BX 9815 .P3 1907 v. 8 Parker, Theodore, 1810-1860 [Works]

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

The American Scholar

BY

THEODORE PARKER

EDITED WITH NOTES BY

GEORGE WILLIS COOKE

1	1		i
1 IN-LUCE- ; 1 VERITATIS;
	^cpy

BOSTON

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION

25 Beacon Street

Copyright, 1907 Abierican Unitarian Association

Pbesswobk by The University Press, Cambridoe, U.S.A.

EDITOR^S PREFACE

Into this volume have been collected a number of Theodore Parker's more scholarly and critical essays, originally published in the various reviews with which he was connected in one or another capacity. To these have been added three or four studies of great preachers. The title of the initial essay, at first used as a college address, has been thought an appropriate one for the whole volume.

The essays on Follen, Beecher, and Macaulay have not before been reprinted from the reviews in which they first appeared. That on Dr. Follen was printed in The Dial, and was the first of Parker's remarkable series of character studies. As the work of a young man it will be found worthy to lead the way to the studies of Adams and Webster. The essay on Macaulay appeared in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, and by what oversight Miss Cobbe failed to include it in her edition, it is impossible now to say. Parker's only contribution to The Atlantic Monthly, in its first volume, was the essay on Henry Ward Beecher. It was his last work of this kind, and probably concluded his many contributions to magazine literature. It shows how highly he appreciated the great Brooklyn preacher.

All of these essays show forth Parker's humanity, and his great admiration for real men. They also indicate his keen critical insight into social causes, as well as his fearless regard for the truth. He did not write to

vi EDITOirS PREFACE

flatter, nor to make the worse appear the better reason. Literary charm and perfection of style did not satisfy him ; but he demanded that justice should be upheld and right sought for with singleness of aim.

G. W. C.

CONTENTS

Page

I. The American Scholar 1

II. Ralph Waldo Emerson 64

III. William Ellery Channing 126

IV. Prescott as an Historian 172

V. Prescott's Conquest of Mexico . . . 220

VI. Hildreth's United States 268

VII. Macaulay's History of England . . . 323

VIII. Buckle's History of Civilization . . . 364

IX. Henry Ward Beecher 419

X. Life and Character of Dr. Follen . . 439

XI. German Literature 463

Notes -IQ^

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Men of a superior culture get it at the cost of the whole community, and therefore at first owe for their education. They must pay back an equivalent or else remain debtors to mankind, debtors for ever; that is, beggars or thieves, such being the only class that are thus perpetually in debt and a burden to the race.

It is true that every man, the rudest Prussian boor as well as von Humboldt, is indebted to mankind for his culture, to their past history and their existing in- stitutions, to their daily toil. Taking the whole cul- ture into the account, the debt bears about the same ratio to the receipt in all men. I speak not of genius, the inborn faculty which costs mankind nothing, only of the education thereof, which the man obtains. The Irishman who can only handle his spade, wear his gar- ments, talk his wild brogue, and bid his beads, has four or five hundred generations of ancestors behind him, and is as long descended and from as old a stock as the accomplished patrician scholar at Oxford and Berlin. The Irishman depends on them all, and on the present generation, for his culture. But he has obtained his development with no special outlay and cost of the hu- man race. In getting that rude culture he has ap- propriated nothing to himself which is taken from another man's share. He has paid as he went along, so he owes nothing in particular for his education ; and mankind has no claim on him as for value received. But the Oxford graduate has been a long time at school II-l 1

2 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and college, not earning but learning ; living therefore at the cost of mankind, with an obligation and an im- plied promise to pay back when he comes of age and takes possession of his educated faculties. He there- fore has not only the general debt which he shares with all men, but an obligation quite special and peculiar for his support while at study.

This rule is general, and applies to the class of edu- cated men, with some apparent exceptions, and a very few real ones. Some men are born of poor but strong- bodied parents, and endowed with great abilities ; they inherit nothing except their share of the general civili- zation of mankind, and the onward impulse which that has given. These men devote themselves to study ; and having behind them an ancestry of broad-shoul- dered, hard-handed, stalwart, temperate men, and deep- bosomed, red-armed, and industrious mothers, they are able to do the work of two or three men at the time. Such men work while they study ; they teach while they learn ; they hew their own way through the wood by superior strength and skill born in their bones, with an axe themselves have chipped out from the stone, or forged of metal, or paid for with the result of their first hewings. They are specially indebted to nobody for their culture. They pay as they go, owing the acad- emic ferryman nothing for setting them over into the elysium of the scholar.

Only few men ever make this heroic and crucial ex- periment. None but poor men's sons essay the trial. Nothing but poverty has whips sharp enough to sting indolent men, even of genius, to such exertion of the manly part. But even this proud race often runs into another debt; they run up long scores with the body, wliich must one day be paid " with aching head and

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 3

squeamish heart-burnings." The credit on account of the hardy fathers is not without hmit. It is soon ex- hausted ; especially in a land where the atmosphei'e, the institutions, and the youth of the people all excite to premature and excessive prodigality of effort. The body takes a mortgage on the spendthrift spirit, de- mands certain regular periodic pa^mients, and will one day foreclose for breach of condition, impede the spirit's action in the premises, putting a very dis- agreeable keeper there, and finally expel the prodigal mortgagor. So it often happens that a man who in his youth scorned a pecuniary debt to mankind and would receive no favor, even to buy culture with, has yet unconsciously and against his will, contracted debts which trouble him in manhood, and impede his action all his life ; with swollen feet and blear eyes famous Griesbach pays for the austere heroism of his penurious and needy youth. The rosy bud of genius on the poor man's tree, too often opens into a lean and ghastly flower. Could not Burns tell us this.''

With the rare exceptions just hinted at, any man of a superior culture owes for it when obtained. Some- times the debt is obvious ; a farmer with small means and a large family sends the most hopeful of his sons to college. Look at the cost of the boy's culture. His liands are kept from work that his mind may be free. He fares on daintier food, wears more and more costly garments. Other members of the family must feed and clothe him, earn his tuition-fees, buy his books, pay for his fuel and room-rent. For this the father rises earlier than of old, yoking the oxen a great while before day of a winter's morning, and toils till long after dark of a winter's night, enduring cold and hardship. For this the mother stints her frugal fare,

4 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

her humble dress ; for this the brothers must forego sleep and pastime, must toil harder, late and early both ; for this the sisters must seek new modes of profit- able work, must wear their old finery long after it is finery no more. The spare wealth of the family, stinted to spare it, is spent on this one youth. From the father to the daughters, all lay their bones to ex- traordinary work for him ; the whole family is pinched in body that this one youth may go brave and full. Even the family horse pays his tax to raise the educa- tion fee.

Men see the hopeful scholar, graceful and accom- plished, receiving liis academic honors, but they see not the hard-featured father standing unheeded in the aisle, nor the older sister in an obscure corner of the gallery, who had toiled in the factory for the favored brother, tending his vineyard, her own not kept ; who had perhaps learned the letters of Greek to hear him recite the grammar at home. Father and sister know not a word of the language in* which his diploma is writ and delivered. At what cost of the family tree is this one flower produced? How many leaves, possible blossoms, yea, possible branches, have been absorbed to create this one flower, which shall perpetuate the kind, after being beautiful and fragrant in its own season.'* Yet, while these leaves are growing for the blossom's sake, and the life of the tree is directed thither with special and urgent emphasis, the difference between branch and blossom, leaf and petal, is getting more and more. By and by the two cannot comprehend each other ; the acorn has forgotten the leaf which reared it, and thinks itself of another kin. Grotius, who speaks a host of languages, talking with the learned of all countries and of every age, has forgot his mother

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 5

tongue, and speech is at end with her that bore him. The son, accomplished with many a science, many an art, ceases to understand the simple consciousness of his father and mother. They arc proud of him, that he has outgrown them ; he ashamed of them when they visit him amid his scholarly company. To them he is a philosopher, they only clowns in his eyes. He learns to neglect, perhaps to despise them, and forgets his obligation and his debt. Yet by their rudeness is it that he is refined. His science and literary skill are purchased by their ignorance and uncouthness of man- ner and of speech. Had the educational cost been equally divided all had still continued on a level ; he had known no Latin, but the whole family might have spoken good English. For all the difference which education made betwixt him and his kinsfolk he is a debtor.

In New England you sometimes see extremes of so- cial condition brought together. The blue-frocked father, well advanced, but hale as an October morn- ing, jostles into Boston in a milk-cart, his red-cheeked grand-daughter beside him, also coming for some use- ful daily work, while the youngest son, cultured at the cost of that grand-daughter's sire and by that father's toil, is already a famous man ; perhaps also a proud one, eloquent at the bar, or powerful in the pulpit, or mighty in the senate. The family was not rich enough to educate all the children after this costly sort ; one becomes famous, the rest are neglected, obscure, and perhaps ignorant ; the cultivated son has little sj^mpa- thy with them. So the men that built up the cathe- drals of Strasbourg and Milan slept in mean hutches of mud and straw, dirty, cold, and wet ; the finished tower looks proudly down upon the lowly thatch, all

6 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

heedless of the cost at which itself arose. It is plain that this man owes for his education, it is plain whom he owes. But all men of a superior culture, though born to wealth, get their education in the same way, only there is this additional mischief to complicate the mat- ter ; the burden of self-denial is not borne by the man's own family, but by other fathers and mothers, other brothers and sisters. They also pay the cost of his culture, bear the burden for no special end, and have no personal or family joy in the success; they do not even know the scholar they help to train. They who hewed the topstone of society are far away when it is hoisted up with shouting. Most of the youths now-a- days trained at Harvard College are the sons of rich men, yet they also, not less, are educated at the public charge ; beneficiaries not of the " Hopkins' Fund," ^ but of the whole community. Society is not yet rich enough to afford so generous a culture to all who ask, who deserve, or who would pay for it a hundred-fold. The accomplished man who sits in his well-endowed scholarship at Oxford, or rejoices to be " Master of Trinity," though he have the estate of the Westmin- sters and Sutherlands behind him, is still the beneficiary of the public and owes for his schooling.

In the general way, among the industrious classes of New England, a boy earns his living after he Is twelve years old. If he gets the superior education of the scholar solely by the pecuniary aid of his father or others, when he Is twenty-five and enters on his pro- fession,— law, medicine, or divinity, politics, school- keeping, or trade, he has not earned his Latin gram- mar ; has rendered no appreciable service to mankind ; others have worked that he might study, and taught that he might learn. He has not paid the first cent

I

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 7

towards his own schooling; he is indebted for it to the whole community. The ox-driver in the fields, the paver in the city streets, the laborer on the railroad, the lumberer in the woods, the girl in the factory, each has a claim on him. If he despises these persons or cuts himself off from sympathy with them, if he refuses to perform his function for them after they have done their possible to fit him for it, he is not only the per- petual and ungrateful debtor, but is more guilty than the poor man's son who forgets the family that sent him to college ; for that family consciously and will- ingly made the sacrifice, and got some satisfaction for it in the visible success of their scheme, nay, are some- times proud of the pride which scorns them, Avhile with the mass of men thus slighted there is no return for their sacrifice. They did their part, faithfully did it ; their beneficiary forgets his function.

The democratic party in New England does not much favor the higher seminaries of education. There has long been a suspicion against them in the mass of the community, and among the friends of the public education of the people a serious distrust. This is the philosophy of that discontent : public money spent on the higher seminaries is so much taken from the hum- bler schools, so much taken from the colleges of all for the college of the few ; men educated at such cost have not adequately repaid the public for the sacrifice made on their account; men of superior education have not been eminently the friends of mankind, they do not eminently represent truth, justice, philanthropy, and piety ; they do not point men to lofty human life and go thitherward in advance of mankind ; their superior education has narrowed their sympathies, instead of widening; they use their opportunities against man-

8 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

kind, and not In its behalf; think, write, legislate, and live not for the interest of mankind, but only for a class ; instead of eminent wisdom, justice, piety, they have eminent cunning, selfishness and want of faith. These charges are matters of allegation, judge you if they be not also matters of fact.

Now, there is a common feeling amongst men that the scholar is their debtor, and in virtue of this that they have a right to various services from him. No honest man asks the aid of a farmer or a blacksmith without intending to repay him in money ; no assembly of mechanics would ask another to come two hundred miles and give them a month's work, or a day's work. Yet they will ask a scholar to do so. What gratuitous services are demanded of the physician, of the minister, of the man of science and letters in general ! No poor man in Boston but thinks he has a good claim on any doctor ; no culprit in danger of liberty or life but will ask the services of a lawyer wholly without recompense to plead his cause. The poorest and most neglected class of men look on every good clergyman as their missionary and minister and friend ; the better edu- cated and more powerful he is, the juster and greater do they feel their claim on him. A pirate In gaol may command the services of any Christian minister in the land. Most of the high achievements in science, let- ters, and art, have had no apparent pay. The pay came beforehand ; In general and from God, In the greater ability, " the vision and the faculty divine," but in particular also and from men. In the opportunity afforded them by others for the use and culture there- of. Divinely and humanly they are well paid. Men feel that they have this right to the services of the scholar, In part because they dimly know that his sii-

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 9

perior education is purchased at the general cost. Hence, too, they are proud of the few able and ac- complished men, feeling that all have a certain prop- erty therein, as having contributed their mite to the accumulation, by their divine nature related to the men of genius, by their human toil partners in the acquirements of the scholar. This feeling is not con- fined to men who intellectually can appreciate intellec- tual excellence. The little parish in the mountains, and the great parish in the city, are alike proud of the able-headed and accomplished scholar who ministers to them ; though neither the poor clowns of the village nor the wealthy clowns of the metropolis could enter into his consciousness and understand his favorite pur- suits or loftiest thought. Both would think it insult- ing to pay such a man in full proportion to his work or their receipt. Nobody offers a salary to the House of Lords ; their lordship is their pay, and they must give back, in the form of justice and sound govern- ment, an equivalent for all they take in high social rank. They must pay for their nobility by being noble lords.

How shall the scholar pay for his education ? He is to give a service for the service received. Thus the miller and the farmer pay one another, each paying with service in his own kind. The scholar cannot pay back bread for bread, and cloth for cloth. He must pay in the scholar's kind, not the woodman's or the weaver's. He is to represent the higher modes of human consciousness ; his culture and opportunities of position fit him for that. So he is not merely to go through the routine of his profession as minister, doc- tor, lawyer, merchant, school-master, politician, or

10 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

maker of almanacs, and for his own advantage; he is also able to represent truth, justice, beauty, philan- thropy, and religion, the highest facts of human ex- perience ; he must be common, but not vulgar, and, as a star, must dwell apart from the vulgarity of the sel- fish and low. He may win money without doing this, get fame and power, and thereby seem to pay mankind for their advance to him, while he rides upon their neck ; but as he has not paid back the scholar's cost, and in the scholar's way, he is a debtor still, and owes for his past culture and present condition.

Such is the position of the scholar everywhere, and such his consequent obligation. But in America there are some circumstances which make the position and the duty still more important. Beside the natural aristocracy of genius, talent, and educated skill, in most countries there is also a conventional and perma- nent nobility based on royal or patrician descent and immoveable aristocracy. Its members monopolize the high places of society, and if not strong by nature are so by position. Those men check the natural power of the class of scholars. The descendant of some fa- mous chief of old time takes rank before the Bacons, the Shakespeares, and the Miltons of new families, — born yesterday, to-day gladdened and gladdening with the joy of their genius, — usurps their place, and for a time " shoves away the worthy bidden guest " from the honors of the public board. Here there is no such class : a man born at all is well born ; with a great na- ture, nobly born ; the career opens to all that can run, to all men that wish to try ; our aristocracy is movable, and the scholar has scope and verge enough.

Germany has the largest class of scholars ; men of

I

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 11

talent, sometimes of genius, of great working power, exceedingly well furnished for their work, with a knowledge of the past and the present. On the whole, they seem to have a greater power of thought than the scholars of any other land. They live in a country where intellectual worth is rated at its highest value. As England is the paradise of the patrician and the millionaire, so is Germany for the man of thought ; Goethe and Schiller and the Humboldts took prece- dence of the mere conventional aristocracy. The em- pire of money is for England, that of mind is for Ger- many. But there the scholar is positively hindered in his function by the power of the government, which allows freedom of thought, and by education tends to promote it, yet not its correlative freedom of speech, and still less the consequent of that, freedom of act. Revelations of new thought are indeed looked for, and encouraged in certain forms, but the corresponding revolution of old things is forbidden. An idea must remain an idea ; the government will not allow it to become a deed, an institution, an idea organized in men. The children of the mind must be exposed to die, or if left alive their feet are cramped so that they cannot go alone; useless, joyless, and unwed, they remain in their father's house. The government seeks to estab- lish national unity of action by the sacrifice of individ- ual variety of action, personal freedom ; every man must be a soldier and a Christian, wearing the livery of the government on the body and in the soul, and going through the spiritual exercises of the church as through the manual exercise of the camp. In a nation so en- lightened, personal freedom cannot be wholly sacrificed, so thought is left free, but speech restricted by censor- ship, speech with the human mouth or the iron lips

12 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

of the press. Now, as of old, is there a controversy be- tween the temporal and the spiritual powers about the investiture of the children of the soul.

Then, on the other side, the scholar is negatively im- peded by the comparative ignorance of the people, by their consequent lack of administrative power and self- help, and their distrust of themselves. There a great illumination has gone on in the upper heavens of the learned, meteors coruscating into extraordinary glory ; it has hardly dawned on the low valleys of the common people. If it shines there at all, it is but as the North- ern Aurora, with a little crackling noise, lending a feeble and uncertain light, not enough to walk with, and no warmth at all ; a light which disturbs the dip and alters the variation of the old historical compass, bewilders the eye, hides the stars, and yet is not bright enough to walk by without stumbling. There is a learned class, very learned and very large, with whom the scholar thinks, and for whom he writes, most un- couthly, in the language only of the schools ; and if not kept in awe by the government, they are contented that a thought should remain always a thought; while in their own heart they disdain all authority but that of truth, justice, and love, they leave the people sub- ject to no rule but the priest, the magistrate, and old custom, which usurp the place of reason, conscience, and affections. There is a very enlightened pulpit, and a very dull audience. In America, it is said, for every dough-faced ^ representative there is a dough- faced constituency ; but in Germany there is not an in- telligent people for each intelligent scholar. So on condition a great thought be true and revolutionary, it is hard to get it made a thing. Ideas go into a nun- nery, not a family. Phidias must keep his awful Jove

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 13

only In his head ; there Is no nicirble to carve it on. Eichhorn and Strauss, and Kant and Hegel, with all their pother among the learned, have kept no boor from the connimn ion-table, nor made him discontented with the despotism of the state. They wrote for scholars, perhaps for gentlemen, for the enlightened, not for the great mass of the people. In whom they had no confi- dence. There Is no class of hucksters of thought who retail philosophy to the million. The million have as yet no appetite for It. So the German scholar Is hin- dered from his function on either land by the power of the government, or the ignorance of the people. He talks to scholars and not men ; his great Ideas are often as idle as shells In a lady's cabinet.

In America all is quite different. There are no royal or patrician patrons, no plebeian clients In litera- ture, no Immoveable aristocracy to withstand or even retard the new genius, talent, or skill of the scholar. There Is no class organized, accredited, and confided In, to resist a new Idea ; only the unorganized Inertia of mankind retards the circulation of thought and the march of men. Our historical men do not found his- torical families ; our famous names of to-day are all new names in the state. American aristocracy is bot- tomed on money which no unnatural laws make stead- fast and immoveable. To exclude a scholar from the company of rich men is not to exclude him from an au- dience that will welcome and appreciate.

Then the government does not interfere to prohibit the free exercise of thought. Speaking Is free, preach- ing Is free, printing free. No administration In Amer- ica could put down a newspaper or suppress the dis- cussion of an unwelcome theme. The attempt would be folly and madness. There is no " tonnage and

14 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

poundage " on thought. It is seldom that lawless vio- lence usurps the place of despotic government. The chief opponent of the new philosophy is the old phi- losophy. The old has only the advantage of a few years, the advantage of possession of the ground. It has no weapons of defense which the new has not for attack. What hinders the growth of the new democ- racy of to-day ? — only the old democracy of yester- day, once green, and then full-blown, but now going to seed. Everywhere else walled gardens have been built for it to go quietly to seed in, and men appointed, in God's name or the state's, to exterminate as a weed every new plant of democratic thought which may spring up and suck the soil or keep off the sun, so that the old may quietly occupy the ground and undisturbed continue to decay and contaminate the air. Here it has nothing but its own stalk to hold up its head, and is armed with only such spines as it has grown out of its own substance.

Here the only power which continually impedes the progress of mankind, and is conservative in the bad sense, is wealth, which represents life lived, not now a living, and labor accumulated, not now a doing. Thus the obstacle to free trade is not the notion that our meat must be home-grown and our coat home-spun, but the money invested in manufactures. Slavery is sus- tained by no prestige of antiquity, no abstract fond- ness for a patriarchal institution, no special zeal for *' Christianity " which the churches often tell us de- mands it, but solely because the Americans have in- vested some twelve hundred millions of dollars in the bodies and souls of their countrymen, and fear they shall lose their capital. Whitney's gin for separating the cotton from its blue seed, making its culture and

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 15

the labor of the slave profitable, did more to perpetuate slavery than all the " Compromises of the Constitu- tion." The last argument in its favor is always this : " It brings money, and we would not lose our invest- ment." Weapon a man with iron, he will stand and fight ; with gold, he will shrink and run. The class of capitalists are always cowardly ; here they are the only cowardly class that has much political or social in- fluence. Here gold is the imperial metal, nothing but wealth is consecrated for life ; the tonsure gets covered up or grown over ; vows of celibacy are no more bind- ing than dicers' oaths ; allegiance to the state is as transferable as a cent, and may be alienated by going over the border ; church-communion may be changed or neglected ; as men will, they sign off from church " and state ; only the dollar holds its own continually, and is the same under all administrations, " safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne." Obstinate money contin- ues in office spite of the proscriptive policy of Polk and Taylor;^ the laws may change. South Carolina move out of the nation, the Constitution be broken, the Union dissolved, still money holds its own. That is the only peculiar weapon which the old has wherewith to repel the new.

Here, too, the scholar has as much freedom as he will take ; himself alone stands in his own light, noth- ing else between him and the infinite majesty of truth. He is free to think, to speak, to print his word and organize his thought. No class of men monopolize public attention or high place. He comes up to the Genius of America, and she asks : " What would you have, my little man ? " " More liberty," lisps he. " Just as much as you can carry," is the answer. " Pay for it and take it, as much as you like, there it

16 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

is." " But it is guarded ! " " Only by gilded flies in the day-time ; they look like hornets, but can only buzz, not bite with their beak, nor sting with their tail. At night it is defended by daws and beetles, noisy, but harmless. Here is marble, my son, not classic and fa- mous as yet, but good as the parian stone ; quarry as much as you will, enough for a nymph or a temple. Say your wisest and do your best thing, nobody will hurt you ! "

Not much more is the scholar impeded by the igno- rance of the people, not at all in respect to the sub- stance of his thought. There is no danger that he will shoot over the heads of the people by thinking too high for the multitude. We have many authors be- low the market, scarce one above it. The people are continually looking for something better than our au- thors give. No American author has yet been too high for the comprehension of the people, and compelled to leave his writings " to posterity, after some cen- turies shall have passed by." If he has thought with the thinkers, and has something to say, and can speak it in plain speech, he is sure to be widely understood. There is no learned class to whom he may talk Latin or Sanscrit, and who will understand him if he write as ill as Immanuel Kant ; there is not a large class to buy costly editions of ancient classics, however beau- tiful, or magnificent works on India, Egypt, Mexico — the class of scholars is too poor for that, the rich men have not the taste for such beauty ; but there is an in- telligent class of men who will hear a man if he has what is worth listening to and says it plain. It will be understood and appreciated, and soon reduced to practice. Let him think as much in advance of men as he will, as far removed from the popular opinion as he

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 17

may, if he arrives at a great truth he is sure of an audience, not an audience of fellow-scholars, as in Ger- man^^, but of fellow-men ; not of the children of dis- tinguished or rich men, rather of the young parents of such, an audience of earnest, practical people, who if his thought be a truth will soon make it a thing. They will appreciate the substance of his thought, though not the artistic form which clothes it.

This peculiar relation of the man of genius to the people comes from American institutions. Here the greatest man stands nearest to the people, and without a mediator speaks to them face to face. This is a new thing: in the classic nations oratory was for the people, so was the drama and the ballad ; that was all their literature. But this came to the people only in cities ; the tongue travels slow and addresses only the ear, while swiftly hurries on tlic printed word and speaks at once to a million eyes. Thucydides and Tac- itus wrote for a few ; Virgil sang the labors of the shepherd in old Ascrsean verse, but only to the wealthy wits of Rome. " I hate the impious crowd, and stave them off," was the scholar's maxim then. All writing was for the few. The best English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is amenable to the same criticism, except the dramatic and the religious. It is so with all the permanent litera- ture of Europe of that time. The same must be said even of much of the religious literature of the scholars then. The writings of Taylor, of Barrow and South, of Bossuet, Massillon, and Bourdaloue, clergymen though they were, speaking with a religious and there- fore a universal aim, always presuppose a narrow au- dience of men of nice culture. So they drew their

figures from the schoolmen from the Greek anthology, II— 2

18 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

from heathen classics and the Christian Fathers. Their illustrations were embellishments to the scholar, but only palpable darkness to the people. This fact of writing for a few nice judges was of great advantage to the form of the literature thus produced, but a disadvan- tage to the substance thereof; a misfortune to the scholar himself, for it belittled his sympathies and kept him within a narrow range. Even the religious litera- ture of the men just named betrays a lack of freedom, a thinking for the learned and not for mankind ; it has breathed the air of the cloister, not the sky, and is tainted with academic and monastic diseases. So the best of It is over-sentimental, timid, and does not point to hardy, manly life. Only Luther and Latimer preached to the million hearts of their contemporaries. The dramatic literature, on the other hand, was for box, pit, and gallery ; hence the width of poetry in its great masters, hence many of its faults of form; and hence the wild and wanton luxuriance of beauty which flowers out all over the marvellous field of art where Shakespeare walked and sung. In the pulpit excel- lence was painted as a priest, or monk, or nun, loving nothing but God ; on the stage as a soldier, magistrate, a gentleman or simpleman, a wife and mother, loving also child and friend. Only the literature of the player and the singer of ballads was for the people.

Here all Is changed, everything that is written is for the hands of the million. In three months Mr. Ma- caulay has more readers in America than Thucydldes and Tacitus in twelve centuries. Literature, which was once the sacrament of the few, onl}'^ a shew-bread to the people, is now the daily meat of the multitude. The best works get reprinted with great speed, the highest poetry Is soon in all the newspapers. Authors

I

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 19

know this and write accordingly. It is only scientific works which ask for a special public. But even science, the proudest of the day, must come down from the clouds of the academy, lay off its scholastic garb, and appear before the eyes of the multitude in common work-day clothes. To large and mainly unlearned au- diences Agassiz and Walker set forth the highest teach- ings of physics and metaphysics, not sparing difficult things, but putting them in plain speech. Emerson takes his majestic intuitions of truth and justice, which transcend the experience of the ages, and expounds them to the mechanics' apprentices, to the factory girls at Lowell and Chicopee, and to the merchants' clerks at Boston.^ The more original the speaker, and the more profound, the better is he relished ; the beauty of the form is not appreciated, but the original sub- stance welcomed into new life over the bench, the loom, and even the desk of the counting-house. Of a deep man the people ask clearness also, thinking he does not see a thing wholly till he sees it plain.

From this new relation of the scholar to the people, and the direct intimacy of his intercourse with men, there comes a new modification of his duty ; he is to represent the higher facts of human consciousness to the people, and express them in the speech of the peo- ple; to think with the sage and saint, but talk with common men. It is easy to discourse with scholars, and in the old academic carriage drive through the broad gateway of the cultivated class ; but here the man of genius is to take the new thought on his shoulders and climb up the stiff, steep hill, and find his way where the wild asses quench their thirst, and the untamed eagle builds his nest. Hence our American scholar must cultivate the dialectics of speech as well as

20 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

thought. Power of speech without thought, a long tongue in an empty head, calls the people together once or twice, but soon its only echo is from an audience of empty pews. Thought without power of speech finds little Avelcome here, there are not scholars enough to keep it in countenance. This popularity of intelli- gence gives a great advantage to the man of letters, who is also a man. He can occupy the whole space be- tween the extremes of mankind, can be at once philoso- pher in his thought and people in his speech, deliver his word without an interpreter to mediate, and, like King Mithridates in the story, talk with the four- score nations of his camp each in his own tongue.

Further still, there are some peculiarities of the American mind in which we differ from our English brothers. They are more inclined to the matter of fact, and appeal to history ; we to the matter of ideas, and having no national history but of a revolution, may appeal at once to human nature. So while they are more historical, fond of names and precedents, enamored of limited facts and coy towards abstract and universal ideas, with the maxim, " Stand by the fixed," we are more metaphysical, ideal ; do not think a thing right because actual, nor impossible because it has never been. The Americans are more metaphys- ical than the English, have departed more from the old sensational philosophy, have welcomed more warmly the transcendental philosophy of Germany and France. The Declaration of Independence, and all the State Constitutions of the North, begin with a universal and abstract idea.^ Even preaching is abstract and of ideas. Calvinism bears metaphysical fruit in New England.^

This fact modifies still more the function of the duty

I

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 21

of the scholar. It determines him to ideas, to facts for the ideas thcj cover, not so much to the past as the future, to the past only that he may guide the present and construct the future. He is to take his run in the past to acquire the momentum of history, his stand in the present, and leap into the future.

In this manner the position and duty of the scholar in America are modified and made peculiar ; and thus is the mode determined for him in Avhich to pay for his education in the manner most profitable to the public that has been at the cost of his training.

There is a test by which we measure the force of a horse or a steam-engine ; the raising of so many pounds through so many feet in a given time. Tlie test of the scholar's power is his ability to raise men in their development.

In America there are three chief modes of acting upon the public, omitting others of small account. The first is the power which comes of national wealth ; the next, that of political station ; the third, power of spiritual wealth, so to say, eminent wisdom, justice, love, piety, the power of sentiments and ideas, and the faculty of communicating them to other men, and or- ganizing them therein. For the sake of shortness, let each mode of power be symbolized by its instrument, and we have the power of the purse, of the office, and of the pen.

The purse represents the favorite mode of power with us. This is natural in our present stage of na- tional existence and human development ; it is likely to continue for a long time. In all civilized countries which have outgrown the period when the sword was the favorite emblem, the purse represents the favorite mode of power with the mass of men ; but here it is so

22 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

with the men of superior education. This power is not wholly personal, but extra-personal, and the man's centre of gravity lies out of himself, less or more, somewhere between the man and his last cent, the dis- tance being greater or less as the man is less or greater than the estate. This is wielded chiefly by men of little education, except the practical culture which they have gained in the process of accumulation. Their riches they get purposely, their training by the way, and ac- cidentally. It is a singular misfortune of the country that while the majority of the people are better culti- vated and more enlightened than any other population in the world, the greater part of the wealth of the na- tion is owned by men of less education and consequently of less enlightenment than the rich men of any leading nation in Europe. In England and France the wealth of this generation is chiefly inherited, and has generally fallen to men carefully trained, with minds disciplined by academic culture. Here wealth is new, and mainly in the hands of men who have scrambled for it adroitly and with vigor. They have energy, vigor, forecast, and a certain generosity, but as a class are narrow, vul- gar, and conceited. Nine-tenths of the property of the people is owned by one-tenth of the persons ; and these capitalists are men of little culture, little moral elevation. This is an accident of our position unavoid- able, perhaps transient ; but it is certainly a misfor- tune that the great estates of the country, and the social and political power of such wealth, should be mainly in the hands of such men. The melancholy re- sult appears in many a disastrous shape, in the tone of the pulpit, of the press, and of the national politics ; much of the vulgarity of the nation is to be ascribed to this fact, that wealth belongs to men who know nothing better.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 23

The office represents the next most popular mode of power. This also is extra-personal, the man's center of gravity is out of himself, somewhere between him and the lowest man in the state ; the distance depending on the proportion of manhood in him and the multitude, if tlie office is much greater than the man, then the offi- cer's center of gravity is further removed from his per- son. This is sought for by the ablest and best edu- cated men in the land. But there is a large class of educated persons who do not aspire to it from lack of ability, for in our form of government it commonly takes some saliency of character to win the high places of office and use respectably this mode of power, while it demands no great or lofty talents to accumu- late the largest fortune in America. It is true the whirlwind of an election, by the pressure of votes, may now and then take a very heavy body up to a great height. Yet it does not keep him from growing giddy and ridiculous while there, and after a few years lets him fall again into complete insignificance, whence no Hercules can ever lift him up. A corrupt administra- tion may do the same, but with the same result. This consideration keeps many educated men from the po- litical arena; others are unwilling to endure the un- savory atmosphere of politics, and take part in a scramble so vulgar; but still a large portion of the educated and scholarly talent of the nation goes to that work.

The power of the pen is wholly personal. It is the appropriate instrument of the scholar, but it is least of all desired and sought for. The rich man sends his sons to trade, to make too much of inheritance yet more by fresh acquisitions of superfluity. He does not send them to literature, art, or science. You find

24. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the scholar slipping in to other modes of action, not the merchants and politicians migrating into this. He longs to act hy the gravity of his money or station, not draw merely by his head. The office carries the day before the pen ; the purse takes precedence of both. Educated men do not so much seek places that demand great powers as those which bring much gold. Self- denial for money or office is common, for scholarship rare and unpopular. To act by money, not mind, is the ill-concealed ambition of many a well-bred man ; the desire of this colors his day-dream, which is less of wisdom and more of wealth, or of political station ; so a first-rate clergyman desires to be razeed to a second- rate politician, and some " tall admiral " of a politician consents to be cut down and turned into a mere sloop of trade. The representative in Congress becomes a president of an insurance office or a bank or the agent of a cotton-mill ; the j udge deserts his station on the bench and presides over a railroad; the governor or senator wants a place in the post-office ; the historian longs for a " chance in the custom-house." The pen stoops to the office, that to the purse. The scholar would rather make a fortune by a balsam of wild cherry than write Hamlet or Paradise Lost for noth- ing; rather than help mankind by making a Paradise Regained. The well-endowed minister thinks how much more money he might have made had he specu- lated in stocks and not theology, and mourns that the kingdom of heaven does not pay in this present life fourfold. The professor of Greek is sorry he was not a surveyor and superintendent of a railroad, he should have so much more money ; that is what he has learned from Plato and Diogenes. We estimate the skill of an artist like that of a pedler, not by the pictures he

THE AIMERICAN SCHOLAR 25

has made, but by the money. There is a mercantile way of determining hterary merit, not by the author's books, but by his bahmce with the pubhsher. No churcli is yet called after a man who is merely rich, something in the New Testament might hinder that ; but the ministers estimate their brother minister by the greatness of his position, not of his character ; not by his piety and goodness, not even by his reason and understanding, the culture he has attained thereby, and the use he makes thereof, but by the wealth of his church and the largeness of his salary ; so that he is not thought the fortunate and great minister who has a large outgo of spiritual riches, rebukes the sins of the nation and turns many to righteousness, but he who has a large material income, ministers, though poorly, to rich men, and is richly paid for that func- tion. The well-paid clergymen of a city tell the pro- fessor of theology that he must teach " such doctrines as the merchants approve " or they will not give money to the college, and he, it, and the " cause of the Lord," will all come to the ground at the same time and in kindred confusion. So blind money would put out the heavenly eyes of science, and lead her also to his own ditch. It must not be forgotten that there are men in the midst of us, — rich, respectable, and highly honored with social rank and political power, who prac- tically and in strict conformity with their theory honor Judas, who made money by his treachery, far more than Jesus who laid down his life for men whose money is deemed better than manhood. It must indeed be so. Any outrage that is profitable to the controlling por- tion of society is sure to be welcome to the leaders of the state, and is soon pronounced divine by the leaders of the church.

26 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

It would seem as if the pen ought to represent the favorite mode of power at a college ; but even there the waters of Pactolus are thought fairer than the Casta-' lian, Heliconian spring, or " Siloa's brook that flowed fast by the oracle of God." The college is named after the men of wealth, not genius. How few pro- fessorships in America bear the names of men of sci- ence or letters, and not of mere rich men ! Which is thought the greatest benefactor of a college, he who endows it with money or with mind? Even there it is the purse, not the pen, that is the symbol of honor, and the University is " up for California," ^ not Par- nassus.

Even in politics the purse turns the scale. Let a party wrestle never so hard, it cannot throw the dollar. Money controls and commands talent, not talent money. The successful shopkeeper frowns on and browbeats the accomplished politician, who has too much justice for the wharf and the board of brokers ; he notices that the rich men avert their eye, or keep their beaver down, trembles and is sad, fearing that his daughter will never find a fitting spouse. The purse buys up able men of superior education, corrupts and keeps them as its retained attorneys, in congress or the church, not as counsel but advocate, bribed to make the worse ap- pear the better reason, and so help money to control the state and wield its power against the interest of mankind. This is perfectly well known ; but no politi- cian or minister, bribed to silence or to speech, ever loses his respectability because he is bought by re- spectable men, — if he get his pay. In all countries but this the office is before the purse ; here the state is chiefly an accessory of the exchange, and our politics only mercantile. This appears sometimes against our

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 27

will, in s^^mbols not meant to tell the tale. Thus in the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, a cod- fish stares the speaker in the face ^ — not a very intel- lectual looking fish. When it Avas put there it was a symbol of the riches of the state, and so of the Com- monwealth. With singular and unconscious satire it tells the legislature to have an eye " to the main chance," and, but for its fidelity to its highest instincts and its obstinate silence, might be a symbol good enough for the place.

Now, after the office and the purse have taken their votaries from the educated class, the ablest men are certainly not left behind. Three roads open before our young Hercules as he leaves college, having re- spectively as finger-post the pen, the office, and the purse. Few follow the road of letters. This need not be much complained of; nay, it might be rejoiced in, if the purse and the office in their modes of power did represent the higher consciousness of mankind. But no one contends it is so.

Still there are men who devote themselves to some literary callings which have no connection with politi- cal office, and which are not pursued for the sake of great wealth. Such men produce the greater part of the permanent literature of the country. They are eminently scholars, permanent scholars who act by their scholar-craft, not by the state-craft of the politician, or the purse-craft of the capitalist. How are these men paying their debt and performing their function.'' The answer must be found in the science and the litera- ture of the land.

American science is something of which we may well be proud. INIr. Liebig, in Germany, has found it neces- sary to defend himself from the charge of following

28 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

science for the loaves and fishes thereof; and he de- clares that he esjDoiised chemistry not for her wealthy dower, not even for the services her possible children might render to mankind, but solely for her own sweet sake. Amongst the English race, on both sides of the ocean, science is loved rather for the fruit than the blossom ; its service to the body is thought of more value than its service to the mind. A man's respecta- bility Avould be in danger in America, if he loved any science better than the money or fame it might bring. It is characteristic of us that a scholar should write for reputation and gold. Here, as elsewhere, the un- profitable parts of science fall to the lot of poor men. When the rich man's son has the natural calling that way public opinion would dissuade him from the study of nature. The greatest scientific attainments do not give a man so high social consideration as a political ofl^ce or a successful speculation, unless it be the science which makes money. Scientific schools we call after merely rich men, not men of wealthy minds. It is true we name streets and squares, towns and counties, after Franklin, but it is because he keeps the lightning from factories, churches, and barns ; tells us not " to give too much for the whistle," and teaches " the way to make money plenty in every man's pocket." We should not name them after Cuvier and Laplace.

Notwithstanding this, the scientific scholars of America, both the home-born and the adopted sons, have manfully paid for their culture, and done honor to the land. This is true of men in all departments of science,- — from that which searches the dcei^s of the sky to that which explores the shallows of the sea. In- dividuals, states, and the nation, have all done them- selves honor by the scientific researches and discoveries

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 29

that have been made. The outlay of money and of genius for things which only pay the head and not the mouth of man is beautiful and a little surprising in such a utilitarian land as this. Time would fail me to attend to particular cases.

Look at the literature of America. Reserving the exceptional portion thereof to be examined in a mo- ment, let us study the instantial portion of it, Ameri- can literature as a whole. This may be distributed into two main divisions: First comes the permanent literature, consisting of books not designed merely for a single and transient occasion, but elaborately wrought for a general purpose. This is literature proper. Next follov/s the transient literature, which is brought out for a particular occasion, and designed to serve a special purpose. Let us look at each.

The permanent literature of America is poor and meager; it does not bear the mark of manly hands, of original, creative minds. Most of it is rather milk for babes than meat for men, though much of it is neither fresh meat nor new milk, but the old dish often served up before. In respect to its form, this portion of our literature is an imitation. That is natural enough, considering the youth of the country. Every nation, like every man, even one born to genius, begins by imitation. Raphael, with servile pencil, followed his masters in his youth; but at length his artistic eye at- tracted new-born angels from the calm stillness of their upper heaven, and with liberal, free hand, with mas- terly and original touch, the painter of the newness amazed the world.

The early Christian literature is an imitation of the Hebrew or the classic type ; even after centuries had passed by, Sidonius, though a bishop of the church.

30 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and destined to become a saint, uses the old heathen imagery, referring to Triptolemus as a model for Christian work, and talks about Triton and Galatea to the Christian Queen of the Goths. Saint Ambrose is a notorious imitator of pagan Cicero. The Christians were all anointed with Jewish nard ; and the sour grapes they ate in sacrament have set on edge their children's teeth till now. The modern nations of Europe be- gan their literature by the driest copies of Livy and Virgil. The Germans have the most original litera- ture of the last hundred years. But till the middle of the past century their permanent literature was chiefly in Latin and French, with as little originality as our own. The real poetic life of the nation found vent in other forms. It is natural, therefore, and according to the course of history, that we should begin in this way. The best political institutions of England are cherished here, so her best literature ; and it is not sur- prising that we are content with this rich inheritance of artistic toil. In many things we are independent, but in much that relates to the higher works of man we are still colonies of England. This appears not only in the vulgar fondness for English fashions, man- ners, and the like, which is chiefly an aff*ectation, but in the servile style with which we copy the great or little models of English literature. Sometimes this is done consciously, oftencr without knowing it.

But the substance of our permanent literature is as faulty as its form. It docs not bear marks of a new, free, vigorous mind at work, looking at things from the American point of view, and, though it put its thought in antique forms, yet thinking originally and for itself. It represents the average thought of respectable men, directed to some particular subject, and their average

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 31

morality. It represents nothing more ; how could it, while the ablest men have gone off to politics or trade? It is such literature as almost anybody might get up if you would give him a little time to make the pre- liminary studies. There is little in it that is national, little individual and of the writer's own mind; it is ground out in the public literary mill. It has no noble sentiments, no great ideas ; nothing which makes you burn, nothing which makes you much worse or much better. You may feed on this literature all your days, and whatsoever you may gain in girth, you shall not take in thought enough to add half an inch to your stature.

Out of every hundred American literary works printed since the century began, about eighty will be of his character. Compare the four most conspicu- ous periodicals of America with the four great Quarterlies of England, and you see how inferior our literature is to theirs — in all things, in form and in substance too.^*^ The European has the freedom of a well-bred man — it appears in the movement of his thought, his use of words, in the easy grace of his sen- tences, and the general manner of his work ; the Amer- ican has the stiffness and limitations of a big, raw boy, in the presence of his schoolmaster. They are proud of being English, and so have a certain lofty nationality which appears in their thought and the form thereof, even in the freedom to use and invent new words. Our authors of this class seem ashamed that they are Americans, and accordingly are timid, ungraceful, and weak. They dare not be original when they could. Hence this sort of literature is dull. A man of the average mind and conscience, heart and soul, studies a particular subject a short time — for

32 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

this is the land of brief processes — and writes a book thereof, or thereon ; a critic of the same average makes his special study of the book, not its theme, " reviews " the v»ork ; is as ready and able to pass judgment on Bowditch's translation of Laplace in ten days after its appearance as ten years, and distributes praise and blame, not according to the author's knowledge, but the critic's ignorant caprice ; and then average men read the book and the critique with no immoderate joy or unmeasured grief. They learn some new facts, no new ideas, and get no lofty impulse. The book was written without inspiration, without philosophy, and is read with small profit. Yet it is curious to observe the praise which such men receive, how soon they are raised to the House of Lords in English literature. I have known three American Sir Walter Scotts, half a dozen Addisons, one or two Macaulays, a historian that was LIume and Gibbon both in one, several Burnses, and IMiltons by the quantity, not " mute," the more is the pity, but " inglorious " enough ; nay, even vain- glorious at the praise which some penny-a-liner or dollar-a-pager foolishly gave their cheap extemporary stuff. In sacred literature it is the same ; in a single winter at Boston we had two American Saint Johns in full blast for several months. Though no Felix trem- bles, there are now extant in the United States not less than six American Saint Pauls, in no manner of peril except the most dangerous, of idle praise.

A living, natural, and full-grown literature contains two elements. One is of mankind in general ; that is human and universal. The other is of the tribe in special, and of the writer in particular. This is na- tional and even personal ; you see the idiosyncrasy of the nation and the individual author in the work. The

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 33

universal human substance accepts the author's form, and the pubhc wine of mankind runs into the private bottle of the author. Thus the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament is fresh and original in substance and in form ; the two elements are plain enough, the universal and the particular. The staple of the Psalms of David is human, of mankind, it is trust in God ; but the twist, the die, the texture, the pattern, all that is Hebrew — of the tribe, and personal — of David, shepherd, warrior, poet, king. You see the pastoral hill-sides of Judaea in his holy hymns ; nay, " Uriah's beauteous wife " now and then sidles into his sweetest psalm. The Old Testament books smell of Palestine, of its air and its soil. The Rose of Sharon has Hebrew earth about its roots. The geography of the Holy Land, its fauna and its flora both, even its wind and sky, its early and its latter rain, all appear in the literature of historian and bard. It is so in the Iliad. You see how the sea looked from Homer's point of view, and know how he felt the west wind, cold and raw. The human element has an Ionian form and a Homeric hue. The ballads of the people in Scotland and Eng- land are national in the same way ; the staple of hu- man life is wrought into the Scottish form. Before the Germans had any permanent national literature of this character their fertile mind found vent in legends, popular stories, now the admiration of the learned. These had at home the German dress, but as the stories traveled into other lands, they kept their human flesh and blood, but took a diff'ercnt garb, and acquired a diff^erent complexion from every country which they visited; and, like the streams of their native Swabia, took the color of the soil they traveled through.

The permanent and instantial literature of Amer- II— 3

34 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ica is not national in this sense. It has little that is American ; it might as well be written by some book- wright in Lcipsic or London, and then imported. The individuality of the nation is not there, except in the cheap, gaudy binding of the work. The nationality of America is only stamped on the lids, and vulgarly blazoned on the back.

Is the book a history ? — it is written with no such freedom as you should expect of a writer looking at the breadth of the world from the lofty stand-point of America. There is no new philosophy of history in it. You would not think it was written in a democracy that keeps the peace without armies or a national gaol. ]\Ir. Macaulay writes the history of England as none but a North Briton could do. Astonishingly well-read, equipped with literary skill at least equal to the mas- terly art of Voltaire, mapping out his subject like an engineer, and adorning it like a painter, you yet see, all along, that the author is a Scotchman and a Whig. Nobody else could have written so. It is of Mr. Ma- caulay. But our American writer thinks about mat- ters just as everybody else does; that is, he does not think at all, but only writes what he reads, and then, like the good-natured bear in the nursery story, " thinks he has been thinking." It is no such thing, he has been writing the common opinion of common men, to get the applause of men as common as him- self.

Is the book of poetry ? — the substance is chiefly old, the form old, the allusions are old. It is poetry of society, not of nature. You meet in it the same ever- lasting mythology, the same geography, botany, zool- ogy, the same symbols ; a new figure of speech sug- gested by the sight of nature, not the reading of

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 35

books, you could no more find than a fresh shad in the Dead Sea. You take at random eight or ten " Amer- ican poets " of this stamp, you see at once what was the favorite author with each new bard ; you often see what particular work of Shelley, or Tennyson, or Mil- ton, or George Herbert, or, if the man has culture enough, of Goethe or Uhland, Jean Paul or Schiller, suggested the " American original." His inspiration comes from literature, not from the great universe of nature or of human life. You see that this writer has read Percy's Rcliqucs, and the German Wunderhorn ; but you would not know that he wrote in a republic — in a land full of new life, with great rivers and tall mountains, with maple and oak trees that turn red in the autumn ; amongst a people who hold town-meetings, have free schools for everybody, read newspapers voraciously, who have lightning rods on their steeples, ride in railroads, are daguerreotypcd by the sun, and who talk by lightning from Halifax to New Orleans ; who listen to the whippoorwill and the bobolink, who believe in slavery and the Declaration of Independ- ence, in the devil and the five points of Calvinism. You would not know where our poet lived, or that he lived anj'wherc. Reading the Iliad you doubt that Homer was born blind ; but our bard seems to have been deaf also, and for expressing what was national in his time might likewise have been dumb.

Is it a volume of sermons .''^ — they might have been Avritten at Edinburgh, ]\Iadrid, or Constantinople, as well as in New England ; as well preached to the " Homo Sapiens " of Linnaeus or the man in the moon, as to the special audience that heard or heard them not, but only paid for having the things preached. There is nothing individual about them ; the author

36 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

seems as impersonal as Spinoza's conception of God. The sermons are like an almanac calculated for the meridian of no place in particular, for no time in spe- cial. There is no allusion to anything American. The author never mentions a river this side of the Jordan; knows no mountain but Lebanon, Zion, and Carmel, and would think it profane to talk of the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, of Monadnoc and the Androscoggin. He mentions Babylon and Jerusalem, not New York and Baltimore; you would never dream that he lived in a church without a bishop, and a state without a king, in a democratic nation that held three million slaves, with ministers chosen by the people. He is surrounded, clouded over, and hid by the tradi- tions of the " ages of faith " behind him. He never thanks God for the dew and snow, only for " the early and the latter rain " of a classic sacred land ; a temper- ance man, he blesses God for the wine because the great Psalmist did so thousands of years ago. He speaks of the olive and the fig-tree which he never saw, not of the apple-tree and the peach before his eyes all day long, their fruit the joy of his children's heart. If you guessed at his time and place, you would think he lived, not under General Taylor, but under King Ahab, or Jeroboam; that liis audience rode on camels or in chariots, not in steam-cars ; that they fought with bows and arrows against the children of Moab ; that their favorite sin was the worship of some graven image, and that they made their children pass through the fire unto Moloch, not through the counting-house unto Mammon. You would not know whether the preacher was married or a bachelor, rich or poor, saint or sinner ; you would probably conclude he was not much of a saint, nor even much of a sinner.

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 37

The authors of this portion of our literature seem ashamed of America. One day slie will take her re- venge. They are the parasites of letters, and live on Avhat other men have made classic. They would study the Holy Land, Greece, Etruria, Egypt, Nineveh, spots made famous by great and holy men, and let the native races of America fade out, taking no pains to study the monuments which so swiftly pass away from our own continent. It is curious that most of the accounts of the Indians of North America come from men not natives here, from French and Germans ; and characteristic that we should send an expedition to the Dead Sea,^^ while wide tracts of this continent lie all untouched by the white man's foot ; and, also, that while we make such generous and noble efforts to christianize and bless the red, yellow, and black heath- ens at the world's end, we should leave the American Indian and Negro to die in savage darkness, the South making it penal to teach a black man to write or read.

Yet, there is one portion of our permanent literature, if literature it may be called, which is wholly in- digenous and original. The lives of the early martyrs and confessors are purely Christian, so are the legends of saints and other pious men; there was nothing like this in the Hebrew or heathen literature, cause and occasion were alike wanting for it. So we have one series of literary productions that could be written by none but Americans, and only here ; I mean the Lives of Fugitive Slaves.^" But as these are not the work of the men of superior culture they hardly help to pay the scholar's debt. Yet all the origi- nal romance of Americans is in them, not in the white man's novel.

88 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Next is the transient literature, composed chiefly of speeches, orations, state papers, political and other occasional pamphlets, business reports, articles in the journals, and other productions designed to serve some present purpose. These are commonly the work of educated men, though not of such as make literature a profession. Taking this department as a whole, it differs much from the permanent literature ; here is freshness of thought and newness of form. If Amer- ican books are mainly an imitation of old models, it would be difficult to find the prototype of some Amer- ican speeches. They " would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." Take the state papers of the Ameri- can government during the administration of Mr. Polk, the speeches made in Congress at the same time, the state papers of the several states — you have a much better and more favorable idea of the vigor and orig- inality of the American mind than you would get from all the bound books printed in that period. The diplo- matic writings of American politicians compare favor- ably with those of any nation in the world. In elo- quence no modern nation is before us, perhaps none is our equal. Here you see the inborn strength and manly vigor of the American mind. You meet the same spirit which fells the forest, girdles the land with railroads, annexes Texas, and covets Cuba, Nicaragua, all the world. ^^ You see that the authors of this litera- ture are workers also. Others have read of wild beasts ; here are the men that have seen the wolf.

A portion of this literature represents the past, and has the vices already named. It comes from human history and not human nature ; as you read it, you think of the inertia and the cowardliness of mankind ; nothing is progressive, nothing noble, generous, or

THE AINIERICAN SCHOLAR 39

just, only respectable. The past is preferred before the present ; money is put before men, a vested right before a natural right. Such literature appears in all countries. The ally of despotism, and the foe of man- kind, it is yet a legitimate exponent of a large class of men. The leading journals of America, political and commercial, or literar}^, are poor and feeble ; our reviews of books afford matter for grave consideration. You would often suppose them written by the same hand which manufactures the advertisements of the grand caravan, or some patent medicine ; or, when un- favorable, by some of the men who write defamatory articles on the eve of an election.

But a large part of this transient literature is very different in its character. Its authors have broken with the traditions of the past ; they have new ideas, and plans for putting them in execution ; they are full of hope, are national to the extreme, bragging and defiant. They put the majority before institutions, the rights of the majority before the privilege of a few ; they represent the onward tendency and material prophecy of the nation. The new activity of the American mind here expresses its purpose and its prayer. Here is strength, hope, confidence, even au- dacity ; all is American. But the great idea of the absolute right does not appear, all is more national than human ; and in what concerns the nation, it is not justice, the point where all interests are balanced, and the welfare of each harmonizes with that of all, which is sought ; but the " greatest good of the great- est number," that is, only a privilege had at the cost of the smaller number. Here is little respect for uni- versal humanity ; little for the eternal laws of God, which override all the traditions and contrivances of

40 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

men; more reverence for a statute or constitution, which is indeed the fundamental law of the political state, but is often only an attempt to compromise be- tween the fleeting passions of the day and the immut- able morality of God.

Amid all the public documents of the nation and the several states, in the speeches and writings of favorite men, who represent and so control the public mind, for fifty years there is little that " stirs the feelings in- finite " within you ; much to make us more American, not more manly. There is more head than heart ; na- tive intellect enough, culture that is competent, but little conscience or real religion. How many news- papers, how many politicians in the land go at all be- yond the Whig idea of protecting the property now accumulated, or the Democratic idea of insuring the greatest material good of the greatest number.'' Where are we to look for the representative of justice, of the unalienable rights of all the people and all the nations.? In the triple host of article-makers, speech-makers, lay and clerical, and makers of laws, you find but few who can be trusted to stand up for the unalienable rights of men ; who will never write, speak, nor vote in the interests of a party, but always in the interest of man- kind, and will represent the justice of God in the forum of the world.

This literature, like the other, fails of the high end of writing and of speech; with more vigor, more free- dom, more breadth of vision, and an intense nationality, the authors thereof are just as far from representing the higher consciousness of mankind, just as vulgar as the tame and well-licked writers of the permanent liter- ature. Here are the men who have cut their own way through the woods, men with more than the average in-

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 41

telligencc, daring, and strength ; but with less than the average justice which is honesty in the abstract, less than the average honesty which is justice concentrated upon small particulars.

Examine both these portions of American literature, the permanent and the fleeting — you see their edu- cated authors are no higher than the rest of men. They are the slaves of public opinion as much as the gossip in her little village. It may not be the public opinion of a coterie of crones, but of a great party ; that makes little odds, they are worshippers of the same rank, idolaters of the same w'ealth ; the gossiping granny shows her littleness the size of life, while their deformity is magnified by the solar microscope of high oflBce. Many a popular man exhibits his pigmy soul to the multitude of a whole continent, idly mistaking it for greatness. They are swayed by vulgar pas- sions, seek vulgar ends, address vulgar motives, use vulgar means ; they may command by their strength, they cannot refine by their beauty or instruct by their guidance, and still less inspire by any eminence of man- hood which they were born to or have won. They build on the surface-sand for to-day, not on the rock of ages for ever. With so little conscience, they heed not the solemn voice of history, and respect no more the prophetic instincts of mankind.

To most men, the approbation of their fellows is one of the most desirable things. This approbation appears in the various forms of admiration, respect, es- teem, confidence, veneration, and love. The great man obtains this after a time, and in its highest forms, without seeking it, simply by faithfulness to his na- ture. He gets it by rising and doing his work, in the course of nature, as easily and as irresistibly as the

42 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

sun gathers to the clouds the evaporation of land and sea, and, like the sun, to shed it down in blessings on mankind. Little men seek this, consciously or not knowing it, by stooping, cringing, flattering the pride, the passion or the prejudice of others. So they get the approbation of men, but never of man. Some- times this is sought for by the attainment of some ac- cidental quality, which low-minded men hold in more honor than the genius of sage or poet or the brave manhood of some great hero of the soul. In Eng- land, though money is power, it is patrician birth which is nobility, and valued most ; and there, accord- ingly, birth takes precedence of all — of genius, and even of gold. INIen seek the companionship or the patronage of titled lords, and social rank depends upon nobility of blood. The few bishops in the upper house do more to give conventional respectability to the clerical profession there than all the solid intellect of Hooker, Barrow, and of South, the varied and exact learning of philosophic Cudworth, the eloquence and affluent piety of Taylor, and Butler's vast and manly mind. In America, social rank depends substantially on wealth, an accident as much as noble birth, but movable. Here gold takes precedence of all, — of genius, and even of noble birth.

" Though your sire Had royal blood within him, and though you Possess the intellect of angels too, 'Tis all in vain; the world will ne'er inquire On such a score; — Why should it take the pains? 'Tis easier to weigh purses, sure, than brains."

Wealth is sought, not merely as a means of power, but of nobility. When obtained, it has the power of nobility ; so poor men of superior intellect and educa-

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 43

tion, powerful by nature, not by position, fear to dis- turb the opinion of wealthy men, to instruct their ig- norance or rebuke their sin. Hence the aristocracy of wealth, illiterate and vulgar, goes unrebuked, and de- bases the natural aristocracy of mind and culture which bows down to it. The artist prostitutes his pencil and his skill, and takes his law of beauty from the fat clown, whose barns and pigs and wife he paints for daily bread. The preacher docs the same ; and though the stench of the rum-shop infests the pulpit, and death hews down the leaders of his flock, the preacher must cry, *' Peace, peace," or else be still, for rum is power ! But this power of wealth has its antagonistic force, the power of numbers. Much depends on the dollar. Nine-tenths of the property is owned by one- tenth of all these men — but much also on the votes of the million. The few are strong by money, the many by their votes. Each is worshipped by its votaries, and its approbation sought. He that can get the men controls the money too. So while one portion of edu- cated men bows to the rich, and consecrates their pas- sion and their prejudice, another portion bows, equally prostrate, to the passions of the multitude of men. The many and the rich have each a public opinion of their own, and both are tyrants. Here the tyranny of public opinion is not absolutely greater than in Eng- land, Germany, or France, but is far greater in com- parison with other modes of oppression. It seems in- herent in a republic ; it is not in a republic of noble men. But here this sirocco blows flat to the ground full many an aspiring blade. Wealth can establish banks or factories ; votes can lift the meanest man into the highest political place, can dignify any pas- sion with the name and force of human law; so it is

44 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

thought by the worshippers of both, seeking the ap- probation of the two, that pubHc opinion can make truth of lies, and right even out of foulest wrong. Pohticians begin to say, there is no law of God above the ephemeral laws of men.

There are few American works of literature which appeal to what is best in men ; few that one could wish should go abroad and live. America has grown be- yond hope in population, the free and bond, in riches, in land, in public material prosperity ; but in a litera- ture that represents the higher elements of manliness far less than wise men thought. They looked for the fresh new child; it is born with wrinkles, and dread- fully like his grandmother, only looking older and more effete. Our muse does not come down from an American Parnassus, with a new heaven in her eye, men not daring to look on the face of anointed beauty, coming to tell of noble thought, to kindle godlike feel- ings with her celestial spark, and stir mankind to noble deeds. She finds Parnassus steep and high, and hard to climb ; the air austere and cold, the light severe, too stern for her effeminate nerves. So she has a little dwelling in the flat and close pent town, hard by the public street; breathes its Boeotian breath; walks with the money-lenders at high change; has her account at the bank, her pew in the most fashionable church and least austere ; she gets approving nods in the street, flattery in the penny prints, sweetmeats and sparkling wine in the proper places. What were the inspira- tions of all God's truth to her ? He " taunts the lofty land with little men."

There still remains the exceptional literature ; some of it is onlj^ fugitive, some meant for permanent dura-

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 45

tlon. Here is a new and different spirit ; a respect for human nature above human history, for man above all the accidents of man, for God above all the alleged ac- cidents of God ; a veneration for the eternal laws which he only makes and man but finds ; a law before all statutes, above all constitutions, and holier than all the writings of human hands. Here you find most fully the sentiments and ideas of America, not such as rule the nation now, but which, unconsciously to the people, have caused the noble deeds of our history, and now prophesy a splendid future for this young giant here. These sentiments and ideas are brought to consciousness in this literature. Here a precedent is not a limitation ; a fact of history does not eclipse an idea of nature ; an investment is not thought more sacred than a right. Here is more hope than memory ; little deference to wealth and rank, but a constant aspiration for truth, justice, love, and piety; little fear of the public opinion of the many or the few, rather a scorn thereof, almost a defiance of it. It appears in books, in pamphlets, in journals, and in sermons, sorely scant in quantity as yet. New and fresh, it is often greatly deficient in form ; rough, rude, and uncouth, it yet has in it a soul that will Uve. Its authors are often men of a wide and fine culture, though mainly tending to underrate the past achievements of mankind. They have little reverence for great names. They value the Greek and Hebrew mind for no more than it is worth. With them a wTong is no more respected because well descended, and supported by all the riches, all the votes; a right, not less a right because unjustly kept out of its own. These men are American all through ; so intensely national that they do not fear to tell the nation of the wrong it does.

46 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

The form of this Hterature is American. It is indi- genous to our soil, and could come up in no other land. It is unlike the classic literature of any other nation. It is American as the Bible is Hebrew, and the Odyssey is Greek. It is wild and fantastic, like all fresh origi- nal literature at first. You see in it the image of re- publican institutions — the free school, free state, free church; it reflects the countenance of free men. So the letters of old France, of modern England, of Italy and Spain, reflect the monarchic, oligarchic, and ec- clesiastic institutions of those lands. Here appears the civilization of the nineteenth century, the treasures of human toil for many a thousand years. More than that, you see the result of a fresh contact with nature, and original intuitions of divine things. Acknowledg- ing inspiration of old, these writers of the newness believe in it now not less, not miraculous, but normal. Here is humanity that overleaps the bounds of class and of nation, and sees a brother in the beggar, pirate, slave, one family of men variously dressed in cuticles of white or yellow, black or red. Here, too, is a new loveliness, somewhat akin to the savage beauty of our own wild woods, seen in their glorious splendor an hour before autumnal suns go down and leave a trail of glory lingering in the sky. Here, too, is a piety some- what heedless of scriptures, liturgies, and forms and creeds ; it finds its law written in nature, its glorious everlasting gospel in the soul of man ; careless of cir- cumcision and baptismal rites, it finds the world a temple, and rejoices everywhere to hold communion Avith the Infinite Father of us all, and keep a sacra- ment in daily life, conscious of immortality, and feed- ing continually on angels' bi'ead.

The writers of this new literature are full of faults ;

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 47

yet they are often strong, though more by their direc- tion than by native force of mind ; more by their in- tuitions of the first good, first perfect, and first fair, than through their historical knowledge or dialectic power. Their ship sails swift, not because it is sharper built, or carries broader sails than other craft, but because it steers where the current of the ocean coin- cides with the current of the sky, and so is borne along by nature's wind and nature's wave. Uninvited, its ideas steal into parlor and pulpit, its kingdom coming within men and without observation. The shoemaker feels it as he toils in his narrow shop ; it cheers the maiden weaving in the mill, whose wheels the Merrimac is made to turn ; the young man at college bids it wel- come to his ingenuous soul. So at the breath of spring new life starts up in every plant ; the sloping hills are green with corn, and sunny banks are blue and fra- grant with the wealth of violets, which only slept till the enchanter came. The sentiments of this literature burn in the bosom of holy-hearted girls, of matrons, and of men. Ever and anon its great ideas are heard even in Congress, and in the speech of old and young, which comes tingling into most unwilling ears.

This literature has a work to do, and is about its work. Let the old man crow loud as he may, the young one will crow another strain ; for it is written of God that our march is continually onward, and age shall advance over age for ever and for ever.

Already America has a few fair specimens from this new field to show. Is the work history? The author writes from the stand-point of American democ- racy,— I mean philanthropy, the celestial democracy, not the Satanic; writes with a sense of justice and in the interest of men ; writes to tell a nation's purpose

48 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

in its deeds, and so reveal the universal law of God, which overrules the affairs of states as of a single man. You wonder that history was not before so writ that its facts told the nation's ideas, and its labors were lessons, and so its hard-won life became philosophy.

Is it poetry the man writes.? It is not poetry like the old. The poet has seen nature with his own eyes, heard her with his own mortal, bodily ears, and felt her presence, not vicariously through Milton, Uhland, Ariosto, but personally, her heart against his heart. He sings of what he knows, sees, feels, not merely of what he reads in others' song. Common things are not therefore unclean. In plain New England life he finds his poetry, as magnets iron in the blacksmith's dust, and as the bee finds dew-bright cups of honey in the common woods and common weeds. It is not for him to rave of Parnassus, while he knows it not, for the soul of song has a seat upon Monadnoc, Wachu- sett, or Katahdiu, quite as high. So Scottish Burns was overtaken by the muse of poetry, who met him on his own bleak hills, and showed him beauty in the daisy and the thistle and the tiny mouse, till to his eye the hills ran o'er with loveliness, and Caledonia became a classic land.

Is it religion the author treats of? It is not wor- ship by fear, but through absolute faith, a never-end- ing love ; for it is not worship of a howling and im- perfect God, — grim, jealous, and revengeful, loving but a few, and them not well ; but of the Infinite Father of all mankind, whose universal providence will sure achieve the highest good of all that are.

These men are few ; in no land are they numerous, or were or will be. There Avcre few Hebrew prophets, but a tribe of priests ; there are but few mighty bards

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 49

that hover o'er the world ; but here and there a sage, looking deep and living high, who feels the heart of things, and utters oracles which pass for proverbs, psalms and prayers, and stimulate a world of men. They draw the nations, as conjoining moon and sun draw waters shore-ward from the ocean springs ; and as electrifying heat they elevate the life of men. Under their influence you cannot be as before. They stimu- late the sound, and intoxicate the silly; but in the heart of noble youths their idea becomes a fact, and their prayer a daily life.

Scholars of such a stamp are few and rare, not without great faults. For every one of them there will be many imitators, as for each lion a hundred lion- flies, thinking their buzz as valiant as his roar, and wondering the forest does not quake thereat, and while they feed on him fancy they suck the breasts of heaven.

Such is the scholars' position in America ; such their duty, and such the way in which they pay the debt they owe. Will men of superior culture not all act by scholar-craft and by the pen? It were a pity if they did. If a man work nobly, the office is as worthy, and the purse as blessed in its work. The pen is power, the office is power, the purse is power ; and if the purse and office be nobly held, then in a high mode the cul- tivated man pays for his bringing up, and honors with wide sympathies the mass of men who give him chance to ride and rule. If not ; if these be meanly held, for self and not for man, then the scholar is a debtor and a traitor too.

The scholar never had so fair a chance before; here

is the noblest opportunity for one that wields the pen ; II— 4

50 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

it is niigliticr than the sword, the office, or the purse. All things concede at last to beauty, justice, truth and love, and these he is to represent. He has what free- dom he will pay for and take. Let him talk never so heroic, lie will find fit audience, nor will it long be few. Men will rise up and welcome his quickening words as vernal grass at the first rains of spring. A great na- tion which cannot live by bread alone asks for the bread of life ; while the state is young a single great and no- ble man can deeply influence the nation's mind. There are great wrongs w hich demand redress ; the present men who represent the office and the purse will not end these wrongs. They linger for the pen, with magic touch, to abolish and destroy this ancient serpent- brood. Shall it be only rude men and unlettered who confront the dragons of our time which prowl about the folds by day and night, while the scholar, the appointed guardian of mankind, but " sports with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neaera's hair.'' " The nation asks of her scholar better things than ancient letters ever brought ; asks his wonders for the million, not the few alone. Great sentiments burn now in half-unconscious hearts, and great ideas kindle their glories round the heads of men. Unconscious electricity, truth and right, flashes out of the earth, out of the air. It is for the scholar to attract this ground-lightning and tliis lightning of the sky, con- dense it into useful thunder to destroy the wrong, then spread it forth a beauteous and a cheering light, shed- ding sweet influence and kindling life anew. A few great men of other times tell us what may be now.

Nothing will be done without toil — talent is only power of work, and genius greater power for higher forms of work — nothing without self-denial ; nothing

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 61

great and good save by putting your idea before your- self, and counting it dearer than your flesh and blood. Let it hide you, not your obesity conceal the truth God gave 3'ou to reveal. The quality of intellectual work is more than the quantity. Out of the cloudy world Homer has drawn a spark that lasts three thousand years. " One, but a lion," should be the scholar's maxim ; let him do many things for daily need ; one great thing for the eternal beauty of his art. A sin- gle poem of Dante, a book for the bosom, lives through the ages, surrounding its author with the glory of genius in the night of time. One sermon on the mount, compact of truths brought down from God, all molten by such pious trust in him, will still men's hearts by myriads, while words dilute with other words are a shame to the speaker, and a dishonor to men who have ears to hear.

It is a great charity to give beauty to mankind, part of the scholar's function. How we honor such as create mere sensuous loveliness ! Mozart carves it on the unseen air; Phidias sculptures it out from the marble stone ; Raphael fixes ideal angels, maidens, matrons, men, and his triple God upon the canvas ; and the lofty Angelo, with more than Amphionic skill, bids the hills rise into a temple which constrains the crowd to pray. Look, see how grateful man repays these architects of beauty with never-ending fame ! Such as create a more than sensuous loveliness, the Plomers, Miltons, Shakespcares, who sing of man in never-dying and creative song — see what honors we have in store for such, what honor given for what serv- ice paid! But there is a beauty higher than that of art, above ])hilosopliy and merely intellectual grace; I mean the loveliness of noble life ; that is a beauty in the

62 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

sight of man and God. This is a new country, the great ideas of a noble man are easily spread abroad; soon they will appear in the life of the people, and be a blessing in our future history to ages yet unborn. A few great souls can correct the licentiousness of the American press, which is now but the type of covetous- ness and low ambition ; correct the mean economy of the state, and amend the vulgarity of the Ameri- can church, now the poor prostitute of every wealthy, sin.

Oh, ingenuous young maid or man, if such you are, — if not, then let me dream you such, — seek you this beauty, complete perfection of a man, and having this go hold the purse, the office, or the pen, as suits you best; but out of that life, writing, voting, acting, liv- ing in all forms, you shall pay men back for your culture, and in the scholar's noble kind, and represent the higher facts of human thought. Will men still say, " This wrong is consecrated ; it has stood for ages, and shall stand for ever ! " Tell them, " No. A wrong, though old as sin, is not now sacred, nor shall it stand ! " Will they say, " This right can never be ; that excellence is lovely, but impossible ! " Show them the fact, who will not hear the speech ; the deed goes where the word fails, and life enchants where rhetoric cannot persuade.

Past ages offer their instruction, much warning, and a little guidance, many a wreck along the shore of time, a beacon here and there. Far off in the dim dis- stance, present as possibilities, not actual as yet, future generations with broad and wishful eyes look at the son of genius, talent, educated skill, and seem to say " A word for us, it will not be forgot ! " Truth and Beauty, God's twin daughters, eternal both yet ever

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 53

young, wait there to offer each faithful man a bud- ding branch, — in their hands budding, in his to blos- som and mature its fruit, — wherewith he sows the field of time, gladdening the millions yet to come.

II

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

When a hen lays an egg in the farmer's mow she cackles quite loud and long. " See," says the compla- cent bird, " see what an egg I have laid ! " all the other hens cackle in sympathy, and seem to say, " what a nice egg has got laid ! was there ever such a family of hens as our family ? " But the cackling is heard only a short distance in the neighboring barnyards ; a few yards above the blue sky is silent. By and by the rest will drop their daily burden, and she will cackle with them in sympathy ; but ere long the cackling is still, the egg has done its service, been addled, or eaten, or perhaps proved fertile of a chick, and it is forgotten, as well as the cackler who laid the ephemeral thing. But when an acorn in June first uncloses its shell, and the young oak puts out its earliest shoot, there is no noise ; none attending its growth, yet it is destined to last some half a thousand years as a living tree, and serve as long after that for sound timber. Slowly and in silence, unseen in the dim recesses of the earth, the diamond gets formed by small accretions, age after age. There is no cackling in the caverns of the deep, as atom journeys to its fellow atom and the crystal is slowly getting made, to shine on the bosom of loveli- ness or glitter in the diadem of an emperor, a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

As with eggs, so is it with little books ; Avhen one of them is laid in some bookseller's mow the parent and the literary barnyard are often full of the foolishest

54!

EMERSON 55

cackle, and seem as happy as the ambiguous offspring of frogs in some shallow pool in early summer. But by and by it is again with the books as with the eggs ; the old noise is all hushed, and the little books all gone, while new authors are at the same work again.

Gentle reader, we will not find fault with such books, they are useful as eggs ; yea, they are indispcnsible ; the cackle of authors, and that of hens, why should they not be allowed.'' Is it not written that all things shall work after their kind, and so produce ; and does not this rule extend from the hen-roost to the Amer- ican Academy and all the Royal Societies of literature in the world.'' Most certainly. But when a great book gets written it is published with no fine flourish of trumpets, the Avorld does not speedily congratulate itself on the accession made to its riches ; the book must wait awhile for its readers. Literary gentlemen of the tribe of Bavius and MjevIus are popular in their time, and get more praise than bards afterwards fa- mous. What audience did Athens and Florence give to their Socrates and their Dante .^ What price did Milton get for the Paradise Lost? How soon did men appreciate Shakespeare? Not many years ago George Steevens,^ who " edited " the works of that bard, thought an " Act of Parliament was not strong enough " to make men read his sonnets, though they bore the author up to a great height of fame, and he sat where Steevens " durst not soar." In 1686, there had been four editions of Flatman's Poems, five of Waller's, eight of Cowley's ; but in eleven years of the Paradise Lost only three thousand copies were sold, yet the edition was cheap, and Norris of Bemerton went through eight or nine editions in a quite short time. For forty-one years, from 1623 to 1664, England

56 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

was satisfied with two editions of Shakespeare, mak- ing, perhaps, one thousand copies In all. Says Mr. Wordsworth of these facts : " There were readers in multitudes ; but their money went for other purposes, as their admiration was fixed elsewhere." Mr. Words- worth himself furnishes another example. Which found the readiest welcome, the Excursion and the Lyrical Poems of that writer, or Mr. INIacaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome? How many a little philosophist In Germany went up in his rocket-like ascension, while the bookseller at Konigsberg despaired over the un- saleable sheets of Immanuel Kant !

Says an Eastern proverb, " the sage is the Instruc- tor of a hundred ages," so he can afford to wait till one or two be past away, abiding with the few, waiting for the fit and the many. Says a writer:

" There is somewhat touching in the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching Queen Elizabeth, and King James, and the Es- sexes, Leicesters, Burleighs, and Buckinghams; and lets pass, without a single valuable note, the founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty to be remembered, — the man who carries the Saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias. A popular player, — no- body suspected he was the poet of the human race; and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men, as from courtiers and frivolous people. Bacon, who took the inventory of the human understanding for his times, never men- tioned his name. Ben Jonson had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was attempting. He no doubt thought the praise he has conceded to him generous, and es- teemed himself, out of all question, the better poet of the two.

" If it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, Shak- speare's time should be capable of recognizing it. . . . Since the constellation of great men who appeared in Greece in the

EMERSON 57

time of Pericles, there was never any such society, yet their genius failed them to find out the best head in the universe. Our poet's mask was imjjenctrable. You cannot see the moun- tain near. It took a century to make it suspected; and not until two centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear. It was not possible to write the history of Shakspeare till now."

It is now almost fourteen years since Mr. Emerson published his first book, Nature. A beautiful work it was, and will be deemed for many a year to come. In this old world of literature, with more memory than wit, with much tradition and little invention, with more fear than love, and a great deal of criticism upon very little poetry, there came forward this young David, a shepherd, but to be a king, " with his garlands and singing robes about him ; " one note upon his new and fresh-strung l3^re was " worth a thousand men." Men were looking for something original, they always are; when it came some said it thundered, others that an angel had spoke. How men wondered at the little book ! It took nearly twelve years to sell the five hun- dred copies of Nature. Since that time Mr. Emerson has said much, and if he has not printed many books, at least has printed much; some things far surpass- ing the first essay, in richness of material, in per- fection of form, in continuity of thought ; but nothing which has the same youthful freshness, and the same tender beauty as this early violet, blooming out of Uni- tarian and Calvinistic sand or snow. Poems and Essays of a later date are there, which show that he has had more time and woven it into life ; works which pre- sent us with thought deeper, wider, richer, and more complete, but not surpassing the simplicity and love- liness of that maiden flower of his poetic spring.

We know how true it is that a man cannot criticise

58 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

what he cannot comprehend, nor comprehend either a man or a work greater than himself. Let him get on a Quarterly never so high, it avails him nothing; " pyramids are pyramids in vales," and emmets are emmets even in a Review. Critics often afford an in- voluntary proof of this adage, yet grow no wiser by the experience. Few of our tribe can make the sim- ple shrift of the old Hebrew poet, and say, " we have not exercised ourselves in great matters, nor in things too high for us." Sundry Icarian critics have we seen wending their wearying way on waxen wing to overtake the eagle flight of Emerson ; some of them have we known getting near enough to see a fault, to over- take a feather falling from his wing, and with that tumbling to give name to a sea, if one cared to notice to what depth they fell.

Some of the criticisms on Mr. Emerson, transatlantic and cisatlantic, have been very remarkable, not to speak more definitely. "What of this new book?" said INIr. Public to the reviewer, who was not " seized and tied down to judge," but of his own free will stood up and answered : " Oh ! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord, quite an irregular thing! not one of the angles at the four comers is a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in my pocket. And for the poem (3'our lordship bid me look at it), upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and try- ing them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, they are out, my lord, in every one of their dimensions."

Oh, gentle reader, we have looked on these efforts of our brother critics not without pity. There is an ex- cellent bird, terrene, marine, and semi-aerial ; a broad- footed bird, broad-beaked, broad-backed, broad-tailed; a notable bird she is, and a long-lived; a useful bird,

EMERSON 59

once indispenslble to writers, as furnishing the pen, now fruitful in many a hint. But when she under- takes to criticise the music of the thiiish or the move- ment of the humming-bird, wh}' , she oversteps the mod- esty of her nature, and if she cssa^^s the flight of the eagle she is fortunate if she falls only upon the water. " No man," says the law, may " stultify himself." Does not this canon apply to critics? No, the critic may do so. Suicide is a felony, but if a critic only slay himself critically, dooming himself to " hoise with his own petard," why, 'tis to be forgiven

" That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap our mortal state."

In a place where there were no Quarterly Journals the veracious historian. Sir Walter Scott, relates that Claud Halcro, ambitious of fame, asked his fortune of an Orcadian soothsayer :

" Tell me, shall my lays be sung. Like Hacon's of the golden tongue. Long after Halcro's dead and gone? Or shall Hialtland's minstrel own One note to rival glorious John ? "

She answers, that as things work after their kind the result is after the same kind:

" The eagle mounts the polar sky. The Imber-goose, unskill'd to fly. Must be content to glide along When seal and sea-dog list his song."

We are warned by the fate of our predecessors, when their example does not guide us ; we confess not only our inferiority to ^Ir. Emerson, but our conscious- ness of the fact, and believe that they should " judge others who themselves excel," and that authors, like

60 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

others on trial, should be judged by their peers. So we will not call this a criticism which we arc about to write on Mr. Emerson, only an attempt at a contribu- tion towards a criticism, hoping that, in due time, some one will come and do faithfully and completely what it is not yet time to accomplish, still less within our power to do.

All of Mr. Emerson's literary works, with the ex- ception of the Poems, were published before they were printed ; delivered by word of mouth to audiences. In frequently reading his pieces he had an opportunity to see any defect of form to amend it. INIr. Emerson has won by his writings a more desirable reputation than any other man of letters in America has yet at- tained. It is not the reputation which bring him money or academic honors, or membership of learned societies ; nor does it appear conspicuously in the liter- ary journals as yet. But he has a high place among thinking men on both sides of the water; we think no man who writes the English tongue has now so much influence in forming the opinions and character of young men and women. His audience steadily in- creases, at home and abroad, more rapidly in England than America. It is now with him as it was, at first, with Dr. Channing, the fairest criticism has come from the other side of the water ; the reason is that he, like his predecessor, offended the sectarian and party spirit, the personal prejudices of the men about him; his life was a reproach to them, his words an offense, or his doctrines alarmed their sectarian, their party, or their personal pride, and they accordingly con- demned the man. A writer who should bear the same relation to the English mind as Emerson to ours, for the same reason would be more acceptable here than

EMERSON 61

at home. Emerson is neither a sectarian nor a parti- san, no man less so ; yet few men in America have been visited with more hatred, — private personal hatred, which the authors poorly endeavored to conceal, and perhaps did hide from themselves. The spite we have heard expressed against him by men of the common morality would strike a stranger with amazement, es- pecially when it is remembered that his personal char- acter and daily life are of such extraordinary loveli- ness. This hatred has not proceeded merely from ig- norant men, in whom it could easily be excused ; but more often from men who have had opportunities of ob- taining as good a culture as men commonly get in this country. Yet while he has been the theme of vulgar abuse, of sneers and ridicule in public and in private ; while critics, more remarkable for the venom of their poison than the strength of their bow, have shot at him their little shafts, barbed more than pointed, he has also drawn about him some of what old Drayton called " the idle smoke of praise." Let us see what he has thrown into the public fire to cause this incense, what he has done to provoke the immedicable rage of certain other men ; let us see what there is in his works, of old or new, true or false, what American and what cosmo- politan ; let us weigh his works with such imperfect scales as we have, weigh them by the universal stand- ard of beauty, truth and love, and make an attempt to see what he is worth.

American literature may be distributed into two grand divisions, namely, the permanent literature, con- sisting of books not written for a special occasion, books which are bound between hard covers ; and the transient literature, written for some special occasion and not designed to last beyond that. Our permanent

62 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

literature is almost wholly an imitation of old models. The substance is old, and the form old. There is noth- ing American about it. But as our writers are com- monly quite deficient in literary culture and scientific discipline, their productions seem poor when compared wuth the imitative portion of the permanent literature in older countries, where the writers start with a better discipline and a better acquaintance with letters and art. This inferiority of culture is one of the misfor- tunes incident to a new country, especially to one where practical talent is so much and so justly pre- ferred to merely literary accomplishment and skill. This lack of culture is yet more apparent, in general, in the transient literature which is produced mainly by men who have had few advantages for intellectual discipline in early life, and few to make acquaintance with books at a later period. That portion of our lit- erature is commonly stronger and more American, but it is often coarse and rude. The permanent literature is imitative, the other is rowdy. But we have now no time to dwell upon this theme, which demands a sepa- rate paper.

Mr. Emerson is the most American of our writers. The idea of America, which lies at the bottom of our original institutions, appears in him with great prom- inence. We mean the idea of personal freedom, of the dignity and value of human nature, the superiority of a man to the accidents of a man. Emerson is the most republican of republicans, the most protestant of the dissenters. Serene as a July sun, he is equally fear- less. He looks everything in the face modestly, but with earnest scrutiny, and passes judgment upon its merits. Nothing is too high for his examination, noth- ing too sacred. On earth only one tiling he finds

EMERSON 63

whicli is thoroughly venerable, and that Is the nature of man ; not the accidents, which make a man rich or famous, but the substance, which makes him a man. The man is before the institutions of man, his nature superior to his history. All finite things are only appendages of man, useful, convenient, or beautiful. ]\Ian is master, and nature his slave, serving for many a varied use. The results of human experience — the state, the church, society, the family, business, litera- ture, science, art — all of these are subordinate to man ; if they serve the individual, he is to foster them, if not, to abandon them and seek better things. He looks at all things, the past and the present, the state and the church, Christianity and the market- house, in the dajdiglit of the intellect. Nothing is al- lowed to stand between him and his manhood. Hence there is an apparent irreverence; he does not bow to any hat which Gessler has set up for public adoration, but to every man, canonical or profane, who bears the mark of native manliness. He eats show-bread, if he is hungr3^ While he is the most American, he is al- most the most cosmopolitan of our writers, the least re- strained and belittled by the popular follies of the na- tion or the age.

In America writers are commonly kept in awe and subdued by fear of the richer class, or that of the mass of men. Mr. Emerson has small respect for either; would bow as low to a lackey as a lord, to a clown as a scholar, to one man as a million. He spurns all con- stitutions but the law of his own nature, rejecting them with manly scorn. The traditions of the churches are no hindrances to his thought ; Jesus or Judas were the same to him, if cither stood in his way and hindered the proportionate development of his individual life.

64 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

The forms of society and the ritual of scholarship are no more effectual restraints. His thought of to- day is no barrier to freedom of thought to-morrow, for his own nature is not to be subordinated, either to the history of man or his own history. " To-mor- row to fresh fields and pastures new," is his motto.

Yet, wuth all this freedom, there is no wilful display of it. He is so confident of his freedom, so perfectly possessed of his rights, that he does not talk of them. They appear, but are not spoken of. With the hope- fulness and buoyant liberty of America, he has none of our ill-mannered boasting. He criticises America often, he always appreciates it ; he seldom praises, and never brags of our country. The most democratic of democrats, no disciple of the old regime is better man- nered, for it is only the vulgar democrat or aristocrat who flings his follies in your face. While it would be difficult to find a writer so uncompromising in his adhesion to just principles, there is not in all his works a single jeer or ill-natured sarcasm. None is less ad- dicted to the common forms of reverence, but who is more truly reverential.?

While his idea is American, the form of his literature is not less so. It is a form which suits the substance, and is modified by the institutions and natural objects about him. You see that the author lives in a land with free institutions, with town-meetings and ballot- boxes, in the vicinity of a decaying church, amongst men whose terrible devils are poverty and social neg- lect, the only devils whose damnation is much cared for. His geography is American. Katskill and the Alle- ghanies, Monadnoc, Wachusett, and the uplands of New Hampshire appear in poetry or prose ; Contocook and Agiochook are better than the Ilyssus, or Pacto-

EMERSON 65

lus, or " smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds." New York, Fall River, and Lowell have a place in his writings where a vulgar Yankee would put Thebes or Psestum. His men and women are Amer- ican, John and Jane, not Coriolanus and Persephone. He tells of the rhodora, the club-moss, the blooming clover, not of the hibiscus and the asphodel. He knows the bumblebee, the blackbird, the bat and the wren, and is not ashamed to say or sing of the things under his own eyes. He illustrates his high thought by com- mon things out of our plain New-England life — the meeting in the church, the Sunday school, the dancing- school, a huckleberry party, the boys and girls hasten- ing home from school, the youth in the shop, begin- ning an unconscious courtship with his unheeding customer, the farmers about their work in the fields, the bustling trader in the city, the cattle, the new hay, the voters at a town-meeting, the village brawler in a tavern full of tipsy riot, the conservative who thinks the nation is lost if his ticket chance to miscarry, the bigot worshipping the knot hole through which a dusty beam of light has looked in upon his darkness, the radical who declares that nothing is good if established, and the patent reformer who screams in your ears that he can finish the world with a single touch, — and out of all these he makes his poetry or illustrates his phi- losophy. Now and then he wanders off to other lands, reports what he has seen, but it is always an American report of what an American eye saw. Even Mr. Emerson's recent exaggerated praise of England is such a panegyric as none but an American could be- stow.

We know an American artist who is full of Amer- ican scenery. He makes good drawings of Tivoli and II— 5

66 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Subiaco, but, to color them, he dips his pencil in the tints of the American heaven, and over his olive trees and sempervives, his asses and his priests, he sheds the light only of his native sky.^ So it is with Mr. Emer- son. Give him the range of the globe, it is still an American who travels.

Yet with this indomitable nationality he has a cul- ture quite cosmopolitan and extraordinary in a young nation like our own. Here is a man familiar with books, not Avith many but the best books, which he knows intimately. He has kept good company. Two things impress you powerfully and continually — the man has seen nature, and been familiar with books. His literary culture is not a varnish on the surface, not a mere polish of the outside ; it has penetrated deep into his consciousness. The salutary effect of literary culture is more perceptible in Emerson than in any American that we know, save one, a far younger man, and of great promise, of whom we shall speak at some other time.^

We just now mentioned that our writers were sorely deficient in literary culture. Most of them have only a smattering of learning, but some have read enough, read and remembered, with ability to quote. Here is one who has evidently read much, his subject required it, or his disposition, or some accident in his history furnished the occasion ; but his reading appears only in his quotations or references in the margin. His litera- ture has not penetrated his soul and got incorporated with his whole consciousness. You see that he has been on Parnassus by the huge bouquet, pedantic in its com- plexity, that he affronts you with ; not by the odor of the flowers he has trampled or gathered in his pilgri- mage, not by Parnassian dust clinging to liis shoes or

EMERSON 67

mountain vigor in his eye. The rose gatherer smells of his sweets, and needs not prick you with the thorn to apprise you of what he has dealt in.

Here is another writer Avho has studied much in the various literatures of the world, but has lost himself therein. Books supercede things, art stands between him and nature, his figures are from literature not from the green world. Nationality is gone. A traveller on the ocean of letters, he has a mistress in every port, and a lodging-place where the night overtakes him ; all flags are the same to him, all climes ; he has no wife, no home, no country. He has dropped nationality, and in becoming a cosmopolitan has lost his citizen- ship everywhere. So, with all Christendom and hea- thendom for his metropolis, he is an alien everywhere in the wide world. He has no literary inhabitiveness. Now he studies one author, and is the penumbra there- of for a time; now another, with the same result. Trojan or Tyrian is the same to him, and he is Trojan or Tyrian as occasion demands. A thin vapory comet, with small momentum of his own, he is continually de- flected from his natural course by the attraction of other and more substantial bodies, till he has for- gotten that he ever had any orbit of his own, and dangles in the literary sky, now this way drawn, now that, his only certain movement an oscillation. With a chameleon variability, he attaches himself to this or the other writer, and for tlie time his own color disap- pears and he along with it.^

With Emerson all is very diff'erent ; his literary cul- ture is of him, and not merely on him. His learning appears not in his quotations, but in his talk. It is the wine itself, and not the vintner's brand on the cask, which shows its quality. In his reading and liis study

68 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

he is still his own master. He has not purchased his education with the loss of his identity, not of his man- hood ; nay, he has not forgotten his kindred in getting his culture. He is still the master of himself, no man provokes him even into a momentary imitation. He keeps his individuality with maidenly asceticism, and with a conscience rarely found amongst literary men. Virgil Homerizes, Hesiodizes, and plays Theocritus now and then. Emerson plays Emerson, always Emer- son. He honors Greece and is not a stranger with her noblest sons, he pauses as a learner before the lovely muse of Germany, he bows low with exaggerating rev- erence before the practical skill of England; but no one, nor all of these, have power to subdue that serene and upright intellect. He rises from the oracle he stooped to consult just as erect as before. His read- ing gives a certain richness to his style, which is more literary than that of any American writer that we re- member ; as much so as that of Jeremy Taylor. He takes much for granted in his reader, as if he were addressing men who had read everything, and wished to be reminded of what they had read. In classic times there was no reading public, only a select audi- ence of highly cultivated men. It was so in England once, the literature of that period indicates the fact. Only religious and dramatic works were designed for pit, box, and gallery. Nobody can speak more clearly and more plainly than Emerson, but take any one of his essays or orations and you see that he does not write in the language of the mass of men more than Thucydides or Tacitus. His style is allusive as an ode of Horace or Pindar, and the allusions are to litera- ture which is known to but fcAV. Hence, while his thought is human in substance and American in its

EMERSON '69

modifications, and therefore easily grasped, compre- hended, and welcomed by men of the commonest cul- ture, it is but few who understand the entire meaning of the sentences which he writes. His style reflects American scenery, and is dimpled into rare beauty as it flows by, and so has a pleasing fascination ; but it reflects also the literary scenery of his own mind, and so half of his thought is lost on half his readers. Ac- cordingly no writer or lecturer finds a readier access for his thoughts to the mind of the people at large, but no American author is less intelligible to the peo- ple in all his manifold meaning and beauty of allu- sion. He has not completely learned to think with the sagest sages and then put his thoughts into the plain speech of plain men. Every word is intelligible in the massive speech of Mr. Webster and has its eff'cct, while Emerson has still something of the imbecility of the scholar as compared to the power of the man of ac- tion, whose words fall like the notes of the wood- thrush, each in its time and place, yet without pick- ing and choosing. " Blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their speech," says he, " it is a shower of bul- lets. It is Cambridge men who correct themselves, and begin again at every half sentence ; and moreover, will pun and refine too much, and swerve from the matter to the expression." But of the peculiarities of his style we shall speak again.

Emerson's works do not betray any exact scholar- ship, which has a certain totality as well as method about it. It is plain to see that his favorite authors have been Plutarch, especially that outpouring of his immense common-place book, his " Moral Writings," Montaigne, Shakespeare, George Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle. Of late years

no THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

his works contain allusions to the ancient oriental liter- ature from which he has borrowed some hard names and some valuable thoughts, but is occasionally led astray by its influence, for it is plain that he does not understand that curious philosophy he quotes from. Hence his oriental allies are brought up to take a stand which no man dreamed of in their time, and made to defend ideas not known to men till long after these antediluvian sages were at rest in their graves.^

In Emerson's writings you do not see indications of exact mental discipline, so remarkable in Bacon, Mil- ton, Taylor, and South, in Schiller, Lessing and Schleiermacher ; neither has he the wide range of mere literature noticeable in all other men. He works up scientific facts in his writings Avith great skill, often penetrating beyond the fact, and discussing the idea out of which it and many other kindred facts seem to have proceeded ; this indicates not only a nice eye for facts, but a mind singularly powerful to detect latent analogies, and see the one in the many. Yet there is nothing to show any regular and systematic discipline in science which appears so eminently in Schiller and Hegel. He seems to learn his science from occasional conversation with men of science, or from state- ments of remarkable discoveries in the common Jour- nals, not from a careful and regular study of facts or treatises.

With all his literary culture he has an intense love of nature, a true sight and appreciation thereof; not the analytic eye of the naturalist, but the synthetic vision of the poet. A book never clouds his sky. His figures are drawn from nature, he sees the fact. No chart of nature hangs up in his windows to shut out nature herself. How well he says:

EMERSON 71

" If a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate be- tween him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man in the heavenly bodies the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown ! But every night come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ... To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other, who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a diiferent state of mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare com- mon, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am.o In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is al- ways a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. Staiuling on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplited into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am noth- ing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me, I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. To be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or servant, is then a trifle

72 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immor- tal beauty. In the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.* . • .

" The tradesman, the attorney, comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again. In their eternal calm he finds himself. The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

" But in other hours nature satisfies the soul purely by its loveliness, and without any mixture of corporeal benefit. I have seen the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from daybreak to sun-rise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth as a shore I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid trans- formations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. How does nature deify us with a few and cheap elements ! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sunset and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the imderstanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.f

Most writers are demonized or possessed by some one truth, or perhaps some one whim. Look where they will, they see nothing but that. Mr. Emerson holds himself erect, and no one thing engrosses his attention, no one idea; no one intellectual faculty domineers over the rest. Sensation does not dim reflection, nor does his thought lend its sickly hue to the things about him. Even Goethe, with all his boasted equilibrium, held his intellectual faculties less perfectly in hand than Emerson. He has no hobbies to ride ; even his fond- ness for the ideal and the beautiful, does not hinder him from obstinately looking real and ugly things in the face. He carries the American idea of freedom in-

* Centenary ed.. Vol. I. pp. 7-10. t The same, pp. 16, 17.

EMERSON 73

to his most intimate personality, and keeps his individ- uality safe and sacred. He cautions young men against stooping their minds to other men. He knows no master. Sometimes this is carried to an apparent excess, and he underrates the real value of literature, afraid lest the youth become a bookworm and not a man thinking. But how well he says:

" Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of man thinking, we have the bookworm.

" Books are the best of things, well used ; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world of value is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth, and utters truth or cre- ates. . . . The book, the college, the school of art, the in- stitution of any kind stop with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they; let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks for- ward; the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hind- head; man hopes, genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man creates not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame

" The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade, or war or man is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. I^et him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observa- tion, patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time, — happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads on every right

74 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

step. For the instinct is sure that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the se- crets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude remember- ing his spontaneous thoufi:hts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in crowded cities find true for them also." *

To US the effect of Emerson's writings is profoundly religious ; they stimulate to piety, the love of God, to goodness as the love of man. We know no living writer in any language who exercises so powerful a religious influence as he. ]Most 3^oung persons, not ecclesiastical, will confess this. We know he is often called hard names on pretence that he is not religious. We remember once being present at a meeting of gen- tlemen, scholarly men some of them, after the New- England standard of scholarship, who spent the even- ing in debating " Whether Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Christian." ^ The opinion was quite generally en- tertained that he was not, for " discipleship was neces- sary to Christianity." " And the essence of Christian discipleship " was thought to consist in " sitting at the feet of our blessed Lord (pronounced Laawd!) and calling him Master, which Emerson certainly docs not do." We value Christianity as much as most men, and the name Christian to us is very dear; but when Ave re- membered the character, the general tone and conduct of the men who arrogate to themselves the name Chris- tian, and seem to think they have a right to monopo- lize the Holy Spirit of Religion, and " shove away the worthy bidden guest," the whole thing reminded us of a funny story related by an old writer : " It was once

* Centenary ed., Vol. 1, pp. 89, 90, 10s2, 103.

EMERSON 75

proposed in the British House of Commons that James Usher, afterward the celebrated Archbishop of Ar- magh, but then a young man, should be admitted to the assembly of the ' King's Divines.' " The proposi- tion, if we remember rightly, gave rise to some debate upon which John Sclden, a younger man than Usher, but highly distinguished and much respected, rose and said, " that it reminded him of a proposition which might be made, that Inigo Jones, the famous architect, should be admitted to the worshipful company of Mousetrap INIakcrs ! " ^

Mr. Emerson's writings are eminently religious ; Christian in the best sense of that word. This has often been denied for two reasons : because Mr. Emer- son sets little value on the mythology of the Christian sects, no more perhaps than on the mythology of the Greeks and the Scandinavians, and also because his writings far transcend the mechanical morality and formal pietism commonly recommended by gentlemen in pulpits. Highly religious, he is not at all eccle- siastical or bigoted. He has small reverence for forms and traditions ; a manly life is the only form of relig- ion which he recognizes, and hence we do not wonder at all that he also has been deemed an infidel. It would be very surprising if it were not so. Still it is not re- ligion that is most conspicuous in these volumes ; that is not to be looked for except in the special religious lit- erature, yet we must confess that any one of Emerson's works seems far more religious than what are commonly called " good books," including the class of sermons.

To show what is in Mr. Emerson's books and what is not, let us make a little more detailed examination thereof. He is not a logical writer, not systematic, not what is commonly called philosophical ; didactic to

76 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

a great degree, but never demonstrative. So we are not to look for a scientific plan, or for a system of which the author is himself conscious. Still, in all sane men there must be a system, though the man does not know it. There are two ways of reporting upon an author: one is to represent him by specimens, the other to describe him by anal3^sis ; one to show off a finger or foot of the Venus de Medici, the other to give the dimensions thereof. We will attempt both, and will speak of Mr. Emerson's starting point, his terminus a quo; then of his method of procedure, his via in qua; then of the conclusion he arrives at, his terminus ad quem. In giving the dimensions of his statue we shall exhibit also some of the parts described.

Most writers, knowingly or unconsciously, take as their point of departure some special and finite thing. This man starts from a tradition, the philosophical tradition of Aristotle, Plato, Leibnitz, or Locke ; this from the theological tradition of the Protestants or the Catholics and never will dare get out of sight of his authorities, he takes the bearing of everything from his tradition. Such a man may sail the sea for ages, he arrives nowhere at the last. Our traditionist must not outgo his tradition ; the Catholic must not get be- 3^ond his church, nor the Protestant out-travel his Bi- ble. Others start from some fixed fact, a sacrament, a constitution, the public opinion, the public morality, or the popular religion. This they are to defend at all hazards ; of course they will retain all falsehood and injustice which favor this institution, and reject all jus- tice and truth which oppose the same. Others pre- tend to start from God, but in reality do take their de- parture from a limited conception of God, from the Hebrew notion of him, or the Catholic notion, from the

EMERSON 7T

Calvinistic or the Unitarian notion of God. By and by they are hindered and stopped in their progress. The philosophy of these three clases of men is always vitiated by the prejudices they start with.

Mr. Emerson takes man for his point of departure, he means to take the whole of man ; man with his his- tor}"-, man with his nature, his sensational, intellectual, moral, affectional and religious instincts and faculties. With him man is the measure of all things, of ideas and of facts ; if they fit man they are accepted, if not thrown aside. This appears in his first book and in his last:

" The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face, we through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by a revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship." *

Again he speaks in a higher mood of the same theme :

" That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine. Obey thyself. That which shows God in me fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decease for ever."

" Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution. The old is for slaves. When a man comes, all books are legible, all things transparent, all religions are forms. He is religious. Man is the wonder-worker. He is seen amid miracles. All men bless

* Centenary ed.. Vol. 1, p. 3.

78 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and curse. He saith yea and nay only. The stationariness of religion, the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed, the fear of* degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man, indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake."

"Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, saints and prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, ' I also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty to come short of another man's.

" Yourself a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at the first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only that fashion, custom, author- ity, pleasure, and money are nothing to you, are not bandages over your eyes that you cannot see, — but live the privilege of the immeasurable mind."

" Let man then learn the revelation of all nature, and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind if the sen- timent of duty is there. But if he would know what the great God speaketh, he must ' go into his closet and shut the door,' as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. Their prayers even are hurtful to him, until he have made his own. The soul makes no appeal from itself. Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made, — no mat- ter how indirectlj', — to niiml)ers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping thought to him never counts his company. When I sit in that presence, who shall dare to come in? When I rest in perfect humility, when I burn with pure love, what can Calvin or Swedenborg say?"*

And again in his latest publication:

' The gods of fable are the shining moraeni ; run all our vessels into one mould. Our c

Centenary ed., Vol. 1, pp. 131, 144, 146; vol. 2, pp. 294, 295.

" The gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. We run all our vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies

EMERSON 79

of Judaism, Christisra, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the neces- sary and structural action of the human mind."

" Man is that noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from within, outward. ... I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error."

" The genius of humanity is the right point of view of his- tory. . . . For a time our teachers serve us personally, as metres or milestones of progress. Once they were angels of knowledge and their figures touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw their means, culture, and limits; and they yielded their place to other geniuses. Happy, if a few names remain so high, that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed them of a ray. But, at last, we shall cease to look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegated quality.

*' Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we may say, great men exist that there may be greater men. The destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? It is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that cli- mate, corn, animals, men may be milder, and the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied."

"The world is young? the former great men call to us af- fectionately. We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world. The secret of genius is to suf- fer no fiction to exist for us, to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use." *

In this Emerson is more American than America her- self, and is himself the highest exponent in literature of this idea of human freedom and the value of man. Channing talks of the dignity of human nature, his great and brilliant theme ; but he commonly, perhaps always subordinates the nature of man to some of the accidents of his history. This Emerson never does ;

* Centenary ed., Vol. 4, pp. 4, 6, 33-35, 290.

80 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

no, not once in all his works, nor in all his life. Still we think it is not the whole of man from which he starts, that he undervalues the logical, demonstrative, and historical understanding, with the results thereof, and also undervalues the affections. Hence his man, who is the measure of all things, is not the complete man. This defect appears in his ethics, which are a little cold, the ethics of marble men ; and in his religious teachings, the highest which this age has furnished, full of reverence, full of faith, but not proportion- ately rich in affection.

INIr. Emerson has a method of his own as plainly marked as that of Lord Bacon or Descartes, and as rigidly adhered to. It is not the inductive method, by which you arrive at a general fact from many par- ticular facts, but never reach a universal law; it is not the deductive method, whereby a minor law is derived from a major, a special from a general law; it is neither inductive nor deductive demonstration. But Emerson proceeds by the way of intuition, sensational or spiritual. Go to the fact and look for yourself, is his command ; a material fact you cannot always ver- ify and so for that must depend on evidence, a spiritual fact you can always legitimate for yourself. Thus he says:

" That which seems faintly possible it is so refined, is often faint and dim because it is deepest seated in the mind among the eternal verities. Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of functions and processes, to be- reave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole. The savant becomes impoetic. But the best read naturalist, who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by continual self-recovery, and

EMERSON 81

by entire humility. He will perceive that there are far more excellent qualities in the student than preciseness and infalli- bility, that a guess is often more fruitful than an indisputable aflBrmation, and that a dream may let us deeper into the secret of nature than a hundred concerted experiments."

" Every surmise and vaticination of the mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences which contain glimpses of truth, to digested systems which have no one valuable suggestion. A wise writer will feel that the ends of study and composition are best answered by announcing undiscovered regions of thought, and so communi- cating through hope new activity to the torpid spirit." *

And again:

" Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They can- not unite him to history or reconcile him with themselves. As they come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily, their own piety explains every fact, every word."

" The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, which we call spontaneity or instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we liuow not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceedeth obviouslj^ from the same source whence their life and being also proceedeth. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and the fountain of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied without impiety and atlieism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, — all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. . , . Perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my per- ception of it is as much a fact as the sun."

* Centenary ed.. Vol. I. pp. C6-7, 70. II— 6

82 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" The relations of the soul to the Divine Spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new-date and new-create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now and absorbs past and future into the present hour."

•' The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let sceptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, ' how do you know it is the truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth, when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake."

"The great distinction between teachers, sacred or literary; between poets like Herbert and poets like Pope; between phi- losophers like Spinoza, Kant, and Coleridge, and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh, and Stewart; between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying half-insane under the in- finitude of his thought, is that one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class, from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact, on the evidence of third persons. It is of no use to preach to me from without. I can do that too easily myself."

" The soul gives itself alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly in- habits, leads, and speaks through it. Then it is glad, young, and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the Great Soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be but the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in thoughts and act with energies which are immortal." *

* Centenary ed.. Vol. 2, pp. 27-8, 63-66, 279, 287, 296.

EMERSON 83

" All j^our learning of all literatures would never enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts or expressions, and yet each is natural and familiar as household words." *

The same method in his last work is ascribed to Plato :

" Add to this, he believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight are from a wisdom of which man is not master, that the gods never philosophize; but, by a celestial mania, these miracles are accomplished." f

Sometimes he exaggerates the value of this, and puts the unconscious before the self-conscious state:

" It is pitiful to be an artist, when, by forbearing to be artists, we might be vessels filled with the divine overflowings, enriched by the circulations of omniscience and omnipresence. Are there not moments in the history of heaven when the hu- man race was not counted by individuals, but was only the In- fluenced, was God in distribution, God rushing into multiform benefit? It is sublime to receive, sublime to love, but this lust of imparting as from iis, this desire to be loved, the wish to be recognized as individuals, is finite, comes of a lower strain." t

He is sometimes extravagent in the claims made for his own method, and maintains that ecstacy is the nat- ural and exclusive mode of arriving at new truths, while it is only one mode. Ecstacy is the state of intuition in which the man loses his individual self -consciousness. INIoments of this character are few and rare even Avith men like the St. Victors, like Tauler, and Bohme and Swedenborg. The writings of all these men, especially of the two last, who most completely surrendered them- selves to this mode of action, show how poor and in- sufficient it is. All that mankind has learned in this way is little compared with the results of reflection,

♦Centenary cd.. Vol. I. p. 218. t The same. Vol. 4, p. 58. tThe same. Vol. I. p. 210.

84 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

of meditation, and careful, conscientious looking after truth; all the great benefactors of the world have been patient and continuous in their work:

" Not from a vain and shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought."

Mr. Emerson says books are only for one's idle hours ; he discourages hard and continuous thought, conscious modes of argument, of discipline. Here he exaggerates his idiosyncracy into a universal law. The methed of nature is not ecstasy, but patient attention. Human nature avenges herself for the slight he puts on her, by the irregular and rambling character of his own productions. The vice appears more glaring in the Emersonidae, who have all the agony without the inspiration, who affect the unconscious, write even more ridiculous nonsense than their " genuis " requires ; are sometimes so child-like as to become mere babies, and seem to forget that the unconscious state is oftener below the conscious than above it, and that there is an ecstasy of folly as well as of good sense.

Some of these imbeciles have been led astray by this extravagant and one-sided statement. What if books have hurt Mr. Oldbuck, and many fine wits lie " sheathed to the hilt in ponderous tomes," sheathed and rusted in so that no Orson could draw the blade, — we need not deny the real value of books, still less the value of the serious and patient study of thoughts and things. Michael Angelo and Newton had some genius ; Socrates is thought not destitute of philoso- phical power; but no dauber of canvas, no sportsman with marble, ever worked like Angelo ; the two philos- ophers wrought by their genius, but with an attention, an order, a diligence, and a terrible industry and

EMERSON 85

method of thought, without which their genius would have ended in nothing but guess-work. Much comes by spontaneous intuition, which is to be got in no other way; but much is to precede that, and much to follow it. There are two things to be considered in the mat- ter of inspiration, one is the Infinite God from whom it comes, the other the finite capacity which is to receive it. If Newton had never studied, it would be as easy for God to reveal the calculus to his dog Diamond as to Newton. We once heard of a man who thought everything was in his soul, and so gave up all reading, all continuous thought. Said another, " if all is in the soul, it takes a man to find it."

Here are some of the most important conclusions Mr. Emerson has hitherto arrived at.

Man is above nature, the material world. Last win- ter, in his lectures,^ he w as understood to affirm " the identity of man with nature ; " a doctrine which seems to have come from his oriental reading before named, a doctrine false as well as inconsistent with the first principles of his philosophy. But in his printed works he sees clearly the distinction between the two, a fact not seen by the Hindoo philosophers, but first by the Hebrew and Greek writers. Emerson puts man far before nature:

" We are taught bj'^ great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and ab- dicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the energy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself."

" Thus in art does nature work through the will of a man filled with the beauty of her first works."

" Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which

S6 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful." *

Nature is " an appendix to the soul." Then the man is superior to the accidents of his past history or present condition :

" No man ever prayed heartily without learning something." t " The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton, is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men said but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages."

" Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both, the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with vast views, the luster will be transferred from the actions of kings to those gentlemen." t

Hence a man must be true to his present convic- tion, careless of consistency:

" A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said to-day." **

The man must not be a slave to a single form of

thought :

* Centenary ed.. Vol. 1, pp. 20, 24, 40. t The same, Vol. 1, p. 74. t The same. Vol. 2, pp. 45, 62-63, ** The same. Vol. 2, p. 57.

EMERSON 87

" How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist, the po- litical or religious fanatic, or indeed any possessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. It is incipient insanity." *

Man is inferior to the great law of God, which over- rides the world ; " His wealth and greatness consist in his being the channel through which heaven flows to earth ; " " the word of a poet is only the mouth of divine wisdom ; " " the man on whom the soul descends, alone can teach ; " all nature " from the sponge up to Hercules is to hint or to thunder man the laws of right and wrong." This ethical character seems the end of nature : " the moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and mar- row of every substance, every relation, every process. All things with which we deal point to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel.'^ " Yet he sometimes tells us that man is identical with God under certain circum- stances, an old Hindoo notion, a little favored by some passages in the New Testament, and revived by Hegel in modern times, in whom it seems less inconsistent than in Emerson.

This moral law continually gives men their compen- sation. " You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong."

" And this law of laws which the pulpit, the senate, and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and all lan- guages, by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that ol birds and flies.

"All things are double, one against another: Tit for tat, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood, measure for measure, love for love. Give and it shall be given you. He that watereth shall be watered himself. What will you haver quoth God; pay for it and take it. Nothing venture, nothing have. Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast

♦Centenary ed., Vol. .2, p. 339.

88 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

done, no more, no less. Who doth not work shall not eat. Harm watch, harm catch. Curses always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. If you put a chain around the neck of a slave the other end fastens itself round your own. Bad counsel confounds the adviser. The devil is an ass."

" There is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Always some damning circumstance transpires. The laws and substances of nature, water, snow, wind, gravi- tation, become penalties to the thief."

" Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue, no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of be- ing. In a virtuous action, I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts, conquered from chaos and nothing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses all limits. It affirms in man always an optimism, never a pessimism." *

By virtue of obedience to this law great men are great, and only so:

" We do not yet see that virtue is height, and that a man or a company of men plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not."

" A true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. You are constrained to ac- cept his standard. Ordinarily everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else or some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else. It takes place of the whole crea- tion. The man must be so much that he must make all cir- cumstances indifferent, put all means into the shade. This all great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age, requires infinite sjiaces and numbers and time fully

* Centenary ed., Vol. 2, pp. 109, 116, 122.

EMERSON 89

to accomplish his thought; and posterity seem to follow his steps as a procession." *

Through this any man has the power of all men:

" Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or the trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but diiferent from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patriarchs say, surely I can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the foreworld again."

" The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His greatest communication to our mind is, to teach us to despise all he has done. Shak- speare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock." t

Yet he once says there is no progress of mankind ; " Society never advances."

" The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much sup- port of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory, his libraries overload his wit, the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether ma- chinery does not encuml)cr, whetiier we have not lost by refine- ment some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establish-

* Centenary ed., Vol. 2, pp. 70, 61. t The same, Vol. 2, pp. 83-84, 289.

90 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic, but in Christendom wliere is the Christian?"*

But this is an exaggeration, which he elsewhere cor- rects, and justly says that the great men of the nine- teenth century will one day be quoted to prove the bar- barism of their age.

He teaches an absolute trust in God:

" Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person, who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. Ever it inspires awe and astoni^shment. . . . When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight that the best is the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time, the solution of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In the presence of law to his mind, he is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. He be- lieves that he cannot escape from his good." f

" In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind, that he is di;inking for ever the soul of God? Where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? Where shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew men to leave all and follow — father and mother, house and land, wife and child? Where shall I hear these august laws of moral being so pronounced as to fill my ear, and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action and pas- sion? The test of the true faith, certamly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature control the activity of the hands, — so commanding that we find pleas- ure and honor in obeying. The faith should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the

* Centenary ed.. Vol. 2, p. 85. t The same. Vol. 2, pp. 292-3.

EMERSON 91

singing bird, and the breath of flowers. But now the priest's Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature, it is unlovely, we are glad when it is done; we can make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves." *

God continually communicates himself to man in various forms:

" We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its mani- festations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this com- munication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A thrill passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. In these communications the power to see is not sepa- rated from the will to do; but the insight proceeds from obe- dience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful perception. Every moment when the individual feels himself invaded by it, is memorable." t

" The nature of these revelations is always the same ; they are perceptions of the absolute law."

" This energy does not descend into individual life, on any other condition than entire possession. It comes to the lowly and simjjle; it comes to whomsoever will put off what is foreign and proud; it comes as insight; it comes as serenity and grand- eur. When we see those whom it inhabits, we are apprized of new degrees of greatness. From that inspiration the man comes back with a changed tone. He does not taliv with men, with an eye to their opinion. He tries them. It requires of

us to be plain and true The soul that ascendeth to

worship the great God is plain and true, has no rose-color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures, does not want admira- tion; dwells in the hour that now is, in the earnest experience of the common day, — by reason of the present moment, and the mere trifle having become porous to thought, and bibulous of the sea of light."

" How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea ot God,

* Centenary ed., Vol. 1, pp. 136-7. t The same, Vol. 2, pp. i;80-l.

92 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments ! " *

He says the same thing in yet more rhythmic notes :

" Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below, —

The canticles of love and woe;

The hand that rounded Peter's dome.

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew;—

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

"The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned; And the same power that reared the shrine Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. Ever the fiery Pentecost Girds with one flame the countless host. Trances the heart through chanting choirs. And through the priest the mind inspires." t

If we put Emerson's conclusions into five great classes representing respectively his idea of man, of God, and of nature ; his idea of self-rule, the relation of man's consciousness to his unconsciousness ; his idea of religion, the relation of men to God ; of ethics, the relation of man to man ; and of economy, the relation of man to nature, we find him in the very first rank of modern science. No man in this age is before him.

* Centenary ed., Vol. 2, pp. 289-290, 292. tThe Problem.

EMERSON 93

He demonstrates nothing, but assumes his position far in advance of mankind. This explains the treatment he has met with.

Then in his writings there appears a love of beauty in all its forms — in material nature, in art, litera- ture, and above all, in human life. He finds it every- where :

" The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, The swinging spider's silver line, The ruby of the drop of wine. The shining pebble of the pond Thou inscribest with a bond. In thj-- momentary play Would bankrupt nature to repay.

" Oft, in streets or humblest places I detect far-wandered graces. Which, from Eden wide astray. In lowly homes have lost their way." *

Few men have had a keener sense for this in com- mon life, or so nice an eye for it in inanimate nature. His writings do not disclose a very clear perception of the beauty of animated nature; it is still life that he describes, in water, plants, and the sky. He seldom refers to the great cosmic forces of the world, that are everywhere balanced into such systematic propor- tions, the perception of which makes the writings of Alexander von Humboldt so attractive and delightful.

In all Emerson's works there appears a sublime con- fidence in man ; a respect for human nature which we have never seen surpassed, never equalled. Man is only to be true to his nature, to plant himself on his in- stincts, and all will turn out well:

* Ode to Beauty.

94 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable ap- pearances,— swine, spiders, snakes, pests, mad-houses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, and warm hearts, and wise discourse, and heroic acts around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which Cometh not with observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God, — he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight." *

" Foolish hands may mix and mar. Wise and sure the issues are."

He has also an absolute confidence in God. He has been foolishly accused of pantheism, which sinks God in nature ; but no man is further from it. He never sinks God in man, he docs not stop with the law, in matter or morals, but goes back to the Lawgiver ; yet probably it would not be so easy for him to' give his definition of God as it would be for most graduates at Andover or Cambridge. With this confidence in God he looks things fairly in the face, and never dodges, never fears. Toil, sorrow, pain, — these are things which it is im- pious to fear. Boldly he faces every fact, never re- treating behind an institution or a great man. In God his trust is complete ; with the severest scrutiny he joins the highest reverence.

Hence come his calmness and serenity. He is evenly balanced and at repose. A more tranquil spirit can-

* Centenary ed., Vol. 1, pp. 76-77.

EMERSON 95

not be found in literature. Nothing seems to fret or jar him, and all the tossings of the literary world never jostle him into anger or impatience. He goes on like the stars above the noise and dust of earth, as calm yet not so cold. No man says things more terribly severe than he on many occasions ; few in America have encountered such abuse, but in all his writings there is not a line which can be referred to ill-will. Impudence and terror are wasted on him ; " upstart wealth's averted eye," which blasts the hope of the politican, is powerless on him as on the piles of granite in New Hampshire hills. Misconceived and misrcported, he does not wait to " unravel any man's blunders ; he is again on his road, adding new powers and honors to his domain, and new claims on the heart." He takes no notice of the criticism from which nothing but warning is to be had, warning against bigotry and impudence ; and goes on his way, his only answer a creative act. Many shafts has he shot, not an arrow in self-defence ; not a line betrays that he has been treated ill. This is small praise, but rare ; even cool egotistic Goethe treated his " Philis- tine " critics with haughty scorn, comparing them to dogs who bark in the court-yard when the master mounts to ride:

" Es will der Spitz aus iinserm Stall Mit Bellen uns begleiteii; Allein der Hundes lauter Schall Beweist nur dass wir reiten."

He lacks the power of orderly arrangements to a remarkable degree. Not only is there no obvious logical order, but there is no subtle psychological method by which the several parts of an essay are joined together; his deep sayings are jewels strung

96 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

wholly at random. This often confuses the reader; this want appears the greatest defect of his mind. Of late years there has been a marked effort to correct it, and in regard to mere order there is certainly a great improvement in the first series of Essays on Nature, or rather formless book.

Then he is not creative like Shakspeare and Goethe, perhaps not inventive like many far inferior men ; he seldom or never undertakes to prove anything. He tells what he sees, seeing things by glimpses, not by steady and continuous looking, he often fails of seeing the whole object; he does not always see all of its relations with other things. Hence comes an oc- casional exaggeration. But this is commonly corrected by some subsequent statement. Thus he has seen books imprison many a youth, and speaking to men, desirous of warning them of their danger, he under- values the worth of books themselves. But the use he makes of them in his own writings shows that this statement was an exaggeration which his practical judgment disapproves. Speaking to men whose chief danger was that they should be bookworms, or me- chanical grinders at a logic-mill, he says that ecstasy Is the method of nature, but himself never utters any- thing " poor and extemporaneous ;" what he gets in his ecstatic moments of inspiration he examines carefully in his cool, reflective hours, and it is printed as re- flection, never as the simple result of ecstatic inspira- tion, having not only the stamp of Divine truth, but the private mark of Emerson. He is never demonized by his enthusiasm ; he possesses the spirit, it never pos- sesses him ; if " the God " comes into his rapt soul " without bell," it is only with due consideration that he communicates to the world the message that was

EMERSON 97

brought. Still he must regret that his extravagant estimate of ecstasy, intuitive unconsciousness, has been made and has led some youths and maids astray.

This mode of looking at things, and this want of logical order, make him appear inconsistent. There are actual and obvious contradictions in his works. " Two sons of Priam in one chariot ride." Now he is all generosity and nobleness, shining like the sun on things mean and low, and then he says, with a good deal of truth but some exaggeration :

" Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual aflBnity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the educa- tion at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand, alms to sots, and the thou- sandfold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I some- times succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold."

Thus a certain twofoldness appears in his writings here and there, but take them all together they form a whole of marvellous consistency ; take them in con- nection with his private character and life, we may challenge the world to furnish an example of a fairer and more consistent whole.

With the exceptions above stated there is a re- markable balance of intellectual faculties, of creative and conservative, of the spontaneous and intuitive, and the voluntary and reflective powers. He is a slave to neither, all are balanced into lovely proportions and intellectual harmony. In many things Goethe io superior to Emerson — in fertility of invention, in a

wide acquaintance with men, in that intuitive per- il—7

98 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ception of character which seems an instinct in some men, in regular disciphne of the understanding, in hterary and artistic culture ; but in general harmony of the intellectual powers, and the steadiness of pur- pose which comes thereof, Emerson is incontestably the superior even of the many-sided Goethe. He never wastes his time on trifles ; he is too heavily fraught, and lies so deep in the sea that a little flaw of wind never drives him from his course. If we go a little further and inquire how the other qualities are blended with the intellectual, we find that the moral power a little outweighs the intellectual, and the religious is a little before the moral, as it should be, but the aff'ections seem to be less developed than the intellect. There is no total balance of all the faculties to cor- respond with the harmony of his intellectual powers. This seems to us the greatest defect in his entire being, as lack of logical power is the chief defect in his intel- lect ; there is love enough for almost any man, not enough to balance his intellect, his conscience, and his faith in God. Hence there appears a certain coldness in his ethics. He is a man running alone, and would lead others to isolation, not society. Nothwithstanding liis own intense individuality and his theoretic and practical respect for individuality, still persons seem of small value to him, of little value except as they represent or help develop an idea of the intellect. In this respect in his writings he is one-sided, and while no one mental power has subdued another, yet his intellect and conscience seem to enslave and belittle the affections. Yet he never goes so far in this as Goethe, who used men, and women too, as cattle to ride, as food to eat. In Emerson's religious writings there appears a worship of the infinite God far transcending

EMERSON 99

all we find in Taylor or Edwards, in Fenelon or Chan- ning; it is reverence, it is trust, the worship of the conscience, of the intellect ; it is obedience, the worship of the will; it is not love, the worship of the affec- tions.

No writer in our language is more rich in ideas, none more suggestive of noble thought and noble life. We will select the axioms which occur in a single essay, which we take at random, that on Self-re- liance :

" It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine."

" Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

" The virtue most in request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion."

" No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature, the only wrong what is against it."

" Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love."

" Your goodness must have some edge to it."

" Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself."

" A foolish consistency is the hobgobhn of little minds."

" To be great is to be misunderstood."

" Character teaches above our wills."

" Greatness always appeals to the future."

" The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul."

"If we live truly we shall see truly."

" It is as easy for the strong to be strong as it is for the weak to be weak."

" When a man lives with God his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn."'

" Virtue is the governor."

" Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man."

" Duty is our place, and the merry men of circumstance should follow as they may."

" My giant goes with me wherever I go."

" It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model."

" That which each can do best none but his Maker can teach him."

" Every great man is an unique.'*

100 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of princi- ples."

His works abound also with the most genial wit ; he clearly sees and sharply states the halfnesses of things and men, but his wit is never coarse, and wholly with- out that grain of malice so often the accompaniment thereof.

Let us now say a word of the artistic style and rhetorical form of these remarkable books. Mr. Emerson always gravitates towards first principles, but never sets them in a row, groups them into a system, or makes of them a whole. Hence the form of all his prose writings is very defective, and much of his rare power is lost. He never fires by companies, nor even by platoons, only man by man ; nay, his soldiers are never ranked into line, but stand scat- tered, sundered and individual, each serving on his own account, and " fighting on his own hook." Things are huddled and lumped together; diamonds, pearls, bits of chalk and cranberries, thrown pell-mell to- gether. You can

" No joints and no contexture find, Nor their loose parts to any method bring."

Here is a specimen of the Lucretian " fortuitous con- course of atoms," for things are joined by a casual connection, or else by mere caprice. This is so in the Orations, which were designed to be heard, not read, where order is the more needful. His separate thoughts are each a growth. Now and then it is so with a sentence, seldom with a paragraph ; but his essay is always a piece of composition, carpentry, and not growth.

Take any one of his volumes, the first series of

EMERSON 101

Essays, for example, the book does not make an or- ganic whole by itself, and so produce a certain totality of impression. The separate essays are not arranged with reference to any progress in the reader's mind, or any consecutive development of the author's ideas. Here are the titles of the several papers in their present order: — History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spirit- ual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art. In each essay there is the same want of organic completeness and orderly distribution of the parts. There is no logical arrange- ment of the separate thoughts, which are subordinate to the main idea of the piece. They are shot to- gether into a curious and disorderly mass of beauty, like the colors in a kaleidoscope, not laid together like the gems in a collection ; still less grown into a whole like the parts of a rose, where beauty of form, frag- rance, and color make up one whole of loveliness. The lines he draws do not converge to one point ; there is no progress in his drama. Towards the end the interest deepens, not from an artistic arrangement of accumulated thoughts, but only because the author finds his heart warmed by his efforts, and beating quicker. Some artists produce their effect almost wholly by form and outline, they sculpture with their pencil, the Parcaj of Michael Angelo is an example ; so some writers discipline their pupils by the severity of their intellectual method and scientific forms of thought. Other artists have we known produce the effect almost wholly by their coloring ; the drawing was bad, but the color of lip and eye, of neck and check and hair, was perfect ; the likeness all men saw, and felt the impression. But the perfect artist will be true to both, will keep the fonns of things, and

lOa' THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

only clothe them with appropriate hues. We know some say that order belongs not to poetic minds, but the saying is false. In all Milton's high poetic works the form is perfect as the coloring ; this appears in the grouping of the grand divisions of the Paradise Lost, and in the arrangement of the smallest details in L'Allegro and II Penseroso, and then the appropriate hue of morning, of mid-day, or of night is thrown upon the whole.

His love of individuality has unconsciously deprived him of the grace of order ; his orations or essays are like a natural field ; here is common grass, only with him not half so common as wild roses and violets, for his common grasses are flowers — and then rocks, then trees, brambles, thorns, now flowers, now weeds, here a decaying log with raspberry-bushes on the one side and strawberry-vines on the other, and potentillas creeping among them all. There are emmets and wood-worms, earth-worms, slugs, grass-hoppers, and, more obvious, sheep and oxen, and above and about them, the brown thrasher, the hen-hawk, and the crow, making a scene of beautiful and intricate confusion which belongs to nature, not to human art.

His marked love of individuality appears in his style. His thoughts are seldom vague, all is distinct; the outlines are sharply drawn, things are always dis- crete from one another. He loves to particularize. He talks not of flowers, but of the violet, the clover, the cowslip and anemone; not of birds, but the nut- hatch, and the wren ; not of insects, but of the Volvex Globator ; not of men and maids, but of Adam, John, and Jane. Things are kept from things, each sur- rounded by its own atmosphere. This gives great distinctness and animation to his works, though lat-

EMERSON 103

terly he seems to imitate himself a little in this respect. It is remarkable to what an extent this individual- lization is carried. The essays in his books are sep- arate, and stand apart from one another, only me- chanically bound by the lids of the volume; his para- graphs in each essay are distinct and disconnected or but loosely bound to one another, it is so with sentences in the paragraph, and propositions in the sentence. Take for example his essay on Experience; it is dis- tributed into seven parts, which treat respectively of illusion, temperament, succession, surface, surprise, reality, and subjectiveness. These seven brigadiers are put in one army with as little unity of action as any seven Mexican officers ; not subject to one head, nor fighting on the same side. The subordinates under these generals are in no better order and discipline, sometimes the corporal commands the king. But this very lack of order gives variety of form. You can never anticipate him. One half of the essay never suggests the rest. If he have no order, he never sets his method a going, and himself with his audience goes to sleep, trusting that he, they, and the logical conclusion will all come out alive and waking at the last. He trusts nothing to the discipline of his camp ; all to the fidelity of the individual soldiers.

His style is one of the rarest beauty ; there is no efFectation, no conceit, no effort at effect. He alludes to everybody and imitates nobody. No writer that we remember, except Jean Paul Richter, is so rich in beautiful imagery ; there are no blank walls in his building. But Richter's temple of poesy is a Hindoo pagoda, — rich, elaborate, of costly stone, adorned with costly work, but as a whole, rather grotesque than sublime, and more queer than beautiful ; you

104 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

v.onder how any one could have brought such wealth together, and still more that any one could combine things so oddly together. Emerson builds a rambling Gothic church with an irregular outline, a chapel here, and a tower there, you do not see why ; but all parts are beautiful, and the whole constrains the soul to love and trust. His manifold images come from his own sight, not from the testimony of other men. His words are pictures of the things daguerreotyped from nature. Like Homer, Aristotle, and Tacitus, he de- scribes the thing, and not the effect of the thing. This quality he has in common with the great writers of classic antiquity, while his wealth of sentiment puts him with the classics of modern times. Like Burke he lays all literature under contribution, and presses the facts of every-day life into his service. He seems to keep the sun and moon as his retainers, and levy black-mail on the cricket and the titmouse, on the dawdling preacher and the snow-storm which seemed to rebuke his unnatural whine. His works teem with beauty. Take for example this:

" What do we wish to know of any worthy person so much as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment? [Love.] What books in the circulating libraries circulate? How we glow over these novels of passion when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature ! And what fastens attention in the inter- course of life like any passion betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or be- tray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We un- derstand them, and take the Avarmest interest in the develop- ment of the romance. All mankind love a lover. The earliest demonstrations of complacency and kindness are nature's most winning pictures. It is the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. The rude village boy teases the girls about the school-house door; but to-day he comes running into the entry, and meets one fair child arranging her satchel, he holds her books to help her, and instantly it seems to him as if she

EMERSON 105

removed herself from him infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him: and these two little neighbors that were so close just now have learnt to respect each other's person- ality. Or who can avert his eyes from the engaging, half-artful, half-artless ways of school girls who go into the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper, and talk half an hour about nothing with the broad-faced, good-natured shop- boy. In the village they are on a perfect equality, which love delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, affectionate nature of woman flow's out in this pretty gossip. The girls may have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between them and the good boy the most agreeable, confiding relations, what with their fun and their earnest, about Edgar, and Jonas, and Almira, and who was invited to the party, and who danced at the dancing-school, and when the singing-school would begin, and other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By- and-by that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk such as Milton deplores as incident to scholars and great men."

" The passion re-makes the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. Almost the notes are articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and almost he fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men."

" Behold there in the wood the fine madman ! He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights, he dilates, he is twice a man, he walks with arms akimbo, he soliloquizes, he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins, and he talks with the brook that wets his foot."

Emerson is a great master of language ; therewith he sculptures, therewith he paints ; he thunders and lightens in his speech, and in his speech also he sings. In Greece, Plato and Aristophanes were mighty mast- ers of the pen, and have not left their equals in ancient literary art ; so in Rome were Virgil and Tacitus ; four

106 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

men so marked in individuality, so unlike and withal so skilful in the use of speech, it were not easy to find ; four mighty masters of the art to write. In later times there have been in England Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Taylor, Swift, and Carlyle ; on the Continent, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Goethe ; all masters in this art, skilful to work in human speech. Each of them possessed some qualities which Emerson has not. In Bacon, Milton, and Carlyle, there is a majesty, a dignity and giant strength, not to be claimed for him. Yet separating the beautiful from what men call sub- lime, no one of all that Ave have named, ancient or modern, has passages so beautiful as he. From what is called sublime if we separate what is simply vast, or merely grand, or only wide, it is in vain that we seek in all those men for anything to rival Emerson.

Take the following passage, and it is not possible, we think, to find its equal for the beautiful and the sublime in any tongue :

" The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. When alone, they solace them- selves with the remembered image of the other. Does that other see the same star, tlie same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emotion that now delight me? They try and weigh their affection, and adding up all costly advantages, — friends, opportunities, properties, exult in discovering that will- ingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the beau- tiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed. But the lot of humanity is on these children. Danger, sor- row, and pain arrive to them as to all. Love prays. It makes covenants with Eternal Power, in behalf of this dear mate. The union which is tlius effected, and which adds a new value to every atom in nature, for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element, is yet a tempo- rary state. Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protesta- tions, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself at last from these en-

EMERSON 107

dearments as toys, and puts on the harness, and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul which is in the soul of each, craving for a perfect beatitude, detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They appear and reappear, and continue to attract; but the regard changes, quits the sign, and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded af- fection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of per- mutation and combination of all possible positions of tlie par- ties, to extort all the resources of each, and acquaint each with the whole strength and weakness of the other. For it is the nature and end of this relation, that they should represent the human race to each other. All that is in the world which is or ought to be known is cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman.

" The person love does to us fit. Like manna, has the taste of aU in it."

" The world rolls, the circumstances vary every hour. All the angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at the win- dows, and all the gnomes and vices also. By all the virtues they are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are known as such; they confess and flee. Their once flaming regard is sobered by time in either breast, and losing in violence what it gains in extent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. They re- sign each other without complaint to the good offices which jnan and woman are severally appointed to discharge in time, and exchange the passion which once could not lose sight of its object for a cheerful disengaged furtherance, whether present or absent, of each other's designs. At last they discover that all which at first drew them together, — those once sacred features, that magical play of charms, was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scafi^olding by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart, from year to year, is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness. Looking at these aims with which two persons, a man and a woman, so variously and cor relatively gifted, are shut up in one house to sjiend in the nuptial society forty or fifty years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with which the heart prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and intellect and art emu-

108 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

late each other in the gifts and the melody they bring to the epithalamium.

" Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but which seeketh virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our per- manent state. But we are often made to feel that our af- fections are but tents of a niglit. Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do. There are moments when the aflfections rule and absorb the man, and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons. But in health the mind is presently seen again, its overarching vaidt, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm loves and fears that swept over us as clouds, must lose their finite character, and blend with God to attain their own perfection. But we need not fear that we can lose anything by the progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on for ever."

We can now only glance at the separate works named above. His nature is more defective in form than any of his pieces, but rich in beauty ; a rare prose poem is it, a book for one's bosom. The first series of Essays contains the fairest blossoms and fruits of his genius. Here his wondrous mind reveals itself in its purity, its simplicity, its strength, and its beauty too. The second series of Essays is inferior to the first ; the style is perhaps clearer, but the water is not so deep. He seems to let himself down to the capacity of his hearers. Yet there is an attempt at order which is seldom successful, and reminds one of the order in which figures are tattooed upon the skin of a South Sea Islander, rather than of the organic symmetry of limbs or bones. He sets up a scaffold, not a living tree, a scaffold, too, on which none but himself can walk.

Some of his Orations and Addresses are noble ef-

EMERSON 109

forts ; old as the world is, and much and long as men are given to speak, it is but rare in human history that such Sermons on the Mount get spoken as the Address to the Students of Theology, and that before the Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge. They are words of lofty cheer.

The last book, on " Representative Men," does not come up to the first Essays, neither in matter nor in manner. Yet we know not a man, living and speaking English, that could have written one so good. The lecture on Plato contains exaggerations not usual with Emerson ; it fails to describe the man by genus or species. He gives you neither the principles nor the method of Plato, not even his conclusions. Nay, he does not give you the specimens to judge by. The article in the last classical dictionary or the History of Philosophy for the French Normal Schools gives you a better account of the philosopher and the man. The lecture on Swedenborg is a masterly appreciation of that great man, and to our way of thinking the best criticism that has yet appeared. He appreciates but docs not exaggerate him. The same may be said of that upon Montaigne; those on Shakspeare and Goethe are adequate and worthy of the theme. In the lecture on Napoleon it is surprising that not a word is said of his greatest faculty, his legislative, organizing power, for we cannot but think with Carlylc, that he " will be better known for his laws than his battles." But the other talents of Napoleon are sketched with a faithful hand, and his faults justly dealt with, not enlarged, but not liid ; though, on the whole, it seems to us, no great admirers of Napoleon, -that he is a little undei-valued.

We must briefly notice Mr. Emerson's volume of

110 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Poems. He has himself given us the standard by which to try him, for he thus defines and describes the poet:

" The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was pres- ent and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of in- dustry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I took part in a conversation the other day, concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a nmsic box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill and command of language we coUld not sufficiently praise. But when the question arose whether he was not only a lyrist, but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is plainly a contem- porary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of our low limitations like a Chimborazo under the line, running up from the torrid base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the herbage of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks and terraces. We hear through all the varied music the ground tone of conven- tional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses is primary.

" For, it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem, — ■ a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new thought, he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune." *

It is the office of the poet, he tells us, " by the beauty of things " to announce " a new and higher beauty. Nature offers all her creatures to him as a picture language." " The poorest experience is rich

* Centenary ed.. Vol. 3, pp. 8-10.

EMERSON 111

enough for all the purposes of expressing thought ;" " the world being put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it ;" he " turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and proportions." For through that better perception " he stands one step nearer things, and sees the flowing or metamorphosis, perceives that thought is multiform ; that within the fonu of every creature is a force impelling it to ascend into a higher form, and, following with his eyes the life, uses the forms which express that life, and so his speech flows with the flowing of nature." " The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs."

" This insight, which expresses itself by what is called imagina- tion, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others. The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them? A spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, is the transcendency of their own nature, him they will suffer. The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that.

" It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of tilings; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man there is a great public power, on which he can draw by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; tlien he is caught up into the life of the Universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and animals. The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, 'with the flower of the mind;' not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intellect re- leased from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, as tlie ancients were wont to express them-

lis THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

selves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar. As the traveller who has lost his way, throws his reins on his horse's neck, and trusts to the instinct of the ani- mal to find his road, so we must do with the divine animal who carries us through this world. For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into na- ture, the mind flows into and through things hardest and high- est, and the metamorphosis is possible." *

In reading criticisms on Emerson's poetry one is

sometimes reminded of a passage in Pepys' Diary,

where that worthy pronounces judgment on some of

the works of Shakspeare. Perhaps it may be thought

an appropriate introduction to some strictures of our

own.

"Aug. 20th, 1666. To Deptford by water, reading Othello, Moor of Venice, which I have heretofore esteemed a mighty good play, but having so lately read the Adventures of Five Hours, it seems a mean thing. Sept. 29th, 1662. To the King's Theater, where we saw Midsummer Night's Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most in- sipid and ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."

Emerson is certainly one

" Quem tu, Melpomene, semel

Nascentem placido lumine videris; Spissae nemorum comae

Fingent ^olio carmine nobilem."

Yet his best poetry is in his prose, and his poorest, thinnest, and least musical prose is in his poems.

The " Ode of Beauty " contains some beautiful thoughts in a fair form:

" Who gave thee, O Beauty,

The keys of this breast, — Too credulous lover

Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages

Thee knew I of old?

* Centenary ed.. Vol. 3, pp. 26-27.

EMERSON 113

Or what was the service

For which I was sold? When first my eyes saw thee,

I found me thy thrall, By magical drawings

Sweet tyrant of all ! I drank at thy fountain

False waters of thirst; Thou intimate stranger.

Thou latest and first! Thy dangerous 'glances

Make women of men; New-born, we are melting

Into nature again."

The three pieces which seem the most perfect poems, both in matter and form, are the " Problem," from which we have already given liberal extracts above; ** Each in all," which, however, is certainly not a great poem, but simple, natural, and beautiful; and the " Sphinx," which has higher merits than the others, and is a poem of a good deal of beauty. The Sphinx is the creation of the old classic mythology. But her question is wholly modern, though she has been waiting so long for the seer to solve it that she has become drowsy.

This is her problem:

" The fate of the man-child ; The meaning of man."

All the material and animal world is at peace:

" Erect as a sunbeam

Upspringeth the palm; The elephant browses.

Undaunted and calm; In beautiful motion

The thrush plies his wings; Kind leaves of his covert.

Your silence he sings.

II— 8

114 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,

Plant, quadruped, bird. By one music enchanted.

One deity stirred, — Each the other adorning.

Accompany still; Night veileth the morning.

The vapor the hill."

In his early age man shares the peace of the world:

The babe by its mother

Lies bathed in joy; Glide its hours uncounted, —

The sun is its toy; Shines the peace of all being

Without cloud, in its eyes; And the sum of the world

In soft miniature lies."

But when the child becomes a man he is ill at ease:

" But man crouches and blushes.

Absconds and conceals; He creepeth and peepeth.

He palters and steals; Infirm, melancholy.

Jealous glancing around. An oaf, an accomplice.

He poisons the ground."

Mother Nature complains of his condition :

"Who has drugged my boy's cup? Who has mixed my boy's bread? Who, with sadness and madness. Has turned the man-child's head?"io

The Sphinx wishes to know the meaning of all this. A poet answers that this is no mystery to him ; man is superior to nature, and its unconscious and in- voluntary happiness is not enough for him ; superior to the events of his own history, so the joy which he has attained is always unsatisfactory:

EMERSON 115

" The fiend that man harries

Is love of the best; Yawns the pit of the dragon.

Lit by rays from the blest. The Lethe of nature

Can't trance him again, Whose soul sees the perfect.

Which his eyes seek in vain.

" Profounder, profounder,

Man's spirit must dive; To his aye-rolling orbit

No goal will arrive; 11 The heavens that now draw him

With sweetness untold, Once found, — for new heavens

He spurneth the old."

Even sad things turn out well:

" Pride ruined the angels. Their shame them restores; And the joy that is sweetest Lurks in stings of remorse." 12

Thus the riddle is solved, then the Sphinx turns into beautiful things:

" Uprose the merry sphinx,

And crouched no more in stone; She melted into purple cloud. She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame;

She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave; She stood Monadnoc's head."

We pass over the Threnody, where " well-sung woes " might soothe a " pensive ghost." The Dirge contains some stanzas that are full of nature and well expressed :

" Knows he who tills this lonely field, To reap its scanty corn.

116 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

What mystic fruit his acres yield At midnight and at morn?

" The winding Concord gleamed below, Pouring as wide a flood As when my brothers, long ago, Came with me to the wood.

" But they are gone — the holy ones Who trod with me this lovely vale; The strong, star-bright companions Are silent, low, and pale.

" My good, my noble, in their prime,

Who made this world the feast it was. Who learned with me the lore of time, Who loved this dwelling-place!

" I touch this flower of silken leaf. Which once our childhood knew; Its soft leaves wound me with a grief Whose balsam never grew.

" Hearken to yon pine-warbler Singing aloft in the tree! Hearest thou, O traveller. What he singeth to me?

" Not unless God made sharp thine ear With sorrow such as mine, Out of that delicate lay could'st thou Its heavy tale divine.

" ' Go, lonely man,' it saith ;

' They loved thee from their birth ; Their hands were pure, and pure their faith,- There are no such hearts on earth.

' ' Ye cannot unlock your heart. The key is gone with them;

The silent organ loudest chants The master's requiem.' "

EMERSON 117

Here Is a little piece which has seldom been equalled in depth and beauty of thought ; yet it has sometimes been complained of as obscure, we see not why :

TO RHEA.

" Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes, Not with flatteries, but truths. Which tarnish not, but purify To light which dims the morning' ;5 eye, I have come from the spring-woods. From the fragrant solitudes; Listen what the poplar-tree And murmuring waters counselled me.

"If with love thy heart has burned; If thy love is unreturned; Hide thy grief within thy breast. Though it tear thee unexpressed; For when love has once departed From the ejes of the false-hearted. And one by one has torn oflf quite The bandages of purple light; Though thou wert the loveliest Form the soul had ever dressed. Thou shalt seem, in each reply, A vixen to his altered eye; Thy softest pleadings seem too bold. Thy praying lute will seem to scold; Though thou kept the straightest road. Yet thou errest far and broad.

" But thou shalt do as do the gods In their cloudless periods; For of this lore be thou sure, — Though thou forget, the gods, secure. Forget never their command. But make the statute of this land. As they lead, so follow all. Ever have done, ever shall. Warning to the blind and deaf, 'Tis written on the iron leaf. Who drinks of Cupid's nectar cup Loveth downward, and not upj

118 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Therefore, who loves, of gods or men,i3

Shall not by the same be loved again;

His sweetheart's idolatry

Falls, in turn, a new degree.

When a god is once beguiled

By beauty of a mortal child,

And by her radiant youth delighted.

He is not fooled, but warily knoweth

His love shall never be requited.

And thus the wise Immortal doethp —

'Tis his study and delight

To bless that creature day and night;

From all evils to defend her;

In her lap to pour all splendor;

To ransack earth for riches rare,

And fetch her stars to deck her hair;

He mixes music with her thoughts.

And saddens her with heavenly doubts:

All grace, all good his great heart knows.

Profuse in love, the king bestows:

Saying, ' Hearken ! earth, sea, air !

This monument of my despair

Build I to the All-Good, All-Fair.

Not for a private good.

But I, from my beatitude.

Albeit scorn'd as none was scorn'd.

Adorn her as was none adorned.

I make this maiden an ensample

To Nature, through her kingdoms ample.

Whereby to model newer races,

Statelier forms, and fairer faces;

To carry man to new degrees

Of power, and of comeliness.

These presents be the hostages

Which I pawn for my release.

See to thyself, O Universe!

Thou art better, and not worse.' —

And the god, having given all.

Is freed for ever from his thrall."

Several of the other pieces are poor; some are stiff and rude, having no lofty thoughts to atone for their unlovely forms. Some have quaint names, which seem given to them out of mere caprice. Such are

EMERSON 119

the following: Mithridates, Hamatreya, Hermione, Merlin, Merops, &c.^^ These names are not more de- scriptive of the poems they are connected with than are Jonathan and Eleazer of the men thus baptized. What have Astrea, Rhea, and Etienne de la Boece to do with the poems which bear their names?

We should think the following lines, from Hermione, were written by some of the youngest Emersonidae:

" Once I dwelt apart, Now I live with all; As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side Seems, by the traveller espied, A door into the mountain heart. So didst thou quarry and unlock Highways for me through the rock.

" Now, deceived, thou wanderest In strange lands unblest; And my kindred come to soothe me. Southwind is my next of blood; He has come through fragrant wood. Drugged with spice from climates warm, And in every twinkling glade. And twilight nook. Unveils thy form. Out of the forest way Forth paced it yesterday; And when I sat by the watercourse. Watching the daylight fade. It throbbed up from the brook."

Such things are unworthy of such a master.

Here is a passage which we will not attempt to criticise.

He is speaking of Love:

" He will preach like a friar And jump like a harlequin; He will read like a crier. And fight like a Paladin," &c.*

♦Centenary ed., Vol. 9, p. 108.

ago THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Good Homer sometimes nodded, they say ; but when he went fast asleep, he did not write hnes or print them.

Here is another specimen. It is Monadnoc that speaks :

" Anchor'd fast for many an age, I await the bard and sage, Who, in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed. Shall string Monadnoc like a bead."

And yet another:

" For the present, hard

Is the fortune of the bard," " In the woods he travels glad.

Without bitter fortune mad,

Melancholy without bad."

We have seen imitations of this sort of poetry which even surpassed the original. It does not seem possible that Emerson can write such stuff simply from " lacking the accomplishment of verse." Is it that he has a false theory, and so wilfully writes in- numerous verse, and plays his harp, all jangling and thus out of tune.? Certainly it seems so. In his poems he uses the old mythology, and in bad taste; talks of gods, and not God — of Pan, the Oreads, Titan, Jove, and Mars, the Parcje and the Daemon.

There are three elaborate poems which demand a word of notice. The " Woodnotes " contains some good thoughts, and some pleasing lines, but on the whole a pine tree which should talk like Mr, Emerson's pine ought to be plucked up by the roots and cast into the depths of the sea. " Monadnoc " is the title of another piece which appears forced and unnatural, as well as poor and weak. The third is called ""initial, daemonic, and celestial love." It is not withtrat good

EMERSON 121

thoughts, and here and there a good line, but in every attribute of poetry it is far inferior to his majestic essay on Love. In his poetry Mr. Emerson often loses his command of language, metaphors fail him, and the magnificent images which adorn and beautify all his prose works are gone.

From what has been said, notwithstanding the faults we have found in Emerson, it is plain that we assign him a very high rank in the literature of man- kind. He is a very extraordinary man. To no Eng- lish writer since Milton can we assign so high a place ; even Milton himself, great genuis though he was, and great architect of beauty, has not added so many thoughts to the treasury of the race ; no, nor been the author of so much loveliness. Emerson is a man of genius such as does not often appear, such as has never appeared before in America, and but seldom in the world. He learns from all sorts of men, but no English writer, we think, is so original. We sincerely lament the want of logic in his method, and his exag- geration of the intuitive powers, the unhappy con- sequences of which we see in some of his followers and admirers. They will be more faithful than he to the false principle which he lays down, and will think themselves wise because they do not study, learned be- cause they are ignorant of books, and inspired because they say what outrages common sense. In Emerson's poetry there is often a ruggedness and want of finish which seems wilful in a man like him. This fault is very obvious in those pieces he has put before his several essays. Sometimes there is a seed-corn of thought in the piece, but the piece itself seems like a pile of rubbish shot out of a cart which hinders the seed from germinating. His admirers and imitators

122 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

not unfrequently give us only the rubbish and proba- bly justify themselves by the example of their master. Spite of these defects, Mr. Emerson on the whole speaks with a holy power which no other man pos- sesses who now writes the English tongue. Others have more readers, are never sneered at by respect- able men, are oftencr praised in the journals, have greater weight in the pulpits, the cabinets, and the councils of the nation ; but there is none whose words so sink into the mind and heart of young men and maids, none who work so powerfully to fashion the character of the coming age. Seeing the power which he exercises, and the influence he is likely to have on generations to come, we are jealous of any fault in his matter, or its form, and have allowed no private and foolish friendship to hinder us from speaking of his faults.

This is his source of strength, his intellectual and moral sincerity. He looks after truth, justice, and beauty. He has not uttered a word that is false to his own mind or conscience ; has not suppressed a word because he thought it too high for men's comprehen- sion, and therefore dangerous to the repose of men. He never compromises. He sees the chasm between the ideas which come of man's nature and the institu- tions which represent only his history ; he does not seek to cover up the chasm which daily grows wider be- tween truth and public opinion, between justice and the state, between Christianity and the church ; he does not seek to fill it up, but he asks men to step over and build institutions commensurate with their ideas. He trusts himself, trusts man, and tinists God. He has confidence in all the attributes of infinity. Hence he is serene ; nothing disturbs the even poise of his

EMERSON 123

character, and he walks erect. Nothing impedes him in his search for the true, the lovely, and the good; no private hope, no private fear, no love of wife or child, of gold, or case, or fame. He never seeks his own reputation ; he takes care of his being, and leaves his seeming to take care of itself. Fame may seek him; he never goes out of his way a single inch for her.

He has not written a line which is not conceived in the interest of mankind. He never writes in the in- terest of a section, of a party, of a church, of a man, ahvaj^s in the interest of mankind. Hence comes the ennobling influence of his works. Most of the literary men of America, most of the men of superior educa- tion, represent the ideas and interest of some party ; in all that concerns the welfare of the human race they are proportionably behind the mass who have only the common culture, so while the thought of the people is democratic, putting man before the accidents of a man, the literature of the nation is aristocratic, and opposed to the w^elfare of mankind. Emerson belongs to the exceptional literature of the times ; and while his cul- ture joins him to the history of man, his ideas and his whole life enable him to represent also the nature of man, and so to write for the future. He is one of the rare exceptions amongst our educated men, and helps redeem American literature from the reproach of imi- tation, conformity, meanness of aim, and hostility to the progress of mankind. No' faithful man is too low for his approval and encouragement ; no faithless man too high and popular for his rebuke.

A good test of the comparative value of books is the state they leave ^^ou in. Emerson leaves you tran- quil, resolved on noble manhood, fearless of the con-

124 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

sequences ; he gives men to mankind, and mankind to the laws of God. His position is a striking one. Eminently a child of Christianity and of the American idea, he is out of the church and out of the state. In the midst of Calvinistic and Unitarian superstition, he does not fear God, but loves and trusts him. He does not worship the idols of our time — wealth and re- spectability, the two calves set up by our modern Jeroboam. He fears not the damnation these idols have the power to inflict, neither poverty nor social disgrace. In busy and bustling New England comes out this man serene and beautiful as a star, and shining like " a good deed in a naughty world." Reproached as an idler, he is active as the sun, and pours out his radiant truth on lyceums at Chelmsford, at Waltham, at Lowell, and all over the land. Out of a cold Uni- tarian church rose this most lovely light. Here is Boston, perhaps the most humane city in America, with its few noble men and women, its beautiful chari- ties, its material vigor, and its hardy enterprise; com- mercial Boston, where honor is weighed in the public scales, and justice reckoned by the dollars it brings ; conservative Boston, the grave of the Revolution, wal- lowing in its wealth, yet grovelling for more, seeking only money, careless of justice, stuff^ed with cotton yet hungry for tariffs, sick with the greedy worm of avarice, loving money as the end of life, and bigots as the means of preserving it ; Boston, with toryism in its parlors, toryism in its pulpits, toryism in its press, itself a tory town, preferring the accidents of man to man himself, and amidst it all there comes Emerson, graceful as Phoebus- Apollo, fearless and tranquil as the sun he was supposed to guide, and pours down the enchantment of his light, which falls where'er it may,

EMERSON 125

on dust, on diamonds, on decaying heaps to hasten their rapid rot, on seeds new sown to quicken their ambitious germ, on virgin minds of youths and maids to waken the natural seed of nobleness therein, and make it grow to beauty and to manliness. Such is the beauty of his speech, such the majesty of his ideas, such the power of the moral sentiment in men, and such the impression which his whole character makes on them, that they lend him, everywhere, their ears, and thousands bless his manly thoughts.

Ill

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING

It is now six years since William Ellery Channing, ceasing to be mortal, passed on to his rest and his re- ward. We have waited impatiently for the publica- tion of his memoirs, that we might " beg a hair of him for memory." They are now before us — three well- printed volumes, mainly filled up with his own writings, letters, extracts from journals, sermons, and various pa- pers hitherto kept from the press. As a public speaker and a popular writer he was well known before; these volumes show us not merely the minister and the author, but the son, husband, father, and friend. If they reveal nothing new in his character, we have yet in them ample materials for ascertaining whence came his influence and his power. What estimate shall we make of the man, and what lesson draw from his life and works.'' These are matters worth considering, but before answering the question, let us look a little at the opportunities afforded him by his profession.

The church and state are two conspicuous and im- portant forms of popular action. The state is an institution which represents man in his relations with man; the church, man in his relations with man and God. These institutions, varying in their modifica- tions, have always been and must be, as they represent two modes of action that are constant in the humail race, and come from the imperishable nature of man. In each of these modes of action the people have their

126

CHANNING 127

servants, — politicians, the servants of the state, and clergymen, the servants of the church.

Now the clergymen may be a priest or a minister, the choice depending on his character and ability. The same distinctions are noticeable in the servants of the state, where we have the priest of politics and the minister of politics. We will pass over the priest.

The business of the minister is to become a spiritual guide to men, to instruct by his wisdom, elevate by his goodness, refine and strengthen by his piety, to inspire by his whole soul, to sei-ve and to lead by going be- fore them all his days with all his life, a pillar of cloud by day, of fire by night. The good shepherd giveth his life to his sheep as well as for them. The minister aims to be, to do, and to suffer, in special for his own particular parish, but also and in general for mankind at large. He proposes for himself this end, the eleva- tion of mankind, — their physical elevation to health, comfort, abundance, skill, and beauty ; their intellectual elevation to thought, refinement, and wisdom ; their moral and religious elevation to goodness and piety, till they all become sons of God also, and prophets. However, his direct and main business is to promote the spiritual growth of men, helping them to love one another, and to love God.

His means to this end are, in general, the common weapons of the church. To him the Sunday is a high day, for it is the great day of work, when he comes into close relations with men, to instruct the mind, to warn in the name of conscience, gently arousing the affections, kindling the religious emotions, and so con- tinuing his Father's work ; the meeting-house, chapel, or church, is the great place for his work, and so, like the Sunday, it is holy to him, both invested with a cer-

128 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

tain sanctity, as to the pious farmer or smith, the plough or the hammer seems a sacred thing. The Bible, the service-book, the traditions he appeals to, the sacramental ordinances he uses, all are means, but not ends, helps to whom they help, but nothing more, their sanctity derivative, not of them but of the use they serve. In our day the press offers him its aid, and stands ready to distribute his thought among the mil- lions of mankind. By means of that he gradually gets beyond the bounds of his parish, rural or metropolitan, and if God has so gifted him has whole nations for his audience, and long after his death, his word will circu- late among the nations a word of power and blessed- ness.

The minister finds a certain respect paid to the clergyman. This is not a thing that is new, but old, hallowed, and slowly fading out of the consciousness of the nations. This traditional respect gives him a certain position and influence, and enables him at once to anticipate and claim a place which is granted to other classes of men only as the result of long life and faithful work. He finds a pulpit erected for him, an audience gathered, respectful and disposed to listen and gratefully to receive whatever good he has to offer. While the priest uses this position and tra- ditional respect to elevate himself, to take his ease in his inn, to keep men still, the minister uses it to help men forward ; not to elevate himself, but them. The pulpit is his place to stand on and move the world. It is not to be denied that even now, in incredulous America, the calling of a clergyman gives a man a good opportunity for power, for a real, serious, and lasting influence, or it gives him the best chance for a sleep, silent and undisturbed, and deep and long.

CHANNING 129

Such are the general means of the minister towards his great end, means which belong to all clergymen, and vary in efficiency only with the number, the wealth, the talent, and social position of his audience. His particular and personal means are his talents, little or great ; his skill, acquired by education and self-dis- cipline ; his learning, the accumulated thought which has come of his diligence, as capital is accumulated by toil and thrift ; his eloquence, the power of speaking the right thing, at the right time, with the right words, in the right way ; his goodness and his piety, — in a word, his whole character, intellectual, moral, and re- ligious. These are the means which belong to the man, not the clergyman ; means which vary not with the number, wealth, talent, and social position of his audience, but only with the powers of the man him- self. His general means are what he has as servant of the church ; his special, what he is as a man.

Say what men will, the pulpit is still a vantage ground, an eminence ; often a bad eminence, it may be, still one of the places of pubhc power. If a man would produce an immediate effect and accomplish one par- ticular work, let him storm awhile in Congress, if he will. But if he aims to produce a long and lasting in- fluence, to effect men deeply, and in many ways promote the progress of mankind, he may ascend the pulpit, and thence pour forth his light and heat on youth and age, distil his early and his latter rain ; he is sure to waken the tender plants at last, and sure to strengthen the tallest and most strong. Yet for all that, say what we may of the power of that position, the man is more than the pulpit, more than the church, — yes, more than all pulpits and all churches, and if he is right

and they wrong, he sets them a spinning around him II— 9

130 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

as boys their tops. Yet 'tis a great mistake to suppose it is the spoken word merely that does all ; it is the mind, the heart, the soul, the character, that speaks the word. Words, they are the least of what a man says. The water in some wide brook is harmless enough, loitering along its way, nothing but water ; the smallest of fishes find easy shallows for their sport ; careless reptiles there leave their unattended young, children wade laughing along its course and sail their tiny ships. But raise that stream a hundred feet, its tinkle becomes thunder, and its waters strike with force that nothing can resist. So the words of a man of no character, though comforting enough when they are echoed by passion, appetite, and old and evil habits of our own — are powerless against the might of passion, habit, appetite. What comes from nothing comes to nothing. I know in whom I have believed, said the apostle — not merely what.

It is the minister's business to teach men truth and religion, not directly all forms of truth — though to help so far as he may even in that — but especially truth which relates to man's spiritual growth. To do this he must be before men, superior to them in the things he teaches : we set a grown woman to take care of children, a man to teach boys. There is no other way ; in mathematics and in morals the leader must go before the men he leads. To teach truth and re- ligion the minister must not only possess them, but must know the obstacles which oppose them both in other minds — must know the intellectual errors which conflict with truth, the practical errors which contend with religion, and so be able to meet and confront the falsehoods and the sins of his time. He must there- fore be a reformer, — there is no help for it. He may

CHANNING 131

have a mystical turn, and reform only sentiments ; a philosophical turn, and reform ideas — in politics, philosophy, theology ; or a practical turn, and hew away only at actual concrete sins ; but a reformer must he be in one shape, or in all, otherwise he is no minister, serving, leading, inspiring, but only a priest, a poor miserable priest, — not singing his own psalm out of his own throat, but grinding away at the barrel- organ of his sect — grating forth tunes which he did not make and cannot understand.

The minister is to labor for mankind, for the noblest end, in one of the highest modes of labor, and its fairest form. He does not ask to rule, but to serve; not praise but perfection. He seeks power over men not for his sake, but theirs. He is to take the lead in all works of education, of moral and social reform. If need is, he must be willing to stand alone. The quali- ties which bind him to mankind for all eternity are qualities which may sever him from his class and his townsmen ; yes, from his own brothers, and that for his mortal life. The distinctions amongst men must be no distinctions to him. He must honor all men, be- come a brother to all, most brotherly to the neediest. He must see the man in the begger, in the felon, in the outcast of society, and labor to separate that dia- mond from the rubbish that hides its light. In a great city the lowest ranks of the public should be familiar to his thoughts and present in his prayers. He is to seek instruction from men that can give it, and im- part of himself to all that need and as they need. He must keep an unbroken sympathy with man ; above all, he must dwell intimate with God. It is his duty to master the greatest subjects of human thought; to know the nature of man, his wants, appetites, expos-

132 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ures, his animal nature, his human nature, and his di- vine ; man in his ideal state of wisdom, abundance, loveliness, and religion ; man in his actual state of ig- norance, want, deformity, and sin. He is to minister to man's highest Avants ; tO' bring high council to low men, and to elevate still more the aspirations of the loftiest. He must be a living rebuke to proud men and the scorner ; a man so full of heart and hope that drooping souls shall take courage and thank God, cheered by his conquering valor.

To do and to be all this he must know men, not with the half -knowledge which comes from reading books, but by seeing, feeling, doing, and being. He must know history, philosophy, poetry; and life he must know by heart. He must understand the laws of God, be filled With God's thought, animated with his feel- ing, be filled with truth and love. Expecting much of himself he will look for much also from other men. He asks men to lend him their ears, if he have any- thing to teach, knowing that then he shall win their hearts ; but if he has nothing to offer he bids men go off where they can be fed, and leave the naked walls sepulchral and cold to tell him, " Sir, you have nothing to say, you had better be done ! " But he expects men that take his ideas for truth to turn his words to life. He looks for corn as proof that he sowed good seed in the field ; he trusts men will become better by his words — wiser, holier, more full of faith. He hopes to see them outgrow him, till he can serve them no more, and they come no longer to his well to draw, but have found the fountain of immortal life hard by their own door; so the good father who has watched and prayed over his children longs to have them set up for themselves, and live out their own manly and indepen-

CHANNING 133

dent life. He does not ask honor, nor riches, nor ease, only to sec good men and good works as the result of his toil. If no such result comes of a long life, then he knows either that he has mistaken his calling or failed of his duty.

We have always looked on the lot of a minister in a country town as our ideal of a happy and useful life. Not grossly poor, not idly rich, he is every man's equal, and no man's master. He is welcome every- where, if worthy, and may have the satisfaction that he is helping men to wisdom, to virtue, to piety, to the dearest joys of this life and the next. He can easily know all of his flock, be familiar with their thoughts, and help them out of their difficulties by his superior- ity of nature or cultivation or religious growth. The great work of education — intellectual and spiritual — falls under his charge. He can give due culture to all ; but the choicer and more delicate plants, that re- quire the nicest eye and hand, these are peculiarly his care. In small societies eloquence is not to be looked for as in the great congregations of a city, where the listening looks of hundreds or thousands would win eloquence almost out of the stones. The ocean is al- ways sublime in its movements, but the smallest spring under the oak has beauty in its still transparence, and sends its waters to the sea. In cities the lot of the minister is far less grateful, his connections less inti- mate, less domestic. Here, in addition to the common subjects of the minister's discourse, everywhere the same, the great themes of society require to be dis- cussed, and peace and war, freedom and slavery, the public policy of states, and the character of their lead- ers, come up to the pulpits of a great city to be looked on in the light of Christianity and so judged. With

134 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

a few hearers we see not how a man can fail to speak simply, and with persuasive speech ; before many, speaking on such a theme as religion, which has pro^- voked such wonders of art out of the sculptor, poet, painter, architect, we wonder that every man is not el- oquent. Some will pass by the little spring nor heed its unobtrusive loveliness ; all turn with wonder at the ocean's face, and feel for a moment awed by its sub- limity, and lifted out of their common consciousness.

In the nineteenth century the clergy have less rel- ative power than ever before in Christendom ; it is partly their own fault, but chiefly the glory and ex- cellence of the age. It has other instructors. But there was never a time when a great man rising in a pulpit could so communicate his thoughts and sentiments as now ; a man who should bear the same relation to this age that Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bern- ard of Clairvaux bore to their age, so far overtopping men, would have more influence, not less than theirs. Nations wait for noble sentiments, for generous thoughts ; wait for the discoverer and organizer. The machinery of the age is ready to move for him, — the steam-horses, the steam-press. His audience has no limit. Even now the position of a ministfer gives him great advantages. He has a ready access to men's souls, a respectful hearing from week to week, and constant dropping will wear the stones, how much more the hearts of men. The children grow up under his eye and influence.

All ministers stand on the same level, and nothing lifts one above another but his genius, his culture, his character, and his life. In the pulpit the most dis- tinguished birth avails nothing; the humblest origin is no hindrance. In New England, in America, every-

CHANNING 135

where in the world money gives power, never more than to-day ; a rich lawyer or merchant finds himself more respected for his wealth, and listened to with greater esteem by any audience. Wealth arms him with a golden weapon. It is so in politics ; power is attracted towards gold. With the minister it is not so. If a clergyman had all the wealth of both the great cardinals Wolsey and Richelieu, did he dwell in a palace finer than the Vatican, all his wealth would not give him a whit the more influence in his pulpit, in sermon, or in prayer. Henry Ware moved men none the less because he had so little of this world's goods. In this way, therefore, the minister's influ- ence is personal, not material. The more he is a man, the more a minister.

In virtue of his position he has the best chance to know men. He overrides all distinctions of life, as- sociates with the humblest man as a brother, with the highest as their equal. If well trained, his education places him in the circle of the movst cultivated minds, while' his sympathies and his duty attract him to the lowest sphere of rudeness, want, and perhaps of crime. He sees men in joy and in grief, at a wedding and a funeral, and when flushed with hope, when wrung with pain, when the soul bids earth farewell. If a true man, the most precious confidence is re^ posed in him. He looks into men's eyes as he speaks, and in their varying faces reads their confession, what they could oft conceal, both ill and good ; reads sometimes with astonished eyes. Reader, you have seen an old coin worn smooth so that there was no mark on it, not a letter; you know not whence it came nor whose it is ; but you heat it in the fire, and the stamp of the die is plain as when the coin was minted

136 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

first; you see the image, read the superscription. So the excitement of a sermon reveals the man's character in his oft-unwilhng face, and the preacher, astonished, renders unto Caesar the things that are his, and unto God his own. Sometimes one is saddened to see the miser, satyr, worldhng in his many forms under a disguise so trim and neat ; but oftener, perhaps, sur- prised to find a saint he knew not of before, surprised at the resurrection of such a soul from such a tomb. The minister addresses men as individuals; the lawyer must convince the whole jury, the senator a majority of the senate or his work is lost, while if the minister convinces one man, or but half convinces him, he has still done something which will last. The merchant deals with material things, the lawyer and the politi- cian commonly address only the understanding of their hearers, sharpening attention by appeals to in- terest ; while the minister calls upon the affections, addresses the conscience, and appeals to the religious nature of man, to faculties which bind man to his race and unite him with his God. This gives him a power which no other man aspires to ; which neither the lawyer nor the merchant, nor yet the politician attempts to wield, nay, which the mere writer of books leaves out of sight. In our day we often forget these things, and suppose that the government or the news- papers are the arbiters of public opinion, while still the pulpit has a mighty influence. All the politicians and lawyers in America could not persuade men to be- lieve what was contrary to common-sense and adverse to their interest ; but a few preachers, in the name of religion, made whole millions believe the world would perish on a certain day, and now the day is past it is hard for them to believe their preachers were mis- taken !

CHANNING 137

Now all this might of position and opportunity may be used for good or ill, to advance men or retard them ; so a great responsibility rest always on the clergy of the land. Put a heavy man in the pulpit, — ordinary, vulgar, obese, idle, inhuman, and he overlays the conscience of the people with his gross- ness ; his Upas breath poisons every spiritual plant that springs up within sight of his church. Put there a man of only average intelligence and religion, he does nothing but keep men from sliding back ; he loves his people and giveth his beloved sleep. Put there a superior man, with genius for religion, nay, a man of no genius, but an active, intelligent, human, and pious man, who will work for the human race with all his mind and heart, and he docs wonders ; he loves his people and giveth his beloved his own life. He looks out on the wealth, ignorance, pride, poverty, lust, and sin of the world, and blames him- self for their existence. This suffering human race, poor blind Bartima?us, sits by the wayside, crying to all men of power, " Have mercy on me ; " the minister says, "What wilt thou.''" he answers, "Lord, that I might receive my sight." No man may be idle, least of all the minister; he least of all in this age, when Bartima;us cries as never before.

Dr. Channing was born at Newport in Rhode Island, the 7th of April, 1780, and educated under the most favorable circumstances which the country then af- forded ; employed as a private teacher for more than a year at Richmond, and settled as a clergyman in Boston more than five and forty years ago. Here he labored in this calling, more or less, for nearly forty years. He was emphatically a Christian min- ister, in all the high meaning of that term. He has

138 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

had a deep influence here, a wide Influence in the world. For forty years, though able men have planned wisely for this city, and rich men bestowed their treasure for her welfare, founding valuable and permanent institutions, yet no one has done so much for Boston as he, none contributed so powerfully to enhance the character of her men for religion and for brotherly love. There is no charity like the inspira- tion of great writers. There were two excellent and extraordinary ministers in Boston contemporary with Dr. Channing, whose memory will not soon depart ; we mean Buckminster and Ware. But Dr. Channing was the most remarkable clergyman in America, yes, throughout all lands where the English tongue is spoken, in the nineteenth century there has been no minister so remarkable as he, none so powerful on the whole. No clergyman of America ever exercised such dominion amongst men. Edwards and INIayhew are great names in the American churches, men of power, of self-denial, of toil, who have also done ser- vice for mankind ; but Channing has gone deeper, soared higher, seen further than they, and set in mo- tion forces which will do more for mankind.

What is the secret of his success.'' Certainly his power did not come from his calling as a clergyman ; there are some forty thousand clergymen in the United States. We meet them in a large city ; they are more known by the name of their church than their own name, more marked by their cravat than their character. Of all this host not ten will be at all well known, even in their own city or village, in a hundred years ; perhaps not one. Nay, there are not twenty who are well known in America now even, out of their denomination ; they, perhaps, known by the

CHANNING 139

unlucky accident of some petty controversy rather than by any real eminence of character and work. Who of them is otherwise known to Europe, or even to England? But Dr. Channing is well known in Ger- many and France, his writings more broadly spread in England than in his native land ; his power widens continually, and deepens too.

His eminence came from no extraordinary intel- lectual gifts born with him. Truly his was a mind of a high order. Yet it is not difficult to find men of far more native intellectual force, both here and every- where; and throughout all his life in all his writings, you see the trace of intellectual deficiencies, his de- ficiencies as a writer, as a scholar, and still more as an original and philosophical thinker. Nor did it come any more from his superior opportunities for education. True, those were the best the country afforded at that time, though far inferior in many re- spects, to what is now abundantly enjoyed with no corresponding result. In his early culture there were marked deficiencies, the results of which appear in his writings even to the last, leading him to falter in his analysis, leaving him uncertain as to his conclusion, and timid in applying his ideas to practice. His was not the intellect to forego careful and laborious and early training; not an intellect to cultivate itself, browsing to the full in scanty pastures, where weaker natures perish for lack of tender grass and careful housing from the cold.

His signal success came from no remarkable op- portunity for the use of his gifts and attainments. He was one minister of the forty thousand. His own pulpit was only higher than others, his audience larger and more influential, because he made it so. His cleri'

140 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

cal brothers in his last years hindered more than they helped him ; his own parish gave him no remarkable aid, and in his best years showed themselves incapable of receiving his highest instructions, and in the latter part of his life proved quite unworthy of so great a man.

He had none of the qualities which commonly at- tract men at first sight. He was little of stature, and not very well-favored ; his bodily presence was weak ; his voice feeble, his tone and manner not such as strike the many. Beauty is the most popular and attractive of all things, a presence that never tires. Dr. Channing was but slightly favored by the graces ; his gestures, intonations, and general manner would have been displeasing in another. He had nothing which at first sight either awes or attracts the care- less world. He had no tricks and made no com- promises. He never flattered men's pride nor their idleness, incarnating the popular religion ; he did not storm or dazzle ; he had not the hardy intellect which attracts men with only active minds, nor the cowardly conservatism which flatters propriety to sleep in her pew; he never thundered and lightened, but only shone with calm and tranquil though varying light. He had not the social charm which fascinates and attaches men ; though genial, hospitable, and inviting, yet few came very near him.

He was not eminently original, either in thought or in the form thereof; not rich in ideas. It is true, he had great powers of speech, yet he had not that masterly genius for eloquence which now stoop down to the ground and moulds the very earth into argu- ments, till it seems as if tlie stones and trees were or- dained his colleagues to preach with him, obedient to

CHANNING 141

his Orphic enchantment ; not that genius which reaches up to the heavens, pressing sun and moon and each particular star into the service of his thought; which proves by a diagram, illustrates by a picture, making the unwilling listeners feel that he had bribed the uni- verse to plead his cause; not that rare poetic power, which is born genivis and bred art, which teems with sentiments and ideas, clothes and adorns them with language gathered from letters, nature, art, and com- mon life, grouping his family of thoughts as Raphael in a picture paints the Madonna, Joseph, Baby, Ass, Angel, Palm-tree, those incongruous things of earth and heaven, all unified and made hannonious by that one enchanting soul. He had not that intellectual, wealthy eloquence, beautiful as roses yet strong as steel. Nor had he the homely force of Luther, who in the language of the farm, the shop, the boat, the street, or nursery, told the high truths that reason or religion taught, and took possession of his audience by a storm of speech, then poured upon them all the riches of his brave plebian soul, baptizing every head anew ; a man who with the people seemed more mob than they, and when with kings the most imperial man. He had not the blunt terse style of Latimer, nor his beautiful homeliness of speech, which is more attrac- tive than all rhetoric. He had not the cool clear analysis of Dr. Barrow, his prodigious learning, his close logic, his masculine sense; nor the graceful imagery, the unbounded imagination of Jeremy Tay- lor, " the Shakespeare of divines," nor his winsome way of talk about piety, elevating the commonest events of life to classic dignit}'. He had not the hard- headed intellect of Dr. South, his skilful analysis, his conquering wit, his intellectual wealth ; no, he had not

142 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the power of condensing his thoughts into the energetic language of Webster — never a word wrong or too much — or of marshalHng his forces in such magnifi- cently stern array ; no, he had not the exquisite rhythmic speech of Emerson, that wonderful artist in words, who unites manly strength with the rare beauty of a woman's mind.

His eminence came from no such gifts or graces. His power came mainly from the predominating strength of the moral and religious element in him. He loved God with his mind, his conscience, his affec- tions, and his soul. He had goodness and piety, both in the heroic degree. His intellectual power seemed little, not when compared with that of other men, but when measured by his own religious power. Loving man and God, he loved truth and justice. He would not exaggerate; he would not under-value what he saw and knew, so was not violent, was not carried away by his subject. He was commonly his own mas- ter. He said nothing for effect, he never flattered the prejudice of his audience; respecting them, he put his high thought into simple speech, caught their at- tention, and gradually drew them up to his own eleva- tion.

He was ruled by conscience to a remarkable degi-ee, almost demonized by conscience, for during a part of his life the moral element seems despotic, ruling at the expense of intellect and of natural joy. But that period passed by, and her rule became peaceful and harmonious. He loved nature, the sea, the sky, and found new charms in the sweet face of earth and heaven as the years went by him, all his life. He had a keen sense of beauty — beauty in nature, in art, in speech, in manners, in man and woman's face. He

CHANNING 143

loved science, he loved letters, and he loved art; but all of these affections were overmastered by his love of man and God,' — means to that end, or little flowers that bordered the pathway where goodness and piety walked hand in hand. This supremacy of the moral and religious clement was the secret of his strength, and it gave him a peculiar power over men, one which neither Luther nor Latimer ever had ; no, nor Barrow, nor Taylor, nor South, nor Webster, nor Emerson.

He had a large talent for religion, and so was fitted to become an exponent of the higher aspirations of man- kind in his day and in times to come. He asked for truth, for religion. He was always a seeker, his whole life " a process of conversion." Timid and self-distrustful, slow of inquiry and cautious to a fault, alwa^'s calculating the effect before fraterniz- ing with a cause, he had the most unflinching confi- dence in justice and in truth, in man's power to per- ceive and receive both.

Loving man and God, he loved freedom in all its legitimate forms, and so became a champion in all the combats of the day where rights were called in question. He hated the chains of old bondage, and moved early in the Unitarian reformation ; but when the Unitarian party became a sect and narrow like the rest, when it also came to stand in the way of man- kind he became " little of a Unitarian," and cared no more for that sect than for the Trinitarians. He could not be blind to the existence of religion in all sects, and did not quarrel with other men's goodness and piety because he could not accept their theology. He was not born or bred for a sectarian ; such as were he did not hate, but pity. He engaged in the various reforms of the day ; he labored for the cause

144. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

of peace, for temperance, for the improvement of prisons, for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, for education, for the general welfare of men by elevating the most exposed classes of society. He was an eminent advocate for the abolition of slavery.

We do not mean to say that he committed no errors, that he never faltered. He had his imperfections and weaknesses, which we shall presently consider; sometimes he was over-timid, and seems to have allowed meaner men to prevail over him with their counsels, their littleness, and their fears. A sick body often enfeebled his mind and sometimes his courage. So he never stood in the foremost rank of any reform, speculative or practical. This is partly owing to the causes just hinted at; in part, also, to his want of originality.

He was, we think, the fairest model of a good min- ister known to the public or his age. He preached what he knew and he lived what he preached. He had a profound confidence in God, not in God merely as an abstraction, the abstract power, wisdom, and love ; but as that abstraction becomes concrete through Provi- dence and reveals itself in the course of nature, men, nations, and the world. He had also and accordingly a profound respect for man and profound confidence in man, not for great men, rich men, and cultivated men alone, but for man as man, for all men ; he did not despise the proud, the ignorant, the wicked. He had a deep reverence for God and for man ; this gave him eloquence when he spoke, gave him his name among men, and gave him his power.

A good deal of his earlier preaching, it is said, re- lated to abstract matters, to ideas, to sentiments, to modes of mind. Men complained that he did not

CHANNING 145

touch the ground. He spoke of God, of the soul, the dignity of human nature ; of love to God, to men ; of justice, charity, of freedom, and holiness of heart; he spoke of sin, of fear, of alienation from God. Years ago we remember to have heard murmurs at his ab- stract st^^le of thought and speech ; it went over men's heads, said some. But his abstractions he translated into the most concrete forms. Respect for God be- came obedience to his laws ; faith in God was faith in keeping them ; human nature was so great and so dignified, the very noblest work of God, and therefore society must respect that dignity and conform to that nature; there must be no intemperance, and men who grow rich by poisoning their brothers must renounce their wicked craft ; there must be no war, for its glory is human shame, and its soldiers only butchers of men ; there must be education for all, for human na- ture is a thing too divine for men to leave in ignorance, and therefore in vice, and crime, and sin; there must be no pauperism, no want, but society must be so re- constructed that Christianity becomes a fact, and there are no idle men who steal their living out of the world, none overburdened with excessive toil, no riot, no waste, no idleness, and so no want ; there must be no op- pression of class by class, but the strong are to help the weak, the educated to instruct the rude; there must be no slavery, for that is the consummation of all wrongs against the dignity of human nature. So his word became incarnate, and the most abstract preacher in the land, the most mystical in his piety, and, as it seemed at first, the furthest removed from practice, comes down to actual sins and toils for hu- man needs.

Then came the same grumblers, murmuring to an- il—10

146 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

other tune, and said, " When Dr. Channing used to preach about God and the soul, about hohness and sin, we hked him, that was Christianity. But now he is always insisting on some reform, talking about intemperance, and war, and slavery, or telling us that we must remove the evils of society and educate all men ; we wish Dr. Channing would preach the Gos- pel." Thus reasoned men, for their foolish hearts were darkened. The old spirit of bondage opposed him when with other good men he asked of Galvanism, " Give us freedom, that we may go in and out before the Lord, and find truth." But the new spirit of bond- age opposed him just as much when he came up with others, and asked for the same thing. Each reform he engaged in got him new foes. The Tories of the church hated him because he asked for more truth ; the Tories of the state hated him because he asked for more justice; the Tories of society hated him because in the name of man and God he demanded more love ! Yet he silently prevailed against all these ; new truth, new justice, new love, came into the churches, into the state, into society, and now those very Tories think him an honor to all three, and claim him as their friend ! Such is the mystery of truth !

We have just said he never stood in the van of any reform — his lack of originality, his feeble health, his consequent caution and timidity, hindering him from that ; yet there was scarcely a good work or a liberal thought in his time, coming Avithin his range, which he did not aid, and powerfully aid. True, he commonly came late, but he always came and he never went back. He was one of the leaders of new thought in the new world and the old.

How strange is the progress of men on their march

CHANNING 14T

through time, a democracy ! how few are the leaders ! So a caravan passes slowly on in the Arabian wilder- ness, the men and the women, the asses and the camels. There is dust, and noise, and heat, the scream of the camels and the asses' bray, the shouts of the drivers, the songs of the men, the prattle of the women, the repinings and the gossip, the brawls and the day- dreams, the incongruous murmur of a great multi- tude. There are stragglers in front, in flank, in rear. But there are always some who know the landmarks by day, the sky-marks by night, the special providence of the pilgrimage, who direct the march, giving little heed to the brawls or the gossips, the scream, or the bray, or the song. They lift up a censer, which all day long sends up its column of smoke, and all the night its fiery pillar, to guide the promiscuous pilgrimage.

The work before us is well named " Memoirs " of Dr. Channing. It is not a life, it is almost wholly autobiographical ; we learn, however, from the book a few facts relating to his life not related by himself. It appears that when a boy he was " a remarkable wrestler," fond of " adventurous sports ; " that he once "flogged a boy larger than himself" for some injus- tice ; that in boyhood he was called " little King Pepin," and " the Peacemaker ; " that he was distin- guished for courage, and once off'ered to go and sleep on board a ship at Newport which was said to be haunted. He was studious and thoughtful, naturally pious, a lover of truth and justice. At college he was studious, yet mirthful, and excelled in the athletic sports of his companions. He soon became disgusted with the gloomy doctrines of Calvinism.

He early saw some of the contradictions in society. " When I was young," says he, " the luxury of eat-

148 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ing was carried to the greatest excess. My first no- tion, indeed, of glory was attached to an old black cook whom I saw to be the most important personage in town." He was grave and reflective, fond of lonely rambles by the sea-shore. His early life was sad, and each year of his course seemed brighter than the last. His character was shaped more by his own soli- tary thought than the influence of companions. In body, when a child, " he was small and delicate, yet muscular and active, with a very erect person, quick movement, a countenance that while sedate was cheer- ful ; " " an open, brave, and generous boy." He was eminent at college, and graduated at Cambridge in his nineteenth year with distinguished honors.

He served for one or two years as a private tutor in a family at Richmond, and lost his health, which he never fully recovered. He seriously set himself about the work of self-improvement at an early age, and diligently continued it all his life. At the age of twenty-three he began to preach. " His preaching at once attracted attention for its power, solemnity, and beauty." On the first of June, 1803, he was ordained as minister of the church in Federal street, Boston ; " a pale, spiritual-looking young man."

At that time he was serious in his deportment to a degree that seemed oppressive.

" He had the air of one absorbed in his own contemplations, and looked care-worn, weary, and anxious. Society seemed distasteful, he joined but little in conversation; toolv his meals in haste; was retired in his ways, lived mostly in his study, appeared rather annoyed than pleased with visitors, seldom went abroad, declining, when possible, all invitations; and, in a word, was most content wlien left uninterruptedly to him- self. There was sweetness in his loolis and words, however; solemn counsels were gently given, and an atmosphere of holi- ness threw a winning charm over his conversation and con- duct."

CHANNING 149

He says himself,

" In the early years of my ministry, ill health and a deep consciousness of unworthiness took away my energy and hope, and I had ahnost resolved to quit my profession. My brother Francis begged me to persevere, to make a fairer trial; and to his influence I owe very much the continuance of labors which, I hope, have not been useless to mjself or to others."

High expectations were naturally formed of such a man.

" The devoutly disposed in the community looked to him with the hope that he might be a means of fanning once more to flame tlie smoldering ashes on the altars of piety. The seri- ousness of his deportment, the depth and sweetness of his voice, the pathos with which he read the Scriptures and sacred poetry, the solemnity of his appeals, his rapt and kindling enthusiasm, his humble, trustful spirit of prayer, his subdued feeling, so expressive of personal experience, made religion a new reality; while his whole air and look of spirituality won them to listen by its mild and somewhat melancholy beauty. The most trifling saw in him a man thoroughly in earnest, who spoke not of dreams and fictions, but of facts with which he was intimately conversant; and the serious gladly welcomed one who led the way and beckoned them nearer to the holy of holies which they asjjired to enter. Intellectual people, too, were attracted by the jiower and grace of his pulpit addresses. He opened to them a large range of thought, presented clear, connected, and complete views of various topics, roused their faculties of discernment by nice discriminations and exact state- ments, and gratified their taste by the finished simplicity of his style. But the novelty, perhaps, that chiefly stirred his audi- ences was the directness with which he even then brought his Christian principles to bear upon actual life. With no flights of mystic exaltation, forgetful in raptures of the earth, with no abstract systems of metaphysical theology, with no coldly elegant moral essays, did he occupy the minds of his hearers, but with near and sublime objects made evident by faith, with lucid truths approved alike by Scripture and by conscience, and with duties pressed urgently home upon all as rules for daily practice. He saw, and made others see, that life was no play-place, but a magnificent scene for glorifying God, and a rich school for tlie education of spirits. He showed to men the substance of which surrounding appearances are the

150 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

shadow, and behind transient experiences revealed the spiritual laws which they express. Thus he gathered round him an en- larging circle of devoted friends, who gratefully felt that they drank in from him new life. The old members of the society, too, for the most part simple people of plain manners, took the heartiest delight in his services, while feeling just pride in his talents. And the few distinguished persons of the congre- gation knew well how to appreciate his rare gifts, and to ex- tend his fame."

" Thus passed the first ten years and more of Mr. Chan- ning's ministerial life. They were uneventful, but inwardly rich in results; and many good seeds then planted themselves, which were afterward to bear abundant fruits. Inherited errors, too, not a few, in thought and practice, had been slowly outgrown, so slowly, that he was perhaps unconscious of the change which had been wrought in his principles. Above all, he had learned the lesson of keeping true to his purest, high- est self, or, to express the same fact more humbly and justly, of being obedient to the Divine will, however revealed to his inmost reason. Goodness had firmly enthroned itself as the reigning power in his nature. He lived the life communicated from above. He was becoming yearly and daily more and more a child of God.

" From his very entrance on a public career he produced upon all who came into his presence the impression of matured virtue and wisdom, and inspired reverence though young. He wore an air of dignity and self-command, of pure elevation of pur- pose, and of calm enthusiasm that disarmed familiarity. Care- ful of the rights of others, courteous and gentle, he allowed no intrusions upon himself. He was deaf to flattery, turned at once from any mention of his own services or position, paid no compliments, and would receive none; but, by constant refer- ence to high standards of right, transferred the thoughts of those with whom he held intercourse from personal vanity to intrinsic excellence, and from individual claims to universal principles. He gave no time to what was unimportant, made demands upon the intellect and conscience of those he talked with, and inspired them with a sense of the substantial realities of existence. In his treatment of others there was no pre- sumjstion nor partiality. He was deferential to old and young, listened without interruption and with patience, even to the dull and rude, spoke ill of none, and would hear no ill-speaking, tolerated no levity, but at once overawed and silenced it by wise and generous suggestions; was never hasty, rash, nor impetuous in word or act, and met these weaknesses in others

CHANNING 151

with an undisturbed firmness that disarmed passion while re- buking it. Above all, he recognized in his fellows no distinc- tions but those of character and intelligence, and, quietly dis- regarding capricious estimates and rules of mere etiquette, met rich and poor, learned and ignorant, upon the broad ground of mutual honor and kindness. Thus his influence was always sacred and sanctifying."

But we must pass rapidly where we would gladly delay our readers. His health became feebler ; he visited Europe in 1822, and was but little better in 1824. A colleague was settled with him; then, freed from the necessity of producing one or two sermons a week, he was enabled to devote more time to other concerns, to direct all his efforts to objects of great importance. Hereafter his position was highly favor- able to literary activity and extensive influence. He became " less ministerial and more manly." His in- terest in the great concerns of mankind continued to increase. All his important works were written after this period. Yet he was still deeply interested in the ministry, though he did not accept the popular views of that profession.

" I consider my profession as almost infinitely raised above all others, when its true nature is understood, and its true spirit imbibed. But as it is too often viewed and followed, it seems to me of little worth to him who exercises it, or to those on whom it ought to act. But when taken up for its respecta- bility, for reputation, for a support, and followed mechanically, drudgingly, with little or no heartiness and devotion, or when seized upon fanatically and with a blind and bigoted zeal, I think as poorly of it as men of the world do, who, I grieve to say, have had too much reason for setting us ministers down among the drones of the hive of society

" My mind turns much on the general question, what can be done for the scattering of the present darkness? I think I see, more and more, that the ministry, as at present exercised, though, on the whole, a good, is sadly defective. What would be the result of a superior man, not of the clergy, giving a course of lectures on the teaching of Jesus, just as he would

152 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

give one on the philosophy of Socrates or Plato? Cannot this subject be taken out of the hands of ministers? Cannot the higher minds be made to feel that Christianity belongs to them as truly as to the priest, and that they disgrace and degrade themselves by getting their ideas of it from ' our order ' so exclusively? Cannot learned men come to Christianity, just as to any other system, for the purpose of ascertaining what it is?"

" At the present day, there is little need of cautioning min- isters against rashness in reproving evil. The danger is all on the other side. As a class, they are most slow to give of- fence. Their temptation is to sacrifice much to win the af- fections of their people. Too many satisfy themselves with holding together a congregation by amenity of manners, and by such compromises with prevalent evils as do not involve open criminality. They live by the means of those whose vices they should reprove, and thus are continually ensnared by a selfish prudence. Is it said that they have families dependent upon tnem, who may suff'er for their fidelity? I answer. Let no minister marry, then, unless the wife he chooses have such a spirit of martyrdom as would make her prefer to be stinted in daily bread rather than see her husband sacrifice one jot or tittle of his moral independence. Is it said that congre- gations would be broken up by perfect freedom in the min- isters? Better far would it be to preach to empty pews, or in the meanest halls, and there to be a fearless, disinterested witness to the truth, than to hold forth to crowds in gorgeous, cathedrals, honored and courted, but not daring to speak one's honest convictions, and awed by the world."

" The erroneous views which doomed the Catholic clergy to^ celibacy are far from being banished from Protestantism. The minister is too holy for business or politics. He is to preach creeds and abstractions. He may preach ascetic notions about pleasures and amusements, for his official holiness has a tinge of asceticism in it, and people hear patiently what it is under- stood they will not practise. But if he ' come down,' as it is called, from these heights, and assail in sober earnest deep- rooted abuses, respectable vices, inhuman institutions, or ar- rangements, and unjust means of gain, which interest, pride and habit have made dear and next to universal, the people who exact from him official holiness are shocked, offended. ' He forgets his sphere.' Not only the people, but his brother- ministers, are apt to think this; and they do so not mainly from a time-serving spirit, not from dread of offending the people, — though this motive too often operates, — but chiefly from false

CHANNING 153

notions about the ministry, its comprehensive purpose, its true spirit, which is an all-embracing humanity. Ministers in gen- eral are narrow-minded and superstitious, rather than servile. Their faults are those of the times, and they are more free from these, perhaps, than most of the people. And are they not becoming less and less ministers, and more and more men?"

He continued to preach from time to time during the greater part of his life.

All Dr, Channing's most important writings may be arranged in three classes, — Reviews, essays, and ser- mons or addresses. His reviews, however, are not so much accounts of books as of men. The articles on Milton, Fenelon and Bonaparte comprise the most im- portant part of the first class. They were published in 1826 and the three subsequent years, and are valu- able specimens of this kind of composition. They es- tablished his fame as a writer both at home and abroad. But for ability of thought, for strength and beauty of expression, they will not bear comparison with the best pieces of Carlyle or even of Macaulay, not to mention other and humbler names. Milton and Fene- lon he appreciates justly, and these two articles are perhaps the most finished productions of his pen, when regarded morely as pieces of composition. They indicate, however, no very great depth of thought or width of observation ; the style is clear, pleasing, and in general beautiful. The article on Napoleon has certainly great merits ; considering the time and cir- cumstances under which it was written, its defects are by no means so numerous as might reasonably have been looked for. In his later years he felt its imper- fections, but it is still, we think, the fairest estimate of the man in the English language, though full jus- tice is not done to Napoleon as a statesman and a law-

154 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

giver. In some passages the style is elevated and sublime, in others it becomes diffuse, wordy, and tedious. The peculiar charm of these three articles consists in the beautiful sentiment of religion which pervades them all. This, indeed, as a golden thread runs through all his works, giving unity to his re- views, essays, sermons, letters, and conversation.

His essays are more elaborate compositions. They treat of the subject of slavery and its kindred themes, the abolitionists, annexation of Texas, emancipation, the duty of the free states in regard to slavery. Sev- eral of these essays are in the form of letters. They are his most important and valuable productions. They have been extensively read in America and Europe, and have brought him more enemies than all his other writings. Here Dr. Channing appears as a reformer. His biographer says,

" Temperament and training, religious aspirations and philosophical views, above all the tendencies of the times, con- spired to make Dr. Channing a social reformer; although the loftiness of his desires and aims, the delicacy of his feelings, the refinement of his tastes, his habits of contemplative thought, and his reverence for individual freedom enveloped him in a sphere of courteous reserve and guarded him from familiar contact with all rude radicalism."

We shall never forget the remarks made by men of high social standing at the publication of the Es- say on Slavery. They condemned both it and its author. He was " throwing firebrands ; " " meddling with matters which clergymen had no right to touch ; " — as all important matters, we suppose, belong to pettifogging lawyers, who can never see through a precedent or comprehend a principle, or to politicians, who make " regular nominations " and adhere to them, or else to editors of partisan newspapers ; " he

CHANNING 155

will make the condition of the slaves a great deal worse," " and perhaps produce an insurrection." This offense was never forgiven him in Boston, and he continued to increase it till the very period of his death. His anti-slavery views struck a death-blow to his popularity here. His zeal for the poor, the in- temperate, the criminal, the ignorant, extraordinary as it was, could be suffered ; it was not wholly unmin- isterial, and was eminently scriptural, — but zeal for the slave, that was too much to be borne. The first publication, in 1835, has had a wide influence and a good one. The essay is not very philosophical in its arrangement, but the matter is well treated, with clear- ness and force ; the wrong of slavery is ably shown. High motives are always addressed in this, as in all his productions. But we have one word of criticism to make on Dr. Channing as an abolitionist. In his first essay and his subsequent Avritings he distinctly separates himself from the abolitionists who contend for " immediate emancipation." He passed severe censures upon them, censured their motto of " im- mediate emancipation," their method of acting by " a system of affiliated societies," gave countenance to the charge that they were exciting the slaves to revolt. He condemned their " denunciations." This was at a time when the abolitionists were not a hundredth part so numerous as now ; when the pulpit, the press, and the parlor rang with denunciations against them ; when their property, their persons, and their lives were not safe in Boston. Now we have no fault to find with criticism directed against the abolitionists, no fear of severity. But at a time when they were few in num- ber, a body of men whom many affected to despise be- cause they hated, and hated because they feared ; when

156 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

thej were poor and insulted, yet manfully struggling against oppression, equal to either fate ; when the church only opened her mouth to drown the voice of the fugitive crjang to God for justice; when the state, which had had but one president who spoke against slavery, and he a man who sold the children of his own body,^ ' riveted the fetters still closer on the slave's limbs ; at a time when the press of the South and the North, political or sectarian — but always commer- cial, low, corrupt, and marketable — said not one word for the millions of slaves whose chains the state made and the church christened ; when no man in Congress either wished or dared to oppose slavery therein, and no petitions could get a hearing; when the governor even of Massachusetts ^ could recommend to her legis- lature inquiries for preventing freedom of speech on that subject; at a time when the abolitionists were the only men that cared or dared to speak ; at a time, too, when they were mobbed in the streets ; when an as- sembly of women was broken up by " respectable " violence, and the authorities of the city dared not resist the mob ^ ; when a symbolical gallows was erected at night in front of the house of the leading abolition- ist of America, " by the order of Judge Lynch,^ " and a price of five thousand dollars set on his head by the governor of Georgia ^ — why, such criticism was at least a little out of season ! Had the abolitionists been guilty of denunciations? — in 1817, when a min- ister preaching in Boston " " actually vilified the char- acter of the Liberal clergy in the most wholesale man- ner," Dr. Channing " directed all his remarks to softening the feelings of those who were aggrieved. ' I cannot blame this stranger so severely,' said he ; ' these harsh j udgments never originated

CHANNING 157

from himself How sad is controversy,

that it should thus tempt our opponents to misrepre- sent men when they might and should know better.' " Yet here the difference between the stranger and the Liberal clergy related only to a matter of theological opinion, not to the freedom of millions of men. We dislike denunciation as much as most men, but we wish it was peculiar to the abolitionists ; denunciation is the commonest thing in politics, the weapon of Democrats and Whigs ; the pulpits ring with its noise ; the Unitarians are denounced as " infidels " to this day ^ ; and who does not know it is the fashion of whole churches to denounce mankind at large as " totally depraved," " capable of no good thing," " subject to the wrath of God," " and deserving eternal damna- tion." If these terms mean anything they amount to denunciation. If by denunciation is meant violent speech, exaggeration, and ill temper, then it is an in- firmity, and is always out of place. Yet such is the weakness of strong men that we meet with it in all the great movements of mankind, in the Christian Reformation and the Protestant Reformation, and in all great revolutions. The American Revolution was the effort of a nation to free itself from tyranny, the very mild tyranny of the British crown. The denun- ciations, violence, and bloodshed Avhich followed are well known. Yet now there are none but the aboli- tionists who think the Revolution was not worth what it cost. But in the case which Dr. Channing complained of, a population greater than that of all the colonies in 1775 were entirely deprived of all their rights and reduced to abject slavery, and the abolitionists — ul- tra-peace men and non-resistants almost all of them — attempted no violence, and used nothing harder than

158 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

hard words. For our own part we confess their lan- guage has not ahvays been to our taste, but we know of no revolution of any importance that has been con- ducted with so httle violence and denunciation. When Dr. Channing wrote about Milton and the stormy times of the English commonwealth, he thought differ- ently, and said,

" In regard to the public enemies whom he assailed, we mean the despots in church and state, and the corrupt institutions which had stirred up a civil war, the general strain of his writings, though strong and stern, must exalt him, notwith- standing his occasional violence, among the friends of civil and religious liberty. That liberty was in peril. Great evils were struggling for perpetuity and could only be broken down by great power. Milton felt that interests of infinite moment were at stake, and who will blame him for binding himself to them with the whole energy of his great mind, and for defend- ing them with fervor and vehemence? We must not mistake Christian benevolence, as if it had but one voice, that of soft entreaty. It can speak in piercing and awful tones. There is constantly going on in our world a conflict between good and evil. The cause of human nature has always to wrestle with foes. All improvement is a victory won by struggles. It is especially true of those great periods which have been distin- guished by revolutions in government and religion, and from which we date the most rapid movements of the human mind, that they have been signalized by conflict. Thus Christianity convulsed the world and grew up amidst storms, and the Reformation of Luther was a signal to universal war, and Lib- erty in both worlds has encountered opposition over which she has triumphed only through her own immortal energies. At such periods, men gifted with great power of thought and lofti- ness of sentiment, are especially summoned to the conflict with evil. They hear, as it were, in their own magnanimity and generous aspirations, the voice of a divinity; and thus com- missioned, and burning with a passionate devotion to truth and freedom, they must and will speak with an indignant energy, and they ought not to be measured by the standard of ordinary minds in ordinary times. Men of natural softness and timidity, of a sincere but eff^eminate virtue, will be apt to look on these bolder, hardier spirits as violent, perturbed, and uncharitable; and the charge will not be wholly groundless. But that deep

CHANNING 159

feeling of evils, which is necessary to effectual conflict with them, and which marks God's most powerful messengers to mankind, cannot breathe itself in soft and tender accents. The deeply moved soul will speak strongly, and ought to speak so as to move and shake nations."

There are not many things in Dr. Channing's life which wc could wish otherwise, but his relation to the abolitionists is one of that number. In 1831, Mr. Garrison, a printer in the office of the Christian Ex- aminer at Boston, issued the first number of the " Liberator," making the declaration, " I am in earnest, I will not equivocate, I will not excuse, I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." He borrowed the type and press of the office he worked in. He could not get trusted for fifty dollars' worth of paper " because he was opposed to the Coloniza- tion Society." So he waited till a negro in Phila- delphia sent him that sum. He was obscure and destitute, but " had a determination to print the paper as long as he could live on bread and water, or his hands find employment." He was reviled, insulted, mobbed ; a price set on his head ; he lived in the same city with Dr. Channing, struggling with poverty, obscurity, and honorable disgrace for twelve years, and Dr. Channing afforded him no aid, nor counsel, nor sympathy, not a single " God bless you, my brother," and did not even answer his letter ! This we find it difficult to understand, as it is painful to relate. We gladly hasten away from the subject, which we could not pass by in silence, but have spoken of in sorrow.

His public sermons and addresses — we speak now only of such as he wished to preserve — treat of a large variety of subjects: Temperance, Education, Christ, Christianity, the Evidences of Religion, the Ministry,

160 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and kindred subjects. These are somewhat unequal, but all are marked by the qualities mentioned above, by a profound reverence for man, and most unhesi- tating confidence in God. None of those sermons in- dicates a mind of a very high order; as works of in- tellect they will not compare with the great sermons of the best English preachers, but we know none of which the effect is more ennobling. His analysis of a subject is seldom final, he usually halts short of the ultimate fact ; his arrangement is frequently unphilo- sophical ; his reasoning often weak, unsatisfactory, various parts of the argument not well connected, his style diffuse and verbose. We know diffuseness is the old Adam of the pulpit. There are always two ways of hitting the mark, one with a single bullet, the other with a shower of small shot. Each has its advantages ; Dr. Channing chose the latter, as most of our pulpit orators have done. It is commonly thought men better understand a truth when it is told two or three times over, and in two or three differ- ent ways ; be that as it may, it is certain that a small quantity of metal will cover the more space the thin- ner it is beaten, and when a man must write one or two sermons in a week, never to be used again, perhaps he may be forgiven if the depth be less as the sur- face becomes greater. Dr. Channing was not very diffuse for a preacher, but certainly for a great man. His vocabulary was not copious, there is no idiomatic freshness in his style ; his illustrations are trite, often commonplace. Neither literature nor nature gets re- flected in his style. His thought and feeling are American in the best sense of the word ; but the form, the coloring, the tone are wholly destitute of nation- ality ; there is no American image in his temple, no

CHANNING 161

American flowers in his garden. We think this a de- fect. In all his writings you see that he had lived alone, not much among books, not much with nature you would fancy, but with his own thoughts.^

As a speaker his style of eloquence was peculiar. He stands alone. His powers of reasoning were cer- tainly not very great, by no means to be compared to the many able men of his country or his age; he had not that great power of demonstration which at once puts the pointed thought into your mind, and then drives it home with successive blows. He had not that creative force which attracts, conquers, and then di- rects ; nor that energy of feeling, which, making an impression almost magical, carries the audience away with its irresistible tide. He commanded attention by presenting numerous minute particulars, trusting lit- tle to the effect of any one great argument. His elo- quent warfare was a guerilla war. He carried the hearer's understanding little by little, never taking it by storm. He did not represent a great reason, a great imagination, or a groat passion ; but a great conscience and a great faith. In this lay the power of his eloquence, the charm of his preaching, the ma- jesty of his character.

As a public speaker, at first sight he did not strongly impress his audience, he did not look the great man ; his body was feeble and unusually small, his voice not powerful, though solemn, affectionate, and clear. How frail he seemed ! Yet look again, and his organization was singularly delicate, womanly in its niceness and refinement. When closely viewed he seemed a soul very lightly clad with a body, and you saw the soul so clearly that you forgot the vesture it wore. He began his sermon simply, announced the 11—11

162 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

theme, spoke of its importance, glanced over the sur- face for a moment, then sketched out his plan as the farmer lands out his field which he is to plough up inch by inch. He began simply, calmly, and rose higher and higher as he went on, each thought deeper and nobler than the last. His conscience and his faith went into the audience till he held them breathless, entranced, lifted out of their common consciousness ; till they forgot their own littleness, forgot the preacher, soul and body, and thought only of his thought, felt only his feeling.

There was never such preaching in Boston, never such prayers. His word sunk into men as the sun into the ground in summer to send up grass and flowers. Did he speak of sin, the ingenuous youth saw its ugliness with creeping hate ; of the dignity of human nature, 3'ou longed to be such a man ; of God, of his goodness, his love, you wondered you could ever doubt or fear. It was our good fortune in earlier years to hear him often, in his noblest efforts ; often, too, on the same day have we listened to the eloquence of another good minister, now also immortal, a man of rare piety and singular power in the pulpit, we mean the younger Ware. More sentimental than Channing, more imaginative, with an intellect less capacious and a range of subjects by no means so broad, he yet spoke to the native soul of man with a sweet persuasion rarely equalled. Ware told you more of heaven, Channing more of earth, that you might make it heaven here. It was his conscience and his trust in God that gave him power. What strength there is in gentleness, what force in truth, what magic in religion ! That voice so thin and feeble, a woman's word, it was heard above the roar of the street and

CHANNING 163

the clatter of legislation ; it went beyond the Alle- ghanies ; it passed over the din of the Atlantic waves, and became a winning and familiar sound in our mother-land ; that hand, so thin and ghostly it seemed a moonbeam might shine through, it held a power which no sceptercd monarch of our time could wield, — the power of justice, of all-controlling faith; that feeble form, that man with body frailer than a girl's, he had an influence which no man that speaks the English tongue now equals. He spoke not to men as members of a party, or a sect, or tribe, or nation, but to the universal nature of man, and that " something that doth live " everlastingly in our embers answered to his call.

He became conscious of his power. It could not be otherwise when his word thus came echoed back from the heights and depths of society. But this only made him yet more humble. A name in both hemispheres gave him no pleasure but as a means of usefulness and increase of power; but made him more zealous and more powerful to serve. Laudations he put aside without reading, and abuse had small eff'ect on him. Did proud men scorn his humanity, and base men aff'ect to pity, it was only the pity which he returned. Yet when a letter from a poor man in England came to thank him for his words of lofty cheer, he could well say, " This is honor." When a nursery-man for- got his plants and his customers to express an interest in him, or a retired Quaker family was moved by his presence, then he could say, " This is better than fame a thousand times." Forgive him if that made him proud. We remember well his lecture on the Eleva- tion of the Laboring Classes, and the sneers with which it was received by some that heard it at the

164 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

time; and we shall not soon forget the feelings it brought to our heart, when one day, in a little town in a Swiss valley, we saw in the shop of an apothecary, who was also the bookseller, a copy of that lecture in the German tongue. It was printed at that place, and was the second edition ! The word which some sneered at here was gone " to the Gentiles," to com- fort the poor laborers under the shadow of the Alps. We know that men sneer at the pulpit, counting it a low place and no seat of power; we know why they sneer, and blame them not. But if there is a man in the pulpit with a man's mind, heart, soul, the pulpit is no mean place, it shall go hard if his power is not felt. In Boston there are well nigh fivescore clergymen, out of these were there fifty like Dr. Channing, fifty more in New York, and yet another fifty in the pulpits of Philadelphia; let them be of all ways of thinking, — Catholic, Calvinistic, or Quaker, — only let them love God as much and man as well, only let them love truth and righteousness as well as he, and labor with as much earnestness to reform theology, society, church, and state ; what cities should we have, what churches, what a society, what a state ! Would there be the intemperance, the pauperism, the ignorance among the people, the licentiousness, the sheer and utter lust of gain which now takes possession of the most influential men of the nation ? Oh no ! — there would have been no annexation of Texas for a new slave-garden, no war against Mexico, no " Holy Al- liance " in America between Democrats and Whigs to secure the " partition of our sister republic ; there would not be three millions of slaves in the United States, and a slave-holder on the throne of the na- tion, for 'tis a throne we speak of, and the people

CHANNING 165

only subjects of a base aristocracy, no longer citizens. Did we speak of fifty Channings in Boston? were there only ten they would make this city, as we think, too good to hope for. But there are not ten such men, — nay, there are not but we will not count them. There are still good men in pulpits, here ; only rare and few, floating amid the sectarianism, wealth, and pride which swim round in this whirlpool of modern society. They never wholly failed in Boston. Nay, when the oil has run low and the meal was almost spent, some prophet came along to cheer this poor widow of the church Avith his blessing, and the oil held, out in the cruse, and the meal was not spent, so that her children did not wholly starve and die out- right, saying, " Who is the Lord ? " True, there has always been some rod, a scion from the tree of life, that held its own amid the drought, and kept obstinately green, and went on budding and blossoming, a memory and a hope ; always some sacramental portion of the manna which fed our fathers, a fragrant reminiscence of the old pilgrimage, and a promise of the true bread which shall one day be given from heaven ; at least, there is always some heap of stones to remind us that our fathers passed over Jordan, and, though sorely beset and hunted after, they could yet say, even in their extremity, " Hitherto hath the Lord helped us ! " These do not fail, " thanks to the human heart by which we live ; " but a powerful ministry in any de- nomination we have not. Yet the harvest truly is plenteous. How white are all the fields ! only the la- borers are few, feeble, faint in heart and limb, and while wrangling about names have so long left their sickles idle in the sun that their very tools have lost their temper, and ring no longer, as when of old they cut the standing corn.

166 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Why does not the church save us from slavery, party-spirit, ignorance, pauperism, hccntiousness, and lust of gain? It has no salvation to give. Why not afford us great teachers, like the old and venerable names, Edwards, Chaunceys, Mayhews, Freemans, Buckminsters, Channings? The church has nothing to teach which is worth the learning of grown men, and even the baby-virtue of America turns off from that lean, haggard, and empty breast, yet cries for food and mother's arms. But there is a providence in all this. Taking the churches as they are, ecclesi- astical religion as it is, it is well that able men do not stand in the pulpits ; well that men of superior ability and superior culture flee from it lo law, politics, the farm, and the shop. If the church has nothing bet- ter to teach than the morality of the market-place and the theology of the dark ages, if she is the foe to pure goodness, pure piety, and pure thought, then parson Log is the best parson. Let us accept him with thankfulness. But it will not always be so ; no, not long. A better day is coming, when the real church shall be the actual ; when theology, the queen and mother of science, shall assert her ancient rule, driving off superstition and priestly unbelief; when a real ministry in religion's name shall rebuke that party-spirit which makes a monarch out of a presi- dent, a miserable oligarchy out of a republic, and transforms the citizens of New-England into the sub- jects of slave-holders, and makes our free men only the servants of gain. Pandora has opened her box, sec- tarianism and party-rage have flown out ; see the an- archy they make in church and state ! But there is yet left at the bottom, hope. When the lid is lifted next that also will appear, and a new spring come out

CHANNING 167

of this winter, and we shall wonder at the White-Sun- day on all the hills, at the Pentecost of inspiration and tongues of heavenly truth.

But we have wandered from our theme. In the midst of Boston, so penny-wise and so pound-foolish, — worldly Boston, which sent to the heathens more rum and more Bibles than all the states, the one to teach them our Christianity, and the other to baptize the converts, making their calling and election sure ; which sent sleek men to Congress, ambassadors to lie in the capitol for the benefit of their party and themselves ; in the midst of Boston where men set up the hay-scales of their virtue, and on one side put their dollars and on the other set patriotism, democracy, freedom, Christianity, while the dollar weighed them all down ; in the midst of this stood Dr. Channing, liberal, wise, gentle, pious without narrowness, democratic, and full of hope. Shall we wonder that he wrought so little ; that he could not get an anti-slavery notice read in his own pulpit, nor the door open to preach a funeral sermon on his anti-slavery friend, the lamented Follen ? Rather wonder that he did so preach. No sailing vessel can stem the INIississippi, nor the stout steamboat go up the falls of St. Anthony ; and it takes time to go round.

Here was one great man in Boston who did not seek wealth, nor want place, nor ask for fame ; one man who would not sell himself. He only asked, sought, and coveted the power to serve. He was afraid he should give too little and take too much. So he took only his living, and gave men the toil of his genius, his praj^crs, and his life. There is no charity so great as this. See now, the effect of such a life ; here in America there is one great man, with

168 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

broad brows, a colossal intellect, and the most awful prejudice the world has seen for some centuries, it is said ; one who would seem an emperor in any council, even of the kings by nature ; with understanding so great that Channing's mind would seem but a baby in his arms ; a senator, who for many years has occupied important public posts, — and yet in New-England, in the United States, Channing has far more influence than Webster. He was never in his life greeted with the shout of a multitude, and yet he has swayed the mind and heart of the best men, and affected the char- acter and welfare of the nation far more than the famous statesman. In our last number we spoke of that venerable man who breathed his last breath in the capitol: John Quincy Adams had held high offices for fifty years, been minister to courts abroad, had made treaties, had been representative, senator, secre- tary of state, been president ; he had lived eighty years, a learned man, always well, always at work, always in public office, always amongst great men and busied with the affairs of the nation ; and yet, which has done the most for his country, for mankind, and most helped men to wisdom and religion, man's highest welfare.'' The boys could tell us that the effect of Adams and Webster both is not to be named in com- parison with the work done for the world by this one feeble-bodied man. Yet there are forty thousand ministers in the United States, and Channing stood al- ways in the pulpit, owing nothing to any eminent station that he filled. In this century we have had two presidents who powerfully affected the nation, one by his mind, by ideas ; his public acts were often foolish ; the other by his will, his deeds, ideas apparently of small concern to him — we mean Jefferson and Jack-

CHANNING 169

son. But, with the exception of Jefferson, no presi- dent in this century has ever had such influence upon men's minds as that humble minister. No, not all to- gether — Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren and Harrison and Tyler and Polk. Some of them did good things, yet soon they will be gone, all but one or two ; their influence, too, will pass away, and soon there will be left nothing but a name in a book, for they were only connected with an office, not an idea, while Channing's power will remain long after his writings have ceased to be read and his name is for- got ; of so little consequence is it where the man stands, if he be but a man, and do a man's work.

The one great idea of Dr. Channing's life was re- spect for man. He was eminent for other things, but preeminent for this. His eminent piety became eminent philanthropy in all its forms. This explains his action as a reformer, his courage, and his inex- tinguishable hope. Dr. Channing was one of the few democrats we have ever known. Born and bred amongst men who had small confidence in the people, and who took little pains to make them better, he be- came intensely their friend. The little distinctions of life, marked by wealth, fame, or genius, were of small account to him. He honored all men ; saw the man in the beggar, in the slave. He never desponded ; he grew more liberal the more he lived, and seemed greenest and freshest when about to quit this lower sphere. His youth was sad though hopeful ; in the middle period of his life he seems saddened and subdued, in part by the restraints of his profession, in part by ill health, and yet more by austere notions of life and duty, imposed by a gloomy theory of religion, but which in his latter days he escaped from and left be-

170 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

hind him. He is a fine example of the power of one man, armed only with truth and love. By these he did service here, and spoke to the best minds of the age, giving hope to famous men, and cheering the hearts of such as toiled all day in the dark mines of Cornwall. By these he sjmipathized with men, with nature, and with God. Hence he grew younger all his life, and thought the happiest period was " about sixty." In 1839 he thus wrote:

"Indeed, life has been an improving gift from my youth; and one reason I believe to be, that my j^outh was not a happy one. I look back to no bright dawn of life which gradually ' faded into common day.' The light which I now live in rose at a later period. A rigid domestic discipline, sanctioned by the times, gloomy views of religion, tlie selfish passions, collisions with companions perhaps worse than myself,— these, and other things, darkened my boyhood. Then came altered circum- stances, dependence, unwise and excessive labours for inde- pendence, and the symptoms of the weakness and disease which have followed me through life. Amidst this darkness it pleased God that the light should rise. The work of spiritual regener- ation, the discover" of the supreme good, of the great and glorious end of life, aspirations after truth and virtue, which are pledges and beginnings of immortality, the consciousness of something divine within me, then began, faintly indeed, and through many struggles and sufferings have gone on.

"I love life, perhaps, too much; perhaps I cling to it too strongly for a Christian and a philosopher. I welcome every new day with new gratitude. I almost wonder at myself, when I think of the pleasure which the dawn gives me, after having witnessed it so many years. This blessed light of heaven, how dear it is to me ! and this earth which I have trodden so long, with what affection I look on it ! I have but a moment ago cast my ej'es on the lawn in front of my house, and the sight of it, gemmed with dew and heightening by its brilliancy the shadows of the trees which fall upon it, awakened emotions more vivid, perhaps, than I experienced in youth. I do not like the ancients calling the earth mother. She is so fresh, youthful, living, and rejoicing! I do, indeed, anticipate a more glorious world than this; but still my first familiar home is very precious to me, nor can I think of leaving its sun and sky and fields and ocean without regret. My interest, not

CHANNING 171

in outward nature only, but in human nature, in its destinies, in the progress of science, in the struggles of freedom and religion, has increased up to this moment, and I am now in my sixtieth j'^ear."

His life was eminently useful and beautiful. He died in good season, leaving a memory that will long be blessed.

IV

PRESCOTT AS AN HISTORIAN

It is now more than eleven years since our accom- plished and distinguished countryman, Mr. Prescott, appeared before the world as a writer of history. Within that period he has sent forth three independent historical works which have found a wide circle of readers in the New World and the Old. His works have been translated into all the tongues of Europe, we think, which claim to be languages of literature; they have won for the author a brilliant renown, which few men attain to in their lifetime, few even after their death. No American author has received such distinc- tion from abroad. The most eminent learned societies of Europe have honored themselves by writing his name among their own distinguished historians. He has helped strengthen the common bond of all civilized nations by writing books which all nations can read. Yet while he has received this attention and gained this renown, he has not found hitherto a philosophical critic to investigate his works carefully, confess the merits which are there, to point out the defects, if such there be, and coolly announce the value of these writ- ings. Mr. Prescott has found eulogists on either conti- nent; he has found, also, one critic, who adds to na- tional bigotry the spirit of a cockney in literature, whose stand-point of criticism is the church of Bow- bell, a man who degrades the lofty calling of a critic by the puerile vanities of a literary fop. The article we refer to would have disgraced any journal which

172

PRESCOTT 173

pretended to common fairness. We often find articles in the minor journals of America written in a little and narrow spirit, but remember nothing of the kind so little as the paper we speak of in the London Quarterly Review, No. cxxvii.. Art. 1.^ We have waited long for some one free from national prejudice to come, with enlarged views of the duty of an historian, having suitable acquaintance with the philosophy of history, a competent knowledge of the subjects to be treated of, and enough of the spirit of humanity, and carefully examine these works in all the light of modern philasophy. We have waited in vain ; and now, con- scious of our own defects, knowing that every qualifica- tion above hinted may easily be denied us, we address ourselves to the work.

The department of history docs not belong to our special study ; it is, therefore, as a layman that we shall speak, not aspiring to pronounce the high cathedral judgment of a professor in that craft. The history, literature, and general development of the Spanish nation fall still less within the special range of the writer of this article. We are students of history only in common with all men who love liberal studies, and pursue history only in the pauses from other toils. However, the remarkable phenomena offered by the Spanish nation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries long ago attracted our attention and study. Still, it is with reluctance we approach our task ; had any of the able men whose business it more properly is girded himself and applied to the work we would have held our peace, but in the silence of such we feel constrained to speak.

Before we proceed to examine the works of Mr. Prescott, let a word be said of the office and duty of

174 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

an historian, to indicate the stand-point whence his books are to be looked upon. The writer of annals or of chronicles is to record events in the order in which they occur ; he is not an historian but a narrator, not an architect but a lumberer or stonecutter of history. It does not necessarily belong to his calling to elaborate his materials into a regular and complete work of art, which shall fully and philosophically rep- resent the life of the nation he describes.

The biographer is to give an idea of his hero, com- plete in all its parts, and perfect in each ; to show how the world and the age with their manifold influences acted on the man, and he on his age and the world, and what they jointly produced. It is one thing to write the memoirs or annals of a man, and a matter quite different to write his Life. Mr. Lockhart has collected many memorials of Sir Walter Scott, labor- iously written annals, but the Life of Sir Walter he has by no means written. In telling what his hero suffered, did, and was, and how all was brought to pass, the biographer must be a critic also, and tell what his hero ought to have been and have done. Hence comes the deeper interest and the more instructive character of a true biography ; memoirs may enter- tain, but a biography must instruct.

The annalist of a nation or a man works mainly in an objective way, and his own character appears only in the selection or omission of events to record, in re- ferring events to causes, or in deducing consequences from causes supposed to be in action. There is little which is personal in his work. On the other hand, the personality of the biographer continually appears. The lumberer's character or the stonecutter's does not report itself in the oak or travertine of Saint Peter's,

PRESCOTT 175

while the genius of the architect confronts you as you gaze upon his colossal work. Now as the less cannot of itself comprehend the greater, so a biographer can- not directly, and of himself, comprehend a man nobler than himself. All the oysters in the world would be incompetent to write the life of a single eagle. It is easy for a great man to understand the little man, im- possible to be directly comprehended thereby. It is not hard to understand the position of a city, the mutual relation of its parts, when we look down thereon from a high tower. Now while this is so, by the ad- vance of mankind in a few centuries it comes to pass that a man of but common abilities, having the culture of his age, may stand on a higher platform than the man of gcnuis occupied a short time before. In this way the biography of a great man, which none of his contemporaries could undertake, because he so far over- mastered them, soon becomes possible to men of marked ability, and in time to men of ordinary powers of comprehension. At this day it would not be very difficult to find men competent to write the life of Alexander or of Charlemagne, yet by no means so easy to find one who could do justice to Napoleon. Lord Bacon was right in leaving his " name and memory " " to foreign nations and to mine own coun- trymen after some time be passed over." We are far from thinking Lord Bacon so great as many men esteem him, but at his death there was no man among his own countrymen or in foreign nations meet to be his judge. The followers of Jesus collected only a few scanty memorials of the man, and they who have since undertaken his life arc proofs that the world has not caught up with his thoughts, nor its foremost men risen high enough to examine, to criticise, and to

176 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

judge a spirit so commanding. But after all, no ad- vance of mankind, no culture, however nice and ex- tensive, will ever enable a Hobbes or a Hume to write the life of a Jesus or even a Plato. It would be hard, even now, to find a man in England or out of it competent to give us the biography of Shakspeare, even if he had all that annals and memoirs might furnish.

Now an historian is to a nation what a biographer is to a man : he is not a bare chronicler, to indite the memoirs of a nation and tickle his reader with a mere panorama of events, however great and brilliantly colored, — events which have a connection of time and place, but no meaning, coming from no recognized cause and leading to no conclusion ; he is to give us the nation's life, — its outer life in the civil, military, and commercial transactions ; its inner life in the thought and feeling of the people. If the historian undertake the entire history of a nation that has completed its career of existence, then he must describe the country as it was when the people first appeared to take pos- session thereof, and point out the successive changes which they effected therein ; the geographical position of the country, its natural features — its waters, mountains, plains, its soil, climate, and productions — • all are important elements which help modify the character of the nation. The historian is to tell of the origin of the people, of their rise, their decline, their fall and end ; to show how they acted on the world, and the world on them, — what was mutually given and re- ceived. The causes which advanced or retarded the nation are to be sought, and their action explained. He is to inquire what sentiments and ideas prevailed in the nation ; whence they came, from without the people

PRESCOTT 177

or from within ; how they got organized, and with what result. Hence, not merely are the civil and military transactions to be looked after, but the philosophy which prevails in the nation is to be ascertained and discoursed of; the literature, laws, and religion. The historian is to describe the industrial condition of the people, — the state of agriculture, commerce, and the arts, both the useful and the beautiful; to infoim us of the means of internal communication, of the in- tercourse with other nations — military, commercial, literary, or religious. He must tell of the social state of the people, the relation of the cultivator to the soil, the relation of class to class. It is important to know how the revenues of the state are raised ; how the taxes are levied on person or property, directly or indi- rectly ; in what manner they are collected, and how a particular tax affects the welfare of the people. The writer of a nation's life must look at the whole people, not merely at any one class, noble or plebeian, and must give the net result of their entire action, so that at the end of his book we can say : " This people had such sentiments and ideals, which led to this and the other deeds and institutions, which have been attended by such and such results ; they added this or that to the general achievement of the human race."

Now in the history of each nation there are some eminent men in whom the spirit of the nation seems to culminate, either because they are more the nation than the nation is itself or because by their eminent power they constrain the nation to take the form of these individuals ; such men are to be distinctly studied and carefully portrayed, for while embodying the na- tion's genius they are an epitome of its history. In

a first survey we know a nation best by its gi'eat men, 11—12

178 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

as a country by its mountains and its plains, its wat- ers and its shores, — by its great characters. Still, while these eminent men are to be put in the fore- ground of the picture, the humblest class is by no means to be neglected. In the family of man there are elder and younger brothers ; it is a poor history which neglects either class. A few facts from the every-day life of the merchant, the slave, the peasant, the mechanic, are often worth more, as signs of the times, than a chapter which relates the intrigues of a courtier, though these are not to be overlooked. It is well to know what songs the peasant sung, what prayers he prayed, what food he ate, what tools he wrought with, what tax he paid, how he stood con- nected with the soil, how he was brought to war and what weapons armed him for the fight. It is not very important to know whether General Breakpate commanded on the right or the left, whether he charged uphill or downhill, whether he rode a bright chestnut horse or a dapple gray, nor whether he got dismounted by the breaking of his saddle-girth or the stumbling of his beast. But it is important to know whether the soldiers were accoutred well or ill, and whether they came voluntarily to the war, and fought in battle with a will, or were brought to the conflict against their own consent, not much caring which side was vic- torious.

In telling what has been, the historian is also to tell what ought to be, for he is to pass judgment on events, and try counsels by their causes first and their consequences not less. When all these things are told, history ceases to be a mere panorama of events hav- ing no unity but time and place ; it becomes philosophy teaching by experience, and has a profound meaning

PRESCOTT 179

and awakens a deep interest, while it tells the lessons of the past for the warning of the present and edi- fication of the future. A nation is but a single family of the human race, and the historian should remember that there is a life of the race, not less than of the several nations and each special man.

If the historian takes a limited period of the life of any country for his theme, then it is a single chapter of the nation's story that he writes. He ought to show, by way of introduction, what the nation had done beforehand ; its condition, material and spiritual, the .state of its foreign relations, and at home the state of industry, letters, law, philosophy, morals, and religion. And after showing the nation's condition at starting, he is to tell what was accomplished in the period under examination ; how it was done, and with what result at home and abroad. The philosophy of history is of more importance than the facts of history ; indeed, save to the antiquary, who has a disinterested love thereof, they are of little value except as they set forth that philosophy.

Now the subjective character of an historian con- tinually appears, colors his narrative, and effects the judgment he passes on men and things. You see the mark of the tonsure in a history written by a priest or a monk ; his standing-point is commonly the belfry of his parish church. A courtier, a trifler about the court of Queen Elizabeth, has his opinion of events, of their causes and their consequences ; a cool and wise politician judges in liis way; and the philosopher, neither a priest nor courtier, nor yet a politician, writ- ing in either age, comes to conclusions different from all three. A man's plilosophical, political, moral, and religious creed will appear in the history he writes.

180 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

M. de Potter and Dr. Neander find very different things in the early ages of the Christian Church ; a CathoHc and a Protestant History of Henry the Eighth would be unlike. Mr. Bancroft writes the history of America from the stand-point of ideal democracy, and, viewed from that point, things are not what they seem to be when looked at from any actual aristocracy. Hume, Gibbon, Mackintosh, and Schlosser, Sismondi, Michelet, and Macaulay, all display their own char- acter in writing their several works. Hume cannot comprehend a Puritan, nor Gibbon a " Primitive Chris- tian ;" Saint Simon sees little in Fenelon but a disap- pointed courtier, and in William Penn Mr. Bancroft finds an ideal democrat.

A man cannot comprehend what wholly transcends himself. Could a Cherokee write the history of Greece ? A Mexican, with the average culture of his nation, would make a sorry figure in delineating the character of New England. If the historian be a strong man, his work reflects his own character; if that be boldly marked, then it continually appears, the one thing that is prominent throughout his work. In the Life and Letters of Cromwell we get a truer picture of the author than of the Protector. The same figure ap- pears in the French Revolution, and all his historical composition appears but the grand fabling of Mr. Carlyle. But if the historian is a weak man, a thing that may happen, more receptive than impressive, then he reflects the average character of his acquaintance, the circle of living men he moves in, or of the departed men whose books he reads. Such an historian makes a particular country his special study, but can pass thereon with only the general judgment of his class. This is true of all similiar men ; the water in the pipe

PRESCOTT 181

rises as high as in the fountain, capillary attraction aiding what friction hindered; you know beforehand Avhat an average party-man will think of any national measure, because his " thought " docs not represent any individual action of his own, but the general aver- age of his class. So it is with an ordinary clergy- man ; his opinion is not individual but professional. A strong man must have his own style, his own mode of sketching the outline, filling up the details, and color- ing his picture ; if he have a mannerism, it must be one that is his own, growing out of himself, and not merely on him, while in all this the small man rep- resents only the character of his class ; even his style, his figures of speech, will have a family mark on them, his mannerism will not be detected at first because it is that of all his friends. Perhaps it would make little difference whether Michael Angelo was born and bred amid the rugged Alps or in the loveliest garden of Valombrosa, his genius seeming superior to circum- stances ; but with an artist who has little original and creative power, local peculiarities affect his style and appear in all his works.

Now within a thousand years a great change has come over the spirit of history. The historical writ- ings of Venerable Bode and of Louis Blanc, the Speculum Hystoriale of Vincencius Bellovacensis, so eagerly printed once and scattered all over Europe, and the work of ]Mr. Macaulay, bear marks of their re- spective ages, and are monuments which attest the progress of mankind in the historic art.

In the middle ages Chivalry prevailed ; a great re- spect was felt for certain prescribed rules, a great veneration for certain eminent persons. Those rules were not always or necessarily rules of nature, but only

182 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

of convention ; nor were the persons always or neces- sarily those most meet for respect, but men accidentally eminent oftener than marked for any substantial and personal excellence. The spirit of chivalry appears in the writers of that time, — in the song and the ro- mance, in history and annals, in homilies, and in pray- ers and creed. Little interest is taken in the people, only for their chiefs ; little concern is felt by great men for industry, commerce, art, much for arms. Primo- geniture extended from law into literature ; history was that of elder brothers, and men accidentally eminent seemed to monopolize distinction in letters, and to hold possession of history by perpetual entail. History was aristocratic, rank alone was respected, and it was thought there were but a few hundred persons in the world worth writing of or caring for; the mass were thought only the sand on which the mighty walked and useful only for that end, their lives were vulgar lives, their blood was puddle blood, and their deaths were vulgar deaths.

Of late years a very different spirit has appeared; slowly has it arisen, very slow, but it is real and visible, — the spirit of humanity. This manifests it- self in a respect for certain rules, but they must be laws of nature, rules of justice and truth; and in respect for all mankind. Arms yield not to the gown only, but to the frock ; and the aproned smith with his creative hand beckons destructive soldiers to an humbler seat, and they begin with shame to take the lower place, not always to be allowed them. This spirit of hu- manity appears in legislation, where we will not now follow it ; but it appears also in literature. Therein primogeniture is abolished, the entail is broken, the monopoly at an end ; the elder sons are not neglected.

PRESCOTT 183

but the younger brothers are also brought into notice. In history, as in trade, the course is open to talent. History is becoming democratic. The life of the people is looked after ; men write of the ground whereon the mighty walk. While the coins, the charters, and the capitularies — which are the monuments of kings — are carefully sought after, men look also for the songs, the legends, the ballads, which are the medals of the people, stamped with their image and super- scription, and in these find materials for the biography of a nation. The manners and customs of the great mass of men are now investigated, and civil and mili- tary transactions are thought no longer the one thing most needful to record. This spirit of humanity consti- tutes the charm in the writings of Niebuhr, Schlosser, Sismondi, Michclct, Bancroft, Grote, Macaulay, the greatest historians of the age ; they write in the interest of mankind. The absence of this spirit is a sad de- fect in the writings of Mr. Carlyle ; himself a giant, he writes history in the interest only of giants.

Since this change has taken place a new demand is made of an historian of our times. We have a right to insist that he shall give us the philosophy of history, and report the lessons thereof, as well as record the facts. He must share the spirit of humanity which begins to pervade the age ; he must not write in the interest of a class, but of mankind, — in the interest of natural right and justice. Sometimes, however, a man may be excused for lacking the philosophy of history ; no one could expect it of a Turk ; if a Rus- sian were to write the history of France, it would be easy to forgive him if he wrote in the interest of ty- rants. But when a man of New England undertakes to write a history, there is less excuse if his book should be

184. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

wanting in philosophy and in humanity ; less merit if it abound therewith.

Mr. Prescott has selected for his theme one of the most important periods of history, from the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century. The three greatest events of modern times took place during that period ; the art of printing was invented, America discovered, the Prostestant Reformation was begun. It was a period of intense life and various activity, in forms not easily understood at this day. The revival of letters w-as going forward ; the classic models of Greece and Rome were studied anew ; the re- vival, also, of art ; Lionardo da A^inci, Pietro Perugino, Michael Angelo, Raphael, were achieving their miracles of artistic skill. Science began anew ; new ideas seemed to dawn upon mankind ; modern literature received a fresh impulse. The new thought presently reported itself in all departments of life. Navigation was improved ; commerce extended, a new world was discovered, and, baited by the hope of gold or driven by discontent and restless love of change, impelled by desire of new things or constrained by conscience, the Old World rose and poured itself on a new continent, and with new ideas to found empires mightier than the old. In Europe a revolution advanced with the steps of an earthquake. The Hercules-pillars of authority were shaken ; the serf rose against his lord, the great barons everywhere were losing their power, the great kings consolidating their authority. Feudal institutions reeled with the tossings of the ground, and fell to rise no more. It was the age of the Medici, of Machiavelli, and of Savonarola ; of Erasmus and Copernicus ; of John Wessel, Reuchlin, Scaligcr, and Agricola ; Luther and Loyola lived in that time. The ninety-five theses

PRESCOTT 185

were posted on the church door ; the Utopia was written. There were Chevalier Bayard and Gonsalvo " the Great Captain ;" Cardinal Ximencs, and Co- lumbus. Two great works mark this period, — one, the establishment of national unity of action in the great monarchies of Europe, the king conquering the nobles ; the other the great insurrection of mind and conscience against arbitrary power in the school, the state, the church, — an insurrection which no legions of medijEval scholars, no armies, and no Councils of Basil and of Trent could prevent or long hinder from its work.

Writing of this age, Mr. Prescott takes for his chief theme one of the most prominent nations of the world. Spain, however, was never prominent for thought ; no idea welcomed by other nations was ever born or fostered in her lap ; she has no great philos- opher, not one who has made a mark on the world ; no great poet known to all nations ; not a single orator, ecclesiastic or political ; she has been mother to few great names in science, arts, or literature. In com- merce, Venice and Genoa long before Spain, England and Holland at a later date, have far out-travelled her. Even in arms, save the brief glory shed thereon by the Great Captain, Spain has not been dis- tinguished ; surely not as France, England, and even the Low Countries. But her geographical position is an important one, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. At the time in question her popula- tion was great, perhaps nearly twice that of Eng- land ; and she played an important part in the affairs of Europe, while England had little to do with the continent. Spain was connected with the Arabs, for some centuries the most civilized people in Europe ;

186 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

hence she came in contact with industry, skill, and riches, with letters and with art, and enjoyed op- portunities denied to all the other nations of Europe. For her subsequent rank among nations, Spain is in- debted to two events, which, as they did not come from the genius of the people, may be called accidental. One was the connection with the house of Austria, the singular circumstance which placed the united crowns of Castile and Arragon on the same head which bore the imperial diadem of Germany. This accident gave a lustre to Spain in the age of Charles the Fifth and his successor. But the other cause, seemingly more accidental, has given Spain a place in history which nothing else could have done, the fact that when the Genoese navigator first crossed the Atlantic the Spanish flag was at his masthead.

Mr. Prescott writes of Spain at her most important period, at the time when the two monarchies of Castile and Arragon were blent into one, when the Moors were conquered and expelled, the Inquisition established, the Jews driven out, the old laws revised, a new world dis- covered, conquered, settled, its nations put to slavery, Christianity, or death ; an age when Negro Slavery, Christianity, and the Inquisition first visited this west- ern world. Not only has the historian a great age to delineate and great events to deal with, — a new continent to describe, a new race to report on, their origin, character, language, literature, art, manners, and religion ; but, to enliven his picture, he has great men to portray. We will not speak of Ferdinand, Isa- bella, and Charles the Fifth, who pass often before us in kingly grandeur ; but there are Gonsalvo, Ximenes, and Columbus, here are Cortes and Pizarro.

Few historians have had an age so noble to describe ;

PRESCOTT 187

a theme so rich in events, in ideas, and in men ; an opportunity so fortunate to present the lessons of his- tory to ages yet to come. The author has this further advantage ; he lives far enough from the age he writes of to be beyond its bigotry and its rage. The noises of a city hardly reach the top of a steeple, all the din of battle is hushed and still far below the top of Mont Blanc ; and so in a few years the passions, the heat, the dust, the rage and noises of kings and nations are all silenced and lost in the immeasurable stillness which settles down upon the past. If the thinker pauses from his busy thought, and after a year or so returns thither again, how clear it all becomes ! So is it with mankind ; the problems of that age are no problems now, what could not then be settled with all the noise of parlia- ments and of arms in the after-silence of mankind has got its solution. Yet Mr. Prescott does not live so far from the time he treats of that genuis alone has power to recall the faded images thereof, to disquiet and bring it up again to life. Yet he lives so remote that he can judge counsels by their consequences as easily as by their cause; can judge theories, laws, institu- tions, and great men by the influence they have had on the world, by their seal and signal mark. In addition to these advantages, he lives in a land where there is no censorship of the press ; where the body is free, and the mind free, and the conscience free to him who will. His position and his theme are both enviable, giving an historian of the greatest genius scope for all his powers.

To judge only from his writings, Mr. Prescott is evidently a man with a certain niceness of literary culture not very common in America, of a careful if not exact scholarship in the languages and literature of

188 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Italy and Spain. Perhaps he cannot boast a very wide acquaintance with hterature, ancient or modern, but is often nice and sometimes critical in his learning. He is one of the few Americans not oppressed by the Res angusta domi who devote themselves to literature, to a life of study and the self-denial it demands in all countries and eminently here, where is no literary class to animate the weary man. His quotations indicate a wealthy library, his own fortune enabling him to pro- cure books which are rare even in Spain itself. Where printed books fail, manuscripts, also, have been dili- gently sought. He writes in a mild and amiable spirit; if he differ from other historians, he empties no vials of wrath upon their heads. He always shows himself a gentleman of letters, treating his companions with agreeable manners and courtesy the most amiable. Few lines in these volumes appear marked with any asperity, or dedicated in any sourness of temper. These few we shall pass upon in their place.

Within less than thirteen years eight volumes have appeared from his hand; the first evidently the work of many years, but the last five volumes reveal a diligence and ability to work not common amongst the few literary gentlemen of America. Labor under dis- advantages alwa3^s commands admiration. How many have read with throbbing heart the lives of men pursuing " knowledge under difficulties," yet such men often had one advantage which no wealth could give, no colleges and guidance of accomplished men supply, an able intellect and the unconquerable will ; but Mr. Prescott has pursued his labors under well-known dif- ficulties, which might make the stoutest quail. These things considered, no fair man can fail to honor the accomplished author, and to rejoice in the laurels so

PRESCOTT 189

beautifully won and worn with modesty and grace.

After this long preamble, let us now examine the three works before us, and see how the author has done the high duties of an historian. Treating of this great theme, we shall speak of the three works in their chronological order, and examine in turn the History of Spain, of Mexico, and of Peru,^ in each case speak- ing of the substance of the work, first in details, then as a whole, and next of its form. The remainder of this article will be devoted to the History of Ferdinand and Isabella.

To understand what was done by Ferdinand and Isa- bella we must know what had been achieved before their time ; must take the national account of stock. This Mr. Prescott undertakes in his Introduction ; but he fails to render an adequate account of the condition of Castile and Arragon, and of course it is not easy for the reader to appreciate the changes that subsequently were made therein.

To be a little more specific ; his account of the con- dition of the law is meagre and inadequate, the history of the reform and codification of laws poor and hardly intelligible, and though he returns upon the theme in the general account of the administration of Ferdi- nand and Isabella, still it is not well and adequately done. What he says of the Cortes of Castile and that of Arragon does not give one a clear idea of the actual condition and power of those bodies. He does not tell us by whom and how the members were chosen to their office, how long they held it and on what condition. The reader wonders at the meagreness of this important portion of the work, especially when such materials lay ready before his hands. After all, we find a more complete and intelligible account of the

190 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

constitution, of the laws, and of the administration of justice in the brief chapter of Mr. Hallam's work than in this elaborate history. Nay, the work of Mr. Dun- ham, written for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, written ap- parently in haste and not always in good temper, gives a far better account of that matter than Mr. Prescott. This is a serious defect, and one not to be anticipated in an historian who in this country undertakes to de- scribe to us the ancient administration of a foreign land. With a sigh the student remembers the masterly chapter of Gibbon which treats of the administration of justice and of the Roman law, a chapter which made a new era in the study of the subject itself, and longs for some one to guide him in this difficult and crooked path. With the exception of the Code of the Visi- goths, the Fuero Juzgo, and the Siete Partidas, works of Spanish law or treating thereof are in but few hands ; Marina, Zuaznavar, and Garcia de la Madrid can be but little known in England or America, for information the general scholar must here depend on the historian ; considering the important place that Spanish legislation has held, the wide reach of the Spanish dominion on both continents, it was particu- larly needful to have in this work a clear, thorough, and masterly digest of this subject.

In speaking of the revenue of the kingdom, Mr. Prescott does not inform us how it was collected, nor from what sources. We are told that the king had his royal demesnes, that on some occasions one-fifth of the spoils of war belonged to him, and it appears that a certain proportion of the proceeds of the mines was his ; but there is no systematic or methodical account of the revenues. True, he tells us that Isabella obtains money by mortgaging her real estate and pawning her

PRESCOTT 191

personal property ; afterwards it appears, accidentally, that two-ninths of the tithes, Tcrcias, formed a part of the royal income. We arc told that the revenues increased thirty-fold during this administration. It is mentioned as a proof of sagacity in the ruler and of the welfare of the people ; but we are not told whence they were derived, and it appears that in 1504 the single city of Seville paid nearly one-sixth of the whole revenue.* In a note he tells us that the bulk of the crown revenue came from the Tercias and the Alcavalas. The latter was an odious tax of ten per cent, on all articles bought, sold, or transferred. Mr. Prescott tells us it was commuted, but how or for what he does not say.

Armies figure largely in any history of Spain, but it is in vain that we ask of Mr. Prescott how the armies were raised, and on what principle, the modern or the feudal ; how they were equipped, paid, fed, and clothed. He often dwells upon battles, telling us who commanded on the right or the left, can describe at length the tournament of Trani and the duel between Bayard and Sotomayor ; but he nowhere gives us a description of the military estate of the realm, and no- where relates the general plan of a campaign. This, also, is a serious defect in any history, especially in that of a nation of the fifteenth century, a period of transition. He docs not inform us of the state of in- dustry, trade, and commerce, or touch, except in- cidentally, upon the effect of the laws thereon. Yet during this reign the laws retarded industry in all its forms, to a great degree. Soon after the discovery of

* Mr. Prescott says near a tenth. This is probably a clerical or typographical error. 'Ihe whole amount is given in the au- thority as 209,500,000 maravedis, of which Seville paid 30,- 971,096.

192 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

America, Spain forbade the exportation of gold and silver, and, as Don Clemencin says, " our industry would have died from apoplexy of money, if the ob- servance of the laws established in this matter had not been sufficient for its ruin." At a later date it was forbidden to export even the raw material of silk and wool. " Spain," says M. Blanqui, the latest writer on the political economy of that country that we have seen, " is the country of all Europe where the rashest and most cruel experiments have been made at the expense of industry, which has almost always been treated as a foe, managed to the death {exploitee a Voutrance) instead of being protected by the govern- ment, and regarded as a thing capable of taxation, rather than a productive element." Restrictions were laid not only on intercourse with foreign nations, but on the traffic between province and province, and a tax, sometimes an enormous one, the Alcavala, was col- lected from the sale of all articles whatever. " Mem- bers of the legal and military profession," says M. Blanqui, " affected the most profound contempt for every form of industry. Any man who exercised a trade was disgraced for life. A noble who ventured to work lost his privilege of nobility, and brought his family to shame. No town accepted an artisan for its alcalde ; the Cortes of Arragon, says Marina, never admitted to their assembly a deputy who came from the industrial class. You would think you were read- ing Aristotle and Cicero Avhcn you find in the writers, and even in the laws of Spain, those haughty expres- sions of contempt for the men M'ho bow their faces towards the earth, and stoop to smite the anvil or tend a loom."

Mr. Prescott does not notice the condition of the

PRESCOTT 193

people, except In terms the most general and vague. Yet great changes were taking place at that time In the condition of the laboring class. He does not even tell us what relation the peasantry bore to the soil; how they held It, by what tenure, for what time, what relation they bore to the nobles and the knights. In Castile i\Ir. Hallam sa^'s there was no vlllanage. Mr. Prescott gives us no explanation of the fact, and does not mention the fact Itself. In Catalonia a portion of the peasantry passed out of the condition of vassalage, • — JNIarlana calls them Pageses, others Vassals de Remenza, — to that of conditional freedom, by paying an annual tax to their former owner, or to entire free- dom by the payment of a sum twenty times as large. This was an Important event In the civil history of Spain. Mr. Prescott barely relates the fact. From other sources we have learned, we knew not how truly, that no artisan was allowed in the Cortes of Arragon, that only nobles were eligible to certain offices there, and no nobles were taxed.

In all this History there are no pictures from the lives of the humble, yet a glimpse into the cottage of a peasant, or even at the beggary of Spain In the fifteenth century, would be Instructive, and help a stranger to understand the nation. Much is said. In- deed, of the wealthier class, of the nobles, and of the clergy, but we find It impossible from this History alone to form a complete Idea of their position in the kingdom ; of their relation to one another, to the people, or the crown ; of the number of the clergy, of their education, their character, their connection with the nobles or the people, of their general Influence — he has nothing to tell us. He pays little regard to the

progress of society ; to advances made In the com- 11—13

194 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

forts of life, in the means of journeying from place to place. Now and then it is said that the roads were in bad order, and so a march was delayed ; even at this day the means of internal communication are so poor, the roads so few and impracticable, that some provinces lie in a state of almost entire isolation. Says M. Blanqui, " More than one province of Spain could be mentioned which is more inaccessible than the greater part of our most advanced positions in Africa." " Castile and Catalonia differ as much as Russia and Germany, and the inhabitants of Gallicia do not under- take the journey to Andalusia so often as the French that to Constantinople."

A philosophical inquirer wants information on all these subjects, and the general reader has no authority but histories like this. It cannot be said that Mr. Prescott feared to encumber his work with such de- tails, and make his volumes too numerous or big. He has space to spare for frivolous details ; he can describe the pageant afforded by the royal pair in the camp before Moclin, in 14«86; can tell us that "the queen herself rode a chestnut mule, seated on a saddle-chair embossed with gold and silver ;" that " the housings were of a crimson color, and the bridles of satin were curiously wrought with letters of gold ;" that " the In- fanta wore a skirt of fine velvet over others of brocade, a scarlet mantilla of the Moorish fashion and a black hat trimmed with gold embroidery," and that the king " was dressed in a crimson doublet with chausses or breeches of yellow satin. Over his shoulders was thrown a cassock or mantilla of rich brocade, and a sopra vest of the same material concealed his cuirass. By his side, close girt, he wore a Moorish scymitar, and beneath his bonnet his hair was confined by a cap

PRESCOTT 195

or head-dress of the finest stuff. Ferdinand was mounted on a noble war-horse of a bright chestnut color."

The account of the Inquisition is eminently unsat- isfactory. No adequate motive is assigned for it, no sufficient cause. It stands in this book as a thing with consequences enough, and bad enough, but no cause ; you know not why it came. Mr. Prescott treats Catholicism fairly. We do not remember a line in these volumes which seems dictated by anti-Catholic bigotry. He has no sympathy with the Inquisition, he looks on it with manly aversion ; but he treats the subject with little ability, not showing how subtly the Inquisition worked, undermining the church and the state, and corrupting life in its most sacred sources. Who made the Inquisition, for what purpose was its machinery set a-going, what effect did it have on the whole nation ? — these are questions which it was Mr. Prescott's business to answer, but which, as we think, he has failed to answer. Whosoever brought it to pass, there is little doubt but it gained Ferdinand and Isa- bella the title of Catholic. But our historian does not like to lay the blame on them ; they are the heroes of his story. Ferdinand may indeed be blamed,^ — it were difficult in this century to write and not blame him ; but Isabella must not be censured for this — her hero- ism is to bo spotless. The spirit of chivalry in our author is too strong for the spirit of humanity. He thinks Ferdinand may have had political motives for establishing the Inquisition, but Isabella only religious motives for its establishment in Castile. Certainly there was a great blame somewhere ; it falls not on the people who had neither the ability nor the will to establish it, nor on the aristocracy of nobles and rich

196 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

men, — they had much to lose, and httle to gain ; It was always hateful to them. The priests, no doubt, were in favor of the Inquisition^ but they could not have introduced it ; nay, could have had little influence in bringing it about if the crown had opposed it. Ferdinand and Isabella were no slaves to the priesthood, they knew how to favor the interests of the church Avhen it served their turn ; but no forehead was more brazen, on hand more iron than theirs to confront and put down any insolence of sacerdotal power. Isabella did not favor the old Archbishop of Toledo; she abridged the power of the priests ; nay, that of the Pope, and easily seized from him what other monarchs had long clutched at in vain. She allowed no appeals to him. The Pragmaticas of Isabella tended to re- strict the power of the clergy and of the Pope within narrower limits than before. Ferdinand and Isabella are the very parties to be blamed for the Inquisition ; if so enlightened above their age the more to be blamed, if cool-headed and farsighted they deserve more re- proach, if Isabella were so religious as it is contended then the severest censure is to be pronounced against her. It was only thirty-six years before the Reforma- tion that she introduced the Inquisition to Castile. It is idle to lay the blame on Torquemada; we profess no great veneration for this genuine son of Saint Dominic, but let him answer for his own sins, not his master's. We cannot but think history is unjust in painting Isa- bella so soft and fair, while her inquisitor-general is portrayed in the blackest colors, and she, with all her intelligence, charity, and piety, puts the necks of the people into his remorseless hands. Ferdinand and Isa- bella were not fools, to be deluded by a priest, however cunning. It seems to us that the Inquisition must be

PRESCOTT 197

set down to their account, and should cover them both with shame ; that as James the Second is to be blamed for Jefferies and the bloody assizes, so arc Ferdinand and Isabella for Torqucmada and the Inquisition. INIr. Prescott admits the most obvious and pernicious cruel- ties thereof, but has not the heart to trace the evil to its source. It is the fashion of certain writers to dwell with delight on every fault committed by the masses of men. What eloquent denunciation have we heard on the " horrid crimes of the old French Revolution ;" " horrid crimes " they were and let them be denounced, but when the writers come to butcheries done by the masters of mankind they have no voice to denounce such atrocities. Yet both equally proceed from the same maxim, that might is right. Llorente may be wrong in the numbers who suffered by the Inquisition ; perhaps there were not 13,000 burned alive at the stake, and 191,143 who suffered other tortures. Sup- pose there were but half that number, na}^ a tenth part ; still it is enough to cover any monarchy in Eu- rope, since the twelfth century, with shame. Grant that Torquemada projected the scheme; the fact that Isabella allowed it to be executed shows that she was of soul akin to her infamous ancestor, Peter the Cruel, and deserves the sharp censure of every just historian. Wc come next to speak of the Moors and Jews. At the time of Ferdinand and Isabella there were in Spain two distinct tribes of men. On the one side were the descendants of the Visigoths, one of the new nations who had appeared in history not many centuries be- fore, and imitcd with the existing population of Spain, as the Romans had formerly united with the settlers they found there; on the other side were two nations, descended, as it is said, from Abram, the mythological

198 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ancestor of numerous tribes of Asia, the Moors and the Jews. Both of these nations had been for centuries distinguished for their civihzation ; they had long dwelt on the same soil with the Spaniards, and if we may believe the tale, few families of the Spanish nobility were quite free from all INIoorish or all Hebrew taint. A philosophical historian would find an attractive theme in the meeting of nations so diverse in origin, language, manners, and religion, as the sons of the East and the West. It would be curious to trace the effects of their union, to learn what the Hebrews and the Moors had brought to Spain and what they es- tablished there; how much had been gained by this mingling of races, which, as some think, is a perpetual condition of national progress. The Jews were not barbarians, they are commonly superior to the class they mingle with in all countries. The Moors were amongst the most enlightened nations of Europe: they had done much to promote the common industrial arts, the higher arts of beauty ; they had practiced agriculture and the mechanic arts with skill and science, for unlike the Spaniards, they were not ashamed of work ; they had fostered science and letters, on their hearth had kept the sacred fire snatched from the altar of the Muses before their temple went to the ground, and still fed and watched its flame, in some ages almost alone the guardians of that vestal fire. The English reader familiar with Gibbon's account of the Arabian race, — a chapter not without its faults, but which even now must still be called masterly, — looks for something not inferior in tliis history, where the occasion equally demands it. But he looks in vain. The chapter Avliich treats of the Spanish Arabs, though not without merit, is hardly worthy of a place in a history written in this age of the world.

PRESCOTT 199

After the two chief monarchies of Spain were prac- tically united into one, it was not to be expected that the Catholic sovereigns would allow so fair a portion of the peninsula to remain in the hands of the Moors. They had only been there on sufferance, and seem never to have recovered from their terrible defeat in 1210. Spanish sovereigns, with the spirit of that age, would wish to subdue the Moors — Christians, the " In- fidels ;" and when such feelings exist an occasion for war is not long to seek. The conquest of a rich king- dom like that of Granada with a high civilization, is an affair of much importance ; the explusion of a whole people in modern times, though still meditated by men whom the chances of an election bring to the top of society in Republican America, is an unusual thing, and in this case it was barbarous not less than unusual.

Mr. Prescott does justice to the industry, intel- ligence, skill, and the general civilization of the Moors ; while he points out defects and blemishes in their in- stitutions with no undue severity, he has yet just and beautiful things to say of them. But he glozes over the injustice shown towards them, and averts the s^^mpathy of the reader for the suffering nation by the remark, that " they had long since reached their utmost limit of advancement as a people ;" " that dur- ing the latter period of their existence they appear to have reposed in a state of torpid and luxurious in- dulgence, which would seem to argue that when causes of external excitement were withdrawn the inherent vices of their social institutions had incapacitated them from the further pro<luction of excellence." Then he puts the blame, if blame there be, on Providence, and says, " in this impotent condition it was wisely ordered that their territory should be occupied by a people

200 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

whose religion and more liberal form of government qualified them for advancing still higher the interests of humanity." Mr. Prcscott elsewhere speaks with manly and becoming indignation of the conduct of Ximenes, who burnt the elegant libraries of the Moors ; yet he has not censure enough, it seems to us, for the barbarous edict which drove the Moors into hypocrisy or exile.

The expulsion of the Jews is treated of in the same spirit: the blame is laid in part on the priests, on Torquemada, and in part on the spirit of the age. Both were bad enough, no doubt, but if Ferdinand and Isabella, as represented, were before their age In states- manship, and the latter far in advance of its religion, we see not how they can be shielded from blame. It is the duty of an historian to measure men by the gen- eral standard of their times, — certainly we are not to expect the morals of the nineteenth century from one who lived In the ninth ; but it is also the historian's duty to criticise that spirit, and when a superior man rises he must not be judged merely by the low standard of his age, but the absolute standard of all ages. Such a judgment we seldom find in this work. Many acts of these princes show that they were short-sighted. Allowing Isabella's zeal for the church, which is abundantly proved, it must yet be confessed that she possessed its worst qualities i — bigotry. Intolerance, and cruelty — In what might be called the heroic de- gree. Ferdinand cared little for any interest but his own. We doubt, after all, if it was love of the church which expelled the Moors and the Jews, and think it was a love yet more vulgar; namely, the love of plunder. He hit the nail on the head who declared that uncoimted numbers of Jews were richer than

PRESCOTT 201

Christians — innumeri [^JudkBoruvi'] Christianis diti- ores. The Jews displayed their usual firmness in refus- ing to pretend to be converted, but their resolution to adhere to the faith of their fathers and their conscience meets with but scanty praise from our author, living under institutions formed by religious exiles, though he calls it " an extraordinary act of self-devotion."

Mr. Prcscott's defence of Isabella does little honor to his head or heart, but is in harmony with the gen- eral tone of the history. The Catholic sovereign thus struck a deadly blow at the industry of the nation. The Moors had almost created agriculture in Spain ; they had founded the most important manufactures, that of silk, wool, leather, and of tempered steel. They were ingenious mechanics and excellent artists. Since that time foreigners have braved the national prejudice against manual work. It was the Flemish and the Italians who re-established the manufacture of tapestry, of woolen goods, and of work in wood ; and more recently the English and French have en- gaged there in the manufacture of linen, cotton, and mixed goods. In the time of Louis XIV. more than seventj'-five thousand Frenchmen had gone to settle in Spain.

Mr. Prescott's account of the literature of Spain has been much admired, not wholly without reason. The chapters which treat of the Castilian literature were certainly needed for the completeness of the work. Everybod}^ knows how much I\Ir. Schlosser adds to the value of his histories by his laborious examination of the literature, science, and art of the nations he describes. To know a nation's deeds we must vmder- stand its thoughts. " It will be necessary," says Mr. Prescott, " in order to complete the view of the internal

202 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

administration of Ferdinand and Isabella, to show its operation on the intellectual culture of the nation. It is particularly deserving of note in the present reign which stimulated the active develop- ment of the national energies in every department of science, and which forms a leading epoch in the orna- mental literature of the country. The present and following chapter will embrace the mental progress of

the kingdom, through the whole of

Isabella's reign, in order to exhibit as far as possible its entire results."

The education of Isabella was neglected in her youth, and at a mature age she undertook to supply her defects, and studied Avith such success, says one of her contemporaries, that " in less than a year her admirable genius enabled her to obtain so good a knowledge of the Latin tongue that she could under- stand without much difficulty what was written or spoken in it." She took pains with the education of her own children, and those of the nobility. She in- vited Peter IVIartyr and ]\Iarinaeo Siculo to aid in edu- cating the nobility, which they readily did. Mr. Pres- cott mentions the names of several noblemen who en- gaged zealously in the pursuit of letters. " No Span- iard," says Giovio, " was accounted noble who held science in indifference." Men of distinguished birth were eager, we are told, to lead the way in science. Lords, also, of illustrious rank, lent their influence to the cause of good letters ; one lady, called La Latina, instructed the Queen in the Roman tongue, another lectured on the Latin classics at Salamanca, and a third on rlictoric at Alcala. Yet, spite of all this royal zeal, this feminine and noble attention to letters, Mr. Prescott confesses that little progress was made

PRESCOTT 203

in the poetic art since the beginning of the century. Once cause thereof he finds in the rudeness of the lan- guage, which certainly had not become more rude dur- ing the progress of so much Latinity and rhetoric ; and another " in the direction to utility manifested in this active reign, which led such as had leisure for intellectual pursuits to cultivate science rather than abandon themselves to the mere revels of the imagina- tion."

Let us look at this subject a little more in detail, and see what opportunities Spain had for intellectual culture, what use she made of them, what results were obtained, and how Mr. Prescott has described " the mental progress of the nation."

The Arabians, as we have twice said before, were for some time the most enlightened nation in the world ; they cultivated arts, the useful and the elegant, with singular success ; they diligently studied physics and metaphysics ; they pursued literature, and have left behind them numerous proofs of their zeal, if not of their genius. There was a time when the great classic masters of science were almost forgotten by the Christians, but carefully studied and held in honor by the disciples of INIahomct, Men of other nations sought instruction in their schools, or sat at the feet of their sages, or studied and translated their works. By means of their vicinity to the Moorish Arabs the Spaniards had an excellent opportunity to cultivate science and letters, but they made little use of those advantages. Robert and Daniel INIorley, Campano, Atkelhard, Gerbert of Aurillac (afterwards Sylvester II.), and others, learned from the Arabian masters; but there were few or no Spaniards of any eminence who took pains to study the thought of their Mahom- etan neighbors.

g04 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

It seems to us that Mr. Prescott a good deal over- rates the hterary tendency of the Spaniards under Ferdinand and Isabella. It is true, at that time a great movement of thought went on in the rest of Europe. The capture of Constantinople drove the Greek scholars from their ancient home ; the printing- press diffused the Scriptures, the ancient laws, the old classics, spreading new thought rapidly and wide. Literature and philosophy were studied with great vigor. This new movement appeared in Italy, in Switzerland, in Germany, and France, even in Eng- land. But in Spain we find few and inconsiderable traces thereof. Mr. Prescott cites Erasmus for the fact that " liberal studies were brought in the course of a few years in Sjoain to so flourishing a condition, as might not only excite the admiration but serve as a model to the most cultivated nations of Europe." But it deserves to be remembered that Erasmus made this statement in a letter to a Spanish professor at the University of Alcala, and besides, founds his praise on the religion as much as on the learning of the country. In a former letter he had said that the study of literature had been neglected in Germany to such a degree that men would not take learning if offered for nothing, — " nobody was willing to hear the professors who were supported at the public charge." But elsewhere Erasmus knows how to say that in Ger- many their " schools of learning were numerous as the towns." But this is of small importance.

It is certain that Ferdinand and Isabella did some- thing to promote the literary cvilture of their people; yet it had not been wholly neglected before the Uni- versity of Hucsca (Osca) was certainly old. Plutarch in his Life of Sertorius informs us that the Roman

PRESCOTT 205

general founded a school there, and some one says that Pontius Pilate was a " Professor Juris " — utriusque juris, we suppose ^ — on that foundation; Spaniards may believe the story. The University of Seville was founded in 990, that of Valencia in 1200, or about that time, that of Salamanca in 1239, — though some place it earlier and some much later ; universities had been founded at Lerida and Valladolid in the fourteenth century. This statement may read well on paper, but it is plain that universities had done little to enlighten the nation, otherwise Cardinal Ximenes had never celebrated that auto da fe with the Arabian libraries.

Queen Isabella, we are told, encouraged the intro- duction of printing into Spain, and caused many of the works of her own subjects to be printed at her own charge; that she exempted a German printer from taxation, and allowed foreign books to be im- ported free of duty. But more than twenty years elapsed after the discovery of the art before we hear of a single printing-press in the kingdom ; and dur- ing the whole of the fifteenth century we cannot find that four hundred editions were printed in all Spain, while during that period the press of Florence had sent forth five hundred and fifty-three, that of IMilan six hundred and eighty-three, that of Paris seven hundred and fifty-seven, Rome nine hundred and fifty- three, Venice three thousand one hundred and thirty- seven. The little city of Strasburg alone had pub- lished more than the whole kingdom of Spain. About fifteen thousand editions were printed in the last thirty years of that century. The character of the works printed in Spain is significant ; first of all comes a collection of songs in honor of the Virgin, setting

206 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

forth the miraculous conception. It is true, a transla- tion of the Bible into the Limousin dialect was printed at Valencia in 1478, but during the fifteenth century we do not find that a single edition of the Vulgate or of the Civil Law was printed in all Spain, though no less than ninety-eight editions of the Latin Bible came forth from the presses of Europe.

Mr. Prescott professes to describe the mental pro- gress of the nation. To accomplish this the historian must tell us the result of what was done in law, in the study of the Roman, the National, and the Canon Law, for all three have been important elements in the development of the Spanish nation ; what was done in physics ; in metaphysics, including ethics and theology, and in general literature. Now Air. Pres- cott, in this examination, passes entirely over the first three departments, and bestows his labor wholly upon the last. It is true, he treats of the alteration of the laws in his last chapter, but in a brief and unsatis- factory style. Yet he had before told us that the at- tention of studious men was directed to science, and it is elsewhere asserted that much was done in this reign for the reformation and codification of the laws. It would be interesting to the mere reader, and highly important to the philosophical student who wishes to understand the mental progress of Spain, to know how much the Roman Law was studied, how much the; Canon Law, and what modifications were made thereby in the national institutions themselves, by whom, and with what effect. After all that has been written of late years, it would not be difficult, certainly not im- posible, to do this. The publication of Las Siete Par- tidas for the first time in 1491, twenty years after the accession of Isabella to the throne, was an important

PRESCOTT 207

event; the legal labors of Alfonso de Montalvo de- served some notice ; the celebrated Consolato del Mare, which has had so important an influence on the mari- time laws of Europe and America, and first got printed during this reign, certainly required some notice, even in a brief sketch of the intellectual history of that reign. In all Catholic countries the study of the Canon Law is of great importance, but during the fifteenth century, though more than forty editions thereof got printed in other parts of Europe, we do not find one in Spain.

In science, including the mathematics and all de- partments of physics, the Spanish did little. Yet circumstances were uncommonly favorable; the con- quest of Granada put them in possession of the libra- ries of the Moors, which were destined only to the flames ; under the guidance of Columbus, they dis- covered new lands and had ample oportunities to study the geography, zoology, and botany of countries so inviting to the naturalist. But nothing was done. It is true, Andres, with his national prejudices, under- takes to mention some names that are illustrious in medi- cine, but Piquer and Lampillas, Monardes, Christoforo da Costa, Laguma, " the Spanish Galen," and the rest that he mentions, may be celebrated throughout all Spain and even in La Mancha ; we think they are but little known elsewhere. In the departments of geo- graphy and astronomy the Spanish accomplished noth- ing worthy of mention.

In metaphysics and ethics there are no Spanish names before the sixteenth centur3', few even then ; scholastic philosophy, which once prevailed so widely in the West of Europe, seems not to have found a footing in the Peninsula. In the tenth century Ger-

208 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

bert went to Spain to learn philosophy of the Arabs ; in the eleventh, Constantinus Africanus communicated its doctrines to the world ; in the twelfth and thir- teenth, Athelhard of Bath, called Athelhard the Goth, Gherard, Otho, of Frisingcn, Michael Scott, and others, filled Europe with translations of Arabian au- thors. But Spain did nothing.

In theology the Spaniards have but one work to show of any note, which dates from the period in ques- tion. The Complutensian Polyglot was a great work; but to achieve that nothing was needed but great wealth and the labors of a few learned and diligent men. The wealth was abundant, and flowed at the Cardinal's command; the treasures of the Vatican and of all the libraries of Europe were freely offered ; the manuscripts of the Jews in Spain were at Ximenes' command; the services of accomplished scholars could easily be bought. Learned Greeks there were in the South of Europe seeking for bread. Of the nine men who were engaged in this undertaking, one was a Greek and three were Jews, of course converted Jews. Artists came from Germany to cast the types for the printing. Mr. Prescott exaggerates the diffi- culty of the undertaking; the scholars could be had, the manuscripts borrowed or bought, indeed, so poorly was the matter conducted that some manuscripts, pur- chased at great cost, came too late for use. Mr. Pres- cott says, " There were no types in Spain, if indeed in any part of Europe, in the Oriental character," but only three alphabets were needed in the Polyglot^ — the Roman, the Greek, and the Hebrew. The two first were common enough, even in Spain ; and in various parts of Europe, before the end of the fifteenth cen- tury, no less than thirty-nine editions had been printed

PRESCOTT 209

of the whole or a part of the Hebrew Bible. The Complutensian Polyglot is indeed a valuable work, but at this day few men will contend that in the Old Testament it has a text better than the edition at Soncino, or that the Complutensian New Testament is better than that of Erasmus. Indeed, we hazard nothing in saying that Erasmus, a sigle scholar and a private man often in want of money, did more to promote the study of the Scriptures and the revival of letters than Cardinal Ximenes and all Spain put to- gether ; and never burnt up a library of manuscripts because they were not orthodox.

All these matters, except the Polyglot, Mr. Pres- cott passes over with few words in his sketch of the mental progress of Spain in her golden age. While France, Germany, Italy, and England made rapid strides in their mental progress, Spain did little, lit- tle in law, little in science, in theology little. But Mr. Prcscott writes in a pleasing style about another portion of the literature of Spain, which is, after all, her most characteristic production in letters, her bal- lads and the drama. The Redondilla is the most dis- tinctive production of the Spanish muse. The ballads of Spain are unlike those of England, of Scotland, and of Germany, in many respects, yet bear the same rela- tion to the genius of the people. They grew up in the wild soil of the Peninsula ; no royal or ecclesiastical hand was needed to foster them. Beautiful they are, — the wild flowers of the field, — but under the eye of Isabella they began to droop and wither; no new plants came up so fair and fragrant as the old. Why not.'' The life of the people was trodden down by the hoof of the priest whom Isabella had sent to his work.

The language was rude, says Mr. Prescott. That 11—14

210 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

hindered not ; Burns found a rude speech in Auld Scotland, but the verses he sung in " hamely westhn jingle " will live longer than the well-filed lines of Pope. Rudeness of language hindered not the genius of Chaucer, of Hans Sachs. Mr. Prescott had small space to note the alteration of laws, the change of social systems, or the progress of civilization in Spain, but he has some twenty pages to bestow upon the drama, and gives us an analysis of the " Tragicomedy of Celestina, or Calisto and Melibea," spending four pages upon such a work. A philosophical reader would consent to spare all mention of Encina, Naharre, Oliva, Cotu, and even Fernando de Roxas, if in the place which they but cumber there had been an account of the real thought, manners, and life of the nation. Far be it from us to complain of the time and space allotted to the popular literature of Spain, the chap- ters are the best of the work ; but one familiar with that delightful growth laments that the historian made no better use of his materials to indicate the life, character, and sentiments of the people.

Mr. Prescott overrates the excellence of Queen Isa- bella. The character of Ferdinand was so atrocious that it admits of no defence. Shall it be said that the age was distinguished for fraud, double-dealing, per- fidy, and hypocrisy .f* It affords no good defence, for it was in these very qualities that Ferdinand surpassed his age. He was a tyrannical king; a treacherous ally, a master whom no servant could trust ; a faith- less husband in the life of Queen Isabella, and false to her memory after her death. Few will deny that he had some ability and some knowledge of kingcraft, though we think his powers and political foresight have been somewhat overrated. The great men of the realm

PRESCOTT 211

lie used as his servants, but when they acquired renown he endeavored to ruin them ; cast them off neglected and covered with dishonor. His treatment of Colum- bus, Gonsalvo, or of Ximenes, would have been a dis- grace to any prince in Christendom. He was no friend of the nobility and quite as little the friend of his peo- ple ; he did not favor commerce or the arts, no, nor letters and science. His zeal for religion appears chiefly in the expulsion of the Moors and the Jews. Isabella had some natural repugnance to the establish- ment of slavery in America, but Ferdinand had none. Mr. Prescott, who is not blind to liis faults, says truly, " His was the spirit of egotism. The circle of his views might be more or less expanded, but self was the steady, unchangeable centre."

Mr. Prescott censures Ferdinand, but it sems to us for the purpose of making a contrast with Isabella, quite as much as in reference to the unchangeable laws of morality ; the effects of his character on the in- stitutions of his country and the welfare of his people he does not point out in a manner worthy of an his- torian. Let us turn to Isabella. " Her character," he says, " was all magnanimity, disinterestedness, and deep devotion to the interest of the people." " Isa- bella, discarding all the petty artifices of state policy and pursuing the noblest ends by the noblest moans, stands far above her age ; " " she was solicitous for everything that concerned the welfare of her people." This is high praise; but laying aside the rules of chivalry let us look in the spirit of humanity. The great political work of this reign was the establish- ment of national unity of action. Spain had been divided into many kingdoms, the separate provinces of each had been united by a feeble tie; the power of

212 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the king was resisted and diminished by the authority of the great barons, and thus the nation was dis- tracted, and its power weakened. Under these sov- ereigns the different kingdoms were formed into one, the several provinces were closely united, the great barons were humbled and brought into dependence upon the throne ; and thus national unity of action es- tablished by the might of a great central power. To accomplish this work, the first thing to be done after the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, was to dimin- ish the power of the nobles. The same problem was getting solved in other countries at the same time. In some countries as the nobles lost power, the cities with their charters gained it ; the communes, the guilds, in short, the people, in one form or another, got an increase of political power. But in Spain it was not so. As power receded from the nobles it fell into the hands of the king. The people only gained domestic tranquillity, not practical political power, or the theoretic recognition of their rights. Ferdinand and Isabella were both jealous of the Cortes. Once, when Isabella wanted the Cortes of Arragon to declare her daughter their future sover- eign, and they refused, she exclaimed, " It would be better to reduce the country by arms at once than endure this insolence of the Cortes." After Isabella's death Ferdinand for a long time neglected to convene the Cortes. Once he obtained a dispensation from the Pope, allowing him to cancel his engagement with the Cortes. In the first two years of her reign, Isa- bella called three meetings of the Cortes, of the popu- lar branch alone. The motive was plain ; she wanted to reduce the power of tlie nobles, and the commons were the appropriate tool. After this work was done

PRESCOTT ns

the sessions became rare. She made the Hcrmandad take the place of the Cortes to the great detriment of popular liberty. But in 1506 the foolish Cortes, either incited by the court or stimulated by the Span- ish desire of monopoly, complained that the right of representation was extended too far. Both Ferdi- nand and Isabella " were averse to meetings of the Cortes in Castile oftener than absolutely necessary, and both took care on such occasions to have their own agents near the deputies to influence their pro- ceedings " and to make the deputies understand that they had not so much power as they fancied. If Isabella had all the superlative qualities which ]\Ir. Prescott and others also ascribe to her, the result must have been different.

We will not deny that Isabella did much for the nation, much to establish internal tranquillity, much to promote the security of property and person. The first thing mentioned by Don Clcmencin — the restora- tion of the currency from its debased condition — if taken alone was highly important. She elevated men of worth to high stations, though they were men of mean birth ; doubtless this was done in part to show the nobles that she could dispense with them in places which they had long monopolized ; still she knew how to distinguish between the accidents and the substance of a man, and chose her counsellors accordingly. Her management of the aff^airs of the church displayed no little skill and much energy. She kept the church from the incursions of the Pope, a task not so difficult as it would have been a century or two before, for the papal power was visibly on the wane ; still, on the whole, we must confess that she did little to elevate the religious character of the clergy or the people.

SI 4 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Did she encourage letters and establish printing- presses? few great works were published in Spain; the Lives of the Saints, treatises in honor of the Virgin, books of " Sacred Offices," and fulminations against Moors, Jews, and heretics, Papal Bulls, and the works of Raymond Lully — such were the books which the Spaniards printed and devoured in the fifteenth cen- tury. The works of Sallust were the most important works issued from the press of Valencia in that cen- tury. Did she encourage science? it bore no fruits which the nation has aspired to gather from the Span- ish tree; poetry? little was brought to pass which could rival the best works of former days. In theology, with the exception of the Polyglot and the publication of the Bible in the Limousin dialect, certainly a sur- prising event in that age, little was done, nothing worthy of note. Under a hand so despotic, and un- der the eye of the Inquisition which Isabella had es- tablished, what could a Spaniard effect? It must be confessed that Isabella did not foster the greatest in- terests of the nation. The publication of proclama- tions which had the force of law (pragmaticas), so frequent in her reign, shows plainly enough her de- sire to rule without the advice of the people whose constitution she thereby violated. It matters not that they purport to be made at the demand of the Cortes, at the request of corporate cities, or of prominent men. Even in America we could find here and there a man in the Senate of the United States who would recommend a powerful President to do the same, per- haps a city or even a state to advise it. Those proclamations were the passing-bell of popular free- dom. Even if they did not, as Mr. Prescott assures us, intrench on the principles of criminal law or af-

PRESCOTT 215

feet the transfer of property, they not less under- mined the Hberty of Castile. The Cortes of Valla- dolid, foolish as it was in other respects, was right in remonstrating against those pragmaticas. Mr. Prcscott mentions several causes which contributed to increase the royal power at the expense of the peo- ple: the control of the military and ecclesiastical or- ders, the pensions and large domains, the fortified places, the rights of seigneurial jurisdiction, the in- crease of power over the Moors, the acquisition of ter- ritory in Italy and the discovery of a new continent ; but he omits the one cause which gave force to all these, the selfish disposition that counted political power as a right, which the monarch might use for her own advantage, not a trust which she must administer by the rules of justice, and for the good of all her subjects. This was the cause which enfeebled the peo- ple after it had broken their noble tyrants to pieces. The rights of the people were continually abridged. In 1495 the nobles and the representatives of the cities complained that the people were without arms. Mr. Prescott thinks this fact a proof that they were in a fortunate condition, not remembering that in such an age an armed people was what the Constitution is to America ; what the British Parliament and acknowl- edged law are to England, the one great barrier against the incursions of the crown. She found the people burthcned with an odious tax, imposed for a temporary emergency, and continued through the in- ertia of the Cortes and the tyranny of the crown. Isabella had conscientious scruples about this tax, but continued it. Monopolies were established by this queen, who is represented as so far before her time; goods must not be shipped in foreign vessels when a

gl6 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Spanish bottom could be had ; no vessel must be sold to a foreigner, even horses were not allowed to be ex- ported, gold and silver must not be sent out of Spain on pain of death. Yet when she forbade the exporta- tion thereof by her commercial policy, by sumptuary laws she forbade their use at home. There are four things which will long continue as the indelible monu- ments of her reign ; the establishment of the Inquisi- tion for the torture and murder of her subjects, the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors, the enslaving of the Indians in America, and the establishment of Negro Slavery there. With this we leave her and her memory, to speak on the general form and style of this work.

It is no part of our plan to criticise the account of civil and military transactions ; but so far as we have examined his authorities, Mr. Prescott is remarkably accurate. Some errors will always escape the vigi- lance of an author, in this case they are rare and un- important. The whole work is divided into three por- tions ; an Introduction, a History of the Domestic Policy of Ferdinand and Isabella, and a History of their Foreign Policy, their Discoveries and Conquests. The main division is a good one, the minuter division into chapters is judicious, and the chapters well ar- ranged. In separate chapters the author treats of various subjects, so as not to confuse the reader. But we notice several defects in the matter and style of the work. There is no description of the large towns ; no account of their history, the growth or decline of their population, of their relation to the villages and hamlets, of the political tendencies of their inhabitants. A brief description of Madrid, Toledo, and Seville, of Barcelona and Valencia, would be of great value to

PRESCOTT 217

one who wished to understand the age; the materials for this are not wanting.

Again, his portraits of distinguished men are not good ; they often lack distinctness and specific char- acter. We have a right to demand a careful analysis of the character of such men as Columbus, Gonsalvo, and Ximenes ; an historian never does his duty com- pletely until he gives us a picture of each prominent man of the times he describes. Portraits of men like Torquemada, Fonseca, Carillo, and Mendoza, the Archbishops of Toledo and Seville, of Bayard and Foix, of the monarchs of those times, and of the other eminent foreigners who come upon the stage, ought to have a place in a work like this.

The author does not present himself to his readers as a philosopher who knows man scientifically, and therefore has an a 'priori knowledge of men ; nor does he appear as a man of the world, who knows men by a wide practical acquaintance with them. In conse- quence of this twofold defect the reader finds neither the careful judgment of the philosopher or the prac- tical judgment of the man of affairs. Both of these defects appear frequently in this work ; for example, in his general review of the administration of Fer- dinand and Isabella, which is not written in the spirit of the statesman, or the spirit of the philosopher, but of an amiable gentleman of letters filled with the sjjirit of chivalry.

The book lacks philosophy to a degree exceeding belief. The author seems to know nothing of the philosophy of history, and little, even, of political economy. He narrates events in their order of time with considerable skill, but the causes of the events, their place in the general history of the race, or their

218 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

influence in special on the welfare of the nation, he does not appreciate. He tells the fact for the fact's sake. Hence there are no pages in the book, perhaps no sentences, which the reader turns back to read a second time, to see if the thought be true; here are the facts of history without the thought which belongs to the facts. It would be difficult to find a history in the English language of any note, so entirely desti- tute of philosophy. Accordingly, the work is dull and inanimate ; the reading thereof tiresome and not profitable. Thus lacking philosophy, and having more of the spirit of chivalry than of humanity, it is impossible that he should write in the interest of mankind or judge men and their deeds by justice, by the immutable law of the universe. After long and patient study of his special theme, Mr. Prescott writes with the average sense of mankind, with their average of conscience, and his judgment, the average judgment of a trading town, is readily accepted by the average of men, and popular with them ; but he writes as one with little sympathy for mankind, and seems to think that Spain belonged to Ferdinand and Isabella, that their power was a right and not a trust, and they not accountable for the guardianship which they exercised over their subjects. The style of the work is plain, unambitious, and easily intelligible. The language, the figures of speech, the logic, and the rhetoric are commonplace; like the judgment of the author, they indicate no originality, and do not bear the stamp of his character. There is a certain mannerism about them, but it is not the mannerism of Mr. Prescott, only of the class of well-bred men. His metaphors, which usually mark the man, are common- place and poor ; rarely original or beautiful. Here

PRESCOTT 219

are some examples : To " spread like wildfire ; " to act *' like desperate gamblers ; " to run " like so many frighted deer ; " to extend " like an army of locusts ; " to be " like a garden." He calls womankind " the sex ; " not a very elegant or agreeable title. There is a slight tendency to excess in his use of epithets ; sometimes he insinuates an opinion which he does not broadly assert, rhetorically understanding the truth. In his style there is little to attract, nothing to repel, nothing even to offend ; he is never tawdry, seldom extravagant, never ill-natured. If he finds an author in error, he takes no pleasure in pointing out the mis- take. Everywhere he displays the marks of a well- bred gentleman of letters ; this is more than can be said of the reviewer we have alluded to before. After long study of this work we take leave of the author with an abiding impression of a careful scholar, dili- gent and laborious ; an amiable man, who respects the feelings of his fellows, and would pass gently over their failings ; a courteous and accomplished gentle- man, who after long toil, has unexpectedly found that toil repaid with money and with honors, and wears the honors with the same modesty in which they have been won.

V PRESCOTT'S CONQUEST OF MEXICO

After Mr. Prescott had finished his History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella several important subjects seemed naturally to claim his attention ; these were the Discovery of America, and the Reign of Charles V. But the first of these had already been described by the graceful pen of Mr. Irving, adorn- ing what it touches ; the second had been treated by Dr. Robertson in a work of great though declining celebrity, and rendered attractive by a pleasing style, which often conceals the superficiality of the author's research, the shallowness of his pohtical philosophy, and the inhumanity of his conclusions. Few men would wish to enter the literary career and run the race with such distinguished rivals. A broader field yet re- mained, more interesting to the philosopher and the lover of mankind ; namely, the Conquest and Coloniza- tion of America by the Spaniards. On this theme Mr. Prescott has written two independent works of wide popularity. Of the first of those we now propose to speak, only premising what we said before in respect to the office and duty of an historian.

The new world was discovered in the reign of Fer- dinand and Isabella ; its islands and continents, though not for the first time, laid open to the eye of civilized Europe. The greater part of America was found to be thinly peopled b^^ a single race of men, different in many respects from the inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere. A large part of the new world was in-

220

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 221

habited by tribes, not only not civilized, but not even barbarous; the nations were eminently savage, though most of them Were far removed from the lowest stage of human life, still represented by the Esquimaux, the New-Hollanders and the Bushmen of South Africa. The French, the English, and the Dutch, in their North American settlements, came in contact with the barbarous portion of the nations, who had a little agriculture, it is true, but subsisted chiefly on the spontaneous products of the forest and the flood. But some tribes had advanced far beyond this state, some had ceased to be barbarous. There was an in- digenous and original civilization in America. At- tempts have often been made to trace this civilization to the old world, to connect it now with the Tyrians, now with the Egyptians, and then with the Hebrews or roving Tartars. Sometimes the attempt has been guided by philology, which makes language the basis of comparison ; sometimes by physiology, and scien- tific men have sought in the bodies of the red Ameri- cans to discover some trace of the stock they sprung from ; sometimes by theology, which seeks the affinity indicated by kindred fonns of religion. But com- monly inquirers have started with the theological prej- udice that all men are descended from the single primitive pair mentioned in the Hebrew myth, and have bent philology, physiology, and theology to con- form to their gratuitous assumption. Hitherto these attempts have been in vain. Even the lamented Mr. Prichard,^ who had this theological prejudice In the heroic degree, — small for an English theologian, in- deed, but great for a philosopher, as he certainly was, a prejudice which appears throughout his researches into the physical history of mankind, — fails to con-

222 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

nect the American civilization with that of any other race. We therefore take it for granted, in the present stage of the inquiry, that it was original and indigenous. Geologists inform us that the western continent appears older than the eastern. If it be so, perhaps the American aborgines are the oldest race now in existence, and may look down on the bearded and pale Caucasians as upstarts in the world. If this be true, the red man has not advanced so rapidly in civilization as the white ; this seems owing to the in- ferior organization of the former, and also to the ab- sence of swine, sheep, horses, oxen, and large animals capable of being tamed, which in the eastern con- tinent have so powerfully aided the progress of civ- ilization. The man who would tame the sheep and the ox must tame also himself. The domestication of ani- mals, those living machines of an earlier age, once promoted the progress of civilization as much as the invention of machinery at this day. The camel, the ship of the desert, and the steamboat, the ship of the sea, have each something to do in ferrying man out of barbarism.

After the discovery of America, the Spaniard soon came in contact with the more advanced tribes of red men, contended with and overcame them, partly in vir- tue of his superior development, but partly also through the aboriginal and organic superiority which marks the Caucasian race in all historical stages of their progress, and appears in every conflict with any kindred race. This indigenous American civilization had two centres, or mother-cities, mainly independent of one another, if not entirely so, Mexico and Peru. The chief seats thereof were soon reached by the Span- iards and conquered, the advanced tribes reduced to

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 223

subjection, to slavery or to death. The European brought there two things, wholly unheard of before — the doctrines of Christianity and a sword of steel, each thought to be the ally of the other in the conqueror's hand.

Here is a theme more important, and therefore more profoundly interesting, than the Lives of Columbus and his followers, or the Reign of Charles V, though both of those bring great events before the thinker's eye ; — certainly the biography of Columbus, of Amerigo, Cabot, and Verrazzani, would offer an at- tractive field to a thinking man. A philosophic his- torian would delight in a land newly discovered. Its geography, botany, and zoology were all new to the eastern world ; there were tribes unheard of before, with a peculiar physical structure, language, litera- ture, manners, arts, laws, institutions, and forms of re- ligion unlike the old. It were a noble task for the naturalist to describe this virgin America as she ap- peared in the fifteenth century, when she first stood un- veiled before the European eye.

In ages before the historical period the Caucasian race had taken possession of the fairest portions of the ancient world. Now, for the first time during many ages, on a grand scale it encounters another race. For the first time in human history the white man and the red man fairly meet. These two families, so dissimilar in natural character, so unlike in their development, now join in war, in wedlock, and at length mingle in political union. Ethnographers of this day somewhat obscurely maintain that the min- gling of tribes, if not races, is an essential condition of progress. It would be instructive to pause over the facts, and consider what influence in this case each

224 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

race has had on the other, and their union on the world. Never before in the historical age had two races thus met, nor two independent civilizations, with modes of religion, so dissimilar, thus come together. In the great wars which the classic nations engaged in the two parties were commonly of the same stock. Even in the expeditions of Sesostris, of Xerxes, and of Alexander, it was Caucasian that met Caucasian. The same is true, perhaps in its full extent, of the expeditions of Hannibal and of the Moors. In all the wars from that of Troy to the Crusades, the heroes on both sides were of the same stock. The nations that we meet in history, from Thule to the " fabulous Hydaspes," all are Caucasians — differing indeed in development and specific character, but alike in their great, general peculiarities. Other races appear only in the background of history, among the classic, the Semitic, or the East-Indian nations ; but seldom even there, and not as actors in the great drama of human civilization.

The Spanish colonies afford the best known example of the mingling of men of different races. The Anglo-Saxon is eminently Caucasian ; he also met the red men. But the Saxon, though like other conquer- ors forgetting his dignity in loose armors, will not mix his proud blood in stable wedlock with another race. There seems a national antipathy to such unions with the black, or even the red, or yellow races of men — an antipathy almost peculiar tO' this re- markable tribe, the exterminator of other races. In New England more pains were taken than elsewhere in America to spare, to civilize, and to convert the sons of the wilderness ; but yet here the distinction of race was always sharply observed. Even community

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 225

of religion and liturgical rites, elsewhere so powerful a bond of union, was unable to soften the English- man's repugnance to the Indian. The Puritan hoped to meet the Pequods in heaven, but wished to keep apart from them on earth, nay, to exterminate them from the land. Besides, the English met with no civilized tribe in America, and for them to unite in wedlock with such children of the forest as they found in North America would have been contrary not only to the Anglo-Saxon prejudice of race, but to the gen- eral usage of the world — a usage to which even the French in Canada afford but a trifling exception. The Spaniards had less of this exclusivencss of race, per- haps none at all. They met with civilized tribes of red men, met and mingled in honorable and permanent connection. In Peru and Mexico, at this day, there are few men of pure Spanish blood.

All the historical forms of religion which have pre- vailed in Europe, and the parts of Asia inhabited by the Caucasians, seem to have sprung from a common stock. Perhaps this is not true, but at least their re- semblances may often be accounted for by reference to some actual union, to their historical genealogy, not wholly by reference to human nature ; their agreement is specific, not merely generic. But the forms of re- ligion that prevailed in America seem to have no his- torical element in common with those of the eastern world. When they agree, as they often do, and in their most important features, the agreement is gen- eric, referable to the identity of human nature acting under similar conditions ; it is not specific, or to be ex- plained by reference to history, to community of tra- dition. It is the same human nature which appears

in all races, and accordingly many, especially re- 11—15

226 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ligious, institutions have a marked likeness all over the world; but the individual peculiarity of each race appears also in those institutions. The civilization of the Caucasian tribes in the eastern world, powerfully affected by their religious institutions, seems to have ben propagated by offsets and cuttings from some primeval tree, and only modified by circumstances and degrees of development ; so there is an historical ele- ment common to all those nations. It appears in their manners, dress, and military weapons ; in their agri- culture, from the east to the west, where the same staple articles of culture appear, and the same animals — the cereal grasses, the sheep, the goat, the swine, the horse, and the ox ; in their arts, useful and beauti- ful; in their politics, their morals, their forms of re- ligion ; in their literature, and even in the structure of their language itself, so deep-rooted is the idiosyn- crasy of race. In America, to judge from the present state of ethnographic investigation, it seems that an- other seed, independent and likewise aboriginal, got planted, came up, grew, and bore fruit after its kind. This also was propagated by cuttings and offsets, so to say ; its descendants had spread from the land of the Esquimaux to Patagonia. Here, as in the other hemisphere, the race became specifically modified by external circumstances, and the degree of development. Still there is a generic element common to all the tribes of America, running through their civilization, and apparent in their institutions. The idiosyncracy of race appears here also, conspicuous and powerful as there.

This diversity of race and the analogous difference between the two civilizations, brought into such close connection, renders the history of the Spanish settle-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO S^T

ments in America exceedingly interesting to a philo- sophical inquirer ; the English colonies are interesting on account of the ideas they brought hither and de- veloped, and the influence those ideas have had on the world ; the Spanish settlements are chiefly interesting on account of the facts they bring to light. Under these circumstances it becomes the huty of the histo- rian, who will write a book worthy of his theme, to note the effect of this mingling of races and of civilizations ; he is not merely to tell who was killed, and who wounded, on which side of the river each one fought, and how deep the water was between them, or how bloody it ran ; he is to describe the civilization of the nations, giving, however briefly, all the important fea- tures thereof, and then show the eff^ect of the meeting of the two.

]\Iore than three centuries have passed by since the Mexican conquest was complete. During that time great revolutions have taken place in the world, — theological, political, and social. A great progress has been made in the arts, in science, in morals and religion, — in the subjective development thereof as piety, the objective application to life in the form of practical morality. But the Spanish-Americans have but a small share in that progress ; they seem to have done nothing to promote it. They have not kept pace with the Anglo-American colonies, not even with the French. It is pretty clear that the population of Spanish North America — continental and insular — ■ is less numerous now than when Columbus first crossed the sea. The condition of the Americans in many re- spects is improved. Still it may be reasonably doubted if the population of INIexico is happier to-day than four hundred years ago. What is the cause of

228 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

this ; have the two races been weakened by their union, were the Mexicans incapable of further advance, or were the Spaniards unable to aid them? The Europeans gave the Indian most valuable material helps to civilization — cattle, swine, sheep, goats, asses, horses, oxen, the cereal grasses of the East, iron and gunpowder ; ideal helps also in the doctrines of Christianity ; — the machinery of the old world. In another work, INIr. Prescott declares the Moorish civili- zation incapable of continuing, as it had in its bosom the causes of its ruin. Is the same thing true of the Spanish civilization? Surely it cannot stand before the slow, strong, steady wave of the Anglo-Saxon tide, which seems destined ere long to sweep it off, or hide it in its own ample bosom. The consequence is always in the cause, there but hidden. The historian of the conquest of Mexico, writing so long after the events he chronicles, while those consequences are patent to all the world, might describe to us the cause; nay, the history is not adequately written until this is done. Without this, a work is history without its meaning, without philosophy. We must complain of Mr. Pres- cott's work, in general, that he has omitted this its most important part. True, he was only writing of the conquest of the country and the immediate coloni- zation ; but this is not adequately described until the other work is done.

Not only has Mr. Prescott an attractive theme- — • obvious facts and glittering deeds, to attract all men and satisfy the superficial, and larger, more general facts of a profound significance, to pause upon and explain ; but the materials for his work are abundant. There are the narratives of men personally engaged in the expeditions they write of, men like Bernal Diaz

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 229

and Gomara ; official documents like the letters of Cortes ; early histories, as that of Solfs ; works on the antiquities of Mexico, like that of Clavigero, and the magnificent volumes published by Lord Kingsborough. Then there are works written by men themselves descended from the IMcxicans. In addition to printed volumes, Mr. Prescott has richly supplied himself with such manuscript treasures of Spanish history as few American eyes ever behold. He has at his command about eight thousand folio pages of the work of Las Casas, Ixtlilxochitl, Toribio, Camarge, Oviedo, and otliers. Public and private collections abroad have been opened to him with just and scholarlike liberality.

If we divide Mr. Prescott's work according to its substance, it consists of three parts : — the first relates to Mexico, its inhabitants and their civilization ; the second to the conquest of Mexico; and the third to the subsequent career of Cortes. In respect of its form, the volumes are divided into seven books, treat- ing respectively of the Axtec civilization, of the dis- covery of Mexico, the march thither, the residence there, the expulsion thence, the siege and surrender of the city, and the subsequent career of Cortes. A valuable appendix is added, and a copious index, the latter quite too uncommon in American books.

This history has been so much admired, so widely cir- culated in America and Europe, and so abundantly read, that, as in the former article, we shall take it for granted that our readers are familiar with the work, and spare them our analysis thereof. We shall also presuppose that the well-informed reader is sufficiently familiar with the writings of Diaz and Soli's, with tlie printed works of Las Casas, with Clavigero, Hcrrera, and the original accounts published at Madrid, a

230 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

hundred years ago, in the collection of " Historiadores primitivos."

We now propose to examine this history of the con- quest of Mexico somewhat in detail, and to say a word of each of the three grand divisions of the subject. We will speak first of the civilization of the Aztecs. Mr. Prescott's account of the geography of Mexico, with his description of the country, is attractive and graphic. It seems to be sufficient ; we only regret the absence of a more extended map. With only the or- dinary maps the reader is often puzzled in trying to make out the exact position of a place, and accord- ingly he cannot always understand the account of a batttle or the description of a march. The two small maps are of great service, and were prepared with much care, but are not adequate to render all parts of the text intelligible ; thus Itztapalapan is said to stand " on a narrow tongue of land which divides the waters of the great salt lake from those of the fresh," Avhile on the map no such narrow tongue exists, and the reader must seek it in Clavigero or elsewhere. But this is a trifle.

In Mexico Mr. Prescott finds four important tribes or " races." The most conspicuous of these are the Toltecs, who came from the North before the end of the seventh century, and in the eleventh century " dis- appeared from the land as silently and mysteriously as they had entered it ; " the Chichemecs, a numerous and rude tribe who came from the North-west in the twelfth century, and were soon " followed by other races of higher civilization, perhaps of the same family with the Toltecs ; " the most noted of these tribes were the Aztecs or Mexicans, and the Acolhuans or Tezcu- cans. The civilization of the Toltecs was communi-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 231

cated to the Tezcucans, and by them to the Chiche- mecs.

Of these four tribes — Toltecs, Chichemecs, Tezcu- cans, and Aztecs — the latter have become the most celebrated. They are the Mexicans, and by that name we shall designate them in what follows. After en- countering various fortunes in the land, they came to the valley of Mexico in the year 1325, A.D., according to Mr. Prescott, where they subsequently built Ten- ochtitlan, the city of Mexico. The Mexicans were a warlike people, and in less than two centuries their empire extended from shore to shore. This rapid en- largement of their power proves the martial vigor of the tribe, and their skill in forming political organi- zations, though ]Mr. Prescott seems to doubt their political ability. But as the Mexican empire was composed of several nations recently conquered and united almost entirely by external force, it is plain it contained heterogeneous elements which might easily be separated. Like the old Roman and all other states thus formed, it was a piece of carpentry, artificially held together by outward circumstances, not a regular growth, where the branch grows out of the bole, that out of the root, and all are united by a central prin- ciple and partake of a common origin and history.

Mr. Prescott devotes four chapters to the civilization of Mexico, and one to Tezcuco. His materials are derived chiefly from Torqucmada, Clavigcro, Sahagun, Gama, the works which have appeared in France and England on the antiquities of Mexico, the writings of Boturini and Ixtlilxochitl. Of these authors Clavigero is the best known to general readers. Not- withstanding the advantage which Mr. Prescott has in coming sixty years after the work of Clavigero

g32 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

was published, we must confess that on the whole the earlier writer has given the more satisfactory account of the matter. It is true, Clavigero had space to be minute and curious in particulars, — for nearly two of his four quarto volumes are devoted to the subject, but his general arrangement is better, though by no means perfect or philosophical, — following an inward principle, — and his account of the Mexican institu- tions is on the whole more distinct as well as more com- plete. Yet in some details Mr. Prescott surpasses his predecessor.

Mr. Prescott gives an account, sufficiently lucid, of what may be called the Constitution of Mexico; he speaks intelligently of the royal power, which was both legislative and executive. He gives a good descrip- tion of the judicial power, certainly a very remarka- ble institution for such a nation, and in many respects a very wise one. But his account of the nobles, of their power and position, is meagre and unsatisfac- tory. He does not tell us how the distinction of no- bility was obtained.

What he says of the penal laws is still less satis- factory, or complete. The only punishments he men- tions are death, slavery, reduction of rank, and confis- cation of property. Clavigero adds confinement in prison and banishment from the country. Prisons as houses of punishment generally indicate a higher civil- ization than the penalty of death, or exile.

Clavigero has given the fuller and more satisfactory account of the Mexican system of slavery. He men- tions also one important provision of the penal law omitted by Mr, Prescott, that kidnapping was pun- ished with death.

Mr. Prescott's account of the manner of collecting

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 233

the revenue is full and clear. The same must be said of his account of the military establishment of Mex- ico. Still the reader would be glad to know whether the soldiers were volunteers or conscripts, how they were fed, and, when succussful in war, what share of the booty belonged to them. Clavigero mentions a significant fact, that there were three military orders, called Princes, Eagles, and Tigers (Achautin, Quauh- tin, and Ocolo). Since the two last are titles of hon- our, as well as the first, they furnish an important monument of the ferocity of the nation.

The civilization of the Mexicans has been sometimes exalted above its merit; still it is plain they had at- tained a pretty high degree of culture. Yet it dif- fered in many respects from that of the eastern na- tions : it was a civilization without the cei'eal grasses ; without wine, milk or honey ; without swine, sheep, or goats ; without the horse or the ass, or any beast of burthen ; civilization without iron. Mexico seems to have been the centre of refinement for all North Amer- ica. Agriculture, one of the earliest arts, seems to have traveled northward ; the three great staples thereof among the natives of North America in the temperate zone — maize, beans, and various species of the pumpkin or squash — had journeyed from the Gulf of Mexico to the Bay of Fundy, and extended in- land to the Rocky Mountains, covering a great extent of country where they were not indigenous, and could not exist but for the care of man.

In Mexico, the fundamental law or constitution was fixed and well understood. The monarchy was elec- tive ; though, by law or custom, the choice must be made from a certain family, still the chief was chosen for his personal qualities. INIontczuma was distin-

234 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

guished as a soldier and a priest — compatible titles in many a land not otherwise very barbarous — before he was elected king. Throughout North America there seems to have been a general custom of choosing the ruler among the nephews rather than among the sons of the former chief.

The judicial power was carefully separated from the executive. The judges were appointed by the king or chosen by the people, and held their office for life or during good behavior. The laws seem to have been well administered. Property was so secure that bolts and bars were not needed. Life, liberty, and the honor of women were carefully guarded, and seem to have been more secure than in Scotland at the same time. Lands were held in severalty and by a certain tenure. Almost all men held real estate in their own right. In the most densely peopled regions there was little land not improved ; far less than at the present day, as we judge. The law of descent was fixed, and well understood. The right of testament was uni- versal.

Historians tell us that the laws were written, and published to the people. We think they exaggerate the extent of a written law, and the power of the Mex- icans to record laws with their imperfect mode of writ- ing. Perhaps Mr. Prescott with others has fallen into a slight error in this particular, though we do not say this with much confidence.

Slavery prevailed in a mild form. Men became slaves by judicial sentence, as a punishment for crime, by selling themselves, or from being sold by their par- ents. The slave could hold property, real or personal, and devise it to whom he would ; he could own other slaves. This was not a privilege which the master

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 235

might revoke, but a right at common law. The slave's life was, theoretically, sacred as the free man's. His children were all free. Nobility was hereditary, while slavery was merely a personal affair, and did not at- taint the blood. Indeed, the slave was only a vassal, bound to render certain services to his feudal lord. This fact shows that the nation had emerged from that state where man is so lazy that only the slave can be made to endure continuous toil, and where Slavery is the chief handmaid of Industry.

The penal laws were severe ; capital offences were numerous. Theft was punished with death, as it was until lately in England, if the property stolen exceeded five shillings in value. Imprisonment, fine, exile, and social degradation were legal punishments for certain crimes. The revenues of the nation were collected in a regular and constant form. As in most despotic countries, the taxes were enormous ; but there seems no reason for supposing that they were so excessive as they have been for many years in the kingdom of Naples ; perhaps they were not proportionately so great as in England at this day. Some of the nobles were exempt from taxation, but we know not whether this exemption was the reward of some extraordinary service, or, as in France before the Revolution, came purely from the selfishness of that class who had the power to withdraw their necks from the common yoke.

War was conducted in a systematic manner ; regu- larly declared and commenced in a formal style. The arts of diplomacy were well known, and the rights of ambassadors respected. The military code was min- ute in its provisions. The arms of the Mexicans were well made and destructive. They used shields of wood, and body armour of quilted cotton. They had

236 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

embattled fortifications of stone, well situated and con- structed with skill. There were military hospitals for the sick and wounded soldier — institutions unknown to the Eastern world till long after the time of Christ ; hospitals better than the Spanish, and supplied with surgeons more faithful.

Their cities were numerous and large, supplied with water by aqueducts. There were many towns contain- ing thirty thousand inhabitants ; the capital contained at least three hundred thousand. In his second official letter, Cortes says that Tlascala was larger and much stronger than Granada when taken from the Moors ; that it had more fine houses, and was better supplied with provisions. Thirty thousand persons were daily in its markets, to buy and sell. He says the exterior aspect of Cholula is more beautiful than any town in Spain. From a single temple (Mezquita) he counted four hundred other temples with towers. Houses were built of wood, of sun-dried bricks, and of stone. While in Spain labor was a disgrace, in Mexico it was held in honor. The calling of a merchant was honorable, and he sometimes rose to distinction in the state, a very remarkable circumstance in a nation so warlike. Trading in slaves seems tO' have been as respectable among the Catos of Mexico as of Rome. Agriculture was held in high and deserved esteem. The harder work in the fields was performed by the men ; only the light work fell to the lot of women. Great pains were taken with the cultivation of flowers, ornamental gar- dening was better understood in Mexico than in Eu- rope. In some places the land was artificially watered, as among the Moors in Spain. There were floating gardens on the lake of Mexico. In the large cities there were public gardens of great extent and beauty.

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 237

Yet, though blessed with maize and potatoes, the Mex- icans lacked the valuable staples of Eastern agricul- ture — the more useful grains, the vine, and the olive ; they had no aid from the ox or the horse, not even from the humbler servant of the plough, the ass.

The mechanics wrought with adroitness and good taste, in wood, in stone, and in feather-work. Their earthern ware, says Cortes, was equal to the best in Spain. Cotton was manufactured and dyed with taste and skill. Gold and silver were abundant, and wrought with a dexterity which rivalled the best works of Venice and Seville, astonishing the artists of Eu- rope. They used also copper, lead, and tin. It has been said — we doubt if correctly — that they did not know the power of fire to render metals more pliant under the hammer. Iron was unknown, in its place their cutting instruments were made of obsidian (itzli), a stone which takes a keen edge, though it is easily blunted. For money they used gold-dust, bits of tin, and bags of cacao.

The public roads excited the admiration of the Spaniards, and were probably better than they left at home. Runners went with such speed that despatches were carried one or two hundred miles in a day. Buildings were erected along the road side for their accommodation. Indeed, couriers went with such rapidity that fish were caught in the Gulf of Mexico, and in twenty-four hours were two hundred miles off, in the kitchen of Montezuma.

There were botanic gardens in several IMexican cit- ies, where the plants were scientifically arranged. Cor- tes mentions one two leagues in circumference; it con- tained an aviary, for Mexico is the country of birds, as Africa of beasts, and basins stocked with numerous

238 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

varieties of fish. At that time such gardens were un- known in Europe.

The Mexicans had attained a considerable pro- ficiency in science. They had a pccuHar system of notation, counting by scores and not by tens, — first they took the five digits of one hand, then of the next, and in Hke manner the ten digits of the feet. They had made a measurement of the year more exact than that of the Greeks and Romans. Their week con- sisted of five days ; four weeks, or twenty days, made a month. There were eighteen months in the year, and then five days were intercalated that belonged to no month. Thus their common civil year consisted of three hundred and sixty-five days. But in every one hundred and four years, it is said, they intercalated twenty-five days which belonged to no year. Thus their calendar was exceedingly exact, and in many years there would be no important difference between actual and calculated time. Their day was divided into sixteen hours ; they had sundials for time-pieces ; they understood the causes of an eclipse, and knew the periods of the solstices and the equinoxes.

Women shared in social festivities with the men. Polygamy was allowed, as throughout all North Amer- ica, and as with the Hebrews before Christ ; wealthy men, and especially kings, had many wives ; yet the custom seems limited to such, as indeed it must have been everywhere.

The languages of the various nations of ]\Iexico were remarkable for that peculiarity called agglutina- tion by philologists, which characterizes all the dialects of America, with perhaps, but a single exception, and forms the linguistic distinction of the American race. Their language was copious, regular and comprehen-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 239

sive. The Mexicans had a rude mode of writing, by pictures and symbols, which enabled them to record events, to transmit and preserve information. By means of this help they recorded their laws, their ju- dicial transactions, and wrote their civil history. They wrote poetry in the same manner. We would speak with becoming diffidence in this matter, which we cer- tainly have not been able to investigate to our own sat- isfaction, and modestly express our fear that the art of writing among the Mexicans has been a good deal overrated. We doubt that an ordinary poem could be recorded in Mexican characters. Still, this art of writing seems to have been more perfect than the Egyptian in the time of the pyramids, as indeed their language was more copious and better developed, tliough greatly inferior to that of the Chinese.

There were schools for the education of the children. Elderly women, serving also as priestesses, took charge of the girls ; the priests instructed the boys. The former learned various feminine employments, were taught to be modest, and to pay " entire obedience and respect to their husbands." Boys were taught to work and to fight ; they were instructed in the art of writ- ing; they learned the traditionary lore of their coun- try, and studied such sciences as the Mexican knew ; they learned the principles of government, and were taught to hate vice and love virtue — to practice the duties of natural religion. To this, of course, was added an acquaintance with the national mythology and the rites of the popular worship. This education was no doubt rude, and limited to a comparatively small portion of the people. There was a general Board of Education, called the Council of Music. All this, we suspect, is a good deal more complete on paper

240 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

than it was in fact ; but Diaz informs us that Monte- zuma intended to keep some of the Spandiards, whom he hoped to conquer, for schoolmasters, and employ them in teaching the people.

In their religion the Mexicans were polytheists. It is not easy to get at the facts respecting this matter, for the authors we depend upon seem unconsciously to have lent a coloring to what they describe, and much of the Christian tradition or doctrine has got mingled with the opinions of the natives. But it is said that they believed in one supreme Creator; they addressed him as " the God by whom we live ;" " invisible, in- corporeal, one God, of perfect perfection and purity ;" " under whose wing we find repose and a sure defence." There were other gods beside him ; the most popular was their God of War, for the Mexicans were a ferocious people, and this peculiarity appears also in their mode of religion. In common with almost every nation of the earth, and perhaps with all, they believed in the immortality of the soul and the doctrine of fu- ture retribution. In the Mexican heaven there were two degrees of happiness, of which the warrior had the higher. The Roman poet had got beyond this. There were three degrees of punishment in hell. " Eternal damnation," it has been said, " is not learned by the mere light of nature, but is one of the truths of revelation ;" so we suppose the Mexicans were in- debted to their Spanish conquerors for this article of the creed. The priests were a distinct class, numerous and respected, and, as in nearly all countries, the best educated class. They served God with an abundance of forms, rites, ceremonies, fasts, and mortifications of the flesh, — according to Mr. Prescott's quotation, " In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell."

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 241

However, in this respect their conquerors taught them many devices which the simple Mexicans did not know before. The Mexicans do not appear to have practiced any ritual mutilation of the body as the Hebrews and Mahometans do to this day. The priesthood was not hereditary, or even heritable, as it seems. It did not necessarily last for life. There was only a mova- ble priesthood, not a caste perpetuating its traditions and its rites in a single family from age to age. The chief priest was elected, though it does not appear by whom. Some elderly women served as priestesses. The Mexicans had some rites which strangely resembled the Christian : — they baptized their children by sprin- kling; the priests heard confession and gave absolu- tion from sin, and, what is remarkable, this absolu- tion not only was thought to save a man from future torment, but actually held good and gave deliverance in a court of justice on earth. There was a Mexican goddess, Cioacoatl was her name, whe seems closely re- lated to mother Eve ; she was " the first goddess who brought forth ;" she " bequeathed the sufferings of childbirth to women ;" and by her " sin came into the world." There was also a Mexican Noah, Coxcox, who survived a deluge, and has often been taken for the mythical patriarch of the Hebrew legend.

There is much that is revolting in the worship of savage nations ; some of the disgusting features thereof remain long after civilization has swept away civil and social monstrosities. The most hideous thing con- nected with the Mexican worship was the sacrifice of human beings. Human sacrifices have been common with all nations at certain stages of their development. The custom was well known among the Greeks and

Romans ; the story of Abraham is a lasting monu- 11—16

242 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ment of its existence among the Hebrews. But in no country did this abomination prevail to so great a de- gree. To render the ghastly sacrifice still worse, the worshippers devoured the flesh of the victims. Can- nibalism was solemnly practiced throughout Mexico. Human blood was the holiest sacrament. The number of victims is variously stated ; one authority mentions more than eighty thousand in a single day, an extraor- dinary occasion ; others but fifty in a year, the esti- mate of Las Casas. Mr. Prescott thinks it safe to admit that thousands were sacrificed each year. Diaz declares that there must have been more than a hun- dred thousand skulls of these victims in a single place, and Gomara relates that two companions of Cortes counted one hundred and thirty-six thousand in a single edifice. No' apology can be attempted for such an abomination ; but the same thing is called by different names in different places. Li thirty-five years King Henry VIII. put to death seventy-two thousand of his subjects by the hands of the public executioner; many thousand Moors were butchered by the Spanish soldiers, after resistance was over, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella ; a great number were put to death with more terrible torments by the most holy court of the Inquisition. A Mexican would write that all these were sacrificed to God. Human sacri- fices in Mexico excited the just horror of Cortes and his companions, while the butcheries in Spain perhaps did not disturb them at all. Few things can be conceived of more abhorrent than the human sacrifices and can- nibalism of the Mexicans: their civilization deprived them of the excuse which shelters the Fiji and New Zealander. Yet these men-slaughterers endeavored to mitigate the sufferings of their victims. Mr. Pres-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 243

cott shows a just and hearty horror of this unnatural mode of worship. But one of their gods, Quetzalcoatl, it is said, taught " a more spirituahzing rehgion, in which the only sacrifices were the fruits and flowers of the season."

We come next to the conquest of IVIexico by Cortes. He first heard the name of Montezuma about Easter, in 1519; on St. Hippolytus' day, August 12th, 1521, the Spaniards carried the capital by assault, and the Mexican empire lay at their disposal. Montezuma had died a captive ; Guatemozin, his successor, was in their lands. Yet Cortes invaded this powerful em- pire with but a handful of soldiers. When he left Cuba, February 10th, 1519, he had one hundred and ten mariners, five hundred and fifty-three soldiers, ten heavy guns, four falconets, and sixteen horses ; he had also about two hundred Indians. Two horses were subsequently added, and eighteen men ; fifteen men were sent away from the expedition, and there were other but inconsiderable losses. He actually began his march into Mexico with about four hundred foot and fifteen horse, and seven pieces of artillery, such as it was. At the same time, he had also thirteen hundred Indian worriors and one thousand Tamanes or porters, men of burthen. The number of Indians was soon in- creased to three thousand. When he first entered Mex- ico against the will of the vacillating monarch, his whole force was less than seven thousand men ; but four hundred of these were Spaniards. After he had been driven from the city, and had been reinforced by others of his countrymen who joined the expedition, when he reviewed his forces at Tezcuco, he had eighty- seven horse, eight hundred and eighteen foot, of whom one hundred and eight were arquebusiers and cross-

M4s THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

bowmen, three large field-pieces of iron, and fifteen smaller guns of brass.

Such were the forces with which Cortes invaded and finally conquered a country containing more inhabi- tants, to say the least, than the kingdom of Spain at that time, with the capital as large and populous as Seville and Cordova united, or twice as great as Milan. Certainly the most daring enterprise of an- cient times becomes tame in comparison with this. True, there were some circumstances which favored the enterprise. Had there been no dissensions in the Mexican empire, his attempt would have been in vain ; without his Indian allies he would soon have been cut off. Then he was aided by the superstition of the times. There Was a prophecy current among the Mexi- cans which Cortes was thought to fulfil. There was a story of Quetzalcoatl, a mythical person worshipped as a god ; he had taught the Mexicans agriculture, the use of metals, and the arts of government, and opposed human sacrifices which he could not prevent ; he had a fair complexion and a flowing beard, the patriarch of the golden age of Mexico ; he had left the country, embarking for Tlapallan, the Mexican Eden or Atlantis, but the prophecy said he would re- turn and resume the possession of the empire. The Mexican saw Cortes, and said : " This is Quetzalcoatl returned from Paradise." The Spaniards were " white gods." Montezuma himself seems to have shared this opinion. This " random shot of prophecy," as Mr. Prescott calls it, seems to have hit the mark, and pre- pared the nation for conquest.

Then the Spaniards were Caucasians, and had the organic superiority of tliat race ; besides, they were far In advance of the Mexicans in the art of war. They

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 245

had horses, steel, ships, gunpowder, muskets, and can- non ; they understood the value of concerted action, and of well-ordered movements on the field of battle; they had weapons of offence and defence far superior to those of their opponents. If Boston could be in- vaded by an army that should land at Provincetown, ascend in balloons, and from a single position recon- noitre the whole state of Massachusetts, and from the extremity of Cape Cod should bombard this city, lev- eling whole blocks of houses at a single shot; if they had swords which could pierce through a ploughshare as easily as silk or cotton cloth, and fire-arms which shot through the most solid walls of brick and stone as readily as a rifle-ball goes through a glass window ; if they had animals trained to war ten times larger than the elephant, as heavy as the largest locomotive ?team-engine, swifter than that, and more difficult to encounter — beasts of war that trod down horse, foot, and dragoons, trampling the artillery itself into the ground ; if, in addition to this, the invaders were clad in armour bullet-proof, were each stronger than ten common men, had a skill, a foresight, a daring, and a patient courage proportionate to their instruments of destruction, and a cruelty not inferior to their cour- age ; and if, still more, it was currently believed that the Book of Revelations had predicted that they should come and conquer the land ; if whole countries were ready to help the invaders, — then we should be con- fronted with foes which would bear about the same relation to us that the Spaniards bore to the Mexi- cans. Considering all these things, the success of the conquerors, marvellous as it appears, is less remarka- ble than the courage and patience with M'hich the Mexicans resisted the attack. Had the Spaniards

246 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

known the full extent of the difficulty, even the iron heart of Cortes must have failed him.

But we must ask, What right had the Spaniards to invade Mexico and possess themselves of its soil? Mr. Prescott examines this question in an unsatisfac- tory manner, and, we are sorry to say it, gives an un- just answer, but in accordance with the spirit in which his three historical works have been written. An un- prejudiced man must say the Spaniards had no claim to Mexico but that of the stout and well-armed high- wayman to the purse of the undefended traveler; the right of the pirate over the unprotected ship of the merchant. It is true, the Spanish monarch had a conveyance from the Pope, which in reality gave no better title and was worth no more than the compen- dious transfer offered by the tempter in the Bible — " all these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Neither Pope nor Satan could alienate and convey what he did not possess. We think it cannot be maintained in natural law that a savage tribe has a right to arrest civilization in any given spot, to keep a continent for a hunting-field dwelt in by a few wild beasts and wild men. It is commonly, per- haps universally, conceded that a nation has eminent domain over the lands of the individual, and allows him to hold them in individual severalty for his pri- vate welfare when not adverse to the general good of the state; even to bequeath them to his successor, sub- ject to the same condition. So the human race has em- inent domain over the lands of each particular nation, allowing it to hold in national severalty for the nation's welfare, when not adverse to the universal good of mankind. As there is a solidarity of the nation, so is there of the race, and rights and duties, national

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 247

or universal, thence accruing. But when the nation takes the lands of the individual, which he has a good natural title to, they must fully indemnify that in- dividual for his lands, else it is robbery ; and robbery by a nation, and for the sake of the greatest majority of its citizens, is no better in itself than if done by one man in his own name, — it is still robbery, spoliation contrary to natural law. The same holds good be- tween any one nation and mankind, between the sav- age and the civilized who may assume to represent the consciousness of mankind. This idea seems to have been in the mind of the settlers of New England ; if not in their mind, they acted as if it were. The pil- grim and the puritan knew that the naked savages of Massachusetts had no natural right adverse to the welfare of the human race, no right to keep the land a wilderness and shut civilization out of it forever; but they knew, also, that though the civilized man rep- resented the higher consciousness of mankind, and, so far as that went represented the human race, still he had no right, whatever necessity compelled him, to take from the savages, against their will, all that they had or anything that they had, without returning them a complete equivalent therefor. So these settlers of New England did not rely on the grant of the Eng- lish king for their title to the Indian land ; they bought it of the Indians, took a deed, recorded the transfer, and honestly paid for it — a small consider- ation, but enough to extinguish the title, and more than it was worth to the Indians themselves. But in New England no Indian owned land in severalty, more than wind and water, excepting the spot his wigwam cov- ered, and the little patch subjected to the rude til- lage of his wife. These were the only spots with

g48 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

which he had mixed up his labor. There was enough for all, and therefore personal and exclusive appro- priation had hardly begun. At the merest caprice, the Indian left his place to whomsoever might take it, and himself sought another — as free as the beaver or the wild-cat, who like him respected the appropria- tion of another. This tract belonged to the Narra- gansetts, that to the Pequods. There was appropria- tion by the tribe, not by the individual. The title of the Narragansetts was good as against the Pequads, or any other tribe, but each man of that tribe took any of the national lands not previously appropriated, as freely as he took the air and the water which was not in another man's mouth. The chief of the tribe seems to have acted as tinistee, and in that capacity gave his quitclaim deed to the chief of the white men, acting in behalf of the rest, and conveyed away the title of the tribe. The Indian parted with his land for a " good consideration," for " value received."

In Mexico the case was quite different. Almost all the valuable land was owned in severalty ; individuals had mixed their labor with the soil, owning it as much as they owned the fish-hook they had made, or the ear of corn they had grown ; owned it as completely as a man can own the soil. The Mexicans were a civilized people ; the lands in the valley of Mexico were as well cultivated as the lands in Granada, thf garden of Eu- rope; the natives had not stopped in their progress, as Mr. Prescott thinks the Moors had done in Spain, and their land therefore could not be claimed as a derelict of civilization ; on the contrary, they seem to have been in a state of rapid advance, as much so as the Spanish nation itself. The superior culture of the Spanish gave him no right to these lands without in-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 249

demnifying the individual owners, — no more than the Enghsh have to China, or the Dutch to Turkey ; no more than the New Englanders Avould have to seize Spain and Italy at this day. The Spaniard could not plead necessity, like the pilgrims, — ^poor, persecuted, and just escaped from the ocean, — who took a fish and some com in their extremity, when they landed on Cape Cod, and carefully paid for both when, months afterwards, they found the owners ! Oppres- sion never planted a single Spaniard in America. The Moors were not allowed to migrate thither, under the administration of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Span- iards did not attempt or pretend to buy a title to the land. Their claim was the claim of the pirate. It is true, the Pope as head of the human race, trustee for all mankind, and vicegerent of Almighty God, gave a title to America. Could Cortes and the others hold under that? Mr. Prescott tliinks they could satisfy their own consciences in that way and though the conveyance were worthless in itself, they would be sub- jectively in the right. But the Pope gave a grant of lands subject to this condition, the heathen must be converted. If that were not done, the title failed through breach of covenant. We shall see how this was attended to.

Mr. Prescott says the desire of converting the natives was " paramount to every calculation of personal in- terest in the breast of Cortes." We are amazed at a statement so gratuitous and irreconcilable with the facts of the case; we should say that the calculation of personal interest was always paramount to the de- sire of converting the natives. Mr. Prescott says, " There was nothing which the Spanish government had more earnestly at heart than the conversion of the

250 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Indians." We wish there were some facts to sustain the assertion. It is true, a pretence was often made of a desire to Christianize the Indians. Velasquez in- structs Cortes " to bear in mind, above all things, that the object which the Spanish monarch had most at heart was the convertion of the Indians ;" he was, however, to impress on them the gi'andeur and good- ness of his royal master, and to invite them " to give in their allegiance to him, and to manifest it by regal- ing him with such comfortable presents of gold, pearls, and precious stones, as, by showing their good will, would secure his favor and protection." Imagine, oh gentle or simple readers, imagine the American board of foreign missionaries sending out their ser- vants to China with such instructions, asking for " comfortable presents " of silks, and Sycee silver, and tea ! Imagine, also, the admiration of the Castilian court, if Cortes had believed that " the conversion of the Indians " was " the object which the Spanish mon- arch had most at heart," and had converted the whole of Mexico, overturned every idol, sending them all as trophies to his " most noble, powerful, and catholic prince, invincible emperor, and our sovereign lord," planted the cross on every teocalli, but the Spanish flag nowhere, and had not sent home a single ounce of gold, nor gained an inch of land ! Imagine the honors, the triumphal processions, that would have been his welcome home to old Castile! Mr. Prescott, in the very teeth of facts, maintains that Cortes took this part of his instructions to the letter, and with him that the conversion of the natives was paramount " to every calculation of personal interest." Plis " first ob- ject," says Mr. Prescott, " was to reclaim the natives from their gross idolatry, and to substitute a purer

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 251

form of worship. . . . He was prepared to use force if milder means should prove ineffectual." He felt " he had a high mission to perform as a soldier of the cross." Cortes comes to St. Juan de Ulloa, as it is now called, and invites the natives " to abandon their cursed idols, abolish human sacrifice, and abstain from kidnapping." Everybody knows the fable of the Fox turned Preacher ; it is less remarkable than the historical and kindred fable of Cortes turned mis- sionary.

This confessor of the faith, this missionary of the Lord, this great first apostle to the Gentiles of Te- nochtitlan, comes to Tabasco, full of war and Chris- tianity, resolved, as Mr. Prescott confesses, to build

" his faith upon The holj'^ text of pike and gun."

The natives opposed the entrance of armed strangers, as the Dutch or the Portuguese would have done. Coortes made proclamation, and assured them that " if blood were spilt the sin would lie in their heads." They answered with shouts of defiance and a shower of arrows. He took the town, and two days after had a severe battle with the inhabitants of the country. Of course the Spaniards were victorious, and the In- dians suffered great loss ; some say one thousand were slain, some thirty thousand. The battle was fought on Lady Day, the day of the miraculous conception of the mother of God. The battle was a good type of the " annunciation " brought by this new Gabriel to the American Virgin. As the primitive Christians, it is said, had miraculous assistance in wielding their spiritual weapons, so these devout heralds of the faith, " soldiers of the cross," and " follqwers of the Lamb," had aid from on high — a celestial champion

252 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" mounted on his grey war-horse, heading the rescue, and tramphng over the bodies of the fallen infidels ! " Cortes thought it was his own tutelary saint, — Saint Peter, a patron not wholly unsuitable for such a client, — " but," says Pizarro y Orellana, " the common and indubitable opinion is, that it was our glorious apostle, Saint James, the bulwork and safeguard of the na- tion." After the battle the Indians were " converted," and the event celebrated on Palm Sunday. " Behold thy King comcth unto thee meek " must have been sung with great unction that sabbath morn, and the lesson for the day, " Come unto me, ye that labour and are heavy laden," must have delighted Saint Peter and Saint James, heard " in this connection ! " A city was afterwards built on the battle-field ; its name com- memorates the day, the deed, and the Christianity of these apostles — Saint Mary of Victory !

At Compoalla Cortes tried his hand at the delightful work of conversion ; the Indian monarch, however, de- clared his own gods were good enough for him, and he could not comprehend how the Creator of the uni- verse " could condescend to take the form of humanity, with its infirmities and ills, and wander about the earth, the voluntary victim of .... those whom his breath had called into existence." Poor be- nighted heathen ! To Cortes this was easy as drawing his sword. However, the nation was converted — at least the temples. Here, though not for the first or last time,i — for " the things that are seen are tem- poral " and require to be renewed, — these devout apos- tles received a foretaste of their reward, in the form of " eight Indian maidens, richly dressed, wearing collars and ornaments of gold, with a number of female slaves to wait on them." The chief requested that they

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 253

might become wives of the Spanish captains. " Cortes received the damsels courteously," such was his zeal for Christianity, but told the cacique they must first be baptized." " Porquc manera no era permitido a hombres, Jiijos de la Iglesia di Dies, tener commercio con idolatras! " Similar comforters were frequently " added to their number." Bcrnal Diaz, a very plain- spoken old soldier, who cared not over much for the souls of the heathen, mentions these things oftener than Mr. Prescott. Cortes himself, in virtue of his apostolic dignity, we suppose, or as head of the new church, took the right " to lead about " the celebrated ]\Iarina, — not without other helpmeets, we think, — an Indian woman who was of great service in the expedi- tion.

This band of missionaries went to Cholula, and mas- sacred the inhabitants, who had been previously as- sembled in a narrow place convenient for the slaugh- ter. A portion of the town was burnt, and, as Cortes himself says, three thousand of the inhabitants put to death. Herrera makes the number six thousand, and others yet greater. ]\Ir. Prescott is far from justify- ing the deed, yet he endeavors to excuse the conduct of Cortes ; these were heathens, religious infidelity was thought a sin to be punished with fire and faggot in this life, and eternal suffering in the next. But if it is believed that death sends a man to eternal tor- ment, a " soldier of tlie cross " would hesitate a little before butchering six thousand men. Las Casas adds that he burnt alive more than one hundred caciques whom he had craftily got into his hands, and that while the city was on fire, it was said that Cortes re- peated a snatch of ])oetry, comparing himself to Nero looking down from tlie Tarpeian rock on the bum-

254 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ing of Rome, and caring not for the screams of the children and the old men. This story seems less prob- able to Mr. Prescott than to us. After thus introduc- ing hinLself to the Cholulans, Cortes " urged the citi- zens to embrace the cross " and abandon their false gods.

When Cortes had his first interview with Monte- zuma, he told the monarch that the Christians had come to snatch his soul and the souls of his people from the flames of eternal fire. The Mexican king must have thought them remarkable men for such a mis- sion. When about to advance to the siege of Mexico, Cortes tells his soldiers that " the conversion of the heathen is the work most acceptable in the eye of the Almighty, and one that will be sure to receive his sup- port;" that without this the war would be unjust, and all they might gain by it, robbery. When a new king was established at Tezcuco, Cortes placed several Span- iards about him, ostensibly to instruct him in their lan- guage and religion, but really as spies to watch over his conduct and prevent his correspondence with the Mexicans.

The Spanish apostles had one mode of distinguish- ing their converts and catechumens from such as had not fallen into their hands which we do not find prac- ticed by the evangelists of other nations : they branded their captives with a hot iron. The letter G was thus indeliably burnt upon them, to denote that they were the spoils of war (guerra). Diaz mentions the brand- ing of the captives a great deal oftener than Mr. Pres- cott ; on several occasions it was done to " a vast num- ber of the inhabitants," and again, " great numbers were led away into slavery and marked in the face with a red-hot iron." This hateful torment was

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 255

burned upon the women as well as the men; even upon the faces of the women who were to serve as temporary " wives " to the conquerors, who, it seems, were not always so anxious to ensure their baptism as their branding.

The motive of the conquerors was love of conquest and plunder. This is plain enough in the despatches of Cortes. Diaz makes no concealment of the fact ; he wished the land to be divided as follows : one-fifth for the king, one-fifth for the church, and the rest among the conquerors, according to their rank and merits. As the conquerors who survived the conquest could not have been more than five or six hundred, they would have been pretty well paid for two or three years' ser- vice. But what would be left for the converted na- tives.'' Heaven in the next life and slavery in this.

The design of the conquerors is made plain by the invasion itself, by their conduct during the war, and by the institutions they established after it was over; they wanted the property and the persons of the Mex- icans. They took both, perhaps with as little ferocity and as much decorum as any nation could rob and en- slave another. The plea of a desire to convert the Indians is a poor defence, and unworthy of an histo- rian like ]\Ir. Prescott. It would be better rhetoric, as well as truer and more honest, to say: these were hard, iron men, with rather less than the average in- telligence, morality, and piety of their nation ; they went to Mexico, led thither by love of adventure, love of fame, of power, or of gold ; they only pretended to care for the souls of tlie men whose property they plundered, whose daughters they debauched, whose persons they stole or slew !

Certainly they were very remarkable heralds of

256 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Christianity. By steel and gunpowder they subdued kingdoms, wrought unrighteousness, obtained promises. They wandered about in steel caps, dragging their ar- tillery after them, impoverishing, afflicting, torment- ing. They routed armies ; cities they overthrew and turned upside down ; captives they took and branded in the name of God. As an earnest of their reward, they had female slaves without number, the first-fruits of them that believe, and having satiated their avarice and their lust, and obtained a good report through the blood of their victims, they received the promises, the heritage of the heathen ; yea, such was the reward of all those blessed apostles — of whom the world was not worthy — horse, foot, and dragoons.

Some conquerors have a great idea, and for the sake of that do deeds which revolt the moral sense of mankind. Such men have some excuse for their vio- lent dealing with the world, in the service they render ; they esteem themselves men of destiny, and in behalf of their idea go forth through seas of blood of their own shedding. Smiting with the sword, it is not for themselves they smite. Thus there is some defence for Alexander, Hannibal, Cssar, and Charlemagne ; for Napoleon and for Cromwell ; even Frederic the Great was not a mere fighter. But Cortes cannot be put in this class. He had no' idea in advance of his age; in all but courage and military skill he appears be- hind his times. No noble thought, no lofty sentiment seems to have inspired him ; none such breathes in his words or deeds. ]Mr. Prescott says he was not a " mere fighter," but we see nothing else that can be said to distinguish him from the rest of men. He was one of the most vulgar of fighters ; he loved the excitement of adventurous deeds ; he sought vulgar fame, and vul-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 257

gar wealth and power, by vulgar means for vulgar ends. Few distinguished conquerors were so ignoble. He came among the red men of America; they began by caUing him a god, and ended with hating him as the devil. In the hot region of Mexico he was treated with great kindness ; his companions " experienced every alleviation that could be desired from the atten- tions of the friendly nations." They made more than a thousand booths for the Spaniards, and freely gave provisions for Cortes and his officers. Montezuma sent to learn who we were, says Diaz, and what we wanted for our ships ; we were only to tell what we wanted, and they were to furnish it. The Indians who attached themselves to his standard were faithful; of the Tlascalans only Xicotencatl proved untrue. But Cortes was crafty, insidious, and deceitful. He fo- mented discontent ; he encouraged the disaffected na- tions to rely on his protection, " as he had come to redress their wrongs," while he came to steal their pos- sessions and their persons. He told his own soldiers they were to fight against rebels who had revolted from their liege lord ; against barbarians, the enemies of Christianity ; to fight the battles of the cross, to obtain riches and honor in this life and imperishable glory in heaven.

He was unjust to his own soldiers, seizing more than his share of the booty. Diaz complains of this oftener than Mr. Prescott ; even the food was sometimes un- justly divided. Did the soldiers complain, Cortes made a speech full of " the most honeyed phrases and arguments most specious " (palabras muy mellifluas, . razones Tmiy hien diclias ). Some he bribed into silence with gold, others with promises ;

some he put in chains. Were the captives to be divided, 11—17

258 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

he not only selected first the king's fifth thereof and his own, but the finest of the women were secretly set apart, so that, as one of these missionaries complains, the common soldiers found only " old and ugly wo- men " left for them. After the spoil was divided in this unjust fashion, he would not always allow the soldiers to keep their scanty share, but once remanded one-third of it back again, and insisted that if it were not restored he would take the whole. Under pretense of loans he extorted a good deal from his own soldiers — ^a circumstance which injured him much, says Diaz. Mr. Prescott thinks such occasions were " critical conjunctures which taxed all the address and personal authority of Cortes. He never shrank from them, but on such occasions was true to himself."

But truth to himself was falseness to his soldiers. He would violate his word to them for the sake of more plunder. Much as they honored and feared him, few loved him much, and in one of his most trying times, says the same old soldier we have often quoted, they all grudged him a handful of maize to stay his hunger.

Cortes was needlessly cruel; this appears in the slaughter at Tabasco, and in the massacre at Cholula, which even Mr. Prescott thinks a dark stain on the memory of the conquerors. His punishments often appear wanton : — he orders a man to be killed for stealing a pair of fowls, another for speaking angrily to Montezuma ; he has the feet of his pilot chopped off for some offence ; he took fifty Tlascalans who came to his camp as spies, cut off their hands, and sent them home. The friendly Indians were curious to see the Spaniards, and came too near the lines of their encampment, and Cortes coolly relates that fifteen, or

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 259

twenty of them were shot down by the sentries. Mr. Prcscott excuses this; the "jealousy of the court and the cautions he had received from his alHes seem to have given an unnatural acutcness to his perceptions of danger." After the conquest an insurrection took place and was speedily put down; four hundred chiefs were sentenced to the stake or the gibbet, " by which means," says Cortes, " God be praised, the safety of the Spaniards was secured." He burnt alive some of Montezuma's officers, who were guilty of no offence but that of obeying their king; at the same time he punished Montezuma for giving them the order. He tortured the members of Guatemo- zin's household, putting boiling oil upon their feet. This great apostle to the Gentiles put Guatemozin himself and the cacique of Tacuba to the torture — not exactly to save his soul, " so as by fire," but to get his gold. Afterwards, on a groundless suspicion, he treacherously hung them both. Mr. Prescott shows little horror at these cinielties, little sense of their in- justice; nay, he seems to seek to mitigate the natural indignation which a man feels at such tyranny of the strong over the weak. We confess our astonishment that an historian who thinks the desire of converting the heathen was the paramount motive in the breast of Cortes has no more censure to bestow on such wan- ton cruelties, so frequently perpetrated as they were. The soldiers of the cross, going on their mission of mercy, to snatch the Indians from the fires of hell, dress the wounds of their horses with melted fat from the bodies of the natives they were to convert ; Mr Prescott makes no comment. Cortes has the slaves branded with a hot iron in the cheek. Diaz mentions this more than ten times ; ]Mr. Prescott but twice, and

260 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

then has no word to say — more than if they had been baptized with water.

The massacre at Cholula was terrible as it was need- less and wanton. " More than three thousand of the enemy perished in ten hours," says Cortes. ]Mr. Pres- cott confesses this has " left a dark stain on the memory of the conquerors," that he does not intend to vindicate their cruel deeds, and then undertakes to excuse this very cruelty. We confess our astonishment at such an excuse.

The massacre at Mexico, after the capture of the city, was terrible. We will not dwell upon it, nor re- count its bloody details. Cortes had destroyed town after town ; army after army had he swept off. It is within bounds to say that half a million men had been put to the sword since the Spaniards came thither, desirous above all things to convert their precious souls ; now the mighty capital, the centre of civilization in North America, whose influence had been felt from the Mexique Gulf to the Bay of Fundy, along either shore of the continent, has fallen ; Guatemozin is captured ; the wide rich empire lies submissive at his feet ; Cortes himself, all iron as he was and smeared with guiltless blood, is moved with compassion ; the nation is to be blotted out. But Mr. Prescott has no sympathy with the Mexicans ; nay, he pauses to avert the sympathy of other men, interposing his shield of ice between the victim and the compassion of mankind. He says : — ■

" We cannot regret the fall of an empire which did so little to promote the happiness of its subjects or the real interests of humanity." " The Aztecs were emphatically a fierce and brutal race, little calculated, in their best aspects to excite our sympathy and regard. Their civilization, such as it was, was not their own, but reflected, perhaps imperfectly, from a race whom they had succeeded. ... It was a generous graft

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 261

on a vicious stock, and could have brought no fruit to perfec- tion. They ruled over their wide domains with a sword instead of a sceptre. They did nothing in any way to ameliorate the condition or in any way promote the progress of their vassals. Their vassals were serfs, used only to minister to their pleasure."

" The feeble light of civilization," he says, " was growing fainter and fainter." He gives not a single fact to warrant this latter statement, but even if it were true, the Spaniards did not mend the matter by ovei-turning the candlestick and putting their bloody heel on the flickering torch. He attempts to remove any little compassion which may linger in his reader's heart; the Mexicans were guilty of human sacrifices, they also were cannibals. True, and it is a horrible thing to think of; but think of the butcheries com- mitted by the Spaniards, also in the name of God ; try each nation by its light, and which is the the worse, the cannibal or the Christian? Mr, Prescott tries to excuse the barbarities of the conquerors ; when any of the inhabitants fell into their hands, " they were kindly entertained, their wants supplied, and every means taken to infuse into them a spirit of concilia- tion." The sad shades of Montezuma and Guatcmozin what will they say to that.'' Diaz informs us of the " means taken " in many an instance. They were re- duced to slavery, branded with a hot iron in the check. This was the kindly entertainment they met Avith from those Christian missionaries, who held their lands on condition of converting the natives. We might naturally look for justice from an American writer, with no national prejudice to blind him. But no, his sympathy is wholly with the conquerors ; the spirit of chivalry is mightier with him than the spirit of humanity. Bustamcnte, however, spite of the

262 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Spanish blood in his veins, writing on the spot made famous by the deeds of Cortes and his followers, wishes a monument might be erected to Guatemozin, on the spot where he was taken captive, and an inscription thereon to " devote to eternal execration the detested memory of those banditti." The work is needless ; themselves have erected a monument " more lasting than brass," telling of their power and their prowess, but also of their more than heathen cruelty, their tyranny, and their shame. The rhetoric of Mr. Pres- cott cannot hide them from the justice of mankind.

We have little to say of the subsequent career of Cortes. He made a bold and desperate expedition to the southern part of North America, enduring won- derful hardships, fighting with his usual skill and courage. Mexico was settled by hungry Spaniards, the natives mainly reduced to slavery. Cortes became rich and powerful. He was accused before the Em- peror, and defended himself. He received great honors in Spain, when he returned thither. He set- tled down on an estate in Mexico. He died at length in Spain, but in his will expresses doubts " whether one can conscientiously hold property in Indian slaves." Mr. Prescott writes the eulogy of his hero, which we have not space to criticize. But there are two ways of judging such a man ; one is that of hu- manity. Here the inquirer looks over the whole field of history, impartially weighs the good and ill of a man, allows for his failings if they belong to his age, and detracts from his individual merits if they also are held in common with the mass of men, but judges the age and its institutions by the standard of absolute justice. This is the work of the philosophic historian. The other way is tliat of personal admiration of the

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 263

hero. We are sorry to say that Mr. Prescott has taken the latter course. Crime is one thing ; but the theory which excuses, defends, justifies crime is quite a different thing, is itself not to be justified, defended or excused. We are sorry to add the name of Mr. Pres- cott to the long list of writers who have a theory which attempts to justify the crime against mankind, the tyranny of might over right. We are sorry to say of this work in general, and on the whole, that it is not written in the philosophy of this age, and, still worse, not in the Christianity, the wide humanity, which is of mankind. We know this is a severe judg- ment, and wish we might be mistaken in pronouncing it, but such are the facts.

Mr. Prescott has little sympathy with the natives. Marina, unmarried and a captive, becomes the concu- bine of Cortes, a married man and a conqueror. Her religion allowed the connection, it was not uncommon; his religion forbade it, and he was living " in mortal sin." She seems to have loved him truly and with all her heart. To him she was a useful instrument, per- sonally as his concubine, politically as his interpreter and diplomatic agent. Mr. Prescott says, " she had her errors, as we have seen." The only error he al- ludes to was her connection with Cortes not held un- lawful, against nature or custom, there ; but no censure is passed on Cortes, though he had a wife at Cuba. When his wife dies, Marina might be lawfully mar- ried to him, if he would ; she had borne him a son, the unfortunate Don Martin Cortes. But he did not want an Indian woman for his wife, whatever might be her services, her love for him, or the connection be- tween them, or the children she had borne him. He must wed one of the titled dames of Spain, daughter

1264 iTHE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

of the Count ide Aguilar, beautiful and " much younger than himself," and Cortes " gave Marina away to a Castilian knight, Don Juan Xamarillo, to whom she was wedded as his lawful wife," says Mr. Prescott, who makes no comment on this transaction, and does not even mention it as one of the " errors " of his hero !

Mr. Prescott takes sides with the Spaniards, passes over much of their cruelty in silence, and often apolo- gizes for what he relates, suggesting some idle cir- cumstance which takes off the edge of indignation from the reader, careless, superficial, and requiring a moral stimulus from his instructor. In his narrative he degrades the Mexicans fighting for their homes and the altars of their gods, not less fondly cherished than the homes and the faith of Christians. The Spaniards are brave, chivalrous, heroic. Their victims, he tells us, " filled the air with wild cries and bowlings like a herd of ravenous wolves disappointed of their prey." In the attack on Mexico, a Spanish ensign narrowly escaped falling into the hands of his foe : " The bar- barians," says Mr. Prescott, " set up a cry of dis- appointed rage." Again, at sight of the enemy and of the sacrifice of prisoners going on in the temple, the Mexicans " like vultures maddened by the smell

of distant carrion, set up a piercing

cry." The efforts of Guatemozin to defend his capi- tal were " menaces and machinations ; " the Mexicans " raged with impotent anger, as they beheld their lordly edifices, their temples, all they had been accus- tomed to venerate, thus swept away." If we remember aright, the Jews mourned a little when Zion was trod- den under foot of the nations, but we should not envy the heart of the historian who should say of the

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 265

Jeremiahs of that time, that they " raged with impo- tent anger." Even Cortes thought it a sad sight (Que era lastima cicrto de lo vcr), " but we were forced to it." When driven to despair, some Mexicans, valiant as Leonidas,

" in the public breach devoted stood, And for their country's cause were prodigal of blood."

They would not ask for mercy ; Mr. Prescott says they " glared on the invaders with the sullen ferocity of the wounded tiger, that the huntsman has tracked to his forest cave." Even the heroism of Guatemozin is only a " haughty spirit."

The Spaniards established a form of slavery worse than that of the heathens. If the Mexicans did little for their vassals — what did their conquerors do.-* INIr. Prescott passes over the horrors of the slavery established there ; excuses the founders for their of- fense : Columbus had done the same ! " Three Hieron^j^mite friars and an eminent Jesuit, all men of learning and unblemished piety," were sent out to investigate the condition of the natives. They justi- fied slavery ; the Indians would not work without com- pulsion, unless they worked, they would not be con- nected with the whites, and without that connection would not be " converted," and of course not " saved." Slavery, therefore, was their only road to escape damnation. We must confess our amazement that a man of liberal culture, in the midst of a Christian country, writing of such cruelties as the Spaniards practiced on their victims, reducing millions of freemen to such a condition, should have no more condemna- tion for such atrocities. How shall we explain the fact.'' Can it be that the commercial atmosphere of Boston had stifled the natural and nobler breath of yhe historian.'' Wc know not.

^66 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

There was one Spaniard who steadfastly opposed the enslaving of the Indians — the Dominican Las Casas, a man who all his life sought continually one great end, the welfare of the Indians. Mr. Prescott be- stows well-deserved encomiums upon him ; often praises him, yet we think he is the only author of all whom Mr. Prescott quotes that can complain of the smallest injustice at his hands.

It now remains to speak briefly of the form of the work. The division into books and chapters is suffi- ciently good. The style is clear and simple, though a little less carefully labored than in his earlier work. The references are abundant, and, so far as we have examined them, distinguished by the same accuracy which we noticed in the former history. Occasionally there is a little harmless pedantry. Thus in the text, he says that Cortes told his men to aim at the faces of the foe, and in the margin quotes Lucan to remind us that the veterans of Caesar hit the dandies of Pom- pey's army in the same way. But such things are rare, and by no means disagreeable.

He often refers events tO' Providence which other men would be content with ascribing to human agency. Thus he says, " it was beneficiently ordered by Provi- dence that the land [of the Mexicans] should be de- livered over to another race, who would rescue it from the brutish superstitions that daily extended wider and wider." But in the same manner " it was beneficently ordered by Providence " that merchant ships should be delivered over to Admiral Drake or Captain Kidd ; that the Indians of Massachusetts should butcher the white men at Deerfield, and the whites should carry the head of King Philip on a pole into Plymouth and sell his family into slavery. Again, speaking of Cor-

PRESCOTT'S MEXICO 267

tes, he tells us " Providence reserved him for higher ends," and that he was " the instrument selected by Providence to scatter terror among the barbarian mon- archs of the western world, and lay their empires in the dust," INIontezuma, " was the sad victim of destiny." But all this providential action is in behalf of the invaders. Causa victrix placet diis.

The figures of speech are commonplace ; we do not remember one that is original, except that already quoted, in which the Mexicans are compared to " vul- tures maddened by the smell of distant carrion." Few of them are elegant or expressive enough to deepen the impression of the simple statement of the fact. One figure, to * spread like wild-fire," which is a favorite in the History of Spain, appears also and frequently in this work. Others are poor and com- mon : — to crowd " like a herd of deer," or a " herd of wolves ; " to be " pale as death ; " to " rush like a torrent ; " to swarm " like famished harpies ; " and to be led " like sheep to the slaughter." They add little to the freshness or beauty of the style, and do not impress us very forcibly with the originality of the author.

VI

HILDRETH'S UNITED STATES

At the present day the United States present one of the most interesting and important pohtical phe- nomena ever offered in the history of mankind. Eng- land has planted her colonies in New Holland, in New Zealand, in the East and the West Indies, at Cape Good Hope, and at Labrador; at Mauritius, Gibraltar, and in the Islands of the Pacific. She has forced an en- trance into China ; she longs to get firm footing in Borneo and Nicaragua. Wheresoever her children wander they carry the seed out of which British insti- tutions are sure to grow ; institutions, however, which never produce their like, but nobler and better on an- other soil. Omitting all mention of Ireland, America W'as the oldest of these colonies, the first to detach itself from the parent stem, and is perhaps the prophecy of what most of the others are destined to become.

It must be a vigorous tribe of men w^hich can hold so vast a portion of the earth Avhile themselves are so few in numbers. Three hundred years ago, in the reign of Edward VI., England was a third-rate power in Europe. Her population was less than three mil- lions, her exports were trifling, and consisted of the raw materials of her clumsy agriculture and her min- eral treasures, which the Tyrians had traversed the ocean to purchase two thousand years before. Her soil could hardly raise a salad. Scotland was inde- pendent, Ireland not wholly subject to English rule, Wales had but lately been added to her realm. She

268

HILDRETH ^69

was remarkable chiefly for the stormy seas which girt the isle, and the chalky cliffs along her shore, for the fogs that cover it, for the rudeness of her inhabi- tants and the tough valor of her soldiers. Now, in three hundred years, England contains some seventeen millions of inhabitants, Scotland and Ireland ten mil- lions more. Russia, Austria, and France are the only nations in Europe that outnumber her in popu- lation. Turke}^, with nine millions, and Spain, with twelve, are powerless beside her. Her ships are in all the oceans of the world, the sun never sets on her flag; her subjects capture the whale at Baffin's Bay, and the elephant in India ; they sport at hunting lions in South Africa. Her navigators, with scientific hardihood, explore each corner of the Northern Sea, or locked in ice wait the slow hand of death, or the slower sun of an arctic summer. She has climes too cold for reindeer ; climes too hot almost for the sugar- cane and the pine-apple ; the lean larch of Scotland, and the banyan-tree of Hindoostan, both grow in the same empire. Esquimaux, Gaboon, and Sanscrit are tongues subject to Britain. At least an eighth part of the men now living in the world owe allegiance to the queen of that little island.

Her children came to America when the nation was in all the vigor of its most rapid growth. The progress of their descendants in population and in wealth has been wthout parallel. Two hundred and fifty years ago there was not an English settler in the United States ; now the population is not far from two-and-twenty millions ; two thirds of the people are of English origin. The increase of property has been more rapid than that of numbers. In fifty years Boston has multiplied her inhabitants nearly five-fold,

270 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and her property more than twenty -five fold in the same time. The increase of intelligence is very re- markable, and probably surpasses that of property.

The Americans are now trying a political experi- ment which has hitherto been looked on with great suspicion and even horror. Here is a democracy on a large scale, a church without a bishop, a state with- out a king ; society ( in the free states ) without the theoretical distinction of patrician and plebian. What is more surprising, the experiment succeeds bet- ter than its most sanguine friends ever dared to hope. The evils which were apprehended have not yet befallen us. The " Red Republic," ^ which hostile prophets foretold, has not come to pass ; there are " red " monarchies, enough of them, the other side of the world, born red ; doomed, we fear, to die in that sad livery of woe ; but in America the person of the citi- zen is still respected quite as much as in Austria and England ; and nowhere in the world is property safer or so much honored, the lovers of liberty here are lovers of order as its condition. Even Mr. Carlyle, accustomed to speak of America with bitterness and contempt, and of the ballot-box with loathing and nausea, confesses to the success of the experiment so far as wealth and numbers are concerned. Indeed, it is a mater of rejoicing to warm-hearted men, that we have cotton to cover and corn to feed the thousands of exiles who yearly are driven by hunger from Eng- land, to seek a home or a grave on the soil of America. It is interesting to study the growth of the American people ; to observe the progress of the idea on which the government rests, and the attempts to make the idea an institution.

This is one of the few great nations which can

HILDRETH 271

trace its history back to certain beginnings ; there is no fabulous period in our annuals, no mythical centuries when

KXuoi'Tes oi)K r]Kovov' dXX' oveipaToiv ' AXiyKioi ixop(f)ai<jL^ TOP naKpbv xpoj'o;' " E0i'po;' einfj irdvTa^ Kovre Tr\tp^v(pels Aofiovs TTpocretXoi's -qaav^ ov ^vXovpyiav' l^arwpvxes 5' evaiov^ uxxre dri<Tvpoi 'M.vp/j.TjKes, avTpwv iv (Mvxois avrjXiois.

To be rightly appreciated, American history re- quires to be written by a democrat. A theocrat would condemn our institutions for lacking an es- tablished church with its privileged priesthood ; an aristocrat, for the absence of conventional nobility. Military men might sneer at the smallness of the army and navy ; and aesthetic men deplore the want of a splendid court, the lack of operatic and other spec- tacles in tlie large towns. The democrat looks for the substantial welfare of the people, and studies America with reference to that point. At present, America is not remarkable for her literature or her art ; she has made respectable advances in science, but her indus- trial works and her political institutions are by far her most remarkable achievements hitherto. We are not sanguine enough to suppose that all the advan- tages of all the other forms of government are to be secured in this, but yet trust that the most valuable things will be preserved here. In due time, we doubt not, the higher results of civilization will appear, and we shall estimate the greatness of the nation not merely by its num.bers, its cotton, its cattle, and its corn. But " that is not first which is spiritual." First of all, the imperious wants of the body must be attended to, — the woods are to be felled, the log-cabins built, the corn got into the ground, the wild beasts destroyed.

272 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the savages kept at peace. There must be many gen- erations between the woodsman who erects the first shanty of logs, and the poet who sheds immortal beauty on logs and lumberers. Were there not ages between the wooden hut of Arcadian Pelasgos in Greece and the Parthenon .f* From mythical Cecrops to Aristophanes the steps are many, each a generation. The genius of liberty only asks two things — time and space. Space enough she has, all America is be- fore her ; time she takes possession of fast enough, only a second at once ; and in the course of ages we think she will make her mark on the world. Up to this time the achievements of America are, taken as a whole, such as we need not blush at. Some things there were and are to be ashamed of — not of the whole. That dreadful blot of slavery remains yet, an Ireland in America ; among the whites, on the one hand, causing the most shameful poltroonery which modern times can redden at, and on the other, calling forth heroism that seems almost enough to redeem the wickedness which has brought it to light. But, turning to that half of the nation free from direct personal contact with this sin of the state, forgetting for a moment the foolishness of " political sages," the cowardice of those leaders who never dare enact justice as a statute, but take the responsibility of making iniquity a law, and omitting the defalcation of men who forsake their habitual worship of a calf of gold, to bow down before a face of dough," — there is certainly a gratifying spectacle. Here are some fifteen millions of free men tr3'ing the voluntary system in church and state, richer than any other people of the same numbers in the world, and with the aggregate wealth of the nation more equally distributed; a nation well fed, well

HILDRETH 273

clothed, well housed, industrious, temperate, well gov- erned, and respecting one another and themselves ; that certainly is something. In all that territory there are probably more nmskets in the hands of pri- vate men than there are habitations, yet not one is kept for actual defense ; and through the free states no soldier walks abroad with loaded gun ; only in the large towns is there a visible police. There are not two thousand soldiers of the state in all that terri- tory, and they are as inoffensive to the citizens as the scare-crows in the field, only not so useful, nor so well paying for their keep. Of this population some three millions are in the public schools, academies, and colleges. Nowhere are churches so numerous or so well attended ; nowhere such indications of happiness, comfort, intelligence, morality among the mass of men. This, we repeat, is something. We have no very great men ; we have never had such. An Alexander, a Caesar, a Charlemagne, a Napoleon, we have not had. Perhaps we never shall ; but it is hardly worth while to go into mourning yet for the absence of such. Great artists, poets, philosophers, men of letters, we have not had, hitherto. We have shown no great respect for such, to our shame be it spoken ; but in due time we may trust that they also will come and shine for ages, with the halo of genius around their brow. However, it does seem a little remarkable that in America every- thing seems to be done democratically — by the* com- bined force of many men with moderate abilities, and not by one man of Herculean powers. It was so in the early periods of the nation ; so in the Revolution, and so now. It has always been so with the Teutonic tribes of men, much more than with the nations from

the Semitic stock. With them there comes a Moses 11—18

274 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

or a Mahomet who overrides a nation for one or two thousand years, and its progress seems to be by a series of leaps ; while the western nations, with less nationalism, and more individualism, accomplish less in that way, but slope upwards by a more gradual as- cent. In the English Revolution there was no one great man who condensed the age into himself, and created the institutions of coming generations, as Moses and Mahomet have done ; spite of the great abilities and great services of Cromwell, no just historian will claim that for him. It was so in the American Revolution, so in the French. Washington led our armies, and Napoleon the legions of France, but neither gave the actors the idea which was slowly or suddenly to be realized in institutions.

It is an interesting work to trace the growth of the American people from their humble beginnings to their present condition ; to discover and point out the causes which have helped that growth, and the causes which have hindered it. To a philosophical historian this is no unpromising field ; the facts are well known ; it is easy to ascertain the ideas out of which the gen- eral political institutions of America have grown ; it is not difficult to see the historical causes which have modified these institutions, giving them their present character and form. None but a democrat can thor- oughly appreciate that history. As the history of Clu-istianity must be written by a Christian who can write from within, and the history of art by a man with an artistic soul, so must the history of America be written by a democrat — we mean one who puts man before the accidents of man, valuing his permanent nature more than the transient results of his history.

American history up to the adoption of the Federal

HILDRETH 275

Constitution forms a whole, and has a certain unity which is not obvious at first sight. The several col- onies were getting established, learning to stand alone ; they were quite unlike in their origin, form of gov- ernment, ecclesiastical and other institutions. Very different ideas prevailed in Georgia and New Hamp- shire. Looked at carelessly they seem only divergent; but when studied carefully it seems as if there was a regular plan, and as if the whole was calculated to bring about the present result. No doubt there was such a cancatenation of part with part, only the plan lay in God, not in the mind of Oglethorpe and Cap- tain Smith, of Carver and Roger Williams.

Considering this history as an organic whole, to treat it philosophically it seems to us it is necessary to describe the material theatre on which this historic drama is to be acted out ; to describe the American continent, telling of its extent and peculiarities in general, its soil, climate, and natural productions, and its condition at the time when the white men first landed on its shores ; this, of course, comprises a de- scription of the inhabitants at that time in possession of its soil.

Then the historian is to tell us of the men who came here to found this empire ; of their origin, their character, and their history in general. He is to tell the external causes which brought them here or the motives which impelled them, and the ideas which they brought, as well as those which sprung up under their new circumstances. Next, he is to show speculatively by the idea, and practically by the facts, how these ideas w^orked under the new conditions of the people; how they acted on circumstances and circumstances on them, and what institutions came thereof. The his-

276 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

torian very poorly performs his duty who merely re- lates the succession of rulers, the increase or diminution of wealth and numbers, the coming on of wars, and the termination thereof, the rise of great men, with their decline and fall, and the presence of institutions, with- out telling of the ideas they represented. Showing the continual growth of the ideas which create the institutions is little more than the work of an annalist or chronicler.

If a great idea appears in human affairs, founding new institutions and overturning the old, it is part of the work of a philosophical historian to give us the story of this idea ; to refer it back to its origin in the permanent nature of man, or the accidents of his development ; to show the various attempts to make the thought a thing, and the idea a fact. Such is the case in American history ; political institutions were set agoing here radically unlike any others in the world. True, we may find points of agreement be- tween the American and various European govern- ments. The trial by jury dates far back beyond the " gray goose " code, and has its origin in remote an- tiquity ; the habeas corpus is doubtless of English origin, and its history may be read in Hallam, and elsewhere ; the notion of delegates to represent corpora- tions or republics may have originated with the early Christians, who sent their ministers and other servants (or masters) to some provincial synod; the idea of individual liberty, the sacredness of the person before the state, may be traced to the wilds of Germany long before the time of Christ. We know how much of American freedom may be found in Sir John For- tescue's Laudation of the laws of England, or in the books of Moses, if we will ; but yet the American gov-

HILDRETH 277

ernment In nation, state, and town is an original thing. The parts are old, many of them, but the whole is the most original thing that can be found in the political history of the world for many an age. Almost every special and true moral precept of the New Testament may be found in some heathen or Hebrew writer before Jesus, but yet, spite of that, Christianity was an original form of religion, as much so as the statue of a goddess which a Grecian sculptor gathered by a grand electicism from five hundred Spar- tan maids, corrected by the ideal in his own creative and critical mind.

You trace the secret cause of the American institu- tions far off in the history of mankind. Here it is a dim sentiment in the breast of the German in the Hercynian forest ; then again it burns in the bosom of the Christian, and he tells the world that God is no respecter of persons, that Jew and Gentile are alike to him. But it leads, at first, to no political conse- quences ; even its ecclesiastical results are trifling, and its social consequences at first of small moment. It could not make St. Paul hostile to personal Roman slavery. In the middle ages you trace the path of this idea. Sometimes it goes over the mountain side, and is seen amid the works of great men, but commonly it winds along in the low valleys of human life ; a little patli, known only to the people, and worn by tlicir feet, not knowing whither it leads them ; a by- path for the vassal, not the highway which the baron and prelate took care to have in order. The record of its existence is found in the song of the peasant or in the popular proverb, in some fabulous legend of unhistorical times, — times that never were, — or in the predictions of days to come. This idea has not a

278 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

place in the pulpit of the minister; but in the silent cell of the devout mystic it has its dwelling-place, and gladdens his enraptured heart as a vision of the king- dom of heaven.

Now it waxes mighty, and contends against the op- pression of tyrannical men, less in the state than in the church. Fast as it becomes an idea men organize it as well as they can, now in little convents or mon- asteries, then in trading companies ; then in guilds of mechanics ; in cities and small states, as in Italy and in the Low Countries, in Switzerland, and the Hanse towns. At length this impulse — it was hardly an idea — puts all Europe into commotion. Men call for spiritual freedom. Under the guidance of that great spirit who stands as the water-shed between the middle ages and modern times, feeling the contradic- tions of a divided age under Martin Luther, men break the yoke of ecclesiastical tyranny they have borne so long. Liberty of conscience was all mankind called for, but for that time they must put up with liberty of conscience limited on the divine side by the Bible, on the human side by the king. Strait and op- pressive limits both proved to be, — bonds that ap- proached nearer and threatened to crush the strug- gling soul. Still men were not satisfied ; they wanted political liberty as well as spiritual, and of spiritual much more than they got. How rapidly the idea of a free state got abroad over Europe. Bodinus, in his Republic ; Thomas More, in his Utopia ; Bacon, in his New Atlantis, — very undemocratic men at the best, — are witnesses to the power of this demand. The sentiment had long been in men's hearts ; it was now rapidly becoming an idea. Kings and priests told men the less liberty they had the better; if they tried

HILDRETH 279^

to go alone they would certainly fall. Was it not better to sit on the hearth of the king, their head under the apron of the church, than thus try to walk in the open air? There was good and bad scripture for such a course ; and of precedents the world was full. But men would not be satisfied ; the king's hearth was warm, and the motherly apron of the church made the head easy and comfortable, but there was a divine soul in man which would break out into all sorts of peasant wars, of Jack Cade's rebellions, of Runymedes and the like. At length the idea gets so fully set forth, as an idea, and so w'idely spread abroad by fanatics and among sober men that the chief question is, Where shall the idea first become a fact? Shall it be in Germany, where the ecclesiastical Reforma- tion began and succeeded most? No, the feudal sys- tem had taken deep root in the Teutonic soil, and could not be pulled up for some ages to come ; the Reforma- tion had affected thought in all departments in Ger- many, but politics suffered little change, and by that little it does not appear that the people were directly gainers to any considerable degree. Could it be in France? There was a body of enlightened men taking the lead in European science and literature, but there "was no intelligence in the people. They seemed subjects of authority, not subjects of reason, and though they now and then gave indication of the sentiment for fredom, which has since become so mighty in that na- tion, yet then no idea of it swept through the land, stirring the tree-tops, and agitating the grass and the very dust. In France there was a gorgeous court, a wealthy king; nobles, rich, famous, and of long-re- nowned descent ; there were soldiers with genius and skill, merchants and artists and clergymen, from

g80 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Abbe Jean to Cardinal Richelieu, but there was no people to appreciate or desire freedom. In Spain no one would think of free institutions ; the mind of the nation, chained by the state and palsied by the church, had only life enough left for mere external things, for gold and sugar ; even her European possessions she could not hold against the vigor of Protestant Dutchmen. Italy had given lessons in commerce, arts, literature, religion, and politics to all the rest of Europe. In the dark ages she had kept the holy fire of science and of literature, covered in the ashes of old renown, and when occasion offered raked the em- bers, with her garment fanning them to a flame, and sent little sparks thereof to Scotland, Ireland, Eng- land, and to all the north. While despotism laid his iron rod on all the north of Europe, and the center too, little commonwealths sprung up at practical Venice, at prudent Pisa, and at haughty Florence, as a poet calls them ; green gardens were they in a snowy world, filled with many a precious plant. But these, too, had declined. Art, literature, science, " la bella scienza," the sweet art of poesy, had flourished there, but the nature of liberty craved another soil. The Reformation, which winnowed the nations with a rough wind, did not separate the wheat from the chaffs in Italy. The priests were too powerful, the people too indolent ; the chaff is so thick, and dry withal, that the poor wheat can germinate but slowly.

" Ay ! down to the dust with them, slaves as they are,"

might well be said of Italy in the end of the six- teenth century. Other vineyards she had helped to plant, but her own she had not kept. The last ser- vice she did mankind was, perhaps, the greatest: she

HILDRETH 281

showed them a new and savage world beyond the fabled island of Atlantis in the West. Columbus and Amerigo, Verrazani and the Cabots, were pioneers of freedom for mankind. When Columbus turned his bark's head to the West, he little knew that he was leading the nations to universal democracy ; but so it seems now.

The new idea must come across the water to make its fortune. To escape the persecution of the dragon with seven heads and ten horns, the man-child must flee with his mother into the wilderness and there so- journ, said our fathers, giving a " private interpreta- tion " to a dark " prophecy ; " at any rate, the American " earth helped the woman." Here, three thousand miles from their native land, out of the reach of old aristocratic institutions, the new nation could unfold its sentimental to an idea, could develop the idea into institutions ; and, trying the experiment on a small scale at first, prepare to found a great empire on the American idea that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that it is the business of a goverment to preserve for each man the perfect enjoyment of all these natural rights, on the sole condition that he does the corresponding duties.

There are two great periods of human history. In the one men seek to establish unity of action, and form the individuals into tribes and states. This is commonly done to the loss of personal fredom ; the state subdues the citizen, and he becomes the subject merely. In religion the ante-christian forms repre- sent this phase of men's affairs, and in politics it is indicated by aristocracies, monarchies, and despotisms. Then comes the second great period of history, in

282 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

which men seek for personal freedom. In rehgion this is represented by Christianity, not the Christianity of the Cathohcs or the Protestants, but the absolute religion of human nature ; in politics, by a democracy, the government of all, for all, and by all. The set- tlers of America in coming here mainly escaped from the institutions of the former period of history, the institutions which once helped mankind but at length hindered them. They brought with them the senti- ments and ideas of the same period, imperfectly formed, and such helps and institutions as had pre- viously come out of their sentiments and ideas. They came from a nation more vigorous in the arts of peace than any which the world had seen before. They came from that nation in the time of its greatest spiritual vigor. They brought with them the best treasures of the private spiritual earnings of the English nation • — the common law, the habeas corpus, trial by jury, the form of representative government, the rich, noble literature of England, of its Elizabethan age. From the general spiritual treasures of the world they brought Christianity and the experience of mankind for five or six thousand years. Virgin America, hid- den away behind the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is now to be married to mankind.

The first settlers came with different motives and expectations, driven by different forms of necessity. There came two types of men quite unlike in most important particulars — the settlers of the North and the South, the Puritans of New England, the secular and more worldly planter of Virginia and the Caro- linas. They came from different motives, for a dif- ferent purpose ; they founded different institutions, which produce the contradictory results we now see.

HILDRETH 283

The difference between South Carohna and Massa- chusetts in 1850 dates plainly back to the different origin of the two colonies. New England was settled for the sake of an idea ; Virginia and the Carolinas by men who reasonably thought to better their condi- tion and make their fortune. M. Chevalier ^ long ago pointed out the distinction between these two types, the Puritan and the Cavalier; only he finds a distinc- tion in birth, wealth, and breeding in favor of the Cavalier, which he would not have found had he known American history somewhat better. However, the dif- ference betw^een the secular and the religious colonies still continues in the descendants of the two. But these types unite or will unite, as he says, to form a future national tj^pe, namely the Western man.

Let us look at the volumes of Mr. Hildreth. His work is divided into fort^'-eight chapters, and, be- ginning with the first voyage of Columbus, ends with the election of the first President after the adoption of the Federal Constitution. When so great a theme is to be treated in the small compass of three volumes, the author must needs be brief; accordingly, he despatches quite summarily the preliminary matter, relating to the discoveries of the continent by the Italian navigators, and briefly sketches a picture of the coun- try and its inhabitants at the period when European colonization first began. The account of the Indians is short, occupying but about twenty pages, yet dis- tinct and clear; for one so brief it is the best account we remember to have seen. The whole Indian popula- tion within the limits of the United States and west of the Rocky Mountains he thinks never exceeded, if it ever reached, three hundred thousand ; others make the number not far from one hundred and eighty

284 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

thousand. The Indians have not yet received the at- tention which they demand from the historian and philosopher ; they are as remarkable monuments in the development of the human race as the fossils are in the history of the physical changes of this earth. But they are passing away ; their institutions, manners, tra- ditions, and language will soon be forgotten, and by and by it will be impossible to reconstruct the history of which they furnish so valuable a chapter.

]Mr. Hildreth speaks of the French settlements in America, and then comes to the history of the English colonization here. For a long time there is an ap- parent want of unity in the subject, which no his- torical treatment can wholly disguise. The reader is hurried from Virginia to New England, then to New York, to Maryland, to the Carolinas, to Pennsylvania, to Delaware, and to Georgia. However, for a long time Virginia and New England are the objects of chief interest. We shall dwell chiefly on the latter, and call the attention of our readers to some things of considerable importance in the story of America. The character of the Puritans has been the theme of un- qualified praise and unqualified condemnation ; the Puritan of Hume, of Macaulay, and of Bancroft are quite different characters. Perhaps no one of these three great masters of the art of history has given us a fair and just likeness of the men. Mr. Hildreth is not ambitious in his attempt to defend the fathers of New England ; he rather leaves their actions to speak for themselves. He thus speaks of them, how- ever : —

" As the other traditions of the church fell more and more into contempt, the entire reverence of the people was concen- trated upon the Bible, recently made accessible in an English version, and read with eagerness, not as a mere form of words

HILDRETH 285

to be solemnly and ceremoniously gone through with, but as an inspired revelation, an indisputable authority in science, poli- tics, morals, life. It began, indeed, to be judged necessary, by the more ardent and sincere, that all existing institutions in church and state, all social relations, and the habits of every- day life should be reconstructed, and made to conform to this divine model. Those who entertained these sentiments in- creased to a considerable jjarty, composed chiefly, indeed, of the humbler classes, yeomen, traders, and mechanics, but in- cluding, also, clergymen, merchants, landed proprietors, and even some of the nobility. They were derided by those not in- clined to go with them as Puritans; but the austerity of tlieir lives and doctrines, and their confident claim to internal as- surance of a second birth and special election as the children of God, made a powerful impression on the multitude, while the high schemes they entertained for the reconstruction of society brought them into sympathy with all that was great and heroic in the nation.

" The Puritans denounced the church ceremonies, and pres- ently the hierarchy; but they long entertained profound rever- ence for the church itself, and a superstitious terror of schism. Some of the bolder and more ardent, whose obscurity gave them courage, took at length the decisive step of renouncing the English communion, and setting up a church of their own, upon what they conceived to be the Bible model. That, how- ever, was going furtlier than the great body of the Puritans wished or dared to follow, and these separatists remained for many years obscure and inconsiderable."

There are certain peculiarities in the institutions they at first founded, which Mr. Hildreth very properly dwells upon and exposes. We refer to the theocratical governments which they founded. No historian of America has so fully done them justice in this respect. He fears no man ; he is not misled by any reverence for the Puritans ; he shows no antip- athy to them ; extenuates nothing, adds nothing, and sets down naught in malice. We shall dwell a little on the theocratical tyranny which they sought to exer- cise. In 1629, John and Samuel Browne, at Salem, insisted on using the liturgy of the English church, and set up a separate worship of their own for that

286 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

purpose. They were arrested as " incorrigible," " factious and evil conditioned," and shipped home to England.

In 1631, the government of Masachusetts decided that no man shall be admitted a freeman, that is, a voter, a citizen in full, unless he were a member of a church in the colony. The candidate for church membership must state his " religious experience " be- fore the church, convince them of his " assurance " and " justification," before he shall be admitted as a member. Thus the road to the ballot-box led through the church, and lay directly in the range of the pul- pit. Hence it was no easy matter to become a free- man. Mr. Hildreth says not a fourth part of the adult population were church members. Baptism was the special privilege of church members and their " in- fant seed."

The clergy were aristocratic, in the evil sense of that word. They would not let the inhabitants of Newtown [Cambridge] remove to Connecticut in 1634, for " the removal of a candlestick is a great judg- ment, which ought to be avoided." Fines were im- posed for absence from public worship ; they aided the " Patricians " to carry " the point against the Plebians."

Stephen Goldsmith was fined forty pounds, forced to make acknowledgment in all the churches (1636), and give bonds for a hundred pounds, because he said all the ministers in the colony, except Allen Wheel- wright, and, " as he thought, Mr. Hooker," " did teach a covenant of works." Men were forbidden to erect a dwelling more than half a mile from the meeting-house, says Mr. Hildreth. The Puritan au- thorities became as arbitrary and unjust as the court

HILDRETH 287

of " High Commission," in England ; and persecuted men, and women not less, for differing from the opinion of the theocratic officers. Stoughton was persecuted for political opinions, Williams for religious, and Mrs. Hutchinson for philosophical notions on ques- tions of the most subtle character. Baptists and Quakers were imprisoned, whipped, banished, or put to death.

No man was allowed to settle in the colony without a permit from the magistrate ; a new comer must not have a house, and no man was suffered to entertain him more than three weeks, without permission. Before Massachusetts had been settled ten years, the synod at Newtown condemned eighty-two prevalent opinions as " false and heretical ! " Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson were banished for unpopular opinions ; freedom of worship was forbidden even to the like- minded, and " the lords brethren " became as tyranni- cal as " the lords bishops." An attempt was made, in 1639, to establish a church at Weymouth, on the principle of admitting all baptized persons without requiring a profession of faith or relation of experi- ence. It was promptly suppressed ; the minister con- cerned in the business was forced to make an apology ; some of the laymen were fined from two to twenty pounds, one whipped " eleven stripes," and one dis- franchised. Two persons once called the churches of Massachusetts " anti-christian," and were heavily fined and imprisoned for the offense. Governor Easton, of Rhode Island, it is alleged, once said, " the elect have the Holy Ghost and also the devil in- dwelling." He had provocation for his conclusion. The judicial treatment of Mrs. Hutchinson was in- famous, and the conduct of the leading clergy was

288 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

worthy of the darkest ages of popish bigotry. The misfortunes of that noble woman were attributed to " the hand of God." The treatment of Samuel Gor- ton and his coadjutors is nearly as desreputable. Did Dr, Child and others petition for a change of laws, so that inhabitants not church members might have the rights of English subjects, it gave " great offense to many godly priests, elders, and others ; " the petition was " adjudged a contempt," the petitioners were fined from ten to fifty pounds apiece. When the Doctor was about to embark for England, his trunk was searched for dangerous papers it might contain. Copies of two memorials were found in the study of Mr. Dand, addressed to the Commissioners of Planta- tions, one of them signed by some " fishermen of Mar- blehead, profane persons," and by " young men who came over servants, and never had any show of religion in them," and by " men of no reason." " A young fellow, a carpenter," by the name of Joy, had been busy obtaining signatures to the petition, and was kept in irons till " he humbled himself " and " blessed God for these irons upon his legs, hoping they would do him good while he lived." The offense of the men in whose hands the petitions were found was deemed " in nature capital," treason gainst the Commonwealth. Dand was kept in prison more than a year, and Child, with others, was heavily fined.

The magistrates of Massachusetts were long averse to having fixed laws — preferring an arbitrary gov- ernment by men to he sober and dispassionate govern- ment of impartial statutes. The code made in 1649 contained some remarkable provisions : " Stubborn and rebellious sons," and children over sixteen " who curse or smite their natural father or mother," were pun-

HILDRETH S89

ished with death. Courtship must not be undertaken without the permission of the parents or guardians of the maid ; or, in their absence, that of the " nearest magistrate," under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Blasphemy was a capital crime. Men were to be ban- ished " for preaching and maintaining any damnable heresies, as denying the immortality of the soul, or resurrection of the body," or " that Christ gave him- self a ransom for our sins," or " for declaring that we are not sanctified by his death and righteousness," or for denying " the morality of the fourth command- ment," or the efficacy of infant baptism, or for de- parting from church at the administration of that ordinance. A few years later, a law was made pun- ishing with fine, whipping, banishment, or with death, any persons " who denied the received books of the Old and New Testaments to be the infallible word of God." We know some persons who would be glad to revive these pleasant statutes at the present day. We are told it is not long since an attempt was made in Massachusetts to secure the indictment of a distin- guished scholar for a learned article published in a very respectable theological journal, in which he main- tained that there was no prophetic passage in the Old Testament which was originally intended to apply to Jesus of Nazareth."* It is not ten years since there appeared, in one of the leading secular newspapers of Boston, an article written by a venerable clergyman, calling for the arrest and punishment of a young man who had, in a sermon, spoken against the cor- ruption of the Christian church at his day, and the doctrines that had no foundation in reason and the nature of things. Three years' confinement in the state's prison was the punishment demanded for the

young minister ! ^ 11—19

290 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Everybody knows the treatment of Baptists and Quakers in Massachusetts. The " great Cotton " de- clared that denial of infant baptism was " soul-mur- der," and a capital offense. When Obadiah Holmes was fined thirty pounds for being a Baptist, as he went from the bar he thanked God that he was "counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus." " Where- upon," says Holmes, " John Wilson [minister of ' First Church ' in Boston] struck me before the judg- ment-seat and cursed me, saying : ' The curse of God or Jesus go with thee.' " Holmes would not pay his fine, and was whipped thirty stripes with a three- corded whip, " the man striking with all his strength." But he " had such a spiritual manifestation that I could well bear it," says he, " yea, and in a manner felt it not, although it was grievous, as the spectators said." He told the magistrates, " you have struck me as with roses," and " I pray God it may not be laid to your charge." Two men came up after the brutal punishment was over, and shook hands with him, say- ing, " blessed be God." They were fined forty shill- ings, and imprisoned. Yet the Baptists continued to increase. Blow the fire, if you wish it to burn.

The town of Maiden was fined for presuming to settle a minister without consulting the neighboring churches, though there was no law to that effect. The General Court forbade the settlement of Michael Powell in the ministry at the second church in Boston ; he had been a tavern-keeper at Dedham, and though " gifted," was " unlearned." How humbly he sub- mitted : " My humble request is, that you would not have such hard thoughts of me that I would consent to be ordained to office without your concurrence; nor that our poor church would attempt such a thing

HILDRETH 291

without your approbation." At his death, this " gifted " man left furniture to the value of fourteen pounds, and a library consisting of " three Bibles, a Concordance, with other books," valued at " two pounds."

In Massachusetts men not members of the church were compelled to support the clergyman, and through her influence Plymouth, always before her sister in liberality, passed a law to the same effect. However, Williams in his settlement at New Providence could rejoice that we have not " been consumed with the over- zealous fire of the so-called godly ministers." Salton- stall writes to the New Englanders : " First, you com- pel such to come into your assemblies as you know will not join you in your worship, and when they show their dislike thereof, or witness against it, then you stir up your magistrates to punish them for such, as you conceive, their public affronts." Cotton and Wil- son replied, " Better be hypocrites than profane per- sons," " we fled from men's inventions," and only com- pelled others to attend to " God's institutions," — that is, to all the abominations of the Puritan creed and ritual. " We content ourselves with unity in the foundation of religion and church order."

Never was the violent attempt to secure " unity in the foundation of religion " less successful. New England was a perfect hotbed of heresy. " How is it," writes Sir Harry Vane, in 1653, " that there are such divisions among you, — such headiness, tumults, disorder, injustice.'* Are there no wise men among you, — no public self-denying spirits.'' "

A law was passed prohibiting the erection of a meet- ing-house without the consent of the freemen of the town, — who were all theocratically orthodox,^ — and

292 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the county court, or the consent of the General Court. It would be " setting up an altar against the Lord's altar." Quakers were banished or hanged. But all this was ineffectual in making men think alike. Bap- tists, Quakers, Antinomians, Ranters of all sorts there were, excited no doubt by the laws against freedom. The " hateful Episcopalians " at length got a church established, in 1686; the theocracy dwindled.

It is instructive to see the Puritans in New England and the Jesuits in Canada, at the same time, contend- ing to establish a theocracy, both for the same pur- pose, each by the same means, — the suppression of in- dividual freedom in religion.

" Presbytery does but translate The Papacy to a free state,"

said Butler, and with not a little truth. The laws of Massachusetts, which continued in force till the Revolu- tion, provided that a " Popish priest " coming here should be accounted " an incendiary, and disturber of the public peace and safety." He was to suffer perpetual imprisonment and death, if he attempted to escape. But spite of the law against " Popish priests," the worst part of Papacy came here, — the spirit of intolerance and persecution.

Along with this intolerance of the churches, the old elements of feudal aristocracy were brought to America, and continued to live for awhile in the new soil. A distinction was carefully kept up between " gentlemen " and those of an inferior condition. Only the "gentlemen " were allowed the title " Mr. ; " their number was not very large. The rest rejoiced in the appellative " Goodman." In 1639 some " persons of quality " wished to come to New England, and it was proposed to establish " a standing council for

HILDRETH 293

life ; " in the Commonwealth there were to be two classes of men, namely, " hereditary gentlemen," to sit as a permanent senate, and a body of " freehold- ers," who were to send deputies to constitute a lower house. The magistrates and elders favored the scheme, finding it comformable to the " light of nature and Scripture." The " great Cotton," an able man, with the soul of a priest, liked the scheme well ; democracy was " not a fit government cither for church or state ; " monarchy and aristocracy " are approved and directed in Scripture," " but only a theocracy is set up in both." " If the people are governors," says he, " who shall be governed.'' " Indignant Mr. Savage, com- menting on this measure, says " the ministers were perpetually meddling with the regimen of the Com- monwealth ; and we have frequent occasion to regret that their references to the theocracy of Israel were received as authority rather than illustration." But how could it be otherwise, with such a theology.? Calvinism naturally leads to an aristocracy on earth, as well as in heaven. The world — this and the next — is for the elect, and who shall lay anything to their charge.'' However, the people put an end to all talk about " hereditary gentlemen," who disappear from the history of New England for ever. Had this ungodly proposition become a law the state of things would have been a little different to-day ! For a long time the law, however, recognized a distinction between the gentleman and the simple man. " No man," says a law of IG'il, " shall be beaten above forty stripes ; nor shall any true gentleman, or any man equal to a gentleman, be punished with whipping, unless his crime be very shameful and his career of life vicious and profligate." But in 1703 Paul Dudley

294. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

thought Massachusetts a very poor place for " gen- tlemen ; " meaning, says Mr. Hiklreth, " those who wish to grow rich on the labor of others." For some time there was no trial by jury in Connecticut; "no warrant was found for it in the Word of God." We find the democratic element active in New England at the very beginning, continually increasing in strength. At first, it is more powerful in Plymouth than in Massachusetts. For eighteen years all the laws of Plymouth were made in a general assembly of all the people. The governor was only president of a council of assistants. The church had no pastor for eight years ; Brewster, the ruling elder, and such members as had the " gift of prophecy," exhorted the congre- gations. On Sunday afternoons there was a free meeting ; a question was started, and all spoke that saw fit. But gradually the theocratic spirit of IMassa- chusetts invaded the sister colony. Still, church mem- bership was not required as a condition of citizenship. In 1631 the freemen in Massachusetts began to be jeal- ous of the theocratic oligarchy which ruled the colony, and claimed the right of annually electing new as- sistants. The constitution of towns was democratic from the beginning, and has been changed but little since. The towns were then, as now, little republics, managing their own affairs, voting money, levying taxes, and choosing " selectmen," a town clerk, treas- urer, and constable. The town sj^stem is an original New England institution, and has proved of great value in the acquisition of political liberty. The free- dom of the town helped overcome the tyranny of the church.

At first the magistrates levied the taxes for the whole colony ; but, in 1632, the people of Watertown

HILDRETH 295

considered that it " was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and their posterity into bondage." It was a wholesome and a timely fear. The freemen detennined to choose their governor and deputy governor. In 1634 the first rep- resentative court assembled ; there were three deputies from each of the eight towns or plantations. Soon they demanded fixed and definite laws. It seems quite remarkable, but it is true, that while money was not the chief basis of social respectability, Boston was far before the country in point of liberality. Now, the opposite is true. Providence Plantation led the way in the establishment of liberty ; for, in 1647, the gov- ernment was declared " democratical," freedom of faith and worship was assured to all, " the first formal and legal establishment of religious liberty ever pro- mulgated," says Mr. Hildreth. In 1652, in York- shire (in Maine), and in some other parts of New England, church membership was not necessary to citizenship. Toleration began to be demanded for the Church of England, and as the Puritans had estab- lished a theocratic tyranny as bad as what they fled from, so the Episcopalians became an humble instru- ment in promoting religious freedom in America. In 1662, the king demanded the repeal of the law which limited citizenship to church members, substituting a proper qualification instead, and the admission of all persons of honest lives to baptism and the Lord's Sup- per. For some years there were three parties in New England : the theocratic party, which continually diminished ; the Episcopalians, Baptists, and Quakers, who demanded religious freedom ; and the moderate men, who mediated between the two extremes. The " halfway covenant " was adopted in 1659 ; a few

i296 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

years later a Baptist church was formally organized in Boston, and though persecuted for a long time sur- vives to this day. After the revocation of the charter, the theocratic party was weakened still further and their domination at length came to an end.

" A new school of divines, known as Latitudinarians, sprung up among the Protestants towards the conclusion of the previ- ous century, had essayed the delicate task of reconciling reason with revelation. They not only rejected the authority of tra- dition, so highly extolled and implicitly relied upon by the Catholics and the English High Churchmen; they scouted, also, that special interior persuasion which the Puritans, after the early Reformers, had denominated faith, but which to these reasoning divines seemed no better than enthusiasm. They pre- ferred to rest the truth of Christianity on the testimony of prophecy and miracles, of which they undertook to establish the reality by the application to the Bible history of the ordi- nary rules of evidence; by which same rules they undertook to establish, also, the authenticity and inspiration of the Bible itself."

" They presently pushed the principle of the halfway cove- nant so far as to grant to all persons not immoral in their lives admission to the Lord's Supper; indeed, all the privileges of full church membership. Mucli to the mortification of the Mathers, who wrote and protested against this doctrine, the college at Cambridge presently passed under the control of the new party — a change not without important results on the in- tellectual history of New-England."

" In the century since its settlement. New England had un- dergone a great change. The austere manners of the Puritan fathers were still, indeed, preserved; their language was re- peated; their observances were kept up; their institutions were revered; forms and habits remained, but the spirit was gone. The more ordinary objects of human desire and pursuit, the universal passion for wealth, political squabbles with the royal governors, land speculations, paper money jobs, and projects of territorial and personal aggrandizement, had superseded those metaphysical disputes, that spiritual vision, and that ab- sorbing passion for a pure theocratic commonwealth which had carried the fathers into the wilderness. Even Cotton Mather, such was the progress of opinion, boasted of the harmony in which various religious sects lived together in Boston, and spoke of religious persecution as an obsolete blunder."

HILDRETH 297

" Education and habit, especially in what relates to outward forms, are not easily overcome. Episcopacy made but slow progress in New England. A greater change, however, was silently going on; among the more intelligent and thoughtful, both of laymen and ministers, Latitudinarianism continued to spread. Some approached even towards Socinianism, carefully concealing, however, from themselves their advance to that abyss. The seeds of schism were broadly sown; but extreme caution and moderation on the side of the Latitudinarians long prevented any open rupture. They rather insinuated than avowed their opinions. Afraid of a controversj% in which they were conscious that popular prejudice would be all against them, unsettled many of them in their own minds, and not daring to probe matters to the bottom, they patiently waited the further effects of that progressive change by which they themselves had been borne along. To gloss over their heresies, they called themselves Arminians; they even took the name of moderate Calvinists. Like all doubters, they lacked the zeal and energy of faith. Like all dissemblers, they were timid and hesitating. Conservatives as well as Latitudinarians, they wished, above all tbings, to enjoy their salaries and clerical dignities in comfort and in peace. Free comparatively in their studies, they were very cautious in their pulpits how they shocked the fixed prejudices of a bigoted people whose bread they ate. It thus happened, that while the New England the- ology, as held by the more intelligent, underwent decided changes, the old Puritan phraseology was still generally pre- served, and the old Puritan doctrines, in consequence, still kept their hold to a great extent on the mass of the people. Yet remarkable local modifications of opinion were silently produced by individual ministers, the influence of the abler Latitudinarian divines being traceable to this day in the respective places of their settlement."

" As the exalted religious imagination of New England sub- sided to the common level, as reason and the moral sense began to struggle against the overwhelming pressure of religious awe, a party inevitably appeared which sought by learned glosses to accommodate the hard text of the Scriptures and the hard doctrines of the popular creed to the altered state of the public mind."

" The modern doctrines of religious freedom and free in- quiry have constantly gained ground, throwing more and more into the shade that old idea, acted upon with special energy by the Puritan colonists of New England — deep traces of which are also to be found in every North American code —

298 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the theocratic idea of a Christian commonwealth, in which every other interest must be made subservient to unity of faith and worship."

At length Unitarlanism and Universalism came, after the Revolution, to bring things to their present condition. As Mr. Hildreth says, of times soon after that, even " in New England the old leaven of Latitu- dinarianism was still deeply at work among the learned, while, among the less educated classes, the new doctrine of Universalism began to spread."

Along with this bigotry of the Puritans, there was a hardy vigor, a capacity for doing and enduring, a manly reliance on God and their own arm, one acknowledged, the other not confessed, which are worthy of admiration.

The treatment of the natives has been remarkable. We have before spoken of the national exclusiveness of the Anglo-Saxon race ; it was never made more ap- parent than by the Puritans in New England. It is difficult even for one of their descendants, at the pres- ent time, to understand the feeling of our fathers re~ specting the Indians. Dr. Joseph Mede was a learned and enlightened man, but in 1634 he wrote to his friend. Dr. Twisse, as follows :

" I think that the Devil, being impatient of the sound of the Gosjiel and Cross of Christ in every part of this old world, so that he could in no place be quiet for it, and foreseeing that he was like at length to lose all here, bethought himself to pro- vide him of a seed over which he might reign securely; and in a place, ubi nee Pelopidarum facta neque nomen audiret.

" That accordingly he drew a Colony out of some of those barbarous Nations dwelling upon the Northern Ocean (whither the sound of Christ had not yet come), and promising them by some Oracle to shew them a Countrey far better than their own (which he might soon do), pleasant, large, where never man yet inhabited, he conducted them over those desart Lands and Islands (which are many in that sea) by the way of the

HILDRETH 299

North into America; which none would ever have gone, had they not first been assured there was a passage that way into a more desirable Countrey. Namely, as when the world aposta- tized from the Worship of the true God, God called Abram out of Chaldce into the Land of Canaan, of him to raise him a Seed to preserve a light unto his Name: So the Devil, when he saw the world apostatizing from him, laid the foundations of a new Kingdom, by deducting this Colony from the North into America, where since they have increased into an innimieraltlc multitude. And where did the Devil ever reign more absolutely and without controll, since mankind fell first under his clutches? And here it is to be noted, that the story of the Mexican Kingdom (which was not founded above 400 years before ours came thither) relates out of their own memorials and traditions that they came to that place from the North; whence their God Vitzliliputzli led them, going in an Ark before them: and after divers years travel and many stations (like enough after some generations) they came to the place which the Sign he had given them at their first setting forth pointed out, where they were to finish their travels, build themselves a City, and their God a Temple; which is the place where Mexico was built. Now if the Devil were God's ape in this; why might he not be so likewise in bringing the first Colony of men into that world out of ours? namely, by Oracle, as God did Abraham out of Chaldee, whereto I before resembled it.

" But see the hand of Divine Providence. When the ott- spring of these Runnagates from the sound of Christ's Gospel had now replenisht that other world, and began to flourish in those two Kingdoms of Peru and Mexico, Christ our Lord sends his Mastives the Spaniards to hunt them out and worry them: Which they did in so hideous a manner, as the like thereunto scarce ever was done since the Sons of Noah came out of the Ark. What an afi'ront to the Devil was this, where he had thought to have reigned securely, and been forever con- cealed from the knowledge of the followers of Christ?

" Yet the Devil perhaps is less grieved for the loss of his servants by the destroying of them, than he would be to lose them by the saving of them; by which latter way I doubt the Spaniards have despoiled him but of a few. What tlien if Christ our Lord will give him his second aifront with better Christians, which may be more grievous to him than the former? And if Christ shall set him up a light in this manner to dazle and torment the Devil at his own home, I will hope they shall not so far degenerate (not all of them) as to come in that Army of Gog and Magog against the Kingdom of Christ,

800 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

but be translated thither before the Devil be loosed, if not presently after his tying up. And whence should those Na- tions get notice of the glorious happiness of our world, if not by some Christians that had lived among them?" — The Works of the Pious ^ Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede, B.D., some- time Felloiv of Christ's College in Cambridge, &c., &c. Lon- don: 1677. pp. 800 — 801.

At Plymouth the Indians were treated with more justice than is usual for the civilized to show to bar- barians. In 1633 legal provision was made in Massachusetts for such red men as should become civilized ; but, with Anglo-Saxon exclusiveness, they were to be formed into townships by themselves. Major Gibbons, at a later date, was admonished " of the distance which is to be observed betwixt Christians and barbarians as well in war as in other negotiations." It was with difficulty that Eliot obtained liberty to organize a church at Natick. Yet the threat was made by the praying Indians to the Wampanoags that, unless they accepted the gospel, Massachusetts " would destroy them by war." A sharp distinction was always made between converted Indians and other Christians ; they Avere treated, in every respect, as an inferior race; restricted to villages of their own, and cut off by opinion, as well as law, from intermarriage and intercourse with the whites. No one was allowed to sell them horses or boats. It was proposed to ex- terminate them, as being of the " cursed seed of Ham." Thus causes were put in action which at length have brought the Indians to their present condition in Massachusetts.

At an early date many of them were reduced to slavery, some in New England ; others were sent off as slaves to the West Indies, eight score at one time, though regular prisoners of war. There were Old

HILDRETH 301

Testament examples for this, and even worse treat- ment. Roger Williams once received " a boy " as his share of the plunder obtained at an Indian defeat. In 1712, Massachusetts forbade the further inporta- tion of Indian slaves ; not from any moral scruples, but on account of " divers conspiracies, outrages, barbarities, murders, burglaries, thefts, and other no- torious crimes and enormities, perpetrated and com- mitted by Indians, being of a surly and revengful spirit, rude and insolent in their behavior, and very ungovernable." There seems to have been no moral objection to slavery in the Great and General Court at that time.

Outrageous cruelties were often practiced on the Indians. It was once proposed by the commissioners for the colonies, that in case of war " mastiff dogs might be of good use." But we think the proposi- tion was not carried out till nearly two hundred years later, then in a different latitude, to the amazement of the civilized world. Even the men of Plymouth loved bloody spectacles at the cost of the Indians. In 1622, Wituwamat's head was carried thither and set up on a pole, as a warning. It was in vain that pious Mr. Robinson wished they had converted some before they killed any. An order was once given to Endicott to put to death all the Indian men on Block Island, and make slaves of the women and children. He could not kill the men, so he stove their canoes, burnt their wigwams, and destroyed their standing corn. While the Rev. Mr. Stone was once praying " for one pledge of love," to confirm the fidelity of the Indian allies, they came in with five such pledges, namely, five Pequod scalps. No doubt, he thought his prayer was " answered." In the war with the Pequods, in 1637,

302 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

under Mason and Underhill, the colonists " bereaved of pity and without compassion," gave no quarter, and showed no mercy ; not even to old men, women, and chil- dren. In the capture of an Indian fort they took only seven prisoners, seven more escaped, but hun- dreds were slain. Says Underhill, " Great and dole- ful was the sight, to the view of young soldiers, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick that you could hardly pass along." But then " ' twas a famous victory." On another occasion, in the same war, twenty-two Indian prisoners of war were put to death after they had surrendered ; about fifty were distributed as slaves, not " to every man a damsel or two," but among the principal colonists. The scalp of Sassacus was sent to Boston. Heads and hands of Pequod warriors were brought in by other Indians ! Even the savages thought the " war too furious, and to slay too many." But what can satisfy bigotry in the name of the Lord ? Underhill refers to " the wars of David " for his precedent ; and, for authority, says " we had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings." Mason adds " that the Lord was pleased to smite our enemies in the hinder parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance." The New Eng- landers commanded him to kill Miantonimoh, their captive and former friend ; he did so, and ate a por- tion of the body, for which there was no scriptural warrant. If an Indian injured a white man, and the tribe did not give satisfaction, the offender might be seized and delivered to the injured party, " either to serve or to be shipped off and exchanged for negroes." The women of Marblchead once murdered two Indian prisoners ; it was Sunday, and the murderers had just come out of church.

HILDRETH

The most wholesale destructions of the Indians

took place during King Philip's war. More than two

thousand were killed or taken in a single year. Wita-

nio, the squaw-sachem of Pocasset, and friend of

Philip, was drowned, but her body was saved, the

head cut off and stuck upon a pole at Taunton, amid

the jeers and scoffs of the colonists. Philip's dead

body was beheaded and quartered ; one of his hands

was given to the Indian who shot him, and his head

was carried in triumph to Plymouth on a public day

of thanksgiving (August 17, 1676.) "Oh that men

would praise the Lord," says Secretary Morton, " for

his goodness and wonderful works unto them ! " His

wife and son were taken prisoners. What should be

done with the lad, a boy nine years old? The opinion

of the clergy was asked. Cotton of Plymouth, and

Arnold of Marshfield, thought in general " that rule

(Deuteronomy xxiv. 16) to be moral and therefore

perpetually binding," and the crime of the parent did

attaint the son. Yet they say :

" Yet, upon serious consideration, we humbly conceive that tiie children of notorious traitors, rebells, and murtlierers, espe- cially of such as have bin principal leaders and actors in such horrid villainies, and that against a whole nation, yea, the whole Israel of God, may be involved in the guilt of their parents, and may, salva republica, be adjudged to death, as to us seems evident by the Scripture instances of Saul, Ashan, Haman, the cliildren of whom were cut off, by the sword of Justice, for the transgressions of their parents, although, concerning some of tliose children, it be manifest, that they were not capable of being co-actors therem." — Morton's Memorial, Davis' Edi- tion, p, 454, No. 1.

Increase Mather says: —

" I should have said something about Philip's son. It is nec- essary that some effectual course should be taken about him. He makes me think of Hadad, who was a little child when his father (the chief sachem of the Edomites) was killed by

304. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Joab; and, had not others fled away with him, I am apt to think that David would have taken a course that Hadad should never have jiroved a scourge to the next generation." — lb., No. 2.

Keith, of Bridgcwater, gave a milder council, which was followed. The boy Avas sold into slavery, and the money deposited in the treasury of the colony. Philip's wife also shared the same fate. The state of Massachusetts is so much richer at this day. We wonder the money arising from the sale, this price of blood, was not given to " The Society for propagat- ing the Gospel among the Indians." In 1725 a premium of one hundred pounds was offered for each Indian scalp. It was estimated that each scalp, in the war of 1704, had cost one thousand pounds. The treatment the Indians receive at the hands of Mass- achusetts, at this day, is a terrible reproach to us.

There is another matter of a good deal of importance we wish to refer to, namely, the indented servants brought to New England. Governor Bradford, in one of his poetical inspirations, thus alludes to them : —

" Another cause of our declining here Is a mixed multitude, as doth appear. Many for servants hitherto were brought. Others came for gain, or new ends they sought; And of those, many grew loose and profane, Though some were brought to know God and his name."

" These servants," says Mr. Hildreth, " seem in general to have had little sympathy with the austere manners and opinions of their masters, and their fre- quent transgressions of Puritan decorum gave its mag- istrates no little trouble." In 1622 Weston sent out nearly sixty of them ; Gorges brought many the next year; Sir William Brewster sent several more in 1628; nearly two hundred came in 1629 ; Richard Salton-

HILDRETH 305

stall sent twenty in 1635. It was one of the offenses of Morton that his " merry mount " was a refuge for " runaway servants." At one time a master re- ceived a grant of fifty acres of land for each servant he brought over. About two hundred servants were once set free on their arrival in New England, in con- sequence of the scarcity of provisions in the colony !

In 1641 the law allowed any man to harbor ser- vants flying from the tyranny of their masters, until the master could be judicially examined; notice must be given to the master and the nearest constable. A faithful and diligent service, for seven years, en- titled the servant to a dismissal. He must not be sent off " empty-handed," says the humane statute, following the Mosaic code in this particular. If a master maimed or disfigured his servant, he was en- titled to liberty and to damages also. Still, the law was not very precise in regard to the treatment of this anomalous class of persons.

In 1643 " the united colonies of New England," forgetting the Old Testament when property was at stake, agreed to surrender runaway servants. In 1650 the law pursued such servants and arrested them at the public expense ; they were required to make up, threefold, the time of their absence.

In 1665 the condition of servants in New York is

remarkable.

" Under a provision borrowed from the Connecticut code, fugitive servants niiglit be pursued by Ime and cry at the pub- lic charge; but this was presently found too expensive, and the cost was imposed on the parties concerned. Runaway servants were to forfeit double the time of their absence, and the cost of their recapture. All who aided in concealing them were liable to a fme. Tyrannical masters and mistresses might be complained of to the overseers, and proceeded against at the sessions; and servants maimed by their masters were entitled to 11—20

306 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

freedom and damages. During servitude, they were forbidden to sell or buy. Any master of a vessel carrying any person out of the colony without a pass was liable for his debts; and by a subsequent provision, any unknown person travelling through any town without a pass was liable to be arrested as a run- away, and detained till he proved his freedom, and paid, by work and labor, if not otherwise able, the cost of his arrest."

The importation of this class of persons continued

till after the middle of the eighteenth century.

" The colonial enactments for keeping these servants in order, and especially for preventing them from running away, were often very harsh and very severe. They were put, for the most part, in these statutes, on the same level with the slaves, but their case in other respects was very different. In all the colonies, the term of indented service, even where no express contract had been entered into, was strictly limited by law, and, except in the case of very young persons, it seldom or never exceeded seven years. On the expiration of that lerm, these freed servants were absorbed into the mass of white in- habitants, and the way lay open before them and their children to wealth and social distinction. One of the future signers of the Declaration of Independence was brought to Pennsyl- vania as a redemptioner. In Virginia, at the expiration of his term of service, every redemptioner, in common with other immigrants to the colony, was entitled to a free grant of fifty acres of land, and in all the colonies certain allowances of clothing were required to be made by the late masters."

The subject demands a distinct and entire treatise, for which we have no space at present ; but the fol- lowing document, copied for us by a friend, from the Court-records at Salem, throw some light on the age of which we have been speaking: —

"10 May 1654 Be it known unto all men by these presents that I George Dill, master of the ship Goodfellow; have sould unto Mr. Samuel Symonds two of the Irish youthes I brought over by order of the State of England, the name of one of them is William Dalton, the other Edward Welch, to serve him, his heirs, executors or assignes for the space of 9 years, And the said Samuel in consideration hereof doth promise & engage to be paid imto the said master the sum of £26 in corn mer- chantable or live cattle at or before the end of October next, provided he give good assurance for the enjoying of them."

HILDRETH 307

At the end of seven years the " two Irish youthes " ran away, or refused to work any longer. It was to recover the two years' service, or their value, that the action was brought in 1661. The following is their reply, or defense. It will be seen that their names do not agree with the names mentioned by the Captain.

" 1661 To the Honoured Court & Jury now assembled the humble defence of W"i Downeing & Philip Welch in the ac- tion between them & their Master W'^ Symonds; That which we say in defence of ourselves is that we were brought out of our own country, contrary to our own will & minds, & sold here to Mr. Symonds, by ye Master of the ship, Mr. Dill, but what agreement was made between Mr. Symonds & ye said Master, was never acted by our consent or knowledge, yet not- withstanding we have endeavoured to serve him the best service we cloud these 7 conpleat yeares, which is 3 yeares more than the Spirits * used to sell them for at Barbadoes, when they are stolen in England, And for our service we have noe calling or wages but meate & cloathes. Now 7 yeares' service being so much as is the practice of old England, & thought meet in this place, & we being 21 yeares of age we hope the Honored Court & Jury will seriously consider our conditions."

"Whereas it has been Represented to His Majesty that by reason of the frequent Abuses of a lewd sort of people called Spirits in Seducing many of His Majesty's Subjects to go on Shipboard, where they have been Seized & Carried by Force to His Majesty's Plantations in America, & that many idle persons, who have Listed themselves voluntarily to be Transjjortcd thither & have received money upon their entering into Service for that purpose have afterwards pretended they were Be- trayed & Carried away against their wills & procured their friends to prosecute the Merchants who brought them," &c. &c,

" The Testimony of John Ring.

" This deponent saith that he with divers others were stolen in Ireland by some of ye English soldiers in ye night out of their beds and brought to Mr. Dill's ship, where the boate lay ready to receive them and in the way as they went some others they tooke with them against their consents & brought

* " At the Court held in Whitehall, December 13th, 1682.

308 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

them aboard the said ship, where there were divers others of their coiiiitrynicn, weeping & crying because they were stolen from their friends, they all declaring the same & amongst the rest were these two men, W"^ Downing & Philip Welch, & there they were kept imtil upon a Lord's day in the morning ye master set saile & left some of his vessels behind for haste as I understood.

"Sworile in Court 26 June 1661."

There were similar servants in the other colonies. Of the hundred and five persons who settled in Vir- ginia in 1606, forty-eight were "gentlemen," " brought up to esteem manual labor degrading. There Avere but twelve laborers, four carpenters, and four other mechanics, the rest were soldiers and ser- vants." In 1608 one hundred and twenty men of the same sort arrived in Virginia ; " vagabond gentlemen, unaccustomed to labor, and disdainful of it, with three or four bankrupt London jewelers, goldsmiths, and refiners, sent out to seek for mines." Governor Smith said of them, that it was better to send out thirty mechanics than a thousand such men ! Ser- vants were indispensable in such a community. In 1613, the Governor of Virginia had for his support a plantation cultivated by one hundred servants. In 1619 ninety young women, " pure and uncorrupt," were sent out to be disposed of as wives for the plant- ers. The price was a hundred pounds of tobacco, about seventy-five dollars. A similar cargo, the next year, however, brought only about half that price. V^e think that was the last adventure of the sort sent to Virginia, — a woman for fifty pounds of tobacco was certainly too cheap.

About the same time, by the order of the king, a hundred dissolute vagabonds were taken from the jails and sent to Virginia to be disposed of as servants. They were known by the name of "jail-birds." In

HILDRETH 309

1643 the law forbade dealing with any servants with- out consent of their masters, and punished such as married without the master's consent. They once planned an insurrection in Virginia, which was de- tected beforehand ; and the 13th of September, " the day the villanous plot should have been put in execu- tion," was declared a perpetual holiday.

" Servants ' sold for the custom,' that is, having no inden- tures, if over nineteen years of age, are to serve five years; if under nineteen, till twenty- four, their ages to be adjudged by the county court. Masters are to provide ' wholesome and com- petent diet, clothing, and lodging, by the discretion of the county court;' nor shall they at any time give immoderate cor- rection, nor ' whip a Christian white servant naked ' without an order from a justice of the peace, under penalty of forty shillings to the servant, to be recovered witli costs, on complaint to a justice of the peace, 'without the formal process of an action.' Justices are bound to receive and investigate the com- plaints of all servants ' not being slaves.' Any resistance or offer of violence on the part of a servant is punishable by an additional year's servitude. Servants are guaranteed the pos- session of such property as may lawfully come to them by gift or otherwise, but no person may deal with them except by per- mission of their masters. In case of fines inflicted by penal laws, unless some one would pay the fines for them, servants are to be punished by whipping, at the rate of twenty lashes for every five hundred pounds of tobacco, or fifty shillings sterling, each stroke being thus estimated at about sixty cents. Women servants having bastards are to forfeit to their mas- ters an additional year's service, unless the master were the father, in which case the forfeiture accrues to the church- wardens. In case the father were a negro or mulatto, other penalties are added, as by a law formerly mentioned. The provisions for the arrest of runawa3's, which are sufficiently stringent, apply equally to slaves and servants, except that out- lying slaves might be killed, and irreclaimable runaways ' dis- membered.' "

Governor Thomas, of Pennsylvania, enlisted the ser- vants, in 1740, into the army, and many of them never returned to their masters, whom the state indemnified for their loss. In 1756 the colonists were much of-

SIO THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

fended because the English government authorized the enhsting of servants, though a compensation was given to their masters. In the revolutionary war many of the soldiers enlisted in the middle and southern States were " redemptioners," or servants. It was proposed in Congress to direct a portion of their pay to com- pensate the masters for the loss of their services, but at the earnest request of Washington the plan was dropped, and the servants who enlisted were declared freemen. Since the Revolution we think there have been no servants of this character.

Some curious anecdotes are preserved of the shifts resorted to by servants to escape from their condition. A citizen from Ireland was once " sold to pay his passage " to America, and bought by a farmer in New England as a servant. The farmer set him to read the Bible one Sunday. He held the book bot- tom upwards, and could not read. One day he was sent by his master into the woods to chop wood ; at night, when he came home, he was asked how much he had cut ; he said, " about a bushel." On looking, it appears he cut it up into slivers. When bade to replenish the fire, he did it with water. He Avas found of no value for any of the common work of the farm, and his master, who lived on the sea-shore, set him to tend the ducks and geese, to keep them from wander- ing or being destroyed, thinking it well, we suppose, to set a goose to watch a goose. At night, the ser- vant came home with his charge, and complained that they must all of them be sick, for, he added, " they have not sucked their mothers once all day." His master considered him a fool, and finding him worth- less, refused to keep him. The servant pretended that he was afraid somebody would kill him unless his mas-

HILDRETH 311

ter gave him a legal discharge, renouncing all claim upon him whatever. This was done ; and within less than a week the foolish servant opened a school in the very town where he had been bought, and from the office of schoolmaster rose to high political stations in New England, and founded a family still proud of his name.

We cannot pass over the matter of slavery, to which Mr. Hildreth has directed much attention, and which is likely to be an interesting subject for some years to come. At the time of the settlement of America the idea was beginning to prevail that it was wrong to hold Christians in bondage, but this ob- jection did not extend to heathens and infidels. It was prudently discovered that the negroes were the descendants of Ham, and the inheritors of the curse of the mythological Noah. Who so fit for bondmen as the negroes .'' It conduced to " godliness " to make them slaves, as well as to " great gain." The same year in which the Pilgrims came to Plymouth, twenty negroes were brought to Virginia as slaves for life, no doubt to the great comfort of the " gentlemen " there. It is not long before we find them in New England ; not long before Boston is concerned in the slave-trade, from which she is not yet become free ; for while we are writing this paper, we learn that a ship from Boston, the " Lucy Anne," has lately been seized, loaded with five hundred and forty-seven slaves ! Another vessel from the same port, the " Pi- lot," is also in British custody for the same offense. The actual seizure of five hundred and forty-seven slaves in Africa is by no means the most infamous part of the support which this city furnishes to slavery, only one of the obvious indications of a spirit well

812 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

known to exist in Boston, and by no means confined to " illiterate and profane persons." The laws of Mass- achusetts, in 1641, justified enslaving " captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell them- selves or are sold unto us."

In 1662 Virginia revised the rule of the common law, and declared that children should follow the con- dition of their mother. All the Southern states have since adopted the same iniquitous provision. In 1663 Maryland made a law that the child of a free white woman shall follow the condition of the father if he be a slave ; this was repealed a few years later, but a fine of ten thousand pounds of tobacco was imposed on the clergymen or the masters and mistresses who promoted or connived at the marriage of such persons.

In 1667 Virginia declared that Christianity was no bar to slavery, but the slave should not escape from bondage by communion and baptism ; killing a slave was declared not felony. Indians " imported by ship- ping," and not Christians, might be slaves for life. In 1671, there were two thousand "black slaves" in Virginia, and six thousand " Christian servants," of whom about fifteen hundred were imported yearly. In 1682 all negroes, mulattoes, or Indians, brought into the colony by sea or land. Christians or not, were declared slaves for life, unless they were of Chris- tian parentage or country. In 1692 an " act for sup- pressing outlying slaves " declares that, if they resist, run awa}"^, or refuse to surrender, " they may be law- fully killed or destroyed with guns, or any other way whatever." The state was to indemnify the master for the loss, giving four thousand pounds of tobacco for a negro. A thousand pounds of tobacco were of- fered to any one who should kill a certain runaway,

HILDRETH 313

the " negro slave Billy." In 1705 laws were passed to prevent intermarriages between blacks and whites, and against emancipating slaves. Summary tribunals were established for the trial of slaves, " without the solemnity of a jury." They were to be kept in jail, " well laden with irons." Even in Pennsylvania, William Penn could not secure the right of equal mar- riage for slaves ! As slaves increased — and about one thousand were annually imported into Virginia in 1720, and for some time after — the laws became more rigorous. It was made more difficult to set them free. South Carolina has always been remarkable for the rigor of her slave laws. In 1670, the " fundamental and unalterable constitution " provided that every freeman " shall have obsolute power and authority over his negro slaves." In 1704 we find one James Moore a " needy, forward, and ambitious man," kid- napping Indians to sell as slaves. Many others did the same in 1712 on a large scale, taking eight hun- dred at one time, and re-annexing Indian villages. A law was made the same year making it the duty of every person to arrest any slave found abroad without a pass, and give him " moderate chastisement." A slave guilty of petty larceny, for the first offense, was to be " publicly and severely whipped ;" for the sec- ond, " one of his ears to be cut off," or " be branded on the forehead with a hot iron ;" for the third, he was " to have his nose slit ;" for the fourth, to " suffer death, or other punishment," at the discretion of the court. Any two justices of the peace, with three free- holders whom they might summon, formed a court for the trial of any slave, charged with any crime, from " chicken-stealing " to insurrection and murder ; and was competent to sentence the accused to punishment,

314 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

even if it were death, and have it executed forthwith, on their warrant alone! This mode of trial remains in force in South Carolina till this day. It was a capital crime for a slave to run out of the province, or for a white man to entice him to do so.

" Any slave running away for twenty days at once, for the first offense was to be ' severely and publicly whipped.' In case the master neglected to inflict this punishment, any justice might order it to be inflicted by the constable, at the master's expense. For the second offense, the runaway was to be branded with the letter R on the right cheek. If the master omitted it, he was to forfeit ten pounds, and any justice of the peace might order the branding done. For the third of- fense, the runaway, if absent thirty days, was to be whipped, and have one of his ears cut off; the master neglecting to do it to forfeit twenty pounds; any justice, on complaint, to order it done as before. For the fourth offence, the runaway, ' if a man, was to be gelt,' to be paid for by the province, if he died under the operation; if a woman, she was to be severely whipped, branded on the left cheek with the letter R, and her left ear cut off. Any master neglecting for twenty days to inflict these atrocious cruelties was to forfeit his property in the slave to any informer who might complain of him within six months. Any captain or commander of a company, ' on notice of the haunt, residence, and hiding-place of any run- away slaves,' was ' to pursue, apprehend, and take them, either alive or dead,' being in either case entitled to a premium of from two to four pounds for each slave. All persons wounded or disabled on such expeditions were to be compensated by the public. If any slave under punishment 'shall suffer in life or member, which,' says the act, ' seldom happens, no person what- soever shall be liable to any penalty therefor.' Any person killing a slave out of ' wantonness,' ' bloody-mindedness,' or ' cruel intention,' was to forfeit ' fifty pounds current money,' or if the slave belonged to another person, twenty-five pounds to the public, and the slave's value to the owner. No master was to allow his slaves to hire their own time, or, by a supple- mentary act, two years after, ' to plant for themselves any corn, pease, or rice, or to keep any stock of hogs, cattle, or horses.' "

" ' Since charity and the Christian religion which we profess,' says the concluding section of this remarkable act, ' obliges us to wish well to the souls of men, and that religion may not be

HILDRETH 315

made a pretence to alter any man's property and right, and that no person may neglect to baptize their negroes or slaves for fear that thereby they should be manumitted and set free, * it shall be and is hereby declared lawful for any negro or Indian slave, or any other slave or slaves whatsoever, to re- ceive and profess the Christian faith, and to be thereunto bap- tized; but notwithstanding such slave or slaves shall receive or profess the Christian religion, and be baptized, he or they shall not thereby be manumitted or set free."

" South Carolina, it thus appears, assumed at the beginning the same bad pre-eminence on the subject of slave legislation which she still maintains."

At this day, no man in South Carolina can be elected as representative to the Assembly, unless legally seized and possessed of ten slaves in his own right.

At first, slavery was not permitted in Georgia ; but many of the settlers of that province were taken from workhouses, from debtoi's' prisons, and even worse places ; " selected from the most helpless, querulous, and grasping portion of the community," " broken traders and insolvent debtors," men " found in the end as worthless as they were discontented and trouble- some." " They were very importunate," says Mr. Hildreth, " for permission to hold slaves, without whose labors they insisted lands in Georgia could not be cultivated."

" ' Most of the early settlers were altogether unworthy of the assistance thej"^ received,' so says Stevens, a recent and judicious native historian of the colony, who has written from very full materials. ' They were disappointed in the quality and fertility of their lands; were unwilling to labour, hung for support upon the trustees' store, were clamorous for privileges to which they had no right, and fomented discontent and faction where it was hoped they would live together in brotherlj'^ pe^ce and charity.' What wonder that men so idle, thriftless, and un- grateful, called loudly for slaves, whose unpaid labours might support them for life?"

So they had their slavery, and thereby Georgia e,ttained her present condition and prospects !

316 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Tlic gradual progress of liberty is remarkable in New England. Hubbard, with the spirit of a priest, complains of the " inordinate love of liberty or fear of restraint, especially in matters of religion," which prevailed in 1647, and speaks of " all that rabble of men that went under the name of Independents, whether Anabapists, Antinomians, Familists, or Seek- ers," with the same theocratic contempt now exhibited by sectarian bigotry and personal malice, which has not the power to bite, and only barks at the freemen of God, who go on their way rejoicing. There are in New England two visible bulwarks of liberty — the free school and the free printing press. In 1639 the first printing press in America was set up at Cam- bridge. However it was kept under a strict censor- ship, and no other was for a long time allowed to be set up. The first three things printed are symbolical of New England ; the " Freeman's Oath " was the proof-shot of the press, then came an " Almanac made for New England," then the " Psalms turned in- to Metre," also " made for New England," by men who knew how to

" Crack the ear of melody. And break the legs of time."

The freedom of the press was not allowed, however, for a long time. Andros was to allow no printing in 1686; King William also forbade it in 1688. In 1719 Governor Shute objected to the printing of an obnox- ious paper by the order of the General Court, declar- ing that he had power over the press, and would pre- vent it. The paper was printed ; the Governor wished to prosecute the printer, but the Attorney-General could find no law on which to frame an indictment. This was by no means the last instance of an attempt

HILDRETH 317

by men " clothed with a little brief authority " to shackle the freedom of the press. The attempt has been repeated in Massachusetts in our own day, but what was once dangerous is now simply laughable. A donkey bracing himself against a locomotive is not a very formidable antagonist, yet he might have over- turned the " Ark of Jehovah " when drawn by " two heifers " with no one to guide them.

In 1682 a printing press was established in Vir- ginia, and the laws of that year were printed. But the governor, Culpepper, put the printer under bonds to print nothing till his majesty's pleasure should be known. The next year, King James II forbade any printing press in the colony, and Virginia had none till 1729.

In 1687 the third printing press was set up at Philadelphia. The fourth was at New York, in 1692.

The first newspaper in America was established at Boston, in 170'!, only containing advertisements and items of news ; a regular newspaper, discussing public affairs, was begun here in 1722, conducted by James Franklin ; " but it perished for want of support," saj's Mr. Hildreth, " ominous fate of the first free press in America ! "

The records of Boston contain this entry, under date of April 13, 1635: "It wis then generally agreed upon, that our brother Philemon Purmont shall be in- structed to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nurturing of children with us." It does not appear that he kept a free school. In 1638 Harvard College was established. Private benefactions and public gifts helped endow this first collegiate institution in Amer- ica. In 1612 the General Court passed a law making it the duty of the selectmen to see that every child

818 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

was taught " perfectly to read the Enghsh tongue ;" a fine of twenty shilhngs for each neglect was im- posed. Thus was an attempt made to render education universal, and, in 16^7, a law was passed making it al- so free ; every town of fifty families was to have a teacher to instruct all the children in common branches, and each town of a hundred families was commanded to " set up a grammar school " where lads might be " fitted for the University," At that time Massachu- setts contained about twenty thousand inhabitants, and the entire property of the whole people, the valua- tion of the colony, could hardly amount to more than two or three millions of dollars. This is the first at- tempt in the world to provide by law for the public education of the people on such a scale. The Mass- achusetts system was soon adopted at Plymouth and New Haven. In this law we find an explanation of much of the prosperity of New England, and the in- fluence she has exerted on America and the world.

Another important thing in our history is the trade of the country. New England early manifested the Yankee fondness for trade and manufactures. In 1634 there were watermills at Roxbury and Dorches- ter, windmills in other places. Vessels were built, the " Blessing of the Bay," and the " Rebecca," and a trade began with New York, with Virginia, and the West Indies. In 1675 the little ships of New England stole along the coasts of America, trafficing with Maryland, Virginia, Carolina, Antigua, and Barba- does, or boldly stemmed the Atlantic wave, sailing to England, Holland, Spain, or Italy. The jealousy, the fear and hate with which New England enter- prise, on land or sea, was met in Old England by the merchants and the ";ovcrnment of Britain would be

HILDRETH 319

astonishing at this day, if we did not see the same bigotry and toryism reproduced in New England it- self at the present time. But we have not space to dwell on this theme.

It is curious to see how early the habit of self-reli- ance got established in New England. Every man was a soldier, every church member a citizen in full. Soon, all men were able to read and write. Necessity at first forced them to rely on " God, and their own right arm." By and by, when the mother country interferred, she found a child not accustomed to sub- mission.

But we must pass away from this theme, and pass over many other matters of interest touched upon by Mr. Hildreth in this work, and speak of his book in general, and in special. It strikes us that, on the whole, the history of the colonial and provincial period is better and more happily treated than that of the Revolution. Everywhere we see marks of the same intellectual vigor which distinguishes the former writ- ings of Mr. Hildreth. There is a strength and fresh- ness in his style. He writes in the interest of mankind, and not for any portion thereof. He allows no local attachment, or reverence for men or classes of men, to keep him from telling the truth as he finds it. He exhibits the good and evil qualities of the settlers of the United States with the same coolness and impar- tiality. His work is almost wholly objective, — giving the facts, not his opinions about the facts. He shows two tilings as they have not been exposed before, — the bigoted character of the settlers of New England, and the early history and gradual development of slavery in the South. His book is written in the spirit of democracy, which continually appears in spite of the author.

320 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

We must say something of its faults of matter and of form. The division into cliapters, it seems to us, is not unifonnly well made; sometimes this division disturbs tlie unity of the subject. He gives us too little of the philosophical part of history ; too little, perhaps, of the ornamental. He lacks the pic- turesquencss of style which makes history so attractive in some authors. He does not give the student his authorities in the margin, as it seems to us he ought to do. His dates are not always to be relied upon. We notice some errors, the results of haste, which we trust he will correct in a second edition. Thus, he says that Locke maintained that men's souls, " mor- tal by generation, are made immortal by Christ's pur- chase." It is well known that this was the opinion of Dodwell, who makes baptism a condition sine qua non of immortality, but we have never found the doctrine in Locke,

In Volume II. he omits some important particulars. The provincial troops, who comprised the entire land forces, were deprived of all share of the prize money, which amounted to one million pounds. The land forces were entitled to the greater part of it but got none ; the expense of these forces remained a long time a heavy burden on the colonies, and especially on Massachusetts. Commodore Warren and the naval forces kept the whole of the prize money, which was contrary to all law, usage, and equity.

He calls Lord Grenville " Bute's chancellor of the exchequer." George Grenville was chancellor of the exchequer, but was never a lord. Bute was never in the ministry. George Grenville was not of the party called " king's friends," as Mr. Hildreth intimates.

Dean Tucker is called " author of the Light of Na-

HILDRETH 321

ture," which was written by a country gentleman re- joicing in the name of Abraliam Tucker, with a liter- ary al'ms^ Edward Search.

" The private sentiments of Lord North were not materially different from those of Chatham." They differed in almost every material point, — as to the right of taxation, and the expediency of asserting it by force.

The bridge spoken of was in Salem, not between Salem and Danvers ; it was not a company of militia under Colonel Pickering, but a party of citizens.*

The praise of Arnold appears excessive. He was hardly " one of the most honored [officers] in the American army." He was distinguished for courage more than conduct, and not at all for integrity.

He speaks of an intercepted letter, Avhich " seemed to imply a settled policy, on the part of France, to exclude the Americans from the fisheries and the Western lands." Mr. Sparks, in his Life of Frank- lin, has successfully vindicated the French court from the charge of ill faith in these negotiations. t

He relies on John Adams' letter to Cushing as au- thority for an odious sentiment ascribed to Mr. Adams. This letter was a forgery, and was so pronounced by Mr. Adams himself, in a letter written at the close of his administration, dated the 4th of March, 1801, and published extensively in the newspapers of that period. It is in the Columbian Centinel.

These are slight blemishes, which may easily be cor- rected in a new edition. On the whole, this history must be regarded as a work of much value and im- portance. It is written in the American spirit, in a

*Vol. 3, p. 66 t Ibid, p. 418. 11—21

322 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

style always brief but always clear, without a single idle word. We look with high expectations for the volume which will bring the history down to our own times.

VII MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

Perhaps there is no period in the annals of man- kind of more interest to Enghshmen and Americans than the one comprised in the plan of Macaulay's history, from the accession of James II till near the present time, and certainly no one standing in so much need of a good historian. We know of no good history of England for the last one hundred and sixty years, since the termination of Hume's. When it was understood that Macaulay had undertaken his work, it was a subject of general congratulation. All were pleased that so important and difficult a work had fallen to the lot of perhaps the only man of the age who was supposed to have the learning and genius required for the task.

Mr. Macaulay is well known as the most popular and able reviewer of the present or perhaps of any past time. Many of his articles in the Edinburgh Review are of permanent value, and have been re- published here in a separate work. There may be articles in that Review that display more profound and exact knowledge in some departments, but there are none so eagerly sought for, none that combine so much varied and extensive information on subjects of general interest, presented in so popular and captivat- ing a style.

It is rare that any man combines so many essential qualifications and so many accidental advantages for writing a history of England. In addition to great

323

324* THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

learning and talent as an author, he is eminently a practical man, well acquainted with the world and its affairs. His public life for many years as a mem- ber of Parliament and a part of the time one of the Ministry and of the Cabinet, has made him intimately acquainted wth politicians and statesmen, and given him an opportunity of knowing from his own experience how the business of government is carried on. We believe, too, that he had the reputation of being one of the best speakers in the House of Commons, and combines the powers of speaking well and writing well, so rarely found united since the days of Cicero.

This work is more entertaining, and contains more of what we wish to know, than any other history of the times ; though it appears to us that the author is sometimes liable to the charge of prolixity, and dwells too long in illustrating a proposition and in nar- ration and description. The characters of eminent men are delineated with great skill and much life, but are sometimes drawn out to an immoderate length. He seems desirous to give a view so full and complete of every part of his subject, as not only to prevent the possibility of being misunderstood, but also to save the reader all the trouble of thinking or making any conclusion for himself. Nothing can be more opposite to the manner of Tacitus, though they agree in one respect, in fondness for point and antithesis.

His style is clear and pointed, as well as beautiful and brilliant. Perhaps the splendor is not always genuine, and sometimes, contrary tO' the rhetorical maxim, resembles that of tinsel rather than the bright- ness of polished steel.

The extent and minuteness of his knowledge of facts are indeed wonderful, and we know not where to find

MACAULAY 325

anything like it in any readable English history. His impartiality, a quality so essential to the histo- rian, in his account of the different religious sects and political parties, is very conspicuous. The Church of Rome and the Church of England, Presbyterians, In- dependents, and Quakers, are brought in review be- fore him, and their errors and faults exposed with a bold and unsparing hand. We think he endeavors to preserve the same impartiality between the Cavaliers and Roundheads, and the Whigs and Tories. But we imagine that the zealous partisans of all the religious sects will be dissatisfied with his account of their con- duct and principles, and that no political party will be entirely satisfied, unless it be the moderate, aris- tocratic Whigs.

If we were to object at all to his views of parties and sects, it would be that he may not have done full justice to the religious or political principles of the Independents, the only sect of that day that seems to have had any just notions of religious freedom or toleration. It was the Independents alone who pre- vented the Presbyterians, at the termination of the Civil War, from establishing a system of religious in- tolerance and persecution as odious as that from which they had just been delivered. Cromwell, Vane, Sel- den, and Milton were for liberty of conscience and toleration in religious worship. The Presbyterians wished to succeed the ecclesiastical tyrants whom the joint arms of the Independents and Presbyterians had recently overthroAvn. INIilton had just reason to com- plain that

" New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large."

S26 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

The first three chapters, including the greater part of the first volume, are introductor3r, intended to pre- pare the reader for beginning the history with the reign of James II. The first chapter contains a rapid sketch of English history from the earliest times to the Restoration, or accession of Charles II. He dwells a little more at length on the contest between Charles and the parliament, the Civil War, the ad- ministration of Cromwell, and the Restoration.

The second chapter is devoted to the reign of Charles II, a knowledge of which is indispensable to a good understanding of the reign of James, and of the revolution which hurled the Stuarts from the throne of England, and condemned them to perpetual exile.

The third chapter contains a description at length of the times when the crown passed from Charles II to James, and a comparison between that and its present condition. It contains a view of the very great advance which has been made in almost all the parti- culars thought most desirable in national prosperity and the well-being of individuals, including a high degree of physical, moral, and intellectual improve- ment.

This description has been mentioned as being out of place in a history, but we think it the most important as well as entertaining in the whole work, the one we should be most unwilling to spare. Voltaire justly complains that " the history of Eui'ope in his time was grown to an endless register of marriages, genealo- gies, and disputed titles, which render the narrative obscure and unentertaining, at the same time that they stifle the memory of great events, together with the knowledge of laws and manners, objects more worthy

MACAULAY 327

of attention." Whatever may be the defects of his historical productions, Voltaire has the great merit of leading the way in the attention now commonly paid by historical writers to laws, manners, and cus- toms, to the progress of the liberal and useful arts, and especially to the condition of the people. The at- tention of the reader is no longer exclusively directed to kings and princes, ministers, ambassadors, and gen- erals, as if all he rest of the world were of no conse- quence to the historian or reader.

Mr. INIacaulay has on the Avhole, we think, been very successful in this account, and has given a very picturesque description of the condition of England one hundred and sixty years ago, and a very favorable one of England at present. We are not disposed to call in question the general fidelity of these pictures, but we think the former is somewhat overcharged, and the latter may, perhaps, be deemed a little flattering. Indeed, we think it must be apparent to most readers, that some exaggeration in description is not very un- common with Macaulay. We do not mention this as detracting from the general merit of the work, and if there is occasionally any exaggeration in his descrip- tions, or error in his conclusions, we think that the author, by a full and accurate statement of all the facts that can be ascertained, generally affords the in- telligent reader the means of forming a correct opinion for himself. Some traces are occasionally visible of the rhetorician and of the eloquent debater in the House of Commons ; sometimes he discusses questions in the style of an advocate for one party, but in these the decision is commonly that of the calm and im- partial historian.

The following is the character of Cranmer, the

328 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

principal founder of the English church and one of its chief niart^^rs, and considered the leader of the Protestant party.

" The man who took the chief part in settling the conditions of the alliance which produced the Anglican Church was Thomas Cranmer. He was the representative of both the par- ties, which, at that time, needed each other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a statesman. In his character of divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way of change as any Swiss or Scottish reformer. In his character of statesman he was desirous to preserve that organization which had, during many ages, admirably served the purposes of the bishops of Rome, and might be expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English kings and of their ministers. His temper and his understanding eminently fitted him to act as mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupu- lous in his dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a time-server in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in every way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the religious and the worldly enemies of popery.

" To this day, the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the church retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprang. She occupies a middle position between the churches of Rome and Geneva. Her doctrinal confes- sions and discourses, composed by Protestants, set forth prin- ciples of theology in which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings, derived from the ancient Liturgies, are very generally such that Bishop Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined in them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her articles and homilies will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration can be discovered in her Liturgy.

" The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine institution, and that certain supernatural graces of a high order had been transmitted by the imposition of hands through fifty generations, from the eleven who received their commis- sion on the Galilean Mount to the Bishops who met at Trent. A large body of Protestants, on the other hand, regarded prelacy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they found a very different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed in Scripture. The founders of the Anglican Church

MACAULAY 829

took a middle course. They retained episcopacy, but they did not declare it to be an institution essential to tlie welfare of a Christian society, or to the efficacy of the sacraments. Cran- mer, indeed, plainly avowed his conviction that, in the primitive times, there was no distinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of hands was altogether unnecessary."

This view of the doctrines and services of the church reminds one of the saying of Lord Chatham, that " the Church of England has a Calvinistic creed, an Arminian clergy, and a Popish Liturgy." Accord- ing to Bishop Hare, the principal difference between the Church of Rome and the Church of England is, that " the one is infallible, and the other never in the wrong." In respect to the divine origin of Episcopacy and the apostolic succession, the English church now approaches nearer to that of Rome than in the days of Cranmei.

The present orthodox belief of the high church- men we believe to be that of the Church of England, with its hierarchy, its archbishops, bishops, deans, and inferior clergy, affords the nearest resemblance to the primitive church in the time of the apostles.

The Church of England has been always strongly attached to the sovereign, its supreme head. The ex- travagance of this attachment and the slavish doctrines taught by the clergy are thus stated by Macaulay.

" The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protec- tion which she received from the government. From the first day of her existence she had been attached to monarchy; but, during the quarter of a century which followed the Restoration, her zeal for royal authority and liereditary right passed all bounds. She had sufi'ered with the house of Stuart. She had been restored with that house. She was connected with it by common interests, friendships, and enmities. It seemed impos- sible that a day could ever come when the ties which bound her to the children of her august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which she gloried would cease to be

330 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

a pleasing and profitable duty. She accordingly magnified in fulsome praise that prerogative which was constantly employed to defend and to aggrandize her, and reprobated, much at her ease, the depravity of those whom oppression, from which she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion. Her favorite theme was the doctrine of non-resistance. That doctrine she taught with- out any qualification, and followed out to all its extreme con- sequences. Her disciples were never weary of repeating that in no conceivable case, not even if England were cursed with a king resembling Busiris or Phalaris, who, in defiance of law, and without the pretence of justice, should daily doom hun- dreds of innocent victims to torture and death, would all the estates of the realm united be justified in withstanding his tyranny by physical force. Happily, the principles of human nature afi'ord abundant security that such theories will never be more than theories. The day of trial came, and the very men who had most loudly and most sincerely professed this extravagant loyalty were, in almost every county of England, arrayed in arms against the throne."

" The restored church contended against the prevailing im- morality, but contended feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of her character that she should ad- monish her erring children. But her admonitions were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attention was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to render unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been pillaged and op- pressed by the party which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence and honor by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight kneedeep in blood for her cathedrals and palaces, for every line of her rubric, and every thread of her vestments. . . . It is an unquestionable and most instructive fact, that the years during which the political power of the Anglican hier- archy was in the zenith, were precisely the years during which national virtue was at the lowest point."

The immorality, profligacy, and total want of principle among the higher classes, in the reign of Charles II, and especially of the most active and leading politicians, seem almost incredible. We have a striking, and, we suppose, a pretty correct description of the general character of the public men in England

MACAULAY 331

at the Restoration, which, to a great extent, was apphcable for more than half a century afterwards.

" Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing immorality: but those persons who made politics their business, were perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt so- ciety; for they were exposed not only to the same noxious influ- ences which affected the nation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar and most malignant kind. Their character had been formed amid frequent and violent revolutions and counter-revo- lutions. In the course of a few years they had seen the ecclesi- astical and civil polity of their country repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal church persecuting Puritans, a Puritan church persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal church per- secuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary monarchy abolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme in the state and thrice dissolved amid the curses and laughter of millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height of power and glory, and then, on a sudden, hurled down from the chair of state without a struggle. They had seen a new representative system devised, tried, and aban- doned. They had seen a new House of Lords created and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Round- heads back to Cavaliers. During these events, no man could be a stirring and thriving politician who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune. It was only in retire- ment that any person could long keep the character either of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, in such an age, is determined to attain civil greatness, must renounce all thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of endless mutation, he must always be on the watch for the indications of a coming reaction. He must seize the exrct moment for deserting a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it waa uppermost, he must ex- tricate himself from it when its difficulties begin; must assail it, must persecute it, must enter on a new career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. His situation nat- urally develops in him to the highest degree a peculiar class of abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick of observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the tone of any sect or party with which he chances to mingle. He discerns the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears miraculous; with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police officer pursues the

332 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

faintest indications of crime, or with which a Mohawk war- rior follows a track through the woods. But we shall seldom find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, or any of the virtues of the nol)le family of Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine, no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old institutions swept away that he has no reverence for pre- scription. He has seen so many new institutions from which much had been expected produce mere disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at those who are anxious to preserve and those who are eager to reform. There is nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple or a blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions and to friends seems to him mere dulness and wrong-headedness. Politics he regards, not as a science of which the object is the happiness of mankind, but as an ex- citing game of mixed chance and skill, at which a dextrous and lucky player may win an estate, a coronet, perhaps a crown, and at which one rash move may lead to the loss of fortune and of life. Ambition, which in good times and in good minds is half a virtue, now, disjoined from every elevated and philanthropic sentiment, becomes a selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Among those politicians who, from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover were at the head of the great parties in the state, very few can be named whose reputation is not stained by what in our age would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an ex- aggeration to say that the most unprincipled public men who have taken part in aff^airs within our memory, would, if tried by the standard which was in fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth century, deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and disinterested."

Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland and ancestor of the present Duke of Marlborough and of Earl Spencer, was one of the most thorough-going politi- cians of this class. He twice changed his religion to please the court, was concerned in many of the worst measures of Charles and James, and was a successful courtier and favorite minister of William.

" Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the po- litical immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner. Nature had given him a keen understanding, a rest- less and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit.

MACAULAY 333

His mind had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had been, during some time, minister in France. Every calling has its peculiar temptations. There is no in- justice in saying that diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which tliey catch the tone of every society into which they are admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Louis were such that no English nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honorable senti- ment. Sunderland came forth from the bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all principles. He was, by heredi- tary connection, a Cavalier; but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance; yet they had sturdy Eng- lish hearts, which would never have endured real despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid, speculative liking for Re- publican institutions, which was compatible with perfect readi- ness to be in practice the most servile instrument of arbitrary powers. Like many other accomplished flatterers and negoti- ators, he was far more skilful in the art of reading the char- acters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals than in the art of discerning the feelings of great masses and of fore- seeing the approach of great revolutions. He was adroit in in- trigue; and it was difficult even for shrewd and experienced men, who had been forewarned of his perfidy, to withstand the fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his professions of attachment; but he was so intent on observing and courting particular persons that he forgot to study the temper of tlie nation. He therefore miscalculated grossly with respect to all the most momentous events of his time. Every important movement and rebound of the public mind took him by surprise; and the world, unable to understand how so clever a man could be blind to what was clearly discerned by the politicians of the coffee-houses, sometimes attributed to deep design what were, in truth, mere blunders,"

The causes assigned by INIacaulay had no doubt much influence in producing the decHne of pubhc and private virtue, but yet seem hardly sufficient to ac- count for the great immorahty said to be so generally

334 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

prevalent. Hume says that " never was a people less corrupted by vice and more actuated by principle than the English at the beginning of the Civil War. At the close of the reign of Charles II it would seem that the proposition might be almost reversed." There is probably some exaggeration in both cases ; but there can be no doubt of a great decline in public and private morals, and a great prevalence of immor- ality and corruption at the latter period.

We suppose it to be true that there has been a very great change for the better in the moral and political character of the public men in England since the reign of Charles II. The improved morals in private life, on Avhich Macaulay dwells with some com- placency, the diffusion of intelligence, and the much greater force of public opinion, have had a very bene- ficial influence on the conduct of the English politi- cians and statesmen. This improvement may be con- sidered as one of the most favorable symptons of the times in England.

The kings of the house of Stuart seem to have been an incorrigible race, incapable of discerning the signs of the times or of improving by prosperity or ad- versity. Called by the English law of succession to the noblest inheritance in the world, they supposed their right to the throne was derived from Heaven, not from the consent of the people ; that they were in- vested by God with absolute power, for the exercise of which they were accountable to him alone. In a word that they had

"The right divine of kings to govern wrong;"

a right which they strenuously attempted to put in practice so long as they had the power.

James I had some learning, with much pedantry,

MACAULAY 335

and endeavored to prove from reason and Scripture the divine and absolute power of the throne. The Duke of Sully pronounced him to be the wisest fool in Europe.

Charles I had more capacity, firmness, and perse- verance than his father, and was more bent upon the establishment of arbitrary power. His design in- cluded the American colonies as well as his dominions in Europe. Only six years after he had granted the charter of Masachusetts he determined to revoke it and established a commission at the head of which was Archbishop Laud, with absolute authority over the colonies in all cases, civil and religious. This board or commission were authorized to make laws and or- dinances in all cases, especially for the support of the Episcopal clergy, by tithes, oblations, and other profits accruing, to make and unmake governors, to constitute such civil and ecclesiastical tribunals and courts of justice, with such powers as they should judge proper, and to revoke any charters or letters patent prejudicial to the crown.

Had Charles been able to carry this plan into ex- ecution we should have had our High Commision and Star Chamber in America, and not a vestige of civil or religious liberty would have been suffered to re- main. The controversy between the king and parlia- ment, which broke out soon after, gave the king and archbishop sufficient occupation at home, and saved the liberties of New England. If England, as most of her writers say, owes her freedom to the Puritans and Long Parliament, it is not less true as to her American colonies.

The character of Charles II is drawn with much force and vivacity, and we suppose in its true colors.

336 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

This most worthless and profligate prince was for a time more popular than any of his predecessors. There is one trait in his character, however, not men- tioned by Macaulay, we mean his special regard for daring and atrocious villains.

The case of Blood, who attempted to assassinate the Duke of Ormond, the first nobleman in the king- dom, and most zealous friend and supporter of the Stuart family, is a signal instance. In his attempt Blood almost succeeded. He had committed other capital crimes, besides the robbery of the crown and regalia from the Tower. Yet this audacious criminal was not only pardoned by Charles, but became a fav- orite companion of the king and an influential courtier, whose interest was solicited by applicants for court favors, and was rewarded by Charles with the grant of a considerable estate in Ireland.

Morgan, the most noted of all pirates or buccaneers in the West Indies, was distinguished by Charles with the honor of knighthood.

The infamous and savage Colonel Kirke aff^ords an- other instance. Charles near the close of his reign appointed Kirke, who had been notorious for his tyranny and cruelties at Tangier, to be governor of New England, with absolute authority. This was soon after Massachusetts had been illegally deprived of her charter, so that there would have been no security against the barbarity of Kirke. But James, when he came to the crown, did not wish to part with one whose disposition was so congenial with his own, and who was so well fitted for his arbitrary and cruel designs. Instead of Kirke, Sir Edmund Andros was sent as governor to New England, a tyrant indeed, but not quite so atrocious as Kirke.

MACAULAY 337

As to James II, his conduct in Scotland and In England showed a love of arbitrary power and a de- light in persecution and cruelty. A bigoted papist himself he instituted a savage persecution against Scottish Presbyterians and Puritans for not conform- ing to the Church of England. In this persecution thousands perished by the sword, famine, or imprison- ment, and many thousand families were utterly ruined. And what was the object of this persecution .-^ Not to convert them to what he believed to be the true re- ligion, but to make them change from one false re- ligion to another that he believed to be equally false. The same remark applies in some degree to his brother Charles in the persecutions of the dissenters in Eng- land, as he was secretly a Roman Catholic. Per- haps, however, it may be doing them some injustice to suppose that they were actuated by any worse mo- tives than other persecutors, though a little more in- consistent. As we believe all persecution arises from bad motives we do not feel certain that Charles and James were any worse in this respect than their con- tempoi'aries of the established church, who instigated and were actively engaged in carrying on these per- secutions.

But for their conduct in church and state both Charles and James may have some excuse in the doc- trines of divine right, passive obedience, and non-re- sistance, so diligently inculcated by the church as we have just seen, and also by the Parliament and the University of Oxford. To a sovereign inclined to tyranny and persecution there can be no stronger temptation than the assurance that he can Indulge his bad passions with impunity. This assurance the church, the Parliament, and the University of Oxford

zealously endeavored to furnish. 11—22

338 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

The first Parliament chosen after the Restoration passed an act that the power of the sword was solely in the king, and declared that in no extremity what- ever could the Parliament be justified in resisting him by force.

By another act all magistrates and oflScers of cor- porations were required to declare on oath their be- lief that it was not lawful upon any pretence whatever to take arms against the king, and their abhorrence of the traitorous position of taking arms by the king's authority against his person, or against those com- missioned by him. A motion to insert the word law- fully before "commissioned" was rejected.

The University of Oxford in full convocation passed a decree " against certain pernicious books and dam- nable doctrines destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and all human society."

The doctrines condemned consist of twenty-seven propositions taken from the works of ]\lilton, Bu- chanan, Owen, Baxter and several others. One of these damnable propositions is, " that when kings sub- vert the constitution of their country, and become ab- solute tyrants, they forfeit their right to the govern- ment, and may be resisted." This and other similar propositions, they declare to be " impious, seditious, scandalous, damnable, heretical, blasphemous, and in- famous to the Christian religion." They forbid the students to read the writings of those authors, and or- der their books to be burnt.

One would suppose that the Parliament, the church, and University of Oxford were rife for slavery. Charles and James had some excuse for taking them at their word.

MACAULAY 839

The history of this period has a peculiar interest for Americans, as being essentially connected with their own. The revolution of 1688 was not less a de- liverance from arbitrary power for New England than for Old. The tyranny of Sir Edmund Andros had become so insupportable that he was deposed and im- prisoned before the success of the revolution was known here.

But though the Revolution was a great blessing to the colonies, yet some of them had much reason to complain of the government under the new settle- ment. Massachusetts could not obtain a restoration of her charter, though deprived of it by a judgment acknowledged to be illegal and unjust. Sir Edmund Andros, so noted as a tyrant in Massachusetts, was rewarded by being sent out as governor of Virginia. The Habeas Corpus Act, so essential to freedom, was passed by the General Court of Masachusetts, but was disallowed and repealed by the committee of plan- tations, at the head of which was the famous Lord Somers. It seems to have been the opinion of this great constitutional lawyer that the English act of Habeas Corpus did not extend to the colonies, and that they could not have this security of freedom except from the bounty of the crown.

The character of William of Orange, the great hero of the Revolution, the idol of the Whigs, and in former times the detestation of the Tories, is drawn at great length and in the most favorable colors. He seems, indeed, with some faults and disagreeable qualities, to have been on the whole the best and most able of the great public men of the age. He was tol- erant and liberal in his views of religion and church establishments, a great merit in that age. A wise

340 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and far-siglited statesman, with an invincible courage and perseverance in a contest which was the cause not only of England and Holland, but of the greater part of Europe against the ambition of Louis XIV. Ma- caulay in this case, as well as some others, has availed himself of important sources of information which do not seem to have been known to any other historian, and attributes to him more amiable qualities than William was supposed to possess.

A very different picture is given of him by the Tories, which we quote merely as showing the ex- travagance of party zeal. Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, pronounced William to be the most worthless of all scoundrels. But then it is to be recollected that the Doctor had an extraordinary veneration for Charles II. Smollet's character of William contains more point and vivacity than is often found in his history, and probably shows the sentiments of the ultra Tories of that age. The following is Smollet's view of the government of William :

" Certain it is he involved these kingdoms in foreign con- nections which, in all probability, will be productive of their ruin. In order to establish this favorite point he scrupled not to employ all the engines of corruption by which the morals of the nation were totally debauched. He procured a par- liamentary sanction for a standing army, which now seems to be interwoven in the constitution. He introduced the per- nicious practice of borrowing upon remote funds, an expedient that necessarily hatched a brood of usurers, brokers, con- tractors, and stock-jobbers to prey upon the vitals of their country. He entailed upon the nation a growing debt and a system of politics big with misery, despair, and destruction. To sum up his character in a few words — William was a fatalist in religion, indefatigable in war, enterprising in poli- tics, dead to all the warm and generous emotions of the human heart, a cold relation, an indifferent husband, a disagreeable man, an ungracious prince, and an imperious sovereign."

MACAULAY 341

The account of William Pcnn's intimacy with James, and his concern in some acts of oppression by the king, his courtiers, and court-ladies, will excite much surprise, and probably resentment in some quar- ters. If the charges are true, it is proper they should be made known. If they are unfounded, the Quakers and Pennsylvanians are abundantly able to vindicate his character. His reputation would bear a consider- able reduction, and yet leave liim one of the best among the distinguished politicians of his age.

Macaulay says it had been the practice of every English government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was the practice of honestly paying them.

This process of honestly paying the national debts has been extremely slow in its operation. At the Revolution the national debt was little more than one million sterling, it is now about eight hundred millions. It is true that the interest has been punctually paid, the public credit is good, and any creditor who chooses may receive payment by transferring his claim to an- other. The debt, however, still remains a burden on the property and industry of the nation. Hume, in his essay on Public Credit says, that it would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker's shop in London, than to empower a statesman to draw bills in this manner upon posterity.

" The establishment of a public credit fruitful of marvels, which would seem incredible to the statesmen of any former age " is enumerated among the bless- ings of the new settlement. This is rather a delicate way of treating the national debt. To the states- men of any former age the ability to contract such a debt, and the folly of doing it, might have seemed

542 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

equally incredible. If nations contract debts they should honestly pay them. But we can hardly deem it a cause of congratulation that the government have been able to incur this enormous debt, with an annual interest of thirty millions, " so burdensome, still pay- ing, still to owe," and to mortgage it upon the lands, property, and industry of the nation for ever ; if not for ever, at least for a duration to which the eye of man can see no limit.

The national debt has been mentioned as one of the great evils produced by the Revolution, as a part of the price the nation had to pay for the new settlement made by discarding the Stuarts and calling in William, and to defray the expense of the wars necessary to support him on the throne.

Unfortunately, the ministry and moneyed class found their own private interests promoted by thus anticipating the incomes of the future generations. The ministry, to avoid the odium of imposing the taxes really necessary, or because they wanted a fund for influence and corruption, w^ere willing to borrow money on terms profitable to the lenders, and leave it to their successors to provide for the payment. Wash- ington, in his farewell address, with his characteristic wisdom and justice, cautions the people of the United States against " ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."

As our author, in stating the purpose and objects of his work, must be supposed to express his meaning with some accuracy, we will, at the risk of being thought hypercritical, make a remark on the expres- sion applied to the British navy. " A maritime power, before which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance." This is another

MACAULAY 343

of the glories of England, the boast of every Eng- lishman. Comparisons are apt to be odious, and some discretion is required to manage them without giving offense. It would be idle to deny the great power of the British navy, and that its strength is superior to every other ; but we doubt the propriety or prudence of this boast ; nations, like individuals, do not like to be reminded of their insignificance, and neither France, Russia, nor America will admit the correctness of the estimate here made by Macaulay of their naval power.

A short time prior to the last war with England, it was said in Parliament, that a single English sloop of war or frigate (we forget which), was able to cope with the whole American navy. This was soon found to be an error. In case of any future war between the two countries (which may heaven avert), the American navy would be found not entirely in- significant. De Tocqueville, the distinguished author and statesman, who of all foreign writers has given on the whole the best account of our country, its institu- tions and prospects, devotes a chapter to what he calls the commercial greatness of America, and closes with this paragraph:

" I think that the principal features in the destiny of a na- tion, as of an individual, are generally indicated by their early youth. When I see with what spirit the Americans carry on commerce, the facilities they enjoy, and the success they have met with, I cannot avoid believing that they will one day be- come the first maritime power on the globe. They are destined to acquire the dominion of the seas, as the Romans were to .conquer the world."

Now, we confess that we do not entirely like this, and do not wish that our country, or any other, should be any stronger at sea than is necessary for its

344 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

own security and the defence of its just rights at home and abroad.

Macaulay seems much of an optimist in politics. Whatever happens is for the best, if not for the pres- ent, at least in the long run. The reign of the sov- ereigns commonly deemed the worst proved to be the greatest blessings. The talents and virtues of the first Norman kings had nearly proved fatal to Eng- land, but the follies and vices of John were her sal- vation. Again, if the administration of James I had been able and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to the country.

Under the reign of his successor, Charles I, there was another narrow escape. The laws and liberties of England, on the brink of destruction, were happily saved by the wanton and criminal attempt of Charles to force upon the Scots the English liturgy and es- tablished church. Another and final deliverance from tyranny by the folly and madness of James H. If the king had not attacked the church, the institution most venerated by Englishmen, he would probably have been quietly permitted to prosecute his plan of establishing arbitrary power in the state.

This seeming propensity for paradox reminds one of Gibbon's remark upon the clergy, that to a philo- sophic mind their vices are far less dangerous than their virtues. A proposition which, by the way, we think is contradicted by all ecclesiastical history.

There is, however, some plausibility in these views of Macaulay, and in the instances mentioned and per- haps many others they may be substantially just. How happy for a nation that, when brought to the brink of ruin, it has a perennial inexhaustible fountain of salvation in the follies, vices, and crimes of its rulers !

MACAULAY 345

This disposition to look on the favorable side of things appears often throughout the work. Whether the church or the laity have the ascendency, it is all for the good of the nation, and she owes a great debt of gratitude both to Popery and Protestantism.

" It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the amal- gamation of races and for the abolition of villanage she is chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in the middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and in- tellectual freedom, and for all the blessings which political and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood."

The Long Parliament merits the lasting gratitude of Englishmen for their resistance to Charles I, and thus saving the liberties of the country. The par- liament that restored Charles II without any condi- tions to limit his power seized the golden opportunity which, if lost, would have long been regretted by the friends of liberty, of placing on the throne this profli- gate monarch. After the two reigns of Charles and James, comprising nearly thirty years of oppression, persecution, and almost every kind of misgovernment at home, besides a vassalage to France the most dis- graceful in the annals of England, another parlia- ment rescued the nation from Popery and tyranny by the total and final expulsion of the Stuarts.

There seems much reason to doubt the correctness of this view of the Restoration. INIacaulay says that " It has been too much the practice of writers zealous for freedom, to represent the Restoration as a dis- astrous event, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that Convention which recalled the royal family without exacting new securities against mal-adminis- tration."

346 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

JNIr. Fox, in his fragment of the History of the Reign of James II, severely condemns the conduct of those wlio at the Restoration made no scruple to lay the nation prostrate at the feet of a monarch, without a single provision in favor of the cause of liberty. Charles would have been glad to accept the crown on any terms. It must have been a strange crisis, indeed, that rendered it necessary for the salvation of the people to place such a man as Charles upon the throne without a moment's delay, and without imposing any limitation on the royal prerogative.

Our author gives a description at considerable length of the state of England at the accession of James II, and compares it with the condition of England at present. The comparison, of course, is very much in favor of its present state, and the contrast is prob- ably greater in almost every respect than most read- ers could have supposed. The great physical, moral, and intellectual improvement in every department, if truly represented, as we must presume was intended, is indeed a just cause of congratulation and thank- fulness.

The political, social, and industrial system of Eng- land since the Revolution is probably better fitted than any system that has been tried, in the old world at least, for very many of the objects thought most de- sirable in national prosperity. It has been especially favorable to the acquisition of great wealth and rapid progress in the great departments of industry, in agri- culture, commerce, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, and in working the various mines, a very im- portant branch in England.

The wealth of the great landholders, merchants, manufacturers, and the mone3'ed interest, is adequate

MACAULAY 347

to any interest or enterprise on the largest scale. With abundant capital, with labor at a low rate to any extent wanted, and often in excess, skillfully or- ganized and directed, the advance in every depart- ment of business and the increase of wealth are, we believe, altogether without example.

The population of England and Wales at that time is supposed to have been somewhat more than five millions, and less than one-third of its present amount. The inhabitants of London, who are now at least nineteen hundred thousand, were then prob- ably a little more than half a million.

In the reign of Charles II, after London no town in the kingdom contained thirty thousand inhabitants, and only four provincial towns contained so many as ten thousand. This statement we suppose may be true, but it is very surprising, especially when we consider the number of cities in the United States containing thirty thousand and upwards, and the great number containing more than ten thousand. Massachusetts alone has twice the number of towns containing ten thousand inhabitants.

The army and navy of Charles II were small com- pared with military and naval establishments in Eng- land at present. The whole annual expense of the army, navy, ordnance, effective and non-effective ser- vice, was then about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Now it is more than tAventy times that amount.

It must be acknowledged that the government of the Stuarts was a very cheap one in a pecuniary view, compared with any the English have had since. Of all the advances made in the rapid march of improve- ment in England since the Revolution, the greatest

348 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

advance has been in taxation and public expenditure!

If the well-being of a nation depended on the amount of its wealth, however unequally distributed, then England would be the happiest country in the world. But we believe the happiness of a people de- pends less on the amount than on the general diffusion of property, so as to afford a comfortable livelihood and the means of education and improvement to the laboring classes. If this be so, there is much cause for regret as well as congratulation in the present condition of Great Britain.

There are some principles in the English political and social system that are passed over in the work be- fore us without much notice, which seem to us to merit consideration both as to their present effects and fu- ture tendency.

The historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in his admirable chapter on the Roman or Civil Law, says that " the insolent prerogative of primogeniture was unknown to the Romans. The two sexes were placed on a just level, and all the sons and daughters were entitled to an equal portion of the patrimonial estate."

Among the Athenians the sons all shared equally the paternal inheritance. The daughters seem to have been left in a great measure, if not altogether, to the mercy or discretion of their brothers. In case there were no sons the daughters inherited equally.

The law of primogeniture was not known to the Anglo-Saxons, but was introduced into England with the feudal system by the Norman conquest. This principle, by which the oldest son alone inherits all the landed or real property, has been in force in England ever since, and has contributed more than anything

MACAULAY 349

else to form the government and social system as they exist at the present da3\ It is the foundation and se- curity of the aristocracy, of their power and influence in the state, and the advantages of their social posi- tion.

Primogeniture not only prevents the division of great estates, but in connection with other causes is continual!}^ diminishing the number of landed pro- prietors. It often happens that by the failure of heirs in great families, or the course of descent, or by pur- chase, that two or three great estates are united, and once united are never again divided.

This process is remarkably illustrated in the case of the present Duke of Sutherland. As this example shows better than any mere description could do how a considerable number of even great estates may be united in one, we quote from the London Quarterly Review the following account of the Sutherland Estate and Improvements. The complacency with which the reviewer dwells on this accumulation, and his aristo- cratic tone and style, are somewhat amusing.

"The estate attached to the earldom of Sutherland (one of the oldest dignities in this empire) was supposed at the time when the late countess married Lord Gower, afterwards Mar- quis of Stafford, and fmally created Duke of Sutherland, to comprise no less than 800,000 acres, a vast possession, but from which its owners had never derived more than a very small revenue. The Countess, a woman of remarkable talents, was enthusiastically attached to her ancestral district, and felt for its inhabitants of all orders, as was natural after a con- nection lost in the night of ages, during which her house had enjoj^d the support of their clansmen and vassals in many a struggle and danger. She had the spirit and heart of a genuine chieftainess; and the name of the Ban Mhoir-fhear Chattaibh — the Great I-ady of tlie Country of the Clan Chattan — ■ will be proudly and affectionately remembered in the Highlands of Scotland many a year after the graceful Countess and Duchess is forgotten in the courts and palaces of which she was for a

350 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

long period one of the most brilliant ornaments. To her Eng- lish alliance, however, her lasting fame in her own district will be mainly due. Her lord inherited one very great fortune in this part of tlie kingdom, and ultimately wielded the resources of another not less productive; and though, as Mr. Loch's book records, no English nobleman ever did more for the improve- ment of his English estates, he also entered with the warmest zeal into his lady's feelings as to her ancient heritage. He added to it by purchase various considerable adjoining es- tates, which fell from time to time into the market, and finally, in 18;39, one neighboring mass of land, the whole estate or country of Lord Reay, which alone comprised not much less than 500,000 acres. It appears that from 18::?9 the whole northern territory of the Duke must have amounted to nearly, if not quite, 1,500,000 acres, a single estate certainly not in these days equalled in the British empire, and this in the hands of the same peer who enjoyed also the English estates of the Gowers and Levesons, with the canal property of the Bridgewaters."

Here is the process on a great scale of extinguishing both large and small estates. This shows how landed proprietors are rapidly diminished in number, and enormous estates or principalities formed. In two generations, by marriage, by purchase, by inheritance and bequest, five very large and several considerable estates are united in one. In Scotland to one great estate of 800,000 acres is added another of 500,000, which besides several others very considerable in ex- tent. All this comes into the hands of the same peer who has three very great estates in England. The estate in Scotland alone is more than twice as large as the state of Rhode Island, and comprises in extent, though not in value, between a thirtieth and fortieth part of the territory of the island of Great Britain.

According to our author, at the accession of James II the number of small landed proprietors who culti- vated their own estates was, so far as can be ascer- tained from the best statistical writers of that age,

MACAULAY 851

not less than one hundred and sixty thousand, who witli their faniihes made up more than a seventh part of the whole population. These small estates are now nearly all extinct. At that time the number who cultivated their own land was greater than the number of those who farmed the land of others. Now it is estimated that not one hundredth part of the land in England is cultivated by the owner.

The enormous wealth produced by commerce and manufactures, instead of occasioning any division of the great landed estates, has had a directly opposite tendenc3\ The rich merchant, manufacturer, banker, or fortunate speculator invests a part of his wealth in land, and as the very large estates are rarely for sale, he buys the smaller ones whenever they can be ob- tained, perhaps in several different counties. When a number of small or moderate or even large estates are thus formed into one they are seldom or never separated.

This seems to be a melancholy, disastrous change in the social S3'stem of England, but we believe most of the British political economists not only see no cause for alarm in this extinction of the smaller landed properties, but consider it as one cause of the great agricultural improvements, and the great increase of national wealth. A few, however, among whom is John Stuart INIill, the author of the work on Political Economy, consider the English system as affording a ground for apprehension, and view with some com- placency the condition of the French agricultural population, four-fifths of whom are said to cultivate their own land. But whether for good or evil, we suppose there can be no doubt of the fact that by the operation of the causes mentioned, and perhaps of

352 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

others, the number of landed proprietors has been for the last one hundred and sixty years continually dimin- ishing, that nearly all the land is held by a compara- tively small number of owners, and that the diminution is still going on as rapidly as ever. Indeed, accord- ing to all accounts, the process of the accumulation of large landed properties and the extinction of small ones is proceeding with a continually increasing velocity.

" Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo."

During the last few years we have heard much of the reforms in the English government, the progress of liberal principles, and the increasing power of popular opinion. It is supposed by many that the influence of the aristocracy is on the decline, that the common people have gained as the nobility and privi- leged orders have lost, so that the advantages of Eng- lish institutions are shared less unequally than for- merly among the diff^erent classes of the community.

Popular opinion has no doubt much greater influ- ence on the measures of government and the conduct of men in office than during the last century. What- ever changes have been made to enlarge the political power of the people, and to relieve them from unneces- sary and oppressive burdens, is to be ascribed chiefly to this cause. The privileged orders have parted with no portion of their power until they were convinced it was no longer possible to keep it. Notwithstand- ing these concessions to the popular demands, we think there is reason to doubt whether the aristocratic principle pervading the political and social institutions of England has been much, if at all, weakened. On the other hand, in several important respects the aris- tocracy appears stronger than ever.

MACAULAY 35S

The English government, at least ever since the revolution in 1688, has been practically an aristocracy of which the sovereign is the nominal head. Lord Brougham remarks that England is the most aris- tocratic nation in Europe, and a glance at Eng- lish institutions will show how the aristocratic principle runs through them all.

The Reform Bill has enlarged the number of voters, and some changes have been made in favor of the popular principle in municipal corporations. But the aristocracy have the entire control of all the offices of honor and emolument in church and state, in the army and navy, at home and abroad.

The following extract from a late number of the

Edinburgh Review presents a striking and probably as

far as it goes a just view of the political and social

state of England.

" To a superficial glance at the condition of our own coun- try nothing can seem more unlike any tendency to equality of condition. The inequalities of property are apparently greater than in any former period of history. Nearly all the land is parcelled out in great estates among comparatively few fami- lies; and it is not the large but the small properties which are in process of extinction. An hereditary and titled nobility, more potent by their vast possessions than by their social precedency, are constitutionally and really one of the great powers of the state. To form part of their order is what everj^ ambitious man aspires to as the crowning glory of a successful career. The passion for equality, of which M. de Tocqueville speaks almost as if it were the great fever of modern times, is hardly known in this country, even by name. On the contrary, all ranks seem to have a passion for inequality. The hopes of every person are directed to rising in the world, not to pulling the world down to him. The greatest enemy of the political conduct of the House of Lords submits to their superiority of rank as he would to the ordinances of nature, and often thinks any amount of toil and watching repaid by a nod of recognition from one of their number." *

* Edinburgh Review, No. CXLV. 11—23

354. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

In the army the officers are taken from the nobihty and gentry with hardly an exception. Commissions are generally obtained by purchase, and sometimes by the gift of the commander-in-chief. The price is be- yond the ability of any but the rich, and rarely has any officer risen from the ranks. Should a rich par- venu take a fancy to a military life and buy a com- mission, woe to the unlucky wight. His treatment from the other officers would soon make him glad to sell or resign a place where he is considered an in- truder. The officers of the navy are generally taken from the same class.

The pay and prize-money in the army and navy are graduated on the same aristocratic scale. At the capture of Havana in 1762 the distribution of the prize-money was as follows. Admiral Pococke com- manding the naval forces had for his share upwards of £122,000; the captains, £1,600; heutenants, £234; petty officers, £17 ; sailors and marines between three and four pounds. Lord Albemarle, commander of the land forces, had the same as the Admiral ; the field officers, £564; captains, £164; private soldiers, £4, Is, 8d. There was however, much complaint that this dis- tribution was not conformable to the former practice. The distribution of the prize-money to the English army at the capture of Paris after the battle of Water- loo was made by proclamation at London, and was probably agreeable to the established rules of the ser- vice.

To the Duke of Wellington, £61,000.

General Officers, £1,274 10s lOd.

Eield Officers, £433 4s 4d.

Captains, £90 7s 3d.

Subalterns, £34 14s 9d.

MACAULAY 355

Sergeants, Corporals, etc., £14 4s 4d.

Private Soldiers, £2 lis 4d.

This is the partnership of the giant and the dwarf. The commander gets all the honor and profits, the soldier the losses and hlows. This is apt to be the case in all wars ; and party contests are too often the " madness of many for the gain of a few."

The proportion between the pay of the officers and soldiers in the armies of the ancient republics, com- pared with the practice in all modern nations, is very curious.

When Xenophon, after the retreat of the ten thou- sand, engaged himself and six thousand of the Greek army in the service of a Thracian prince, the terms of the pay were, to each soldier one daric a month ; each captain, two darics ; and to Xenophon, the general and commander, four darics. Among the Romans, Polybius says the pay of a centurion was only double that of a private soldier. It appears from Demos- thenes that the pay of an Athenian ambassador in his time was not more than that of a common soldier.

The annual income of the Lord Chancellor of Eng- land was formerly as much as £20,000, and besides he had many lucrative offices at his disposal. We be- lieve it has been reduced by the Whig government to £14,000, with a retiring pension of £5,000. The sal- aries of the Judges are from £5,500 to £10,000 a year. We do not mention these instances of salaries as extravagant, under the existing circumstances. They are probably not higher than is required by the nature of the government, and the state of English society.

In the church the bishops, archbishops, and other dignitaries, enjoy very ample revenues, from one or

356 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

two thousand to twenty thousand pounds a year. These, with some exceptions, are given to the rela- tives of the nobility and gentry, younger brothers and cousins. The majority of the clergy seem sufficiently removed from the temptations of wealth. In about five thousand parishes, a few years since, there was no resident clergyman, and the religious services were performed, as far as they were performed at all, by curates. Of this portion of the clergy the compensa- tion varies from ten to a hundred pounds annually, in few instances exceeding the latter sum.

The bishops often amass large fortunes. Bishop Tomline, the private tutor of the late William Pitt, was said to have left an estate of £700,000, and we not unfrequently hear of a dignitary of the Church in England, and especially in Ireland, leaving at his de- cease from one to several hundred thousand pounds. The late reform of the church has introduced a greater equality in the salaries of the bishops and archbishops, varying from £4,500 to £20,000.

In respect to the church, however, we have no idea that any attempt to abolish or diminish tithes would be of any service to the tenants or aif ord any relief to the people in general. The whole benefit would go to the landlords. There is much reason in the sentiment of Burke, that a Bishop of Durham or Winchester may as well have £10,000 a year as an earl or a squire, although it may be true that so many dogs and horses are not kept by the former, and fed with the victuals which ought to nourish the children of the poor peo- ple. In the reformation of the cliurch by Henry VIII the confiscation of a greater part of the church property served only to enrich the crown and a few greedy courtiers. The estates of several among the

MACAULAY' 357

most wealthy of the nobihty and gentry in England, it is well known, were derived from the plunder of the abbe3\s, monasteries, and convents. Such an origin of a great estate as the Duke of Bedford's, so eloquently described by Burke in his Letter to a noble Lord, is not peculiar to the Russell family.

The rich plunder expected from the great wealth of the church was no doubt one of the main causes of the reformation in England, so far as relates to Henry VIII and his courtiers, especially the latter. The motive assigned by the poet Gray, with much wit as AvcU as gallantry, for the conduct of the great re- former of the church, was the primary, but not the only one.

" 'Twas love that taught this monarch to be wise, And gospel light first I)eamed from Bullen's ej^es."

Henry's love for the property of the rich abbeys and monasteries proved far more lasting than his af- fections for Anne Bullen, and his reforms were con- tinued long after the unfortunate queen ceased to in- fluence her imperious husband.

The lucrative civil offices are shared by the aris- tocracy and their dependents, except in a few in- stances where extraordinary skill or industry is re- quired, and which must be had wherever they can be found.

The mercantile, manufacturing, and moneyed in- terests have long had great influence in the policy and measures of the British government. Though the representatives of these classes have always been in number a minority in parliament, yet from their su- perior activity and sagacity with regard to their own interest, they have frequently obtained undue advan- tages from the government, and arc on the whole much

S58 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

more favored in the public burdens than the agricul- turists. The rich merchants, manufacturers, and bankers may be considered either as members or as allies and supporters of the aristocracy.

The House of Lords is now far superior to that assembly, when, about eighty years ago, it was called by Lord Chesterfield the Hospital of Incurables. This is owing chiefly to continual recruits of the most dis- tinguished commoners, who have, since the accession of George III, tripled the number of the Upper House. In point of talent, wealth, personal influence, and weight of character, it probably stands much higher than at any former period. Take from the House of Lords the families that have been ennobled during the last sixty years, and though its legal and consti- tutional power would be the same, its real power and influence would be comparatively insignificant.

These continual accessions from the ranks of the commons are the vivifying principle of the nobility, giving it health, strength, wealth, talent, and influ- ence. The leading commoners, the most distinguished men in political life, in the law, army, navy, and church, and in the landed, moneyed, commercial, and manufacturing interests, do not wish to diminish the power or privileges of an assembly of which they may hope to be one day members, and which at any rate they consider indispensable to the continuance of the present political system.

One of the best founded complaints against the Eng- lish government is the neglect to provide for the edu- cation of the common people. No public provision is made for this object, at least none worth mentioning, except so far as it may be supposed to come within the duties required by law or custom from the clergy

MACAULAY 359

of the established church. While so much is doing in Prussia and several other countries on the continent at the public expense, though much has been said and written in England in favor of a general system of education, we hardly recollect any measure of the gov- ernment for this purpose except the grant a few years since of £30,000 for the education of teachers.

It may be supposed of course that the same neg- lect would extend to the English colonies and depend- encies or whatever territories were added by conquest or otherwise to the British empire. In Ireland and Wales their old institutions for education were broken up by the English at the Conquest, and no new sys- tem established, and the mass of the people left in ignorance to this day. For the public system in New England we are not indebted to the English govern- ment or institutions, but to the piety and wisdom of our Puritan ancestors.

We are much inclined to doubt whether, in any country where a privileged order of men have in fact the control of the government any public system for the education of the people ever has been, or is likely to be, carried into practice. In a republic with- out any privileged class enlightened men feel a com- mon interest in educating the people so far as to make them good citizens and qualify them for the duties which ordinary men may be called on to perform in such a community. The general diffusion of knowl- edge is considered one of the best securities for the peace and prosperity of the country. In a monarchy where the sovereign has the entire power, such a sys- tem of general education may be formed and car- ried into execution, as in Prussia and several of the states of Germany. Where the monarchical or the

860 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

democratic element has the real ascendency the gov- ernment may feel an interest in educating the people.

Perhaps the case of Scotland may be thought an exception ; but in Scotland the system of general edu- cation was established by the Presbyterians in the time of the Solemn League and Covenant, from the influ- ence of popular freedom and religious enthusiasm. It was repealed at the Restoration, but the Scots ob- tained the re-establishment of it at the revolution of 1688.

We believe education one of the most essential du- ties which society owes to its members. But what is a good education, and what will best fit them for the duties they may be called on to discharge, and the place they may probably fill, is a very important question. The governing powers in England have not yet de- termined that any system is to be adopted, or that any general one is expedient ; and looking at the continu- ance and stability of their present political institu- tions, it may not be so easy a question as we imagine. For instance, what education is best for an English sailor who may be impressed and compelled to serve many years under the discipline of a British man of war, with little or no chance of promotion ; or for the common soldier, who in an army officered by gentlemen can very rarely rise above the ranks ; or for the labor- ing classes in their present condition.'* No education can remedy most of the evils which are felt by the laboring classes. Education cannot give them employ- ment, food, or clothing, and perhaps would only make them drscontented with the inevitable hardships of their condition. There is very little reason to suppose that the government have any such object in view as educating the common people at the public expense.

MACAULAY 861

According to M. de Tocqueville an aristocratic gov- ernment has a very great superiority over all others in the ability with which its foreign relations are man- aged. He adduces the example of the Romans and the English in support of this opinion. An aris- tocracy, he says, is a steadfast and enlightened man who never dies.

There may be much truth in this, but we think in respect to England, as much of her success is to be as- cribed to national character and fortunate situation as to the wisdom of the aristocracy. England in her foreign relations and in all controversies with other powers has unrivaled advantages. Her insular situa- tion and naval strength give her means of defense and annoyance possessed by no other country. Every other great nation of Europe has seen a foreign army in its territory and in possession of its capital. But since the Norman conquest no attempt to invade Eng- land has succeeded, except in case of a civil war or disputed succession to the crown, where a great por- tion of the people favored the enterprise.

This security has rendered Englishmen in a great degree strangers to the calamities of war except as they appear in the shape of taxes. To their minds war has been associated with the triumphs of victory, the dis- play of British power and valor, the firing of the Park and Tower guns, the thanks of both houses of par- liament, with honors and rewards for the successful naval or military commanders. The slaughter of the battle field, the sufferings of the wounded, the groans of the dying, the burning of towns, the multitudes driven from their sweet and cheerful homes to perish by cold, hunger, or disease, have in times past made little impression on their imagination. With the Eng-

362 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Hsh as with all other nations success will for a time render any war popular however unjustifiable. It is not till they begin to feel the losses and burdens of a war that the}^ are sensible of its impolicy or injustice, and wish for peace.

This geographical position so happy for the Eng- lish, we have thought has sometimes been unfortunate for other nations, as it has enabled and disposed Eng- land to inflict on them the calamities of war without any serious danger of their being brought home to her own island. In the American Revolutionary War it is not probable that so many towns would have been wan- tonly burnt, and so much private property destroyed, if these evils could have been retaliated upon their authors.

Government is constituted for the good of the whole society and of every member. The English govern- ment like all other governments and social systems must be estimated not by any theory or imaginary standard of perfection, but by its effects on the well- being of the people. We must judge of the tree by its fruits. Mr. Fox said his defense of the British constitution was not that it was perfect or tallied with the theories of this man or that man, but that it pro- duced substantial happiness to the people, and if this ground were taken away he knew not what defense to make. We suppose this to be the true and only sat- isfactory ground on which any political institution or form of society can be defended.

Macaulay looks on the favorable side of things, and sees nothing but progress and improvement, though he hears much complaint of decline and ruin. The na- tion in his view is sound at heart, has nothing of age but its dignity, combined with the vigor of youth. He

MACAULAY' 363

thinks the nation is going on in a course of improve- ment, preserving what is good in its institutions, and reforming what is bad in a peaceable constitutional way. This is undoubtedly the true mode of reform.

But the changes of civil government are not confined to acts of parliament or measures of government. Time, says Bacon, is the greatest of innovators. Time and the course of events have made the English government and social sj^stem what they now are, and may be silentl}'^ working greater changes than any min- istry or political agitators.

VIII BUCKLE'S HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

This Is the most important work, in its line, from a British hand, which the world has seen for many a year. The theme is one of the greatest in the world. The author has treated it better, with more learning and profound comprehension, than any of his English predecessors. Who is Mr. Buckle? We know not. The name is new ; this is his first work, as he thus tells us : " To my mother I dedicate this, the first volume of my first work," — a pious and appropriate dedica- tion, which promises other things to come.

No Englishman has written a more elaborate book in this century. It is learned also, though not so comprehensive in its erudition as we might wish. The list of " authors quoted " occupies fifteen pages, and comprises about six hundred titles and perhaps three thousand volumes. Half as many more are referred to in the copious and well-studied notes, which enrich the volume. Notwithstanding the imposing array which this catalogue presents at the first glance, its de- ficiencies, in a writer who thinks so meanly of the labors of his predecessors, are more remarkable than its seeming completeness. Not to speak of ancient writers, of whom only three are referred to, no men- tion is made of Grotius, Prideaux, Vico, Creuzer, Du Cange, Duchesne, INIaltc-Brun, Becker, W. v. Hum- boldt, Wachlcr, Hegel (Phil. d. Gcsch.), Muller (J. V. and C. O.), Fichte (Grundz. d. gegenw. Zeitalt.), Schelling {Phil. d. Myth.), Bocckh, Wachsmuth, Eich-

364

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 365

horn, Savigny, Raumer, Heeren (Gesch. d. Syst. d. Eur. Staat.), Thierry, and a host of others whose writings bear more or less directly on the subject of this volume. The author speaks in the highest terms of the works of German philosophers, but names but four or five German books in his catalogue, none of which are the works of the masters in the philosophy of history.

This volume is but half of the Introduction to the History of Civilization in England. How many vol- umes the history itself shall contain we are not told. It is so bulky that we fear it will not immediately be reprinted here. The great cost of the original will prevent it from circulating much in a country where a laboring man may buy his week's reading for a quar- ter of a dollar. But its contents are so valuable that we shall make a careful analysis of the most important, though perhaps not the most interesting parts, and lay it before our readers, with some additional com- ments of our own. The paper will consist of two parts, — an abstract of the work itself, and some criti- cisms thereon.

The volume contains fourteen chapters ; the first five are general, and relate tO' the development of man- kind under various circumstances friendly or hostile thereto, to the method of inquiry, and the influence of various causes upon civilization. The sixth is a transi- tional chapter, in which the author leads his readers over from his general laws to their particular appli- cations. The other eight treat mainly of the develop- ment of civilization in England and France.

In Chapter I he tells us that history is the most popular branch of knowledge ; more has been written on it than on any other, and great confidence is felt in

366 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

its value. It enters into all plans of education, ma- terials of a rich and imposing appearance have been collected, political and military annals have been com- piled ; and much pains taken with the history of law, religion, science, letters, arts, useful inventions, and of late with the manners and customs of the people. Political economy has become a science ; statistics treat of the material interests of mankind, their moral pecu- liarities, the amount of crime, and the effect of age, sex, and education thereupon. We know the rate of mor- tality, marriages, births, deaths, the fluctuation of wages, the price of needful things. Physical geog- raphy has been studied in all its details ; all food has been chemically analyzed, and its relation to the body pointed out. Many nations have been studied in all degrees of civilization. Put all these things together, they seem to be of immense value.

But the use of these materials is less satisfactory ; the separate parts have not been combined into a whole, while the necessity of generalization is admitted in all other great fields of inquiry, and efforts are made therein to rise from particular facts to universal laws, tins is seldom attempted in the history of man.

" Any author who, from indolence of thought or from natural incapacity, is unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowl- edge, has only to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he is qualified to be an historian; he is able to write the history of a great people, and his work becomes an authority on the subject which it professes to treat. The establishment of this narrow standard has led to results very prejudicial to the progress of our knowledge. Owing to it his- torians, taken as a body, have never recognized the necessity of such a wide and preliminary study as would enable them to grasp their subject in the whole of its natural relations; hence the singular spectacle of one historian being ignorant of politi- cal economy, another knowing nothing of law, another nothing of ecclesiastical affairs and changes of opinion; another neg-

BUCICLE'S CIVILIZATION 367

lecting the philosophy of statistics and another physical science; although these topics are the most essential of all, inasmuch as they comprise the principal circumstances by which the temper and character of mankind have been affected and in which they are displayed."

Accordingly, in the whole literature of Europe there are only three or four really original books, which con- tain a systematic attempt to investigate the history of man in the scientific manner belonging to other de- partments. Yet in the last hundred years there has been a great gain, and the prospects of historical lit- erature are more cheering than ever before ; but scarcely anything has been done towards discerning the principles which govern the character and destiny of nations. " For all the higher purposes of human thought, history is still miserably deficient, and pre- sents that confused and anarchical appearance natural to a subject of which the laws are unknown, and even the foundation unsettled." Auguste Comte, " who has done more than any man to raise the standard," contemptuously notices " the incoherent compilation of facts hitherto called history." The most celebrated historians are manifestly inferior to the great men of science, none of them is at all entitled to be compared with Kepler and Newton. Yet the study of history requires the greatest talents on account of the com- j)lication of its phenomena, and the fact that nothing can be verified by experiment.

Hence the scientific study of the movements of mind, compared with that of the movements of nature, is still in its infancy. So in physics, the regularity of events and the possibility of predicting them are always taken for granted, while the regularity of history is not only not so taken, but is often denied. It is said in the affairs of men there is something mysterious and

368 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

providential, which hides their future from us, and so history has never become a science, but only an em- pirical narrative of facts. But the question comes: Is it so? Are the actions of men and societies gov- erned by fixed laws, or are they the result either of blind chance or of supernatural interference?

In regard to all events there are two doctrines which represent different stages of civilization: 1. that every event is single and isolate, the result of blind chance ; or 2. that all events are connected, and so each is the result of necessity.* An increasing percep- tion of the regularity of nature destroys the doctrine of chance, and replaces it by necessary connection. Out of these two doctrines of chance and necessity come the dogmas of free-will and predestination.

As soon as a people has accumulated an abundance of the means of living, some men will cease to work ; the most of those who are free from labor seek only pleasure, but a few endeavor to acquire knowledge and diffuse it. Some of the latter will study their own minds ; such of them as have great ability will found new philosophies and religions, which often exercise an immense influence over the people who receive them. But these great thinkers are affected by the character of their age, which accordingly appears in their phi- losophy and religion. Thus the doctrine of chance in the outer world corresponds to, and occasions, that of free-will in the inner world ; while the doctrine of necessary connection in nature corresponds to that of predestination in man. Predestination is founded on the theological hypothesis that all is regulated by supernatural interference. Among the Protestants this doctrine, accompanied with that of the eternal * He means Necessitudo, we take it, not Necessitas.

BUCKLE'S CWILIZATION 369

damnation of the non-elect, acquired influence through the dark and powerful mind of Calvin, and among Catholics from Augustine, who seems to have borrowed it from the INIanicheans ; but it is a barren hypothesis, lying out of the province of human knowledge, and so it cannot be proved either false or tnie. Free-will is connected with Arminianism, and founded on the metaphysical hypothesis that all happens by chance ; it rests on the supremacy of human consciousness, a dogma supported only by the assumption, 1. that there is an independent faculty called consciousness ; and 2. that its dictates are infallible. But the first has not been proved ; the second is unquestionably false, for though consciousness be infallible as to the fact of its testimony, it is fallible as to its truth. The present uncertainty in regard to the matter of con- sciousness shows that metaphysics will never be raised to a science by the ordinary method of observing merely individual minds ; but that its study can be success- fully prosecuted only by the deductive application of laws, which must be discerned by historical induction from the whole of those great phenomena which the human race presents. Homer, Shakespeare, and other great poets have hitherto been the best investigators of the human mind ; but they occupied themselves mainly with the concrete phenomena of life, and if they ana- lyzed, as is probable, they concealed the steps of their process.

" The believer in the possibihty of history is not required to hold either to predestination or free-will, only to admit that, when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the result of some antecedents, and that, therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results." 11—24

370 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Now, as men's actions are determined by outward things, those actions must be uniform, and the same results must always follow from the same circum- stances. All the progress and decline of men must come from the action of external phenomena on the mind, or that of the mind on the phenomena. On the one side is nature, the world of matter obeying its own laws ; on the other, man obeying his laws. By their mutual action each modifies the other. A philo- sophical history can be made only on the knowledge of this action and mutual modification of man by na- ture and nature by man. The problem of the his- torian is to discover the laws of this twofold modifica- tion. First, he must inquire whether man aff^ects na- ture most, or nature man ; that is, whether physical phenomena are more aff'ected by man than man by physical phenomena, or the opposite. That which is most active and powerful should be studied first, for being the most conspicuous, it is easiest known, and when its laws are generalized, the unknown to be ac- counted for will be smaller than if the opposite course be pursued. But before he enters on that work the historian will prove the regularity of mental phe- nomena, not by deduction from an assumed hypothe- sis, either metaphysical or theological, but by induction from almost innumerable facts, extending over many centuries, gathered and put into arithmetical tables, — the clearest of all forms, — by government officials, who had neither prejudice nor theories to support.

The actions of men are of these two classes, virtues or vices. If it can be shown that the vices vary ac- cording to changes in surrounding society, then it is clear the virtues vary also in like manner, though in- versely. But if there be no such variations, then it

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 371

must follow that men's actions depend on personal caprice, free-will, and the like, on what is peculiar to the individual.

At first thought, it would appear that of all vicious or virtuous actions the crime of murder was the most arbitrary and irregular. But experience shows that it is committed with regularity, and bears as uniform a relation to certain circumstances, as the movement of the tides or the rotation of the seasons. Thus it was observed that from 1826 to 18-t-4 the number of per- sons accused of crime in all France was on the whole about equal to the male deaths in Paris, but the annual amount of crime in France fluctuated less than that of male deaths in Paris ; the same regularity was ob- served in each separate class of crimes, all obeying the same law of uniform and periodical repetition. In other countries, also, variations of crime are less than those of mortality.

Suicide seems the most arbitrary and capricious of all murders, but this also observes a constant law. The average annual number of suicides in London is about 24-0. It varies from 213 to 266. In 181-6 there was a great railway panic, the suicides rose to 266; in 184i7 there was a slight improvement, and the suicides fell to 256; in 181<8 there were S.il ; in 1849, 213 ; and in 1850 they rose again to 229. This crime, like many others, depends somewhat on the sea- son of the year, and is more common in summer than in winter.

Facts of this kind " force us to the conclusion, that the offenses of men are the result not so much of the vices of the individual offender as of the state of so- ciety into which he is thrown." And this induction cannot be overthrown by any of those hypotheses with

872 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

which metaphysicians and theologians have perplexed the study of past events. This is the great social law, that the moral actions of men are the product of their antecedents, not of their volition. But, like other laws, it is subject to disturbances proceeding from minor forces, which meet the larger at particular points, and cause aberrations. But these discrepancies are trifling. Hence " we may form some idea of the prodigious energy of those vast social laws, which, though constantly interrupted, seem to triumph over every obstacle, and which, when examined by the aid of large numbers, scarcely undergo any sensible per- turbation."

Marriage has a fixed relation to' the price of corn ; in England the experience of a centui'y has proved that instead of having any connection with personal feelings, marriages " are simply regulated by the aver- age earnings of the great mass of the people, so that this immense social and religious institution is not only swayed, but is completely controlled by the price of food or the rate of wages."

The aberrations of memory also follow a general law. At London and Paris the same proportionate number of persons drop undirected letters into the post-office. These things are so plain, that in less than a hundred years it will be as hard to find an historian who denies the regularity of the moral world, as it now is to find a philosopher who denies the uniformity of nature. This regularity of human actions and its dependence on certain conditions is the basis for scientific history.

In Chapter II ]Mr. Buckle states the influence of physical agents on the organization of societ}' and the character of individuals. The most powerful agents are food, soil, climate, and the general aspects of na-

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 373

ture. The latter excites the imagination, and so some- times produces superstition, wliich is the great obstacle to progressive knowledge, and imparts ineffaceable peculiarities to the national religion. The three for- mer affect the general organization, and cause those large and conspicuous differences between nations which are often ascribed to some fundamental differ- ence in the various races into which mankind are di- vided. But these ethnological differences are alto- gether hypothetical, Avhile those caused by climate, food, and soil are not only real, but also capable of a satisfactory explanation. He condenses these three into one general term, Physical Geography, and tells the effect it produces.

1. The accumulation of wealth must always be the first great social improvement, for without that there is neither taste nor leisure for the acquisition of knowl- edge. In an ignorant people, — and all must start ignorant, — this accumulation will be regulated solely by the physical peculiarities of the country, that is, by the fertility of the soil, and by the energy and regularity of the work bestowed upon it. This latter depends entirely on the climate, which directly affects man's power of work, by enervating or invigorating the laborer, and also indirectly influences the regularity of his habits. Thus, in Northern countries cold and darkness interrupt out-door work, and the laboring people are more prone to desultory habits ; hence the national character becomes more fitful and capricious than it would be under a better climate. The Swedes and Norwegians differ greatly from the Spanish and Portuguese in government, laws, religion, and man- ners, but all four agree in a certain instabilit}^ and fickleness of character. This peculiarity, common to

374 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

them all, is caused by the climate, which in the South- ern countries interrupts toil by heat and drought, and in the Northern by darkness and cold. This effect of climate has not been noticed by Montesquieu, Hume, and Charles Comte, the three most philosophical writers on climate.

No nation has ever been civilized through its own efforts, unless it had a favorable soil or climate. Thus in Asia civilization has always been confined to that tract which extends from the south of China to the west coast of Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Palestine, while the barren country in the North has been peopled by rude wandering tribes, who are always kept in pov- erty by the nature of the soil ; but yet, when they mi- grate thence, they found great monarchies, in China, India, and Persia, and equal the civilization of the most flourishing peoples. In Arabia the Arabs have always been a rude, uncultivated people, their soil compelling them to poverty ; but when established in Persia, Spain, and the Punjaub, their character seems to undergo a great change. In the sandy and barren parts of Africa, — the vast plain which occupies the centre and North, — the people are always barbarians, entirely un- cultivated, acquiring no knowledge, because they can accumulate no wealth. But in Egypt the overflow of the Nile makes the country fertile, wealth was rapidly accumulated, the cultivation of knowledge quickly fol- lowed, and the land became the seat of a civilization which, though grossly exaggerated, forms a striking contrast to the barbarism of the other nations of Africa, none of which could work out their progress or emerge from the ignorance to which the penury of nature con- demned them.

In the ancient world, — Asia and Africa, — the fer-

BUCIO^E'S CIVILIZATION 375

tility of the soil had more influence than climate in civ- ilization. But in Europe climate is the more powerful of the two. In the former case the effect depends on the relation of the soil to its produce, that is, of one part of nature to another ; in the latter, the effect depends on the relation between the climate and the laborer, that is, between nature and man. The first is the less com- plicated relation, and came earlier into action, and hence civilization began in Asia and Africa, and not in Europe. But that form of civilization which de- pends on the fertility of the soil is not so valuable or permanent as that which depends on climate, for all ef- fectual human progress depends less on the bounty of nature than on the energy of man which a favorable climate develops. And while the productive powers of nature are limited and stationary, the powers of man are unlimited. We have no evidence which authorizes us to put even an imaginary limit to the human intel- lect. So a favorable climate, which stimulates labor, is a more valuable agent of civilization than fertility of soil, which feeds men with its almost spontaneous bounty.

The next thing to consider is the distribution of wealth, — what portion shall belong to the laboring classes, what to such as labor not. In a very early stage of society, the distribution of wealth, like its crea- tion, is wholly determined by physical laws, which are so active as to have kept a vast majority of the inhabi- tants of the fairest portion of the globe in constant poverty. An inquiry into the distril)ution of wealth, therefore, is an inquiry into the distribution of power, and will throw light on the origin of social and poli- cal inequality. Wealth will be distributed between the laborers, the more numerous class, who produce it, and

376 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the non-laborers, the contrivers, the less numerous, but more able class, who direct the energy of the others. The laborers' share is called wages ; the contrivers' share is profits. Wages will depend on the number of laborers, and that on the cheapness of food ; so, in a country where food is cheap, laborers will abound and wages be low. Therefore an inquiry into the physical laws on which a nation's food depends is of the greatest importance.

The food of man produces two and only two effects necessary to his existence, — 1. to supply the animal heat, and 2. to repair the waste of tissues. The first purpose is accomplished by non-azotized substances containing carbon, but no nitrogen ; the second, by azotized ^ substances in which nitrogen is always found. In hot climates men require but little non-azotized food, for the climate keeps up the temperature ; and less azotized food than in cold ones, — for, as they ex- ercise less, the body has less waste to repair. So the in- habitants of hot countries will require less food than those of cold ones, and population will increase with corresponding rapidity. But the inhabitants of colder countries consume not only more food than those of warm countries, but more animal, carbonized, or non- azotized food, which is more costly than is the other kind, for it is not, like vegetables, thrown up by the soil, but consists of the bodies of powerful and often ferocious animals, and is procured only with great la- bor. So, when the coldness of the climate compels men to use carbonized or animal food, even in the infancy of society the men are bolder, more adven- turous, than the vegetable-eaters of warm climates, gratuitously fed by the bounty of nature. Thus there is a constant tendency for wages to be low in warm

BUCIvLE'S CrVILIZATION 377

countries, and high in cold ones. In hot chmates food will be abundant, population will increase rapidly, and wages be low ; while in cold countries the opposite re- sult will follow.

In Asia, Africa, and America, all the ancient civiliza- tions were seated in hot climates, where food was cheap, the wages low, the profits high, and the la- borer depressed. In Europe civilization arose in a colder climate, where food was dearer, wages conse- quently higher, profits lower, and the laborers in a better condition. The Irish are the only great European people fed on cheap food ; and the conse- quences presently appeared in the rapid increase of the laborers, their low wages, and miserable squalid con- dition, though in a country' which has greater natural resources than anj^ other in Europe. The matter of food and wages may be thus summed up: when the wages are invariably low, the distribution of political power and social influence will also be very unequal.

Civilization is old in India. The climate requires men to feed on vegetable, non-azotized food, on rice, the most nutritive of all the grains. Food is cheap, laborers abundant, wages low, profits high, in the shape of rent of land and interest of capital, the labor- ing people much depressed, the ruling class rich, in- solent, and despotic. It has been so these three thousand years, as appears from the ancient laws and maxims which determine the condition of the work- ing man.

These laws of fertility, soil, food, and climate are so invincible that, wherever they have come into play, they have kept the laborers in perpetual subjection ; the people have no voice in the management of the state, no control over the wealth they have created ;

378 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

they have always been tame and servile, their history recites no instance of their turning upon their rulers, no war of classes, no popular insurrections, not one great popular conspiracy, no revolutions among the people. Similar causes were at work in Egypt, in Peru, in Mexico, and produced the same results as in India: the date, the banana, and the maize were to the latter what rice was to the former. In all these countries civilization depended on the fertility of the soil, food was cheap, laborers abundant, wages low, profits high, the working class poor and enslaved, the rulers rich, insolent, and despotic. We have not space to follow the author in the interesting details of this part of his work, but only remark, in passing, that he does not seem to be entirely familiar with the ab- original civilization, and is sometimes mistaken in his statements ; but his grand inductive generalization re- mans secure.

He thus sums up the result for Asia, Africa, and America : —

" The great physical laws which, in the most flourishing coun- tries out of Europe, encouraged the accumulation of wealth, but prevented its dispersion, secured to the upper classes a monopoh' of one of the most important elements of social and political power. The result was, that in all those civilizations the great body of tlie people derived no benefit from the na- tional improvements; hence, the basis of the progress being very narrow, the progress itself was very insecure. When, there- fore, unfavorable circumstances arose from without, it was but natural that the whole system should fall to the ground. In such countries society, being divided against itself, was un- able to stand. And there can be no doubt that, long before the crisis of their actual destruction, these one-sided and irregular civilizations had began to decay. So that their own degeneracy aided the progress of foreign invaders, and secured the overthrow of those ancient kingdoms which, under a sounder system, might have been easily saved."

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 379

In Europe civilization depended less on the fertility of the soil, giving man its cheap spontaneous bread, more on the climate, which stimulated him to vigorous and regular activity, demanded a more costly food, and so prevented the too rapid increase of population. As a natural consequence, in Europe alone a permanent civilization has been established, and society so or- ganized as to include all the different classes ; and though the scheme is not yet sufficiently large, it leaves room for the welfare of each, and so secures the progress of all.

Having thus disposed of the influence of food, soil, and climate, which directly affect the material interests of man in the accumulation and distribution of wealth, he next examines that of the general aspects of nature which affect his intellectual interests in the accumula- tion and distribution of knowledge. The aspects of nature may be divided into two' kinds, — such as affect the imagination by exciting feeling, terror, or great wonder, and such as affect the understanding, and ex- cite men to study the details and causes of the phenomena about them. In all civilizations hitherto the imagination has been active to excess. This ap- pears from the superstitions of the ignorant, and the poetic reverence for antiquity which blinds the judg ment of the educated and limits their originality. It is possible that the understanding may in turn tyran- nize over the imagination. All the great early civilza- tions of Asia, Africa, and America were situated within the tropics, where nature is most dangerous to man, and its aspects most sublime and terrible, both in the con- stant phenomena, such as mountains, and the oc- casional, such as earthquakes, tempests, hurricanes, and pestilences, which powerfully affect the imagination.

S80 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

This general statement is illustrated by examples of the superstitions generated by earthquakes and pesti- lences. The illustrations are not happy, they are al- most puerile. He thus generalizes his conclusions: *' There are certain natural phenomena which excite the imagination, incline man to superstition, and hinder the progress of knowledge. These phenomena are much more numerous out of Europe than in it," and give a peculiar character to literature, religion, and art. To prove this, he compares the productions of a t3'pi- cal Asiatic with a typical European country, India with Greece, — both " flagrant instances."

The literature of India shows the most uncontrolled ascendency of the imagination. There is little prose composition ; works on grammar, law, history, medicine, mathematics, geography, and metaphysics are nearly all poems. The matter corresponds to the form ; imagination, luxuriant even to disease, runs riot on every occasion. This appears in great national works, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas, and in geographical and chronological systems ; in the ex- aggerated respect for past ages, which is " repugnant to every maxim of reason, and is merely the indulgence of a poetic sentiment in favor of the remote and un- known." " It gave theologians their idea of the primitive virtue and simplicity of man, and of his sub- sequent fall from that high estate." It " diffused a belief that in old times men were not only more vir- tuous and happy, but also physically superior in the structure of their bodies," and lived to a greater age than is possible for their degenerate children. Thus the Hindoos say that in the most flourishing periods of antiquity the average age of common men at death was 80,000 years, and of holy men 100,000 years ; but

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 381

some early poets lived about half a million, and one king — his title is too long for our space — lived 8,400,000, of which he reigned 6,300,000. To glorify the Institutes of Menu, which arc really less than three thousand ^^ears old, the native authorities declare they were miraculously revealed to man more than 2,000,- 000,000 years ago. The same characteristics ap- pear in the Indian religion. Its mythology, like that of every tropical country, is based upon terror of the most extravagant kind. The most terrible deities Are also the most popular. The same thing appears in the Indian art, which is an expression of the monstrous.

Now in Greece the aspects of nature were quite dif- ferent, nay, almost opposite ; they gave a healthy stimulus to the imagination and the understanding, which led to the elevation of man. The Indians had more respect for super-human powers, and turned men to the unknown and mysterious ; the Greeks had more respect for human powers, and turned to the known and available. This peculiarity appears in the litera- ture, religion, and art of Greece, which are so well known that we need not follow Mr. Buckle in the de- tails of his learned and careful comparison. The Greek literature was the first in which a systematic attempt was made to test all opinions by human reason, and vindicate the right of man to judge for himself on matters of supreme importance.

In Chapter III he examines " the method employed by metaphysicians for discovering mental laws." Studying the whole of human history, he finds that, out of Europe, the tendency has been to subordinate man to nature, but in Europe to subordinate nature to man. So he divides civilization into two parts, non-European and European. To understand the first, we must be-

382 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

gin with the study of nature, the stronger force, while to comprehend the European civihzation, which is characterized by a diminishing influence of physical agents and an increasing influence of mental agents, we must begin with man, who continually and progres- sively overmasters nature, so that the average duration of life becomes greater, the number of dangers thereto is lessened ; the curiosity of men is keener, and their contact closer, than at any former period, and a more just distribution of wealth has taken place than in other countries. It is only in Europe that man has succeeded in taming the energies of nature, and compelling them to minister to him. He has extirpated ferocious beasts, overcome famine and the most frightful diseases, bridged the rivers, tunneled the mountains, reclaimed land from the sea, and fertilized the barren spots of the earth. The most advanced nations of Europe owe comparatively little to the original forces of nature, which had unlimited power over all other civilizations.

European civilization diff^ers from all others in this. It is characterized by the " diminishing influence of physical laws," — he means forces, — " and an increas- ing influence of mental laws." The proposition will be proved in future volumes, but will be admitted in advance, he thinks, by all who attend to these two fundamental propositions: 1. that the forces of nature have never been permanently increased, and never will be ; and 2. that the forces of man continually become more powerful by the acquisition of new means, either to control the manageable operations of nature, or to avoid dangers from those consequences which we can foresee when we cannot prevent them.

To discover the laws of European civilization, we

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 383

must first know the laws of mind, which will afford the ultimate basis of history. The metaphysicians claim to have done this work ; so it is necessary to as- certain the value of their researches, the extent of their resources, and the validity of their method. The metaphj^sical method consists in each observer's study- ing his own mind, while the historical method consists in studying many minds. The metaphysical method is one by which no discovery has ever yet been made in any branch of knowledge, as it is impossible for the metaphysician to isolate his mind from disturbing forces, and his method does not allow him to enlarge his survey, so as to correct the individual disturbance by the general fact gathered from many particulars.

Besides, there is yet another difficulty. There are two applications of this metaphysical method ; with one the inquirer begins by examining his sensations, with the other by examining his ideas. Hence there are two classes of metaphysicians, the sensationalists and the idealists, who adopt different methods and ar- rive at opposite conclusions ; the further they advance, the more they differ ; they are at open war in every department of morals, philosophy, and art. They know no other method ; no other application of it is possible, and so they cannot reconcile their an- tagonistic conclusions. Meaning by metaphysics " that vast body of literature which is constructed on the supposition that the laws of the human mind can be generalized solely from the facts of individual con- sciousness," ]\Ir. Buckle sa3's, " If we except a very few of the laws of association, and perhaps I may add the modern theories of vision and touch,"; — he refers to Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, and Brown, — " there is not to be found in the whole compass of metaphysics a sin-

384} THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

gle principle of importance, and at the same time of incontestable truth." This defect in the conclusions comes from the fault in the method ; metaphysicians first raise a cloud, and then complain they cannot see. Metaphysics can be successfully studied only " by an investigation of history so comprehensive as to enable us to understand the conditions which govern the move- ments of the human race."

In Chapter IV. he compares the moral and intelec- tual forces or agencies, — he calls them laws, — and in- quires into the effect of each on the progress of society. In this investigation he tries to avoid the method of the metaphysician, who derives his knowledge of men from the study of his own consciousness, exceptional, perturbed, and abnormal as it may be ; and follows that of the naturalist, who takes so large a number of facts that the individual perturbations are but an infinitesmal quanitity, and thence induces his general laws.

The progress of mankind, he says, is twofold : moral, relating to our duties, and intellectual, relating to our knowledge. This double increase of knowledge and virtue is essential to civilization. To be willing to perform our duty, is the moral part of progress ; to know how to perform it, the intellectual. It is possible that there is a progressive increase of man's natural powers, intellectual and moral; but the fact has not yet been proved, and we have no decisive ground for saying that natural faculties would be greater in a child born in the most civilized part of Europe than in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous coun- try. We have no proof, he thinks, of the existence of hereditary talents, vices, or virtues, hereditary mad- ness and disease. There is no progress of capacity, only of opportunity.

BUCIO^E'S CIVILIZATION 385

The moral powers — that is, in our philosophy, the power to know duty and the will to do it - — have an extremely small influence over the progress of civiliza- tion. The great dogmas of morals, which are " the sole essential of morals," have been known for thousands of years, not a jot nor tittle has been added to them, while there is a continual increase in the knowledge of intellectual truths. The most cultivated Europeans do not know a single moral truth not known to the ancients, while the moderns have made most important addition to every department of ancient knowledge, and have created new sciences which the boldest think- ers of old times never thought of. So it is plain man's progress depends on the intellectual, which is the progressive agent, not on the moral, which is but sta- tionary.

Besides, intellectual achievements are permanent; they are put in the terms of science, and, in immortal bequests of genius, become the heirlooms of mankind. But good moral deeds are less capable of transmission, less dependent on previous experience, and cannot well be stored up for future men. So, though moral ex- cellence be more amiable than intellectual, it is less ac- tive, less permanent, and less productive of real good. The effects of the most active philanthropy, the most disinterested kindness, reach but few, do not last long, and the institutions they found soon fall to decay. The more we study, the more we shall

" see the superiority of intellectual acquisition over moral feel- ing. There is no instance on record of an ignorant man, who, having good intentions, and supreme power to enforce them, has not done far more evil than good. And whenever the in- tentions have been very eager, and the power very extensive, the evil has been enormous. But if you can diminish the sin- cerity of that man, if you can mix some alloy with his mo- ll—25

386 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

tives, you will likewise diminish the evil which he works. If he is selfish, as well as ignorant, it will often happen that you may play off his vice against his ignorance, and, by excit- ing his fears, restrain his mischief. If, however, he has no fear, if he is entirely unselfish, if his sole object is the good of others, if he pursues that object witli enthusiasm, upon a large scale, and with disinterested zeal, then it is that you have no check upon him; you have no means of preventing the calamities which, in an ignorant age, an ignorant man will be sure to inflict."

To prove this discouraging proposition, he cites the case of religious persecutors, who are not bad men, nor bad-intentioned men, but only ignorant of the na- ture of truth, and of the consequences of their own actions. It was the most moral of the Roman Em- perors, Aurelius and Julian, who persecuted the Christians ; and in Spain, " the Inquisitors were re- markable for an undeviating and incorruptible in- tegrity."

Religious persecution is the greatest evil man ever inflicts on man ; " all other crimes are of small account " compared to this. It is intellectual, and not moral, activity which has ended it. The practice of war is the next great evil, and in diminishing that, the moral feel- ings have had no share at all, for the present moral ideas relating to war were " as well understood and as universally admitted in the middle ages, when there was never a week without war, as they are now, when war is deemed a rare and singular occurrence." It is intellectual, and not moral, actions which have done this great work. For every addition to knowledge in- creases the power of the intellectual class, and weakens the military class. It is a significant fact, that the recent Continental war was begun by Russia and Tur- key, the two most barbarous nations in Europe.^ The military predilections of Russia are not " caused by a

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 387

low state of morals, or by a disregard of religious du- ties," but by ignorance ; for as the intellect is little cultivated, the military class is supreme, and all ability is estimated by a military standard.* In England, a love of war, as a national taste, is utterly extinct ; this result has not come from moral instinct or moral training, but from the cultivation of intellect, and the rise of educated classes, who control the military. As society advances the ecclesiastical spirit and the military spirit never fail to decline. Thus, while in Greece some of the most celebrated poets, orators, philosophers, and statesmen were also warriors, since the sixteenth cen- tury Europe has not produced ten soldiers who were distinguished either as thinkers or writers. " Crom- well, Washington, and Napoleon are perhaps the only first-rate modern warriors " who were competent to govern a kingdom and command an army.t

Three things have weakened the power of the mili- tary class, — the Invention of gunpowder, the discov- eries of political economy, and the application of steam to the purposes of travel. We have no space for an analysis of his argument here.

Hitherto INIr. Buckle's remarks have been general, and belong to what may be called the universal part of transcendental history ; but In Chapter V he turns his attention more especially to England. He selects this as a typical country, — an instantia flagrans, — In wliich the universal laws of human development are interfered with less than elsewhere, and where for some

* In sustaining his assertions here, Mr. Buckle should take comfort from the somewhat celebrated preamble of our Con- gress in 184fi, " Whereas war exists by the act of Mexico," — she being the less intellectual power of the two.

f His contrast here of Marlborough and Wellington is well put, and worth rcmeinl)ering.

388 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

centuries the people have not been much troubled by the two great distui'bing forces, the authority of govern- ment and the influence of foreigners. England has borrowed nothing by which the destinies of nations are permanently altered, and affords the best example of the normal march of society, and the undisturbed operation of those agencies which regulate the fortunes of mankind.

Germany and the United States are not typical countries, like England. In the first, the philosophers are at the head of the civilized world, but the people are more prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious, and un- able to guide themselves, than the people of England or France. The great authors write books for each other, not for the people, and the dull, plodding class remains uninfluenced by the knowledge of the great thinkers, and uncheered by the fire of their genius.*

" In America we see a civilization precisely the reverse of this; ... a country of which it has been truly said, that in no other are there so few men of great learning, and so few of great ignorance. In Germany the speculative classes and the practical classes are altogether disunited; in Amer- ica they are altogether fused. In Germany nearly every year brings forward new discoveries, new philosophies, new means by which the boundaries of knowledge are to be enlarged. In America such inquiries are almost entirely neglected; since the time of Jonathan Edwards, no great metaphysician has ap- peared, little attention has been paid to physical science [ !], and with the single exception of jurisprudence scarcely any- thing has been done for those vast subjects on which the Ger- mans are incessantly labouring. The stock of American knowl- edge is small, but it is spread through all classes; the stock of German knowledge is immense, but it is confined to one class."

The progress of European civilization depends on the accumulation and distribution of knowledge ; and

* This sweeping remark of Mr. Buckle is founded probably on his imjiicssions of Southern Germany. It is not true of Prussia or of Saxony.

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 389

so ]ic must take a country in which knowledge is both normally accumulated and diffused. These condi- tions are happily united in England, which he will portray as the central and heroic figure in the historic group, but sketch in the other nations who play the special and subordinate parts in this great drama of civilization. He will study Germany for the laws of accumulation of knowledge, America for those of its diffusion ; France for the political form of the pro- tective spirit, Spain for its religious form. Thence he will induce the general laws, and in subsequent vol- umes of the history itself apply them deductively to England.

Tlie progress of a nation depends partly on the method its thinkers pursue in their investigations, whether it be deductive or inductive. The Germans favor the first, the Americans the last. The English thinkers are inductive, the Scotch deductive : — Simson, Stewart, Hutchinson, Adam Smith, Hume, Ferguson, Mill, all pursue the deductive method. No country possesses a more original and inquisitive literature than Scotland ; but in none equally enlightened docs so much of the superstition of the middle ages still continue. There is hostility between the speculative and practical classes.

By religion he means the theological ideas and the ritual service, by literature " everything which is writ- ten," and by government, not the complex of institu- tions, laws, and modes of administration, but simply the privileged classes who rule officially. He says a nation's progress does not depend on its religion, litera- ture, or government. This proposition he defends at length ; a nation's religion, literature, and government are only effects of its civilization, not also causes

390 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

thereof ; no progressive country voluntarily adopts a retrogressive religion, no declining country ameliorates its religion. Savages are converted to Christianity only by becoming civilized. A religon too much in advance of a people can do no present service, but must bide its time. Thus the Hebrews continually re- lapsed from the monotheism which Moses taught. The Romans with rare exceptions were an ignorant and barbarous race, ferocious, dissolute, and cruel ; poly- theism was their natural creed ; they could not compre- hend the sublime and admirable doctrines of Christian- ity, and after that seemed to have carried all before it, and received the homage of the best part of Europe, it was soon found that nothing was really effected. Superstition but took a new form ; men worshipped the Virgin ]\Iary instead of Cybele. The Catholic religion is to Protestantism what the dark ages are to modern times. Accordingly, the most civilized coun- tries should be Protestant. In general, it is so ; but sometimes a foreign force fixed the religion of the peo- ple, which does them small service. Thus Scotland and Sweden are Protestant countries, but more marked with superstition, intolerance, and bigotry than Catho- lic France. The French have a religion worse than themselves ; the Scotch have one better than them- selves ; and in both cases the characteristics of the peo- ple neutralize those of their creed, and the national faith is altogether inoperative.

" Literature in itself is but a trifling matter." Its value depends on its communicating real knowledge, that is, an acquaintance with physical and mental laws. To look upon an acquaintance with literature as one of the objects of education is to make the end sub- ordinate to the means. Hence there are " highly edu-

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 391

cated men," so called, whose advance in knowledge has been retarded by the activit}^ of their education. They are burdened with prejudices, which their read- ing only renders more inveterate ; for literature is not only full of wisdom but of absurdities also, so the bene- fit of literature will depend on the skill and judgment with which books are selected and studied. Europe would have made more rapid progress in the seventh and eighth centuries if all knowledge of the alphabet had been lost. For the noble works of antiquity thereby preserved were not used at all, and letters helped only to spread the superstitious regard men so much delighted in at that time.

Government is still less the ally of progressive civil- zation ; for " no great political improvement, no great reform, either legislative or execvitive, has ever been originated in any country by its rulers." Able think- ers find out the abuses, devise the remedy, convince and persuade the people, and force the rulers to adopt the improvement ; and then the people are expected to admire the wisdom of the rulers ! Thus, the repeal of the Corn Laws in England was not the work of the ministry in Parliament, but of the political economists, who proved that protective restrictions were absurd; and thus the repeal of the Corn Laws became a mat- ter, not of party or of expediency, but merely of knowledge ; when the diffusion of knowledge reached a certain point the laws must fall. Besides, all great reforms consist in undoing an old wrong, not in en- acting a new right ; the tendency of modern legislation, is to restore things to that natural channel whence pre- ceding legislation turned them away. The ruling classes have interfered so much with the. development of mankind, and done so much mischief, that it is won-

S92 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

derful civili.zatIon could advance at all. In Eng- land for the last two centuries they had less power than elsewhere, but have yet done such a great amount of evil as forms a melancholy chapter in the history of the human mind ; excepting certain laws necessary to preserve order and prevent crime, nearly all has been done amiss. All the most important interests have been grievously damaged by the rulers' attempt to aid them ; thus, the effort to protect trade nearly ruined trade itself, which would have perished had it not violated the laws by smuggling. The economical evils of this protective system, its injuries to trade, are surpassed by its moral evils, the increasing of crime. The attempt to protect religion increased only hypocrisy and heresy, — he might have added cruelty and atheism ; the effort to keep down the rate of inter- est on money has always raised that interest. Still, more, all the great Christian governments have made strenuous efforts to destroy the liberty of the press, and prevent men from expressing their thoughts in politics and religion, the most important of all sub- jects. Even in England the rulers tax paper, and make the very thoughts of men pay toll.

" It is truly a frightful consideration that knowledge is to be hindered, and that the proceeds of honest labour, of patient thought, and sometimes of profound genius, are to be dimin- ished, in order that a large part of their scanty earnings may go to swell the pomp of an idle and ignorant court, minister to the caprice of a few powerful individuals, and too often supply them with the means of turning against the people re- sources which the people called into existence."

In England the rulers have less power than else- where ; and the progress has been more regular, more rapid, and less violent and bloody. She has shown the world " that one main condition of the prosperity

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 393

of a people is this, that its rulers shall have very little power, and exercise that little very sparingly."

So the growth of European civilization is not due to religion, literature, or government, but only to the progress of knowledge, which depends on the number of truths known, and the extent to Avhich they are known, — the accumulation and distribution of knowl- edge.

In Chapter VI Mr. Buckle treats of the origin of history, and the state of historical literature during the middle ages. In this history of history he finds that, in the last three centuries, historians have shown an increasing respect for man's mind, and have more than ever attended to the condition of the people and the diffusion of knowledge. His sketch of the progress of history from the oral ballad, up through all stages of monkish absurdity, is amusing and curious. We must pass it by, however, to speak of what seems more essential to the understanding of his positions.

In Chapter VII he gives an outline of the History of the English Intellect, from the middle of the six- teenth to the end of the eighteenth century. To es- cape from the melancholy condition of the dark and middle ages, there must be an increase of doubt, Knowledge is the condition of progress, doubt of knowledge. Scepticism is " hardness of belief," an increased application and diffusion of the laws of evi- dence and the rules of reasoning. " In ph3^sics, it is the necessary precursor of science ; in politics, of liberty ; in theology, of toleration," — and, he might have added, of truth.

"To scepticism we owe that spirit of inquiry which, during the last two centuries, has encroached on every possible sub- ject, has reformed every department of practical and specu-

394 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

lative knowledge, has weakened the authority of the privileged classes, and thus placed liberty on a surer foundation, has chastised the despotism of princes, has restrained the arrogance of nobles, and has even diminished the prejudices of the clergy."

No single fact has so extensively affected the dif- ferent nations as the duration, amount, and diffusion of their scepticisms. In Spain, by means of the In- quisition, the church prevented the publication of sceptical opinions ; there knowledge and civilization are stationary. But scepticism first began in England and France, and was most widely diffused ; and there " has arisen that constantly progressive knowledge to which these two great nations owe their prosperity."

Mr. Buckle then shows the growth of doubt in England, and as its consequence the increase of re- ligious toleration, and the decline of the old ecclesiasti- cal spirit. It is the authority of the secular classes which has forced toleration on the Christian clergy. Elizabeth at first balanced the Catholics and Pro- testants, allowing neither party the preponderance; in the first eleven years of her reign no Roman Catholic was put to death for religion, and afterwards, though men were undoubtedly executed for their opinions, yet none dared state their religion as the cause of their execution.

Jewel's Apology was written in 1561 ; Hooker's Ec- clesiastical Polity in 1594 ; Chillingworth's Religion of Protestants in 1637 : each is typical of its time ; — in Jewel, ecclesiastical authority is the basis, and reason the superstructure ; in Hooker, reason is the basis, and authority the superstructure; while with Chillingworth authority disappears, and " the whole fabric of religion is made to rest upon the way in which the unaided reason of man shall interpret the

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 395

decrees of an omnipotent God." This fundamental principle was adopted by the most influential writers of the seventeenth century, all of whom insisted on the authority of private judgment. The ecclesiastical spirit declined ; able men devoted their talents to science.

" What used to be considered the most important of all ques- tions is now abandoned to men who mimic the zeal without professing the influence of those really great divines whose works are among the glories of our early literature." " The- ological interests have long ceased to be supreme, and the af- fairs of nations are no longer regulated according to ecclesi- astical views."

Sir James Mackintosh said, that unless some revolu- tion, auspicious to priestcraft, should replunge Europe in ignorance, " church-power will certainly not survive the nineeenth century."

" In England, where its march has been more rapid than elsewhere, this change is very observable. In every other de- partment we have had a series of great and powerful thinkers, who have done honor to their country, and have been the ad- miration of mankind. But for more than a century we have not produced a single original work in the whole field of con- troversial theology."

For more than a century no valuable addition has been made to that immense mass of divinity which con- tinually loses something of its interest among think- ing men. Both military and ecclesiastical power de- cline before the progress of civilization.*

* In his summing up on this point the author gives the fol- lowing explanation of his use of the word scepticism. " By scepticism I merely mean hardness of belief, — so that an in- creased scepticism is an increased perception of the difficulty of proving assertions; or, in otlier words, it is an increased application, and an increased diffusion, of the rules of reason- ing, and of the laws of evidence. This feeling of hesitation, and of suspended judgment, has in every department of thought been the invariable jjreliminary to all the intellectual

396 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

In the reign of James I. and Charles I. great at- tempts were made to restore the fading power of au- thority ; but the dead could not be revived. Even the Puritans were more fanatical than superstitious.

We have not space to examine Mr. Buckle's pro- found investigation into the reign of Charles II., when so severe a blow was struck at the tyranny of the church and of the nobles. In those few years clerical property was made amenable to Parliamentary taxation ; the clergy were forbidden to burn a heretic, or make a sus- pected person criminate himself in the trial. It was fixed that all money bills must originate with the House of Commons ; that the Peers have no original jurisdiction, only appellate, in civil cases. The pre- rogatives of purveyance and pre-emption were abol- ished, and the king could not vex the property of his subjects; the Habeas Corpus Act made their persons also secure ; general impeachments fell to the ground, and the liberty of the press became a fixed fact ; the feudal incidents which the Norman conquerors had im- posed, military tenures, wardships, fines for alienation, forfeiture for marriage by reason of tenure, aids, hom- ages, escuages, primer-seisins, and other mischievous subtilties, all went to common ruin. This was done in the age of Charles II. : the king was incompetent, the court profligate, the ministers venal, — all these in the pay of France; there were unprecedented insults from

revelations through which the human mind has passed; and without it there could be no progress, no change, no civiliza- tion. In physics it is the necessary precursor of science; in politics, of liberty; in theology, of toleration. These are the three leading forms of scepticism; it is therefore clear that in religion the sceptic steers a middle course between atheism and orthodoxy, rejecting both extremes, because he sees that both are incapable of proof."

BUCIvLE'S CIVILIZATION 397

abroad, frequent conspiracies at home, a great fire and

a great plague in London !

" How could so wonderful a progress be made in the face of these unparalleled disasters? These are questions which our political comjiilers are unable to answer, because they look too much at the peculiarities of individuals, and too little at the temper of the age in which those individuals live. Such writers do not perceive that the history of every civilized coun- try is the history of its intellectual development, which kings, statesmen, and legislators are more likely to retard than to hasten; because, however great their power may be, they are, at best, the accidental and insufficient representatives of the spirit of their time, and because, so far from being able to regulate the movements of the national mind, they themselves form the smallest part of it, and, in a general view of the progress of man are only to be regarded as the puppets who strut and fret their hour upon a little stage; while beyond them, and on every side of them, are forming opinions and principles which they can scarcely perceive, but by which, alone, the whole course of human affairs is ultimately governed."

Even the vices of the rulers served the people's cause.

" All classes of men soon learned to despise a king who was a drunkard, a libertine, and a hypocrite; and who, in point of honor, was unworthy to enter the presence of the meanest of his subjects."

His reckless debaucheries made him abhor all re- straint, and to dislike the clerical class, whose profes- sion at least presupposes more than ordinary purity. From the love of vicious indulgence, he disliked the clergy ; and he conferred the highest dignities of the church on feeble or insincere men, who could not defend what they really believed, or did not believe what they really professed. Such were Juxon, Sheldon, and Bancroft, Archbishops of Canterbury, and Frewen, Stearn, and Dolbcn, Archbishops of York. But Jeremy Taylor, who married the king's illegitimate sister, daughter of Joanna Bridges, and Barrow, both men of great talents and unspotted virtue, were treated

398 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

with neglect. In consequence of this fihing great ecclesiastical offices with little, and sometimes wicked men, and banishing the noble men to obscure positions, the power of the church continued to decline, and re- ligious liberty to increase. The clergy attempted to retrieve their power, by reviving the doctrine of passive obedience and divine rght ; but this only increased the opposition of the people. The Anglican clergy were friendly to James II. before he came to the crown, using all their strength to defeat the bill which ex- cluded him from the succession. They rejoiced in his elevation. They sustained him while he persecuted the dissenters, but when he issued his Declaration of In- dulgence, which nullified the Test and Coi-poration Acts, the established clergy broke from him, and dis- solved this " conspiracy between the crown and the church." They looked on, in silence, while the king proposed to turn a free government into a despotism. They saw Jeffreys and Kirke torture their fellow-sub- jects, the jails crowded, the scaffolds ininning with blood. They were well pleased that Baxter should be thrown into prison, and Howe driven into exile. They insisted on passive obedience to a Lord's Anointed, because these victims opposed the church. But when James attempted to protect men hostile to their church, the guardians of the temple flew to arms. They re- fused to obey the order, united with the dissenters, and overturned the throne. The only time when the church made war upon the throne was when the crown declared its intention of tolerating, and in some degree of pro- tecting, the rival religions of the land. When James subsequently promised to favor their order, they re- pented of their work. They opposed William, " that great man, who, without striking a blow, saved the

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 399

country from the slavery with which it was threatened." They continued to intrigue for tlie restoration of the dethroned tyrant, because his successor was the friend of rcHgious liberty. The power of the Church con- tinued to decline.

" Under two of the most remarkal)Ie men of the eighteenth century, Whitfield, the first of theohigical orators, and Wesley, the first of tlieological statesmen, there was organized a great system of religion, that l)ore the same relation to the Church of England that the Church of England bore to the Church of Rome." " In the eighteenth century the Wesleyans were to the Bishops what in the sixteenth century the Reformers were to the Popes."

But after the death of their great leaders the Methodists produced no man of original genius, and since Adam Clarke none of their scholars has had a European reputation. In the time of William the dis- senters were estimated as about one twenty-third part of the population; in 1786 they were one-fourth; in 1851 they were two-fifths of the whole.

The advance of the sceptical spirit, and the triumph of religious liberty, are shown by yet other things, ■ — the separation of theology from morals and poli- tics. The one was effected late in the seventeenth cen- tury, the other before the middle of the eighteenth ; and both were begun by the clergy themselves. Cum- berland would construct a system of morals independent of theology ; Warburton taught that, in dealing with religion, the state must look to expediency, not revela- tion ; Hume, Paley, Bentham, and INIill have carried their doctrines much further. The Catholics are al- ready admitted to Parliament, the Jews will soon be there. The power of clerical oppression was still further weakened b}^ the great Arian controversy, " rashly instigated by Whiston, Clarke, and Water-

400 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

land," bj the Bangorian controversy, by Blackbume's work on the confessional, the dispute on miracles, the exposure of the gross absurdities of the Fathers, the statements of Gibbon relative to the spread of Christianity, — " important and unrefuted," — the " de- cisive controversy between Porson and Travis respect- ing the text of the heavenly witnesses," and the " dis- coveries of geologists, in which not only was the fidelity of the Mosaic cosmogony impugned, but its accuracy was shown to be impossible."

This spirit of inquiry reached classes hitherto shut out from education. In the eighteenth century, for the first time, schools were established for the lower classes on the only day they had time to attend them, and newspapers on the only day they had time to read them ; circulating libraries first appeared in England ; printing began to be established in the country towns. Then, too, for the first time, were efforts made to popularize the sciences ; literary reviews began then ; book-clubs, debating-societies among tradesmen, date from the same period. It was not till 1769 that the first public meeting assembled in England where an attempt was made to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights.* Then the proceedings of the courts of law and parliament were published, and poli- tical newspapers arose. The great political doctrines that persons, not land or other property, should be represented, was then promulgated, and the people for the first time were called on to decide the great ques- tions of religion, which they were not consulted on before.t The word " independence," in its modern

* For the author overlooks the political preaching of the Puritans.

f For the author overlooks the theological preaching of the Puritans.

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 401

acceptation, docs not occur till the beginning of the eighteenth century. Authors began to write in a lighter and simpler style, which all men could under- stand. Literary men found a wider public, and were no longer dependents on the caprices of the privileged class.

Our author then traces the reaction against this spirit of civilization, and thinks it fortunate that, after the death of Anne, — a weak and silly woman, — the throne was long filled by the two Georges, " aliens in manners and in country, one of whom spoke our language but indifferently, and the other not at all," " and both profoundly ignorant of the people they undertook to govern." The crown and the clergy could not work together to resist the progress of man- kind. But the reactionary movement was greatly aided by the character of George III. ; despotic and superstitious, he sought to extend the prerogative and strengthen the churcli. Here is the picture of that monarch, such as our fathers looking across the ocean saw him.

" Every liberal sentiment, everything approaching to reform, nay, even tlie mere mention of inquiry, was an abomination in the eyes of that narrow and ignorant prince. Without knowl- edge, without taste, without even a glimpse of one of the sci- ences or a feeling for one of the fine arts, education had done nothing to enlarge a mind which nature had more than usually contracted. Totally ignorant of the history and resources of foreign countries, and barely knowing their geographical posi- tion, his information was scarcely more extensive respecting the people over whom he was called to rule. In that immense mass of evidence now extant, and which consists of every de- scription of private correspondence, records of private con- versation and of public acts, there is not to be found the slight- est proof that he knew any one of those numerous things which the governor of a country ought to know; or, indeed, that he was acquainted with a single duty of his position, except that mere mechanical routine of ordinary business, which might 11—26

402 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

have been eflFected by the lowest clerk in the meanest office in his kingdom."

During the sixty years of his reign Pitt was the only great man he wilHngly admitted to his councils ; and he must forget the lessons of his illustrious father, and persecute his party to death. George III. looked on slavery as a good old custom, and Pitt dared not oppose it. The king hated the French, and Pitt plunged the nations in a needless, wicked, and costly war. He corrupted the House of Lords by filling it with country gentlemen remarkable for nothing but health, and lawyers who rose to office chiefly through the zeal with which they favored the king and re- pressed the people.

Mr. Buckle gives a nice and discriminating account of Burke, " one of the greatest men and the greatest thinkers who has ever devoted himself to the practice of English politics." We have seen no picture so just of this great man when sane, and also when mad- ness had made him the most dangerous of lunatics. But we must pass it by, and also his account of the American Revolution, and the reaction in England oc- casioned by the troubles in Finance.

Chapter VIII relates the history of the French in- tellect from the middle of the fifteenth century to the reign of Louis XIV. It is one of the most learned, original, and instructive chapters in the book. Great events pass before us, and also great men, — Henry IV., Montaigne, Richelieu, Descartes, and their famous contemporaries. But we have no time to look at them.

Chapter IX is devoted to the " History of the Pro- tective Spirit and Comparison of it in France and England." VV^e must submit a short analysis of its contents.

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 403

Modern civilization began to dawn in the tenth and eleventh centuries ; in the twelfth it had reached all the nations now civilized. The people began to rebel against the clergy, who had once protected them against the military rulers. This is the starting-point of modern civilization. Then the clergy began sys- tematically t( punish men for heresy ; inquisitions, tor- turing, bumii ^s, and the like, became general. Then began an uncc ising struggle between the advocates of inquiry and 1 le advocates of tradition. Then the feudal system egan, and set the example of a large public polity in which the clerical body as such had no place. Accordingly there came a struggle between feudality and the church. European aristocracy be- gan, and in the organization of society took the place of the church. William the Conqueror brought feu- dalism to England, but made each vassal dependent on the king, not merely on his feudal superior; while in France the great lords and their vassals were inde- pendent of the king. Hence arose the great differ- ence between the English and French aristocracy. The former, being too feeble to resist the king, allied them- selves with the people to uphold their common right against the king ; the people acquired a tone of inde- pendence and lofty bearing with the habits of self- government, and founded their great civil and political institutions. In France the great lords resisted the people. Hence, when the feudal system declined in the fourteenth century, in one country the French king took the authority, and j)ower became more and more centralized, while the English people took it in the other, and power became progressively diffused. When evil days set in, and the invasions of despotism have begun, liberty will be retained, not by those who

404 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

show tlic oldest deeds and longest charters, but by those most inured to independence, and most regardless of that insidious protection which the upper classes throw around them. Men can never be free unless they are educated to freedom, and that training is by institu- tions, not books, — by self-discipline, self-reliance, self- government.

The protective spirit was strong enough in France to resist the Reformation, and preserve to the clergy the forms of this ancient supremacy ; in England it was opposed by the great nobles, — who are to politics what the priests were to religion, — but carried by the people. At the accession of Elizabeth there was an intimate connection between the English nobles and the Catholic clergy ; she therefore must choose her ministers from the commoners, hence came the two Bacons, the two Cecils, Knollys, Sadler, Smith, Throgmorton, and Walsingham, — the most eminent statesmen and diplomatists of her reign. The Pope taunted her with excluding the ancient nobility and raising obscure peo- ple to honor; the rebellion of 1569 was the rising of the great families of the North against " the upstart and plebeian administration of the queen." At first James and Charles tried to revive the power of the two great protective classes, the nobles and the clergy ; but they could not execute their michievous plans, for there arose what Clarendon called " the most pro- digious, the boldest rebellion that any age or country ever brought forth." This was an outbreak of the democratic spirit, the political form of a movement of which the Reformation was the religious form.

In Chapter X Mr. Buckle makes a comparison be- tween the English Rebellion and the contemporary Fronde, and shows that the energy of the protective

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 405

spirit in France caused the failure of the latter. In France the people, not accustomed to self-government, intrusted the conduct of this rebellion to great noble- men ; in England they took tlie matter into their own hands, and carried it through.

Chapters XI and XII treat of the age of Louis XIV and his successor, of the protective spirit ap- plied to literature, of the consequences of the alliance between the intellectual and the governing classes, of the reaction against this spirit, and of the distant preparations for the French Revolution. Both chap- ters are well studied, rich in learning, in critical judg- ment on men and things, and full of original opinions. No writer, we think, has given so just an account of the good and ill of Louis XIV, and surely none of the progress of the French mind during that period. We arc compelled to pass them over. No man has given so careful and exact an account of the character of Voltaire, and the good services he rendered to the world.

In Chapters XIII and XIV Mr. Buckle discusses the historical literature of France from the end of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century, and the proximate causes of the French Revolution after the middle of the eighteenth century. They are learned, exact, and profound. But we have no space for an analysis.

The plan of Mr. Buckle's book is quite faulty, both confused and defective. When he began to print, we doubt if he knew exactly what he would do. At first he appears to intend writing a Universal History of Civilization ; he lays down his rules accordingly, and begins his work. But finding at length the difllculties greater than he imagined, he says he has abandoned

406 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

his original scheme, and reluctantly determined to write, not the history of the civilization of mankind, but that of a single country ; and accordingly selects England as the best type of normal developments.

He has no preface or special introduction to this volume. He does not, at the outset, tell his readers what he intends to do, on the whole, and how many vol- umes he designs to regale them with ; and then dis- tribute the work into its several parts, and lay before us a plan of the entertainment, with a bill of fare, showing what we are to feast upon, and when each spe- cial dish is to appear. In various parts of the volume he hints at his plan, rather vaguely intimating what he intends to do. Thus the introduction is scattered piecemeal throughout a volume of nearly a thousand pages.

On his title the book is called " History of Civiliza- tion in England," but the " running-title," at the head of each page, is " General Introduction," of which it seems this volume is but a part, — one or two more on the same preliminary theme being hinted at. Only the first six chapters are, properly speaking. Introductory to the History of Civilization ; the rest are the actual History of Civilization in England and France.

The volume is divided only into chapters, not also into books, and the arrangement of the chapters is not very good ; so the author is often forced to repeat what had been sufficiently said before. As the work is not completed, perhaps it would be excessive to ask for an index, — such as generous Mr. Macaulay so kindly throws in with his magnificent composition ; but we think the reader of so big a book has a right to claim a copious table of contents at the beginning, and a descriptive " heading " on each of the nine or ten

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 407

hundred pages. But Mr. Buckle gives us neither the one nor the other. Besides, the titles of the chapters do not always sufficiently indicate the contents.

But these faults can be easily corrected in the next edition, which is sure to be called for when the public recovers from this painful but healing panic. We would modestly hint to the author the following scheme for his grand work.

A Preface, setting forth the purpose of the work and its probable extent. The volume itself might thus be divided into Books and Chapters. Book I. Trans- cendental History. Chap. I. Resources and Purposes of the Historian ; Chap. II. Regularity of Human Actions, and the Causes thereof ; Chap. III. Influence of Physical Forces on the Development of Man, on the Organization of Society and the Character of In- dividuals ; Chap. IV. Examination of the Metaphys- ical Method of Investigating the Spiritual Faculties of Man ; Chap. V. Comparison of the Power of the Moral and Intellectual Faculties, — their relative In- fluence on the Civilization of Mankind ; Chap. VI. The Eff^ect of Religion, Literature, and Government on that Civilization.

Book II. Origin of Historical Literature in general, and its Progressive Development in Europe, from the Decline of the Classic Nations to the end of the Middle Ages.

Book III. Outline of the Intellectual History of the English, from the end of the Middle Ages till the end of the Eighteenth Century.

Book IV. Intellectual and Moral History of the French, from the end of the Middle Ages to the end of the Eighteenth Century. Chap. I. General Out- line thereof, till the Accession of Louis XIV. ; Chap.

408 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

II. General History of the Protective Spirit, and a Comparison of its Special Effects in Finance and Eng- land ; Chap. III. Comparison between the French and English Rebellions of the Seventeenth Century ; Chap. IV. Reign of Louis XIV, — Effect of the Protective Spirit on Literature, and of the consequent Union of the Intellectual and the Governing Classes ; Chap. V. Reaction against the Protective Spirit, — Remote Preparation for the French Revolution ; Chap. VI. Progressive Developments of Historical Literature in France, from the end of the Middle Ages to the end of the Eighteenth Century ; Chap. VII. Proximate Causes of the French Revolution, after the middle of the Eighteenth Century.

We do not say this is the best possible arrangement of the valuable matter which Mr. Buckle spreads out before us, but one better than the present ; and likely to save some confusion, and to spare both writer and reader some repetitions which now embarrass the de- velopment of his great thoughts.

There is a little confusion in his use of terms. Thus he uses the word law when he means force, power, or even a special human faculty. We take it, a law is not a force (or power), but the constant mode of operation in which that force acts: it is the manner of a cause, not the cause of a manner. He often speaks of the progress of mankind or a nation, but does not tell what it consists in. Speaking generally, we suppose the progress of mankind may be summed up in these three things: — 1. The development of man's natural faculties. 2. The consequent acquisi- tion of power over the material world. 3. The or- ganization of men into small or large companies hav- ing corporate unity of action for the social whole, and

BUCKLE'S CR^ILIZATION 409

individual freedom for the personal parts. It would be an improvement if the author would favor us with a definition of Civilization, which might properly be made in the Preface.

The author's style is clear and distinct, not ambi- tious or ornamented. We often pause to admire a great thought, a wide and felicitous generalization, or a nice account of some special detail, nay, to question the truth of a statement of fact, or of a philosophic in- duction ; we never stop to puzzle over a difficult sen- tence. Now and then he rises to eloquence, — the elevation of his language coming from a moral, and not a merely intellectual cause. We do not always agree with the argument, but remember no instance in which he uses a sophism, or practices any trick on the mind or emotions of his readers ; he never throws dust in their eyes. Sometimes the evidence he offers is obviously inadequate to convey the writer's certainty to the reader ; then he confesses the fact. We remem- ber no ill-natured line in all the book, no ungenerous sentiment. It is written in the special interest of no class, nation, or race, but in the general interest of mankind.

We must now mention in detail some things which seem to require a little further notice at our hands.

He says we are enabled to compare the condition of mankind in every stage of civilization, and under every variety of circumstance. We think the collec- tion of facts is not yet quite adequate to convey an idea of the lowest stage. Man's existence may be di- vided into six periods, — the wild, savage, barbarous, half-civilized, and enlightened. Scholarly men know little of the first ; for many years it has not been a favorite subject of research. Lafitau, Monboddo,

410 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Meiners,^ and others, have collected important facts ; many more still lie unused in the works of travelers, geographers, and naturalists. Within a few years Colonel Sleeman related some exceedingly interesting particulars which came under his notice in India "* ; we refer to the children brought up by the wolves in Hindustan, and subsequently reclaimed. Captain Gib- son of New York has told some things highly im- portant if true.^ Scholars know little of the condi- tion of the wild men who are below the savage, though now and then one of that class is exhibited in our great towns as a show. But, as mankind started from this primeval condition, it becomes important to study those tribes which have advanced least from it, and such isolated persons as Colonel Sleeman speaks of, who occur from time to time even in Germany and France, and to gather together the facts scattered in the works of ancient and modern writers, from Herodotus to the travelers in the American interior. The cannibals of Polynesia may shed much light on the historical development of the human race. Writ- ers make great mistakes through their ignorance of the primitive condition of mankind.

Mr. Buckle says we cannot make experiments in civilization, and thereby determine either facts of man's nature or laws of his developments, and thus it is more difficult to master human history. This is true, but at this day so many human experiments are taking place spontaneously that a philosopher need hardly ask for more, even if he had power to make them directly. Thus we have all the five gi'eat races before us, — to adopt that convenient division, — liv- ing separately in some places, and mingling their blood in others. There are nations in all the six

BUCKLE'S CIVILIZATION 411

stages of development, except the lowest, and perhaps some even in that condition or very near it; it is a wide range from tlie Dyaks of New Guinea to the Royal Academy of London. There arc five great forms of civilized religion still in the full tide of experiment, — the Brahminic, Buddhistic, Jewish, Christian, and Mo- hammedan,— not to mention Mormons. Catholicism and Protestantism stand side by side in Christendom ; there are many Protestant sects experimenting on man- kind. The three great forms of government, and many transitional forms, may be studied in their actual works. The experiment of labor is tried in many forms, from slavery to entire unrestricted free- dom. Polyandry still prevails as an institution in Siberia and other parts of Asia, — nay, in all the great towns of the world as a profession ; what is the in- stantial life of the tribe in Tartary, as it once was in Scotland, is the exceptional life of the individual harlot in London and Boston. Polygamy can be stud- ied in Turkey and Utah, where it is a lawful institu- tion, and in many places in its unlawful forms. In the United States we have three races of men, Ethi- opian, American, Caucasian, here living separate, or there mingling their blood. In one part of the Union the public takes great pains to educate and foster the laboring people ; in another, the public makes it penal to educate them.'' There are few experiments a philos- opher would wish made with mankind which mankind is not making without his advice. We think, however, of two not yet attempted. One is to allow women the same political rights as the men ; the other, to put honest men in political office. Neither has been tried as yet.

Mr. Buckle denies that there is any original differ- ence in the faculties of different races of men.

412 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" Original distinctions of race are altogether hypothetical." " We have no proof of the existence of hereditary talents, vices, or virtues; we cannot safely assume that there has been any permanent improvement in the moral or intellectual facul- ties of man, nor have we any decisive ground for saying that these faculties are likely to be greater in an infant born in the most civilized part of Europe than in one born in the wild- est region of a barbarous country."

We are surprised at this statement, coining from a man of such a comprehensive mind, and one so exceed- ingly well read in many departments of human thought. Looking at the matter on a large scale, it seems to us that the difference in the natural endow- ment of different races is enormous. All the great, permanent, and progressive civilizations are Caucas- ian. The Mongolian in China is no longer progres- sive ; no other race has reached the enlightened state. All the six forms of civilized religion, Brahminic, He- brew, Buddhistic, Classic (Greek and Roman), Chris- tian, Mahometan, are Caucasian. All the great works of science, literature, poetry, eloquence, and the fine arts are from the same race. So are all the liberal governments, — the democracies, republics, aristocra- cies, limited monarchies. No other race ever got be- yond a despotism limited by fear of assassination. Surely the inductive philosophy would compel an in- quirer to infer an original difference of faculties in the races themselves. What odds betwixt even the Greeks and the Romans, the French and English, the Irish and the Scotch ! In America, the original differ- ence of faculties in the African, the Indian, and the Caucasian springs into' the mind as readily as the dif- ference of color comes up before the eye. The obsti- nate and ferocious Indian will fight, he will not be a slave. He may be broken, not bent. The pliant and affectionate African seldom fights, and rarely takes

BUCIvLE'S CIVILIZATION 413

vengeance, and is easily sent into slavery. The In- dian boy and girl refuse education or take it unkindly. How many experiments have been made in Massachu- setts and New York ! They all came to nothing.

Look at the matter on a smaller scale. The indi- vidual inheritance of qualities we had thought was abundantly made out in the case of man, as of the humbler animals. The same historic face runs in the family for generations, the same qualities appear. Genius appears to be an exception to this. Writers on phrenology we thought had proved this long ago. We can hardly suppose Mr. Buckle ignorant of any important work, but this matter of inheritance has been lately discussed with great learning by M. Pros- per Lucas.*

We find national character as the result of three factors. There is a geographical element, an ethno- logical element, and an institutional element. Mr. Buckle admits only two, the geographical and insti- tutional. If, in the middle ages, the Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Norsemen had settled in France instead of England, and there mixed their blood, does any one think this Teutonic people would have now the same character which marks the Celtic French.'' What a difference between the Spanish and English settlements in America! Is there no odds in the blood.'' What a difference between the Greeks of the age of Pericles and the mongrel people — part Greek, but chiefly Ro- man, Celt, and Slav — who occupy the same soil to- day ! Chmate, soil, aspect of nature, is still the same : what an odds in the men !

* In his Traite philnsophique ef phys'wlogique sur I' IlirMite Naturelle. Paris. 1850. 2 vols. 8vo.

414 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild,

Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields; Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,

And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds. The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air;

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beams Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."

The difference between the mythology of India and Greece, we think, was caused more by the ethnology of the people than the geography of their lands.

Mr. Buckle assumes that the Swedes and Spanish are a fickle people, inconstant and unstable, and finds the cause of that peculiarity in their climate, which renders out-door work irregular. We have found no proof of national fickleness in either people.

He gives a terrible portrait of the destructive deities of the Hindoos. Siva is represented as a hideous be- ing, encircled by a girdle of snakes, with a human skull in his hand, and wearing a necklace composed of human bones. He has three eyes ; the ferocity of his temper is marked by his being clothed in a tiger's skin, over his left shoulder the deadly cobra di capello raises its head. Dourga his wife has a body of dark blue, while the palms of her hands are red with blood: she has four arms, one holding the skull of a giant ; the hands of victims are round her waist; her tongue lolls out from her mouth; her neck is adorned with a ghastly row of human heads, which hang dangling there. Mr. Buckle attributes this horrible deity to the effect of the aspect of nature, filling the mind with terror, and forcing it to call up " shrieks and shapes and sights unholy." But, alas ! these Hindoo conceptions of God are less hideous than the Deity set forth by our own Jonathan Edwards. No Hindoo could be-

BUCIvLE'S CIVILIZATION 415

lieve in eternal damnation. Siva and Dourga would have shrunk from the thought of tormenting new-bom babies for ever and ever.

Mr. Buckle speaks of tlie regularity of crime, the certainty of its annual amount. But he fails to notice some other important facts connected with crime. Such offenses as theft, violence to the person, beating of women, and the like, are confined, almost entirely, to the poorest class of the community. A more care- ful inquiry shows that the criminals of this class either have a bodily organization which impels them to crime, or else have been exposed in early life to influences of education which incline them that way ; so that with many crime is either organized in them, or institution- ized upon them.*

What we most object to in Mr. Buckle's transcen- dental history is his estimate of the moral powers ; he thinks they have little to do with the progress of man- kind. He says there is a twofold progress, moral and intellectual ; to be willing to perform our duty is the moral part, to know how to perform it is the intellec- tual part ; the influence which moral motives or the dictates of the moral instinct have exercised over the progress of civilization, is exceedingly small, while the intellect is the real mover in man's progress.

Here we differ widely from him. It seems to us that a man must know his duty, be willing to perform it, and also know how to perform it ; and that there has been a continual progress in these three things. He says, quoting from Sir James Mackintosh, morals have hitherto been stationary, and are likely for ever

* What Seneca says of man in general, is mainly true of these unfortunates. "Fata nos ducunt; et quantum cuique restet, prima nascentium hora disposuit. Causa pendet ex causa, privata ac publica longus ordo rerum trahit." — De Prov., V. C.

416 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

to continue so. But if we read history aright there has been a continually increasing knowledge of natural right, a continual spread of knowledge among larger and larger masses of people ; and more and more are animated by moral motives, the desire to do a known right. He says the great moral systems were the same three thousand years ago as they are now ; we think this statement greatly deceptive. Take an example. Did the Hebrew law say, " Thou shalt love thy neigh- bor " ? It restricted neighborhood to men of the same country. When Jesus explained the word as meaning whoso needed the aid a man could give, he represented a great moral progress since the law was written. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself :" these words are adequate to express the moral feelings of a good man to-day, as well as when first uttered ; but how much more they include now than then ! removal of the causes of poverty, drunkenness, crime; protec- tion to the deaf and dumb, the blind, the crazy, and the fool. There has been no change in the multi- plication-table since the days of Pythagoras, there will be no change of it ; but the knowledge of it has been spread among many millions, that knowledge has been applied to many things he never thought of, and there has been a great development of the mathematical faculty in mankind.

IVIr. Buckle says the influence of a man of great morality is short in time, and not extensive in space. In both statements he is mistaken. For the good man directly incites others to imitate and surpass his ex- cellence; the tradition of it remains long after he is dead, and spreads over all the civilized world. Be- sides, the moral idea becomes an institution or a law, and then is a continual force in the new civilization

BUCKLE'S Cn^ILIZATION 417

itself. A moral feeling can bo organized, as well as an intellectual idea. The law forbidding murder, theft, the slave-trade, piracy, and a thousand other offenses, was a moral feeling once. So a hospital, an almshouse, a school, a college, was once only the " dic- tate of the moral instinct." He says, " The deeper we penetrate into the question, the more clearly shall we see the superiority of intellectual acquisitions over moral feeling." He should invert the sentence. He says the Spanish Inquisitors Avcre highly moral men, no hypocrites, but remarkable for an undeviating and incorruptible integrity ; with conscientious energy " they fulfilled their duty." Now it is quite clear that the leaders of the Spanish church were men of large intellect, carefully cultivated, learned, adroit, familiar with the world. But we should say they were men of very little morality. The conscience, the power to discern right, was so little developed, that, if they were learned, they did not know it was wrong to tear a girl to pieces on the rack, because she could not be- lieve that the Pope was infallible. We should not say a man's mind was well developed who did not know that one and one make two; should we say a man's conscience is well developed who does not know it is wrong thus to torture a girl?

He says, " The stock of American knowledge is small, but it is spread through all classes." If by knowledge he means " an acquaintance with physical and mental laws," it is not true that the amount is small in comparison with other countries, though ac- quaintance with literature is certainly quite rare. But when he says " little attention has been paid to physical science," we think him much mistaken. He

thinks philosophical inquiries are " almost entirely 11—27

418 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

neglected." It is not quite true. If no great meta- physician has appeared since Jonathan Edwards, as he truly says, how many has England produced since Berkeley ? Dr. Hickok's " Rational Psychology " is a more profound book than that of Jonathan Edwards.'^ Three things go to make a great metaphysician ; power of psychological analysis ; intuitive power to perceive great truths, either by a synthetic judgment a priori or by a comprehensive induction from facts of con- sciousness or observation, power of deductive logic. Jonathan Edwards was great only in the last, and least of all. America is more devoted to practical affairs, and certainly has done little in metaphysics. But from the death of Newton, in 1727, till the end of that century, how little England did in mathe- matics ! We wish it were true that knowledge is so widely diffused as he says. But, alas ! there are four million slaves who know nothing, and as many " poor whites " who know little. We shall not pursue these criticisms.

" Ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parura cavit natura."

Mr. Buckle has given us one of the most important contributions which any Englishman has yet made to the philosophy of human history. We wish we had adequate space to point out its excellences in detail; but the analysis and the extracts we have given must suffice for the present. We congratulate the author on his success. We are sure the thoughtful world will give him a thoughtful welcome, and if his fu- ture volumes, which we anxiously look for, shall equal this, he is sure of a high place in the estimation of mankind.

IX

HENRY WARD BEECHER

There are more than thirty thousand preachers in the United States, whereof twenty eight thousand are Protestants, the rest Cathohes, — one minister to a thousand men. They make an exceeding great army, ■ — mostly serious, often self-denying and earnest. Nay, sometimes you find them men of large talent, perhaps even of genius. No thirty thousand farm- ers, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, or traders have so much of that book-learning which is popularly called *' Education."

No class has such opportunities for influence, such means of power ; even now the press ranks second to the pulpit. Some of the old traditional respect for the theocratic class continues in service, and waits upon the ministers. It has come down from Celtic and Teutonic fathers, hundreds of years behind us, who transferred to a Roman priesthood the allegiance paid to the servants of a deity quite different from the Catholics. The Puritans founded an ecclesiastical oligarchy which is by no means ended yet ; with the most obstinate " liberty of prophesying " there was mixed a certain respect for such as only wore the prophet's mantle ; nor is it wholly gone.

What personal means of controlling the public the minister has at his command ! Of their own accord men " assemble and meet together," and look up to him. In the country the town-roads center at the meeting-house, which is also the terminus a quo, the

419

420 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

golden mile-stone, whence distances are measured off. Once a week the wheels of business, and even of pleas- ure, drop into the old customary ruts, and turn thither. Sunday morning all the land is still. La- bor puts off his iron apron and arrays him in clean hu- man clothes, — a symbol of universal humanity, not merely of special toil. Trade closes the shop ; his business-pen, well wiped, is laid up for to-morrow's use ; the account-book is shut, — men thinking of their trespasses as well as their debts. For six days, aye, and so many nights, Broadway roars with the great stream which sets this way and that, as wind and tide press up and down. How noisy is this great chan- nel of business, wherein humanity rolls to and fro, now running into shops, now sucked down into cellars, then dashed high up the tall, steep banks, to come down again a continuous drip and be lost in the gen- eral flood ! What a fringe of foam colors the margin on either side, and what gay bubbles float therein, with more varied gorgeousness than the Queen of Sheba dreamed of putting on when she courted the eye of Hebrew Solomon ! Sunday this noise is still. Broad- way is a quiet stream, looking sober or even dull ; its voice is but a gentle murmur of many waters calmly flowing where the ecclesiastical gates are open to let them in. The channel of business has shrunk to a little church-canal. Even in this great Babel of com- merce one day in seven is given up to the minister. The world may have the other six, this is for the church ; — for so have Abram and Lot divided the field of time, that there be no strife between the rival herdsmen of the church and the world. Sunday morn- ing time rings the bell. At the familiar sound, by long habit born in them, and older than memory, men

BEECHER 421

assemble at the meeting-house, nestle themselves de- voutly in their snug pews, and button themselves in with wonted care. There is the shepherd, and here is the flock, fenced off into so many little private pens. With dumb, yet eloquent patience, they look up list- less, perhaps longing, for such fodder as he may pull out from his spiritual mow and shake down be- fore them. What he gives they gather.

Other speakers must have some magnetism of per- sonal power or public reputation to attract men, but the minister can dispense with that; to him men an- swer before he calls, and even when they are not sent by others are drawn by him. Twice a week, nay, three times, if he will, do they lend him their ears to be filled with his words. No man of science or letters has such access to men. Besides, he is to speak on the grandest of all themes, — of man, of God, of religion, man's deepest desires, his loftiest aspirings. Before him the rich and the poor meet together, con- scious of the one God, Master of them all, who is no respecter of persons. To the minister the children look up, and their pliant faces are moulded by his plastic hand. The young men and maidens are there, — such possibility of life and character before them, such hope is there, such faith in man and God, as comes instinctively to those who have youth on their side.

There are the old: men and women with white crowns on their heads ; faces which warn and scare with the ice and storm of eighty winters, or guide and charm with the beauty of fore-score summers, — rich in promise once, in harvest now. Very beautiful is the presence of old men, and of that venerable sisterhood whose experienced temples are turbaned with the rai-

422 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ment of such as have come out of much tribulation, and now shine as white stars foretelHng an eternal day. Young men all around, a young man in the pulpit, the old men's look of experienced life says " Amen " to the best word, and their countenance is a benediction.

The minister is not expected to appeal to the self- ish motives which are addressed by the market, the forum, or the bar, but to the eternal principle of right. He must not be guided by the statutes of men, changeable as the clouds, but must fix his eye on the bright particular star of justice, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. To him office, money, social rank and fame are but toys or covinters which the game of life is played withal ; while wisdom, in- tegrit^', benevolence, piety are the prizes the game is for. He digs through the dazzling sand, and bids men build on the rock of ages.

Surely, no men have such opportunity of speech and power as these thirty thousand ministers. What have they to show for it all.'^ The hunter, fisher, woodman, miner, farmer, mechanic, has each his spe- cial wealth. What have this multitude of ministers to show? — how much knowledge given, what wise guid- ance, what inspiration of humanity.'' Let the best men answer.

This ministerial army may be separated into three divisions. First, the church militant, the fighting church, as the ecclesiastical dictionaries define it. Reverend men serve devoutly in its ranks. Their work is negative, oppositional. Under various ban- ners, with diverse and discordant war-cries, trumpets braying a certain or uncertain sound, and weapons of strange pattern, though made of trusty steel, they

BEECHER 423

do battle against the enemy. What shots from an- tique pistols, matchlocks, from crossbows and cat- apults, are let fly at the foe ! Now the champion at- tacks " New A^iews," " Ultraism," " Neology," " In- novation," " Discontent," " Carnal Reason " ; then he lays lance In rest, and rides valiantly upon " Uni- tarlanism," "Popery," "Infidelity," "Atheism," Deism," " Spiritualism " ; and though one by one he runs them through, yet he never quite slays the evil one ; — the severed limbs unite again, and a new mon- ster takes the old one's place. It is serious men who make up the church militant, — grim, earnest, valiant. If mustered In the ninth century, there had been no better soldiers nor elder.

Next is the church termagant. They are the scolds of the church-hold, terrible from the beginning hith- erto. Their work is denouncing ; they have always a burden against something. Obsta decisis is their motto, — " Hate all that is agreed upon." When the " contrary-minded " are called for, the church ter- magant holds up its hand. A turbulent people, and a troublesome, are these sons of thunder, — a brother- hood of universal come-outers. Their only concord is disagreement. It is not often, perhaps, that they have better thoughts than the rest of men, but a superior aptitude to find fault ; their growling proves, " not that themselves are wise, but others weak." So their pulpit Is a brawling-tub, " full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." They have a deal of thunder, and much lightning, but no light, nor any continuous warmth, only spasms of heat. Odi pre- sentem laudaro absentem, — the Latin tells their story. They come down and trouble every Bethesda In the world, but heal none of the impotent folk. To them.

424 THE AIMERICAN SCHOLAR

" Of old things, all are over old, Of new things, none is new enough."

They have a rage for fault-finding, and betake them- selves to the pulpit as others are sent to Bedlam. Men of all denominations are here, and it is a deal of mischief they do, — the worst, indirectly, by mak- ing a sober man distrust the religious faculty they appeal to, and set his face against all mending of anything, no matter how badly it is broken. These Theudases, boasting themselves to be somebody, and leading men off to perish in the wilderness, frighten every sober man from all thought of moving out of his bad neighborhood or seeking to make it better. But this is a small portion of the ecclesiastic host. Let us be tolerant to their noise and bigotry.

Last of all is the church beneficent or constructant. Their work is positive, — critical of the old, creative also of the new. They take hold of the strongest of all human faculties, — the religious, — and use this great river of God, always full of water, to moisten hill-side and meadow, to turn lonely saw-mills, and drive the wheels in great factories, which make a metropolis of manufactures, — to bear alike the lum- berman's logs and the trader's ships to their appointed place ; the stream feeding many a little forget-me-not, as it passes by. Men of all denominations belong to this church catholic; yet all are of one persuasion, the brotherhood of humanity, — for the one spirit loves manifoldness of form. They trouble themselves little about sin, the universal but invisible enemy whom the church termagant attempts to shell and dislodge; but are very busy in attacking sins. These ministers of religion would rout drunkenness and want, ignorance, idleness, lust, covetousness, vanity, hate, and pride, —

BEECHER 425

vices of instinctive passion or reflective ambition. Yet the work of these men is to build up ; they cut down the forest and scare off' the wild beasts only to re- place them with civil crops, — cattle, corn, and men. Instead of the howling wilderness, they would have the village or the city, full of comfort and wealth and musical with knowledge and with love. How often are they misunderstood ! Some savage hears the ring of the axe, the crash of falling timber, or the rifle's crack and the drop of wolf or bear, and cries out, " A destructive and dangerous man ; he has no reverence for the ancient wilderness, but would abolish it and its inhabitants ; away with him ! " But look again at this destroyer, and in place of the desert woods, lurked in by a few wild beasts and wilder men, behold, a whole New England of civilization has come up ! The minister of this Church of the Good Sa- maritans delivers the poor that cry, and the father- less, and him that hath none to help him ; he makes the widow's heart sing for joy, and the blessing of such as are ready to perish comes on him ; he is eyes to the blind, feet to the lame; the cause of evil which he knows not he searches out; breaking the jaws of the wicked to pluck one spirit out of their teeth. In a world of work, he would have no idler in the market-place; in a world of bread, he would not eat his morsel alone while the fatherless has nought ; nor would he see any perish for want of clothing. He knows the wise God made man for a good end, and provided adequate means thereto ; so he looks for them where they were placed, in the world of matter and of men, not outside of either. So while he entertains every old truth, he looks out also into the crowd of new opinions, hoping to find others of their kin ; and the

426 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

new thought does not lodge in the street ; he opens his doors to the traveler, not forgetful to entertain stran- gers,— knowing that some have also thereby enter- tained angels unawares. He does not fear the great multitude, nor does the contempt of a few families make him afraid.

This church constructant has a long apostolical suc- cession of great men, and many nations are gathered in its fold. And what a variety of beliefs it has ! But while each man on his private account says, credo, and believes as he must and shall, and writes or speaks his opinions in what speech he likes best, — they all, with one accordant mouth, say likewise, faciamus, and betake them to the one great work of developing man's possibility of knowledge and virtue.

Mr. Beecher belongs to this church constructant. He is one of its eminent members, its most popular and effective preacher. No minister in the United States is so well known, none so widely beloved. He is as well known in Ottawa as in Broadway. He has the largest Protestant congregation in America, and an ungathered parish which no man attempts to num- ber. He has church members in Maine, Wisconsin, Georgia, Texas, California, and all the way between. Men look on him as a national institution, a part of the public property. Not a Sunday in the year but representative men from every state in the Union fix their eyes on him, are instinicted by his sermons and uplifted by his prayers. He is the most popular of American lecturers. In the celestial sphere of theo- logical journals, his papers are the bright particular star in that constellation called the " Independent " ; men look up to and bless the useful light, and learn therefrom the signs of the times. He is one of the

BEECHER 427

bulwarks of freedom in Kansas, a detached fort. He was a great force in the last Presidential campaign, and several stump-speakers were specially detailed to overtake and offset him.^ But the one man surrounded the many- Scarcely is there a Northern minister so bitterly hated at the South. The slave-traders, the border-ruffians, the purchased officials know no higher law ; " nor Hale nor devil can make them afraid " ; ^ yet they fear the terrible whip of Henry Ward Beecher.

The time has not come — may it long be far dis- tant ! — to analyze his talents and count up his merits and defects. But there are certain obvious excel- lences which account for his success and for the honor paid him.

INIr. Beecher has great strength of instinct, of spon- taneous human feeling. INIany men lose this in " get- ting an education " ; they have tanks of rain-water, barrels of well-water ; but on their premises is no spring, and it never rains there. A mountain-spring supplies ]Mr. Beecher with fresh, living water.

He has great love for nature, and sees the sym- bolical value of material beauty and its effect on man.

He has great fellow-feeling with the joys and sor- rows of men. Hence he is alwa^'^s on the side of the suffering, and especially of the oppressed ; all his ser- mons and lectures indicate this. It endears him to millions, and also draws upon him the hatred and loathing of a few Pharisees, some of them members of his own sect. Listen to this : —

" Looked at without educated associations, there is no differ- ence between a man in bed and a man in a coffin. And yet such is the power of the heart to redeem the animal life that there is nothing more cxciuisitcly refined and pure and beauti- Iful than the chamber of tiie house. The couch! From the day

428 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

that the bride sanctifies it, to the day when the aged mother is borne from it, it stands clothed with loveliness and dignity. Cursed be the tongue that dares spealv evil of the household bed! By its side oscillates the cradle. Not far from it is the crib. In this sacred precinct, the mother's chamber, lies the heart of the family. Here the child learns its prayer. Hither, night by night, angels troop. It is the Holy of Holies."

How well he understands the ministry of grief

" A Christian man's life is laid in the loom of time to a pattern which he does not see, but God does; and his heart is a shuttle. On one side of tlie loom is sorrow, and on the other is joy; and the shuttle, struck alternately by each, flies back and forth, carrying the thread, which is white or black, as the pattern needs; and in the end, when God shall lift up the finished garment, and all its changing hues shall glance out, it will then appear that the deep and dark colors were as needful to beauty as the bright and high colors."

He loves children, and the boy still fresh in his manhood.

"When your own child comes in from the street, and has learned to swear from the bad boys congregated there, it is a very difi^erent thing to you from what it was when you heard the profanity of those boys as you passed them. Now it takes hold of you, and makes you feel that you are a stock- holder in the public morality. Children make men better citi- zens. Of what use would an engine be to a ship, if it were lying loose in the hidl? It must be fastened to it with bolts and screws before it can propel the vessel. Nov, a childless man is just like a loose engine. A man must be bolted and screwed to the community before he can begin to work for its advancement; and there are no such screws and bolts as chil- dren."

He has a most Christ-like contempt for the hypo- crite, whom he scourges with heavy evangelical whips, — but the tenderest Christian love for earnest men struggling after nobleness. Read this: —

" I think the wickedest people on earth are those who use a force of genius to make themselves selfish in the noblest things, keeping themselves aloof from the vulgar and the ignorant and

BEECHER 429

the unknown; rising higher and higher in taste till they sit, ice upon ice, on the mountain-top of eternal congelation."

"Men are afraid of sHght outward acts which will injure them in the eyes of others, while they are heedless of the damna- tion which throbs in their souls in hatreds and jealousies and revenges."

"Many people use their refinements as a spider uses his web, to catch the weak upon that they may be mercilessly de- voured. Christian men should use refinement on this principle; the more I have, the more I owe to those who are less than I."

He values the substance of man more than liis acci- dents.

"We say a man is 'made.' What do we mean? That he has got the control of his lower instincts, so that they are only fuel to his higher feelings, giving force to his nature? That his affections are like vines, sending out on all sides blos- soms and clustering fruits? Tliat his tastes are so cultivated, that all beautiful things speak to him, and bring him their delights? Tliat his understanding is opened, so that he walks through every hall of knowledge and gathers its treasures? That his moral feelings are so developed and quickened that he holds sweet commerce with Heaven ? Oh, no ! — none of these things ! He is cold and dead in heart and mind and soul. Only his passions are alive; but — he is worth five hundred thousand dollars !

" And we say a man is ' ruined.' Are his wife and children dead? Oh, no! Have they had a quarrel, and are they sepa- rated from him? Oh, no! Has he lost his reputation through crime? No. Is his reason gone? Oh, no! it's as sound as ever. Is he struck through with disease? No. He has lost his prop- erty, and he is ruined. The man ruined? When shall we learn that ' a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things be possesseth ' " ?

Mr. Beecher's God has the gentle and philanthropic qualities of Jesus of Nazareth, with omnipotence added. Religious emotion comes out in his prayers, sermons, and lectures, as the vegetative power of the earth in the manifold plants and flowers of spring.

" The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joj'. The lonely pine on the mountain- top waves its sombre boughs, and cries, ' Thou art my sun ! '

430 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

And the little meadow-violet lifts its cup of blue, and whispers with its perfumed breath, ' Thou art my sun ! ' And the grain in a thousand fields rustles in the wind, and makes answer, ' Thou art my sun ! '

" So God sits eflFulgent in heaven, not for a favored few, but for the universe of life; and there is no creature so poor or so low that he may not look up with childlike confidence and say, ' My Father ! thou art mine ! ' "

" When once the filial feeling is breathed into the heart the soul cannot be terrified by augustness, or justice, or any form of Divine grandeur; for then, to such a one, all the attributes of God are but so many arms stretched abroad through the universe, to gather and to press to his bosom those whom he loves. The greater he is, the gladder are we, so that he be our Father still.

" But, if one consciously turns away from God, or fears him, the nobler and grander the representation be, the more terrible is his conception of the Divine Adversary that frowns upon him. The God whom love beholds rises upon the horizon like mountains which carry summer up their sides to the very top; but that sternly just God whom sinners fear stands cold against the sky, like Mont Blanc; and from his icy sides the soul, quickly sliding, plunges headlong down to unrecalled de- struction."

He has hard words for such as get only the form of religion, or but little of its substance.

" There are some Christians whose secular life is an arid, worldly strife, and whose religion is but a turbid sentimental- ism. Their life runs along that line where the overflow of the Nile meets the desert. It is the boundary line between sand and mud."

" That gospel which sanctions ignorance and oppression for three millions of men, what fruit or flower has it to shake down for the healing of the nations? It is cursed in its own roots, and blasted in its own boughs."

" Many of our churches defy Protestantism. Grand cathe- drals are they, which make us shiver as we enter them. The windows are so constructed as to exclude the light and inspire a religious awe. The walls are of stone, which makes us think of our last home. The ceilings are sombre, and the pews coffin-colored. Then the services are composed to these cir- cumstances, and hushed music goes trembling along the aisles, and men move softl_y, and would on no account put on their hats before they reach the door; but when they do, they take

BEECHER 431

a long breath, and have such a sense of relief to be in the free air, and comfort themselves with the thought that they've been good Christians !

" Now this idea of worship is narrow and false. The house of God should be a joyous place for the right use of all our faculties."

" There ought to be such an atmosphere in every Christian church that a man going there and sitting two hours should take the contagion of heaven, and carry home a fire to kindle the altar whence he came."

" The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual."

" My best presentations of the gospel to you are so incom- plete! Sometimes, when I am alone, I have such sweet and rapturous visions of the love of God and the truths of his word, that I think, if I could speak to you then, I siiould move your hearts. I am like a cliild who, walking forth some sunny summer's morning, sees grass and flower all shining with drops of dew. ' Oh,' he cries, ' I'll carry these beautiful things to my mother ! ' And eagerly plucking them, the dew drops into his little palm, and all tlie charm is gone. There is but grass in his hand, and no longer pearls."

" There are many professing Christians who are secretly vexed on account of the charity they have to bestow and the self-denial they have to use. If, instead of the smooth prayers which they do pray, they should speak out the things which they really feel, they would say, when they go home at night, ' O Lord, I met a poor curmudgeon of yours to-day, a mis- erable, unwashed brat, and I gave him sixpence, and I have been sorry for it ever since'; or, *0 Lord, if I had not signed those articles of faith, I might have gone to the theatre this evening. Your religion deprives me of a great deal of enjoy- ment, but I mean to stick to it. There's no otlier way of get- ting into heaven, I suppose.'

" The sooner such men are out of the church, the better."

"The youth-time of churches produces enterprise; tlieir age, indolence; but even this might be borne did not these dead men sit in the door of their sejiukhres, crying out against every living man who refuses to wear the livery of death. In India, when the husl)and dies, they burn his widow witl; him. I am almost tempted to think, that if with the end of every pas- torate, the church itself were disbanded and destroyed, to be gathered again by the succeeding teacher, we should thus se- cure an immortality of youth."

" A religious life is not a thing which spends itself. It is

432 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

like a river which widens continually, and is never so broad or so deep as at its mouth, where it rolls into the ocean of eternity."

" God made the world to relieve an over- full creative thought, — as musicians sing, as we talk, as artists sketch, when full of suggestions. What profusion is there in his work! When trees blossom, there is not a single breastpin, but a whole bosom full of gems; and of leaves they have so many suits that they can throw them away to the winds all summer long. What unnumbered cathedrals has he reared in the forest shades, vast and grand, full of curious carvings, and haunted evermore by tremulous music! and in the heavens above, how do stars seem to have flown out of his hand faster than sparks out of a mighty forge ! "

" Oh, let the soul alone ! Let it go to God as best it may ! It is entangled enough. It is hard enough for it to rise above the distractions which environ it. Let a man teach the rain how to fall, the clouds how to shape themselves and move their airy rounds, the seasons how to cherish and garner the universal abundance; but let him not teach a soul to pray, on whom the Holy Ghost doth brood ! "

I He recognizes the difference between religion and

theology.

"How sad is that field from which battle hath just departed! By as much as the valley was exquisite in its loveliness is it now sublimely sad in its desolation. Such to me is the Bible when a fighting theologian has gone through it.

" How wretched a spectacle is a garden into which the cloven- footed beasts have entered ! That which yesterday was fra- grant, and shone all over with crowded beauty, is to-day rooted, despoiled, trampled, and utterly devoured, and all over the ground you shall find but the rejected cuds of flowers and leaves, and forms that have been champed for their juices and then rejected. Such to me is the Bible when the prag- matic prophecy-monger and the swinish utilitarian have toothed its fruits and craunched its blossoms.

" O garden of the Lord ! wliose seeds dropped down from heaven, and to whom angels bear watering dews night by night ! O flowers and plants of righteousness ! O sweet and holy fruits ! We walk among you, and gaze with loving eyes, and rest under your odorous shadows; nor will we, with sacrilegious hand, tear you, that we may search the secret of your roots, nor spoil you, that we may know how such wondrous grace and goodness are evolved witliin jou ! "

BEECHER 433

"What a pin is when the diamond has dropped from its set- ting, is the Bible when its emotive truths have been taken away. What a babe's clothes are, when the babe has slipped out of them into death and the mother's arms clasp only raiment, would be the Bible, if the Babe of Bethlehem, and the truths of deep-heartedness that clothed his life, should slip out of it."

" There is no food for soul or body which God has not sym- bolized. He is light for the eye, sound for the ear, bread for food, wine for weariness, peace for trouble. Every faculty of the soul, if it would but open its door, might see Christ standing over against it, and silently asking by his smile, 'Shall I come in unto thee?' But men open the door and look down, not up, and thus see him not. So it is that men sigh on, not knowing what the soul wants, but only that it needs something. Our yearnings are homesickness for heaven; our sighings are for God; just as children that cry themselves asleep away from home, and sob in their slimiber, know not that they sob for their parents. The soul's inarticulate moan- ings are the affections yearning for the Infinite, but having no one to tell them what it is that ails them."

" I feel sensitive about theologies. Theology is good in its place; but when it puts its hoof upon a living, palpitating, human heart, my heart cries out against it."

" There are men marciiing along in the company of Chris- tians on earth, M-ho, when they knock at the gate of heaven, will hear God answer, ' I never knew you.' — ' But the ministers did, and the church-books did.' — ' That may be. I never did.'

" It is no matter who knows a man on earth, if God does not know him."

" The heart-knowledge, through God's teaching, is true wealth, and they are often poorest M'ho deem themselves most rich. I, in the j)ul]>it, ]ireach with proud forms to many a humble widow and stricken man who might well teach me. The student, spectacled and gray with wisdom, and stuffed with lumbered lore, may be childish and ignorant beside some old singing saint who brings the wood into his study, and who, with the lens of his own experience, brings down the orbs of truth, and beholds through his faith and his humility things of which the white-haired scholar never dreamed."

He has eminent integrity, is faitliful to his own

soul, and to every delegated tnist. No words are

needed here as proof. His life is daily argument.

The public will understand this ; men whose taste he 11—28

434 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

offends, and whose theology he shocks, or to whose philosophy he is repugnant, have confidence in the in- tegrity of the man. He means what he says, — is solid all through.

" From the beginning, I educated myself to speak along the line and in the current of my moral convictions; and though, in later days, it has carried me through places where there were some batterings and bruisings, yet I have been supremely grateful that I was led to adopt this course. I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it ! try what it is to speak with God behind you, — to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws."

With what affectionate tenderness does this great, faithful soul pour out his love to his own church! He invites men to the communion-service.

" Christian brethren, In heaven you are known by the name of Christ. On eartli, for convenience's sake, you are known by the name of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Congre- gationalists, and the like. Let me speak the language of heaven, and call you simply Christians. Whoever of you has known the name of Christ, and feels Christ's life beating within him, is invited to remain and sit with us at the table of the Lord."

And again, when a hundred were added to his

church, he says : —

" My friends, my heart is large to-day. I am like a tree upon which rains have fallen till every leaf is covered with drops of dew; and no wind goes through the boughs but I hear the pattering of some thought of joy and gratitude. I love you all more than ever before. You are crystalline to me; your faces are radiant; and I look through your eyes, as through windows, into heaven. I behold in each of you an im- prisoned angel, that is yet to burst forth, and to live and shine in the better sphere."

He has admirable power of making a popular state- ment of his opinions. He does not analyze a matter to its last elements, put the ultimate facts in a row and

BEECHER 435

find out their causes or their law of action, nor aim at large synthesis of generalization, the highest effort of pliilosophy, whicli groups things into a whole — it is commonly thought both of these processes are out of place in meeting-houses and lecture-halls, that the people can comprehend neither the one nor the other — but he gives a popular view of the thing to be dis- cussed, which can be understood on the spot without painful reflection. He speaks for the ear which takes in at once and understands. He never makes atten- tion painful. He illustrates his subject from daily life ; the fields, the streets, stars, flowers, music, and babies are his favorite emblems. He remembers that he does not speak to scholars, to minds disciplined by long habits of thought, but to men with common edu- cation, careful and troubled about many things ; and they keep his words and ponder them in their hearts. So he has the diff'useness of a wide natural field, which properly spreads out its clover, dandelions, dock, but- tercups, grasses, violets, with here and there a deli- cate Arethusa that seems to have run under this sea of common vegetation and come up in a strange place. He has not the artificial condensation of a garden, where luxuriant nature assumes the form of art. His dramatic power makes his sermon also a life in the pulpit ; his auditorium is also a theatrum, for he acts to the C3'e what he addresses to the ear, and at once wisdom enters at the two gates. The extracts show his power of thought and speech as well as of feel- ing. Here are specimens of that peculiar humor which appears in all his works.

" Sects and Cnristians that desire to be known by the undue prominence of some single feature of Christianity are neces- sarily imperfect just in proportion to the distinctness of their peculiarities. The power of Christian truth is in its unity aud

436 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

symmetry, and not in the saliency or brilliancy of any of its special doctrines. If among painters of the human face and form there should spring up a sect of the eyes, and another sect of the nose, a sect of the hand, and a sect of the foot, and all of them should agree but in the one thing of forgetting that there was a living spirit behind the features more im- portant than them all, they would too much resemble the schools and cliques of Christians; for the spirit of Christ is the great essential truth; doctrines are but the features of the face, and ordinances but the hands and feet."

Here are some separate maxims: —

" It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim- milk."

" The mother's heart is the child's school-room."

" They are not reformers who simply abhor evil. Such men become in the end abhorrent themselves."

" There are many troubles which you can't cure by the Bible and the Hymn-book, but which you can cure by a good perspira- tion and a breath of fresh air."

" The most dangerous infidelity of the day is the infidelity of rich and orthodox churches."

" The fact that a nation is growing is God's own charter of change."

" There is no class in society who can so ill afford to under- mine the conscience of the community, or to set it loose from its moorings in the eternal sphere, as merchants who live upon confidence and credit. Anything which weakens or paralyzes this is taking beams from the foundations of the merchant's own warehouse."

" It would almost seem as if there were a certain drollery of art which leads men who think they are doing one thing to do another and very difi^erent one. Thus, men have set up in their painted church-windows the symbolisms of virtues and graces, and the images of saints, and even of Divinity itself. Yet now, what does the window do but mock the separations and proud isolations of Christian men? For there sit the audi- ence, each one taking a separate color; and there are blue Christians and red Christians, there are yellow saints and orange saints, there are purple Christians and green Chris- tians; but how few are simple, pure, white Christians, uniting all the cardinal graces, and proud, not of separate colors, but of the whole manhood of Christ ! "

" Every mind is entered, like every house, through its own door."

BEECHER 437

" Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed."

" Compromise is the word that men use when the devil gets a victory o%'er God's cause."

" A man in the right, with God on his side, is in the ma- jority, though he be alone; for God is multitudinous above all populations of the earth."

But this was first said bj Frederic Douglas, and better: "One with God is a majority."

"A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it; else the hand would cut itself, which sought to drive it home upon another. The worst lies, therefore, are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true."

"It is not conviction of truth which does men good; it is moral consciousness of truth."

" A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative; but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral-bell is already rung."

" Night-labor, in time, will destroy the student; for it is marrow from his own bones with which he fills his lamp."

A great-hearted, eloquent, fervent, live man, full of religious emotion, of humanity and love, — no won- der he is dear to the people of America. Long may he bring instruction to the lecture associations of the North ! Long may he stand in his pulpit at Brooklyn with his heavenly candle, which gocth not out at all by day, to kindle the devotion and piety of the thou- sands who cluster around him, and carry thence light and warmth to all the borders of the land !

We should do injustice to our own feelings, did we not, in closing, add a word of hearty thanks and commendation to the member of Mr. Beecher's con- gregation to whom we are indebted for a volume that has given us so much pleasure. The selection covers a wide range of topics, and testifies at once to the good taste and the culture of the editress. Many of

438 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

the finest passages were conceived and uttered in the rapid inspiration of speaking, and but for her admir- ing intelhgence and care, the eloquence, wit, and wis- dom, which are here preserved to us, would have faded into air with the last vibration of the preacher's voice.

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF DR. FOLLEN

There are two classes of men that have a wide and reformatory influence on the world ; who write out their thoughts and sentiments, not in words only, but in things. The one consists of men of great intel- lectual power, but no special goodness of heart. They see in the " dry light " of the understanding what is false, what wrong, what ludicrous in man's affairs, and expose it to be rejected, to be abhorred or to be laughed at. Their eye is keen and far-reaching in the actual ; but their insight is not the deepest, nor does the sphere of their reason include all things of human concern. Of these men you do not ask, What was their character.'' how did they live in their day and their place.'* but only, What did they think of this thing and of that? Their lives may have been bad, their motives, both for silence and for speech, may have been ignoble and selfish, and their whole life but a long attempt to build up for themselves a fortune and a name; but that docs not mar their influence, except in the narrow sphere of their personal life. The good they do lives after them, the evil sleeps with their buried bones. The world looks on them as half-men, expects from them no wholeness of action, but takes their good gift and first forgives and then forgets their moral obhquity or defects. It is often painful to contemplate such men. The brightness of their intellect leads us to wish for a corresponding beauty on their moral side. If a man's wisdom does not

439

440 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

show itself in his works, if his hght does not become his hfe, making his pathway radiant ; why, our moral anticipation is disappointed, and we turn away in sadness. Men of a giant's mind and a pigmy's heart; men capable of spanning the heavens, of fathoming the depths of all human science, of mounting with vigorous and untiring pinions above the roar of the crowd and the prejudice of th„ schools, and continu- ing their flight before the admiring eyes of lesser men till distance and loftiness swallows them up ; men who bring back from their adventurous vo3'agings new discoveries for human wonder, new truths for daily use ; men, too, that with all this wondrous endowment of intellect are yet capable of vanity, selfish ambition, and the thousand little arts which make up the ac- complished worldling, such men are a sore puzzle to the young and enthusiastic moralist. " What," he says, "is God unjust.? Shall the man whose eye is ever on himself, keen as the eagle's to look for his own profit, yet dull as the blindworm's or the beetle's to the shadows of wrong in his own bosom, shall he be gifted with this faculty to pierce the mystic cur- tains of nature, and see clearly in his ignoble life where the saint groped for the wall and fell, not see- ing.'' " Such is the fact, often as he may attempt to disguise it. The world, past and present, furnishes us with proofs that cannot be winked out of sight. Men capable of noble and reformatory thought, who lack the accomplishment of goodness and a moral life — we need not pause tO' point out men of this character, both present and departed ; that would be an ungrate- ful work, one not needed to be done.

The other class is made up of men of moral powers. Their mental ability may be small or great, but their

FOLLEN 441

goodness is the most striking, and the fundamental thing. They may not look over a large field, nor be conversant with all the nooks and crevices of this wondrous world, wliere science each day brings some new miracle to light ; but in the sphere of morals they see as no others. Fast as thought comes to them it turns into action ; what was at first but light, ele- mentary and cold, is soon transformed into life, which multiplies itself and its blessings. These men look with a single eye to the everlasting riglit. To them God's law is a law to be kept, come present weal or present woe. They ask not, What shall accrue to me, or praise or blame? But contentedly they do the work of righteousness their hands find to do, and this with all their might. They live faster than they see, for with a true moral man the spontaneous runs be- fore the reflective, as John outran Peter in seeking the risen Son of Man. When these men have but humble minds they arc worthy of deep homage from all mankind. In solitude and in silence, seen by no eye but the All-seeing, they plant with many and hopeful prayers the seed that is one day to spread wide its branches, laden with all manner of fruit, its very leaves for the healing of the nations. How often has it happened that some woman, uncouth, not well bred, and with but little of mind, has kindled in some boy's bosom a love of right, a sense of the sweetness of charity, of the beauty of religion, which grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength, and at last towered forth, strong and flame-like, in the moral heroism of a man wliom licavcn employs to stir the world and help God's kingdom come ! It was only a raven which the boys, resting at noon-day beside the brook Cherith, saw slowly flying towards the moun-

442 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

tain. But he bore in his beak food for the fainting prophet, the last of the faithful.

When this moral power is found with great intel- lectual gifts, as it sometimes is, then have we the fair- est form of humanity, the mind of a giant, and an angel's heart. These act, each on each. The quick- ening sentiment fires the thought ; this gives strength again to the feelings. The eye is single, the whole body is full of light. The intellect of such an one attracts admiration, his moral excellence enforces love. He teaches by his words of wisdom, by his works of goodness. Happy is the age that beholds a conjunc- tion so rare and auspicious as that of eminent genius, and moral excellence as eminent. A single man of that stamp gives character to the age, a new epoch is begun. Men are forced to call themselves after his name, and that may be said of him which was said of Elias the prophet, " After his death his body prophesied." But such are the rarest sons of God.

Dr. Follen belonged to the class of men that act on the world by their moral power. Certainly it was that which was most conspicuous in him, in his counte- nance, his writings, his life. Some live for study ; their books, both what they read and what they write, are their life ; and others for action. They write their soul out in works ; their name may perish, their use- fulness remains, and widens and deepens till time and the human race shall cease to be. Dr. Follen be- longed to the class, then, of men of moral action. In saying this we do not mean to imply that there was little of intellectual force, only that the moral power cast it into the shade ; not that he could not have been eminent in the empire of abstract thought, but only that he chose the broad realm of benevolent

FOLLEN 443

action. Others, better fitted for the task, and with more space and time at command, will doubtless judge his writings from the intcllectuiil point of view, and mankind will pass the irreversible decree on his re- corded thoughts, and bid them live or die. We shall confine ourselves to the first volume of his works, con- taining a biography written by his wife, and only attempt a delineation of the moral life and works of the man.

The main points of his history are briefly summed up. Charles Theodore Follen was born on the 4th of September, 1796, at Romrod, in the western part of Germany ; became obnoxious to the government at an early age, fled to Switzerland for an asylum in 1820, came to America as the only civilized land that of- fered him life and liberty in 1824, and ceased to be mortal in the beginning of 1840.

There is a rare unity in his life, such as we scarcely remember to have noticed in any modern biography. It is a moral-heroic drama in one act, though the scene shifts from the college to the camp, from the thunder- ing stomi of a meeting of reformers to the Christian pulpit and the Sunday school, where children are taught of the Great Rcfonner of the World. Dr. Follen's work began in early life ; while yet a stripling at college we see the same qualities, working for the same end, as in the very last scenes of his life. His pious love of freedom, his abhorrence of all that had the savor of oppression about it, his disinterested zeal for mankind, his unconcern for himself so long as God saw him at his post and his work, these began early and continued till the last. His whole life was a warfare against sin, that had slain and taken pos- session of what belongs to mankind. But we must speak of the details of his history more minutely.

444 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

He was the son of a counscllor-at-law and judge In Hesse Darmstadt. When a cliild he was serious and earnest beyond his years. He received his education at the Seminary and University at Giessen, devoting himself to the study of the law. His enthusiasm against the French kindled with the uprising of his Father-land, and in 1813 we find him a soldier in the army of the patriots. The return of peace the next year restored him to his studies at the University. At the age of twelve, says his biographer, he had con- ceived thoughts of a Christian society far different from all that is now actual on the earth, and while at the University " consecrated himself to the work of a reformer by a perfect subjection of himself to the law of justice and universal brotherhood, as taught by Jesus." His attempts to reform his fellow students brought him into trouble, and rendered him an object of suspicion to the government. At the age of twenty he began to lecture, in a private capacity, we suppose, on " various parts of jurisprudence " at the Univer- sity of Giessen. At this period doubts respecting re- ligion came over him. He met the enemy face to face, studied the writings of skeptics, pantheists and in- fidels, and found the books written against Christian- ity, next to the Gospel itself, were the most efficient promoters of his belief in its divine truth. This fear- less examination of all that had been said against religion showed him that it rested on a rock which neither its foes nor its friends could ever shake. He never afterAvards feared that the most valuable of all man's treasures could be blown away by a few mouth- fuls of wind. Did a man who knew religion by heart ever fear that it would perish?

In 1818 some towns in Hesse engaged this youth,

FOLLEN 445

in Ins twenty-second year, to help them in escaping an artful design of their government to oppress them. His noble attempt succeeded. Of course " the influ- ential persons " whose object he defeated, and the gov- ernment whose illegal designs he exposed, were of- fended at him. He became the object of a bitter and unrelenting persecution. His hopes blighted in his native kingdom, he accepted an invitation to the Uni- versity of Jena. Here he commenced a course of lectures on the Pandects before a respectable audi- ence, though it was thought extraordinary for so young a man to undertake a branch so difficult. Here also his reformatory and liberal principles stood in the way of his promotion. He was tried as an ac- complice of George Sand in the murder of Kotzcbue, a tool of despotism, was acquitted, but forbidden to lecture in Jena. He returned to Giessen, suspected by the government, treated with coolness by some of his " friends," for they thought his cause without hope, and " left him to strive alone in his hour of trial and suffering." The excellence of his character was pleaded as proof of his innocence of ill. " So much the worse," said one opposer, who knew what he was about ; " I should like him better if he had a few vices." The government, thinking him the handle of the axe, which they knew lay, ready and sharpened, at the root of the tree, intended to imprison him. He escaped by flight to Strasburg, thence to Paris, and became acquainted with Lafayette. But all foreign- ers were soon ordered to quit France, for this was in 1820, and the same spirit ruled in Paris as in Giessen. A lady invited him to Switzerland. Here he was in- vited to become a ])rofessor in the Cantonal School of the Grisons, one of the higher seminaries of educa-

446 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

tion. Here again his liberal spirit raised up enemies. But at this time it was the church, not the state, that took offense at his freedom. In his lectures on his- tory he ascribed the Christian revelation to the effi- cacy of two great principles, namely, the doctrine of one God, and that all men ought to love one another, and strive after godlike perfection. Some were in- spired to lead men to this great aim. The clergy were alarmed, and declared that he denied the godhead of Jesus, total depravity, and original sin. Dr. Fol- len's resignation of his office was the result of this clerical alarm. However, he was soon appointed as a public lecturer at the University of Basle, where he taught natural, civil, and ecclesiastical law, and phi- losophy in its application to religion, morals, legis- lation, and the fine arts. But even here, " where the free Switzer yet bestrides alone his chainless moun- tains," he was not secure, while in the canton of the Grisons the Congress of Troppau demanded that he should be given up. While at Basle, in 1824, the government of Basle received three notes from the governments of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, demand- ing that he should be given up to the tribunal of inquisition. The result of all was that he fled from Basle hid under the boot of a chaise to Paris, and thence to America, w^hcre he arrived in December, 1824. His subsequent stor}^ may be briefly hinted at. He was successively teacher of Ethics and Ecclesias- tical History at the Divinity School and teacher of German in the University at Cambridge, a preacher of the Gospel at Boston, New York, Lexington, and other places; and as a philanthropist engaging in the benevolent works of the day.

Dr. Follen was eminently a Christian man. By

FOLLEN 447

this we do not mean that he liad learned by rote a few traditional doctrines, whose foundation he never dared examine, and condemned all such as could not accept them, not that he loved to say there was no salvation out of the Procrustes-bed of his own church, not that he accepted the popular standard of con- ventional morals, cursing all that fell below and damn- ing such as were above that standard. We know this is too often a time description of the sectarian or popular Christian, a man with more memory than thought, more belief than life, more fear than love. With Dr. Follen Christianity took a turn a little different. To serve God with the whole mind was not necessarily to think as Anselm and Augustine in re- ligious matters, but to think truly and uprightly ; to serve him with the whole heart and soul was to live a life of active goodness and holiness of heart. He was not one of the many who have days to be Christians, and days to be men of the world ; but a Christian once was a Christian always. We do not mean to say that he had no stains of human imperfection, weakness and evil. Doubtless he had such. The prurient eye may read traces of such on this monument, where conjugal love solaces its bereavement by tracing, with affection- ate pen, the tale of his life, his trials, his temptations, and his endurance.

In a moral character so rich as this of Dr. Follen it is difficult, perhaps, to select a point of sufficient promi- nence by which to distinguish the man, and about which to group the lesser elements of his being. But what strikes us as chief is his love of freedom. He felt man was superior to all the circumstances, pros- perous or adverse, which could be gathered about him. Therefore, he saw the weakness of men beneath the

448 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

trappings of a monarch's court, and did not fear to lift up his juvenile voice for human rights and ever- lasting truth ; therefore, he saw the greatness of men under the squalid garments of the beggar or the slave, and never despaired of raising them to the estate of a man, but toiled and prayed for this great end. This love of freedom was conspicuous in his youth, breathing in the " Great Song ; " ^ and shone more and more as years gave him the meditative mind. It ap- pears in all his writings, in all his life. At an early age he joined the army to fight for freedom and his Fatherland in the tented field; the chief cause he en- gaged in as a lawyer was the cause of right against oppression. For this he was an exile in a strange land, and in that land he but continued in manhood the work begun in youth. This love of freedom ap- peared in his sermons, where, some think, it does not often appear. So one day after preaching, a friend " who had a kind heart, but an arbitrary character," took him by the button and said, " Your sermon, sir, was very sensible, but you spoil your discourses with your views about freedom. We are all wearied with hearing the same thing from you. You always have something about freedom in whatever you say to us. I am sick of hearing about freedom ; we have too much freedom. We are all sick of it ; don't let us hear any more such sermons from you."

He saw the great stain which defiles the govern- ment of the Union, the stain of slavery. With his characteristic zeal he espoused the cause of the op- pressed and downtrodden African. His attention was first called to the subject by accident. As he returned from preaching, one rainy day, he overtook a negro, apparently not well able to bear the storm. He took

FOLLEN 449

him Into tlie chaise. The negro talked of slavery, of Mr. Walker's " incendiary publication," of the sus- picious death of Mr. Walker." This awakened the at- tention of Dr. Follen to the subject. He soon visited Mr. Garrison, whose efforts in the cause of Abolition have been so justly celebrated. " He found him in a little upper chamber where were his writing-desk, his types, and his printing-press ; his parlor by daj^ his sleeping-room by night ; where, known only by a few other faithful spirits, he denied himself all but the bare necessaries of life that he might give himself up, heart and hand, to the despised cause of the negro slave."

Here he did not find many of the more conspicuous men of the land to join him. There is a time when every great cause, that is one day to move the mil- lions, rests on the hands and in the hearts of a few men ; noble hearts and strong hands ; heroes of the soul, whom God raises up to go on the forlorn hope of humanity and shed their life where others shall one day wave the banner of triumph, and walking dry- shod, sing pasans of victory, though often unmindful of those by whom the day was won. In 1833 Dr. Follen writes to Dr. Bowring,^ and says he has " been seven years in the land, and found but two eminent men, Dr. Channing and Clement C. Biddle,'* who will not connive at slavery for any purpose ! " Dr. Bowring's reply is worthy to be pondered : " I am not surprised at the way j^ou speak of the slavery ques- tion. It is indeed the opprobiuni of the United States. There is no escape from the palpable, the prominent, the pestiferous fact, that human beings are bought and sold by men who call thenisolvos republicans and

Christians. It is thrown in our teeth, it is slapped in 11—29 . , . , ,

450 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

our faces, it is branded on our souls, when we talk of your country and hold up your institutions to ad- miration and imitation. You must indeed labor day and night, at sun-rising and sun-setting, at home and abroad, with the influential above, and with the in- fluential below you."

In the days of peril which came over the anti- slavery cause Dr. Follen did not shrink from fidelity to his principles. He faced the evil like a man, neither courage nor calmness forsaking him. We would gladly, for our country's sake, tear out many pages of the book that records his life; for they are pages of shame to the free state we live in ; but what is done cannot be undone by silence.* But there was one as true in this matter as himself. His wife writes thus: " There were some of my friends who thought that I should feel very badly at seeing my husband one of this little company of insulted men ; but as he stood there [before a committee of the Legislature], bat- tling for freedom of speech in this free land, sur- rounded by the rich and the powerful, and the favor- ites of the world, and condemned by them all for it, I would not have had him exchange positions with any one of them. The unruffled calmness of his soul took possession of mine." This is not the only instance of the same spirit in her. Before this she had bid him above all things to be true to his convictions. One day he said to his wife, " I have been thinking of joining the Anti-Slavery Society; what do you think of it.?" " That you ought to follow the light of your own mind," was the reply; "why should you hesitate .J*" " I know that it will be greatly in the way of my worldly interests." " Very well," says the wife. " I

* See, especially, pages 387-403, not to name other places.

FOLLEN 451

feel," he replied, " as if I ought to join them." "Then why not do it?" "It is a serious thing to relinquish my worldly prospects altogether. If I join the Anti-Slavery Society I shall certainly lose all chance of a permanent place in college or perhaps any- where else. If it were only for myself I should not be troubled about it; but to involve you and Charles in the evils of real poverty — I shrink from that." " You have," replied the same adviser, " sacrificed your country, your home, and all that makes home dear for the sake of freedom and humanity ; do not think that we are not able to make the slight sacri- fices which we may be called on to make in this cause."

" He knew," says the biographer, " that there are evils belonging to all associations ; he never vindicated nor approved of abusive language in the Abolitionists, any more than in their opposers ; but when a young friend raised this objection to joining the Anti- Slavery Society he replied to him, ' I did not feel at liberty to stand aloof from a society whose only object was the abolition of slavery.' "

Were his fears well-grounded.'* To be true, one must alwa^'s pay the price. " A clergyman made a most vehemment attack upon Dr. Follen [though only in words] for his devotion to the cause of Abolition. It was in the street." One Thanksgiving-day, while preaching at New York, in part of his sermon he spoke of the subject of slavery: " Before he had con- cluded the first sentence of his remarks, two gentle- men rose and went out of the church looking very angry. Many others showed signs of displeasure and alarm, and his words evidently excited a strong sensa- tion through the whole society." Dr. Follen him- self writes as f ollpws about the matter : " It is some-

452 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

what doubtful now whether they will settle me here permanently. I feel sure that, if I had known the con- sequences, I should have changed nothing, either in matter or manner. So we feel easy, come what may." He himself attributed his failure with that society to his expression of the obnoxious opinions about slavery. But we will speak no more of this theme.

While a minister at New York he labored to convert men from infidelity, to apply religion to daily life. He rejoiced in having that city for the sphere of his action, where misery, vice, and irreligion are sup- posed to act with a deeper intensity of violence than elsewhere in the land. His heart was in his calling. His biographer speaks of his ministerial character and conduct : " When he saw a crowd of human beings assembled around him, he did not look upon them as rich or poor, or weak or powerful, wise or simple, gentlemen or ladies, but literally and simply as im- mortal spirits, absent from their true home, and seek- ing the way back to their Fatherland. He thought none so pure that he might not fall ; none so degraded that he might not rise ; and he always preached with the feeling that the salvation of souls might be the consequence of th/e truths he should declare. He sought to make the house of the minister common ground for humanity, where the rich and the poor might meet together, as representatives of the Com- mon Image of Him that is the Maker of them all. So he invited the whole society to meet him Wednes- day evenings."

" We made no preparation, except to light our rooms, and gave no entertainment except a glass of water to those who desired it. It was understood that all shoidd come in their usual dress; that those who were so disposed might wear their bonnets, and tliat from seven till eleven o'clock in the evening all should come and go as they pleased.

FOLLEN 453

"These social parties were eminently successful; in fair weather our room was always full, and even when it was stormy there were some who did not fail to come. We had the pleasure of introducing to each other many who had found the divisions of the pews impassable barriers to a friendly acquaintance, and who have since become true and warm friends. The rich in worldly goods, they who were gifted with the heavenly dowry of genius, the artisan and the artist, the flattered favorites of the world, and its poor for- gotten pilgrims, the homebound conservative, the republican stranger whose home was the world, and the exiled philan- thropist, the child and his proud grandparent, the learned and the unlearned, the grave and the gay, all met at our house and passed a few free and happy hours in an unre- strained and friendly intercourse, recognising the bond of brotherhood which exists between the members of God's human family. Few things ever gave Dr. Follen so true a pleasure as these meetings, not merely on accoimt of his own actual enjoyment of them, but as they established the fact that such social meetings were practicable, and that the van- ity, and expense, and precious time that are lavished upon show parties are not necessary, in order to obtain all the higher purposes of social intercourse; and as a proof that people have a purer and better taste than they have credit for. It was also a high gratification to his republican heart to see that it was possible to do away some of those arbitrary distinctions in society which prevent the highest progress and improvement of all. One of these AVednesday evenings a lady was present who belonged to a famil}% that if such a term could be used without absurdity in this country, might be called patrician, but who had herself a patent of nobility from him who is the giver of all things. I said to her, " That gentleman who has just sung the Scotch song so well is a hair-dresser; his wife, who as well as himself, is from Scotland, and who has l)een talking very intelligently of Mr. Combe's lectures, which she attended in her own country is a dress- maker. That higiilj'^ intelligent woman, who has held a most interesting corres])ondence with my husband upon some theo- logical questions, is a watch-maker's wife. That saintly old lady is the wife of a man who makes india-rubber shoes, etc., and that very gentlemanly and agreeable man is a tailor." " I hope," she replied, " that the time will come when such things will not be mentioned as extraordinary." When I repeated this to my husband, after the company were gone, " That is beautiful " he said, with his face radiant with joy. He never

454 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

forgot it ; and when we last went to New York, he said, " We must go and see that truly republican lady." Dr. FoUen often said that our freedom was a fact rather than a principle, and that nowhere was opinion so tyrannical as in this boasted land of liberty. He resolved, in his ministry in New York, to be truly faithful to his own principles. He took his market- basket daily to market, and brought home our dinner him- self. He practised the strictest economy, that he might have something to give to the poor. Mr. Arnold and Mr. Chan- ning, who had been the ministers to the poor, had both left the city. Provisions were dear, and the sufferings of the poor were severe ; Dr. Follen volunteered his services, and devoted all his leisure to this difficult and painful though in- teresting duty. His labors were very arduous; the poor Ger- mans, when they knew he was their countryman, beseiged our door; and during the inclement part of the season it was seldom that we took any meal without some poor sufferer waiting till it was finished, that he might tell his sad story and receive his portion of our frugal repast. Dr. Follen's labors among the poor would have been a sufficient employ- ment without his duties in his parish and preaching on Sun- day, and he was often so exhausted that I feared he would lose his health entirely; but he felt such a deep interest, such an inspiring joy in these occupations that he never complained of the weariness of his body."

His love of freedom, and his practical exhibition of

this love in searching for the grounds of religion, gave

him an interest in the eyes of infidels, men whom

worldliness or the popular theology had led to despise

religion itself. In the course of sermons he preached

on infidelity he did not use scorn and contempt ; though

these, it is well known, are the consecrated weapons

too often used by the pulpit in this warfare.

" He reveiwed during this course of lectures all the most celebrated writers and theories of infidelity, the French En- cyclopedists, Hobbes, Hume, Tom Paine, and Fanny Wright. He vituperated none, he sneered at none, he treated them all with respect. He took Paine's ' Age of Reason ' into the pul- pit, and read an eloquent passage from it, proving that he believed in God and in the immortality of the soul, and simply stated that in the same pages were to be found the grossest indecencies. He pointed out the inconsistencies of unbelievers.

FOLLEN 455

the false grounds of their arguments, and showed that, in spite of themselves, they could not get rid of a belief in im- mortality. He then showed that fair and free inquiry would lead to faith. Christianity, rightly understood, instead of checking free inquiry, invites it and opens to it an infinite sphere.

" Christianity is," he said, " the most efficient skepticism, when directed against imposition and blind credulity. Chris- tianity is the deepest science, the most sublime philosophy, adapted to the capacity of a little child, yet transcending the wisdom of the wisest." He dwelt most eloquently upon the importance to the cause of religion, that believers should have a deep and well-grounded faith themselves before they at- tempted to convert others. "Those who reject Christianity because of its supposed inconsistency with nature, experience, and reason, can be convinced of their error only by those who have embraced it because of its perfect agreement with the demands of reason, the teachings of experience, and the deepest wants of human nature. The atheist in his pride is more imperfect than the most rude and confined worshipper of Deity; for the former wants entirely that deepest and great- est effort of the mind, of which the other possesses at least a degree. The principles of man's immortality being acknowledged in the New Testament ought not to be considered a check to our inquiry whether this doctrine has any other foundation beside that evidence. God has given us this infinite desire of extending our knowledge as far as possible, and if we have not made this use of our endowments, we do not feel assured that there are no reasons for doubting. Many think that call- ing in question the truths of the doctrines of the New Testa- ment is a kind of irreverence; but to me it seems, on the contrary, that the true foundation of our abiding belief in its truth is, that its fundamental doctrines may at all times be put to the test of fair reasoning, that its principles are not a mere matter of fact and history, but of free investiga- tion and conviction. The Bible gives us only means of arriv- ing at truth, not truth itself. I believe in the Bible because the Bible believes in me. I find the law and the prophets in my own soul."

We know not the result of these lectures. The ef- fect of a sermon no man can tell. He who preaches as a man to men casts a seed into the river of human life, and knows not on what shore it shall be cast up,

456 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

or whether the waters close, cold as ever, over his liv- ing word and quench its fiery life. But can it be that a good word is ever spoken in vain? Who will believe it? The last time Dr. Follcn preached in New York,

" He spoke affectionately, as a brother would speak to brethren whom his heart yearned to bless, and whom he was to leave for ever. After service he remained in the desk purposely to avoid meeting any one, for his heart was too full to speak any more. When he came down to meet me, thinking all others were gone, a man and his wife came forward, who had been waiting for him. The man took his hand and said, ' You have, sir, during your ministry here changed an unhappy atheist. to a happy, believing Christian. I am grieved to think that I shall worship no more with you in this church; but you have given me the hope that I may yet worship with you in a higher, a heavenly temple.' Tears ran fast down his and his wife's cheeks as he uttered these words and pressed Dr. Follen's hand and departed. ' That,' said my husband, ' is re- ward enough for all my toils and disappointments.' "

He did not fail or fear to acknowledge goodness and

moral purpose in a philanthropist, though lacking

the strength and beauty of religion. The remarks he

made on Mr. Darusmond, " the husband of Frances

Wright," ^ full of sadness as they are, may well be

pondered by the " rigid righteous."

" There is that noble old man spending his thoughts, his time, and his money, for what he considers the highest good of his fellow men, with a youthful devotedness and enthus- iasm of benevolence, carrying in his heart the evidences of his immortality, and yet tenacious of the belief that he and his beautiful child, and all that he loves best in the world, and all his generous and exalted purposes and hopes are but a part of the dust he treads on. What a lesson does his magnanimous love for his fellow-beings teach to the multitudes of the cold, calculating men and women we see, who take the name of him who was the first and greatest of all philanthropists, and who call him an infidel, and are eager to condemn him."

There arc some things in this book on which we do not feel competent to decide, and therefore shall hold

FOLLEN 457

our peace ; many others on whicli we should gladly dwell, did time and space permit. But there is one trait of his character on which we would dwell, this is, his hopeful resignation. His disappointments, what- ever was their cause, did not sour his temper, nor make him less sanguine for the future, not less confident of his OAvn conviction of right. He did not complain in adversity ; and when persecuted for righteousness' sake, took it patiently, and went on his way rejoicing. We do not say that traces of indignation could not be found in the fair chronicle of this biography — in- dignation that is not Christian, as we think. But let a candid, yes, an uncandid reader search for these traces, and he will marvel that they are so rare. A friend said he was " a Christian up to the arms, the heart Christian, the arms somewhat violent, and the head directed to the outward world." When disappointed,

" He turned directly to some present duty, or he talked with his friends of the future, which he still trusted had some unlooked-for good in store for him. His near friends were in the habit of rallying him upon his sanguine anticipations, and this even after their failure, might have produced some sensitiveness upon the subject; but how sweetly did he join in the laugh at his own confiding credulity, that led him to measure the good he expected from others, not by the his- tory of his own experience, but by the overflowing bounty of his own heart. One instance of this I cannot resist relating. One New Year's day I observed him, in the morning, ])utting away some books that he usually kept on his study table, and apparently making room for something. I asked him what he was preparing for. ' I am making room on my table for our New Year's presents,' he replied. I smiled. ' I see,' he said, 'that you do not expect any, but I do.' I was right; we had not a single New Year's gift, but his unfeigned merri- ment at his imgrounded hopes, and the many hearty laughs which the remembrance of his mistake, when like disappoint- ments in more important affairs befel us, ])roved that he possessed that which made such things of little importance. No one thought less of the intrinsic value, or rather of the market

458 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

price, of a gift from a friend than he; and no one that I ever knew thought more of the active love that prompted such testimonials of affection; he was truly child-like in these things.

" We practised, necessarily, this winter, the strictest econ- omy. Through mud, and cold, and storms, Dr. Follen walked out seven miles to the church where he was engaged to preach. Far from uttering a complaint at the cold or fatigue or in- convenience, which he occasionally had to endure, he always returned home with a smile upon his face, that seemed to say, * I have been about my Father's business.' Never did he once say, I wish I had a chaise; and when I urged him in bad weather to take one, he always answered, * I like walking bet- ter; having no horse to take care of I have my mind free, and I often compose my sermons on the way.' "

" Dr. Follen occasionally, at these times, but not often, al- luded to the fact that his whole life, as it regarded worldly success, had been a series of failures, never with any bitter- ness, seldom with anything like despondency. ' Had I been willing,' he has said, ' to lower my standard of right, the world would have been with me, and I might have obtained its favor. I have been faithful to principle under all circum- stances, and I had rather fail so than succeed in another way; besides, I shall do something yet; I am not discouraged, and we are happy in spite of all things.' He was, however, very weary of the continual changes we had made, and more es- pecially of a continual change of place; he longed for a more permanent local home."

One winter he attempted a course of lectures in Bos- ton, on Switzerland. But few came to hear it, not enough to defray the expenses.

" On one day only I saw him stop from his writing, and rest his head between his hands for a long time upon his paper. 'What is the matter?' I asked. 'I find it very hard to write with spirit under such circumstances,' he replied. We always returned to Lexington on the evening of the lecture. It was a long way, the road was heavy, and the weather was cold; and it was dark and often very late when we got home. Usually he was so full of lively conversation, that it seemed neither long nor dull; but one night he was very silent. 'Why,' I asked, 'are you so silent to-night?' 'I do feel this disap- pointment,' lie replied; 'it shows me how little I have to hope from public favor in Boston.' ' Perhaps,' I said, ' you have

I

FOLLEN 459

made a mistake in your subject. People now-a-days prefer speculations to facts; let us consider this merely as a mode, not very expensive, of seeing our friends once a week; it is not, after all, a costly pleasure. Your history of Switzerland will be written and will be a valuable possession.' ' That is right,' he replied; 'it shall be so; henceforward we will look at it as a pleasant visit to our friends; it is a good thing for me to have this course of lectures written, they will yet be of use to me, and it is pleasant to see our friends once a week.' "

But we must bring our paper to an end. Yet, not without noticing his love of the beautiful. " Na- ture was a perpetual joy to him."

" His love of the beautiful was intense, in its most humble as well as sublime manifestations. I have seen him gaze at the wings of an insect till, I am sure, he must have committed all its exquisite coloring and curious workmanship to memory. One Sunday, when he had walked far into the country to preach, he was requested to address the children of the Sun- day school. He gave them an account of a blue dragon-fly that he had seen on his way. He described it, with the clear blue sky shining through its thin gauzy wings, and its airy form reflected in the still pure water over which it hovered, looking doubtful whether to stay here or return to the heavens from whence it apparently came. He sought, by interesting the children in its beauty, to awaken feelings of admiration and love towards all the creatures that God has made."

We must come to the last scene of his life. He left New York to go to Lexington and preach the dedica- tion sermon in the new church built there after a plan of his own, the church he hoped should be the scene of his future labors. He had prepared a part of the dis- course to be delivered on the occasion. He read this to his wife, and added :

" ' I shall explain to the people the meaning and use of sym- bols in general, and then explain the meaning of those carved on the pupit.' These were of his own designing, and were a candlestick, a communion cup, a crown of thorns, a wreath of stars, and in the centre a cross. ' I shall not write this part of my sermon,' said he, ' but I will tell you what I shall say,

460 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

and that will make it easier when I shall speak to the people. I shall tell them that the candlestick is a symbol of the light which should emanate from the Christian pulpit, and from the life of every individual Christian. The crown of thorns is a representation of the trials and sufferings which the faithful Christian has to endure for conscience' sake. The cup signi- fies that spiritual communion which we should share with all our brethren of mankind, and that readiness to drink the bitter cup of suffering for their sake, and for conscience' sake, which he manifested who offered it to his disciples before he was betrayed. The cross is a type of him who gave his life for us all, and whose example we must stand ready to follow, even though it lead to death. The circle of stars represents the wreath of eternal glory and happiness which awaits the faithful soul in the presence of God.' "

The simple words of his biographer best describe his

departure :

" He arranged his papers against his return. He was going to take his lectures of German literature with him, but I urged him to leave them with me, to be put in my trunk, where they would be kept in better order. He made a little memorandum of what he had to do when he returned. One article was to get the ' Selections from Fenelon ' reprinted ; the next, to inquire about a poor German, who was an exile, and a sufferer for freedom's sake. The last was to get a New Year's gift for a poor little girl whom he had taken to live with us. Just as I left the door at Lexington I told this child that if she was a good girl I would bring her a New Year's gift from New York. Dr. FoUen overheard me, I never spoke of it to him. My illness and anxiety had put it out of my head, but he re- membered it. As he put his sermon in his pocket, he said, 'I shall not go to bed, but devote the night to my sermon; I want to make something of it that is worth hearing.' He gave Charles some money, and told him to go presently and get some grapes for me at a shop where he found some very fine ones. ' They are good for your mother,' he said, ' and you must keep her supplied till my return.' ' Be of good courage till you see me again,' he said to me as he took leave of me. ' Be a good boy, and obey your mother till I come back again,' were his words to Charles, as he took him in his arms, and kissed him."

The partner of liis joys, the prime chccrcr of his sorrows, has built up a beautiful monument to his

FOLLEN 461

character. How beautifully she has done her work; with what suppression of anguish for shattered hopes, and buds of promise never opening on earth, we have not words to tell. But the calmness with which the tale is told, the absence of panegyric, the sublime trust in the great principles of religion, apparent from end to end of this heart-touching record of trials borne and ended — these show that she likewise drank at that fountain whence he derived his strength and joy. We would gladly say more, but delicacy forbids us to dwell on the mortal. Let us pass again to him who has put off this earthly shroud.

This record of life is to us a most hopeful book. It shows a man time to truth, an upright man whom fame and fortune could not bribe, whom the menace of monarchs and the oppression of poverty could never swerve from the path of duty. Disappointment at- tended his steps, but never conquered his spirit nor abated his hope. He had the consolations of religion, that gave him strength which neither the monarchs, nor poverty, nor disappointment, nor the neglect of the world, nor the attacks of men narrow-minded and chained down to bigotry could ever take from him. How beautifully he bears his trials. In the balance of adversity God weighs choice spirits. In the hour of trial he gives them meat to eat which the world knows not of. But Dr. Follen did not stand alone. Not to name others, there was one brave soul in a pulpit whose counsel and sympathy gave new warmth to his heart, new energy to his resolution ; one like himself, whom fear could not make afraid.* They rest from their la- bors. The good they have done shall live after them ; the kind words they spoke, the pure lives they lived, shall go up as a testimonial to him that liveth for

462 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ever ; their example kindles the fire in earnest hearts on earth, a light that never dies. Dr. Follen was fortunate in his life. Talents God gave him, and an occasion to use them ; defeat gave him courage, not dismay. Deep, rich blessings fell on him.

" Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; Heaven did a recompense as largely send; He gave to misery all he had, a tear;

He gained from Heaven — 'twas all he wished — a Friend."

XI

GERMAN LITERATURE

Opinions are divided respecting German literature. If we are to believe what is currently reported and generally credited, there is, somewhere in New Eng- land, a faction of discontented men and maidens who have conspired to love everything Teutonic, from Dutch skates to German infidelity. It is supposed, at least asserted, that these misguided persons would fain banish all other literature clean out of space ; or at the very least would give it precedence of all other letters, ancient or modern. Whatever is German, they admire ; philosophy, dramas, theology, novels, old ballads, and modern sonnets ; histories, and disserta- tions, and sermons ; but above all, the immoral and irreligious writings which it is supposed the Germans are chiefly engaged in writing, with the generous in- tention of corrupting the youth of the world, restoring the worship of Priapus or Pan or the Pope, — it is not decided which is to receive the honor of universal homage, — and thus gradually preparing for the kingdom of misrule, and the domination of chaos and " most ancient Night." It is often charitably taken for granted that the lovers of German works on philos- ophy and art amongst us are moved thereto, either by a disinterested love of whatever is German, or else, which is the more likely, by a disinterested love of evil, and the instigation of the devil, who, it is gravely said, has actually inspired several of the most esteemed writers of that nation. Thia German epidemic, we

46S

46J* THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

are told, extends very wide. It has entered the board- ing-schools for young misses of either sex, and com- mitted the most frightful ravages therein. We have been apprised that it has sometimes seized upon a College, nay, on Universities, and both the Faculty and the Corporation have exhibited symptoms of the fatal disease. Colleges, did we say.^"

" No place is sacred, not the church is free."

It has attacked clergymen in silk and in lawn. The Doctors of Divinity fall before it. It is thought that

" Fever and ague, jaundice and catarrh, The grim-looked tyrant's heavy horse of war. And apoplexies, those light troops of death. That use small ceremony with our breath,"

are all nothing to the German epidemic. We meet men with umbrellas and over-shoes, men " shawled to the teeth," and suppose they are prudent persons who have put on armor against this subtle foe. Histories of this plague, as of the cholera, have been written ; the public has often been called to defend itself from the enemy, and quarantine regulations are put in force against all suspected of the infection. In short, the prudent men of the land, men wise to foresee and curious to prevent evil, have not failed to advise the public from time to time of the danger that is im- minent, and to recommend certain talismans as effect- ual safeguards. We think a copy of the " Westmin- ister Catechism," or the " Confessions of Faith adopted by the Council of Trent," or the " Athanasian Creed," perhaps, if hung about the neck, and worn next the skin, might save little children, and perhaps girls nearly grown up, especially if they read these amulets every morning fasting. But a more important specific has

GERMAN LITERATURE 465

occurred to us, which wc have never known to fail, and it has been tried in a great many cases, in both hemis- pheres. The remedy is simple ; it is a strong infu- sion of dulness. Continued applications of this ex- cellent noitrum will save any person, we think, from all but very slight attacks of this epidemic. Certainly, it will secure the patient from the worst form of the disease, — the philosophical frenzy which it is said prevails in colleges and among young damsels, but which, we think, docs not attack the pulpit. The other forms of the malady are mainly cutaneous, and easily guarded against.

It has often been matter of astonishment to us that the guardians of the public welfare did not discover German literature when it first set foot in America, and thrust it back into the ocean ; and we can only account for the fact of its extension here from the greater activity of evil in general. " Rank weeds do grow apace." So this evil has grown up in the ab- sence of our guardians, as the golden calf was made while IVIoscs was in the mount fasting. While the young men and maidens have been eating the Genuan lotus the guardians of the public weal have been *' talking, or pursuing, or journeying, or peradventure they slept, and must needs be awaked." However this may be, they are now awake, and in full cry.

Now, for our own part, we have never yet fallen in with any of these dangerous persons who have this exaggerated admiration of whatever is Teutonic, still less this desire to overthrow morality, and turn reli- gion out of the world. This fact may be taken as presumptive evidence of blindness on our part, if men will. We sometimes, indeed, moot with men, and

women also, well read in this obnoxious literature; they 11—30

466 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

are mostly, — yes, without a single exception, as we remember, — unoffending persons. They " gang their ain gait," and leave others the same freedom. They have tastes of their own, scholarly habits ; some of them are possessed of talent, and no contemptible erudition, judging by the New England standard. They honor what they find good and to their taste, in German literature as elsewhere. Men and women, some of them are, who do not think all intellectual and aesthetic ex- cellence is contained in a hundred volumes of Greek and Roman authors, profound and beautiful as they are. They study German philosophy, theology, criti- cism, and literature in general, as they would the sim- ilar works of any nation, for the good they contain. This, we think, is not forbidden by the Revised Stat- utes, or any other universal standard of right and wrong. Why should not a man study even Sanscrit philosophy if he will, and profit by it in peace, if he can? We do not say there are nO' enthusiastic or fanatical admirers of this literature ; nor, that there are none who " go too far " in their admiration, — which means, in plain English, farther than their critic, — but that such persons are by no means common, so that there seems, really, very small cause for the panic into which some good people have seen fit to fall. We doubt the existence, therefore, of this reputed faction of men and maidens who design to reinstate confusion on her throne.

But on the other hand, we are told — and partly be- lieve it^ — that there is a party of cool-headed, discreet, moderate, sound, and very respectable persons, who hate German literature. Of these we can speak from knowledge. Most men have heard of them, for they have cried out like Bluebeard in the tale, " till all shook

GERMAN LITERATURE 467

again." They arc plenty as acorns in autumn, and may be had for the asking. This party has, to speak gently, a strong dislike to German literature, philos- ophy, and thcolog3^ Sometimes this dislike is founded on a knowledge of facts, an acquaintance with the subject, in which case no one will find fault; but far oftcner it rests merely on prejudice, — on the most utter ignorance of the whole matter. Respecting this latter class of liaters without knowledge, we have a few words to say. We have somewhere seen it written, " He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is a folly and shame unto him." We commend it to the attention of these judges. They criticize Ger- man literature by wholesale and retail — to adopt the ingenious distinction of Dr. Watts. They issue their writs, and have the shadow of some poor German brought into the court of their greatness, and pass sentence with the most speedy justice, never examin- ing the evidence, nor asking a question, nor permitting the prisoner at the bar to say a word for himself till the whole matter is disposed of. Before this honorable bench Goethe, and Sclileiermacher, and Schiller, and Arndt, and Kant, and Leibnitz, Henry Heine ^ and Jacob Bohmc, Schelling of universal renown, and Schefer of Muskau in Neider-Lausitz, and Hegel, and Strauss, with their aids and abettors, are brought up and condemned as mystics, infidels, or pantheists ; in one word, as Germans. Thus the matter is disposed of by the honorable court. Now we would not protest against this method of proceeding, ancient as it is, and supported by ])recedents from the time of Jethro to General Jackson. Such a protest would be " a dan- gerous innovation," no doubt. We would have no ex- ceptions from the general method made in favor of

468 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

German letters. No literature was ever written into more than temporary notice, and certainly none was ever written down. German literature amongst us encounters just the same treatment the classic authors received at the hands of the middle ages. When those old sages and saints began to start out of the corners where night had overtaken them, men were alarmed at their strange faces and antique beards and myste- rious words. " What ! " said they, as they gaped on one another, in the parlor, the court, the camp, or the church, Avith terror in their faces, — " What ! study Greek and Roman letters.? Greek and Roman philos- ophy.? Shall we men of the tenth century study au- thors who lived two thousand years ago, in an age of darkness ? Shame on the thought ! Shall we who are Christians, and live in an age of light, look for in- struction to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, or Seneca — men from dark pagan times ? It were preposterous ! Let such works perish, or sink back to their original night." * So it goes with us ; and it is said, " Shall we Americans, excellent Christians as we are, who live in a land of education, of righteousness, of religion, and know how to reconcile it all with our three millions of slaves ; in the land of steamboats and railroads ; we Americans, possessed of all needed intelligence and cul- ture,— shall we read the books of the Germans, infidels

* The following anecdote is quite to the point. One day, in the year 1530, a French monk said in the pulpit, " a new lan- guage has been discovered, which is called Greek. You must take good heed, and keep out of its way. This language en- genders all heresies. I see in the hands of many, a book written in this language. It is called the New Testament. It is a book full of thorns and vipers. As for the Hebrew language, all who study that become Jew:, immediately." — Sismondi, Histoire des Francaise, T. XVI. p. 364, cited in Michelet's Hist. Luther.

GERMAN LITERATURE 469

as they are — Germans, who dwell in the clouds, and are only fitted by divine grace to smoke tobacco and make dictionaries? Out upon the thought!"

No doubt this decision is quite as wise as that pro- nounced so gravely by conservatives and alarmists of the middle ages. " Would you have me try the crim- inal before I pass sentence? " said the Turkish justice; " that were a waste of words and time, for if I should condemn him after examination, why not before, and so save the trouble of looking into the matter? " Cer- tainly the magistrate was wise, and Avherever justice is thus administered the traditional complaint of the " law's delay " will never dare lift up its voice. Honor to the Turkish judge and his swift decision; long may it be applied to German literature. Certainly it is better that ninety-and-nine innocent persons should suffer outrageous torture than that one guilty should escape. Why should not public opinion lay an em- bargo on German works as on India crackers, or for- bid their sale? Certainly it costs more labor to read them than the many excellent books in the mother tongue. No doubt a ready reader would go over the whole ninety-eight volumes of Sir Walter Scott in less time tlian he could plod through and master the single obstinate book of Kant's Kritik of the Pure Reason. Stewart, and Brown, and Reid, and Paley, and Thomas Dick, and Abcrcrombie, are quite easy reading. They trouble no man's digestion, though he read them after dinner, with his feet on the fender. Are not these writers, with their illustrious progenitors, successors, and coadjutors, sufficient for all practical purposes? Why, then, allow our studious youth in colleges and log-cabins to pore over Leibnitz and Hegel till they think themselves blind, and the red rose yields to the white on their cheek?

470 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

In the name of good sense, we would ask if English literature, with the additions of American genius, is not rich enough without our going to the Hercynian forest, where the scholars do not think but only dream? Not to mention Milton, and Shakespeare, and Bacon, — names confessedly without parallel in the history of thought,- — have we not surpassed the rest of the world in each department of science, literature, philosophy, and theology? Whence comes the noble array of scien- tific works that connect general laws with single facts, and reveal the mysteries of nature? Whence come the most excellent works in poetry, criticism, and art? Whence the profound treatises on ethics and meta- physics? Whence the deep and wide volumes of the- ology, the queen of all sciences? Whence come works on the classics of Greece and Rome? Whence histories of all the chief concerns of man? Do they not all come, in this age, from England and our own bosom? What need have we of asking favors from the Ger- mans, or of studying their literature? As the mid- dle-age monks said of the classics,- — Anathema sit. It is certainly right that the ghost of terror, like Mr. Littlefaith in the stor}', should cross itself in presence of such a spirit, and utter its Apage Sathanas. Such an anathema would, no doubt, crush the Monadnoc — or a sugar-plum.

But let us come out of this high court of Turkish justice, and for a moment look German literature in the face, and allow it to speak for itself. To our ap- prehension, German literature is the fairest, the rich- est, the most original, fresh and religious literature of all modern times. We say this advisedly. We do not mean to say Germany has produced the greatest poetic genius of all modern times. It has no Shake-

GERMAN LITERATURE 471

speare, as the world has but one in whom the poetic spirit seems to culminate, though it will doubtless rise higher in better ages. But we sometimes hear it said, admitting the excellence of two or three German writers, yet their literature is narrow, superficial and poor, when compared with that of England. Let us look at the facts, and compare the two in some points. Classical taste and culture have long been the boast of England. There is a wealth of classical allusion in her best writers, which has an inexpressible charm, and forms the chief minor grace in many a work of poetic art. Classical culture is the pride, we take it, of her two " ancient and honorable universities," and their spirit prevails everywhere in the island. The English scholar is proud of his " quantity," and the correctness of his quotations from Seneca and Demos- thenes. But from what country do we get editions of the classics that are worth the reading, in which modern science and art are brought to bear on the an- cient text.'* What country nurtures the men that illus- trate Ilomer, Herodotus, the Anthology of Planudes, and the dramatic poets.'' Who explain for us the an- tiquities of Atliens, and write minute treatises on the law of inheritance, the castes, tribes, and manners of the men of Attica.'' Who collect all the necessary facts, and reproduce the ideas lived out, consciously or unconsciously, on the banks of the Eurotas, the Nile, or the Alpheus? Why, the Germans. We do not hesitate to say, that in the present century not a ■Greek or a Roman classic has been tolerably edited in England, except through the aid of some German scholar. The costly editions of Greek authors that come to us from Oxford and London, beautiful reprints of Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Euri^iidcs, Sophocles,

472 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

yEsch3'lus, Herodotus, the Attic orators, and Plotinus — all these are the work of German erudition, German toil, German genius sometimes. The wealthy island- ers, proud of their classic culture, furnish white paper and luminous type ; but the curious diligence that never tires, the profound knowledge and philosophy which brings the whole light of Grecian genius to illuminate a smgle point, — all this is German, and German solely. Did it not happen within ten years that the translation of a German work containing some passages in Greek, incoiTectly pointed in the original edition, and, there- fore, severely censured at home, was about being pub- lished in Edinburgh, and no man could be found in the Athens of the North, and " no man in all Scotland," who could correctly accent the Greek words.'' The fact must be confessed. So the book was sent to its author, — a Professor of Theology, — and he put it into the hands of one of his pupils, and the work was done. These things are trifles, but a straw shows which way the stream runs, when a mill-stone would not. Whence come even the grammars and lexicons of almost universal use in studying the ancient authors.'' The name of Reimer, and Damm, and Schneider, and Biittman, and Passow, give the answer. Where are the English classical scholars in this century who take rank with Wolf, Heyne, Schweighauser, Wyttenbach, Boeckh, Herrmann, Jacobs, Siebelis, Hoffman, Sieben- kis, Miiller, Creutzer, Wellauer, and Ast.'' Nay, where shall we find the rivals of Dindorf, Schafer, Stallbaum, Spitzner, Bothe and Bekker, and a host more.'' for we have only written down those which rushed into our mind. What English name of the present century can be mentioned with the least of these.'' Not one. They labor, and we may enter into their labors.

GERMAN LITERATURE 473

if we are not too foolish. Who write ancient history like Niebiihr, and Miiller, and Schlosser? But for the Germans the English would have believed till this day, perhaps, all the stories of Livy, that it rained stones, and oxen spoke, for so it was written in Latin, and the text was unimpeachable.

But some may say, these are not matters of primary concern ; in things of " great pith and moment " we are superior to these Teutonic giants. Would it were so. Perhaps in some of the physical sciences the Eng- lish surpass their German friends, though even here we have doubts which are strengthened every month. One would expect the most valuable works on physical geography from England ; but we are disappointed, and look in vain for any one to rival Rittcr, or even ]\Iannert. In works of general civil and political his- tory in the present century, though we have two emi- nent historians in our own country, one of whom must take rank with Thucydides and Tacitus, Gibbon and Hume, England has nothing to equal the great works of Von Hammer, Wilkins, and Schlosser. Why need we mention the German histories of inventions, of art, of each science, of classical education, of literature in general.'' Why name their histories of philosophy, from Brucker down to Brandis and Michclet.'^ In English, we have but Stanley, good in his time, and valuable even now, and Enfield, a poor compiler from Brucker. The Germans abound in histories of liter- ature, from the beginning of civilization down to the last Leipsic fair. In England such works are un- known. We have as yet no history of our own liter- ature, though the Germans have at least one, quite readable and instructive. Even the dry and defective book of Mr. Hallam, — for such it is with all its many

474 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

excellencies, — is drawn largely from its German prede- cessors, though it is often inferior to them in vigor, and almost always in erudition and in eloquence.

Doubtless, the English are a very learned people ; a very Christian people likewise, no doubt. But within the present century, what has been written in the Eng- lish tongue, in any department of theological scholar- ship, which is of value and makes a mark on the age.'' The Bridgewater Treatises, and the new edition of Paley, — we blush to confess it, are the best things. In the criticism and explanation of the Bible, Old Tes- tament or New Testament, what has been written that is worth reading.'' Nothing, absolutely nothing of any permanent value, save some half-dozen of books, it may be, drawn chiefly from German sources. Who have written the grammars and lexicons by which the Hebrew and Greek Testaments are read.^ Why, the Germans. Who have written critical introductions to the Bible, useful helps in studying the sacred let- ters.'' Why, the Germans. Who have best and alone developed the doctrines of the Bible, and explained them, philosophically and practically.'' Why, the Ger- mans again. Where are the men who shall stand up in presence of Gesenius, Fiirst, Schleusner, and Wahl; Winer, and Ewald, and Nordheimer; Michaelis, Eich- horn, Jahn and Bertholdt, Hug and De Wette ; the Rosenmiillers, Maurer, Umbreit, Credner, Paulus, Kui- noel, Fritzsche, Von Meyer, Liicke, Olshausen, Heng- stenberg and Tholuck, and take rank as their peers? We look for them, but in vain. " We put our finger on them, and they are not there." What Avork on the- ology which has deserved or attracted general notice, has been written in English in the present century.'' We know of none. In Germany such works are nu-

GERMAN LITERATURE 475

merous. They have been written by pious men, and the profoundest scholars of the age. Wegscheider's Theology is doubtless a poor work ; but its equal is nowhere to be found in the English tongue. Its equal, did we say.'* There is nothing that can pretend to ap- proach it. Where, then, shall we find rivals for such theologians as Animon, Hase, Daub, Baumgarten, Crusius, Schleiermacher, Bretschneidcr, and De Wette.'' even for Zacharia^, Yatke, and Kaiser.''

In ecclesiastical history everybody knows what sort of works have proceeded from the English and Ameri- can scholars. Jortin, Milncr, Priestley, Campbell, Echard, Erskine, Jones, Waddington, and Sabine ; these are our writers. But what are their works? They are scarcely known in the libraries of scholars. For our knowledge of eccelsiastical history we depend on the translations from Du Pin, and Tillemont, or more generally on those from the German Mosheim and Gieseler. All our English ecclesiastical historians, what are they when weighed against INIosheim, the Walchs, Vater, Gieseler, Schrockh, Planck, Muenscher, Tzschirner, and Neandcr.'' Why, they might make sumptuous repasts on the crumbs which fall from these men's table. The Germans publish the Fathers of the Greek and Latin Church, and study them. To the English they are almost " a garden shut up and a fountain sealed." It is only the Germans in this age who study theology, or even the Bible, with the aid of enlightened and scientific criticism. There is not even a history of theology in our language.

But this is not all, by no means the chief merit of the German scholars. Within less than threescore years there have appeared among them four philoso- phers who would have been conspicuous in any age, and

476 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

will hereafter, Ave think, be named with Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, and Leibnitz — among the great thinkers of the wrold. They are Kant, Fichte, Schell- ing, and Hegel. Silently these lights arose and went up the sky without noise, to take their place among the fixed stars of genius, and shine with them; names that will not fade out of heaven until some ages shall have passed away. These men were thinkers all ; deep, mighty thinkers. They knelt reverently down before nature with religious hearts, and asked her questions. They sat on the brink of the well of truth, and contin- ued to draw for themselves and the world. Take Kant alone, and in the whole compass of thought we scarce know his superior. From Aristotle to Leibnitz we do not find his equal. No, nor since Leibnitz. Need we say it.'' Was there not many a Lord Bacon in Im- manuel Kant.'* Leibnitz himself was not more capa- cious, nor the Stagyrite more profovmd. What revo- lutions are in his thoughts ! His books are battles. Philosophical writers swarm in Germany. Philosophy seems epidemic almost, and a score of first-rate Ameri- can, or half a dozen English, reputations might be made out of any of their philosophical writers of fourth or fifth magnitude. Here, one needs very little schol- arship to establish a name. A small capital suffices for the outfit, for the credit system seems to prevail in the literary as well as the commercial world ; and one can draw on the bank of possibilities, as well as the fund of achievements. One need but open any number of the Berlin Jahrbiicher, the Jena Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung, or the Studicn und Kritiken, to see what a lofty spirit prevails among the Germans in philosophy, criticism, and religion. There a great deal is taken for granted, and supposed to be known to all readers,

GERMAN LITERATURE 477

which licre is not to be supposed, except of a very few, the most learned. Philosophy and theology we reckon as tlie j)ri(le of the Germans. Here their genius bursts into bloom, and ripens into fruit. But they are greatly eminent, likewise, in the departments of poetry and elegant letters in general. Notwithstanding their wealth of erudition, they are eminently original. Scandinavia and the East, Greece and the middle ages, all pour their treasures into the lap of the German nmsc, who not only makes trinkets therefrom, but out of her own stores of linen, and wool, and silk, spins and weaves strong and beautiful apparel for all her household, and the needy ever3'where. " She maketh herself coverings of tapestry ; her clothing is silk and purple." No doubt, among the Germans there is a host of servile imitators, whose mind travels out of it- self, so to say, and makes pilgrimages to Dante, or Shakespeare, or Pindar, or Thucydides. Some men think they are ver}^ Shakespeares, because they trans- gress obvious rules. The sickly negations of Byron, his sensibility, misanthropy, and affectation, are aped every day in Berlin and Vienna. Horace and Swift, Anacreon and Bossuet, and Seneca and Walter Scott, not to name others, have imitators in every street, who remind one continually of the wren that once got into the eagle's nest, set up to bo king of the birds, and attempted a scream. Still the staple of their literature is eminently original. In point of freshness it has no equal since the da^s of Sophocles. Who shall match with Wieland, and Lessing, the Schlegels, Herder, so sweet and beautiful, Jean-Paul, Tieck, and Schiller, and Goethe.'' We need not mention lesser names, nor add more of their equals.

In what we have said, we would not underrate Eng-

478 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

lish literature, especially the works of former ages. We would pay deep and lasting homage to the great poets, historians, philosophers, and divines of the mother country, in her best days. Their influence is still fresh and living throughout the world of letters. But as these great spirits ascended, the mantle of their genius or inspiration has fallen on the Germans, and not the English. Well says a contemporary, " Mod- ern works are greatly deficient both in depth and purity of sentiment. They seldom contain original and strik- ing views of the nature of man, and of the institutions which spring from his volition. There is a dearth of thought and sterility of sentiment among us. Liter- ature, art, philosophy, and life, are without freshness, ideality, verity, and spirit. Most works since the days of Milton require little thought ; they want depth, freshness ; the meaning is on the surface ; and the charm, if any, is no deeper than the fancy ; the imagi- nation is not called into life ; the thoughts are carried creepingly along the earth, and often lost amid the low and uncleanly things of sense and custom." " I do not, at this time, think of any writer since Milton, excepting Coleridge and Wordsworth, whose works require a serene and thoughtful spirit in order to be understood." *

As little would we be insensible to the merits of the rising literature of our own land. Little could be ex- pected of us, hitherto. Our business has been to hew down the forest ; to make paths and saw-mills, railroads and steamboats ; to lay the foundation of a great peo- ple, and provide for the emergencies of the day. As yet there is no American literature which corresponds to the first principles of our institutions, as the Eng-

*A. B. Alcott in " Record of a School."

GERMAN LITERATURE 479

lish or French literature coiTesponds to theirs. We are, perhaps, yet too young and raw to carry out the great American idea, either ir hterature or society. At present both are imitations, and seem rather the result of foreign and accidental circumstances, than the offspring of our own spirit. No doubt the time will come when there shall be an American school in science, letters, and the elegant arts. Certainly, there is none now. The promise of it must be sought in our news- papers and speeches oftencr than in our books. Like all other nations we have begun with imitations, and shall come to originals, doubtless, before we end.

But there is one peculiar charm in German litera- ture quite unequalled, we think, in modern days, that is, the religious character of their works. We know it is often said the Germans are licentious, immoral in all ways, and above all men, — not the old giants ex- cepted,— are haters of religion. One would fancy Mezentius " or Goliah was the archetype of the nation. We say it advisedly that this is, in our opinion, the most religious literature the world has seen since the palmy days of Greek writing, when the religious spirit seemed fresh and warm, coming into life and playing grateful with the bland celestial light reflected from each flower-cup and passing cloud, or received direct and straightway from the source of all. It stands an unconscious witness to the profound piety of the Ger- man heart. We had almost said it was the only Chris- tian national literature the world has ever seen. Cer- tainly, to our judgment, the literature of Old England in her best days was less religious in thought and feel- ing, as it was less beautiful in its form, and less simple in its quiet loving holiness, than this spontaneous and multiform expression of the German soul. But we

480 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

speak not for otlicrs, let each di'Ink of " that spiritual rock " where the water is most salubrious to him. But we do not say that German literature comprises no works decidedly immoral and irreligious. Certainly we have read such, but they are rare, while almost every book not entirely scientific and technical breathes a religious spirit. You meet this coming unobtru- sively upon 3^ou where you least of all expect it. We do not say, that the idea of a Christian literature is realized in Germany, or likely to be realized. No, the farthest from it possible. No nation has yet dreamed of realizing it. Nor can this be done until Christian- ity penetrates the heart of the nations, and brings all into subjection to the spirit of life. The Christianity of the world is yet but a baptized heathenism, so lit- erature is yet heathen and profane. We dare not think lest we think against our faith. As if truth were hostile to faith, and God's house were divided against itself. The Greek literature represents the Greek religion, its ideal and its practical side. But all the literature of all Christian nations, taken to- gether, does not represent the true Christian religion, only that fraction of it these nations could translate into their experience. Hence, we have as yet only the cradle song of Christianity and its nursery rhymes. The same holds true in art, — painting, sculpture, and architecture. Hitherto it is only the church militant, not the church triumphant, that has been represented. A Gothic cathedral gives you the aspiration, not the attainment, the resting in the fulness of God which is the end of Christianity. We have Magdalens, Ma- donnas, saints emaciated almost to anatomies, with most rueful visage, and traditional faces of the Sav- ior. These, however, express the penitence, the wail-

GERMAN LITERATURE 481

ing of the world lying in darkness, rather than the light of the nations. The Son of Man risen from the grave is yet lacking in art. The Christian Prome- theus or Apollo is not yet ; still less the triple Graces, and the Olympian Jove of Christianity. What is Saint Peter's to the Parthenon, considered as symbols of the two religions.'' The same deficiency prevails in literature. We have inherited much from the heathen, and so Christianity, becoming the residuary legatee of deceased religions, has earned but little for itself. His- tory has not yet been written in the spirit of the Christian scheme ; as a friend sa3's, hitherto it has been the " history of elder brothers." Christianity would write of the whole family. The great Christian poem, the Tragedy of IMankind, has not yet been conceived. A Christian philosophy founded on an exhaustive ana- lysis of man is among the things that are distant. The true religion has not yet done its work in the heart of the nations. How, then, can it reach their literature, their arts, their society, which come from the nation's heart? Christianity is still in the manger, wrapped in swaddling-bands, and unable to move its limbs. Its Jewish parent watches fearful, with a pondering heart. The shepherds that honor the new-born are Jewish still, dripping as yet with the dews of ancient night. The heathen magicians have come up to worship, guided by the star of truth which goes before all simple hearts, and lighteth every man that cometh into the world. But they are heathen even now. They can only offer " gold, and frankincense, and myrrh." They do not give their mind, and still less their heart. The celes- tial child is still surrounded by the oxen that slumber in their stalls, or wake to blame the light that pre- vents their animal repose. The Herod of superstition

n— 31

482 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

is troubled, and his city with him. Alarmed at the new tidings, he gathers together his mighty men, his chief priests and scribes, to take counsel of his twin prophets, the flesh and the devil, and while he pre- tends to seek only to worship, he would gladly slay the young child, that is born king of the world. But Christianity will yet grow up to manhood, and escape the guardianship of traditions, to do the work God has chosen. Then, and not till then, will the gospel of beautiful souls, fair as the light, and " terrible as an army with banners," be written in the literature, arts, society, and life of the world. Now when we say that German literature is religious, above all others, we mean that it comes nearer than any other to the Chris- tian ideal of literary art. Certainly it by no means reaches the mark.

Such, then, is German literature. Now, with those among us who think nothing good can come of it, we have nothing to say. Let them rejoice in their own cause, and be blessed in it. But from the influence this rich, beloved, and beautiful literature will exert on our infant world of letters, we hope the most happy results. The diligence which shuns superficial study ; the boldness which looks for the causes of things, and the desire to fall back on what alone is elementary and eternal, in criticism, philosophy, and religion ; the re- ligious humility and reverence which pervades it, — may well stimulate our youth to great works. We would not that any one should give in his adhesion to a German master or copy German models. All have their defects. We wonder that clear thinkers can write so darkly as some do, and that philosophers and theologians are content with their slovenly paragraphs, after Goethe has written such luminous prose. We

GERMAN LITERATURE 483

doubt that their philosophical or theological systems can ever take root in the American mind. But their method may well be followed ; and fortunate will it be for us if the central truths their systems are made to preserve are sown in our soil, and bear abundant fruit. No doubt there is danger in studying these writings ; just as there is danger in reading Copernicus or Locke, Aristotle or Lord Brougham, or Isaiah and St. John. As a jocose friend says, " It is always dangerous for a young man to think, for he may think wrong, you know." It were sad to see men run mad after Ger- man phllosoph}' ; but it is equally sad to see them go to the same excess in English philosophy. If " Trans- cendentalism " is bad, so is Paleyism and Materialism. Truth is possessed entire by no sect, German or Eng- lish. It requires all schools to get at all truth, as the whole church is needed to preach the whole Gospel. Blessed were the days when truth dwelt among men in her wholeness. But alas ! they only existed in fable, and now, like Osiris in the story, she is cut into frag- ments and scattered world-wide, and sorrowing mor- tals must journey their life long to gather here a piece and there a piece. But the whole can never be joined and reanimated in this life. Where there is much thought there will be some truth, and where there is freedom in thinking there is room for misconduct also. We hope light from Germany ; but we expect shadows with it. The one will not eclipse the sun, nor the other be thicker than the old darkness we have " felt " from our youth up. We know there is sin among the Germans ; it is so wherever there are men and women. Philosophy, in Germany or England, like the stout man a-journeying, advances from day to day ; but sometimes loses the track and wanders, " not

484 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

knowing whither lie goeth ;" nay, sometimes stumbles into a ditch. When this latter accident, — as it is con- fessed,— has befallen philosophy in America and Eng- land, and men declare she is stark dead, we see not why her friends might not call on her German sister to extricate her from the distress and revive her once more, or at least give her decent burial. We are sorry, we confess it, to see foolish young men, and old men not burthened with wisdom, trusting wholly in a man, thinking as he thinks, and moving as he pulls the strings. It is dangerous to yield thus to a German or a Scotch philosopher. It were bad to be borne off on a cloud by Fichte and Hegel, or to be made " spouse of the worm and brother of the clay " by Priestley or Paley. But we fancy it were better to fall into the hands of Jove than Pluto. We cannot predict the re- sult of the German movement in philosophy ; but we see no more reason for making Henry Heine, Gutzkow, and Schefer the exponents of that movement, — as the manner of some is, — than for selecting Bulwer, Byron, Moore, and Taylor the infidel, to represent the church of England. Seneca and Petronius were both Roman men, but which is the type.-^ Let German literature be weighed in an even balance, and then pass for what it is worth. We have no fear that it will be written down, and should be sorry to see any exaggerated statement of its excellence which would in the end lead to disappointment.

We turn now to the book named at the head of our article. The author's design is to give a picture of German literature. His work does not pretend to be a history, nor to point out the causes which have made the literature what it is. His aim is to write of subjects rather than to talk about books. His work

GERMAN LITERATURE 485

is merely a picture. Since this is so its character de- pends on two things, namely, the artist's point of sight, and the fidelity with which he has painted things as they appear from that point. The first question then is, from what point does he survey the field.'' It is not that of philosophy, theology, or politics. He is no adept in either of these sciences. He is emi- nently national, and takes the stand of a German ama- teur. Therefore it is his duty to paint things as they appear to a disinterested German man of letters ; so he must treat of religion, philosophy, education, his- tory, politics, natural science, poetry, law, and criti- cism, from this point of view. It would certainly re- quire an encyclopedical head to discuss ably all these subjects, and bring them down to the comprehension of the unlearned. It was scarcely to be expected that any one man should be so familiar with all departments of thought in a literature so wide and rich as this, as never to make mistakes, and even great mistakes. But ]\Ir. Menzel ^ docs not give us a faithful picture of things as seen from this position, as we shall pro- ceed to show in some details. He carries with him violent prejudices, which either blind his eyes to the truth or prevent him from representing it as it is. On his first appearance, his unmanly hostility to Goethe began to show itself.* Nay, it appeared, we are told, in his Streckverse, published a little before. This hostility amounts to absolute hatred, we think, not only of the works, but of the man himself. This animosity towards distinguished authors vitiates the whole work. Personal feelings and prepossessions perpetually in-

* Europaischen Blattern for 1854, I. B. p. 101 — 108, and IV., p. 233, seq. But these we have never seen, and only a few stray numbers of the Literatur-Blatt.

486 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

terrupt the cool judgment of the critic. When a Avriter attempts, as Menzel does, to show that an au- thor who has a reputation which covers the world, and rises higher and higher each year, who is distinguished for the breadth of his studies and the newness of his vicAvs, and his exquisite taste in all matters of art, is only a humbug, what can we do but smile, and ask if effects come without causes? Respecting this hostil- ity to Goethe, insane as it obviously is, Ave have noth- ing to say. Besides, the translator has ably referred to the matter in the preface. That Goethe as a man was selfish to a very high degree, a debauchee and well-bred epicurean, who had little sympathy with what was highest in man, so long as he could crown himself with rose-buds, we are willing to admit. But let him have justice, none the less. Mr. Menzel sets up a false standard by which to judge literary pro- ductions.

Philosophy, ethics, art, and literature should be judged of by their own laws. We would not censure the Laocoon because it did not teach us agriculture, nor the Iliad because it was not repub- lican enough for our taste. Each of these works is to be judged by its own principles. Now, we object to our friend, that he judges literary works by the po- litical complexion of their author. Thus, for exam- ple, not to mention Goethe, he condemns Johann von Miiller, — whom, as a Swiss, he was not bound to men- tion among German writers, — and all his works, be- cause he M as no patriot. For him, " of all the Gemian writers, I entertain the profoundest contempt." No doubt the venerable historian, as some one has said, would be overAvhelmcd as he stands in the Elysian fields with Tacitus and Thucydides, to be despised

GERMAN LITERATURE 487

by such an liistorian as Menzel ! * So Krug is con- demned, not for his fustincss and supcrficiahty, but because he wrote against the Poles. It is surprising to what a length this is carried. He ought to con- demn the " Egoism " of Fichte no less than that of Hegel. But because the former is a liberal and the latter a conservative, the same thing is tolerated in the one and condemned in the other. Words cannot ex- press his abhorrence of Hegel. Fries is commended as a philosopher because he was " almost the only true patriot among our philosophers." Okcn must not be reproached with his coarse materialism, because he re- signed his professorship at Jena rather than give up his liberal journal. These few instances are sufficient to show the falseness of his standard.

He indulges in personal abuse ; especially does he pour out the vials of his calumny on the " young Ger- mans," whom he censures for their personal abuse. He seems to have collected all the " little city twad- dle," as the Germans significantly name it, as mate- rial for his work, and very striking are the colors, in- deed. His abuse of this kind is so gross that we shall say no more of it.f Mr. Menzel is the Ber- serker of modern critics. He scorns all laws of lit- erary warfare; scalps, and gouges, and stabs under the fifth rib, and sometimes condescends to tell a little fib, as we shall show in its place. He often tries the works he censures by a moral, and not a critical or artistic standard. No doubt, the moral is the high- est ; and a work of art wlicrcin tlic moral element is wanting deserves the severest censure. No man can

• See an able defence of Von Miillcr, in Strauss's Streit- schriften, Heft 2. Tiil>ingen: 1837. p. 100.

t Read who will, Vol. III. p. 22%, for an example.

488 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

insist on this too strongly. But when a man writes from the artistic point of view, we think it is his duty to adhere to his principles. If a work is immoral, it is so far false to the first principles of art. It does very little good, we fancy, merely to cry out that this book of Gutzkow, or that of Goethe, is im- moral. It only makes foolish young men the more easfer to read it. But if the critic would show that the offending parts were false, no less than wicked, and mere warts and ulcers on the body of the work, he would make the Avhole appear loathsome and not attractive. Mr. Menzel is bound to do this, for he believes that the substance and the form of art are inseparable, or in plain English, that virtue is beauti- ful and vice ugly. Having made this criticism, he might justly pronounce the moral sentence also. If truth is harmonious, then a licentious work is false and detestable, as well in an artistic as in a moral point of view. But we cannot enlarge on this great question at the end of an article.

Judging INIenzel from his own point of view, this work is defective in still graver points. He carries his partisan feelings wherever he goes, and with very su- perficial knowledge passes a false sentence on great men and great things. His mistakes are sometimes quite amusing, even to an American scholar, and must be doubly ludicrous to a German, whose minute knowl- edge of the literature of his own country would reveal more mistakes than meet our eye. We will point out a few of these in only two chapters — those on philos- ophy and religion. In the first, we think the author may safely defy any one to divine from his words the philosophical systems of the writers he treats of. Take, for a very striking example, his remarks upon

GERMAN LITERATURE 489

Leibnitz. " The great Leibnitz, who stood on the boundary hne between the old times of astrology, magic, and sympathetic influences, and the later times of severe scientific method, united the labyrinth of life belonging to these austere dark days with the clear light of our own. He was animated with deep re- ligious faith, but still had the full vigor of thought. Living faith in God was his rock ; but his system of world-harmony * showed nothing of the darkly-colored cathedral light of the ancient m3'stics ; it stood forth in the clear white light of the day, like a marble tem- ple on the mountain-top." From this statement one would naturally connect Leibnitz with Pythagoras, Kepler, and Baron Swedenborg, who really believed and taught the world-harmony. But who would ever dream of the monads, which play such a part in the system of Leibnitz.? He tells us that Eberhard has written a one-sided and Kantian history of philosophy, which is very strange in a man Avho lived a Wolfian all his days and fought against the critical philosophy, though with somewhat more zeal than knowledge, it is thought. Besides, his history of philosoph^^ was pub- lished in 1788, before the Kantian philosophy had be- come lord of the ascendant. As he criticises poets by the patriotic standard, so he tries the philosophers by his aesthetic rule, and wonders they are hard to under- stand. But these are minor defects ; come we to the greater. His remarks on Kant are exceedingly un- just, not to speak more harshly. " The philosoph- ical century wanted an earth without a heaven, a state without a church, man without a God. No one has

* Mr. Felton has translated Weltharnionie " Preestablished Harmony," which Leibnitz believed in, but it is not the mean- ing of the word.

490 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

shown so plainly as Kant how with this limitation earth may still be a paradise, the state a moral union, and man a noble being, by his own reason and power, subjected to law." We do not see how any one could come to this conclusion Avho had read Kant's Kritik of Judgment, and Practical Reason, and conclude our critic, forgetting to look into these books, in his ab- horrence of scholastic learning and " study that makes men pale," cut the matter short, and rode over the " high priori road " in great state to the conclusion. We pass over his account of Fichte and Schelling, leav- ing such as have the ability to determine, from his remarks, what were the systems of these two philoso- phers, and reconstruct them at their leisure. There is an old remark we have somewhere heard, that it takes a philosopher to judge a philosopher; and the truth of the proverb is very obvious to the readers of this chapter. Hegel seems the object of our author's most desperate dislike. His sin, however, is not so much his philosophy as his conservative politics, as it ap- pears. He does not condescend — as an historian might do once in a while — to give us a portrait, or even a caricature of his system ; but contents himself with such abuse as the following precious sentences. " Hegel first reduced God to a mere speculation, led about by an evil spirit, in the void of his heavenly heath, who does nothing but think, indeed, nothing but think of thinking." " He makes no distinction between himself and God ; he gives himself out for God." He says God first came to a clear conscious- ness of himself " in the philosopher who has the only right philosophy, therefore in himself, in the person of Hegel. Thus we have, then, a miserable, hunch- backed, book-learned God ; a wooden and squinting

GERMAN LITERATURE 491

academical man, a man of the most painful and pomp- ous scholasticism ; in a word, a German pedant on the throne of the world." We need make no comments on the spirit which suggests such a criticism upon a philosopher like Hegel. Still further, he says, Forster " declared over the grave of Hegel that, beyond all doubt, Hegel was himself the Holy Ghost, the third person in the Godhead." When we read this several years ago, we believed the words were uttered by some man of an Oriental imagination, who meant no harm by his seeming irreverence. But on inquiry we find it is not so. One who heard Mr. Forster's oration, who had it lying before him in print at the time of writ- ing, declares there was no such thing in it, but the strongest passage was this : " Was it not he who rec- onciled the unbelievers with God, inasmuch as he taught us truly to understand Jesus Christ." *

But enough on this subject. Let us say a word re- specting the chapter on religion, more particularly on that part relating to theology. Here the learned au- thor's abhorrence of book-learning is more conspicuous than elsewhere, though obvious enough in all parts of the book. We pass over the first part of the chapter, — which contains some very good things that will come to light in spite of the smart declamations in which they are floating, — and proceed to his account of Catholicism in Germany. Here, in a work on Ger- man literature, we naturally expect a picture of the Catholic theology, at least a reference to the chief Catholic writers in this department. But we are dis- appointed again. We find declamations and anecdotes well fitted for the Penny INIagazine, as a German critic says, to whom we are indebted for some hints on this

• Strauss, ubi sup., p. 212, 213.

492 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

topic. He throws together such remarks as would make excellent and smart paragraphs in a newspaper ; but gives no calm, philosophical view of the subject. He can enlarge on the Jesuits or Janscnists, on the influence of Kant's and Schelling's j)hilosophy, and the reaction in favor of Catholicism, for these subjects are in all mouths ; but he scarce looks at the great philosophical question on which the whole matter hinges. His acquaintance with modern Catholic writ- ers seems to be as narrow as his philosophy is super- ficial. Gunther, Pabst, Mohler, Singler, Stauden- maier, Klee, and Hermes, have escaped the sharp glance of our author. In the portion of the chapter which relates to Protestantism we find the same defects. The sketch of the history of theology since Luther is hasty and inaccurate. It docs not give the reader a clear conception of the progress of ideas. He makes some amusing misrepresentations, to which we will only refer. Among the most celebrated of German preachers since the middle of the last century, he for- gets to mention Teller, Loffler, ZollikofFer, Lavater, Herder, Tzschirner, Schmalz, Rohr, Zimmermann, De Wette, Marheineke, Nitzsch, Tholuck, Ehrenberg, Strauss, Reinhard, Therimin, Couard, Lisco, and many others of equal fame. INIosheim is mentioned as a dis- tinguished writer on morals. Amnion and Bretschneider are dispatched in a word. Wctstein is mentioned among the followers of Erncsti and Semler, and is put after Eichhorn, tliough he died only two years after the latter was born. But it is an ungrateful task to point out these defects. Certainly we should not name them, if there were great and shining excel- lencies beside. But they are not to be found. The chapter gives a confused jumble of ideas, and not a

GERMAN LITERATURE 49S

true picture. True, it contains passages of great force and beauty, but tlirougliout the whole section, order and method, accurate knowledge and an impar- tial spirit, are grievously wanting. Wlio would guess what great things had been done in Biblical criticism from Mr. Menzel's words? Who would know that De Wctte had written profound works in each of the four great departments of theology ; indeed, that he wrote anything but a couple of romances.'' But we are weary with this fault-finding. However, one word must be said by way of criticism upon his standing point itself. German literature is not to be surveyed by an amateur merely. The dilettanti has no rule and compasses in his pocket by which he can measure all the objects in this German ocean of books. No doubt, histories of literature have hitherto been too often " written in the special interest of scholastic learning," and are antiquarian lists of books and not living histories. It is certainly well to write a his- tory of literature so that all men may read. But it would require a most uncommon head to treat ably of all departments of literature and science. In one word, it is quite impossible to judge all by one rule. The writer, therefore, must change his position as often as he changes the subject. He must write of matters pertaining to religion with the knowledge of a theologian, on philosophical subjects like a philoso- pher, and so of the rest. Any attempt to describe them all from one point of sight seems as absurd as to reckon pounds, shillings, and pence, and drachms, ounces, quarters, and tons in the same column. A sketch of German theological literature ought to tell what has been done and what is now doing by Protes- tants and Catholics in the four great departments of

494. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

exegeticaL historical, systematic, and practical the- ology. It should put us in possession of the idea, which lies at the bottom of Catholicism and Protestant- ism, and tell what form this idea assumes, and why it takes this form and no other. But to this Mr. Menzel makes no pretension. He has not the requisite knowledge for this. His learning seems gathered from reviews, newspapers, the conversations-lexicon, literary gossip, and a very perfunctory perusal of many books. The whole work lacks a plan. There is no unity to the book. It seems a compilation of ar- ticles, written hastily in the newspapers, and designed for immediate effect. So the spirit of the partisan appears everywhere. We have declamation instead of matter-of-fact and cool judgment. Still the work is quite entertaining. Its author, no doubt, passes for a man of genius ; but, as a friend says, who rarely judges wrong, " he has more show than sinew, and makes up in smartness what he wants in depth." We are glad to welcome the book in its English dress, but we hope it will be read with caution, as a guide not to be trusted. Its piquant style and " withering sar- casm " remind us often of Henry Heine and the young Germans, with whom the author would not wish to be classed. We think it will not give a true idea of the German mind and its workings to the mere English reader, or aid powerfully the student of German to find his way amid that labyrinthian literature. The book is very suggestive, if one will but follow out the author's hints, and avoid his partialities and extrava- gance.

Professor Felton ^ seems to have performed the work of translation with singular fidelity. His version is uncommonly idiomatic and fresh. It reads like

GERMAN LITERATURE 496

original English. But here and there we notice a slight verbal inaccuracy in translating, which scarce any human diligence could avoid.* We regard the version as a nionuuient of diligence and skill. The metrical translations are fresh and spirited.

* It would have been a convenience to the readers, if it had been stated in the preface, that the version was made from the second German edition, pubHshed at Stuttgart, 1835; for the author only treats of things as they were at that time, or be- fore it.

NOTES

NOTES

I

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

This address was delivered at Waterville, Maine, August 8, IS-iO, apparently at the commencement ex- ercises of Colby College. It was published in Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, vol. III., 1852, at the end of that volume, and bore the title of "The Po- sition and Duties of the American Scholar." It was reprinted in Miss Cobbe's edition, volume seven, Dis- courses of Social Science.

Page 6, note 1. The founder of the Hopkins fund was Edward Hopkins, born in Shrewsbury, England, 1600, educated in its Royal Free Grammar School, became a successful London merchant, turned Puritan, migrated to New England, joined in the settlement of Connecticut, was secretary of the colony, in 1638, and was alternately governor and lieutenant governor from 1640 to about 1655. He went to Eng- land in 1653, and died in London, March, 1657. In his will he left his estate in New England, valued at about £20,000, after the decease of his wife, "for the breeding of hopeful youths both at the grammar school and college for the better service of the country in future times." About £1,000 went to the grammar schools of Hartford, New Haven, and Hadley. By a decree in chauncery £500 went to Harvard College in 1710. This money was invested in the purchase of a township belonging to the "praying Indians," now comprising Hopkinton (named after the donor^ and parts of Upton and Holliston, in Worcester county, Massachusetts. Of the money accruing from this land three-fourths went to Harvard College and one- fourth to the Cambridge Grammar School.

499

500 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Page 12, note 2. The political term doughface, meaning a person who is pliable and facing all ways, was first used by John Randolph of Roanoke. He first spelled it doe, using it of those timid persons not having the courage of their convictions. It was ap- plied to northern men friendly to slavery, who were open to political influence, and modified their actions to suit occasions and personal interests. It was also sometimes applied to southern men willing to conciliate the northern demands. During the discussion of the Missouri bill, in 1820, several northern men voted with the southern members of the House, and Randolph called them doughfaces. Another account says that several southern men voted to exclude slavery from the territories, and were called doughfaces by Randolph. He termed this action "a dirty bargain." The atti- tude of Randolph was well expressed in a letter he wrote February 24, 1820: — "These Yankees have almost reconciled me to negi'o slavery. They have produced a revulsion even on my mind; what then must the effect be on them who had no scruples on the subject.^* I am persuaded that the cause of humanity to these unfortunates has been put back a century, certainly a generation, by the unprincipled conduct of ambitious men, availing themselves of a good, as well as a fanatical spirit in the nation." — The Life of John Randolph of Roanoke, by Hugh A. Garland, New York, Appletons, 1850, vol. II, p. 133.

Page 15, note 3. To sign off from the church was a term used in the American colonies during the eighteenth century, after the process had begun that led to the separation of state and church. When a person was no longer willing to continue his connec- tion with the church established by law he could sign a statement requesting that his share of the church tax should be assigned to the congregation of his prefer- ence, which was always one not sanctioned by the state in any other manner.

NOTES 501

" When the legislature at Boston broke in upon their own exempting law, in 1752, the Baptists were so much alarmed as to call several meetings, and to elect John Proctor their agent to carry their case to England ; and he drew a remonstrance upon the sub- ject, which was presented to the Assembly at Boston, in May, 1754. It stated matters so plainly that a motion was made by some to take the signers of it into custody ; but Governor Shirley, newly returned from Europe, convinced them of the impolicy of such a step ; and then they appointed a committee to confer in a friendly way with the Baptists ; and matters were shifted along until the war came on, and their de- sign in England was dropped. At length all their exempting laws for Baptists and Quakers expired, and the Assembly of November 23, 1757, made a new one wherein both denominations were again included in one act. By it no Baptists were to be exempted from min- isterial taxes in the places where they lived, ' but such whose names shall be contained in a list or lists to be taken and exhibited on or before the 20th of July an- nually, to the assessors of such town, district, precinct or parish, and signed by three principal members of the Anabaptist church to which he or they belong, and the minister thereof, if any there be, who shall therein certify that the persons whose names are in- serted in the said list or lists are really belonging thereto, that they verily believe them to be conscien- tiously of their persuasion, and that they frequently and usually attend public worship in said church on the Lord's days.' And the like was required of the Quakers. It w as continued in force thirteen years ; and no tongue nor pen can fully describe all the evils that were practiced under it." — A History of New England, with ])articular reference to the Denomina- tion of Christians called Baptists, bv Isaac Backus. Second ed., 1871, vol. II, pp. 140-14-1. This is one

502 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

instance of many laws enacted in the eighteenth cen- tury, and, up to the time of the separation of church and state in Massachusetts, which took place in 1834. The later laws, which enabled the individual member of a parish to withdraw from the payment of church taxes, established more especially the designation of " signing off."

Page 15, note Jf.. Polk and Taylor were opposed to the United States Bank, and helped to destroy it. Polk opposed its recharter, and in a letter written in 1829 he said he was irreconcilably opposed to the ex- istence of such an institution, denied its constitution- ality and its expediency. He at first favored the State Bank system, but later opposed it in favor of an independent treasury as most desirable for the na- tional government.

Fage 19, note 5. The lyceum was a very important institution for general education at the time this ad- dress was given. It began in 1826 in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and extended widely throughout the country. Many town lyceums were organized, which were combined into county, state, and finally a national organization. In the cities these often took the form of mechanics' institutes. See Cooke's Emerson, and Old South Leaflets, vol. \T, no. 139, pp. 293-312.

Page 20, note 6. Most of the first State Constitu- tions, following the Declaration of Independence, have a Bill of Rights at the beginning, which sets forth fundamental political principles, and guarantees the rights of the individual which it was thought neces- sary to have assured. These rights were those of free press, speech, trial by jury, no oppressive taxation, protection from unwarranted search, habeas corpus, and several others, varying in different States. The National Constitution did not set out with such a guarantee, and this nearly resulted in its failure to secure the necessary majority for its adoption.

NOTES 503

Page '20, note 7. Such metaphysical fruit may be seen not only in the writings of Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins, but in the earlier works of John Wise. Later it appeared in Jonathan INIayhew and Channing. Other names might be mentioned to jus- tify the statement.

Page 26, note 8. " Up for California " refers to the keen interest, at the time this address w'as given, incident to the discovery of gold.

Page 27, note 9. It is not known when the figure of a codfish was first placed over the Speaker's chair in the Massachusetts House of Representatives as em- blematic of the then chief industry of the colony. Tradition carries it back to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was there from 1773, and was transferred to the new house in 1798. In 1895 it was transferred to the then new chamber. See all that is known on the subject in " A History of the Emblem of the Codfish in the Hall of Representatives, compiled b}"^ a Committee of the House," Boston, State Printers, 1895.

Page 31, note 10. In 1849 the four most impor- tant American periodicals were the North American Review, Christian Examiner, Democratic Review, and New Englander. Those of England were the Quar- terly, British and Foreign, Critical, and INIonthly Re- views. Others might be named, but these indicate the force of the comparison.

Page 37, note 11. In 1848 the United States gov- ernment sent the store-ship " Supply " on an expedi- tion to surA'ey the Dead Sea. The commander of the expedition, by whom it was planned, was a lieutenant in the Navy. The results were published in a " Nar- rative of the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea," by W. F. Lynch, U. S. N., Philadelphia, 1849- In the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Ethnology the national govern-

504 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

merit has since clone extended and important work along the lines of research suggested by Parker.

Page 37, note 12. Perhaps the most important of these lives of fugitive slaves was that of Frederick Douglas, whose " Narrative " was published in 18*i5, " My Bondage and My Freedom," 1855, and " Life and Times of Frederick Douglas," 1882. The first of such narratives, however, was " Walker's Appeal," published in Boston in 1829. He was born in Noi-th Carolina of a slave father and free mother, traveled extensively in the South, and knew intimately the condition of the slaves. He kept a shop in Boston for second-hand clothes, and published his own work for free distribution. It created much stir in the South. Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward published his " Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro," in 1855. He was a protege of Gerrit Smith, and was a man of much ability. Rev. W. H. Furness said of one of his ad- dresses, at an anti-slavery meeting in New York, that " his speech was such a strain of eloquence as I never heard excelled before or since." Several other such books were published from 1830 to I860.

Page 38, note 13. Many attempts were made to annex Cuba and other territory to the south of the United States during the period of the anti-slavery agitation, especially after the South learned it could not introduce slavery into the western territories. Most of the histories of the period deal with these attempts.

II

RALPH WALDO EMERSON"

This critical and appreciative survey of the writ- ings of Emerson appeared in the Massachusetts Quar- terly Review for March, 1850. It bore the title of " The Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson." At the head of the article as it appeared in the Review was a

NOTES 505

list of Emerson works wliicli had then been pubhshed, as follows : —

Nature. Boston, 1836, 1 vol. 12mo.

Essa3's. By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Boston, 1841, 1 vol. 12mo.

Essays, Second Series. By Ralph Waldo Emer- son, 1844, 1 vol. 12mo.

Poems. By Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1847, 1 vol. 12mo.

Nature, Addresses and Orations. By Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1849, 1 vol.

Representative JNlen : Seven Lectures. By R. W. Emerson, 1850, 1 vol. 12m.

This review was included by Miss Cobbe in her edi- tion, vol. II, Critical Writings. It has not otlienvisc been reprinted.

An account of the origin and history of the Massa- chusetts Quarterly Review is to be found in the tenth chapter of Weiss's Life and Correspondence, and in Cabot's Emerson. The first number appeared in De- cember, 1847, and it was continued for three years. It was proposed that Emerson should be the editor, but lie wrote only the " Editors' Address " in the first number, and two book reviews in subsequent issues. The other editor was James Elliot Cabot, who wrote Emerson's biography many years after, and edited some of his later volumes. Much of the real work of the Review fell on Parker, and he wrote for nearly every number, furnishing two articles to some issues, and many book reviews to all. Several of his con- tributions to its pages appear in the present volume- Among the WTiters were Lowell, Phillips, Sumner, Weiss, and other liberal men ; but the pay was too small, if anything at all, to command the constant ef- fort of the best talent.

All the biographies of Parker bear testimony to the close relations of Emerson and Parker, and their writ-

506 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ings indicate how wide apart they were in much of their thinking. The words spoken by Emerson in memory of Parker after his death sufficiently prove his regard for his friend. These words were spoken in Music Hall, June 15, 1860, and may be found in the centenary edition of Emerson's works. At a time when Emerson was still condemned and misrep- resented Parker wrote this worthy testimony to his genius, appraising his intellectual qualities and his philosophy of life ; and quoting from him in a manner to attract the attention of those who had not hitherto been drawn to his teachings.

Parker's admiration for Emerson began very early, as is seen in what he wrote in his journal after hear- ing the Divinity School Address.

" Sunday, July 15, 1838. — Proceeded to Cam- bridge to hear the valedictory sermon by Mr. Emer- son. In this he surpassed himself as much as he sur- passes others in the general way. I shall give no abstract. So beautiful, so just, so true, and terribly sublime was his picture of the faults of the church in its present position. My soul is roused, and this week I shall write the long-meditated sermons on the state of the church and the duties of these times."

In his " Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England " Emerson gave a most appreciative and yet critical estimate of Parker and his work, and none more just has been written. In his tribute after Parker's death, he said :

" Theodore Parker was a son of the soil, charged with the energy of New England, strong, eager, in- quisitive of knowledge, of a diligence that never tired, upright, of a haughty independence, yet the gentlest of companions ; a man of study, fit for a man of the world; with decided opinions and plenty of power to state them ; rapidly pushing his studies so far as to leave few men qualified to sit as his critics. He elected

NOTES 507

his part of duty, or accepted nobly that assigned him in his rare constitution- Wonderful acquisition of knowledge, a rapid wit that heard all, and welcomed all that came, by seeing its bearing. . . . He had a strong understanding, a logical method, a love for facts, a rapid eye for their historic relations, and a skill in stripping them of traditional lustres. He had a sprightly fancy, and often amused himself with throwing his meaning into pretty apologues ; yet we can hardly ascribe to his mind the poetic element, though his scholarship had made him a reader and quoter of verses."

In view of the high praise of Emerson in this tribute it is most interesting to consider what he says in de- preciation of what he regards as Parker's tendency to overpraise his friends : " He never kept back the truth for fear to make an enemy. But, on the other hand, it was complained that he was bitter and harsh, that his zeal bunied with too hot a flame. It is so difficult, in evil times, to escape this charge ! for the faithful preacher most of all. It was his merit, like Luther, Knox, and Latimer, and John Baptist, to speak tart truth, when that was peremptory and when there were few to say it. But his sympathy for goodness was not less energetic. One fault he had, he overestimated his friends, — I may well say it, — and sometimes vexed them with the importunity of his good opinion, whilst they knew better the ebb which follows unfounded praise. He was capable, it must be said, of the most unmeasured eulogies on those he esteemed, especially if he had any jealousy that they did not stand with the Boston public as highly as they ought. His commanding merit as a reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pulpits — I cannot think of one rival — that the essence of Ciiris- tianity is its practical morals ; it is there for use, or it is nothing."

508 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Page 55, note 1. George Steevens, 1737-1800, a commentator on Shakespeare. His edition, with the help of Dr. Johnson, appeared in 1773, revised and enlarged in 1778. He did other important editorial work.

Page 66, note 2. It is probable this reference was to Christopher Pearse Cranch, 1815-1892. He worked as a painter in Italy, New York, and Paris. His work deserved Parker's praise. He was also a poet, and published much, including " The Bird and the Bell " and " Ariel and Caliban."

Page 66, note 3. This younger man, it may be assumed, was either James Russell Lowell or George William Curtis.

Page 67, note 4" It may be possible to guess who was meant by this scathing criticism, but it could be nothing more than conjecture.

Page 70, note 5. Under the title of " Ethnical Scriptures " Emerson gave much attention in " The Dial " to the religious writings of India, Persia, China, and other oriental countries. The first of these ap- peared in the very first number edited by him, that for July, 1842, and was a series of selections from the " Veeshnoo Sarma." The issue for January, 1843, contained selections from Manu, and that for July, first using the general title of Ethnical Scinptures, was ex- tracted from the Desatir. Other selections were from the Kings, Preaching of Buddha, Hermes Trismegis- tus, and the Chaldean Oracles. Some of these se- lections WTre made by Thoi*eau. This was one of the earliest attempts in this country to make the public familiar with the sacred books of the world, other than the Hebrew and Christian.

Page 71, note 6. In later editions this sentence reads, " I am glad to the brink of fear."

Page 7Ji., note 7. This was perhaps at a meeting of the Boston Association of Ministers after the Di-

NOTES 609

vinity School Address. Cabot says in the Memoir, pa^e 384, that " amon<^ the ministers wlio came to- gether at the Thursday lecture there was a good deal of stir, which communicated itself to the circles they influenced. Hard words were said, and when the ad- dress appeared in print it was sharply attacked in the Daily Advertiser by Andrews Norton."

Page 75, note 8. James Usher, 1580-1656, was archbishop of Annagh, intimately connected with the University of Dublin, founded by his uncle Henry Usher, also archbishop of Armagh. Usher was a theologian of prominence. John Selden, 1584!-1654<, was a famous jurist, antiquary, and oriental scholar, whose Table-talk is one of the famous English books. See John Selden and his Table-Talk, by Robert Wat- ers, for an interesting account of him and his rela- tions to Usher. Inigo Jones, the famous English architect, 1572-1651, designed many important buildings, and planned the repairs of St. Paul begun in 1033.

Page 85, note 9. These were the lectures now pub- lished in the Conduct of Life.

Page llJi-, note 10- This line was afterwards changed to

" Has turned my child's head.'' " Page 115, note 11. These lines were revised to read,

" To vision profounder, Man's spirit must dive; His aye-rolling orb

At no goal will arrive." Page 115, note 12. These lines now read, " Lurks the joy that is sweetest In stings of remorse."

Page 118, note IS. This line now reads, " He who loves, of gods or men."

510 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Page 119, note 14- Emerson uses these and other names in a symbolical and mystical sense. They are names from mythology, legend, early poetry or biog- raphy. Most of them have been explained in William Sloane Kennedy's " Clews to Emerson's Mystic Verse," published in The American Author for June, 1903. They have also been elaborately interpreted in The Arena by Charles Malloy.

Ill

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING

Parker had already spoken of Dr. Channing in a sermon on the occasion of his death. The present survey of his life, character, and works was called out by the appearance of an elaborate biography :

Memoir of William Ellery Channing, with Extracts from his Correspondence and Manuscripts. In three volumes. Boston, Crosby and Nichols, 1848.

This memoir was prepared by a nephew, William Henry Channing, whose biography has been extendedly written by O. B. Frothingham. Parker's review of this memoir was published in the Massachusetts Quar- terly Review for September, 1848. Miss Cobbe in- cluded it in her second volume, entitled Critical Writ- ings.

Page 156, note 1. It has been often asserted that Thomas Jefferson had children by the negro women slaves on his plantation at Monticello. The proof has not been furnished, though the gossip has been per- sistent. " The chief offender among newspapers was the Richmond Recorder, edited by a Scotchman named Callcnder, who sought an asylum in this coun- try to escape punishment for libels published in Eng- land. He was not here long before he was arrested and imprisoned under the sedition act and was one

NOTES 511

of those whom Jefferson pardoned on the day that he became president. This incident brought him per- sonally to Jefferson's acquaintance, and for a time he proved to be useful to the Democratic leaders as a writer. Jefferson defended and shielded him as long as his patience would pennit, and aided him from time to time with loans of money that were never repaid, but was finally compelled to repudiate him, when Cal- lender turned upon his benefactor. . . . He was the author of several miserable scandals about Wash- ington. He attempted to blackmail Jefferson into making him postmaster at Richmond, but Jefferson had the moral courage to refuse, even though he knew what to expect, and the penalty of his refusal was the publication of a scries of the most revolting stories about his private life, which were copied into the Fed- eralist newspapers of the northern states with what President Cleveland called ' ghoulish glee.' Some of these stories were based upon local gossip at Charlottes- ville, and doubtless had a slender vein of trutli, a meagre excuse for existence, but Callender's vulgar and malicious mind magnified and distorted them. Jefferson never stooped to a denial, and his political opponents chose to interpret his silence as an admis- sion of guilt. He was probably no more immoral than Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, and other men of his time. He was neither a St. Anthony nor a Don Juan. Judged by the standard of his generation, his vices were those of a gentleman, and such as did not deprive him of the respect and confidence of the com- munity.

" The scandals circulated by the Federalist news- j)apers were so generally believed that Thomas Moore, the famous Irish poet, accepted them as true, and, visiting the United States during the period of Jef- ferson's presidency, wrote some verses of which the following is a sample:

512 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" ' The patriot, fresh from Freedom's councils come, Now pleas'd, retires to lash his slaves at home; Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia's charms And dream of Freedom in his bondmaid's arms.' '

*' This poem may be found in the London edition of the Poetical Works of Thomas Moore published in 1853, and is embellished by a foot-note explaining that the President of the United States was referred to.

" The local traditions attributed to' Jefferson the paternity of a distinguished man of the generation following him who wa.s prominently identified in the development of the west, and whose mother, famous for her beauty and attractions, lived near Monticello. Her husband was a disolute wretch and abandoned her to the protection of friends. Jefferson looked after her interests, advised her concerning the management of her little property, educated her son, appointed him to office, pushed him into political prominence, fur- nished him opportunities for advancement, and showed an affectionate solicitude for his welfare. It is char- itable to suppose that this was due to a friendly rather than a paternal interest.

*' In early days, and up to a recent period, nearly every mulatto by the name of Jefferson in Albemarle county, and they were numerous, claimed decent from the Sage of Monticello, which gratified their pride but seriously damaged his reputation. Jefferson does not appear to have taken notice of these scandals, except in a single instance. During the campaign of 1804 a respectable mulatto living in Ohio, named Madison Jennings, boasted that he was a son of the president and Sally Jennings, who was one of his slaves, and Jefferson invoked his carefully kept record of vital statistics at Monticello to prove an alibi. The date of Madison Jennings' birth made it impossible for Jefferson to have been his father, and Edward Bacon, the overseer of the plantation, made a statement to a

NOTES 513

clergyman In which he gave circumstantial evidence to prove Jefferson's innocence-" — William Elory Cur- tis, The True Thomas Jefferson, pp. 311-313.

Page 156, note 2. Edward Everett, in the Gov- ernor's Address of 1836 to the General Court of Massachusetts, as printed in the Documents of the House of Representatives of that year, pages 29-31, said on this subject: " The country has been greatly, agitated during the past year in relation to slavery, and acts of illegal violence kindled on this subject in different parts of the Union, Avhich cannot be too strongly deplored. ... As the genius of our in- stitutions and the character of our people are entirely repugnant to laws impairing the liberty of speech or of press, even for the sake of repressing its abuses, the patriotism of all classes of citizens must be in- voked to abstain from a discussion which, by exas- perating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave ; and which if not abandoned, there is gi'eat reason to fear will prove the rock on Avhich the Union will split. Such a disastrous consummation, in addition to all its remediless political evils for every state of the Union, could scarcely fail, sooner or later, to bring on a war of cxtennination in the slaveholding states. On the contrary, a conciliatory forbearance with regard to this subject, in the non-slaveholding states, would strengthen the hands of a numerous class of citizens at the south, who desire the removal of the evil, whose voice has often been heard for its abolition in legis- lative assemblies, but who are stinick down and si- lenced by the agitation of the question abroad; and it would leave this whole painful subject where the Con- stitution leaves it, and in the hands of an all wise Providence." See James Freeman Clarke's Anti-Slav- ery Days, page 103.

Fage 156, note 3. Harriet Martincau, in her " So-

614 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

ciety in America," vol. I, pages 126-127, American ed. of 1837, describes this event: "Upon consulta- tion the ladies agreed that they should never have sought the perilous duty of defending liberty of opin- ion and speech at the last crisis ; but as such a service seemed manifestly appointed to them the women were ready. On the 21st of October they met at the office of their association [Boston Female Anti-slavery So- ciety], 46 Washington street. Twenty-five reached the room by going three-quarters of an hour before the appointed time. Five more made their way up with difficulty through the crowd. A hundred more were turned back by the mob. They knew that a handbill had been circulated on the Exchange and posted on the City Hall and throughout the city the day before, which had declared that Thompson, the abolitionist, was to address them, and invited the citi- zens, under promise of pecuniary reward, to ' smoke Thompson out and bring him to a tar-kettle before dark.' The ladies had been warned that they would be killed, ' as sure as fate,' if they showed themselves on their own premises that day. They therefore in- formed the mayor that they expected to be attacked. The reply of the city marshal was, ' You give us a great deal of trouble.' The committee-room was sur- rounded, and gazed into by a howling, slirieking mob of gentlemen, while the ladies sat perfectly still, await- ing the striking of the clock. When it struck, they opened their meeting. They were questioned as to whether Thompson was there in disguise, to which they made no reply. They began as usual with prayer. The mob shouting, ' Hurra ! here comes Judge Lynch ! ' Before they had done the partition gave way, and the gentlemen hurled themselves at the lady who was presiding. The secretary having risen, and begun to read her report, rendered inaudible by the up- roar, the mayor entered, and insisted on their going

NOTES 615

home to save their hves. The purpose of the meet- ing was answered ; they had asserted their principle, and they now passed out, two by two, amidst tlie execration of some thousands of gentlemen, persons who had silver shrines to protect. The ladies to the number of fifty walked to the house of one of their number, and were presently struck to the heart by the news that Garrison was in the hands of the mob." This was the ' mob of gentlemen of property and standing,' dressed in broadcloth, who attacked Gar- rison inmicdiately following this episode.

Page 156, Tiote ^. Garrison wrote to George W. Benson, September 17, 1835 : " I suppose you have hoard of the presentation of a stout gallows to me, at 23 Brighton street, Boston, by order of Judge Lynch. It was destroyed by the city authorities. I regret that it was not preserved for our Anti-slavery Museum. Thompson has presented a brickbat to it, but this would have been a more substantial curiosity." Gar- rison's biogi'aphy by his children, vol. I, page 519.

Page 156, note 5. The Georgia Senate, Novem- ber 30, 1831, passed a resolution offering a reward of $5000 to any person " who shall arrest, bring to trial and prosecute to conviction under the laws of this state the editor of a certain paper called the Lib- erator." The proclamation of the governor was based on this resolution, and was continued without being rescinded for several years. Garrison's Life by his children, vol. I, page 249.

Page 156, note 6. This reference is to vol. II, page 89, of the ]\Iemoir of Dr. Channing, by W. H. Chan- ning.

Page 157, note 7. The Autobiography of Dr. Ly- man Beecher will afford a good illustration of this tendency to condemn Unitarianism. He writes of it, vol. II, page 53. " It was as fire in my bones ; my mind was heating, heating, heating." Again, page 56:

516 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

" It is scarcely necessary to add that the system of Unitarianism, in all its forms, Dr. Beecher regarded as the deadly foe of human happiness, whose direct tendency was to prevent true conviction and conver- sion, and leave men bound hand and foot under the power of the adversary. He could not be loyal to Christ, benevolent to men, or true to his own convic- tions without making war on such a system."

Page 16 ly note 8. This was not the general opin- ion of the men of Channing's own period. George Ticknor, traveling in Europe, and dining daily with the arbiters of opinion in all countries, wrote home to Boston in 1836 : " Channing's is already much greater than I had supposed, not so extra live as that of Washington Irving, but almost as much so, and decidedly higher. . . . Mrs. Somerville, Miss Joanna Bailey, and several other persons, declaring to me that he was generally regarded as the best writer of English prose alive." In April, 1838, Mr. Tick- nor dined at Lord Holland's, with Pazzo di Borgo and the Earl of Albemarle, and he noted that " Lord Holland, Lord Albemarle, and Mr. Allen talked about Dr. Channing as the best writer of English alive." Dr. Chalmers praised Channing for his intellectual power and eloquence; and Turguenev was a great ad- mirer of Channing. See George Ticknor's Life, Let- ters and Journals.

IV

PRESCOTT AS AN HISTORIAN

The sixth number of the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, for March, 1849, contained Parker's discus- sion of the Character of Mr. Prescott as an Historian. The following books were placed in review, and their titles were printed at the beginning of the article:

The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isa-

NOTES 51T

bella the Catholic. By William H. Prescott, &c., &c. Boston, 1838. 3 vols. 8vo.

History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a Pre- liminary View of the Ancient Mexican Civilization and the Life of the Conquerer, Hernando Cortes. By Wilham H. Prescott, &c., &c. New York, 1845. 3 vols. 8vo.

1 History of the Conquest of Peru, with a Prelimi- nary View of the Civilization of the Incas. By Wil- liam H. Prescott, &c., &c. New York, 1847. 2 vols. Svo.

This review was reprinted by Miss Cobbe in the sec- ond volume of her edition, entitled Critical Writings. In his Life and Correspondence, vol. II, page 10, Weiss says of the manner in which this and the suc- ceeding article were prepared : " Before he under- took to review Mr. Prescott's popular histories he spent all the leisure time which he could command during seven months, in reading the authorities. He read everything excepting some MSS. in the posses- sion of Mr. Prescott himself, and thus he verified nearly every citation made in the eight volumes which were under review. The first article contains an ad- mirable statement of the office and duty of an his- torian. This is derived from his own humane and philosophical spirit, criticizing in the interest of the future of the people all the best histories yet written of the past."

The biography of Prescott was written by George Ticknor, Boston, 1864. In the series of American Men of Letters is a biographical and critical study by Rollo Ogden ; and in the English Men of Letters is one by Harry Thurston Peck.

Page 173, note 1. The name of the writer of this article is not given in Poole's Index of Periodical Lit- erature. It appeared in vol. 64, June, 1839.

Page 189, note 2. The review of the work on Peru was not writteji.

518 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

V

PRESCOTT'S CONQUEST OF MEXICO

In his first article on Prescott as an historian Parker gave special attention to the work on Ferdinand and Isabella. This was followed in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review for September, 1849, by the pres- ent study of the History of Mexico. It appears that Parker had it in mind to write also of the History of Peru, but this article was not produced. The Mex- ico was reprinted by Miss Cobbe in her Critical Writ- ings, the second volume of her edition of Parker's works.

Page 221, note 1. James Cowles Prichard, 1786- 1848, was the founder of the science of ethnology in England. A graduate of Oxford, a physician in Bris- tol, he published in 1813 his " Researches into the Physical History of Man," two volumes, later expanded to five. In this work he taught the unity of the human species as acted upon by causes which have produced the several races. He showed also that the Celts be- long to the Aryan family of races. This idea he de- veloped, in 1831, in his " Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations." His most important work was his " Nat- ural History of Man," 1843, which is still a standard for ethnologists, though their investigations have been widely extended since his day.

VI

HILDRETH'S UNITED STATES

The History of the United States, by Richard Hil- dreth, three volumes, New York, 1849, was the sub- ject of a critical article in the June number of the Massachusetts Quarterly, Review, for 1850. It was

NOTES 619

written in the same spirit as the articles on Prescott, though perhaps with less exacting preparation. Miss Cobbe reprinted it in the Critical Writings, vol. II, of the complete works edited by her.

Richard Hildreth was born in Deerfield, Mass., June 22, 1807. He graduated at Harvard, studied law, became editor of the Boston Daily Atlas, which repre- sented the views of Rufus Choate, Caleb Cushing, and others of that school in politics. Favoring General Harrison for president, he wrote a campaign biog- raphy of him in 1839. For a period he was at Demerara, British Guiana, as an editor, and wrote an account of that country. On his return he was connected with the New York Tribune for several years, and contributed to the " American Cyclopedia." In 1861 he was made consul at Trieste, which position ill-health compelled him to abandon, and, going to Florence, he died there July 11, 1865. He wrote the first American anti-slavery novel, " The Slave ; or. Memoirs of Archy Moore," 1836. It wsis reprinted as " The White Slave," 1852. He also published a " History of Banks, Banking and Paper Currency," 1837; "Despotism of America," 1840; "Theory of Morals," 1844; "Japan as it Was and Is," 1855. He added three volumes to his " History of the United States," in 1852, bringing it down to the end of the first term of Monroe's administration. The work is free from prejudice, vigorous in criticism of men and events, and fearless in stating the truth.

Page ^70, note 1. Red Republic refers to the name of " Red Republicans " given by the French to those who held radical republican doctrines, which they would maintain even at the cost of bloodshed. The term " bonnets rouges " was also applied to them be- cause of the red caps worn at the period of the revo- lution.

Page ^72, note '2, This reference to those who were

520 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

called doughfaces has been already explained. They faced both ways as between the political issues of the day, or were ready to turn any way that would make to their own advantage.

Page 283, note 3. Michel Chevalier was a French economist and geographer, who visited the United States in 1834. Among his works were " Des interets materiels en France: travaux publics," Bruxelles, 1838 ; " Cours d'economie politique," 3 vols., Paris, 1850; " Mexique, ancien et modern," Paris, 1863; " L'industrie et I'octroi de Paris," Paris, 1866 ; and many articles on geographical and economic subjects. He wrote " Lettre sur I'Amerique du Nord," 2 vols., Bruxelles, 1837, and also " Histoire et description des des voies de communication aux Etats-Unis," 2 vols., Paris, 1840-41. It is the first of these works to which Parker refers, which was translated as " Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, being a series of letters on North America," translated from the third Paris edition, Boston, 1839. Thomas Gamaliel Bradford, the translator, says in his preface: " M. Chevalier was sent to this country in 1834 under the patronage of Thiers, then Minister of the In- terior in France, to inspect our public works. But, attracted by the novel spectacle presented by society in the United States, he extended the time of his stay and the sphere of his observations amongst us, and spent nearly two years in visiting nearly all parts of the Union, and studying the workings of our social and political machinery. His letters gave the results of his observations, the impressions made on his mind, his speculations in regard to the future destiny of our institutions, ratlier than a detailed narrative of facts and events, which, however, is introduced when neces- sary for illustration or proof. It will be found that M. Chevalier has studied with diligence and sagacity, drawn his conclusions with caution and discrimination.

NOTES 521

and stated liis views in a clear, forcible, and interest- ing manner. He seems to be perfectly free from any narrowness and prejudice, ready to recognize whatever is good or of good tendency, whether in character, manners, habits or opinions, without regard to mere personal likes or dislikes, and to be equally frank in condemning, whenever he perceives, in our practices, a violation of our own principles or of those of an enlightened philosophy. He tells many home truths to all parties and classes. . . ." Chevalier's work is regarded as one of the best which has been written about the United States, because of its impartiality and because of his keenness of observation.

Page 289, note Jf.. The article by George Raphall Noyes on Whether the Deity of the Messiah be a Doctrine of the Old Testament, published in the Chris- tian Examiner for January, 1836, is that indicated. The Attorney General of Massachusetts talked of prosecuting the author, but he finally decided not to do so. Dr. Noyes, 1798-1868, was the minister of the Unitarian church in Petersham, Mass., and pro- fessor of Plebrew literature and other oriental lan- guages in Harvard College after 1840. He pub- lished translations of the New Testament, and of the poetical books of the Old Testament.

Page 289, note 5. Parker's sermon of 1841 at South Boston, on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity, was threatened in this manner. It was mere newspaper writing, however.

VII MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

The study of the first two volumes of INIacaulay's history appeared in the Massachusetts Quarterly Re- view for June, 1849, with the title, " Macaulay's

522 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

History of England." It has never been reprinted, having been for some unknown reason overlooked by Miss Cobbe.

VIII

BUCKLE'S HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION

Buckle's first volume of his History of Civilization in England, London, 1857, deeply interested Parker on its appearance ; and this study of it was published in the Christian Examiner for March, 1858, vol. 64. This monthly review succeeded other Unitarian peri- odicals in 1824, under the editorship of John Gorham Palfrey. At the time of the publication of this article the editors were Frederic H. Hedge and Edward Ever- ett Hale. The article on Buckle was included by Miss Cobbe in her twelfth volume. Autobiographical and Miscellaneous.

Writing to Prof. Henry D. Rogers of Edinburgh, on December 29, 1857, Parker said of Buckle's work, then recently published : " I think it a great book, and know none so important since the Novum Or- ganum of Bacon. I mean none in English. Of course I except the Principia of Newton. This is a Novum Organum in the department of history — the study of man ; it is a restauratio maxima. Nobody here ever heard the name of Henry Thomas Buckle before. If you can tell me, I wish you would ; and also what is thought of the book in that northern Athens where you dwell. In many particulars it re- minds me of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. I don't always agree with the author, even in matters of * great pith and moment ;' but always think him a great man. His learning also is admira- ble."— Weiss, vol. I, page 334.

Parker wrote to Buckle, sent him his article and his works. Weiss prints at the end of his first volume

NOTES 523

the letters of Buckle, and in the second volume are the letters which passed between them as the result of Parker's attempt to see the historian. In his first letter Buckle stated that he was familiar with Parker's writings, and in all of his letters his expression of admiration was considerable.

The two volumes of the " Life and Writings of Buckle," by Alfred Henry Huth, reprints the corre- spondence, and indicates the appreciation of Parker on the part of Buckle to have been lively and most friendly, in so far as their brief correspondence made this possible. John Mackinnon Robertson, in his " Buckle and His Critics," devotes a chapter to Parker and his article. " Parker's criticism seems to have been, with one exception [Saturday Review, July 11, 1857, by a Mr. Sanders], that which interested Buckle the most of those which he lived to read, and it might well do so, being the performance of a widely read and exceptionally conscientious critic." He speaks of Parker's painstaking, with a quantity of result hardly commensurate with the copious and conscien- tious preparation. Robertson subjects all who have written of Buckle to a severe arraignment, with rarest exceptions ; and his dissent from Parker's conclusions is in no degree singular for him.

Buckle appears to have had a considerable influence on Parker's later thinking. This is seen in the series of sermons on the revelation of God in matter and mind which is printed in this edition of Parker's works for the first time. It did not lessen in any de- gree the vigor and completeness of his idealism, but it gave him an enlarged conception of man's relations to the universe and the influence of economic conditions on human progress.

Page 376, note 1. Azote, nitrogen, the name given it by Lavoisier, and still used in France. Azotized, nitrogenous.

524 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Page 386, note ^. The Crimean war, to which Parker often made reference in his sermons and lec- tures.

Page Jf-lOy Tiote 3. Joseph Francois Lafitau, 1670- 1746, was a French missionary to Canada. In 1724 he published at Rome, in two volumes, his " Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains compares aux moeurs des premiers temps." This is one of the standard early works on the life of the Indians. Lord Monboddo, 1714-1799, was the author of " Origin and Progress of Language," and " Ancient Metaphysics." He collected facts about savage peoples, and in some re- spects anticipated Darwin as to the origin of man in animal life. Christopher Meiners, 1747-1810, was a German historian, who wrote on the history of re- ligion, philosophy and science.

Page 4-10, note 4. Several accounts of the nurtur- ing of boys by wolves are given in " A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude in 1849-1850." By Major-General Sir W. H. Sleeman. London, Bentley, 1858, two vols. These narratives are in vol. I, pages 208-222. Sleeman also wrote books on the Thugs, and various works on political economy. See Tylor, " Primitive Culture," vol. I, page 281, for a genuine interpretation of these stories about wolves.

Page JflO, note 5. An account of the stealing of a girl by an orang outang is given in " The Prison of Weltervreden ; and a Glance at the East Indian Archi- pelago." By Walter M. Gibson. New York, J. C. Rikcr, 1855. Probably other incidents narrated in this book are referred to by Parker.

Page 411, note 6. The education of negroes was forbidden by law in the South, and the punishment was severe.

Page JflS, note 7. Laurens Perseus Hickok, 1798- 1888, was a Congregational minister, professor in Western Reserve College, Auburn Theological Semi-

^ NOTES 625

nary, Union College, and president of the latter in- stitution, 1866-1868. He published works on " Moral Science," 1853 ; Mental Science," 1854 ; " Ra- tional Cosmology," 1858; "Rational Psychology," 1861 ; " Logic of Reason," 1874. He was regarded as a strong thinker in his day, but Parker's judgment has not held good.

IX

HENRY WARD BEECHER

In the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1858, the first volume, appeared this review of the work of the great Brooklyn preacher, based on a compilation of Beecher's sayings in his sennons and lectures. It was Parker's only contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, and one of the last of his literary articles. It has not been re- printed.

Beecher lectured in the course conducted by the Parker fraternity, in 1858, and was severely criti- cised in various evangelical journals. He replied in the Independent for January 6 and 13, 1859- Both articles were printed in pamphlet fonn. The first was on " Total Depravity," in reply to the charge that he had denied it. The second article was on " Working with Errorists," and especially applied to his delivery of the lecture to such a society, usually regarded as propagandist of infidelity of the worst kind. " We believe in the right of free speech," Beecher replied, " even by men whose speech, when delivered, we can- not believe." " What a pitiful thing it is to see men who have the chance of saying what they believe, who do say it two hundred times a year, who write it, sing it, speak it, and fight it; who by all these social af- firmations, by all their life-work, by all positive and most solemn testimonies, are placed beyond miscon- ception,— always nervous lest they should sit down

526 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

with somebody or speak with somebody, and so lose an immaculate reputation for soundness ! Therefore men peep out from their systems as prisoners in jail peep out of barred windows, but dare not come out for fear some sharp sheriff of the faith should arrest them."

In view of Parker's appreciation of Henry Ward Beecher, it is interesting to note that he did not ad- mire the theology of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the father, as may be seen from a record made in his diary at a period considerably subsequent to that of Beecher's preaching in Boston.

" March 31, 1852. Old Dr. Beecher came to see me, and spent an hour and a half. ' Tell me who you are,' he said, * where you came from, and how you got so far from the common track.' I did so, and we had a quiet talk. He is genial, generous, active- minded, and expressed a strong sympathy for me, and a good deal of feeling of kindliness towards me."

In a letter written from Santa Cruz, in 1859, Parker gave an account of his early acquaintance with Lyman Beecher and the repulsive effect produced upon his mind by his theology. This was in the winter of 1831—32, when Beecher was using every effort to revive the older phases of theology in Boston.

" For a year," Parker wrote, " though bom and bred among Unitarians, I had attended the preachings of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the most powerful orthodox minister in New England, then in the full blaze of his talents and reputation, and stirred with polemic zeal against ' Unitarians, Universalists, Papists, and Infi- dels.' I went through one of his ' protracted meet- ings,' listening to the fiery words of excited men, and hearing the most frightful doctrines set forth in ser- mon, song, and prayer. I greatly respect the talents, the zeal, and the enterprise of that able man, who cer- tainly taught me much ; but I came away with no

NOTES 527

confidence in his theology. The better I understand it, the more self-contradictory, unnatural, and hate- ful did it seem. A year of his preaching about fin- ished all my respect for the Calvinistic scheme of the- ology."— Weiss, vol. I, p. 57.

Page ^^7, note 1. In the biography of H. W. Beccher by W. C. Beechef and S. Scoville, page 289, it is stated : " Mr. Beecher gave himself unreservedly to this contest." " My church," Beecher himself wrote, " voted me all the time that I thought to be required to go out into the community and speak and canvass the state of New York. I went into that canvass, spoke twice and often three times a week, having the whole day to myself — that is, making all the speeches that were made. I was sent principally, to what was called the Silver-Gray district or counties — the old-time Whigs that were attempting to run a candidate between Fremont and Buchanan. I gen- erally made a three hours' speech a day in the open air to audiences of from eight to ten thousand people." Beecher advocated the election of John C. Fremont in this campaign of 1856.

Page Jt27, note %. John Parker Hale of New Hampshire is the one indicated in this quotation. In 1852 he was the candidate of the Free-Soil party for president. When a monument to his memory was dedicated in Washington, Frederick Douglas said: " No statue of patriot, statesman, or philanthropist of our times will convey to aftercoming generations a lesson of moral heroism more sublime."

X

LIFE AND CHARACTER OF DR. FOLLEN

This was the first of Parker's many studies of lit- erary and political leaders prominent in American life.

528 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

It is interesting to contrast it with those devoted to Franklin and Webster, and to note how his powers of characterization had grown. It appeared in The Dial for January, 1843. The work reviewed was The Works of Charles Follen, with a Memoir of his Life. In five volumes. Boston, Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1841. The first volume contained the memoir by his wife. The second volume contained sermons, the third Lec- tures on Moral Philosophy, the fourth Schiller's Life and Dramas, and the fifth Miscellaneous Writings, in- cluding the inaugural address in 1831 on the occasion of the author's induction into the professorship of the German language and literature at Harvard College. No reprint of it has hitherto appeared.

The Dial was a quarterly devoted to the ideas repre- sented by the transcendcndalist movement, and was published from July, 1840, to April, 1844. For the first two years it was edited by Margaret Fuller, with the aid of George Ripley for the earlier numbers. The last two years the Dial was under the control of Emer- son, with Thoreau as his efficient aid. For several months Elizabeth Peabody was the publisher, and she was also one of the contributors. Among the writers not already named were Alcott, Lowell, Charles A. Dana, Cranch, Dwight, W. E. Channing, Hedge, Cur- tis, and L. M. Child. Many of Emerson's best poems appeared in its pages. Parker was one of the most voluminous of its contributors. Twelve of his essays were printed in the Dial, also verses and book-reviews. Emerson wrote in his " Historic Notes of Life and Let- ters in New England," that " some numbers had an instant exhausting sale because of papers by Theodore Parker."

In the same essay Emerson wrote of Parker's re- lations to the whole movement, and as to his char- acter as preacher and reformer. " Parker was our Savonarola," he wrote, " an excellent scholar, in frank

NOTES 529

and affectionate communication with the best minds of the day, yet the tribune of the people, and the stout reformer to urge and defend every cause of our humanity with and for the humblest of mankind. He was no artist. Highly refined persons might easily miss in him the element of beauty. What he said was mere fact, almost offended you, so bald and detached; little cared he. He stood altogether for practical truth, and so to the last. He used every day and hour of his short life, and his character appeared in the last moments with the same firm control as in the midday of strength. I habitually apply to him the words of a French philosopher who speaks of ' the man of nature who abominates the steam-engine and the factory. His vast lungs breathe independence with the air of the mountains and the woods.' "

Parker contributed to every number of the first vol- ume of the Dial, and to all but one of the second. In the first number appeared an article on " The Di- vine Presence in Nature and the Soul ;" in the second, " A Lesson for the Day," and " Truth against the Wortd : A Parable of Paul ;" in the third, " German Literature ;" and in the fourth, " Thoughts on La- bor." To the first number of the second volume he contributed a paper on " The Pharisees," and also two poems entitled " Protean Wishes." He did not have anything in tlie second number, but in the third was printed his article on " Primitive Christianity," re- viewing Donicr's Christology. The first and the last numbers of the third volume had nothing from his pen, but in the second was printed his review of the Hollis Street Council that tried John Picrpont, which attracted much attention ; and in the third, his paper on "Tlie Life and Character of Dr. Follen." He had but one article in the fourth volume, that in the second number reviewing the work of Charles Hennell, an EngHsh idealist and radical, on the " Origin of

630 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

Christianity." Parker was in Europe from Septem- ber, 1843, for a year, and this will doubtless account for his failure to write for the last volume more largely. Seven of Parker's contributions to the Dial were reprinted in his " Critical and Miscellaneous Writings," published in 1843 ; and these were " A Les- son for the Day," " German Literature," " Truth against the World/' " Thoughts on Labor," " The Pharisees," " Primitive Christianity," and " Thoughts on Theology."

For details as to the history of the Dial, see The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, edited by William T. Harris, for July, 1885, where there is printed an extended article by George Willis Cooke, with a com- plete list of the contributors. Also An Historical and Biographical Introduction to Accompany The Dial as reprinted in numbers for the Rowfant Club, by George Willis Cooke. In two volumes, Cleveland, the Rowfant Club, 1902. This last work is in two volumes of about five hundred pages, gives a detailed history of the transcendental movement, the Dial as its organ, with biographical sketches of all the contribu- tors.

A word ought to be added in regard to the author of the admirable biography of Dr. Follen. Mrs. Pol- len was Eliza Lee Cabot, of an old and cultivated Bos- ton family. She was born August 15, 1787, and married Dr. Follen in 1828. She was the first editor of a children's paper in this country, the " Child's Friend " being under her control from 1843 to 1850. She published several books for children. Her books included " The Well-Spent Hour," 1827 ; " The Skep- tic," 1855; "Poems," 1839; "To Mothers in the Free States," 1855 ; " Anti-Slavery Hymns and Songs," 1855 ; " Twilight Stories," 1858, and " Home Dramas," 1859. She not only wrote an interesting biography of Dr. Follen, but she edited his works with

NOTES 631

skill. She prepared her son, together with other boys, for Harvard College. She was an ardent opponent of slavery, and wrote much in behalf of the abolition cause.

Page Jt.Jf.8, note 1. Appendix to Life of Charles Follen, page 585, where is published a poem by him entitled Das Grosse Lied. On page 593 is a transla- tion, evidently by his own hand. Other poems are also printed, both in German and English.

Page 44^> note 2. David Walker, a negro, pub- lished his " Appeal to Colored Citizens " in 1829, is- suing it from his store in Brattle street, Boston. See Story of Garrison's Life by his children, vol. I, pages 160—1, where a detailed account of the book and its author is given in a footnote.

Page UO, note 3. John Bowring, 1792-1872, English linguist, political economist, and diplomatist. He was editor of Westminster Review, edited works of Bentham, was a member of Parliament, governor of Hong-Kong, and held important diplomatic positions. He made many translations, was a Unitarian, and wrote many excellent hymns.

Page UO, note Jp. Clement C. Biddle, 1784-1855, was a diligent student of economics and issued an an- notated edition of J. B. Say's " Political Economy " shortly after the war of 1812, besides editing Prin- sep's translation of the same work. He was present at the free-trade convention held in Philadelphia, in 1831, and was at that time influential in shaping the financial policy of the national government.

Page Ji56, note 5. Frances Wright, 1795-1852, was born in Scotland, imbibed ideas of French philos- ophers, visited the United States in 1818. In 1821 she published in London Views of Society and Man- ners in America. After visiting France, she returned to the United States in 1825, purchased a large farm near Memphis in Tennessee, and established there a

532 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

colony of free negroes. As this was opposed to the laws of the state, she took the negroes to Hayti. In 1833 she began to lecture against slavery, and for the freedom of women. She spoke with great liberty, was a severe critic of existing social restrictions, and was bitterly opposed. She joined Robert Owen in his community at New Harmony, Indiana, and edited the paper published there. She married, in 1838, d'Arus- mont, whose ideas were similar to her own ; but they soon separated, and she lived in Cincinnati with her daughter until her death. She published several works, including " A Few Days in Athens," 1822 ; " Popular Lectures on Free Inquiry," 1829. She was a free thinker, and was usually called an infidel. Biog- raphies have been published of her in London by John Windt, and in Cincinnati by Amos Gilbert.

Page 4-61, note 6. Follen was an intimate friend and great admirer of Dr. Channing, and this refer- ence is probably to him.

XI

GERMAN LITERATURE

The third number of the Dial, January, 1841, con- tained this article. It was included by Parker in his Critical and Miscellaneous Writings, 1843. Miss Cobbe gave it a place in the ninth volume of her edi- tion of Parker's works, being the first volume of the Critical Writings. The work reviewed had this title- page :

German Literature, translated from the German of Wolfgang Menzel. By C. C. Felton. In three vol- umes. Boston, Hilliard, Gray and Company, 1840.

These volumes were included in the series of " Speci- mens of Foreign Standard Literature," edited by George Ripley, and published in Boston by Hilliard, Gray and Company, from 1838 to 1842. The first

NOTES 533

two volumes were " rhilosophical Miscellanies," trans- lated by Ripley himself, from Cousin, JoufFroy, and Benjamin Constant. The third volume included John S. Dwight's translations from Goethe, Schiller, and other German poets. The fourth was " Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe," translated by Margaret Fuller. Then followed JoufFroy's " Introduction to Ethics," in two volumes, translated by William Henry Channing. IMenzel's work came next, and it was fol- lowed by Dc Wette's " Theodore or the Skeptic's Con- version," translated by James Freeman Clarke. There followed De Wette's " Human Life or Practical Ethics," in translation by Samuel Osgood. The series concluded with Songs and Ballads from the German, translated by Charles T. Brooks. It was planned to include several other French and German works, but the series probably did not prove a financial success.

Page Ji67, note 1. The anglicizing the Heinrich must be regarded as a concession on the part of Parker to the general ignorance of German at this period.

Page 4-79, note 2. Mezentius was a mythological king of Etrusca, famous for cruelty, said to have formed an alliance with Ilutulianus. The word is used as sj-nonymous with fabulous giants, therefore coupled with Goliath.

Page 485, note 3. Wolfgang Menzel, 1798-1873, after graduating from Bonn, lived at Stuttgart, and was a member of the landtag of Wiirtemberg. He published a clever volume of poems called " Streck- verse," in 1827, which was followed in 1829 and 1830 by " Riibezahl " and " Narcissus." A romance of the thirty years' war, entitled " Furare," was pub- lished in 1851. He edited the " Literaturblatt " from 1825 to 18i8, and from 1852 onwards. His History of German Literature appeared in 1830 in three vol- umes, and in a revised edition of 1836 in four. He wrote a history of the war of 1866 with Austria, and

534 THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

one on the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. He also produced numerous other works. In his " Social Forces in German Literature," Prof. Kuno Francke says of him : " It is a mistake to think of Wolfgang Menzel, the intellectual father of modern Anti-Semi- tism, as an irreconcilable enemy of Borne and Heine. His estimate of both men, in his Die deutsche Literatur, volume four of 1836, belongs to the best that has been said about either."

Page 4.9 Jf., note ^. Cornelius Conway Felton, 1807- 1862, was a teacher in the Round-hill school at North- ampton, a Latin tutor at Harvard, a professor in Greek there, and in 1834 took the chair of Greek lit- erature. In 1860 he became president of Harvard College, which position he held until his death. He published translations of Guyot's " Earth and Man," a revised edition of Smith's " History of Greece," " Selections from Modern Greek Writers," and " Fa- miliar Letters from Europe." His chief work was his " Greece, Ancient and Modern," lectures at the Lowell Institute, which was published in 1867, in two volumes, Boston.

Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries

1 1012 01196 1366

Date Due