A Young Scholar's Letters: Being a Memoir of Byron Caldwell Smith

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YOUNG SCHOLAR'S LETTERS

BEING A MEMOIR OF

BYRON CALDWELL SMITH

EDITED BY

D. O. KELLOGG

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PREFACE.

N the legend of Hellas, when Herakles brought
Theseus back from Hades, the Greeks called the
return of the Attic prince a Psychagogia, or a
leading of a soul back from the region of the dead. In
a less literal but a more significant way, the publica-
tion of these letters replaces Byron Caldwell Smith,
who died in the splendid promise of his youth, amongst
the living generation, and by them ** he, being dead,
yet speaketh/* Many who knew him in his fair per-
son will rejoice at this restoration of his bright, strong-
pinioned spirit to a place-, and ;funtitioi3f ^«mpogj»man-
kind, and lament the lefesrlais ^iafly ji6(Mras€i,iVhich
seemed at the time to end ^^irareJKl^, of ;e,xtraordinary
promise. • %« -.- i.o o -.»

These letters were written W/^¥pvi^*tn2iV^ between

the ages of nineteen and twenty^fhree,- "during four

years of student-life in five university cities of Europe.

It is notable that the author of them had planned for

himself, and in advance, the scheme of study that he

followed there, and that it was dominated by an ideal

I of culture rather than by standards of professional at-

X) I tainments. It is further remarkable that, although so

"^ ' young on leaving home, he had already forged his way

"V^ to philosophic, religious, and social conceptions which

he thereafter developed but never abandoned, Stud-

'^ ents, wherever they congregate, make a world of their

^ • • •

i
..p-

iv Preface.

own, and in Europe their communities have a Bo-
hemian irresponsibility and freedom on which dissolute
habits make heavy inroads. For young Smith such
temptations could not seduce him from the joy he had
in conforming to the pure order of nature and he came
out of the Circean ordeal unsullied. **I have with-
stood every temptation/' he writes to his mother as he
set his face homeward, *' and grappled with every diffi-
culty that I thought might conceal treasures for my
life, that I might be worthy one day to return to your
bosom as pure in body and soul as when I nestled there
as at the fountain of my life.*' Is not the remem-
brance of a spirit so self-poised, of a pursuit of truth
and beauty so strenuous, of conduct so blameless, and
of a career ended with the bloom of youthful enthusi-
asm fragrant upon it, worthy of perpetuation ?

It has fallen to one who was a close associate of
Byron Smith during all his professional life and who,
for arjBajJft gf tWtimJ, ^i]i)4irJ$im as a member of his own
family; .W *w£it* these'-lettefe.' In performing this task
care has Waeh ^C^ }xi:present the character of their
author with ¥oliiess "and* integrity, and to sacrifice VlVlx-
formity W-'^tvie •ii)f»iite Spontaneity and freedom of
epistolary wntinV*aft*difelfent times and under difiFerent
circumstances. To make them look as he would have
made them look had he revised them for publication
(a task he would never have undertaken, for he did
not dream that his biography could be of public inter-
est), would be to introduce into them an element of
constraint and reserve incompatible with their naivete
and self-revelation. There have been eliminated from
these letters some personal comments and ephemeral
business matters of no permanent interest, but enough
of these has been preserved to keep alive the epistolary

Preface. v

form and color. It was a fixed principle with Profes-
sor Smith to give no needless oflFence to a single person,
though he scorned trimming, cowardice, and untruth-
fulness. For this reason, where no verity or sup-
pression of traits was involved, the editor has rarely
modified or erased vehement expressions of dislike for
things other men cherish, which never would have
fallen from Smith's lips except under the sacred con-
fidence of intimate friendship or family intercourse.
Otherwise the portraiture in these pages stands as its
subject drew it, unsuspicious that strange eyes would
ever behold it. It is a picture veracious and without
concealments.

From the dawning of intelligence Byron Smith was
a child of enthusiasm and ardor. His hunger for know-
ledge and his aspiration for culture grew with his growth
and were unappeasable. In the realm of books the
ground he conquered will seem prodigious even to
scholars. To some his expressions of opinion may at
times seem over-confident and even egotistical. A
part of that self-assertion (which he never showed in
general company) belongs to the intimacy of home.
But a part, too, belongs to his singular sense of clear-
ness in thinking and the fervor kindled in him by the
themes of which he discoursed.

Among his rare intellectual characteristics there may
be noted his philosophic and religious views. Even
those who dissent most widely from them, will recog-
nize that he presents them wdth masterful comprehen-
sion, logical force, and great vigor of language. He
claimed discipleship of Spinoza and Hegel, frankly
avowing himself to be a pantheist. From Absolute
Being he stripped away all predicates, especially dis-
carding all anthropomorphism. Thus he was left to

vi Preface.

confront in his soul an inscrutable abstraction as the
source of all being and history. For most men this
position is paralyzing to the religious sense, and re-
sults in an impotent or indifferent agnosticism. Not
so with Byron Smith. To him this mystery was life,
and wonderful beyond utterance. It was a divine and
ultimate fact, and here he worshipped with a reverence
that was impassioned. On this foundation he built a
religion.

On it he also founded a system of ethics, and gloried
in its noble generosity and arduous exactions upon
human nature. It called for a self-effacement seldom
reached by the devotee of mysticism. Yet he was not
an ascetic. To him selfishness was simply separation
from nature, in and through which ceaselessly throbbed
the unspeakable Divinity. He recognized no personal
immortality, and thought it made self of extravagant
importance, setting it in opposition to the divine whole,
and making love a passion rather than a principle.
Death was to him a dreamless repose, a blessed Nirvana.

Although first of all a metaphysician, he did not
believe in the opposition of philosophy and science.
Science he understood in its principles, methods, and
tendencies, but he found in it a firm support for his
speculations. He would not lose his hold upon the
unity of all things, for at that centre was divinity.

Not unrelated to these premises were his views of
art and scholarship. Nature had a sacred beauty for
him. It was a revelation of the Absolute. The artist
was touched with a divine afflatus. In verdant fields
under ** azure '* skies, on the sea and on land, and in
the galleries or before the temples of Europe, his soul
kindled with solemn joy. Of the poets he was a dis-
cerning critic, and few pens have more incisively

Preface. vii

pointed out the soul of art or a singer's limitations.
He seems to see into the heart of a Wordsworth, a
Goethe, a Tennyson, or a Swinburne.

His arguments have the parry and unerring thrust
of a skilled dialectician. His thought moves through
metaphor and epigram with lucidity and charm, as the
clear waters of a river, catching light on its white foam
as it pours over obstacles, or purling in soft cadences
along the reaches of its channel.

To those who respect youth, lofty aspiration towards
verity, faculties capable and brilliant, the ardor of a
noble nature, loyalty to conviction, and purity of heart,
— all combined in a narrative of devotion to culture,
— these autobiographical pages are now committed.

D. O. KKLIX)GG.

ViNEiyAND, N. J., February, 1897.

LETTERS OF
A YOUNG SCHOLAR

INTRODUCTORY.

THIS book is for the most part an autobiography
of Byron Caldwell Smith, since that part is com-
piled from his letters. It needs no justification
from the fact that it puts before mankind a remarkable
union of youth and mental gifts in one person, nor
from the desire of fond relatives and friends to perpetu-
ate the memory of a character they can never forget or
of an influence they can never erase. In a final judg-
ment of values men do not ask the age of the singer
whose impassioned notes thrill them, nor of the painter
whose limning entrances them. Work and lives must
be taken at their real worth. It is therefore with the
conviction that they deserve it that these letters are
wrought into this life-history, and that the reader will
recognize the fine enthusiasms, the high gifts, the ele-
vation of character, and the eloquence of expression
thus disclosed as of fascinating interest.

Yet youth has its beautiful glamour, and great ex-
cellences are more striking when early attained. These
letters were written when their author was passing from
nineteen to twenty-three during four years of studious
life at Heidelberg, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and Athens.

2 A Young Scholar.

They were for the home reading of parents loved with
unusual candor and confidence, and their self-revela-
tion is without constraint. Their writer unfolded
himself in that large atmosphere of sympathy, as the
flowers expand their petals and give forth their per-
fume in a balmy morning of June. In them his remi-
niscences of youth complete a rounded history of his
mental life, and it is only necessary that a friendly
band should add a few details of childhood and of the
days that were fading away under the stroke of disease
to make a whole biography and chain a life that other-
wise would seem like the rapturous dream of an artist
and a sage, to this earth.

Antecedents.

Authors searching for new scenes and strong natures
to give color to their writings have as yet not discov-
ered the valleys of the upper Ohio. Yet they were
peopled by a dominant race as religious as the Puri-
tans of New England, but far more touched with
ardor. Their lives were as simple, their confronting
of a new wilderness to be subdued as brave and unre-
pining, their veraciousness as stern and thorough, their
strength as indomitable, their ideals as high, their do-
mestic affections as sweet and faithful, as those of any
people that ever reared and gave vigor to states. It is
the Scotch-Irish race that gave character to the settle-
ments of this region, and they came thither with their
school-mststers and their Presbyterian pastors, not as
fugitives from persecution, but under the more genial
impulse that seeks enlargement of life and room to
grow in their own fashion. They were not embittered ;
they were not joyless ; they were godl5^ One sees

Antecedents.

in their characters the same difference in moderation
and geniality as between the Presbyterians and Inde-
pendents in the days of the English Commonwealth.
Sir Walter Scott describes it well in Woodstock and
other of his novels. Into these valleys came now
and then descendants of those German Anabaptist
sects whom the influence of Penn drew to the fertile
fields of the Susquehanna valley ; a meek, devout,
simple people, clannish as Israelites for like reasons
of faith, living in a perpetual sense of obedience to
God, and, while narrowed by too formal adherence to
the letter of the law, yet too godly to lose its spirit.
They were a meek, affectionate people, plodding with
dogged perseverance, as are the characteristics of their
race.

Among these people Alexander Campbell found a
field ripe for his harvesting. He followed his father
from Ulster province to Washington county, Pennsyl-
vania, where both were stirred by an unappeasable
desire to see the unity of Christians. They would wipe
from Christendom all the blots and scars of contro-
versy and creeds, and have believers one family, known
only as obedient disciples of Christ. Campbell wished
to reach the heart of divine truth that makes men
free, and, holding with unquestioning conviction that
through the New Testament the mind of Jesus spoke
so that the lowliest heart could understand, he strove
to silence all the jargon of the schools and the disso-
nances of the sects, so that men should hear in Christ's
words the revealing voice of God*s will. His ideals
were by no means novel. Others had tried the same
dangerous experiment again and again through the
ages, and the issue had been a religion more fantastic
and even antinomian than that of the formalized

4 A Young Scholar.

church from which they sought to escape. If Camp-
bell's venture was free from this peril it was largely
owing to the sound sense, the self-restraint, and the
discerning consciences of the people who received his
tenets. He sowed his seed on good ground. Men and
women reopened their Bibles and tested Campbell's
preaching by his fidelity to the primitive gospels.
They gathered about and adopted his teachings. He
secured their liberty by a Congregational system of
church government ; they accepted adult baptism by
immersion ; their young men prophesied in their meet-
ings ; they founded their church-fellowship on simple
obedience to Christ ; they repudiated dogmatism and
formulas. Great was the influence of that evangelist
of rude eloquence, glowing faith, and brave, high rec-
titude. It lingers now, spread all along the Ohio val-
ley to Missouri. In its nurture his widowed mother
trained the youth of President Garfield, and its fra-
grance was upon him at the White House as chief of
the nation. The Disciples of Christ, as they wish to
be called, or the Campbellites, as sectarian discrimina-
tion terms them, may not have been able to break
through the limitations that rest upon all religious
societies, and so have only added another denomination
to the motley divisions of Protestant Christendom, but
they were of heroic blood, fearless of scorn, veracious
and truth-loving as they could see the truth, simple
in manners, and withal not lacking in picturesque
qualities.

Byron Smith was the child of these influences. In
him mingled the blood of Penn's Palatinate Germans
and of the Ulster Presbyterians. The inspiriting fel-
lowship of The Disciples brought his parents to-
gether, and its atmosphere enveloped his cradle. His

Antecedents.

father was of the Pennsylvania German stock, and
came across the Appalachian ranges to the Ohio valley
with his father, and here both came under the influence
of Alexander Campbell and for a time were now and
then lay exhorters in that communion. His mother's
family came from Belfast, in Ireland, and were the
children of the covenant, as the Irish Presbyterians
defined their relation to God, the covenant-keeping
Sovereign of the Universe. This commingling of races
has given rise again and again to some of the finest
personalities of the world. The warmth of family loy-
alty and love never cools in the blood of either. To
the huge capacity of the German for enduring persist-
ency and thoroughness of work, the Irish adds its
acuteness, ardor, versatility, and wit. The qualities of
either race are counterparts in the making of a full-
rounded, well-balanced, and strong man. The genius
of work and the genius of intellect combine in the
ideal genius. How far this result was attained in our
young scholar his own words are soon to disclose.

The father, George P. Smith, in middle life was a lithe,
slight man, alert and elastic in motion, full-bearded,
and with wavy hair touched with iron-grey. His brown
eyes had in them a glint of light that indicated quick
understanding and resolute energy ; evidently a man
not to be trifled with, and self-reliant. His manner
was placid, his speech soft, his manners gentle and
without affectation. Fear he did not understand.
There slept in him a Berserker rage, that shot forth at
the last indignity of bodily assault, and woe to the man
that laid hands upon him. Such a man is seldom mo-
lested, and had not one or two rash men dared to
awaken this temper by violence it never would have
been known what a tempest that tranquil man's breast

6 A Young ScJwlar.

could brew. But his scorn of wrong and his purpose
to see the earth clean and righteous, never slept within
him. In his youth he preached as the spirit moved him
among assemblies of The Disciples, though he never
sought ordination or pastoral care. He made journal-
ism his business, and, in the days when men were
angered by slavery, he was working on the editorial
staflF of the Wheeling Times and Gazette. He was the
friend of the bondman. As the presidential election of
1856 drew on, Mr. Smith advocated in that Democratic
city the choice of John C. Fremont, and in the City
Hall addressed an assembly in an anti-slavery speech.
Many were enraged and a mob gathered to waylay
him on the street. He was beaten and his clothing
torn from him, but possessing himself of a dirk he held
the crowd at bay, having wounded two of his assail-
lants when the sheriflF rescued him. Strangers to him
went on his bail-bond, from admiration of his pluck.
In a pro-slavery court a Wheeling jury acquitted him
of the charges of the indictment, but he was advised
quietly to leave the city. ** Not until I have cast my
vote for Fremont,** was his answer. On election morn-
ing, amply and visibly armed with knife and pistol he
walked openly to the polls and deposited his ballot for
the Republican candidate and none molested him going
or returning. He then turned his face westward and,
after two years* stay in Mason, Illinois, moved on to
Danville in the same State, where he published a news-
paper. He was at Steubenville, Ohio, visiting his
wife's parents and on his way to Port Townsend on
Puget Sound to assume the duties of collector of the
port, an office to which President Lincoln had appointed
him, when the call was made by the government for
three months* volunteers to resist the secession rebellion.

Antecedents,

He abandoned the civil office and promptly enlisted,
receiving the rank of captain and serving on General
Morris's staflF at Wheeling, Virginia. Again he en-
listed when troops for a year's service were called for,
and going to Dwight, 111., he became major of the 69th
regiment of that State. This little place was the home
of his family during his service in the field. As a major
his services were rendered in Chicago, but the fol-
lowing year he obtained permission to recruit a regi-
ment, and he raised the 129th Illinois volunteers,
becoming its colonel under the commission of Governor
Richard Yates. The regiment was immediately ordered
to l/ouisville, Kentucky, and was attached to General
Rosecranz's army. At Louisville the Colonel passed
through a long and dangerous sickness in a military
hospital, which he left in health too shattered for service
in the field. Consequently he resigned in 1864, and
removed to Jacksonville, 111., where his son Byron,
then a lad of fifteen, had already passed two terms
in Illinois College. Here he became editor and pro-
prietor of the Daily Jacksonville Journal, and in the
columns of that paper the youth found occasion at times
to practise his pen. The family settled in Humboldt,
Kansas in 1869, led thither in hopes that the change
would restore the father's failing health, and here he
mingled farming with journalism and with public ser-
vice in the House of Representatives of that State. In
1884 he fled from the agues of a new state to Pittsburg,
Pa., where he was in the service of the Pension Bureau.
He died at Steubenville, Ohio, in the summer of 1889.
This narrative necessarily fixes the residences and
migrations of the son until he went abroad, when his
own letters begin to indicate his locations, pursuits, and
fortunes.

8 A Young Scholar.

Byron Smith*s mother, Margaret Caldwell, was the
daughter of Belfast Presbyterians who settled on a
farm near Steubenville, Ohio. To describe their home
is most quickly done by saying that its pious and
winning spirit Bums portrayed in **The Cotter's
Saturday Night. ' * It was the cotter's household trans-
ferred to the freer and larger life of an American frontier,
for when the Cald wells came to the Ohio valley it was a
frontier. There was frugality in it without penury,
diHgence and thrift, but without anxiety. The sire
was patriarch and priest to his family. He read to
them God's oracles and they knelt reverently and daily
at the family altar. High thoughts gave dignity to the
home ; love lent it warmth and cheer ; veracity made
life earnest and real for it. One feels the strength and
wholesomeness of these integrities^ — the solidity and
stability of truth-loving are in it. Mr. Caldwell lived to
be a venerable man and in his later years was much an
inmate of his daughter's family. As his hair whitened
with the silvery touch of time, he grew oracular in his
cozy ingle-side seat, speaking as one having the author-
ity of a good life and a long experience. His converse
still was of high themes, for his love of right-living
grew with his years, his interest in the lives of kindred
and neighbors mellowed and expanded, and his need
to discern the divineness of reality in things and the
Godward purport of events was imperative.

The people I have described drifted widely as time
went by from the doctrinal moorings of early days, and
outgrew their Campbellite cradles. No influence was
more potent in producing the change than the unfolding
of the bright and captivating life that had sprung from
them. But through it all, the love of love, the human
soulfulness that was more than conventions and station,

Antecedents.

the conviction that truth was the keeper of all security
and goodness, the scorn of sham, and the courage of
rectitude persisted. Indeed it was just these qualities,
which their primal faiths nourished in them, that made
their changes of mind necessary. Their birthright
spirit wafted them on.

These Smiths and Caldwells were not learned people,
but they had a substitute for learning in their bright
common-sense. They were never lured to grasp the
unearned favors of fashion or position, but they loved
to see work done honestly and well. For social arts
they had bonhanimie.

Such were the influences that nurtured the youth of
Byron Smith. It is his mother's testimony that parent-
al authority never was used to warp or constrain his
development. Indeed there was little occasion for inter-
ference, for the child, quick of wit, and inquisitive for
the reason of things, found as keen delight in the play
of his mental faculties as a boy does with his first pair
of skates. Yet he was far from being a pale, large
foreheaded book-worm, devouring his books in quiet
corners of the house. It could not be said of him, as
John Stuart Mill said of his childhood, that he ** never
was a boy." While still in petticoats he was ready to
arbitrate his differences with his mates with a pair of
chubby fists, and when in knickerbockers, he strove
to be first in the race. He needed no spur either on the
play-ground or in the school-room. His merriment
was hearty, his enthusiasms many. Over his large
lustrous brown eyes there passed expressions of intent-
ness, questioning, eagerness, intelligence, mirth, jubil-
ancy with vivacity, like troops that enter and pass over
the mimic stage, until sleep drew down the long-
fringed curtains of their lids. His dark brown hair

lO A Young Scholar,

clustered about a face of clear brunette complexion and
rosy cheeks, such as seems to be granted to Irish
beauties. But from the earliest manifestations of in-
tellect there appeared in him a delight in ideas, and an
insatiable appetite for knowledge that was his domin-
ant characteristic. The great function of his parents
was to tend the unfolding of the soul of their son and
nurture it with sympathy, and this they proudly did.

Early Years.

Island Creek is a farming township on the Ohio
River immediately north of Steubenville, and in it the
Smiths and Cald wells dwelt on adjoining farms and
had the same religious connections. Here, on the 28th
of August, 1849, Byron Caldwell Smith was born, being
the first child of his parents. Their migrations fixed
the scenes of his childhood and his schooling. His
teaching was such as was aflForded by such towns as
Mason, Dwight, and Danville in Illinois, with the ex-
ception of four months in a Roman Catholic school at
Wheeling when his father was on staflF duty there in
the early days of the Civil War. Mathematics were a
delight to his heart, and he seemed to have entertained
towards them in his childhood the spirit of a remark
that he made years after, to the eflfect that no farther
advance in that branch of study was to be expected
except from highly imaginative minds. Imagination
is not associated usually with pure mathematics, but
men who can conceive concretely of figures of four or
five dimensions have a rare gift. At all events, these
studies to Smith were more than ingenious processes
and solutions of problems. They conjured before him
relations numerically expressed and marshalled vital

Early Years. ii

things in orderly procession. He excelled, therefore,
in geometry. At ten years of age, while attending the
White Seminary at Danville, he was present at the
annual exhibition of the proficiency of its scholars
before a public audience. The class in higher geometry
came to the front, and soon had themselves, their
teachers, and the lookers-on in a very uncomfortable
state of flushing warmth and uneasiness. One after
another failed to make his diagram fit his problem, or
his demonstration fit the figure. Byron, through the
humiliating scene grew restless, his face glistened with
eagerness because the failures were so needless to his
mind, and at last he went forward to explain, and with
lucid demonstration to the admiration of the audience
solved the problems and corrected the diagrams.

He had just passed his fifteenth natal day when he
entered Illinois College at Jacksonville. At this time
he was pondering deep questions of government, such
as the philosophical basis of personal rights and liberty ;
theological problems cast spells over his thought and
he was then in quest of that unity which would recon-
cile faith and nature. A clear conception of such prob-
lems was to be found in ideas and not in the formal
drill of grammar and logic he had reached. During
his college course, through the columns of the Jackson-
ville Journal, he entered anonymously upon a contro-
versy with the classical professor of the college over
the right method of making Greek a means of culture
rather than of mental discipline. The professor was a
man of more force, ability, and thought than in those
days was ordinarily to be found in the chairs of West-
em sectarian colleges, and he was lured into the dis-
cussion by the impression that he was answering the
criticisms of some clergyman in the place. Great was

12 A Young Scholar.

the surprise of the town when the fact came out that
the Goliath of the faculty had been measuring weapons
with a David of the class-rooms having the ruddiness of
his teens fresh upon him. In these days the young stu-
dent was found propounding his reflections and views
to those who were interested in him. He would have
seemed pedantic had it not been for the evident flame
of enthusiasm that was in him. I^ife was opening to
him as a very wonderful and beautiful thing. To see
the order of nature, to contemplate a lucid thought, to
perceive the primal rock of truth under facts, to catch
the tone of beauty in literature, made him rapturous,
and like all hale youth he could not restrain the expres-
sion of his ardor. His speech was always fluent and
yet with all his glowing temperament there was in him
a singular power of accuracy and fitness in the use of
words. No doubt, to prosaic and unsympathetic nat-
ures this exuberance of utterance was a bore and a
token of too great self-complaisance. Had he vaulted
with poles on the campus, shouted rollicking college
songs in college corridors, exhibited the antics and
abandon of high animal spirits, people would have said
these performances fitted his youth, and have smiled
with the amusement or pleasure that older people so
readily receive from the pagan glee of young students.
To comprehend Byron Smithes style of exuberance
at this time we must conceive that ideas and mental
operations were to him what athletic sports are to young
men. He approached them in a similar spirit.

In the summer when he attained the age of nineteen
he graduated from Illinois College, and, having laid
out a scheme of scholarly culture for the following six
years, found in his parents' generosity and devotion the
means of putting it in execution. It was to be carried

Early Years. 13

out in Europe, and with it beg^n those letters which
convert the rest of this book into an autobiography.
They were penned with no dream that stranger eyes
would ever see them ; they are wholly without con-
straint or affectation. They present their author in
all the freedom of self-revelation that love and confi-
dence and sympathy could secure for him. It is not
the intention of their editor to add one needless word to
their narrative, and they require small elucidation. If
the art of letter-writing is a lost one, it surely revived
with Byron Smith's pen. It is, perhaps, proper to
apprise those who will read on, that the picture to be
unveiled to them is not one of incident, but of a gifted
soul. As the highest art lies in depicting the human
form as the instrument of a noble intellect and heart,
so it is the higher reach of literature to reveal the
mind and soul of a noble man.

The letters now take up their function and appear in
chronological order.

I.ETTERS.

I.

The splendor and mystery of the sea ; Bremen ; the
Cathedral of Cologne; pantheism native to the German
mind as seen in the early religious architecture as well
as in the transcendental phibsophy; Heidelberg; early
soulsickness.

HBIDEI39]itG» Sept. 23d, 1868.

I^et me give you a hasty and incomplete account of
what I saw, or rather what I felt in the four weeks of
voyaging and railroading from which I now gladly
rest. How I shall strive to forget what I saw of hu-
man nature on the sea, of the vileness and the coarse-
ness of sin and intemperance, of the wants and the
lusts which make men miserable, and contemptible
and pitiable ! But what a divine and infinite beauty
hath the sea, the very type of the transient in the eter-
nal, of the yielding yet unconquerable ! He who has
not gazed for hours, till entranced, on its white wind-
flowers and quietless great violet bosom, has felt little
of the sense of that ineffable mystery which, like the
dark earth, must underlie the flowers of love and glad-
ness and quenchless hope in our hearts. There is one
treasure given us in the great chaff heap of men's
lives which, when found, turns to gold. Without it
every life is pulvis et umbra^ shade and dust alone ;

15

1 6 A Young Scholar.

with it none can be less than the universe, of which it
is a ** joy-mirror,** as the dear German philosophers
would say.

We could not have seen the sea in a more beautiful
mood than it was our fortune to experience through
our entire voyage. Its colors were the most ethereal
and perfect that can be imagined.

From the wan grey water of dawn to the rich-
golden green of sunrise, the soft violet of mid-day,
the purple sea of twilight, and heavy cold lead-colored
waste of night, the pencil of light worked wonders on
the deep. Among a heedless and vulgar crowd whom
the light of Paradise could not penetrate, the immortal
beauty of the sea preserved for me a tone of mind
which they had not the sense to envy. You would
pardon this flight of egotism could you congratulate
yourself, as I can, on having endured without utter
disgust the daily associations with the company on
board the vessel.

I cannot say that the voyage on the whole was not a
great pleasure — ^it certainly was a lesson and an experi-
ence of incalculable advantage to me. It awoke a
passion to know more of the sea, not more of the life
of men on it but of its great self. Sometime I must
live by its shore and peer into its great and beautiful
secrets, which are only yielded to the patient watching
of the eyes that love to seek. You may smile at my
enthusiasm, but it is a -love bound to grow with my
growth, and in the end solve the great problem of life.
I do not think that the beauty of the sea is comparable
with that of the land in those forms which afford the
best nourishment to man's mind day after day, but it
is rather a great spiritualizer, breaking down the barriers
of sense by its negative impressions, driving him out

i

Letters. 1 7

of his daily relations, rebuking him by its endlessness,
barrenness, and unbroken tameless splendor.

How awfully sweet is the thought of green quiet
fields, and scented bright flowers, little golden children
of the black earth, to one long on the sea ! I have
gathered numberless blossoms of fantasy from those
fruitless, beautiful waves where no other blossoms will
grow. The memory of this mighty -^schylean ele-
ment of grandeur and mystery will murmur forever in
my soul and roll, like its own compact deep waters,
blossoming into white passion-flowers of song when
the breath of love agitates its bosom. This is the
education, not for the artist only, but, what is much
more, for a man. Preach beauty and harmony to the
inharmonious hearts of men, and take your texts from
groves and running brooks and the flowers which
grow out of the black bosom of mother earth. Away
with forms and creeds and revelations and limits for the
limitless ; break down these walls which hem the view,
even the crystal arch of heaven, and let men know
that they are gazing into the bottomless and the endless.
The infinite and unknowable are the background for
the stars and the canopy of earth.

We saw the cliffs of England at a distance of not
over three miles, and the city of Dover was quite dis-
tinct even to the unassisted eye. France could also be
discovered at the same time but not clearly. We were
one whole day in sight of land in the Channel, which
the Germans on board would call canal. We lost sight
of England Wednesday night and prepared for bad
weather in the German Ocean. The passage through
this famous play-ground of the winds was calmer, if
possible, than in the Atlantic, where I had been sick
but two days.

9

1 8 A Young Scholar.

After a tedious voyage of three weeks our steamer
cast anchor Saturday afternoon in the mouth of the
Weser. I^and had been in sight since morning, but
was only observed as a mere cloud line above the hori-
zon ; now, however, its greenery was quite distinct,
and the peaceful little Batavian-like villas, embowered
in closes of fresh verdure near the strand, oflFered the
first nourishment of real nature to eyes almost famished
on the phantom beauty of the sea. As I am no lover
of overwhelming sensation, I was delighted by the
gradual, quieting impression made by this low green
coast.

We left the huge machine which had carried us from
home, standing out on a clear horizon like a great far-
travelled messenger just arrived at a distant world,
and went ashore in a little serving boat which smirked
and snorted out to the bar to bring us oflf. I shall not
attempt an account of my emotions on putting foot on
this strange land, for they are yet too confused and
contradictory to submit to being stated. While I could
fairly anticipate the joy of the exertion, I trembled
with a pleasing dread of the magnitude and the import-
ance of its results to me. My country and my friends,
who had heretofore been too much objects of my love
alone, appeared now to withdraw and stand over me,
apart in a place not subject to the fluctuations of hu-
man passions, but to become as never before objects of
my reverence and rulers of my life.

In Bremen I got my first impression of a German
city, clean with narrow stone-paved streets and high,
solid houses of stone or brick, plastered over with a
smooth, hard cement, making them look as made of
dressed blocks ; dotted with parks, statues, fountains,
etc. ; with a high-towered old cathedral and council-

Letters. 1 9

house with a carved point, all covered with tile roofs ;
and filled with an orderly and sober population, and
very quiet traffic in the streets. I visited the Raths-
keller, or, in English, cellar of the council-house of
Bremen. Here is where the famous wine is kept which
is over three hundred years old. This is a very strange
place, with its great iron-headed casks which hold
ten or fifteen hogsheads of liquor under its white
massive vaults, adorned by great grotesque figures
of Bacchus and his satyrs in gilding. I was also in
the Dead-cellar where corpses are preserved without
decay for over four hundred and ten years.

The Cathedral at Cologne,

A careful survey of this famous structure is worth
to the student of history the perusal of many learned
tomes on the intellectual and religious state of Europe
in the middle ages. Till I beheld it I never com-
prehended the force of architecture as one of the
fine arts — that is, as an interpreter of psychological
conditions. The ground-plan of the cathedral, if I
remember, is an immense cross, or rather parallelo-
gram with projections at the sides scarcely consider-
able enough for the arms of a cross. Its walls are
pinnacled, gryphoned, and otherwise adorned with
grotesque figures of old saints. The central aisle is
one hundred and sixty-five feet from floor to vaultings,
and the great roof is supported by scores of columns
rising from the broad marble area to that giddy height.
The centre of the building is surmounted by a finished
tower and steeple nearly four hundred feet high, while
twenty -five hundred workmen are constantly employed
on the two principal front towers, which are to be six

20 A Young Scholar.

hundred feet in height. Bight years will see the work
completed which six centuries ago was begun.

It scarcely resembled the work of man's hands,
but stood rather like some huge crystal of nature, or
a habitation of some primal earth-power kindred
to the storm-god, the force of waters, or the prin-
ciple of life in sweet flowers, or dark forests on the
hills.

Pantheism is native to the German mind, and is no
less distinguishable in the religious architecture of
an early period than the transcendental philosophy
of to-day. Distinct conceptions of divine things are
characteristic of the sectarian and, as commonly un-
derstood, religious mind, but how mysterious, how
really infinite, did the universe appear to the soul of
the great master who planned this temple to the Spirit,
who, if He giveth the com, also blasteth it and is the
Father of sorrow as well as of joy. The chaunt of the
choir, and intonation of the great organ, when roll-
ing through these marble aisles shaded by the mellow
light of stained windows, and solemnized by the devo-
tions of twenty generations now in the dust, are fit
to inspire terror or ecstasy as the listener feels at
enmity or at peace with that awful Being whom he
has enthroned in the star-paved infinite halls above.
The temple-building age of the race is gone by. One
has only to behold this great hymn of stone mutter-
ing the hopes and fears of departed centuries up to
the skies, to look at all religious buildings of the pres-
ent as he would at the efforts of forty to frisk and
gambol in the plays of ten. The knees which first
bent upon this floor were not far above the tortures
of the damned — at least their owners thought so, and
any sweet, sudden vision of the imagination might

Letters. 2 1

really be some calm-eyed saint, or pitying glance of
the dear mater dolorosa^ our ** Lady of Sorrow."

If these reflections have carried me too far, the
nature of my subject rather than my imagination is
to blame, and I must now leave tmsaid the greater
part of what I wished to write you of this famous
cathedral.

That part of the Rhine which I saw from Bonn to
Bingen, where night fell, was a panorama of such
beauty and romantico-historical interest, as scarcely to
allow one the time or temper to observe critically.

I will not attempt to load my letter further with
accounts of what you can find much better described
in infinite books of travel, but hasten home — that is
to Heidelberg — and to business.

Ruins of the Castle of Heidelberg,

Looking away into the western sky from this little
ancient bower of greenery on the terrace of Princess
Garden, Heidelberg Castle yard, with the quiet, brown-
tiled city, and little silver, eager Neckar in the
autumnal sunshine at my feet, my thoughts go out
involuntarily to the friends at home. This is the
very eye of Germany, and finest ruin of the middle
ages in Europe, if not the finest ruin in the world.

I have never felt as to-day the unutterable loneliness
of this place, although I have been here almost daily
for two weeks. To-day the thoughts of home are
really awaking far down in my heart. How irresisti-
ble these memories ! What floods of melancholy do
they threaten to rain down on the soul ! I fear them,
for to-day the first drops have fallen and my heart
is too full of sighs. Ah ! the world is everywhere

22 A Young Scholar.

beautiful, and there are everywhere so many souls
to whom one may speak a joyful word, that men have
little more need to wander for ** sweetness and light *'
than the silver-cupped lilies of the field. I am not
insensible to the beauties of this place, but if I am
not so elevated by them as I might expect to be, it
is because I never knew before how very nearly full
my happiness has been without them.

What a blessed change did I experience three years
ago, when the world was without color and men's
hearts without love, because I was soul-sick. How
can I ever forget that delightful September day, so
like this, with its rich autumn-colored greenery and
mellow air, when, oppressed by a cruel dread of some
nameless evil and a perfect disgust of all life, I rushed
from the house for relief out into the light under the
sky, and stood for some moments entranced before the
infinite joy and life of nature, until the glory of that
autumnal day sank down into my soul. My care was
gone, I smiled through tears of gladness at the blindness
of my fears, and ever since have been as happy and
cheerful as man may hope to be.*

'^A year later Byron Smith wrote the following metrical
account of ttiis experience.

Once in childhood^s minstrel days,

While light of summer prairie fell
Upon my hair, and all the ways

Of flowery grass and hazel dell
Seemed strange to feet that knew them well,

Within my heart, as in a flower,

The breaking flush of life grew bright.
And every soft-winged, listless hour
Passed and left a deeper light.
Made day more sweet, more strange the night.

Letters. 2 3

Beattie was a true poet, for he said, you know, of
nature :

'* Her charms shall work thy soul's eternal health."

Do not, I pray, take what I write to-day for a speci-
men of what I think a letter ought to be — not a Tro-
phonian oracle or Sibylline prophecy of the unutterable,
but a calm and clear narrative of facts and statement
of things.

II.

Visions of home ; study of the classic and German Ian-
guages; from the boy's task of memorizing to the
man's labor of thinking ; need of Greek culture in the
conflict of modem learning ; work of the scholar; the
presidential campaign ; nature of authority.

Heidei«bbrg, ist Oct., 1868.

The first letter from home has just reached me, and
how wonderfully sweetened are its words by a silence
of over two months and a distance of so many thousand
miles !

There is a miserable sad fog in the sky and a feeble,
cold rain is dripping through it, but I am too happy to
regard either the vain ways of men or the windy ways
of heaven with troubled eyes. To-day shall be a holi-
day, and books shall rest from their importunities,
while their bond-slave snatches a moment of time to
rejoice and to indulge a sweet grief which is akin to
joy and pain. I have read both your dear letters so
many times and am proud of both. Dear mother
writes like a Cornelia, and what son would not feel like
a Gracchus with such a mother to love andencourage

24 A Young Scholar.

him ? I love home — no one knows how well, — and the
first wish of my heart is to make it the centre of
** sweetness and light," for I shall never have any other
home but round your hearth. Sometimes a note of
some melody that dear little Abby * plays will strike a
vision into my soul so vivid, that I am again sitting on
the shaded tiny porch and hear the indistinguishable
murmur of known voices within, — only a faint con-
sciousness lurks, as in a dream, that it will not last.

Dear mother asks if I am homesick. I do not know
what sort of a complaint that is with others, but with
me it is a continual hunger, and will only be borne,
not stilled. I would not be at home away from home.
Write longer letters, and as an artist, with the purpose
of creating home around me.

When I finish this letter and send it off I shall know
more about my studies for the winter, and whether it
will be possible or advantageous for me to attend the
Lyceum or not. My labor, however, will consist almost
entirely of a thorough, genial, and minute study of the
classic and German languages. I abandon for the first
six months all attention to ideas and literatttre, and
shall busy myself in those technical difficulties which
an earlier and better directed study should have en-
abled me to be past at this time. But I trust to my
enthusiasm and industry to deliver me from the toils
of syntax. The labor of most or nearly all American
students is rendered fruitless by their beginning the
study of philology so late as never to escape from the
boy's task of memorizing to the man's labor of thinking.
I am thoroughly convinced that an enlightened sym-
pathy and extensive acquaintance with the spirit of

* His only sister.

Letters. 25

Greek art is essential to any liberal education. The
Greeks were the great apostles of intellectual order,
and were no less remarkable in the semi-moral, semi-
intellectual region of aesthetics than the Hebrew mind
in the purely theosophical. The one will always com-
mand the admiration of the learned ; the other has
passed for inspired with the many. The great igno-
rance of men, however, is of the capacities of their own
race.

Some minds are so Greek by nature that they may
scarcely be thought to need an exquisite sense of com-
pleteness cultivated, yet without the support of some
congenial literature it is not apt to hold its desired
importance in the wonderful civilization of our day,
where the mind and the eye are distracted by a multi-
tude of objects and subjects. It is prudent for the
scholar, whose business is in the conflict of modem
learning, where the stars and animalculae are searched
for their secrets and the grandest speculations are link-
ing the present and future of the race to the most ab-
stract problems, to secure himself a retreat in the

** Olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick warbled notes the summer long."

Without such a country residence, how can he as-
sociate with the aristocracy of letters ? And thus he,
on whose vision the genuine impression of a little
Dorian temple in a myrtle grove of Greece, where the
bright blue waters of the ^gean are breaking forever
at its marble base, has once been made, will scarcely
leave the pursuit with his will.

But after all, the principal work of the scholar is not
there. It consists in a mastery of the diviner ideas of

26 A Young Scholar.

his own time, and a comprehensive reduction to order
in his own mind of the systems of thought that are now
winning for the world true conceptions of liberty, na-
ture, and man, and driving out of life that Protean mon-
ster of superstition, that lingers in the dawn of a terrific
advance of Truth. Truth has become Graecized, that is,
is losing the fretful ardor of her youth and uncertainty,
and now moves with the divine, calm majesty of Pallas,
neither hastening nor ceasing, but sending her silent
golden shafts far into the fading hosts of cruel bigotry
and selfish philosophy. He who despairs of these days
is a fool and the real and only genuine traitor known
in nature.

I have not received a Journal* yet, but read the
English and German papers with interest on the (presi-
dential) campaign in America. They represent the
situation as very deplorable in the South, which is con-
firmed by several acquaintances I have made here just
from the Carolinas. Negro rule, they say, is prostrating
every department of industry but the trade of corrupter
and lobbyist. Incompetency, immorality, and irre-
sponsibility are alike necessary qualifications in their
legislators, whose election is directed and secured by
adventurers from the North, called Carpet-baggers.
It is a sad picture, and however much we may think
they (of the South) need some such humiliation, we
must yet recognize such a rule as fatal alike to innocent
and guilty, and as a precedent absolutely fearful. It
makes no difierence what the animating principle of a
regnant party may be, a province or a dependency has
never yet experienced anything but the boundless
efiects of corruption and misrule. It is no more possible

* His father's newspaper. Hie Daily Jacksonville Journal.

Letters. > 27

for the North to maintain good government in the
South, than for the authority of a master not to be
abused by the majority of men. I have always pre-
ferred a republic to every other kind of despotism, as
most likely to be liberal on occasions, and have no rea-
son to change my mind since I have seen the surface
of European societ5\ You know my peculiar ideas on
the nature of authority in society, and I cannot expect
to see any country free from internal broils till the
rigid distinction between protection and government,
objective and subjective aid, is recognized and the func-
tion of law or force limited to the former. This is no
distance at which to argue politics, so I shall await the
results of November (the presidential election).

III.

A student-guest at the Lyceum; love 0/ temperateness.

nth Oct., 1868.

I have entered the Lyceum here as a guest, in which
character I shall not be subject to many very annoying
interferences which the regular student must endure.
I only study the classics, and am not yet required to
take part in the recitations, as my German will not
permit. I get the lessons and much more and attend
recitations, and expect in three or four months at far-
thest to recite. They are more thorough than I ever
thought it was possible to be in an ordinaiy school.

I have seen but two or three drunken men in Ger-
many. I suppose mother's anxiety about my habits
must be excused, but I do not know how she could en-
tertain fears when she knows my temper in such things

28 A Young Scholar.

and, what is as much, I know her desire. My habits
here shall be in all respects as temperate as they were
at home.

IV.

Autumn the philosophic season ; a happy mean of labor
and rest; German enthusiasm for light and catholic
sentiments; the German youth the people's ideal; the
character of this ideal.

HKIDKI3KRG 26th October, 1868.

Everything moves on with lis as I imagine it does
with the empty shades below. The currents of our
lives hardly make an eddy and are clear to the eye.
Autumn is the most philosophic season of the year,
and when all nature is resigning life and the pomp of
summers, I catch the infectious spirit of resignation,
and take a certain melancholy delight in reflecting that
I have cause for grief, and still let the sweet days die
in labor that I love.

Nothing could be more regular than our hours, which
we keep with the quiet and punctuality of a monastery.
It is that happy mean of labor and rest, which, if a man
is not allowed change, wears longest and best. We *
refresh our evenings with a walk through the moun-
tains, which the beautiful scenery invites and cheers ;
or sometimes take our stroll on the busy streets, where
the eye of a curious, or the reflections of a philosophic
mind need not to be idle, and the afifections of a senti-
mental stranger, like myself, find a thousand objects
of pity, or faces with whose gentleness or jollity he may

* He passed his year at Heidelberg in the companionship of a
young American stndent with whom he had been in college.

Letters. 29

fed an interest. Often we take our walks alone by a
sort of mutual consent, when we feel that we need
a moment of self-communion. These little evening
tramps will soon be broken up by the increasing in-
clemency of the weather, which is more forward
towards winter here than at home.

My attendance at the Lyceum is regular and I am
highly gratified by the progress I am making under
instruction, I may say, for the first time in my life.
The art of teaching is thoroughly understood here, and
the drill is perfect. My studies are incapable of lend-
ing interest to my letters, further than to let you know
that they are successful. I read but little, and that
from the German classics. I have made several trans-
lations from Burger and lycnau, but they need touching
up, and that requires time.

You have little idea of the difficulty I experience in
resisting the constant temptation to read, and when I
indulge myself for an hour in the pages of Wieland or
Kleist or Jean Paul, I miss my accustomed auditor,
dear mother, whose noble appreciation of noble senti-
ments lent them a double interest. German literature
is only to be appreciated out of its native soil by the few.
A mild ideal atmosphere early accustoms the mind to
the beauty in the haze of things. The promise of the
German character is even greater than its achievement,
but such enthusiasm for light and such catholic senti-
ments as govern them in the pursuit of excellence can-
not fail of the highest results of culture. I desire to
gain something of that generous disposition towards
the sum of all systems of thought which is so promi-
nent a trait of mind among the learned of Germany.

There is a peculiarity of the German character which,
I think, I may affirm to be national, and to one who

30 A Young Scholar.

thinks, it must give a far insight into the real life of
the people. I refer to the kindly and enthusiastic sen-
timents with which the old regard the young. If the
people have an Ideal it is the German youth. I need
not tell you how this character is supposed to unite
generosity with frankness, courage, and tenderness, —
with an enthusiasm for the beautiful which is truly
Greek, and I do not believe any people can vie with
the Germans in the attainment of their desire.

Have dear little Abby write to me with her own
hand. I shall kiss the letter a hundred times. Can't
Billy * manufacture a postscript ?

V.

Latin instruction ; German laboring men look to Amer-
ica; superiority of American country women due to
liberty ; Greek verbs and Homer ; art purified nature ;
Morris's ^^ Earthly Paradise ^

HEIDEI.BERG, 8th Nov., 1868.

Within the last fortnight I have received two letters
from you ; one enclosing a sheet from dear little sister.
I have deposited my guldens with the banker on
whom the paper was drawn, and, as far as money can
purchase content, I am at rest for several months to
come. It is possible to live in Germany on very little
money, but a student can spend a good deal with
advantage, if he can afford it. For instance, although
I have the regular recitations at the Lyceum, as I take
nothing but the classics I have time to write a good
deal of Latin, which cannot be corrected by the pro-

* A yonnger brother.

Letters. 3 1

fesson Consequently I need some one to do this, and
this will be an extra expense.

The news of Grant's election has reached us, for
which, I believe, every one was prepared. It is going
to add fuel to the emigration fever, which next spring
will be unprecedented. There is scarcely a laboring
man in Germany under forty years of age, who does
not look forward to a home in America, — something he
need never think to own in the Fatherland. Means to
go are almost impossible for him to obtain. I know a
young tailor here who thinks that, if, after ten years*
savings, he will be able to get to New York he will be
fortunate. He has been several years a journeyman,
but has just been able to live and is not worth a kreut-
zer. Marriage among the very poor is scarcely known,
and four-fifths of the people are very poor,

A woman in Germany pays her own way, and has
about as many rights as a man, with an exemption
from the army, — and such women ! It is pitiable to
see every trace of women's grace and sweetness crushed
from their poor faces. Among the peasants I have not
seen a face which was not painful to behold, while in
America, among the country women, no one is surprised
to find the greatest delicacy and proportion. The
cause or causes are not far to seek ; the very breath of
liberty bears beauty with it, puts a fire in the eyes,
gives uprightness and elasticity to the step, and a
cheerful independence to the whole countenance.
There is nothing more brutalizing than slavery of all
kinds and degrees, and to live with the never absent
sense that there is some one over you, that your destiny
is being determined by the prejudices, or even wisdom,
of others, will put a cloud on the face of the sun. The
learned can, in a manner, dispense with the sunlight of

32 A Young Scholar.

liberty by shutting themselves up in their studies,
and lighting all the candles of science, or from the
pages of ancient Greece catch the light of suns set two
thousand years. Even they betray a sickly tint of arti-
ficial light, and learning is not even here what it ought
to be. She is a goddess in whose robes the freshness
of the mountain air should blow, and whose hair should
be sweet with the weight of wood-perfiimes and the
light of the field.

I begin to see that too much planning and too little
work are no more profitable, although more delightful,
than the reverse. I put my powers of memory to a test
the other day, and committed in one hour one hundred
entirely new Greek verbs : I mean that I was able to
give the Greek verb when its German equivalent was
pronounced. I consider this a feat, but do not propose
to repeat it very often. I am reading Homer's Odyssey
with such delight as you can hardly imagine. It is
more than probable that, when I have finished my
studies in Homer, I shall write you an essay on his
genius and works.

You neglect to tell me what you are reading. I am
in no condition to recommend anything to your atten-
tion in English, as I have only what I took from home.
You may determine whether or not you have a taste for
pure art, which is simply purified nature, by ascertain-
ing whether you are able to find unalloyed delight in
several of the stories of Morris's Earthly Paradise,
The book, you know, was presented me in Chicago,
and I read it all the time I was at sea. It is as Greek
as the Odyssey,

Dear Abby's letter was especially pleasant, — so full of
every kind of news and gossip. She writes sense and
English. Your letters grow thinner every mail. You

Letters. 33

must not let the only bond between me and home grow
weak. Father does not say much more than he would
if he met me at the comer of the street, but he is work-
ing hard for me and loves me, I am sure. What pleas-
ure we shall have one day, when I come home, to repay
him a part of his care and toil ! We shall always have
but one home and one interest, which some day will
not all be earned by him. I leave a thousand things
unsaid and unasked. Write often and at length to
your lonesome boy.

VI.

Men's part in the world ; preparation for the Univer-
sity ; a newspaper article would derange one's tem-
per for study,

HEIDBI3ERG, 6th Dec, 1868.

Your own and mother's letters of November 6th are
before me, and by their side the sweet face of little sister.
A wife and daughter who love us must make us do
men's parts in the world. If my peculiar views on
the subject of government have appeared to make me
a dissolver of civil relations, they have driven me for
logical foothold on to a more elevated conception of
the family. Where my head clearly leads my heart
is in training to follow, although I had no need of
reason to make me an enthusiast for the family. You,
I am sure, cannot fail to understand the joyous pride
that must thrill a true man's heart and is the reward
for his sufferings, when he can plant his shield over
the dear and defenceless, and face the world. I say
to myself: ** Father and I are now comrades of battle ;
he watches while I arm — he shall soon be relieved."

When you receive these lines, nearly a half-year will

34 ^ Young Scholar.

have elapsed since we parted on the cars. The twinkle
of letters, like stars, must light me through the dreary
watches of the night, with sometimes the pale memory
dreams which rise like the ** ghost of the late buried
sun.'* This letter must, however, be one of business
and not of sentiment, although sentiment is no sport
for a poor homesick fellow, but the first of realities.

Business in this world is limited to dealings touch-
ing money, which, like faith in the church, compre-
hends everything else. To begin, as Horace warns
poets not to do, at the beginning : — I have, after get-
ting and reciting my lessons at the Lyceum, which are
much easier for me now than when I began, seven
hours each and every day, and they must be utilized.
I have discovered a gentleman in the city who has
prepared young men for the University with eminent
success and in an almost incredibly short time, but
these were able to take two or three hours with him a
day. He reckons for success on extra diligence and more
than average perception in his pupils. This gentleman,
who has a reputation to sustain as well as a charac-
ter that appears most honorable, promises me to abate
at least one of the three years to which I am doomed,
if I give him the direction of my studies and take six
lessons a week of him. I am confident that at least
so much, if not more, could be done. I trust that you
will be able, as I know you will be willing, to pay it.
In the meantime, till I can hear from you, I shall em-
ploy him, for I feel that time is flying, and enough
has already come and gone with unweighted wings
for me.

What can I say to your invitation to write? [/. e.
for the Jacksonville Journal'^, When I consider how
it must appear to you I cannot excuse myself, but

Letters. 35

then I really have now no more material to write of
Germany than if I were almost anywhere else. Soci-
ety no man can learn without money and time ; Ger-
man politics are sluggish and as impenetrable as mud ;
my scenery is shut within this little valley, and now
often smothered in vapor ; and I have no time for Ger-
man literature more than just to taste. Moreover,
people here are very like the Germans at home. After
all, my matter would not so utterly fail me if I had
time ; but every available inch of it is under contribu-
tion to duty. To collect one's ideas for a newspaper
article would derange one's temper for study to a sad
degree.

Give my love to all, and think of me as often as I do
of you, which is without ceasing.

VII.

Industry a goddess ; the opera ^^ Faust ^\' taneltness not
endurable ; German pedagogic to help the reform of
American schools.

HKIDEI.BKRG, 27th Dec, 1868.

For once you must pardon my neglect and be satis-
fied with a note instead of a letter.

My three days' vacation has run through to the last
sands, and to-morrow I awake to ** fresh fields and
pastures new." You remember the passage in Lyddas :
** Sober-faced Industry is a goddess, with girt-up gown
and severe smile, whom no one loves at first ; but for
the initiated into her mysteries of silent, ceaseless, mid-
night toil, she has many an hour of calm and genial
feeling, when the balanced wheelwork of the mind runs
without hum or jar."

36 A Young Scholar.

Yesterday E and I, with a triad of friends, went

to see the opera Famt at Mannheim. What emotion
purifies the heart like pity ! And what a masterpiece
of sadness has Goethe created, where the unsearchable
forces of our nature impel life against life, and love,
like the fabled blossom made deadly by lightning,
grows a poison flower by wrath out of heaven ! The
music by Gounod, and performed by perhaps the finest
orchestra in Baden, was such an interpreter of every
scene, that you had thought it more intelligible than
the words. We returned at eleven o'clock, and have
thought in iambics all day.

The weather has been so mild as to leave sweet little
nooks of grass in the mountains, but they cannot laugh
the gray sky into the azure and silver of summer. Ice
has formed but once.

You have no right to taunt me with my praise of
solitude, and ask me how I find it in reality, since it
seemed so desirable when it could not be reached.
This is not solitude, but desertion ; nor is it even soli-
tary desertion, for the world's voice rings in my ears :
— now however, it is German that is spoken. But I
confess, and that is what you desired I should do, that
utter loneliness is not even endurable by the lion of
the desert. How insufferable then must it be for a
man ** whose heaven-erected face the smiles of love
adorn*' !

I am collecting information on the entire pedagogic
of the German schools and intend imparting it to the
Journal. I am convinced that what I can say will be
acceptable to all earnest students and may contribute
its mite to the reform in our schools which must be
achieved, and for which I shall strike a blow when I
come home.

Letters. 3 7

VIII.

Gothic Utters; as Telemachus in the ** Odyssey ^^ ; charm
of the * ^Earthly Paradise * * / its Greek stories the finer ;
men defend with the most violence what they least un-
derstand; the Spaniards itnth the coolness of a gam-
bler and equal concern ; Germain monarchists exalt
learning to kill the thinking faculties ; draft on
patience.

H^iDBi^BKRC, 3d Jan., 1869.

Two of your letters came to hand four days ago at
the same time, notwithstanding the difference of their
postmarks of six days. Your letters are so Gothic,
not only in their form, but as well in contents and ar-
rangement, that to answer them is pretty much like
singing an appropriate chorus to the blended songs of
a wood full of birds on a June morning.

Your solicitude about my health and appetite is un-
founded, as I never enjoyed either in a greater degree
than since I have been here. I caught from the cir-
cumstantiality of Abby's letter a real genuine impres-
sion of home. She has the art of making herself
objective. Tell her I think of her dear little face every
day, and long for the time when I shall see it again.
Her picture is a delight to me, and dear father in his
fur coat looks out from the magical metal plate with
those clear eyes, manly, imperturbable brow, as I loved
them at home. As Telemachus in the Odyssey ^ who
mourned his father as lost when Mentes, who was
Pallas in disguise, put courage in his heart and then
went gleaming up to heaven, thought with more love,
so has absence made me feel more consciously how
noble a father I have. I^et me have your own picture

38 A Young Scholar.

and Billy's, for the eyes are fed with a shadow while
the heart has the essential reality of'love.

When I heard that you had procured a copy of
Morris's poems I intended to make this letter an intro-
duction to reading them, but the inexorable demands
upon my time will not allow me more than a few re-
marks. The pre-eminent charm of the sentiment is the
delicate blending, or rather fusion, of an intense ob-
jectivity in form, the antique element, and an equally
intense subjectivity in essence, the finest product of a
high civilization. His stories, you will notice, are al-
ternately on Greek and mediaeval legends. For the
reason above referred to, his Greek stories are by all
odds the finer, as they offered him the most perfect
body for his sentiments, which must still be modern.
The mind of every reader is fitted up with what one
may call its scenery, and the finest poet can do little
more than shift the figures already possessed. It is
true that he must perfect and develop the material in
a measure to his hand, as the furniture of the mind is
not fixed, but grows ; still one poet cannot expect to
carry the process very far, and if he finds little to his
hand to begin with, he seldom succeeds in arranging
an effect.

To construct a story of Morris's in the imagination
does not demand a great number of fixings, but rather
a very few but exquisite human figures and idyllic
landscapes. The sea is always introduced with the
most enchanting effect, which I failed to perceive till I
had seen the sun-saturated water of the Atlantic.
With the qualifications of a tolerable imagination
nursed in dreams of artless human beauty and still
fields and waters, of a heart undebauched by a thou-
sand affections as transitory as worthless, and of a

Letters. 39

clear conscience and good digestion, one may open to
the first tale, **Atalanta*s Race,** with the certainty of
being delighted. I can only call attention to the beau-
tiful introduction to this story, and then to the lovely,
fearful maiden, the friend of Artemis, who scorned all
love. How appropriately Morris has given her gray
eyes ! — but I believe he has done as much for all his
female characters. The beautiful episode of Milanion
at the temple of Venus deserves many a reading. After
the preferment of this eloquent prayer, the temple is
described, or rather the heavens and earth are so
blended with the place that we think we could have
prayed too in such a spot.

In the ** Doom of King Acrisius ' ' the fight of Perseus
with the sea-monster is a subject for the pencil. An
artist would seize the moment when

" In confused folds the hero stood.
His bright face shadowed by the jaws of death ;
His hair blown backward by the poisonous breath."

In the story of ** Alcestis ** remark what an efiect the
shepherd-man, Apollo, has on the mind, — a god in dis-
guise. But this subject could only be exhausted with
the entire book. The story of ** Cupid and Psyche,'*
the finest allegory in existence, is perhaps the most
perfect of the tales. If you cannot become, as I am,
an enthusiast for Morris, you will have the majority to
sympathize with you.

I have written a letter to M in which I expressed

my opinion on some delicate subjects in not a very
delicate way, and I am in fear he may not understand
one. Religion is something in which men put their
hopes darkly, and as they are determined not to be
driven from it, they defend what they least understand

40 A Young Scholar.

with the most violence. I have done the same thing
and can fully appreciate the agony of mind with which
we feel ourselves being forced in some cherished ob-
scurity to see the light. When we have been driven
from an error we never regret it, but the pain of sepa-
ration cannot be surpassed by that which we feel on the
death of a friend.

Your ingenious policy for $1000, costing onlj' $1.10
per annum, is more than was thought possible when I
was a boy in arithmetic. Methuselah's age would not
suflSce to make such a policy paying to the grantors.
Tell me if this is a new invention since I have left
home. How fast one gets behind in Europe !

The revolution in Spain raised the highest hopes in
my breast for Spanish freedom, but there is eminent
danger of a relapse. The secret influence of European
sovereigns is untold, and they are exerting themselves
to their utmost to turn aside the eyes of the Spanish
people from the seductive light of liberty. That nation
acts with the coolness of a gambler, but I am afraid
with only equal concern. Kingship is in less danger
in Germany than in any other civilized nation of
Europe. German monarchists have understood how
to control the popular thirst for knowledge to their own
interest. They have made learning a state institution,
and by making an almost incredible proficiency in the
forms of science and language indispensable to success
in either public or professional life, they have suc-
ceeded in killing the thinking faculties of the great
majority of educated men by an overdose. One ex-
treme is as beneficial to oppression as another. I shall
benefit by their oppression, as I can take just as much
of each course as will advance my true culture.

My first year will be the most slavish I shall spend.

Letters. 41

You cannot imagine the drafts this work makes on my
patience. I think every day I shall be bankrupt in
that necessary quality, but it seems to grow with use.
My self-respect is flattered by my cheerfulness under
circumstances I had thought would cast me down. I
work like a spirited horse, steadily but restlessly.
What years of literary ease and domestic happiness I
promise myself as a reward for this labor and loneli-
ness !

I must go now to dinner, having consumed the
morning on this letter, which will be a poor pleader
for a half-day when we must answer for our wasted
time.

IX.

Temperance and freedom from cares enable us to do prod-
igies ; monopoly the secret of money-making ; the secret
of life ; expansion of social pleasures and realization
of noble ideals a cure for intemperance ; as healthy and
innocent luxuries of life become attainable, the per-
nicious ones are given up ; study of Greek drama ;
Heidelberg skies.

HEIDEI.BBRC, 8th Feb., 1869.

Your letters with an enclosed draft for some hundred
and eighty gulden were received more than a week
ago. I did not write an acknowledgment of their
receipt at the time, as I had posted a long letter to you
only some three or four days previous, and as I never
sin against order by doing more than is on my card.

My health continues excellent, but in view of my
liability to a spell of fever in the spring, I shall slacken
sail and wear into the wind. This winter's test has
been severe, but has affected neither my appetite, eyes,

42 A Young Scholar.

nor temper. Perfect temperance in all one's bodily
habits, with an ordinary freedom from grinding cares,
will enable us to do almost prodigies in labor.

Your journalistic ambition is not so far from meeting
my humble approval as perhaps you would think.
Monopoly is the secret of money-making, and if you
were master of ten Journals each one would cost you
less than the same paper would the publisher who had
no other oflSce. I look to some form of journalizing
as the only field open for myself in which to discharge
that debt of labor which we nearly all have to pay for
the privilege of existing.

I neither covet nor expect to lead a purely scholastic
life. Such an existence is dearly bought at any price,
and reason as well as inclination points me to the busy
field of actual human labor as likely to afford most
delight in the execution of my duties, and far greater
satisfaction in the reflections of age.

But how shall I adorn and deepen my life from the
wealth of the dead centuries ? The secret of a perfect
life is to live through the past, in the present, and with
the future. The secret of a happy life may be learned
from the former, and it is to keep our ambition below
our abilities, and then we are always successful. I
know far too well where I can hope to succeed to lay
any claim to the laurels of song. I warn you all from
entertaining too high hopes of my powers, for it is the
surest way to ensure disappointment for yourselves and
the bitterest mortification for me.

We are altogether apart on the liquor question, as,
in fact you are aware, on many other public issues, but
at all events you are conscientious and able in your
defence of prohibitory legislation. You will fail, must
fail, ought to fail; but that would be nothing more

Letters. 43

than the fate of many a generation of earnest and power-
ful legislators. Temperance must win in the end, but
unless some other vice is to be substituted for drunken-
ness, we can never get rid of intemperance till the
gradual expansion of social pleasures and the realization
of noble ideals make drunkenness, what so many vices
have already become, without any attraction and anti-
quated. The development of society is organic and
proceeds from within, not from without. Wquor is
only an instrument of human imperfection in the pro-
duction of vice, not a cause in itself. The race is just
so imperfect, and so much moral weakness must have
its effect, whether its instrument be one or another.
The savage, who can procure neither liquor nor any
other of our civilized means of vice, manages to be the
most wretched and villainous of mortals. In many
countries I could name, the entire plain is shedded over
with the pious solicitude of men who forget that, if
Nature had thought drunkenness needed any more
legislation, she would have added to the already severe
penalties she executes against it. It is a long and
hard lesson, — ^this of keeping hands off the delicate pro-
cesses of social machinery, which is as much under law
as the stars. Every man's sphere is to seek light and
sweetness for himself first of all, then when he has got
it, give of it freely to all who will listen or look, — and all
will do that. While the virtuous men of society are
represented by the narrowness, dryness, and darkness
of our religious brethren in America, I should lament
the day that drunkenness or any other vice of excess
was stopped, not that in themselves they are not bad,
but that if they could be eradicated at this stage, it
would be conclusive evidence that we had reached our
zenith, — that we had grown to our stature, and such a

44 A Young Scholar.

stature ! Principles, like algebraic formulas, know no
particular names or quantities, but work with generali-
ties, «, w, x^yy etc., for which in any given problem
you must substitute the particular things ; but who
will swallow the liquor-law or tariflF when formulated
to a principle? Of course there can be a thousand
twists and evasions, which evade nothing, between
these principles and the law on the books, but reason
must call them all the same. Drunkenness has de-
creased immensely in the last two centuries, but the
cause has never been a sentiment or law against it.
The prying eye of research finds that as the healthy
and innocent luxuries of life become attainable, the
pernicious ones are given up. There is no manner of
doubt on this matter. This law has obtained in regard
to every moral quality we can cultivate. The last of
arbitrary power and forced respect gives place only to
the increasing honor shown to human nature as such,
and especially to the peaceable attainments of the
scholar and thinker.

But why should I enumerate these happy changes, —
this transmutation of vice into virtue ? We all can now
see what stupid unbearable worlds have been the very
dreams of the virtuous Puritans of Cromwell's time.
In the unconquerable disobedience of their children in
marrying for love, although it brought ruin and con-
tempt, lay the force which was in the end to master
and make the marriages of to-day seldom a pious pros-
titution. If I may be allowed to reason rather than
relate, in the drunkenness of our land we see the fruit
of our cold selfish society, and till innocent mirth and
jollity make the sweet land ring from sea to sea, we
shall hear the hideous imitatum of the midnight orgy
and carouse. I am confident that in Germany, where

Letters. 45

there is absolutely no sentiment against drinking, and
where the chances for social pleasures are not so good
by far as in America, but better cultivated, drunkenness
does not do one third the harm it does at home. How
seldom a drunken man is here seen ! Yet it is not true
the people drink at home to intoxication, for the beer-
saloons are never empty of a gay, interesting crowd
from every rank of society and of every profession.
About one table are seen a half-dozen laborers eating
black bread and sausage and drinking their mug of
beer ; around another a group of students reading a
drama of Sophocles in the Greek for their pleasure, or
hotly debating the HegeUan philosophy. This is no
fancy picture but an actual fact. The entire corps of

preachers in J would be children in learning beside

these young enthusiasts. Yet even for these beer is an
evil as it is used here, but how much less an evil than
were there nothing but Sunday-schools on the one hand
and beer on the other ? The conditions of society, not
her laws, are to determine the extent of every vice.
But this is a long and irregular digression for a letter,
and not to my own taste.

I will mention what my progress has been in Greek
poetry, — perhaps the hardest department of classical
learning. I have studied some dozen books of Homer
with such thoroughness that my teacher says I can read
his entire works against the first of next autumn. A
year from date, if nothing happens, I shall have read
the entire Greek drama, embracing about forty tragedies
and comedies of -^iEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and
Aristophanes. These are without doubt the finest re-
mains of ancient genius, and in a field where the
Romans could no more follow the Greeks than a Metho-
dist. I am in no humor to-day to descant on the

46 A Young Scholar.

pathos of Sophocles, but take my word for it, the man
who does not know Greek is no scholar and is to be
pitied.

I have written and rewritten an article on German
schools, but I was frightened to find myself in such
deep water and on a subject I could only treat in a way
interesting to an enthusiast, like myself— I may, how-
ever, hammer out something yet ; it is an uncertain
subject and would not interest anybody.

The region about this place must be a wonder in
May. Such deep skies and airy delicate shaded clouds,
it appears to me, I had never seen at home, and then
the fine hills or mountains — ^but they are neither — are
so green near the sky that they intensify the blue.
Spring too will awaken my longing for home, which
has somewhat slumbered through these inert months.
What delicious and sad emotions does not spring arouse
in our hearts, — ^if it has a place there ! In this respect
I am as near to nature, I often think, as some of the
animal world. Dr. Johnson would not allow that the
seasons made any difference in our real feelings. He
was not as susceptible as a bear. How I wish the days
had fifty hours.

Do not let any one see my letters in whose eyes you
imagine I would care to stand well. I don*t laugh as
often as when at home, but have an even temper, — on
the whole a much better.

Letters. 47

X.

Tendency of feeling to become ideas ; struggle against
our sensibility ; an escape in mental toil ; Tennyson^ s
^' In MemoHam^^ a sublime biography; philosophic
value of the poem; pain of mourning ; an intenser
life; error of the poem ; Spinoza's God.

(Conjectured date) HeidkI/BERG, March, 1869.

Too earnest and serious letters, such as mine, always
act as a soporific antidote to the pains of separation.
If I can sound on in your ear with the monotonous
drum of abstract thought, I shall grow farther and
still more distant, till I shall be to your sense as a low
disembodied voice whose unreal joys and griefs will be
remembered as things sad or sweet, or things of
thought. Feelings with me have an almost resistless
tendency to become ideas, memories to pass from the
actual life, where they sob and ache and glow, to the
motionless heights of soul, where passion is none and
love only a perfect yearning.

It is strange, but love is too overpowering a passion
for me, too awful. My nature trembles in its presence,
and I shrink, maiden-like, from the too great joy, the
divinity of love. It is the wisest for me ; it is in truth
the only thing possible, to be content with one stolen
glance of her great, sweet face. Who will understand
me ? I scarce understand myself, yet I know that I
am too weak to live and cherish one full love, a ray of
flower-like, starry affection, — the one holy thing in life,
of infinite memory, of power to penetrate the dust of
death, a fountain of songs as the sun is of spring.

Far be sentimentalism from me. I love to look at a
healthy life with blood in its face, and no one has ever
done less for, nay more against, over-great sensibility

4& A Young Scholar.

of feeling than I ; but it is in no one's power to be
other than one is bom. This same peculiarity is per-
ceptible in other and lesser affections, — ^a certain desire
to go off from them, to worship them alone at a great
distance. How absurd ! Yes, and I contend against
it, let it be hoped with some success.

This sense of completeness, or rather content with
what is past, should be the cool bright mood of age,
after a life of struggle and of love. It takes away all
fear of death, but for youth it is sad and leaves me to
wonder how rsLy life will be filled out, if it is long.
Can these sweet and high concluding strains sound on
for years or will they cease? After the last, surely
there is no more music.

I have tried by these remarks to give you a deeper
insight into my heart than one generally gets from
words, but I shall have scarcely succeeded. If you
have a chord of kindred feeling, it will jar audibly at
these words, and you will understand me ; if not, the
common stock of sentiment is not rich enough to fur-
nish me with universally understood expressions for
such a feeling. My only escape appears to me to be in
a life of unusual mental labor and an assiduous culti-
vation of the minor feelings. I can love children and
places and friends, books and animals and mankind
and some great cause, and brother and sister, while I
must take care to be always master of my filial feelings.

The following is a reflection after reading Tennyson's
In Memariam,

For every one whose Jieart beats true to the pulses
of this age, that is, who lives over in the increased
distinctness and fervor of personal experience what is
only dimly and in outline indicated by the religious,
literary, and political convulsions of the period, will

Letters. 49

esteem this master- work of Tennyson's as a piece of
sublime, universal biography. We see here what re-
sources the world at this time has for a grand, pure
soul in sorrow.

We have a man whom nature and fortune conspired
to endow with the fullest and finest sense of life possi-
ble in an age which, for beautiful enthusiasms, star-like
virtues, and deep, sweet sympathies, is indeed the very
crown of times. He meets with a loss bitter and deso-
lating as the heart of such a man can sustain ; but it is
of a nature to which, by an inexorable law of fate,
every human bosom is in its degree liable, and, being a
sorrow from the heavens, leaves no hateful and to be
hated human form between the sufferer and his grief.
It is a pain to be wept out by a naked human soul to
the naked, heedless heavens. We are to see whether,
on the earth or under it or above it, there is a final
reconciliation ; whether with the Christian we are to
think it no bereavement, or with the philosopher an
endurable and salutary bereavement, or with the ach-
ing heart only a bereavement which we shall forget
when we forget all things.

That Tennyson has not decided from an aesthetic-
moral view this conflict which, from a moral-intellectual,
has been so terribly contested in the world, is too ap-
parent from his work to need a statement. Indeed we
should be unwarranted in looking for such a perform-
ance till the faith of the world is better fixed ; at least
till all that half the great minds affirm of life and im-
mortality is not negated by the other. It is not until
sometime after their discovery that we are able to feel
ourselves at peace with great truths, and, whatever
may be the final decision as to the soul's immortality,
there will certainly be no exception here to the general

-I

' I

»

I

i
I

50 A Young Scholar.

rule. That, with each great truth once decided, a final
reconciliation of the human heart must take place, fol-
lows from the necessity in nature of a gradual adapta-
tion or an ultimate extinction. Not to pursue the
methods of this great and creative law in the limited
field of history, we may rest assured of its existence.

What, then, is the philosophical value of this poem ?
The answer to this question will be determined by the
faith or lack of faith of him who answers. The spirit-
ualist will say, taking up the conclusions of the poet,
that it shows the triumph of faith over grief. But
there is another conception which, to my mind, is the
true, essential tendency of the work, that is, the reali-
zation through the imagination and feelings of the
existence of the beloved object for the mourner, or, in
other words, the annihilation of time as a factor in the
life of the soul. Death is only a ceasing of the subject
to exist for himself; for love he cannot cease to be.
So much of our nature as remains unchanged after such
a loss, and so much only, can keep the old love, if kept
by the imagination in a constant glow and in the perfect
vigor of its accustomed sensations. It will not grieve,
for the pain of mourning arises from the discontinuation
of old and agreeable impressions.

A friend dies in whom the poet had gathered up the
almost infinite affection of his young heart for an
object of the finest, highest, broadest manhood. He
had loved in his friend all that is amiable in the race,
and cherished dreams of divided happiness and fame
with him. But with a poet*s love all nature enters
glorified into his heart. His friend had now ceased
any longer to be as a personality. Is then all that
was built on him to fall together? With most
men it would have done so ; with the poet it did so

Letters. 5 1

only partially. It will always in a less degree be
so as our sense of life becomes more unified and
intense, and as our love can look farther before and
after.

It is too true that the poet has descended to that
traditional abuse of what seems the earthly at times,
nay, even to frantic and senseless expressions of disgust
at life unless it is to last forever. By this means
he does not approach the object of his desires and
fears in any degree, but he fully unprepares himself
to meet the other alternative. These words are often
in the harshest contrast to other and better weighed
and more deeply felt passages. This is the chief error
or imperfection of the work, as all works must have
chief errors and other smaller ones.

In the nature of Tennyson's passion itself, as it
appears to us from this great dirge, we may notice
a certain want of individuality, perhaps due to the
little idea he gives us of his friend's relation to him.
The poem is rather a bas-relief than a freely rounded,
perfect whole which we are at liberty to view from all
sides. Such limitation was probably necessary in the
production of those great lyrical monotones of grief
which, to change the figure, seem to moan with an
endless pathos in the depths, with an answering accord
in the heights of his soul.

It is a great fault of feeling to find the sorrow of
these poems too intellectual, as I have at times heard
it characterized. True it is that the whole understand-
ing cannot take part in the heart's sorrow ; but not
for this reason is the grief of all men alike. Nay, it
is in the choicest light of the understanding, the true
wisdom of a man who grieves, that the really wise
and good and tender in the centre of their being come

52 A Young Scholar.

together and make one heart, where great sorrow or
great joy abideth. The assimilation of all these
elements is the true growth of character. He only,
who has felt the enthusiastic longing of youth for
wisdom, can know how real a part of a man's inner-
most desires and dreams the pressure after truth comes
to be, and, with such sympathies in the reader, the
great I^aureate's work will have no trace of the forced
and far-fetched.

His choice of metre cannot be admired suflSciently,
and his mastery in it is so natural that its use is made
impossible for every coming poet who may have read
him. He seldom indulges here in that golden shim-
mer of coloring which in his early pieces reminds one
of the old Italian masters. He might have safely
been more profuse with his magical brush, did he not
have Milton's Lycidas as a guide. But we have said
enough and more than enough of dispraise. He has
lived to see the direction which he had the originality
and boldness to take up in poesy, become the common
highway of English art. For neither to Byron nor
to Wordsworth can we trace the birth of that unspeak-
ably tender light, so deep, so spiritual, now spread
over all the best productions of the British Muse. I
am certain that, in the perusal of this great work of
human love and ruthless fate, you will not miss the
sublime tones of sorrow transposed by presence of
universal death into the unearthly cadences of a
pathos that nothing can disturb.

The divinely intoxicated thinker of whom you
speak, Spinoza, the real father of German speculation,
develops in the fifth division of his Ethics an idea
that is destined to be recognized as the most fruitful
thought of the human mind ; enveloped, it is true.

Letters. 53

in the appendages of his general system and not car-
ried through to any important consequences, but still
the thought. Nature is God to Spinoza, but it is
another nature than we are accustomed to represent
by the word God. It is the entire sum of all that
actually exists, the divine whole, full of life, blossom-
ing in flower-beauty, sky-beauty, soul-beauty forever, —
a divinity that rejoices in an eternal youth. Its being
is order with a soul of necessity. It is all one great
problem for the mind, and an infinite treasure for the
heart. This we must love and seek to understand.

XI.

Enchanted ground ; age of imperative thought ; fashions
of learning; faith the heroic virtue; religious fal-
lacies ; no exiling sorrow ; nobler studies,

Hbibki^BRG, loth April, 1869.

This is indeed enchanted ground ; such a spot as
earth and sky conspire to make sacred. The great
valleys are resonant with the soft but querulous music
of spring birds, while the air lies almost still, nursing
the sweet balm of flowers. The water makes a cheer-
ful sound in the cool, deep moat, and on the walls stout
old knights in stone are almost hid in the freshening
ivy. Heroes, ye men of passion, do ye not look with
superior pity on us poor children of ideas ? Hundreds
of years ago, in the sweet spring-time, the glorious
tournament and minne-song stirred your young blood ;
here, where ** ladies' eyes rained influence," the anx-
ious search for lore has brought me far from home and
buried my youth in the dust of libraries, — ^youth that
is never to come again.

54 -^ Young Scholar.

Forgive me this reverie, for part of it comes from
my very heart. For what is all this voluptuous pomp
of nature, this unfettered joy and overflowing luxury
of life ? Why should it make me sad, as if conscious
of some irreparable loss — as if the sweet fruits of life
were passing before me, Tantalus-like, in the impo-
tenc5»^ of a dream ? Is it a misfortune in this age of
imperative thought to have a too lively sense of the
rich full wine that is in our hands, but which we dare
not drink lest it cloud the brain? I look forward
to old age for some recompense of my self-denial,
when Memory, who loves the thought of labors past
better than the withered flowers of delight, will spread
her own heavenly colored clouds over these very days,
and every sigh of the boy's heart will be a gentle, far-
off, tender remembrance to the old man.

But why should I not be glad now ? The health of
youth is mine now, and the roselight of hope. So
long as everything is new nothing can be wearisome,
and if I already have plucked one dusk flower of
regret ** that sad embroidery wears,** still even it is dear
to me, and I have yet no cause in my life for remorse.

I study with zeal, but not as a devotee, the wisdom
of men. I have thoughts of my own, and to their
songs I bring an almost equal share, — an open heart.
I respect myself, for I have fought clear of all the
nets in social order and universal order that the inter-
twisted follies, fanaticisms, vices, and dreams of one
generation weave for another. Wherever I see a man
caught in them, I have seen to his bottom, at least in
one place. I have no cause for vanity in this con-
sciousness, but it delivers me from that excessive rev-
erence for these great men with which an ardent child
is certain to begin its studies. I am aware that in the

Letters. 55

schools there is as great a pernicious clinging to tra-
dition and old forms as in the state.

It is difficult to introduce any sound human sense
into institutions which have once bound up, as it were
in one body, the heterogeneous mass of many men's
opinions. It is the teacher's trade to teach what he
was taught, and the first requisite for the scholar is to
know what others know, for learning has its fashion,
and one as much more imperative than that of dress as
the pride of knowledge is naturally greater than the
pride of appearance. Some great men advise a stu-
dent to dare to be ignorant of many things that every-
body knows. I shall not hesitate longer in dismissing
the pretensions of school cram to my time.

It is my intention to live a genuine, fair life, and
neither pretend, do, or believe anything that I do not
think is altogether sound and true to the centre. If
this resolution strips me to the faith of a savage and
darkens every jack o' lantern pole-star in my horizon
(of which there are some thousands claiming confi-
dence), I shall not be intimidated, for I do not at least
fear any ghosts in the dark. So long as the essential
question is What sort of faith will make me happy ?
and not What is the truth about life ? there will be no
end to the errors and consequent miserable confusion
of opinions. Faith, in the only acceptation that makes
it anything but credulity, is that heroic virtue of mind
that forbids us to make any effort to blink the truth
for fear of consequences, — which refuses to acknowl-
edge as even desirable anything but the truth. Now
I ask you how this philosophic, liberal spirit is possible
for one who even sUvSpects that he has in his hands a
** revelation,*' for that all reason is long over with. A
man who believes this need not be remarked.

56 A Young Scholar.

You seem to have altogether mistaken the purport
of my syllogism. I gave it as the most generalized
statement of the cosmological argument for the exist-
ence of a personal Creator. By showing that our word
** planner'* never means the origin of the wisdom of a
plan, but only a mediate agent, I believe that I have
(for myself) discovered the fallacy of this ordinary ar-
gument. For my part I have not the slightest idea
that the order of nature ever did begin, and am myself
growing extremely tired of these questions which find
their only support in the inert credulity of human na-
ture. Religion serves to give some form and embodi-
ment to our notions and highest affections at an age
when symbols are necessary to convey or rather to
ratify every idea. Their incongruity and absurdity
become apparent as soon as, and no sooner than we
can fairly see, in the worth of our nature, the utUe et
honestum, the useful and the right. To deprive a man
of his superstition before this, is like refusing the mathe-
matician his assumption of x. He treats it as a known
quantity while he knows nothing about it ; but this
proceeding is necessary if he is ever to evolve its value
from the given conditions. He drops his x so soon as
he knows its equivalent in common-sense figures.

lycaming is always cultivated first for power, and
often never for anything but power. In order to make
human culture worthy of some men's celestial notice
they must fancy they are cultivating themselves for

eternity. W imagines that he is preparing the

youth of an entire city for examination at the council-
table of the Trinity. Now most men of sense and even
genius have found that, after much labor, they had
made but slim preparation for this life ; so you see
that our worthy friend has no mean idea of his abilities

Letters. 5 7

and responsibilities. Men are that in their general
opinions that they are in their particular, and, so long
as the possession of boundless wealth or power is reck-
oned by a world as the ideal of earthly happiness, they
will leave themselves nothing to wish for in their uni-
versal doctrine of life, — that is, in their religion.

But extravagant hope is fatal to happiness, for where
it does not make every beautiful reality worthless, as
in the eyes of an ascetic, it will be certain to occasion
a feeling of hoUowness or vacancy, the effect of over-
tension. Thus we are never done hearing religious
people talk about the vanity of this world, as if there
were for us here, while we live at least, anything but
this world. They talk of life as a ragpicker might of
a fragment of Raphael* s canvas ; it is the paint that
spoils it for all his uses.

I find no theory that can exile sorrow from the realms
of life, or imperfection from any kind of existence. We
call laws perfect. This means certain^ for any other
complete character cannot be given them. We are
born with tears and lamentations as the first proofs of
our life, and yet, some men have the madness to dream
of millenniums. Life is on the whole very endurable,
to me a greater source of wonder and delight than the
still years of heaven. When it becomes oppressive I
can leave it without pain, and so I have no grounds of
complaint. While in it I find daily something to bet-
ter, something to regret which I cannot better.

I am as fortunate in my studies as I could expect,
and hope now to be able to give my attention in a short
time to the nobler studies. One more year will release
me from the shackles of grammar, at least of the classi-
cal languages, and I can then combine my Oriental
studies with others in such a manner as to make the

58 A Young Scholar.

drudgery scarcely felt. I am gradually extending my
acquaintance with German literature, and find here
many a glorious thing.

This beautiful weather, it is so hard to study. I
rise early and do not leave my room in the forenoon,
for I could not get courage to come back if I did. For
the sake of company at dinner with whom I can con-
verse and improve my hour's walk after meals, I am
obliged to leave my eating-house, which is, in truth,
frequented by a very ignorant set of clerks. At a bet-
ter place my dinners will cost me eight kreutzers more,
but still that is cheap, and conversation is indispensable
to progress in German.

XII.

A family removal; changes of age ; theory of politics
and art ; efforts at composition of poetry ; Elizabethan
dramatists for old age.

Heidei^berg, 25th April, 1869.

Perhaps I should have written home on receipt of
the exchange that mother negotiated during your ab-
sence, but I have waited for the recurrence of my wonted
time. Your own letter with its strange and important
news * is now before me. Whatever be the event of
the contemplated change it cannot but be important.
Both the future of the children and the fortune of your-
self and mother will in no small degree be influenced
by one more remove to the singular and active life in
the far West, which some years ago had not altogether
disappeared from Illinois. My first wish is that it may
confirm your health and contribute somewhat to en-
liven your spirits, which, with great concern, I have

* The impending removal of the family to Kansas.

Letters. 59

watched apparently sinking under the fatigue of your
wearisome business into a settled melancholy. When
I come home I shall do my best to make life for you
more genial than it has ever been. You may make
less money in the West, but that is not so vital a matter
as we are apt to think. It is much more important
that now, near the change of life, you should enter
with good omens on a cheerful old age.

After a man's youth there is no period so critical and
impressible as the ten years from forty to fifty. It is
for other reasons recognized as such in one sex, but is
scarcely less important in the other. I desire that you
be not all too careful of me and my wants. A year or
so less in Europe than the rhythm of my plans seems to
demand, will not be unwillingly sacrificed to the welfare
of an affectionate parent, for I have gained too deep a
sense of the infinite beauty and blessedness of filial
love to let the splendid, but in a great part hollow, ac-
complishments of the schools stand between me and
mine. * * The world is too much with us, * * says Words-
worth, and for no class of men is it of more import-
ance to remember this than for scholars.

You do right and beautifully to cherish your dreams
of western life, and all that is necessary to realize them
is the might of an unblinded soul. How immense the
difference between an enthusiast and a visionary ! How
enviable the man who can keep alive the heart in the
head ! Only the finest natures preserve into old age
that glorious day-spring of sentiment in the breast,
that makes, for even the most earthly, a sweet vision of
youth. It is with inexpressible sadness that, at mo-
ments, I become aware that the magic roselight of
youth is fast fading around me, — that I feel the faint
last pulsations which were once the source of over-

6o A Young Scholar.

powering ecstasies or delicious sorrow. I am conscious
that not only those feelings, but the capacity to experi-
ence them are in the past, and I look forward to the
fair, hard light of common day with eagerness to see
what sort of recompense it has in keeping. Could I
become ambitious? avaricious? or enthusiastic as an
advanced agitator ?

Alas ! high passions of whatever kind are but species
of intoxication from which we have a dreadful waking.
Many men are wrecked from the sea of youth on the
shore of manhood ; many are drifted sluggishly on to
the land ; some enter from a prosperous voyage with
high hopes and full hearts to do courageous battle.
No one will ever know the violence of the logical strug-
gles that have absolved my intellectual nature up to
this time. I have carried off the victory, but is it not
pitiful that it should have cost me such desperate effort
to emancipate myself from the villainous and obvious
humbug and superstition which passes for the science
of civil relation and moral duty ? I cannot some way
draw any comfort from the reflection that many others
are still in the dark.

Professor T *s masterly lecture on civil govern-
ment would have been to me a year ago an absolute reve-
lation, but only after I have satisfied my own reason,
can I have the contentment of seeing that what I, as a
child, had won from iron meditation, is the mature
conviction of an old man. His distinctions are drawn
with scientific precision from uncontrovertible grounds
of fundamental rights. His lecture is the first bit of
rational politics I have heard of in America. Only in
his classification of the arts proper with the powers of
social forms did he wholly mistake his ground. Art
proper is, in so far as art goes, a spontaneous, pure

Letters. 6 1

product, having, considered in its origin, no object to
fulfil, but is the simple natural expression of every life
whose burden is hope defeated by desire. Wherever it
can be produced there it is right and necessary that it
should have way. The agitation of women's rights in
America is to my mind the most gratifying phenomenon
of the times, but my grounds for thinking this are too
tedious to be given here.

I am much obliged to Mr. M for saving one of the

best turns in those verses, which appeared by his correct
reading of my manuscript. On a reperusal of them I
am satisfied that I failed in the expression of my idea
in them, and that they give the conception in a sort of
green or raw form without the softer mellow light of a
perfect artistic treatment. The language too is what
might be expected of my first attempt in the English
dactyl. Poetry is not my forte, and my cultivation of
it is a matter of the most disinterested love. Occasional
efibrts at its composition give us a closer and more in-
structed eye in reading.

I would recommend to mother's attention, as a prac-
ticable object of study, the old English dramatists and
their modern critics ; Shakespeare, Jonson, Massinger,
Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Marlow, with the
fine critical literature their works have called out.
Any one could spend years in "this delightful field of
human genius, where so much conspires for the enter-
tainment of the imagination and occupation of the rea-
son. It would be provident in my opinion to cultivate
such a resource for old age.

If you go West soon this will perhaps be the last let-
ter that you will read from me in our common home.
Take good care of mother, brother, sister, and your-
self, and do not fail to write that long-promised letter.

62 A Young Scholar.

XIII.

Teleology or plan in nature considered; natural religion ;
dialectics the grammar of thought ; civil liberty.

Hbidei^bbrg, 27th May, 1869.

How can I refrain from a perhaps premature answer
to the challenge blared out in your review of my syllo-
gism, which was contained in your long letter of the
loth, received this morning ? No, I must maintain so
honest a S5'llogism, as a true knight of logic, against
all comers. I have to object to your objections, that
they are contradictory, inadequate, and founded on
misconceptions.

But here now we come to close quarters and all
swinging of banners is out of place. I intend to rout
you, foot and dragoon, and I insist consequently that
whoever is found first to maintain an unintelligible
position, capitulates at once.

We use two words in the discussion that are vital to
it, and I see that you understand them in at kast two
diflFerent ways. They are plan and planner. There
is one definition oi plan which may be thought the
most strictly correct : namely, that it is a purposed re-
sult of reflection. I admit that this definition makes
the first premise an axiom and would enable the second
alone to establish the point at issue. Observe closely
what I say : this is the definition you have assumed,
and so your thunder has been blown into thin air.

I do not wonder at your eulogies of Aristotle and
logic in general ; — you certainly thought you were do-
ing me a service in referring me to my dialectics. But
now we will take the only reasonable definition oiplan
for the minor premise, which is simply, without refer-

Letters. 63

ence to its origiu (the point in dispute), an exUUng
adaptation of certain means to certain ends. This fitness
is the most remarkable thing in nature, and it is to be
observed in all things. Now the point is simply this,
— to prove that all such adaptations in the first place
are the product of a reflecting intelligence, and in the
second place, of an uncaused intelligence or God.

To do the first of these the word planner in the major
premise must mean intelligent cause ; to prove the
second and establish the divinity it must mean un-
caused intelligent cause. I do not mean that by giving
to this word these meanings, the major premise really
establishes these things, but that these are the defini-
tions the word must have if it is to establish anything.
It is my part to show that it is not true, with these
definitions for the word planner^ (that creation has such
a cause).

An intelligent cause, so far as we know anything
about such a thing, is not necessarily anything but an
adaptation (itself), or pure product of nature herself,
and difiers in no way from an ordinary proximate cause
but in being aware of the processes. To this point I
desire your closest attention. We agree, I believe, that
before the birth of Raphael all the causes existed that
finally painted his Madonna. Where then is the neces-
sity of every adaptation in nature having such an
origin, viz., in the intellect of a being whose intellect
and its results are determined by causes again equally
unconscious and unintelligent as those which we see
do directly bring about these adaptations themselves ?
But even were it so, which is extremely absurd, this
cause would still not be a God, for it is not a final
cause. We must now be prepared to do the last great
feat of absurd conceptions, viz., that of an intelligence

64 A Young Scholar.

without a cause. The human intelligence, as we have
seen, is the product of unintelligent or unconscious
causes. Intelligences can only differ in degree, but are
alike in kind. How then do we have any greater ease
in conceiving of an uncaused intelligence than of any
other uncaused phenomena, say the adaptations in
nature ? We cannot, for every intelligence presupposes
in itself the most wondrous adaptation, and besides
this the wonderful faculty of being aware of the pro-
cesses by which it works.

For my part, I believe that everything has its cause,
namely the phenomena that preceded it, and it is no
misconception to suppose a retrogression of causes ad
infinitum^ for at no point of the golden chain can we
conceive ourselves nearer the end than at another.

This is a sufficient disproof of teleology, but there
are other very vulnerable approaches. For instance,
wisdom is nothing more than a knowledge of the adapt-
ations in nature, and perfect wisdom is only a know-
ledge of all of them. But a thing cannot be known that
does not exist, at least potentially in sufficient causes ;
consequently we can conceive of no wisdom anywhere
existing before nature. Again, if at any time God
alone existed. He was the sole factor in the creation,
but a creation of which any one thing is the sole factor
is simply a metamorphosis, and the original ceases to
have existence save in its effects.

Again, so far from a lawgiver being necessary for a
law, we cannot conceive of any law which we thor-
oughly understand, being given. For instance, the
entire science of mathematics, which is at the bottom
of every combination in nature, is independent of gods.
Mechanics partake of the necessity of numbers, and its
laws determine all celestial phenomena, the shape of

Letters. 65

the earth, its surface irregularities, the volume, course,
etc., of winds, rivers, seas, etc., ad infinitum. The
correlation of functions in organic bodies, of which we
know so little, is without doubt subject to mechanical, or,
in other words, mathematical laws. Chemistry is called
by its best masters a science of numbers. Again laws
of logic, laws of right and justice, could not be any-
thing but what they are, if forty gods willed otherwise.
In fact a law cannot be given, but simply is because
it must be. Theism always takes her refuges in our
ignorance of the laws.

You say very correctly that a plan cannot plan itself,
but, pray, how can a planner plan himself? As you
state your willingness to show that wherever there is
a plan, there is somewhere an ultimate origin of its
wisdom, be so good as to say who sat in council over
the nice arrangements of the divine mind. You are
bound to admit some place an adaptation which has
not been the subject of conscious reflection, and it is
very unscientific to so involve the problem needlessly,
by the introduction of an unintelligible something.

The entire force of my argument hinges on the fact,
which I have seen nowhere else mentioned, that intelli-
gence introduces no new ordering force into nature,
but is a simple consciousness of processes positively
determined by causes existing prior to intelligence, and
efficient for the consciousness as well as the plans or
wisdom of the mind.

Nature is to me not an accident but a necessity.
Why it exists or is, will be shown when it is shown
how it could cease to be, or that there was a time in
which it was not, or how it possibly could not be.
Why it is as it is, will also be capable of demonstration
when we see how it could possibly be otherwise. Till

66 A Young Scholar.

then such questions belong on the table. Our business
is simply to learn how it is.

I have faith that by an obedience to the laws of life
it will go best with me. I hope the conditions of my
organism will allow me to observe them, with charity
for all who under other conditions and laws perish and
perish. I love a good man because he is good, not
because he could as well be bad and is not, like those
who believe in a free-will. I love especially all who
love me because I can*t help it. I would be honest,
merciful, brave, and wise because I do not think life
worth anything at all on any other conditions. Who-
ever needs more reasons than these to make or keep
him upright is incapable of understanding virtue and
its own loveliness.

Death does not concern me, for when it comes I have
no existence. Other evils leave me to lament them,
but a man never knows when he dies. I had rather
live than die so long as I am young and in health, but
when life ceases to please me I had rather quit. Super-
stition, or in other words religion, is intended to increase
the fear of death. Nature has implanted a certain
dread of death in the bosom of everything that lives.
To this they owe their preservation. No doctrine can
or ought to be taught to destroy this.

Do you understand what you mean when you say
* * pay homage to God ' ' ? Is it a gratifying recognition
of His superioritj'', or is not that a question to dispute ?
Do you love Him tenderly, so that your heart leaps with
a sweet low joy at thought of Him as it does at the
thought of other dear ones ? Do you admire Him for
inventing truth ? Or is not all this talk about adoration
simply a childish accounting for the involuntary delight
we feel in life, and wonder at the great mysteries we

Letters. 67

do not understand ? How do you represent God to
your mind when you desire to worship ; — as He is in the
pictures, or perhaps in His real infinitude ? You will
not be astonished when I say in conclusion, that I look
on your letter rather as an ingenious efibrt to puzzle me
than as an expression of your views.

You speak of the study of logic with some enthusiasm.
Ptue dialectics are the grammar of thought, and al-
though no more necessary to a correct thinker than
grammar to a correct speaker, are yet of great service
in habituating the mind to methods of exact deduction.
The highest problems of logic result in problems of
metaphysics, as for instance Pyrrho*s argument against
the efficiency of causes cannot be contradicted by logic.
Some of the finest masters of dialectics are to be found
among the nominalist and realist schoolmen of the loth,
nth, and 12th centuries. A thorough course of
speculative philosophy will embrace the peculiar views
of the great thinkers of logic. It will be my forte, as
the science is almost purely mathematical.

Originality in truth is a very rare plant, and you
frighten me by expressing your expectations of my
studies. Till you admit my theory of government I
can have little encouragement to expect to find much
that is new for you. If you really are in earnest in
your objections to my syllogism, I beg that you will
thoroughly study the idea involved in the word planner^
under the light which is thrown upon it by the reflec-
tion that a planner, as far as we know, is simply a plan
himself.

To be an apostle of liberty demands such a sublime
faith in nature that no religionist can be expected to be
one. We must consider too the rights of our fellow-
men to self-government in so sacred a light, that theists

68 A Young Scholar.

have been proverbially on the side of strong governments
from constitutional incapacity to understand any sanc-
tities. Sometimes I feel my heart swell toward a bat-
tle with the superstition and despotism of American
ideas. Perhaps I could swing a battle-axe and make
it ring on the mail of ignorance and policy that are
choking us to death. I do not court a life of storm
and battle, but it appears now to be the duty of every
man who can make his arm tell.

I would like to write a great deal more in this letter,
but it has already run in on my time too heavily.
Mother must not be anxious about my vacation tramp,
which in all likelihood will be through Switzerland.

E will go along, but next winter he goes to Vienna

and I to Berlin. I understand to a T a stranger's life
in Europe. A man's only danger here is in his profli-
gacy, and consequently I feel pretty safe.

This letter, considering its subject, has been in too
great haste.

XIV.

Inherited features; imitation of Wordsworth ; the philo-
sophic not higher than the poetic intellect ; latitude of
Goethe ; the desire to live after death,

HKid^i«bERG, 6th June, 1869.

Your letter of the 13th of May, containing father's
picture, hit the mark several days ago. I shall not
pass any compliments on father's face, for that would
be almost a sort of egotism. I was startled the other
day, when a side glance toward my glass revealed to
me a likeness of which I had no idea. My whiskers
and eyes are not to be mistaken, and peculiar moods

Letters. 69

heighten the likeness wonderfully. I do not mean to
say that on the whole I could pass for as handsome a
man, but there is something strange in a resemblance
which often loses little by an enormous caricature.
Father's features would indicate a soul whose element
was ideal action, — a turn for which modern life presents
few openings. The explorer, the military hero, the
social reformer represent it with us. Dreaming will
satisfy me better than it will him.

You are mistaken in regard to the poet whom I en-
deavored to imitate in those irregular verses, and Mrs.

C is correct. Allow me to return her my humblest

thanks for her flattering judgment. I am only re-
strained from being more enthusiastic in the demon-
stration of my feeling from the reflection above made,
that a horrible caricature may still possess resemblance.
My effort was to give the simple dignity of man as
Wordsworth understood it, not in so far as he differs
from his fellows, but in that which is common to the
race. In this sense my lines are hardly original. How
you happened on Swinburne, whose sensuous imagery
and harmony are altogether wanting to the verses, or
Browning whose cool intellectualit)'^ is equally distant,
or Arnold who talks in great lucid Grecian ways, it is
difficult to understand. Yet Wordsworth has been the
master of all these men, who are younger poets. They
have studied Greek and studied Byron and studied
Dante, but they have seen farthest into the darkness of
nature through Wordsworth's glasses.

Your chemico-logical figure, the affinity of the truth
for the understanding, has its justification. Only great
ignorance and an entire want of sense and feeling for
law could ever allow the claims of an institution to be
part of the order of things and equally noble in its ori-

70 A Young Scholar.

gin with the primal harmonies of nature. It is without
a logical content (you would say **has no afl&nity for
our understanding,*' as for instance the efl&cacy of
baptism), and alone can give a thinker no clue to its
nature or purport, but like nude pictures must carry
its explanation labelled in its mouth.

One of your remarks to the eflFect that the speculative
intellect was of a higher order than the creative, or in
other words the philosophic than the poetic, does not
meet my approval. They are of equal rank, and to-
gether divide the empire of life with the actor and in-
vestigator. It is no matter whether a man strikes,
observes, muses, or sings ; if he does his work well he
is the peer of every other. A Columbus, a Newton, a
Bacon, a Shakespeare, are equally noble. The one en-
larges life, the other secures what has been gained and
makes progress possible, the third orders and harmon-
izes it, the last lays open its highest meaning and se-
cures the essential being of the different ages. It is the
highest end of culture to so illuminate the mind that no
shadow obscures any part, that we lose the professional
spirit in the philosophic. I owe an infinite debt to
Goethe for opening my eyes to the fatality of the nar-
rowness which ranks the great departments of human
knowledge and action, the one above the other, accord-
ing to the cast of our tastes. How the poets are deified
if we are in love or chronically sentimental ? How over-
shadowing the proportions of the great actors to men
whose sun is hidden by a dollar ! But Goethe could
spin metaphysics with his Hegelian friends, bicker and
squabble over a theory of light with the Newtonians,
write love-songs like a spooney, fierce novels like a
would-be suicide, grand life dramas, a Faiisty like a
philosophic Shakespeare, social theories like a Rous-

Letters. 7 1

seau ; in fine he could drink beer in a kneipe with
bauerSy dance with peasant girls, seduce princesses, puz-
zle physicists, correct philosophers, and stand it all
without loss of vigor for eighty-three years. He was
an epitome of his time, with the good and bad all
summed up in himself. No man can or ought to imi-
tate him in his errors, but one such life, viewed as a
whole, teaches us the folly of a one-sided enthusiasm,
or of a niceness of manners that consists in decencies
forever. Breadth of feeling is too apt, if it comes at all,
to come when long experience and wearied age have
lowered the temperament to a neutral point.

It is no use for us to believe more than we can under-
stand, and the cold unvarnished truth, if manfully met,
will brace the mind and heart better than glorious con-
jectures. When we die we cease to be, and conse-
quently the dead are not lost to themselves, which
would be misery, but only to us who hav'e the sacred
pleasure of keeping their memory while we live. A
man who has lived as a man ought to live to an old
age and done his duty in every way it becomes a man
to do it, no more desires to live after death than he
does to have lived before his birth. He has labored
until he is weary of labor and has thought through
his circle of mind. He has loved forms which have
long ago been dust, and it would be painful to begin
to love again. He feels kindly towards everything
that lives and is glad to know that their delight will
not be stopped by his death. He has gradually been
losing his hold on life, till now without pain it is al-
most gone. How still and bright must the ocean of
his life appear, so full of distant islands where he
has been delighted, and far shores where his young feet
have trod, now lit by the setting sun ! If we die young

72 A Young Scholar.

it is noblest to die cheerfully and courageously, but it
is nonsense to imagine that we are just taking a flight
to paradise. As I have but one life to live I shall live
it as nobly as I can. Nature has existed one eternity
without me ; she can and will exist another without
me. The fables about heaven and hell are inventions
evidently gotten up to help us through this world.
They exist only for this world and hang to it as mere
appendages.

I shall close with this page, so I can say some things
I wished to. Could n't you send something over $ioo
by the next draft, as I would like to travel a little? It
shall not cost much, but then I shall have to go to
Berlin to spend the winter there.

XV.

Sensibility to fear and love ; Swinburne* s view ; dual-
ism of Christianity ; the new school of poetry ; obscurity
accompanying the religious idea,

HmDBi*B^RG, 27 June, 1869.

I can hardly tell you why, but a remark in your last
letter caused me a deal of rather melancholy uneasi-
ness. What a strange, weird note of fear runs in the
blood of some families ! You sometimes almost wish
yourself dead for fear of knowing what may become of
your children. I laughed at this much more heartily
than another would because I understood it. Of such
persons we cannot say, as of Tennyson's ** Margaret,"

" Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away."

Letters. 73

Although the ground-works of our feelings are sufiS-
ciently alike for a mutual understandiug, yet you are
by far the most intense realist. Feelings with me have
an almost irresistible tendency to become ideal memo-
ries, to pass from actual life while a sob and ache and
groan to the motionless heights of soul where passion
is none and love but a perfect yearning. It is an eflFort
of nature to protect herself. Some persons are but "^
scarcely agitated hy the grandest, sweetest passions of
our nature, some are exalted by them into a fuller,
larger life and they would overwhelm them if met and
embraced in all their stormy, magnificent mood. ^

I tremble like a maiden before the awful mystery of
love. One hurried, stolen glimpse fills my life with
song, throws ** splendor on the grass and glory on the
flower.** Call it overwrought sensibility and in one
sense you are right ; in another it is in me an anticipa-
tion of the love of a grander time than ours. Now for 1
almost the best men love has a hideous double ; nature
is a sphinx with the fair front of a virgin and but the
body of a beast. They grope in miserable darkness,
just seeing somewhat of heavenly light and love but
feeling themselves still deep in the slough of sensuality, j
These men do well to be yet one-sided, to cling fast to
their distinctions between flesh and spirit, so long as
they share what these call the flesh with the dumb
brute.

But such people should persuade themselves that '
what they mean by sensuality, which performs al-
though a degraded yet so important a part in their
lives, is unknown to Swinburne. I readily admit that
he especially treats that phase of feeling which cor-
responds to sensuality in their lives and the lives of
animals; but it is no more sensuality in their sense

74 A Young Scholar.

than is Christianity fetichism because they both take
the place of religion for different people.

Swinburne's point of view is too high to see any-
thing as in itself unholy or shameful which is a part of

^he natural order of things. Don't understand me to
say that shame is not a necessary element in the lives
of such people, for it is, and will remain so till it is
developed into something better which will take its
place, as the cold, high self-respect and sense of right in
the philosopher takes the place of brutal ferocity in the
savage as generators of courage. You may ask how

I it is possible for such a difference to exist ? Christianity,
as every other active religion, has been throughout its
entire history an analysis of human nature. It has
sought to separate it into parts and give relative values
or worth to them. It is in the first place a dualism of
soul and body, from the first of which all that is noble
springs, but from the last not quite all that is bad, for
the soul itself is capable of many vices, such as dis-
obedience and pride.

But man is an organism and not made up of separate
and imperfectly connected parts, which truth some have
never been capable of comprehending. The result of
their dissection is therefore this, that man is altogether
or totally depraved and that all the virtues, the existence
of which they could not deny, are from the free grace
of God. With those uncertain, half-way infidel Chris-
tians who deny these positions logically considered, but
yet unconsciously act upon them in their life-philosophy,
I have nothing to say. But a newer school of men at

^ whose head perhaps, aesthetically considered, Swin-
burne stands, has entered upon the synthesis of human
nature, that is, is finding the beauty and goodness in
the results of the organism of which life itself is but the

Letters. 75

flower. Here then it becomes the duty of the poet to
take every normal human passion, deepen, unfold, and
intensify it, to develop its close organic connection
with all the other aspirations that bum in our frame.
This end is not to be attained by bleeding a passion,
or choking it, or putting other people's clothes on it,
but by developing it. You will perhaps see what I
mean, but if you see of how far-reaching a system of
reformations this is only a single part, you will com-
prehend much better the inanity of the ordinary objec-
tions to Swinburne. If one wishes to read real obscenity
one must hunt its literature in periods when the re-
ligious idea was much stronger than it is now.

XVI.

In our politics^ life for a man of brains ; Italian antici-
pations ; learning in Germany is wealth in America ;
American students in Germany,

H^IDEIfBBRO, July ii, 1869.

Two weeks don't seem to develop any, even the most
trifling, crisis in my history, and yet I am required to
think as if they did. You are, however, making his-
tory at home fast enough. I received father's letter
dated at Humboldt in which he gave expression to very
high hopes indeed. I am certain that in Kansas his
herds and acres will be made to have a political weight.
I am very well pleased that it should be so, for where
but in politics is there suflGlcient intellectual life for a
man of brains who is not especially a scholar ? What
you are about to do will be at least of great advantage
to Billy, who should not be allowed to grow a year
older without some certain business direction. He

J

76 A Young Scholar.

ought by all means to be a farmer, and in a few years
he will want an establishment. There are so many
fools afloat that real industry, directed by common
sense and made respectable by common honesty, cannot
fail of success.

If you come to Europe had you not better wait till I
go to Italy ? Berlin is a poor place for visiting and it
would pay better to **do'' Germany, as the tourists
say, and reside in Italy than spend a year in a great
business city like the capital of Prussia. What days
we could spend in Florence, or Rome, or Venice ! If
you wish to come in a year, I shall take Italian lessons
next winter in Berlin and pay less attention to French.
Nothing could equal the delight I should feel in hav-
ing you with me in such a land but that of having you
all. There I should study the history of the Middle
Ages, the Catholic Church, School-philosophy, the
sweet, half-effeminate period of the Renaissance, the
art wonders of the world, while the awe-inspiring
associations of the country would be a schooling in
themselves.

Germany is the grandest land for work for an intel-
lectual American, since learning is pursued for the sake

of the chase as wealth is at home. E wishes to go

to Vienna because the most famous school for homoeo-
pathy in the world is there. Of almost fifty Americans
with whom I have come in contact here or heard of,
not one but myself is seeking general culture. At the
most they are studying I^atin and Greek with a view
to teaching the languages, or else they are theologians
who add for form's sake a little philosophy to their
regular cram on David and his concubines. By far the
majority are studying chemistry, medicine, or law. Of
these the medical students are the only workers.

Letters. *]^

Learning proper, that is a knowledge of what and how
the world has ever thought and thinks at present, is
below par in America. In fact even here, although
there is a great deal of study, there are not many who
study out of a profession. I have the honor of the
acquaintance of the only real student of philosophy in
Heidelberg. All others inscribed as such are either
physicists or triflers, who take a Doctor's degree after a
few months of dabbling in logic and in the history of
philosophy. The degree is worth nothing in Germany,
it is bought. A professorship on the other hand,
which is a state's examination prize, is rigorous in the
extreme. Well I shall not fiddle away with nothing
to say any longer.

This is the meanest letter I ever wrote since I used
to begin with ** I am well ; how are you ? *'

XVII.

Liberality towards a son ; faith in immortality and a
soul reconciled to death; Darwin's theory ; philos-
ophy of Feu^rbach.

HEIbEi^bERG, July 20, 1869.

Your letter of the 2d inst. was received just one
week ago to-day. It came in with my breakfast and
took precedence, so that the meal was quite cold when
I finished the second reading. I then laid the letter
on the table to be called up for a third reading at leisure.
These rich, abundant letters of yours, so freighted with
your very self, are the real incidents of my Ufe here :
such affecting appeals to embrace certain ideas, such
frantic explosions of a mother's fear and a woman's
superstition as to overwhelm a person without bringing

78 A Young Scholar.

*

any conviction, and make a not very ardent mind afraid
of or indifferent to the truth !

I shall never be able to repay the debt of gratitude I
owe to the wise liberality of your own and father's
treatment of me. I was never constrained nor sought
to be constrained in a speculative opinion, and yet I
always found in you both the liveliest interest in my
boyish fancies and ideas.

This morning I am alone with a magnificent bouquet
of roses in a tumbler of water on the table, while the
** sluggish air is shattered by the bells ** — the bells of
a Sunday morning, a still, beautiful, pious morning
with the golden calm of summer in the sky.

I feel a deep distaste at struggling to produce and
defend by the processes of logic the ideas, or rather
modes of thought, which represent the achievements of
my soul in finding depth and clearness and light in
life. I speak the sentiments of truth when I say that
I feel the necessity of death as a beneficent and perfect
conclusion, giving sublimity, depth, and pathos to life.
This I feel to be a perfect mood of mind, but how am
I to communicate this sentiment to others who are
destitute of the sensibilities pre-requisite to it? To
look the same way at death we must have the same
conception of life.

I am not so unwise as to think or wish to make a
fooVs festival of existence where there is to be nothing
but a reign of unbroken gaiety. I know how impossi-
ble this is for any theory to accomplish, however well
adapted to that end. The faith in an immortality takes
away neither the terror of death, natural to all men
whose lives are but half-lives, nor has it at all deepened
and purified life, but quite the reverse. It has been
gradually lost as we have emerged into a more real and

Letters. 79

intense existence, and now, in every country of high
culture, is held chiefly by the poor and the women
whose mental and moral development is yet very rudi-
mentary. It is so foolish to say that if I live hereafter
I don't care to live here, and it is the sign of a most
worthless, profligate nature when one says, If this life
is all I would live it in sin. Such a person means to say
that lust is in itself better than love, and that an abun-
dance of luxury is sweeter than the afiection of our fel-
lows and the consciousness of having made others bet-
ter, stronger, and happy. According to my philosophy
it is through love alone that any soul can become
reconciled to death. The first condition of love is
moral purity, the second is wisdom. To love is to live
in another, to have taken one's interest out of one's self
and entrusted it to others. For every individual there
are many forms of love, each peculiar and beautiful in
its kind, and not the least of these is a love for the
aged, — an affection so full of deep and calm pathos that
it is perhaps among the very highest and therefore felt
but by few.

Are you not ashamed to have written ** It never pays to
keep old people," and to have asked me if that shallow-
hearted and if possible shallower-headed girl did not act
in accordance with reason in banishing her old grand-
father? What sense has she of life — of its beauty or
height or breadth ? We must rise through the starry
steps of love to that divine peace of soul which cannot
be disturbed by our own end, since the course of nature is
a constant and jubilant triumph, and since death, which
is inevitable and which closes our existence as birth
began it, is a desirable conclusion when the circle of life
has been lived out and the dear forms of our youth are
either gone or worn as ourselves, and while the ever

8o A Young Scholar.

young world, the passion and beauty of youth, the
prattle of children make old hearts glad for the life
around them, although no man would live his over
again. I do not ask you to follow me in this faith. It
is, as in all things, possible that I am mistaken. I
only refuse to believe that for which I have no evidence.
If you feel it impossible to reconcile life and death,
abolish death and live. It is not every one who can
walk beneath the sweet stars and with cheerful courage
think there will come a time when I shall greet them
neither amidst the mountains nor by the sea. Many
souls, with Tennyson, ** cannot think the thing fare-
well. ''

The irresistible advance of modem science, propelled
by that terrible theory of Darwin's which finds in Eu-
rope almost universal acceptance among the learned, is
fast pushing the old stays and props of the world over.
It is becoming impossible to believe. The first result
of this change will be a fearful disintegration of society,
a loosening of old foundations and a period of moral
anarchy, till a new reconciliation of our reason and our
aspirations is found in a new ethical system. How long
must we wait for this ! Who will be the great teacher
of another faith to the world ? I cry to these theologi-
ans, like John in the wilderness, **Make straight the
ways of the Lord.'* Well, enough of this !

My progress has really exceeded my expectations,
not exactly in the work done, which is always less,
but in the actual mastery acquired over the languages.
My genial work begins next winter.

Metaphysics are at present below par in Germany.
Scientific realism has almost swept them from the field.
There is a new school, however, which has undertaken
to adapt the principles of speculative philosophy to the

Letters. 8 1

new scientific conditions. Feuerbach is at the head of
this movement. It is probable that I shall find a hold
here. At all events, as things now stand, I shall be
obliged to think for myself.

I cannot help wishing myself with you on the grand,
free prairie. I could enjoy it so much better than I
once did. You will renew the old Mason days in rid-
ing over the flowery grass under a soft blue western
sky. I keep the eyes of my longing on the stretches of
the western world, but Kansas is too far inland. I had
rather be on the sounding sea beach.

If you come to me we will go to Italy and spend a
year in Rome and Naples. Then perhaps father will
be able to come the last year of my stay, and come
home with us by the way of China. Am I not a
genuine Smith to cherish such dreams ? Money makes
all things possible.

XVIII.

Systematic studies of art ; solitariness in travel; deep-
ening life; American activities; America of igoo ;
the American who reforms into superstition.

H^D]$I«BERG, Aug. 8, 1869.

My year's work has come to a close which it is natu-
ral I should hail with the pleasure every worker takes
in rest. I have abandoned my idea of making a trip
in Switzerland during vacation because it would, if
made at all agreeably, draw too heavily on my purse.
My intention now, which I hope you will find wise, is
to take advantage of my route to Berlin to spend some
time in the most interesting cities of western Germany,
Miinchen, Prague, Dresden, Leipzig. I shall spend
the time, two coming months, till the beginning of

6

82 A Young Scholar.

lectures in the Fall in a systematic study of art, for
which purpose I shall visit the superb collections in the
above named cities. Being all alone with a few works
on the subject before me, I can put up at a very modest
inn for a few days in each place, read my critics in the
morning, visit the galleries and museums in the after-
noon, stroll through the streets in the evening, come
to my room and write down my impressions at night.
This is the way to really learn or rather imbibe the
greatest things Travel oflFers to its devotee. Solitude
makes the heart a thousand times more susceptible
than it can possibly be when teased by constant com-
pany. To be alone offers more opportunities of meet-
ing with striking, affecting, or instructing incidents than
most travellers seem to know. It is also the shortest
way of gaining that perfect self-reliance and consummate
knowledge of human nature, at least on one side, which
distinguish the travelled man.

It is true that one does not have much to do with
anybody but porters, coachmen, hotel clerks, and rail-
road officials, but it is surprising how few persons ever
thoroughly come to understand how to maintain their
simplest rights against the shameless impudence in this
class. The best method is to do as much as possible
for yourself, be instrjicted in the prices before coming
to a place, and then threaten all obstreperous characters
with the police, who generally settle things here in favor
of the traveller. One must have no compassion on the
multitude of serving men, who are in everything so
anxious to be of use.

I/ife grows deeper, sweeter, and sadder for me year
by year. I come gradually to an understanding of
what surrounds me in what has been and in what is,
but my intellect seems to master the situation with

Letters. 83

greater certainty and force than my heart. I know
what and how strongly I should believe, better than
I know what and how strongly I dare love. I must
confess to an utter want of interest in the greater num-
ber of things for which men think it worth while to
live. I do not believe that greater intercourse with
the active world would be able to create in me a taste
for these things, for, their worthlessness once seen, it is
impossible to revive the delusion. The question often
occurs to me with saddening force, What should I do
or desire to do, were I now at home, with all the
learning and accomplishments with which, without
vanity, I can suppose six years of study and travel
will enrich me ? I would of course have novel opin-
ions, perhaps worth propagation, but why should I
care to try and persuade an unripe multitude to accept
ideas in which they would think they saw their great-
est misfortune ? How could I find any sufficient life
for myself in contending with the vagaries of some
mesmeric spiritualism adapted to the credulity of a
stupid mass of superstitious people? While we live,
life is what we want, more life ; when we die we want
nothing.

The American people appear to me, as the German
nation did to Heine, as if they had swallowed the stick
with which they were once flogged. They have pur-
chased their liberty at the expense of their ability to
move. I shall be laughed at for saying that the Ameri-
can people do not move, but it is the truth. To move
is to gain new ideas, to grow from one form of thought
to another > but in America every vital idea was brought
over in the *' Mayflower,'* and what we witness to-day
is an enormous acceleration of their motion.

It is quite possible to predict the future of such a

84 A Young Scholar,

people. Just imagine more of everything and you will
have the America of 1900. Now to my mind — which
demands a growth, not magnification, a harmony of
discordant elements through the comprehension of
higher principles, not a constant shifting of the same
difficulty, — ^public life at home is sadly unsuited.

I hear coming through the grass a party of boozy
young Americans making night hideous with the
chorus **0h, ho, oh, ho, 1*11 never get drunk any
more." Judge how I can feel, in that vulgar rant and
childish noise, an insensibility to every generous effort
one could make for them, and the miserable, swagger*
ing self-assertion on which learning and reason alike
would be lost. Such men only can reform into super-
stition. The religionist represents the complementary
hemisphere which, with this vicious levity, makes up
the impassive circle of American development. But I
must close with this sheet. I will write you when on
the road. I send you a picture taken day before yes-
terday. My health is excellent ; do I look as if I
could take care of myself ?

XIX.

A sequence of studies; ** The Nation ^\* American
women,

(Fragments.)

I shall be free next winter to begin at Berlin a com-
prehensive study of the history of philosophy in its
sources. I shall then be able to read Plato, Aristotle,
Theophrast, Philo, Plotinus, Jamblicus, Aurelius, etc.,
together with the fragments of the Stoics, Epicureans,
and Roman philosophers, and with the magnificent
critical literature in the German language at the same

Letters. 85

time. I shall also take chemistry or geology, the
French language, which I read already with tolerable
ease, German literature, and continue my studies, al-
though not so exclusively, in the classical languages.
At present I am laboring at Greek and I^atin in order
to make all this possible. Two years in classic and
mediaeval philosophy will be a fine preparation for the
study of modern thought since Bacon. I shall dis-
charge one of the natural sciences a year, in which
time I can get from them all they offer to the simple
scholar who does not pretend to specialty. The order
will likely be chemistry, natural history, geology,
physics, mathematics, and astronomy. Thus I shall
always have on hand some positive science.

I received the Every Saturdays the other day all in
a lump. They were all the numbers since Janu-
ary. The editor of The Nation is wide-awake. He
hardly knows what he wants, but he sees very well
what he does not want. I must go now and eat my
Sunday dinner, take a walk up the Neckar, and then I
shall come back and finish this page.

Ten o'clock p.m. I have just spent a very pleasant

evening at Miss E 's, where I met besides herself

two very entertaining and pretty young ladies. We
talked as well as I was able on many things, principally
the character of the modem English and American
woman. I found it hard in the presence of so much
intelligent and delightful womanhood to be very ardent
in the defense of the somewhat mannish character of
my country-women, but after some time I got them to
see that in its noblest exponents, for instance as they
were acquainted with it in literature in the persons of
Jane Eyre, etc., it is after all a great sort of woman-
hood.

86 A Young Scholar.

You acted very hastily in showing my remarks to

Prof. T . Had I known what you would have done

I should have used language more becoming our relat-
ive ages and merits. It is difl&cult for one who thinks
for himself to be sufficiently modest, yet no one knows
better the necessity. It strikes a quarter of eleven.
Good-night.

XX.

To Berlin ; enthusiasm for art ; first semester ; cost of
living ; mastery of learning.

BBRUN, 22 Aug., 1869.

The date of my last letter has almost escaped my
mind in the confusion of the last two weeks. If I do
not forget I informed you from Heidelberg of my in-
tention to come directly to Berlin, omitting the trip in
Switzerland that I had previously contemplated. Sev-
eral reasons influenced me to this, the chief of which
was the fear ot expenses. I should have been obliged
to come to Berlin at any rate, and the united cost of the
two journeys, though very reasonable, frightened me ;
in fact it would have exceeded my purse. For another
matter, I should have been alone unless I had chosen
the company of some gentlemen there, of whose ability
and disposition to spend I was too ignorant to take the
risk. But, in order not altogether to lose the advantage
of my time and money, I went something out of my way
in coming to Berlin and visited Munich, Prague, and
Dresden.

My intention was to stop longer in these places but
the inevitable extra expense, upon which one never
knows how to calculate, forced me to come on to my
destination after two or three days* rest in each of the

Letters. 87

above places. My time, however, afforded me a view
of much that was worthy of the trouble, especially in
Munich, where the works of art are so extraordinary
and where at the time there was an international art
exposition. I enjoyed the most pleasant and profitable
three days imaginable. I despair of giving you any
idea of the art wonders of the galleries. It begat in me
such an enthusiasm for the subject that I have already
laid out for the winter a course of reading on art, which
will embrace all the best critics, English, French, and
German.

My most burning ambition just now is to become a
connoisseur, and nothing shall hinder me from appreci-
ating as well the real excellences of Titian, Veronese,
Angelo, etc., as I flatter myself I can now appreciate
the divine soul of Dante or Calderon. You will appre-
ciate my openness to you to whom I tell everything
just as I think it. You must not be alarmed for my
more formal studies which, I assure you, will not be
oppressed, but rather relieved and made easier by this
child of delicate blood and passionate breath, my
enthusiasm for art.

Now I am in Berlin, the city of Bismarck, of Fred-
erick the Great, and of Hegel. I have already selected
in the catalogue for the coming semester or half-year
my cotu-se, on physics, on aesthetics, on Greek philo-
sophy, on Demosthenes (the lectures in I^atin), on Old
German poesy and literature of the Middle Ages.
These are so distributed through the week as to give
me on an average four a day, and the industrious stu-
dent allows himself six, but I shall have in the prose-
cution of my Latin and Greek exercises, which I
cannot yet give up, and of French, together with my
reading, sufficient to employ my hours.

88 A Young Scholar.

The term does not open until the middle of October,
until which time I shall recreate as best I may, and
read light books. Some acquaintance with the
greatest writers of fiction is not only beneficial, but
in the present state of learned society imperatively
demanded of every scholar. Hawthorne, Thackeray,
Irving, Auerbach, Hugo, etc., must be read. You
will be anxious to learn how I am fixed here and what
my expenses are likely to be. By reference to my book
I had just one year ago to a day about a hundred
dollars in money and was just arrived in Heidelberg.
Now I have forty dollars, so the diflFerence, sixty
dollars, added to the four hundred and thirty dollars
which I have received, makes four hundred and ninety
dollars for my year's expenses, including a considerable
number of books that I have yet, and my travelling.

The coming year promises to cost me a trifle more,
not for books, clothes, or tuition, for the first and last
of these will hardly be so much, but I must now bear all
of the expenses of my room and fuel, and boarding is
higher. My resolution is, if possible, to live alone, for
although it would be hard to find a more agreeable
room-mate than C in respect to taciturnity and in-
offensive habits, yet I feel a thousand times more at
ease when alone. Interruptions from visitors are to a
certain extent unavoidable, and when there are two in
a room the nuisance is doubled. Then two persons find
so many ways of frittering away one another's time
that, whether they will or no, entire hours glide by
during a friendly little argument or an oration. The
time which you really set apart for recreation is drawn
out in a hundred ways, often by the presence of a friend
who is not so anxious to work.

Another thing, I should run a great risk in taking

Letters. 89

in a stranger, for we rent here by the half-year, and I
could not get rid of him if he was ever so low and dis-
agreeable a fellow. My room, which is very pleasant,
will cost with service included fifty-four thalers for a
half-year. A thaler here is worth very nearly as much
as a dollar greenback. It is impossible for me to say
yet for how little I shall be able to live. I am certain,
however, that it will not be much above my expenses
at Heidelberg. Fire, light, and washing are, as every
where, extras. My matriculation and lecture fees will
all have to be paid at once, and the greater part of the
necessary books purchased at the same time, 15th of
October. You will see that I shall stand in need of
money soon. All the books I read I get from a
large circulating library, which costs me 75 cents a
month.

Do not fear that you would have to meet a sour-
faced and ungrateful son should circumstances compel
you to take me home. I would return with but one
desire in the world, to make with you and for you a
cheerful fight against fortune. No one could well be a
more enthusiastic lover of learning than I, but I am at
the same time above learning and could manage to think
many a fair and bold thing without it. You will not
understand me as abating one jot of zeal in my work,
but as only growing up out of and around it, as one
really should. He is no master of learning who is
mastered by it. A man who cannot drive cattle the
more cheerfully for having studied Kant or Anacreon
has not studied them rightly. I do not say more con-
tentedly and happily than he could do something else,
but more contentedly than a man who never had read
the philosophers and poets.

Not one scholar in a thousand can do this, but not

90 A Young Scholar.

one man in ten thousand lives either reasonably or
contentedly, and as for

** The wreath of air,
That flake of rainbow flying in the highest
Foam of men's deeds,"

you have long known the estimation in which I hold it.
My landlady is a character. I will describe her to
you some time when I know her better and have more
time. Swinburne says that the ** peace of the devil
passeth all understanding,** which I have reason to
believe true. My love to all the family and your new
neighbors.

XXI.

Bohemian peasantry ; Munich; Italian masters ; Dres-
den; Prague ; fiction reading ; an intelligent and
beautiful woman ; studies ; North German character-
istics.

B^Ri^iN, Aug. 30th, 1869.

Dear Joe * : — ^The confusion of the last three weeks
has been so great that I can no longer recollect whether
or not I finished and mailed a letter to you which I cer-
tainly began. It seems to me that, on leaving Heidel-
berg, I tore it up with other papers of unfinished
compositions and broken melodies of verse, and con-
demned it to the stove. Nothing will be the worse, at
all events, if I write again, and now that I have just
made an interesting trip,t it will be easier to say some-
thing new.

* A fellow-student in days at the college in Jacksonville,
Illinois,
t From Heidelberg to Berlin.

Letters. 9 1

I was almost two weeks on the way, as I spent
several days in the principal places through which I
passed — Stuttgart, Munich, Prague, Dresden. The
intervening country, save the Bohemian mountains
between Prague and Dresden, might have passed for
any of the broken western states had it not been for
the squalid wretchedness of the poor country people.
Such battered, tormented, brutalized looking creatures
I don't expect to see again. If a man's fears did n*t
force him to believe some things against his reason,
such undeserved inequality in our human lot might
shake certain creeds, but we call that justice, even
love in the highest, which in the low would be cruelty.
I believe Tacitus makes some such remark concerning
the interpretation of the conduct of Tiberius, but my
memory may be false.

At Munich, the art-centre of Germany, I spent most of
my time in the galleries and at the international art ex-
hibition held there at the time. This city was the resid-
ence of Schwanthaler, Cornelius, Ranch, Klenze, and
others who take rank with Thorwaldsen and Canova
as restorers of taste. I/)uis I. of Bavaria, their great
patron, the Maecenas of modem art, has adorned his
capital as no other city of its size in the world. Only
the inspiration of the sister muse of song could do just-
ice to the sublimities of these works. Some of the
faces in the Italian gallery by Titian, Veronese, Dolce,
Tintoretto, and Raphael will never fade from the tab-
lets of my memory while the sweetness of this outer
world beats through to my brain. Could I only tell
you how I spent two long days in that little Italian
kingdom of color, till the subtle soul of the masters
seemed to look at me through the eyes of their creat-
ures ! It was a glorious delight to feel that one had

92 A Young Scholar.

mounted up through the forms of change, till one
could catch the unity of mastership in a reeling feun
and beatific holy Virgin, a monk, and a Venus. I
felt the chrysalis of a great faculty breaking within
me ; then the play of wonderful wings. I could have
made an artist, a better one than I shall ever be at
anything else, but time is gone. There is yet the de-
light of appreciation left, and I am determined to be a
connoisseur if zeal will help me to it.

This winter I have mapped out a course of reading
which will embrace all the best art critics, German,
English, and French. The galleries here are very
fine and I shall have my time to study them; while
I shall hear a course of lectures by the great Hotho on
aesthetics. At Dresden, where the galleries are very
fine, perhaps as good as at Munich, I had less time,
but I may go there during the holidays on purpose to
study them. Prague is a city preserved as it were
fi^om the thirteenth century. Its wonderful old streets
and churches and strange hostelries, where the social
old knights used to drink, are just as they were before
America was thought of. Its old wall makes the finest
promenade in the world, shaded by great trees and
made merry with dancing on all the old towers or bas-
tions, where the wall is widened.

I attended service in two cathedrals and walked
piously across the famous bridge on which there
stands a statue of Bohemia's patron saint,* who
in old times worked some astonishing miracles with
the river Moldau to the discomfiture of Bohemia's ene-
mies and the great glory of God. Every spring an

* St. Nepomuc, who was thrown into the Moldau for refusing
to disclose the confessional secrets of the Empress, upon which
the river grew praetematnrally luminoos.

Letters. 93

incredible pilgrimage of the faithful is made to his
shrine on the bridge, where an inscription almost old
enough to be Ciceronian tells us, vas^ qui transite per
vianiy colete numen loci I *

Now I am comfortably quartered in Berlin for the
fall and winter at least, most likely for the year. Till
the 15th of October, when the University opens, I shall
recreate myself in light literature, a branch somewhat
behind with me. I read a novel a day and hope
against the aforementioned time to have finished the
best works of Thackeray, Hawthorne, George Kliot,
Fielding, Smollett, Auerbach, Freiligrath, Andersen,
and Gutzkow. It is absolutely necessary for me to
know more about the best works of modem fiction,
but that will come gradually.

You will be sure to congratulate me on my good
fortune when I tell you that I am engaged with a
young lady of eighteen, of great beauty and amiability,
mistress of four languages and a brilliant wit, not to do
the one foolish thing in the world, but to read together,
or rather make an exhaustive study of modem and
English poetry since Tennyson. She is an American,
and her family were and are very violent rebels. Their
home is in the neighborhood of New Orleans, but her
mother, sister, and herself prefer to live in Europe,
where they have been, excepting a visit or two home,
ever since the war. Notwithstanding their political
principles both the mother and daughters were very
friendly with Mr. C. and me ; perhaps because we were
so fresh in the expression of our opinions. The mother
especially loves pluck with all the extravagance of
what she calls her chivalric Southern blood.

* Respect, oh wanderer by this road, the divinity of this
place.

94 A Young Scholar.

If I were so unfortunate as to be a lover, I might suc-
ceed in a description of this charming little creature,
but nothing less than the sapphire fire would color my
words. Just to give you a rude idea, you must imagine
a face with dark brunette complexion, and very delicate
in all its outlines, rather intellectual than Venus-like.
The chin and mouth are of peculiar delicacy, even for
the other features ; the lips finely turned and elastic.
Her eyes are not brilliant but soft and clear with an in-
expressible and transient light of melancholy. They
are a deep hazel. Her hair, which is very dark, is
luxuriant but straight, while that of her blonde sister
falls in the finest curls I ever saw. But her form is a
study for Gautier.* Her slipper is just the length of
my hand and I can span it without noticeable pressure
at the instep. The hand is a miracle of flexible, deli-
cate form and perfect color. Now such extremities are
generally found to go with a very poorly moulded
body and limbs, but it is just here that Gautier's pen
is needed to convey an idea of the most perfect fulness
woven into infinitely delicate forms. On the streets
she arrested the gaze of every one, but especially the
students, although always veiled.

Now the plain truth is, that were I capable of ever
loving any woman, I should have gone mad about this
creature, but on the honor of a friend I assure you that
it did not cost me a sigh to take leave of her, although
there is scarcely a probability of my ever seeing her
again. I feel myself after this test perfectly proof for
life. We read Tennyson together, but as we are apart
now, she in Heidelberg, we must carry on our studies
by correspondence, for which we have her mother's

^Jacques Gautier-Dagoty, a French anatomist and engraver
of the i8th centuiy.

»>

Letters. 95

consent and approval. I am nominally master in these
lessons but I find it diflScult not to learn more than I
teach. You may believe that I eagerly snatched at
this connection as an escape from masculine barbarism
and metaphysical beer, which threatened to engulf me.
The relation is for me a very pleasant one, almost
tender, and I confess that I look to its end which, in
the nature of things earthly, must come soon, with
some sadness. But they all go, these delicate little
flowers of life, even our great loves, which fill the soul
with awful light and storm, go too. Go where ?

** Qui salt o^ s'en vont les roses ?
Qui sait oil s'en va le vent ?
Bn songeant d teUes choses,
J'ai pleor^ souvent"

My lectures for the winter half-year or semester will
comprise a course on Greek philosophy, which will be
my chief study, on physics, on aesthetics, on the Iliad,
on the orations of Demosthenes, a Latin lecture, and
on German I^iterature of the Middle Ages. I may
hear some slim lectures on history beside these. My
reading will be the art critics above mentioned, and
modem English poetry, with the works of about a
dozen great scientific materialists, Diderot, Holbach,
Btichuer, Vogt, Moleschott, Feuerbach, Lange, Czolbe,
etc. My I^atin compositions must be continued and I
expect to read this year the body of Latin poetry up
to the Brazen age. I read with perfect ease and can
do it without trouble. This work is all genial and I
am happy. From six to twelve I shall study, from
two to six hear lectures, and from then until bed-time,
eleven o'clock, either read or spend in German society.
Two nights in the week for talk will be sufiicient. On

96 A Young- Scholar.

Sundays I shall write my letters. With five minutes
for dumb-bells between my morning hours, two hours'
rest at noon, and time for a long walk between six and
supper, I shall grow strong. If I can manage to eat
dinner with Frenchmen, as is probable, I shall improve
my speaking knowledge of their tongue. Now I have
written all, or very nearly all, about myself, and beg
leave to ask of you something like the same particu-
larity in your next.

This place is very much like an American city on
account of its great business relations. The people
of North Germany are cool-headed, industrious men
of the world with pretty much all that recommends
and blemishes such characters. The city has a bad
reputation for morals, but, unless one seeks corruption,
it is not put under his nose, as it is in the streets of
New York at night. In an evening stroll in that city
from my hotel, I had eight separate invitations to
**walk in, Mr. Fly.*' Such a thing has never hap-
pened me here. My expenses here for a year will be
about six hundred dollars. They were less than five
hundred in Heidelberg. It is possible to live on con-
siderably less in both places, but I had rather stay a
shorter time, if that were necessary, than be annoyed
by hunting expedients to shift through on less. One
really loses time by it.

This letter is a sad mix of irrelevant matters, and
will never do as a model of correspondence, but I had
only an hour and three-quarters to write it in, and you
know I require time if I wish to compose.

If you like, I will send you some lines written in
meter the next time, but most of my verses are fatally
colored with atheistical sentiments, which will make
them disagreeable to you. In fact there is so much to

Letters. 97

modify in my feelings, so much to be harmonized, that
it is the merest accident if I ever strike a mood all-
golden enough for song. I send you a picture taken
three weeks ago, and will confidently expect yours in
return. Don*t delay an answer for I am very lonely
here,

XXII.

Desire of (ucustomed labor ; character analysis; pretence
of artificial purity ; Swinburne ; synthesis of affection
and desire; Goldwin Smith on the philosophy of his-
tory ; how to form right (pinions.

Bkrun, Sept. 5, 1869.

My situation here is a very novel one but not un-
pleasant. I could scarcely be more alone on Crusoe's
island than I am now in the heart of the Prussian capi-
tal. I desire to be perfectly undisturbed till the Univer-
sity opens, for I find that absolute quiet is more
propitious to the process of intellectual digestion than
I had supposed. My severe studies are conscientiously
laid aside and I begin already to feel that most violent
of all appetites, the desire of accustomed labor. Before
I omitted work I was quite weary and glad to rest ;
now I should be the most wretched man on earth
were I condemned to idle forever. A system bent to
toil does not straighten without pain.

I read light literature, Thackeray, Eliot, Disraeli,
Hawthorne, Fielding, Auerbach, Gutzkow, Freiligrath,
etc. ; make verses ; take long walks in the immense
zoological garden where there are no animals but
Berliners taking the air with their dogs and daughters ;
take long after-dinner dozes on the sofa ; and when I
can't do any of these things I stand at the window and

98 A Young Scholar.

wish I were home. Your letters come like a full- freighted
argosy to an anxious merchant. They appear elo-
quent, profound, poetical, everything, — I will not say
because they are your letters, but the circumstances
certainly lend them a favorable light.

You practise satirical chemistry on your friends.
The analysis of character is an operation in which I
take great interest and profess some skill. I am not a
keen observer of men, or very accurate in my estimates
of what certain persons will do under certain complicated
conditions. This is the talent of a leader of men. But
when a character is once fairly observed and its peculi-
arities known, I think I have some insight into the
inner adjustment of its parts. It is one thing to know
a fast horse by certain jockey signs, and another to
point out anatomically the causes of his speed.

In the practical faculty I think you are by nature
far my superior, but I doubt as much when it comes to
the philosophical classification and explanation of pecul-
iar characters. I find your observation that M

represents a high form of a low type to be perfectly cor-
rect. The rank of types is determined by the greater
or less unification of intellect, imagination, and propen-
sity ; the rank of form by the separate strength of

these faculties. In M they are all strong, but

each would singly lead him to a different result in al-
most every case. This produces confusion in the intel-
lect, diffuseness in the imagination and impotence in
the passions. With his mind, which in a small way
may be called encyclopaedic, he will never arrive at a
clear notion. With all his imagination he has no ideal,
and in spite of his extraordinary social nature he never
has been nor ever will be in love, nor will he make any
connections stronger than those of ordinary friendship.

Letters, 99

If his intellect could force his imagination to ideal-
ize, his imagination would then mold the great mass
of his kindly nature into some grand and beautiful
affections, but in him intellect, imagination, and feel-
ing are disconnected, — all very powerful limbs but not
jointed. Where the whole organization is finally knit
and in perfect harmony we have a higher type. If in
such case the parts are small the form is low. The
Greek character presented few low types and few high
forms. The reverse may be said of the Teutonic mind.
A character in which a certain unification is reached
by the extravagant preponderance of one or two of the
faculties must not be reckoned as belonging to a high
type. Great men, however, are more often of this class
than any other. They are not great characters, but in
some direction they are powerful. In a great actor the
intellect and sensibilities predominate ; in a great poet
the imagination and sensibilities ; in a great philosopher
the intellect and imagination ; in a great man they are
all strong and closely harmonized.

But let us drop this subject and come to Swinburne. /
If the object of those insipid friends of yours is to
avoid sensuality, not through the purification of things
held sensual by shedding into the kingdom of the
blood the needed light and wind and waters of the
soul, but by utterly ignoring it, then I can understand,
if not approve, their objections to meddling with such
things even in the grand sacred way of Swinburne.

It is plain as the sun in the heavens that these people
neither do, nor can, nor wish to ignore and choke out
the sensuality of their natures. They prefer to keep
it in the dark where it only stinks, and make pretense
to the silly world that they don't know anything about
it. This sort of artificial purity is like the housewifely

lOO A Young Scholar.

r

cleanliness Grandmother Henry could not endure.
The great task of the moral reformer is to overcome
the opposition between any two parts of our nature
by fairly developing each to its utmost capacity, when
they will fall together. \ As an example, with too many
the good man is he who severely subordinates his self-
love to his love of others. Very good ! As long as a
man's self-love finds its gratification in extravagant
possessions, or in all too great authority, or in the lux-
uries of life, the best thing for him to do is to subordi-
nate this love to some other; but when the man's
knowledge of himself and the world is so far advanced
^ that he sees the vanity of those things which he once
, ^ . sought for, and he begins to find pleasure in wisdom
^ i^ c ■- and acts of sympathy and in the affections of ordinary
\^ j\t*^' ^ ^^^^> ^^^ self-love and his humanity suddenly become
^^ W identical, and it no longer has any meaning to say to
v« '^ ' \ him that he must not follow the lusts of his heart.

\\^^ So it is with appetite and love. Most men have

J itH difl&culty in subordinating one to the other, and these

^ remain for many good men to the end of their days in

a hostile or uncongenial relation. This is so universal
that I risk my reputation for sense with most people in
saying that the most perfectly developed and powerful
appetite would never find itself in conflict with the
unity of the affections. They who are accustomed to
feel what they call a passion in common with that
of the brute will have no more conception of what I
mean than a New Zealander would of the blessedness
of ** mercy, which droppeth as the gentle dew from
heaven." It is nevertheless a fact that the passion of a
perfect man is no more like a brute's than is his in-
. * tellect.

Now this synthesis of affection and desire can only

^ y

^ . t.

Letters. loi

be brought about in the way Swinburne indicates.
Passion must be heightened and purified by the ele-
ment of sorrow so prominent in his works, and enriched
by an infusion of the very blood of beauty, as art only
can do it. The animal substratum in this way soon
ceases to be animal and fuses gradually with the star-
fire of pure divine love. The result is something
greater, sweeter, more manifold than either, just as the
perfect and genial humanity of a great kindly soul is*
more than the charity of an ascetic which has cost him
terrible struggles with himself.

Whether Swinburne expects such a result or not I
do not know. He may write with only the artistic
instinct to express what he feels and despise the remon-
strances of critics because he does not care for the
result, but it is more probable that he is thoroughly
aware of his philosophical justification.

You ask me what I think of his ** Hesperia.'* That I
and his **Hymn to Proserpina " are the finest specimens
of versification representative of the Greek language.
They are poems in sound and rhythm as well as sense.
One can enjoy them without understanding them. I
read them many times over with delight before I had I
their sense clearly before me. —I

While at home I read Goldwin Smith's lectures on
the philosophy of history and at that time read them
to approve. Much of their detail has escaped my
memory in two years, but I remember that they turn
upon the possibility of a science of history, which
he denies. The reason that he advances, namely, the
freedom of the will, would make a philosophy equally
impossible — in fact, would make all calculations based
on peculiarities of character or institutions worthless.
Smith belongs to that more numerous than admirable

I02 A Young Scholar.

school of thinkers who hold the unknown for the
impossible. It does not matter that every year sees
them lose ground ; there is always the infinite region
of the unknown into which they can retreat and again
bid defiance to the enterprising, investigating intellect.
He is great by reason of the multitude of lesser men
who think as he does. Such men are always power-
ful through the ignorance of the world, never through
its intelligence. Comte was an egotist ; so was
Calvin ; which had the greatest right to think well
of himself is no matter. If M. Comte thought that
he could invent a science of society and then arrange
society according to it, he simply forgot that sciences
are not first invented and nature afterwards scientific-
ally arranged, but that we are at first to leave nature
alone and then win from her arrangement their method.
Every grade of impudence and ignorance, from the
days of Moses and Minos down to the last constitu-
tional convention, has tried its ability in fixing civil
relations which, if let alone, would be already most
beautifully arranged on a basis of perfect liberty and
economy. Some political economist feels himself re-
sponsible for the over-population of his country,
another for the scarcity of food. It is possible that
some political economists have much to do with these
evils, and their conscience urges them to propose so
many ways of relief. But we can count their willing-
ness to serve us to their credit without taking their
advice.

I cannot imagine what the result of my studies in
speculative philosophy will be. To begin with I am
a materialist and must understand all their talk about
soul as somehow a misconception or mistaking a func-
tion for an organ. Trendelenburg is a very great man,

Letters. 103

and I am to hear him on the history of philosophy,
but I can hardly conjecture what my opinion of the
whole thing will be when the winter is through. It
is at all events worth while to be acquainted with the
various doctrines, all of which cannot be right and
none of which very probably correct. They are full
of suggestive ideas and fragments of great truths and
beautiful theories, from which much may be gained.
If I were a genius I would have a magnificent dif-
ference in my opinions of most things in the world
to build a new system upon of philosophy, morals,
and politics as well as art. My desire is to see the
man who will give the world a helping hand and
raise me on to solid ground. He will be sure to come,
but when? — a saviour of the world, as the first one
was of his time, who will show us how we may live
perfectly, who will overcome death, not explain it
away. The world, as the individual, has a great deal
of sad reality to learn after the dream of youth, but
it is only sad at first, after awhile it goes well enough.
Heaven is a pretty dream to resign, so is a young love,
or a child's vision of glory and power, but we all have
to give them up. Those who lose most in these
splendid passions of youth will be able to meet the
further losses of mature life, and even existence itself
is not so very dear to one who has ever lost what he
loved most. Courage and a cool, clear vision will
square us with the truth if we accustom ourselves
early to look it fairly in the face and follow after no
dreams.

But to be able to do this we must be as pure of heart
as fire, strenuous in exertion of all our faculties, care-
less of the reward in gold or applause, and full of love
for all the world. I say that such a brave, free life,

I04 A Young Scholar.

which is utterly without fear because pure and wise,
is possible without the bribe of an immortality. Can
I live such a life, is the question of the hour with me.
Shame and remorse must never come near and then
fear will stand off.

I have absolutely no habits which occasion me ex-
pense. I neither smoke, drink, dance, play, fight (as
a student duelist), nor frequent expensive society, and
there are few students here who do not do all these
things. If you think yourself able to keep me here
and can yourself come over in a year I should be the
happiest boy on earth. Give my love to Abby and
Billy and tell dear father that this letter is as much his
as yours. I love very much for father to write. Two
sorts of letters make it far more like home than yours.

XXIII.

T%e blind farces of life ; a hunger of the soul ; the stu-
denies sacrifice; Euphrone; verses on ^^ In Memo-
riant '* / In Excelsis.

BBRijN, Sept. i8, 1869.

The mild autumn days wax bright and warm, work-
ing the wonders of morn and evening on earth and sky,
while through my soul they seem to flow with a low
murmur of minutes, neither bringing to nor taking
anything from its peace. Sometimes I almost think
the quick may taste the blessed Nirvana of Buddhist
hope, the consciousness of perfect rest, neither joy nor
fear nor expectation, only calm. But it is not so;
even in the embers of life there is a restless thought
which can always brighten into a conflagration. To-
day I do not feel my life, or in other words it does not

Letters. 105

seem to me that one thing more than another could
stir my pulses, and yet my heart would be a wild sea
of tempestuous joy in an instant could I, looking out
of my window, behold your faces on the street. Such
strange creatures are we that we can dream on with
passions, unfelt and unthought of, locked in our hearts
that have power to make us miserable or happy beyond
words.

What is wisdom but a knowledge of how these blind
forces may be utilized ? And what is a life in which
they never awaken ? Is that society healthy in which the
student's life is an envied privilege, when we are glad to
be allowed to pass the glorious years of youth and early
manhood in the study of languages and laws, at the
best, of poetry, and dream of action? Of what emotions
is my heart not capable at twenty ? Music that shoots
as a fire through the soul or blows as a wind, touches
not the extremest bounds of its desire. Poetry — it once
taught me to feel new and strange passions undreamt
of by the child—is now only a common comforter, a
necessary solace, a gentle but often insu£Scient substi-
tute for the reality of which it is but a shadow. It
eases the heart of an oppression which is not always
one of pain, but a higher something between or above
pain and joy, just a perfect emotion for tears.

When this nameless hunger of the soul grows too
dreadful, a note of poetical, interpreting music touches
the spirit and the whole burden is swept out in a re-
sistless flood. Then a sweet and cheerful tranquillity,
as safe as an infant's slumbers, enters in, and oh ! the
delight to look upon the sun, the woods and waters of
the earth. That this sensibility is not morbid, I am
convinced by the calm still under it, — the feeling of the
indomitable strength and courage of a healthy nature.

io6 A Young Scholar.

The student's sacrifice is a sacrifice of youth and
hence these inward conflicts. A few years will see
them blown over when in maturity and old age I can
find play for all the impulses within. Courage ! I say
to myself, and turn my eyes from dreams that are
dangerous to my labor which is safe. There is a sort
of grand desperation in such work that makes every-
thing seem possible. I^t a man conquer his youth
and fear will be to him an idle name. If in no other,
at least in this way we may gain

" That lofty mind
By philosophic discipline prepared
For calm subjection to acknowledged law,
Pleased to have been, contented not to be."

Time which changes all things will take the pain
from these days and leave me only the beautiful and
softened recollection, the shine and sound of a storm
long passed.

What few verses I write are forged in the very fire of
my soul. They are not great, for they lack that supreme
breadth and height which poetrj?^ must owe to a great
as well as to an intense nature. Take those I send you
as some of the best that I have lately composed. That
with the Greek title, which is the euphemistic appella-
tion for night, used on solemn occasions by the devout
when they feared to violate her dread sanctity, and
which signifies the Gracious One, is a recollection of a
night at sea. You will understand the double allusion
in the first strophe to the fabled harp of Amphion, to
the music of which the walls of Thebes arose, and the
geological genesis of strata in which the sea waves have
been the first great agent.

Letters. 107

If you can, think yourself into the scene and try to
feel that spirit of infinite rest and sameness of night and
the sea, with the contrast of the endless variety of the
earth and the day partially suppressed. The emotion
is indescribable and in my verses I could only hope to
awaken it for one who had already felt it.

KUPHRONK.

In the kingdom of the night and still desire,

Sweet with starlight and cool sea air breathing low

That same chant upon the waters' silver lyre

Under which the builded world rose long ago,

We forget the kingdomed day of songs and flowers,

We forget the changing colors of the year.

While the peace of night is shed through tranquil hours

In our heart of hearts, that knows not change nor fear.

Two of the other pieces are recollections still older,
mere gleams of a light which was always too grand and
pure for me fully to comprehend. That on finishing
Tennyson's ** In Memoriam '' cannot well be intelligible
to one who has not read that grand monody of his on
the death of a friend. It was written in the castle gar-
den at Heidelberg just before leaving. You may criti-
cise the sentiments, language, thoughts, everything
with the greatest liberty ; for what does it matter ? We
cannot all feel the same thing in the same way.

Mine eyes are vacant on this scene ;
My heart is sounding with thy great love,
Above whose face the low winds move

Of grief and song. I list between.

O poet heart, giv'st thou God praise

That thou bast loved another so?

Or only find'st thou poesied woe,
A sound to charm our idle days ?

io8 A Young Scholar.

Or is 't indeed thy song's intent
That soddened paths may still be sweety
Which grief and hope with sister feet

Ascend toward some '' far off event? "

How seldom we reach that imperial mood of real
poesy, which I have tried to compare to the natural
heavens with their clouds and winds in the following
verses that I take from a little poem of mine on man
and nature, a parallel.

IN EXCEI^IS.

O nightly frame of soundless skies,
Whose waste of violet, clear and deep.
Above the stars in golden sleep

And everlasting beauty lies !

How many men with hearts at ease,

Who take no second look at fate,

Who follow only love and hate,
Hear gods above thy silent seas ?

Or think they hear? since gods must be,
Else fate cannot be reasoned with,
It matters not before what myth

They bend the idle, suppliant knee.

XXIV.

Calls on professors ; Physical strength ; credulity and
common' sense ; translation of Lenau's ^^ Primula
Verisr

BKRUN, Oct. 24, 1869.

You are expecting in this letter to hear that I am at
last under way ; but the school opened on the 15th only
for the admission of students. The lectures begin to-
morrow. Yesterday I made the tour of my professors, as
is customary, calling upon each in his house. There are

Letters. 109

nine on my ticket and I was an exhausted mortal when
I reached my room. It would rejoice your eyes to see
such genuine gentlemen ; so much simplicity, kindness,
and dignity. The greatest living Greek historian, or
rather the greatest of all that ever lived, Curtius, and
the rival of Rosencrantz in speculative philosophy,
Trendelenburg, and Lepsius, the reviver and inter-
preter of Egyptian learning who first read the puzzling
hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs, do not embarrass a
young man.

You complain of my appearance in the photograph
with justice, for it is an extremely bad likeness, ac-
cording to the judgment of all my friends. You are
mistaken, however, in seeing thinness and care on the
face, at least more than usual, for I never weighed
so much as now, nor was I ever physically in better
trim. The other day at a fair where a crowd of men
were striking on a Turk's head, a machine for measur-
ing the force of blows with the fist, after the biggest
man had beat everybody ten pounds I beat him twenty-
three. He was almost double my weight. The whole
crowd must come up and feel my arm. I shall always
feel safe among those fellows.

C ought to have more discrimination than to

credit the absurd story of the decline of the University
at Heidelberg on account of rationalism. Why in the
country of rationalists should that hurt the school?
Or does he think that it is part of a rationalist's creed
not to study ? The learned Campbellite church has not
quite monopolized science. At Heidelberg there are
between 500 and 600 students ; here there will be this
year over 3000. Some men are famous for neglecting
their common-sense and believing everything they hear,
at least on one side. E thought he had read some-

no A Young Scholar.

where that the city of Mexico in the days of the
Montezumas had 8,000,000 inhabitants. Rome when
mistress of three continents, at the very wildest compu-
tation, never had over 5,000,000. Pekin, the capital of
one-third of the human race, has not that many. The
emporium of modem commerce, London, cannot support
but between three and four millions, and yet a small
country like Mexico, and but one-quarter civilized, was
to find resources to supply a capital almost twice as
large as Rome. When we come to look at the books,
Mexico, according to the conqueror's own account,
was as large as Seville or Cordova in Spain, perhaps
with 300,000. It is n't wonderful that such people
believe in miracles. The world has more heroism,
more charity, more imagination, more truth, more of
every good quality than it has of common-sense.

I enclose a translation I made a few days ago from
Lenau's famous piece set to music by Mendelssohn,
Primula Verts ^ or in English, the ** Firstling of Spring."
I love the verses very much for a tender melancholy
which, in most of the other poems of I^enau, degen-
erates into pitiful misery. The poor fellow died in-
sane. In this poem he compares the trusting aflFection
of his own heart, which was blasted, to the earliest
flower of Spring, that leaps into the sunlight on the
first sweet troubling of the earth, but only to be killed
by later frost.

PRIMUI^A VBRIS.

I.

Beautiful flower,

Art thou again so
Early returned ?

Welcome, I greet thee,

Primula Veris.

Letters. 1 1 1

Lighter than all that

Bloom in the meadow,
Sweet hast thou slumbered,

Beautifol flower,

Primula Veris.

Heard by thee only,

Called the first whisper
Soft, of awakening ;

Beautiful springtime,

Primula Veris.

Ah ! in my heart too

Blossomed but lately.
Fairer than all the

Flowers that I/>ve bears,

Primula Veris.

2.

Beautiful flower.
Primula Veris,
Fair one, I call thee
Faith's flower symbol.

Trustful, hast'neth
Forward to meet thee
Heaven's first greeting,
Giv'st him thy bosom.

Springtime is here now.
Even if frosts and
Darkening clouds should
Cover him over.

Flower, thou b'lievest
The long wished for
Heavenly Spring at
I^ast is returned.

112 A Young Scholar.

Giv'st him thy bosom ;
Bat the keen frosts, that
Watched thee from ambush.
Press in thy bright heart

Ah, it may wither ;
Never was lost yet
Soul of a flower
Trustful as thou art.

XXV.

Genuine ignorance superior to school ignorance; little
devotion to truth; Hubner^s lectures; HaupVswit;
cheapness in Germany traditionaL

B^RUN, 7th Nov., 1869.

It is full time to protest against more notes and let-
ters six inches long. What could be a more painful
disappointment than to open a letter from home, which
I always do with barbaric gestures and exclamations
of delight, and then to find a beggarly account of com-
monplaces which I rush over in thirty seconds ? You
can write a letter brimful of wit and sentiment and most
curiously suggestive ideas. Is n*t father afraid that I
shall remember him only as my faithful commissary ?

B *s letter is a literary curiosity. An ignorant

man cannot do his common-sense justice on paper.
When he takes up a pen he feels foolish and like a
child. The poor fellow has an ambition to become
a professional man and asked my advice. It would
be a cruel wrong to encourage him in such an idea and
distract him from his trade. It is foolish even to en-
courage him to make an effort for common culture.
Too many preparatory difficulties lie in his way, all

Letters. 113

of which would have to be mastered before ^he could
gain any benefit from his labor. Genuine and cheap
ignorance is a thousand times preferable to that expen-
sive sort acquired at our schools. In my letter to him
I have to be guarded in the expression of the disagree-
able truth.

What a strange faculty father has of drawing after
him in his peregrinations about the world smaller na-
tures ! If he had lived in ancient times he would
have been a great chief and wandered over the country
with a pack of as devoted savages behind him as ever
followed Gengiskhan. It is his political nature, a
certain natural bent to public life. I have n't a bit
of it.

Unless M means to open a private cemetery for

his defunct opinions I cannot conceive what he intends
doing with four acres of ground near the Deaf and
Dumb Asylum. Has he grown disgusted at the miser-
able order preserved in the Lord's family, as he was
fond of calling the race ? It is certainly a very ineffi-
ciently managed household, M felt this himself,

and had determined to devote his life to reforming the
dreadful muddle into which the I^ord, very likely on
account of the extent of the concern, had let everything
fall. Some of us do not look like full brothers, while
we white children suppose, from the peculiar favor
shown us, that we are the legitimate men of this world
and entitled to kick out the black and yellow bastards.
It is a pity that- such silly and illogical ideas, just
because they seem to offer a shibboleth of reform, should
master a man's understanding. How precious little
devotion there is in the world to truth because of the
truth, and not for the crumbs !

I take my notes on lectures at the University in Ger-

8

114 A Young Scholar.

W I III ■!■ I 1 - - ^ -- - -- -, ,

man. Ifris the best imaginable exercise in thelanguage.
Here the lecture-rooms are crowded, many often having
to stand. I secured a seat in every one by being prompt
in announcing myself to the professors. There is one
of the nicest professors here. He looks for the world
like father, only not quite so stem and military, who
lectures on I^atin grammar. His name is Hiibner.
It does me good to see and hear him in his chair. He
will talk to the students about the etymological value of
an Etruscan inscription as if he were telling a youngster
a Mother Hubbard's tale. One old fellow, Haupt, who
lectures on the Iliad^ is the very contrary of Hiibner.
Almost half his time is consumed in making fun of
and blackguarding certain Homeric commentators.
He will get red in the face when he thinks of Payne
Knight's theory of the Digamma. His wit is as keen
as his temper is sour, and his enmity towards theolo-
gians is to me a constant source of amusement. But
the old man suffers a great deal from ill health, which
I think is the cause of all his bad humor.

I am glad to hear of Billy's industry and pushing
habits. There is more than one way of being a man,
and the great West needs actors more than thinkers.
Americans here who attend the theatres and eat in the
second-class restaurants tell me that they cannot make
out for less than a thousand dollars a year. Living is
as high here, I believe, as in New York. The cheap
days of Germany are pretty much a tradition. Travel-
ling in England, according to accounts, costs about
twice as much as it does in the United States. You
must pay every man you see.

Can't you begin again by answering my letters when
you receive them ? They will come regularly two weeks
apart. Good-by.

Letters. 115

XXVI.

Death still terrible ; life real ; the divine emotion ; better

educated if less learned,

BERWN, Nov. 24th, 1869.

Death has been in the midst of our friends and sad-
dened our own hearth, but has spared us. How infi-
nitely nearer to us is that little circle of names, father,
mother, brother, and sister, than all the great world
beside ! We can hardly weep for others while the soul
shudders with helpless fear before the thought of losing
one of those golden links.

I cannot contemplate my own death with fear, think
as I will, but Death has still his terrors for me and
no philosophy is consolation. Religion is a vanity
before this great reality, the indestructible pathos of
life. Grief is not for the dead but for ourselves.

** The end and the beginning are one thing to them
who are past the end.'*

** There lies not any troublous thing before,
Nor sight nor sound to war against them more,
For whom all winds are quiet as the sun.
All waters as the shore."

The expectation of a future life looks to me so far-
fetched, so unreal, so out of joint with everything I
feel, that, were it not utterly improbable, I should find
little or no comfort in it. I^ife, far from being a vanity
because limited, is only so much more real, and every
pulse of pain or pleasure gathers from the thought a
lyric intensity. An ineffable sweetness and grandeur
broods over our days. Hearts cling closer for love, for
love is life in the highest.

ii6 A Young Scholar.

At times in the presence of Nature's most solemn
aspects, as amidst dry leaves of a Fall forest when the
strange savor of dying things is in the air, and the
white sky stretches out cloudless and limitless as it
seems forever, I have felt in my inmost soul the
broken wail and rush of a great music. Oh, earth !
Oh, life ! And these were all the words I could utter.
Above joy and pain there is a perfect emotion bom
of both ; we may call it divine. In it life and death are
harmonious. If my nature were mightier and did not
shudder and lose all thought under these floods of feel-
ing, then I too might be a poet. As it is, I envy those
wonderful, crowned heads, not their laurel and their
light, but the power with them to feel these things and
not to weep but sing.

Mother's criticism of my letter to Grandfather was
not unexpected or unjust, but she forgets the character
to whom I write and the artificial occasion of writing,
when she asks me to strike a deeper and more musical
chord. The highest sentiment of which an old man
like Grandfather is generally capable, is a feeling for
moral earnestness. With him it is peculiarly true and
everything else appears frivolity. Then I am fettered
in my use of words and images to suit his taste which,
although not really prosaic, yet finds its genuine
nourishment in the contemplation of the nude truth,
grandly limbed and thewed like a god, but which, like
the art of Greece, admits no ornament.

I am working for an education not a profession. I
shall strictly avoid spending time on anything which
is not culture, and by that means I hope to be better
educated, if less learned, than some whose names are
high among scholars. This age of specialties makes
such a course exceedingly laborious, and I find that in

Letters. 117

many respects these great German schools are ill-suited
to my purposes. They are the best, it is true, of any,
but still I must listen to many things that can only
have an interest for the professional philologist, scien-
tific man, metaphysician, historian, artist, etc. I am
obliged to read a great deal for the information I de-
sire. My course of study is indulged in here by the
very wealthy and the aristocracy.

My health is excellent and spirits cheerful with work.
We have had the wettest Fall I have ever seen. I
thank Billy for his little note and wish it were longer.
Kiss Abby for me if the rogue is at home.

XXVII.

Pre-Socratic speculation in Greece ; verse^ on^s inmost
life ; genesis of Hebraic ideas of immortalify ; nothing
in the world worthy of hate,

Berun, 6th Dec, 1869.

When in my last letter I spoke of having a longer
communication on hand, or rather under consideration,
I meant to send you a review of pre-Socratic specula-
tion in Greece. This chapter opens the narrative of
thought and is, for such as take an interest in the
genesis of ideas, of incomparable importance. It is
but the vestibule to the temple of Greek speculation,
a structure of the chastest and severest beauty, but now,
alas ! a ruin. Time has spared many a more worthless
edifice than the systems of Herakleitos and Parmenides.
On this period I have heard Trendelenburg, Bonitz, and
Gruppe ; read all the fragments of the old philosophers
themselves which are extant in Greek, and about 3000
pages of I^atin commentary. But this introduction is
superfluous, as nothing of the kind is to follow. The

ii8 A Young Scholar.

subject may lie over till I am needing matter for a
letter.

This time I have ransacked my journal and all the
loose leaves on my desk for verses to send you as a
Christmas gift. I always felt a little delicacy, or rather
sensitiveness, about turning such things to public gaze,
for they are copies more or less exact of one's most in-
most life. But I lose my scruples as I grow older. I
am ashamed now that I have so often and fatally
checked my nature when it should have had the sun-
light of sympathy.

The unhealthy tone of some of these verses by no
means escapes me, but many of them were written in
a transition period, one of depression and pain. One
can see in them what the German student would call
the claws oi katzenjammer, that is, the headache, etc.,
after a drunk. I had believed too much ; the world
still believes too much, and an awakening to the reality
of things was dreadful. With time one comes to look
with fresher, clearer eyes at life, with sympathies deep-
ened and again in tune.

In your letter before the last you asked me if Plato
got his ideas of immortality from the Hebrews. The
reverse is by far the more probable, for the Bible Old
Testament does not teach the immortality of man,
while in Homer, who lived nine hundred years before
Christ, we read of Elysian fields and the assemblies of
the dead. Plato, five hundred years after Homer, and
after many philosophers who had taught immortal-
ity, endeavored to prove the undying nature of the
spirit by arguments which embrace everything of value
that had been adduced on the point. The Jews and
Christians, when, long after this, they came to believe
in it, did so without proof, as they did all things ; — mira-

Letters. 119

cles, revdations, dreams, prophecies, etc. The man is
an ass who says that Plato borrowed from the Hebrews ;
such an assertion is parallel to that which would have
us owe our sense of right and wrong to Moses and his
ten laws.

My society here is slim, but perhaps I have as much
of its kind as is wholesome. Sometimes I have a dis-
pute with a countryman who insists on being either
redeemed or elect, or who favors a tariflf, or with a
German who prefers Horace to Catullus. For the
most part my opinions grow rusty for want of wear.

I expend some of my superabundance of logic in my
letters home. I must n't forget to tell you that the use
of the word ** kingdom'' and *'kingdomed" in my
verses ** Euphrone " is original and, as I think, of great
beauty. **The kingdom of the night" means the
whole realm of night abstracted and thought of for
itself, independent of all other times, as a kingdom is
something in politics or nature independent and per-
fect in itself.

Your advice to study history is rather superfluous.
All I want is time, time and money, and I '11 study his-
tory. It is wrong of you to hate so heartily as you do.
There is nothing worthy of hate in the world. The
sage knows only two passions, love and pity. But I
am persuaded your hate is a mild form and rather in-
dignation. I would be a sage if I could, and expect to
be one at your age, but for the present I cannot well
help thinking " damn " at some people.

Father's health concerns me very much and it is no
encouragement to hear that he is every now and then
shaking with the ague. I wish I knew what you could
do. What do you say to my lessons on the flute ? I
believe I could learn to play.

I20 A Young Scholar.

XXVIII.

A temple of Venus ; women in universities ; Goethe's
lyrics ; lofty purpose,

Berijn, 24th Dec, 1869.

This letter has been due some time, but I was occu-
pied with some reading which I wished to finish before
the University Library was closed for the holidays. I
am now free for two weeks. The recreation is scarcely
necessary and I shall only idle three or four days of it.

The city is full of preparation for the celebration of
the holidays.- On every comer are stands of toys or
small groves of pine saplings for Christmas trees. Ger-
many is going to please her babies. The demonstrative
fondness of this people for their children is a spectacle
for a stranger. The men seem to be rather the worse.
They do not think half so much of their wives as of
their little ones.

Last night I went for the first (and last) time to the
famous Orpheum. It is one of the sights of the place
and down in the guide-books, as the tourists say. A
modern temple of Venus, more splendid than the
cathedral, with music and lights and inmates some-
thing like those of Mahomet's heaven. The place
is the first dance-house in the city, and a rendezvous
for all the ilite of the demi-mxynde. Shamelessness is
carried to the perfection of an art. If you are very
delicate you can pay a thaler and sit up in the gallery
loges where you will not come in contact with any of
these wretched girls. If you have less money and
more stomach you can stand it out below for ten
groschen. I did the latter. I can*t describe what I
saw, but the effect would certainly have been a salutary

Letters. 121

one if I had needed disgust. The ladies were dressed
in robes of satin and gauze with trails and without
trails, and in performing the dance, which they did
alone, nothing was left undone that the vilest brute
alive could have desired to see. Some of the girls
had interesting faces, only at a distance however, for,
when close by, their eyes were robbed of the celestial
fire of innocence, and expressed only a sensual leer.
If a man wants to make his life vanity, take all the
passion out of it, throw mud in the spring of all poesy
and love, he can do it right there. To talk about such
things as a temptation is to confess to a vile heart. I
never knew before how far I was above such influences.

The richest thing was that I found my pious friend
from Carlisle there and in tow of one of the nymphs.
He had been there before and advised me to go once
if I wanted to see the effect of German speculation.
He had been there, he said, out of curiosity and had
been sickened. Why a man should go the second
time out of curiosity and to get sickened again I could
not see. It was amusing to observe the sudden efforts
he made to shake off his companion when he caught

sight of R and me. The lady could not comprehend

what had so suddenly changed his humor. We pre-
pared to go home and went together immediately.
On the way I asked him if he thought he could get
a clear idea of Fichte's Ichlekre or doctrine of the
absolute ego at the Orpheum. He will not be likely
to say anything more about dance-houses in connec-
tion with German speculation.

The weather is wretched in the extreme but not
severe. The climate of Berlin would be improved by
any sort of change you could make.

When you write to C send her my regards and

122 A Young Scholar.

tell her if she could comprehend for once the real
relation between the sexes in Germany, she would
not hope to see her reform in the universities during
the present generation, — I think not for several. In
the medical schools it may go after some time, but
people do not feel here as they do at home about the
propriety of such a thing. For my part I must yet
see a demand among women for the thorough learning
of the universities. For the life of me I cannot help
but think that women on an average are intellectually
immeasurably below the male standard. The men
slaves of Greece and Rome, who certainly did not
have one-tenth the motive and opportunity to study
that the women of our modern times possess, were
often very profound scholars for their age. Many
persons agree with me in thinking that history makes
out a plain case against the intellectual equality of
the sexes, while I think that a certain depth and
purity of feeling compensate for the inferiority. Be
that as it may, no amount of fine feeling will help a
person through an obscure fragment of Parmenides.
But I sympathize thoroughly with the aimers of these
eflforts, so far as they aim at an independent intel-
lectual culture for women. We may think what we
choose of people's capacity, but we have no right to
limit their opportunities. To my mind intellect and
culture make a goddess of a woman, who with only
the other advantages of person and character must be
insipid and vulgar.

I will pay anybody for telling me what need we have
of Goethe's lyrics. With a half-dozen exceptions they
had better either not have been written or else done in
prose, for poetry they have none, as his genius, although
a master of dramatic pathos, and having clearness of

Letters. 123

vision in everything concerning human character, is
still highly unpoetic. So I dare maintain. Goethe
seems to me to have had everything but that "faculty
and vision*' which Wordsworth had and allows the
poet. What I say is literary heresy, I know, but we
must all think as we cannot help thinking. I owe a
great deal to Goethe in the way of general insight into
things and breadth of view, but I never could see that
he made me master of a profounder sensibility towards
any object of human love, nor can I recall any passage
in his works which seems splendid with new light, — a
thought such as there is no end to in Shakespeare.

I do a great deal of work but it gets sour enough
sometimes, and I think it would then puzzle me to give
a reason for my existence and the hope that is for the
moment not in me. But I must work now to live ; it
is a second nature. Generally I feel full of purpose,
and lofty theories of life beckon me on to some high
achievement. I would fain live like a god and feel
nothing but pure pathos ; then I see it is dinner time
and am hungry. I lose inclination to quarrel with my
fellow-men about their ideas, and I have my doubts as
to the possibility of ever living up to my own. This
was the birthnight of man's greatest friend, Jesus of
Nazareth. This means more to me than to him who
calls him God.

Good-night and a Happy New Year !

XXIX.

Influences in childhood ; a student' s freedom ; concerning
marriage; domestic sorrows,

BERifiN, Jan. 8, 1870.

Dkar Aunt LEiyriK : — You were certainly kind not
to upbraid me in your letter for negligence. I expected

124 A Young Scholar.

nothing less than a regular lecture. Indeed, I felt that
it was deserved. For once an abundance of matter
stood in the way, I could not think what to write un-
less I began (and what's begun, must be ended) a set
narrative long enough to get a copyright on. Between
mother and me we spin all manner of speculative
cobwebs ; poetry, criticism, nonsense, will fill a sheet
when nothing else will. She is even more sublimated
than myself, and sometimes I think could almost take
hold of an abstraction with her teeth. She is a strange
soul to come out of Island Creek. For my part I
am unable to breathe without interruption so rarefied
an atmosphere. Perhaps this is the reason why I have
always felt so lively an inclination for dear Uncle Henry
and yourself, who both live so genially in a genial
world. No child of sensibility could grow up to insig-
nificance under mother's influence : if there is an ele-
ment of strength in one it must come out.

But this is not matter for a letter. You would like to
know all about my surroundings, the sort of people I
live among, the sights I see, etc. If so, I can only
refer you to some reliable history of the German people,
and then an account of their universities. The story
is a long one. I have a room in the city, eat at a rest-
aurant, attend lectures in the academic building, read
during the afternoon in the Royal Library (which con-
tains 600,000 volumes), and study at night in my own
quarters. My life is magnificent, simply because I
have to make no appearance, can go and stand and
stay when and where I please.

My kingdom is the library. The grand erudition of
these laborious scholars has created for the earnest stud-
ent a second world, one over and above that where we
live! One learns to laugh at and pity the muddled

Letters. 125

notions of the mass of men from these dear intellectual
heights. Thought ceases to be only a means to some
lower end and becomes an object for itself. We live
to think. It is true, that here, where men's lives are
devoted to the most laborious and profoundest study,
those things which you hold sacred are called dreams.
But who 's to judge ? and whose opinion would carry
before the unprejudiced the most weight, — a German
professor's, or an orthodox preacher's?

But beyond this grand battle-ground of science and
superstition, of positive knowledge and mere faith, is
the eternal realm of song, the poetry of all times and
tongues, where a world of beautiful and tragic forms,
of pathetic and songful figures, is opened to the heart
and imagination. I care not if I have but one change
of shirts and the food necessary to life, so I may only
learn, and every day think clearer and feel more pro-
foundly the infinite beauty of life and the loveliness of
things. I can appreciate the comforts of existence as
well as others, but the comforts alone, what are they ?
Roast meats and preserved fruits.

A question of yours (you will remember it) is both
delicate and difficult in the extreme. Difficult because
it will not admit of a categorical ^^^ or no, and delicate
because the real reason is likely to be misunderstood.
The fact is, that it is very unlikely that I shall ever
marry.

I know that a life without love is like a flower with-
out its color, and feel this as painfully as another can,
but such a life may at least be genuine and high. Then
my idea of what a woman must be whom I could love
is, I suppose, absurd and impracticable in the extreme.
I can see plenty of quiet and kindly creatures whose
lives are pure and persons pleasing, even some who are

126 A Young Scholar.

interesting, sweet creatures, but somehow I can*t help
dreaming of a great soul of passion and intellect that
seeks for the profoundest truth, — a woman whose
nature is intenser, grander, clearer than that of the girl
of the period, whose life is an insipid observance of
conventionalities forever. A scholar's life can never
be so objectless as that of an old bachelor generally is,
so you need not fear my petrifaction.

Our family has suffered an irreparable loss in the
death of dear Aunt Ellen. How sweet a nature shone
through her very eyes ! This hard world had grown
too rough and confused for her; so I thought long
before her death. If I could say a word of comfort for
poor Cousin Mary and John, how gladly would I do it !
But I know that a grief like theirs must be simply
borne.

Let us withdraw a weary heart and saddened

From Timers thronged highway and from Life's derision,

Where we have striven, but were never gladdened,
And seek repose within the core of vision.

I shudder to think of the possibilities of sorrow that
hang over my head. Could reason, could life itself,
sustain them ? Who is it that cares more for himself
than others ? It must be a monster who does not love
some one better than life. I was glad your letter was
so full of family news. Mother does not write me much
about such things. Greet all the friends for me and
give my love to Grandmother and Aunt Mary in par-
ticular. I want you to write often and longer letters
than your last. Your affectionate nephew*

Letters. 127

A scheme of culture ; scholarship and spedalizaHon ; a
lover self -sufficient ; ^^ potter abend ^^ ; Methodist stu-
dents in Berlin,

BERlriN, Jan. 19, 1870.

Some avenging fatality has punished me certainly
for letting you wait some weeks ago full seven days
longer for a reply than was fair ; I have not heard from
home for four weeks. It must be that one letter has
fallen through the mail, or you would scarcely make so
extraordinary an exception to your usual time. Per-
haps my verses have determined you either to drop
such a poetaster altogether or to send for me with the
design of submitting my case to the physician.

I intended in this letter to tell you about my studies,
what can be told, and ask your advice on some points.
You know I had no other object in coming to Europe
than culture in its widest sense, and the time which I
had set to do the work in is amply sufficient to give me
one of the finest educations in the world ; that is, such
an education as you might imagine an intellectual Eng-
lish lord would covet, who desired it for social purposes ;
a real familiarity with the two classic languages and
a genial knowledge of the entire literature contained in
them ; an almost equal acquaintance with the German,
French, Italian, Spanish, and English literatures ; and
a knowledge of the German and French of the Middle
Ages — the languages of the Troubadours and Minne-
singers ; add to these the Persian or Arabic, or both,
and modern Greek as a simple philological side of an
education ; the speculation of all ages, as I shall have
it here, from Thales to Herbart, and this by an actual

128 A Young Scholar.

study of the philosophers in the original languages, to-
gether with the splendid commentaries of German schol-
ars ; a parallel study of political and social history and
science as the practical side ; and, to round all, a course
in natural science and mathematics with such a study
of art as my enthusiastic nature will make easy.

You must not get pale at the mention of all these
things, for it has been done and can be done again. A
scholar's work grows easier in a geometrical ratio as he
advances. It is not always the drudgery of page by
page which it is at first. For instance, I shall be able
to read, as vacation work, the corpus, or entire body, of
Latin classic poets ; Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus,
Propertius, Tibullus, Juvenal, Persius, and I have al-
ready read most of them, but I shall re-read all. Once
I could not do so much, but the question is this ; be-
tween such an education and what is called in any one
branch profound scholarship, there is a great difference.
In America, however, there is, I dare say, scarcely one
professor of the classics who would have a better ac-
quaintance with his specialty than I should have, but
that says nothing. Here a Greek scholar for excellence,
or a philosopher by profession, or any sort of specialist,
goes into the dry details of his branch which have no
earthly value as culture. He will know about the
Greek what Shakespeare did not of English. Such in-
vestigations are necessary to widen our general know-
ledge and the results of such a life may throw a ray of
light on some point which the general scholar can
utilize in ten minutes ; but the extra light is a perma-
nent addition to learning. Many men have spent their
lives in such minute labor and been able to do nothing.
Others have only confused the state of the subject. A
few gradually clear it up.

Letters. 129

Now I feel tempted, at the expense of some con-
siderable part of the above splendid catalogue of mat-
ter, to give extra attention to the Greek language and
speculative philosophy ; not exactly with the hope of
making a name among the philologists or school
philosophers, but perhaps of being better able to en-
courage in America a genial study of these much
neglected subjects. I expect to be able to do that any-
how, but a more special preparation than I should care
to make for my own culture might be of importance.
Then if I should desire to teach (and who can tell what
may be necessary ?) it would always be a recommenda-
tion to be a trained specialist. The fact is, if I were a
born genius I should pursue my original plan and
seek only such information as would be valuable to my
mind in speculative thought or art creation, but I am
becoming seriously persuaded that it would only
cripple my usefulness to follow such a course. It would
certainly better accord with my tastes, and if I had a
fortune I do not know but I should let the useful take
care of itself and study only for my own accomplish-
ment. What do you advise? I feel that, if I were
willing to sacrifice all my dreams, I might be sure of a
position among scholars which would be honorable
even to my Alma Mater, Berlin, but it looks cold and
repulsive beside the ideal fields of light where I may
roam instead of plow,

E writes me that he is flourishing on Austrian

air. He sends his regards to you and the family ; says

that poor M is madly in love and condoles with me

on his case after his own fashion. Miss I^ O

is the lady of M 's heart. She is confined to her

bed with consumption and he watches by her the
greater part of his time. He wants to marry her that

130 A Young Scholar.

he may have a right to uurse her, but she refuses him
because he has left the creed of his fathers. It is very
sad and not a Uttle astonishing that he has turned out,
after his long life of social dissipation, capable of such
an affection. A soul in love is sacred and terrible. It
is hard to prevent a life uninformed by any great plastic
passion from sinking under its own insignificance.
Every man must have a reason for respecting himself.
It is all one whether he seeks it in the artificial light of
social place, or the borrowed light of wealth or learn-
ing. The lover only, like a divinity, is self-sufiicient.
There is one thing the human heart sets far above
pomp of place or pride of right, years of rest or end-
less heaven sleep with visions bright.

But all the world does not feel alike. For instance,
last night we had polterabend, or my landlady held a
sort of wake over her dying maidenhood on the eve of
her third marriage ! To-morrow the proper ceremonies
transpire. Last night was a sort of festivity which
precedes the marriage three days, called polterabend.
The woman insisted on my coming in to see the young
ladies and honor her nuptials, which I did to the best
of my ability, if acting the fool with a jolly company
of Germans and drinking beer can be so called. The
bridegroom called me ** Baron'' or rather ** Hen-
Baron'* all the evening. He either thought to flatter
me or else mistook my real name, ** Byron," for the
title of nobility often worn in Germany by persons less
pretentious than myself. The poor nobility cling to
their titles as to their lives. The girls told me I looked
like a geistlicher, or divine, and insisted on turning me
into an artist by parting my hair in the middle. Then
they said I looked like a painter. You would have
died laughing to see the figure I cut. I was obliged to

Letters. 131

take a dancing lesson with every one in succession till
I could scarcely breathe. It was the liveliest company
ever I was in and I took pains it did n't get duller on
my account. It was something new for me.

The pair are well-to-do and belong to the upper-
lower class, that is, the top of the class just below the
professional and wealthy members of society, who make
the middle class. Company here is so much less re-
strained than at home that an American is almost
frightened to find himself so unceremoniously treated.
I can enjoy their sport almost as well as they, perhaps
better, and yet we have not an idea or taste in common.

It appears a sort of punishment for my hostility to
religion that I should everywhere be taken for a student
of theology. I shall get my hair clipped h la Heenan,
and try to look as savage as possible, if people don't
stop making the mistake.

To-day the weather is cold and windy. I long for the
vine-clad hills of the Neckar and the summer shades
of the murmurous old castle. You have no conception
of the charm a mere place can exert on the mind till
you see something like Heidelberg. When I am once
well away from Berlin I shall not much care to return.

My money is due about this time, and I expect it
every day. In sending that you must be punctual, as
it stands between me and the world. I have a friend
or two who in a pinch would lend me something, but I
had much rather not ask for it. This letter is three
days late. I have deferred it in hopes of hearing from
you. Your affectionate son and pensioner.

P. S. — Jan. 29th : Your letter without a date, con-
taining the check, I received just an hour ago. I have
delayed sending the enclosed letter one full week over

132 A Young Scholar.

time, for every day I thought, well, to-morrow it must
come. In directing it you wrote **27** instead of
*' 47,*' and the police had to hunt me up. You should
have these letters all registered. The post-oflSce offi-
cials here told me that no letter was safe without that
precaution. Since New Year I have done, for me, an
amazing amount of work. I am engaged in one sort
of intellectual labor or other fourteen hours a day. I
wish I could study myself tired once. I am delighted
that my verses please you. But how can I write poetry
who never have occasion for a poetic emotion, save
what comes second-hand through books !

Berlin is the chief city of prose. Poetry only comes
here to be criticised. Nothing rhymes ; it 's all rea-
son. The god of logic, Trendelenberg, is sick, and an-
nounced that he would begin his lectures on Philoso-
phy again next Monday. It sounds as if he knew his
recovery by syllogism. A fellow who has the inclina-
tion can go crazy here with the greatest ease, but I
have no mind to. I might get dangerously serious
but for my American acquaintances. Fish in an ex-
hausted receiver are more at home than these Meth-
odists. They are confounded, muddled, outraged,
astonished, and of course finally disgusted. They
can comprehend neither head nor tail of German learn-
ing and ideas. They run their nose in the ground in
every direction. Nothing is orthodox and nothing
seems to care whether there is such a thing as orthodox
Christianity on earth or not. In a thousand years from
now the German professors will take up the subject
as one of the phases of vulgar superstition in a
barbarous age. My money came in time, for I change
my room next month and take a mate with me, a
German law-student. I shall write again soon.

Letters. 133

XXXI.

Thought ceaseless; self-mastery ; depth of Wordsworth ;
studies in philosophy,

Bkri;in, Feb, 6 1870,

A change of quarters or a new hat or any deviation
from an old habit is always painful, at least for me who
am fonder of intense impressions than of variety. I
have been almost a week in our new room, and begin
to feel myself at home after a season of disagreeable
adaptations. My mate is a genuine German, a fellow
who holds the most astounding opinions without being
conscious of their outrageousness, but he has an ex-
cellent temper and we agree as well as the majority of
persons who stand in as close relations. To-day I have
neither poetry nor philosophy for your amusement or
confusion. The weather is bitter cold and our fires
none the bCvSt, which may account for the absence of
the usual superabundant vitality discharged in my
letters.

I heard the other day from M , and received his

very welcome picture. He complains that I have not
kept him posted in the obituary and police reports, etc.,
of Berlin, or in his own words that I do not seem to know
anything about my neighbors. Abby wants to hear
gossip too. There is no such thing but in social life,
and for me society is only a tradition, or, more properly,
a speculation. One day is the exact pattern of every
other, save in the internal world of thought, which is
an ever-rolling panorama. I shall not be able to
avoid the influences, in this highly impressible period
of life, of silent study for years. I feel it becoming a
necessity. The maelstrom of endless thought grows

134 -^ Young Scholar.

swifter and louder ; the rest of the world must recede.
Will you be ready to welcome home a being whose
nature must ever yearn for the peace of a silent and
exhaustless library ? What if I turn monk and take
orders in the Catholic Church ! Real belief is not re-
quired, at least not expected, and oaths are only forms.

Don't get frightened, I am only in sport; but the
surroundings are all-powerful to mould my habits. I
am utterly deserted on the side of social or domestic
life, have as good as no nourishment for that part of
my nature, while duty, opportunity, and inclination
conspire to bury me in a life of reflection. What great
souls have been condemned to live upon themselves !
I am however to be pitied the more as I am the less
able to find in myself suflScient nourishment for every
want. Spinoza ground glasses for a living in Antwerp
in a little room all alone, and his soul brooded on the
eternal depths, a universe of pure contemplation as the
night-azure, strewn with golden thoughts like stars.
The great winds of moving but invisible passions, no
doubt, swept through its silent regions on the track of
** limitless desire.'' The cruel period of depression
is over with me. At last I feel dawning a sense of
calm mastery over life, a power in myself to forbear
and endure. I am happy, happy even if I were to know
that all things for me were soon to pass. Before and
after are one. The success of life is dependent on our-
selves, and we are dependent on the circumstances
which make us.

Your last letter was like an anthology from Words-
worth. My admiration of the man grows with my ac-
quaintance, although the interpretations which we give
to the blank misgivings of the soul are a whole heaven
apart. He felt life stir in profounder depths of the soul

Letters. 135

than any man of the century. It is natural that he
should not have understood what he first experienced.
But after all, immortality is rather a form of reflection
into which he endeavored to mould a great world-emo-
tion (pardon the German), than an actual presence in
his poems. I feel to-day a minimum of critical vigor,
therefore I shall not spread myself further on Words-
worth.

I have begun the study of Plato and shall probably
spend about three or four months on his dialogues and
the commentaries of Aristotle, Hermann, Schleierma-
cher, Munk, and then comes the actual study of Aristo-
tle's works, 1450 folio pages of Greek and of the literature
which illustrates his system. One cannot understand
Aristotle critically with less than five months* labor,
and then one must have a facile command of the Greek
and a head for philosophy. The rest of ancient phi-
losophy will require perhaps six months more. In the
meantime I shall pursue my literary studies, the poets,
and general authors of belles-lettres, and also take oc-
casion to gradually read myself into a familiarity with
German speculation preparatory to a systematic study
of it. The most extensive school now in Europe is
perhaps Comte's Positivism. Hegel has already taken
his place in the ranks of things which were. But his-
tory, and above all the history of thought, is, as Hegel
himself said, penetrated by one great self-controlling
idea, and every system is but a ** moment in the eter-
nal being." The object of study in youth must be to
find the keys to all the splendid temples of thought and
feeling in which we shall wonder and worship till the
snows of winter bow our weary heads. Persons who
read only surface books or who find in reading only an
amusement, have no idea of what the great work of

136 A Young" Scholar.

^» »■ — ■■»■■■■ — — ^^■■■■^

books is. The pleasure of the student is altogether
different in kind from that of the mere man of informa-
tion or of taste.

It will be spring when you receive these lines and
the delicious life of the new year will be stirring in the
earth. Perhaps I shall then make some new songs — if
I feel the prompting, that is. This winter I have not
made one rhyme. The coaches on the street make
their stupefying rattle without ceasing to-day. The
citizens ride out to the skating park where fashion in-
dulges in a slide, but no excitement can empty the
comfortable beer-houses of Berlin. If possible don't
let me wait longer than the 25th of March for my next
instalment. I have contracted a little extra expense
this winter, the object of which 1 hope to reveal to you
with pleasure by and by ; I fear you would laugh at me
now. I have delayed this almost a week in expectation
of a letter from you.

XXXII.

Filial sympathy ; denial of self; the combat of scientific
realism ; government in harmony with scientific tend-
encies.

BBRi^iN, Feb. 20, 1870.

Dear Father :— Did I think that you really meant
all you say in your last letter, I should be soundly un-
happy. I know we sometimes complain as children
that no one cares for us only to get a mother's reassur-
ing caress, but it was cruel in you to even pretend to
think me so insensible to the love of a kind parent as
would appear from what you have written. You know
that when you relate to me your plans or recall the

Letters. 137

struggles and deprivations of your youth and manhood,
you could have no more sympathetic auditor. Men
neglect the gods whom they believe in ; such is our
weakness. Why then reckon it to a busy student as
indifference or want of fiUal piety when he neglects the
difficult task of expressing the sympathy he feels with
a beloved parent ? I cannot think of a divided interest,
but you it seems will not understand how singly my
heart is set on home, — on a home with you and mother
where my whole life shall be devotion. My nature
needs love far more than light, but you will scarcely
believe me, for you have been used to think of my
wants as summed up in a book-case and school-teacher.
You have spared nothing to give me these, I think, and
this must be love.

To-day I have re-read your letter of Oct. 24th. It
breathes the sadness of unfulfilled desire, of life which
has failed in many high things, of a heart which has
never been enough beloved. It seems to you as if
learning could soothe these pains, as though we find
anything else in books than the measureless pathos of
time. It is the scholar* s privilege to turn from the
actual world whose passion and mystery overpower us,
to beautiful early Hellas. There is nothing in the lives
of Homer's young heroes, so radiant and bold, which
we cannot understand ; no bitter kernel of mystery.
The soft woven light and music of Ionian numbers are
spread as a veil about the forms of youthful gods and
men, as Swinburne says, *' while both alike were
Greek, alike w^ere free."

But what is history ? Less than four hundred years
after these songs were first heard among the ^gean
isles, Heraclit the Dark looked with tears upon the
fire-born Cosmos and endeavored with profound reflect-

138 A Young Scholar.

ion to grasp the single thought which is alone wise,
which goes as a great wind, a spirit of order, through
the All. Wisdom, not knowledge, is the guide to con-
tent — wisdom which is love, which leads us through
life with the freshness of childhood always on our brow
and infinite peace in our heart. To have an ambition
for ourselves is cursed. Egoism is hell. What is
place or pomp or all the sorry trumpery of honor ! He
who will find his life must lose it. Self ! was there
ever a more wretched thing ! It is sorrow, a black
spring whose fount is in Tartarus, that has no right
to bubble its hell-water up to the pure air, into the
azure light of heaven which fills the flowers of earth.
Religion is a consecration of the iniquity of self, teach-
ing the soul that it is deathless, opening infinity to its
greed of life. You must not despair ; you can yet reach
that sublime calm, the consummation of soul, which
proceeds from a wise estimate of things and their
worth, and a great joy in the divinity of the whole.
You will try with me. I^et us together, father and son,
make the resolution to live down fear and all misery,
ijot as poor ascetics, but as men, the sublime beings
capable of truth and love, life in the lives of others.
My pen is weak to express what fires my heart, it is
the flame of a new era. I write to you without reserve.
I cannot endure to see a dear life sink into a tedious,
miserable hopelessness. We must have courage. I
have had a bitter struggle, and still have, to smother
the impulses of youth in a heart only too sensitive, to
let it hunger itself dead. I do not know if it is wise,
but it has been undertaken and must be accomplished.
Perhaps you will be interested to know what I am
reading at present. I have given myself three months
(two hours a day) to make myself familiar with the

Letters. 139

state of the great intellectual combat now raging in
Europe. The form of scientific realis^i, called by its
enemies materialism, threatens to extinguish speculat-
ive philosophy entirely and theosophy too — so far,
namely, as this is subject to a logical handling. The
writings of Biichner, Moleschott, Vogt, Du Bois-Rey-
mond (our Rector), I^ange, etc., are the forces on one
side. The opposition is best characterized as a ** mob
of gentlemen who write with ease.*' The contest is a
sharp one ; even the theologians are not altogether con-
temptible adversaries, so far as erudition and a trained
dialectic can avail anything.

I have studied very thoroughly the first development
of the doctrine of the Epicureans and Atomists of
Greece, Hobbes, Gassendi, De la Mettrie, Diderot,
Holbach, etc. Kant's Critique of the Reason is the
point about which the battle rages hottest at present.
I must reserve a study of national economy and statis-
tics for another time, although the principles of these
sciences are vital to the question. The theory of law,
or rather theories, will find their places in my course
of philosophy, which will also embrace the principles
of political science from Thucydides through Grotius,
Machiavelli, and their numerous successors up to Mill,
Buckle, and Carey the American. The great I^ibrary
furnishes me with every manner of book save contemp-
orary belles-lettres. A studiosus has no excuse for
not knowing everything, save that time refuses to
stretch. You will probably have more interest in my
sociological studies than in those that are directed tow-
ard such matters as the Attic dramatists, Spanish
ballad poetry, Arabian speculation, or the modem Ger-
man lyric. In time I shall get my nose above water
in these matters.

140 A Young Scholar.

It is to be supposed that you have political irons in
the fire as usual. Once I was inclined to think them
foolish, but that was a boy's one-sided view. Intel-
lectual activity is a prime necessity of all persons who
have brains, and for one who is not a scholar, politics
offer the most interesting and honorable field for their
exercise. There is no reason why, with your past, you
may not succeed to your own wishes in the new state.
I know little of the modus operayidi by which men grow
to greatness on the milk of popular favor, but I am con-
fident that you do. I shall endeavor to help physic
the American people if the opportunity ever occurs.
If I can take any part in politics, it will be as agitator
for a form of state in harmony with the scientific tend-
encies of the age. The function of government is a
simple, not a complicated one. Just as philosophy in
its historical development has successively thrown oflF
the sciences of medicine, politics, mathematics, physics,
aesthetics, till we have it now as pure speculation on
the first principles of being, so has the state, which at
first regulated all the relations of the citizen in succes-
sion, excluded from its jurisdiction religion, the con-
trol of the individual's business or profession, the
censorship of morals and opinions, the regulation of
commerce, etc. The state has not exactly done this,
but this is the tendency in her development to a purer
form. But I have no need to instruct you in the real
philosophical meaning of the great modem struggles
for more individuality, or, in other words, liberty.
You have, however, to do with actual politics, the best
application of existing forms. The talents of a states-
man and agitator are very different.

I shall have to bring this letter to a close after so
weighty a remark. Mother has not sent me of late a

Letters. 141

real good specimen of her letter style. I have several
which I defy any woman to beat for what the Germans
call '' geist.'' My Teutonic room-mate is asleep on the
other side of the table. Too much beer or too much
Rhine wine seems to be the cause of his slumbers.
He is a Schopenhauerianer and believes that life is a
dream of pain. So he says, and makes fun of all man-
ner of enthusiasm as absurd. After all, he seems to take
it very easy. The sky is warm and blue this morning.
One of my professors, Trendelenberg, has been obliged
by ill-health to give over his lectures. I am very sorry,
for he is a splendid thinker and had not yet come to
the most interesting part of his course. What do Billy
and Abby do for a school? Can't you get Abby to
reading novels ? Anything to excite a little intellect-
ual activity.
Love to all.

XXXIII.

Argument concerning a personal Creator; defense of
views of civil government ; unity of tke human race;
the empirical psychology ofBastian.

BERI.IN, Feb. 27, 1870.

Your letter, I mean the critical one of Jan. 30th, has
given me matter for various reflections. Of course my
first impulse was to undertake a systematic refutation
of your strictures, but maturer examination of the
whole argument convinces me that if we are ever to
approximate an understanding it must be by first set-
tling the method, and the ground from which we can
agree to start, the loci communes, in other words, be-
tween us. I hope in the course of this letter to make

142 A Young Scholar.

plain the great difference between the ways on which
we endeavor to approach the truth. In order that
there may be no misapprehension of my position,
I will remark that the views which I shall advance,
with the exception of those I shall claim as my own,
are shared by the overwhelming majority of scientific
men on the continent and in England ; by such think-
ers as lyyell, Huxley, Darwin, and others.

What I wish to call your attention to chiefly, is the
great revolution the last few years have seen transpire
in the way or method of dealing with great cosmical
questions. The change dates in a manner certainly
from Kant, but it is very lately that the importance of
his ideas for the positive sciences has been acknow-
ledged. This influence heretofore has been almost
exclusively felt in the various systems of speculative
philosophy.

Matter is an abstraction, a metaphysical conception,
and all conclusions drawn from its supposed attributes
of passivity, inertia, insensibility, etc., are unwarranted.
There is however a somewhat that appears to our senses
under the form of matter and force. These are insep-
arable, and most probably one in their real being.
We may call that which is, dynamic matter, or ma-
terial force. Beyond the existence of this we have no
evidence that anything is or has been. That this
something is, we have the immediate evidence of con-
sciousness.

Next, what is law ? Here it seems to me is to be
found the root of the theological error. Is a law of
nature something which, like a civil law, depends for
its force on enactment, or is it necessary and eternal ?
Law is relation and all relation is mathematical. The
mechanic, the physicist, the moralist, in so far as they

Letters. 143

comprehend the laws of their sciences, see in them
only the mathematical necessary relations of forces,
intensities, magnitudes, etc. Where our insight grows
weak or fails, there it seems that the relations might
be otherwise than they are. It is absurd to think of
the laws of Algebra, or Geometry, or Logic, or Right,
or Mechanics being enacted. And what are the laws
of Psychology but mathematical ? Chemistry has of
late been reduced to a mathematical science, the for-
mulae all made algebraic and the substances distin-
guished by the weight of their atoms. There is nothing
but mathematical relation, and when we talk about a
law-giver for nature, we simply mean some being who
enacted that two and two equal four. And when we
talk about a Creator we mean a Being who made some-
thing out of nothing some years ago.

No particle of force is lost. Science has demonstrated
this beyond a doubt. Heat, electricity, magnetism,
the force of gravitation, mechanical force, chemical
force, are all the same force, and can be transmuted
the one into the other. I add to these without hesita-
tion, vital force and intellectual force. Thus the uni-
verse is a perpetutim mobile ; it costs nothing to run it.
Vital force is sustained by the chemical force of food,
and fails or increases with this. Consciousness is a
manifestation of vital force, and, indeed, one of the most
easily disturbed. It is heightened, diminished, removed,
restored by purely physical means. It originates with
the organism, and is present in the lower organisms in
a lower form. To say that matter cannot think is a
pure contradiction of our daily experience, and a simple
assertion. Every time an egg is hatched the contrary
is demonstrated.

Now what is wisdom, — ^intelligence ? Evidently only

144 ^ Young Scholar.

a consciousness of things, or more properly of the rela-
tions (laws) between things. How absurd then to
make intelligence a prius to these laws, in the knowl-
edge of which it consists ! I pray you give close atten-
tion to this thought. Right here is the circle in which
the unscientific mind constantly turns. Knowledge,
wisdom, must necessarily come after there is something
to know. But listen to the way in which you square
this circle. **The Author, Planner, Creator of the
Universe exercises not intelligence as man exercises
intelligence. (The question is not about the exercise,
but the nature of intelligence.) He was under no ne-
cessity to think, to elaborate, to experiment, but was
and is the embodiment of all wisdom, the very essence
of all intelligence, from whom eternally spiritual life
emanates, and from whose existence the laws of nature
are derived.*'

Is this scientific thought ? How do you know the
astonishing things here so dogmatically stated ? And
what distinct sense do you attach to the '* embodiment
of wisdom," the ** essence of intelligence,' ' the ** de-
rivation of law from the existence " of a being which,
in order that itself may not be B^plan, must sustain no
internal relations, and to the ** emanation of spiritual
life ' ' ? You see the difference between our methods of
investigating truth. You speak of my assumptions,
and I endeavor to bind myself rigidly to the empirical
facts, while you allow yourself such speculation as the
above.

You promise me to account for the existence of God,
if I promise to account for the existence of the universe.
It is not the task of thought to account for being, but
do you show that God w, and I will not ask you to
account for his existence. It is not a dilemma.

Letters. 145

^■i^-^— ■^— ^i^"— ■■■.-■■-■■■■■ ■■■■«^

Again, you ask why the great law of selection and
preservation of the best, to which we owe the order or
adaptations of nature, might not be a part of the origi-
nal plan, or, in other words, you ask if it was not
planned that the strong should overcome the weak, for
to this natural necessity the whole law must be and
is reduced. In this question you can see how unclear
your distinction between plan and necessity is. You
are astonished that order should come out of disorder,
or the lack of order. Is the contrary thinkable ? You
must refer all disorder to the ' * essence of all intellig-
ence/' /recognize the law by which the intellects of
a Shakespeare and Aristotle were developed from the
obscure brains of primitive men, whose language did
not distinguish between nouns and verbs ; by which
the beauty and order of civilization have risen out of the
chaos of barbarism, the present world of flowers and
plants out of the even ruder forms of the geological
periods. Even you express a hope and faith in the
ultimate perfectibility of the race — that is, order out
of disorder.

I do not believe in perfectibility of any kind, because
the conditions of life are in a constant state of change,
and the adaptation consequently can never be com-
plete. But it is not perfection we want, only improve-
ment, growth. You suggest that if Nature goes on
with her process long enough, the result will be a
God her Or«/«r^, not her Creator. I object that the
universal condition of beginning is ending, that life is
bound to the fate of matter, and that the changes in the
universe can never cease so long as force exists, and
force is indestructible. Systems of suns are rolled to-
gether, then bum away. There is no chance, more-
over, for monotheism, as the condition of growth is

zo

146 A Young Scholar.

competition, and he i6 only a God who is supreme
over law. How can the creature of law be this ?

I am sorry to have occupied so much of my letter
with this abstract argumentation. It seems to me a
wrong you do your acute and logical mind in remain-
ing longer on the old standpoint of personification.
The scientific men of our day have left these popular
errors to the masses, and such scholars as, like the
members of the Roman Curia, have an interest in
utilizing them.

You remark with justice that I must not consider the
assent of Mill and Buckle to my political ideas, or rather
my agreement with them, as final proof of their truth.
I could not cease to consider a system as ignominious
and unworthy the dignity of human nature which
makes liberty a creature of convention, and identifies
the right with the interest, imaginary or real, of the
majority. It is enough for me that the whole process
of the development of civil government, I mean of
course historically, has been, and is yet, an unconscious
approximation of my ideal. I do not hesitate to de-
signate it as an ideal, because it is a purely rational
conception. For this reason it is not necessarily im-
practical, — rather in the highest degree practical.

Buckle and Mill are thought to be visionaries by
some. The first logician of his day and the first philo-
sopher of history can certainly afford, if any one can,
to be so considered. The scientific thinkers of our day
feel the power of their method. They know that others
are wrong because they are not scientific. It would
be as remunerative a task to endeavor to persuade
a modem astronomer of the truth of the Ptolemaic
system, as Mill, for instance, of the propriety of a
protective tariff, or Buckle of its justice.

Letters. 147

The law by which all organisms advance is the same,
one great and simple principle, so that we have in the
fauna and flora of Australia a practical example of the
effects of the system. That country's insular position
has given to its plants and beasts a monopoly, so to say,
of the soil, by cutting off the competition of the con-
tinents. The result is, that Australia is a geological
epoch behind, and that the artificially introduced plants
and animals of Europe and India rapidly exterminate
the natives. Competition has refined and strengthened
their organizations. I know you will object to the
analogy, but it will be because you refuse to recognize
in man and in society the same inevitable laws which
govern the rest of the organic world.

You mention that you had prepared a paper on the
question of **The Origin of the Races.'* I do not
know what grounds you can take other than that dif-
ference of race seems so very great that you cannot be-
lieve in their previous unity, which is certainly not
science. The Darwinist has no more difficulty in ac-
counting for the races, than the comparative philologist
for the dozen or so distinct Indo-Germanic tongues,
which are all from one mother-language. The process
of differentiation has been identical.

We have the greatest living anthropologist in our
university. Dr. Bastian. I hope to hear him next
semester. His plans and ideas are stupendous. He has
undertaken to revolutionize the science of psychology,
carry it out of the region of dreams and subjective ex-
perience, and make it empirical. Accurate and com-
parative observation of the genesis of ideas in the
primitive races of men, as they are still to be found on
the earth, and of the relation of sensibility and the feel-
ings to the understanding in the process of growth, is

148 A Young Scholar.

the means by which he hopes to arrive at an insight
into the real nature of our intelligence.

Mother's letter was very fine and gave me great
pleasure. Perhaps its rather more friendly tone con-
trasted with the sharpness of your critique. But do
not think that I would have you handle my ideas with
gloves. They can get no hurt, if they are sound, from
a little rough treatment. Only we must try to get on
the same standpoint of the exact sciences and the em-
piric method. I cannot manage such ideas as the
** embodiment of all wisdom.'* ** essence of intelli-
gence'* ** emanation of spiritual life," etc. An argu-
ment becomes instantly words^ when we deceive
ourselves with such phrases.

Perhaps my reply has been too sharply or passion-
ately written. I beg you will excuse the too-apparent
self-consciousness of my manner, as one of the unripe-
nesses of youth. I hope now that I shall hear often
from you, as you will certainly have leisure in your
office business. I must beg pardon for the appearance
of this letter. My pen is so wretched and it is Sunday
morning, so I cannot get a better one.

XXXIV.

spring influences ; ike mood of student life in Germany;
special work in Greek; creed of Du Bois-Reymond ;
death-bed love ; Swinburne^ s artist sense,

BERI.IN, March 17, 1870.

This evening I refuse a free ticket to a first-class
concert in order to write home while in the mood.
When we wait for one another's letters before writing,
the interval between them grows constantly greater.

Letters. 1 49

Every small delay in that case becomes an addition to
the whole time intervening. Hereafter I shall observe
the fixed time of two weeks, as you also promise to do.

Your letter (Feb. 21st) is full of interesting thoughts,
not without that flavor of speculation characteristic of
you. There is a streak of the grimmest realism in
your idealism. Its source I think is a sound instinct
for law^ something that astonishingly few people pos-
sess. Most persons construct \h!t universe and life com-
pletely to suit their own tastes. It 's a vain labor, this
of reforming the facts.

On the approach of spring weather I wish myself
away from Berlin. All one sees in a great city is a
softer fog and a sort of patronizing sunshine, which
brings the little naked children out of the cold, wet,
basement dwellings on to the warm sidewalks. What
I felt at Heidelberg has awakened in me a desire to go
off with my books to some quaint little place with an
idyllic stream and hills of vine and woods about it,
and there work and dream the summer away. A
lonely little room with the bright light curtained out
and stillness and cool shut in, with Euripides and
Spinoza and all the rest of the immortals on their
shelves and on my table, where I would sit and work
so quietly through the bright morning hours ! Oh,
this is earthly Paradise ! Then in the evenings a long,
pensive stroll under the delicious sky among the hills,
or an hour or so in the country beer-garden, where one
can sit in the open air at a clean, white pine table with
a mug of brown beer and watch the village folk —
youths and maidens, old men and children — ^resting
after work, smoking, chatting, or dancing to the
schoolmaster's violin. If one feels melancholy, it only
makes the memory of such days dearer.

150 A Young Scholar.

If life seems gliding from under our feet, and all its
dreams dissolving in the ever shortening future, are
we not daring with greater heart than others to stand
and watch the ** sweet days die? " This is the only
way to feel student life in Germany. The country,
the people, everything, is so wonderfully suited to
foster that mood in which the soul, as it were, opens
infinitely downward, till it is as still and deep as the
shadow-hearted water of the sea. I shall remain here,
however, the summer term, on account of seven very
important lectures, and my present opportunities of
speaking the language.

During vacation I wish to go with a friend through
the Hartz Forest on foot, then spend some time in
either Diisseldorf or Dresden. There is not the re-
motest danger in such a tramp. Every one here who
can walk at all takes it sometime in life.

I shall take father's and your advice and make it
my business to acquire such a knowledge of Greek as
will enable me to edit a classic. I need not do this
much to the detriment of my other studies. If I see
occasion to make use of it at home, a few years there
of special study will give me a place as a thorough
Greek philologist.

I expect my life, if it is spared, to be one of severe
labor. Toil is the greatest panacea, healer of heart-
aches, sweetener of existence. Our Rector, the famous
Dr. Du Bois-Reymond, closed a course of lectures on
the results of modern science in which he had declared
himself atheist and materialist, with the remark that
his view of things was not pleasant for some, even dis-
heartening, but that it was the scientific man's creed^
whose salvation was work, Goethe on his death-bed,
and other great men, have declared that the hours of

Letters. 151

steady labor were the only really happy moments of
their lives. The older we grow, it seems to me, the
more we must feel this. There is indeed a higher
place of soul and sense, and one of superior contempla-
tion, of conquest over self through insight and love,
but, how hard to reach, and impossible to maintain !
It is the religion of the future. Perhaps my own
nature will grow larger and riper with years, and capa-
ble of more than I now think.

Your account is a variation on the theme of E 's

story. In my opinion neither M nor Miss I^

more than fancy an attachment. A sick girl at death's

door, of Miss L 's age and character, can only

imagine herself in love. The idea of having lived a
** loveless life,** as Morris says, now she is near her end,
frightens her into a last desperate effort to cling to
something. The sort of moral necessity of getting in

love will persuade M that he really is. In my

opinion he is too old, that is, too experienced. The
soul must still be malleable and full of the forces of
growth, if a great passion is to seize it and mould it to
a supreme harmony. Two spirits may then be welded
together, afterward they may only be tacked or riveted
as cold irons.

I am proud of your clear, fair insight into Swin-
burne's poetry. Licentiousness is trifling, as in Byron
or Heine, and is dangerous because false. It paints
and powders certain things and gives them an outside
which they do not have. Truth as it is in Swinburne
is never dangerous. Whether it is always poetical or
not, is another question. In my opinion, Swinburne's
artist sense has seldom misled him in his materials.
Where it has we can only say the impression is not
(esthetic^ never that it is bad.

152 A Young Scholar.

My lectures close this week for the winter term.
During the spring vacation I shall study the galleries
and the history of art My money will last me till the
first of May, then I shall have my lecture fees for the
next semester to settle. My eyes are sound as ever.

What came of the ' * wild-cat ' * Billy was after ? Tell

sister to write to me. Remember me to Uncle J

and family. He owes me a letter. Will Linnie come
home alone ? How are Grandfather and Grandmother
doing ? Make your letters longer than this one is.

XXXV.

JSasier vacation ; sense of Christian art inborn^ of Greek
art gained by culture ; need of solitariness,

Beri^in, April 10, 1870.

Our Easter vacation of six weeks is already half over.
I have been trying to recreate in all the known and
approved ways of seeing sights, doing nothing, and
finally, when sick of such occupation, working desper-
ately for amusement. Military reviews. Parliament,
the aquarium, gardens, concerts, Spinoza, Hobbes,
the Museum, newspapers, letters, etc., seem variety
enough, but I must make out of all these things work^
which I started out to avoid. I have seen the royal
family a number of times in the pomp and circumstance
of parade, and must say that I saw nothing but the
absurdity of so much shimmer and show. The whole
court looks like a troop of spangled circus actors. The
difference is that here what shines is gold, not tinsel.
Even this fact we must take on credit. The king is a
sour old Dutchman, whose chief pleasure is in his army
and actresses.

Letters. 153

My pleasantest hours are spent in the- art galleries
and statuaria. Homer has awakened in me a sense
for the creations of Greek plastic art. Without this
fine instinct for form, this real epic ** delight in things,**
as Professor Haupt calls it, we are left cold by these
really divine works. When a man not familiar with
Greek literature pretends to appreciate the marbles of
Polyclitus or Praxiteles, Phidias or I^ysippus, set him
down as a humbug. We are born with a sense for
Christian art, the creations of a Raphael or Veronese.
The soul in these speaks to our soul, but we must ac-
quire _by culture a sense for the antique. It is true
that for me this was no great difficulty. Yet still it
cost me time and labor, besides studies of history of
art and artists, which I hope to verify practically in
nearly all the great collections of Europe. I study the
philosophical theories of the great speculators. The
aesthetics of Hegel, Herbart, etc., although very un-
certain sciences, are still very suggestive systems. It
is my custom to write down for future use and present
practice short criticisms of the most important works
of art which I have time to examine. Perhaps you
will think it odd that I should go day after day for
weeks to the museum to see a single statue, but so I
have. A real work of genius does not begin to make
its due impression under less than a dozen visits.

In a previous letter, I believe I told you how much
I longed to breathe the delicious country air, to satu-
rate my spirit through and through with

"The quiet that is in the starry sky
And sleep that is among the lonely hills."

The growth of soul requires the soft vicissitudes of
loneliness, of quickening joy and deepening grief, as a

154 ^ Young Scholar.

flower the recurrence of light and rain and darkness.
It is only the unblown blossom that thrives onward.
The spirit that has been watered by all the rains of
heaven and blown upon by all the winds, that has sat-
urated its every leaf in the tender air and sunlight, has
lived. It feels no longer trouble in its inward gloom,
the motions of growth, the fear of an unfinished end.

Culture is valuable to me just as virtue, — not for
what I may do with it, but for what I may be with it.

The verses which you sent me by G are not by

any means the worst that I have ever read, although
the language is conventional, and the sentiment is a
sort of Sunday-school sadness. They have, however,
the truth of pain. The images too are confused, —
every verse bringing a new one ; first the load^ then
the cross^ then the oar^ then the disappointment.
Moreover, it is not just clear what the shadow is, al-
though the last line seems definite enough. This ob-
scurity is not occasioned by any involved passion of
pain which the eye scarcely pierces, but is simply want
of discipline in the writer^s thought. Such verses
must, however, be taken as evidence of uncommon sen-
sibility, although poetry is made of more than this.

I am glad to say that E manfully stood by his

resolution to leave off tobacco, at least in Heidelberg.
What he has done since, I do not know.

Perhaps you will already have seen an account of the
killing of Colonel Charles Jones and his eldest son in
Louisiana by a party of lynchers for shooting General
Lidell. It occurred some time in February, I think.
These were the father and brother of my acquaintances
at Heidelberg. I pity those poor people very much.
This letter is overdue and, as I have written myself
out, I shall close. My room-mate and I continue to

Letters. 155

agree. I moved in order to have the better opportu-
nity of speaking German. Tell Billy I have not had a
ride in Germany. Spring has scarcely begun with us.

XXXVI.

Matter of talk among students ; the ignorant deal with
generalities ; formulated thought; our words will not
waken in others the sense we feel ; Phidian marbles
and delight in plastic beauty ; Tennyson's ^^The Mys-
tic'^ ; a symphony in verse.

B^RUN, April 25, 1870.

Two or three of my last communications have been
so slight and hastily written, that if you care at all for
the contents, and not only for the writer of my letters,
they will have disappointed you. Subjects of interest
are not so easily found as one might suppose, at least
in Berlin and by a student of speculative philosophy
and Greek philology, especially too when one's corre-
pondent is in Kansas. Books make matter of talk be-
tween students, but as regards the world, and even the
thinking part of it, they are in one's way. It is not so
much a lack of sense for bookish questions as a want
of that minute and quick interest which only familiar-
ity with a subject can give, that hinders a scholar in
his intercourse with Philistiadom.

Life is made up of trifles ; not less the world of
learning. How long, for instance, would a great savant
like Hermann toil over the signification of one corrupt
passage in a classic, when, after all, the sense may have
no value as a thought ? The ignorant deal with the
great generalities exclusively. It is refreshing, too, to
see how far they penetrate into the shadowy region

156 A Young Scholar.

of the unknowable. Any bauer in Kansas can explain
to you the genesis of the world, its purpose, the ulti-
mate fate of all life, the composition of the Godhead,
etc., — and such knowledge has cost him less time and
trouble than the skill he has acquired in breaking
calves. There is really something naive and beautiful
in such simplicity. It has an epic breath scarcely less
invigorating than the unconscious, child-like faith of
Homer. One thing is worse ; the modern thinks he has
proof for his notions, whereas it never occurred to the
ancient that proof had anything to do with the beauti-
ful legends of the gods. They were true by force of
their beauty.

We are never fairly outside an intellectual circle
until we can appreciate it. I am learning to stand
toward Christianity as toward Paganism, or Buddhism,
viz : friendly. It is no use to expect the world to
move faster than it does, it is best as it is. In one
sense no system of thought is more than relatively
the right. In another sense all are absolutely justi-
fied. Formulated thought at the best expresses very
vaguely the real, inner soul of us. There is an internal
as well as transcendental truth ; ordinary truth is some-
where between. Only we must guard against inter-
preting one in the language of the other. Such are
to a great extent the dogmas of religion, expressions
of the soul in terms of the senses. What is immor-
tality? Does not Tennyson say of the Mystic, **He
hath felt the vanities of after and before " ? It is the
race stammering with childish tongue the great truth
that love, the highest function of spirit, knows not
time, that is, knows not self, for it is the individual
that makes time, by measuring eternity.

So we must learn to appreciate all ideas. Where

Letters. 157

they are not any more valuable to us as an enlarge-
ment of our intellectual belief, they still are revelations
of the great life, modes of being, shapes of soul, —
somehow with their inner flower of love or pain, —
and all life is beautiful, one more than another, but
the whole is more beautiful even, for this reason.
Words are serviceable, it is true, but they will not,
as many seem to think, awaken in others the sense
or feeling we may have.

I never felt this so strongly as a few days ago on
visiting the Museum with an American acquaintance,
— an odd sort of fellow, who pubUshed a metaphysi-
cal treatise with a no less pretension than that of
reconciling philosophy and revelation and then came
to Germany to study the subject. If he had done
this first his book might either never have appeared,
or at least have been improved. Well, we came
together at dinner and after some general talk the
conversation was turned on Greek philosophy, and
from that to Greek art. He seemed astonished that
I, who had just appeared so interested in the specu-
lation of Parmenides, should express a no less enthusi-
astic admiration for the marbles of Phidias. He
appeared to think that only those affected a taste for
such things who were incapable of anything in
departments of real intellectual competition. I was
foolish enough to think I might make him see what
I did in at least some of the figures from the gable
of the Parthenon, so I invited him to come with me
when we were through dinner to the Museum where
these works are represented in excellent plaster copies.
We stood before a group from Phidias's own hand,
the daughters of Cecrops, forms in which the un-
earthly, unapproachable majesty and beauty of the

158 A Young Scholar.

gods are incarnate. The flesh seems to wave with the
force of inner life. The proportions seem, and yet
are not, greater than human. One lies at full length
on the lap of her sister and the thin, masterly-handled
drapery seems to flow with the rhythm of limb. I
was in raptures, almost devotion. The ** divinely
tall** forms of Sophocles seemed to live before my
soul. I endeavored with such words as were at my
command to make him see what I did, but without
sxiy result. He said it would always remain a mystery
to him why any artist could not make such statues.
The wonder to me is that any man ever could make
such things of stone. The question which first sug-
gested itself to his psychological mind was how I
could see any soul in the mere forms, for the heads
are lost and the torsos themselves injured. The fact
is, the form is scarcely less an index of the character
than the face, and a poetic eye can read its lines. But
it is not what we learn that delights us in the con-
templation of that most beautiful of all things, the
human form, more than in a passage of fine music.
How can you explain into a man the beauty of
Mozart's Requiem ? But of all things good which are
wanting to our time, one of the chiefest is an appreci-
ation of plastic beauty, a sense which was bom with
the Greek. A sense for form, so un-Celtic, is not only
manifested in art, but the politics and speculation of
a people betray its presence or its want.

In your last letter you sent me two copies of verses,
one of Tennyson's and one of Mrs. Bailey's.* The latter
is worthless, a mere bundle of played out and flat poeti-
cisms, a shallow reproduction of the film-like coating of

* Mrs. Margaret L. Bailey, a Virginia lady who wrote verses.

Letters. 159

poesy wliich varnishes American Sunday-school life.
In Tennyson* s verses I should have thought I saw the
work of a talented but unformed imitator of that poet's
style. He will write himself out of a reputation if he
keeps on. The field of ** metaphysical poetry/' to bor-
row a phrase from Johnson, is moreover no field for
him. His mind as evidently lacks in that abyssmal,
spiritual depth of which we get glimpses in Wordsworth,
as it is endowed with a golden lucidity of vision, and
tearful pathos. This piece. The Mystic, has, however,
single lines worthy of the I^aureate at his best. The
** dim shadows four- faced to four corners of the sky "
are, so to say, the ideas or Platonic types of things
which alone have real being, what we see being only
phenomena : these are ** without form " because they
are only intelligible essences ; space is created by them
by their facing the four corners of the sky. He means
to say that the mystic is lifted above space, and by
what follows, also above time. The three shadows are
past, present, and future. I send you the verses to read
again.

Some lines of my own will perhaps not be unwelcome.
Their connection with one another is not in the sense,
but in the feeling, a rhythm of the soul that rises from
grief to joy and from joy to adoration, as a symphony
in its three parts. The management of such a piece
requires the master's hand, and I am but a bungler.
Sometimes I feel like a Tantalus when after I have let
the chalice of the heart drip full of some golden thought,
I am sure to spill it :

O soulful life !
Forth from dawn's cosmic, blossom-freshening winds,
And with them dreams of far-world-wandering,
Blow me-ward from strange lands, where opal seas

i62 A Young Scholar.

sight, calm. Two years are gone and the process goes
on. My feelings bom with me are far too great, or else
my ballast too small. Now that I have reefed a sail
or two, I navigate much better.

It *s a dreadful thing, — this amputation of the heart,
but sometimes it is necessary. The affections which
are left me grow the healthier for it, and these I can
sum up in two words, home and books. Home means
a great deal you may think, and so it does ; but it is
one love in which the parts are each equal to the
whole, a mathematical impossibility, but still true.
A mother with three children does not love them more
than a mother who has only one, and yet she does not
love each of her three less than the other, her single
child.

I think the struggle with myself, which made me
come to Europe where I could fight it out alone, and
where I should have the aid of an absorbing industry,
helps me overcome home-sickness. I do not think I
could leave home again to stay away so long, were I
once back. Books are my employment. I know no
other use to put them to than to study them. To make
an education a stepping-stone to fame would be like
a child climbing into a tree-top on a candy ladder.
The ladder is meant to be eaten. This comparison
limps, but you will understand me. Of course we seek
useful activity as a necessity of a vigorous and kindly
nature, but this is not seldom off the highway of
honor.

I meant to go into an examination of your letter
as a piece of polemic literature, but your expressed
desire to dose the question, as well as the hopeless-
ness of making anything clear in one letter, restrains
me. How could I expect to affect your opinion of

Letters. 1 63

my views when, after all I have written, you can
conceive that I could be an apologist of suicide ? Is
not suicide the desperation of selfishness ? Is it not
a bankruptcy of love? Then you call an opinion
** monstrous** which is not original with me, or at
least not first mine. Buddha, Spinoza, and Christ
held it long ago. It has been the inspiring thought
of every great moral rejuvenation of the race, the
motive of every Thermopylae.

I want to learn to feel with you, as is much fairer
than to insist on your feeling with me. While our
own character is building we have no sympathy for
others. How could we ? The mind must throw itself
all upon one point till we have a personal fastening, a
character. So it has been with me, and I am conscious
of having wanted ability to feel for any ideas but my
own. It is far otherwise with me now, and yet I have
this advantage of you, that I am younger, and conse-
quently more pliant.

I received a letter from R not long ago. He

seems to have grown infinitely flatter since I knew
him, or else I have changed my taste. He is married,
has a son, and still talks about his life being a failure.
What has failed but his peacock vanity ? If he loved
learning for its own sake, he could not so complain ;
how much less with a wife of his own choice and a child
to love !

My walk in the Hartz Mountains will only last a
few days and is as safe as going to bed. I will tell you
what I see. To-day I witnessed the funeral of Prus-
sia's greatest liberal statesman, Waldeck. Forty thou-
sand grateful citizens followed the old man to his last
home. His life was one long labor for the humble
classes of ** Fatherland.*' I have learned to love Ger-

164 A Young Scholar.

many nearly as well as my happier and prouder native
Republic. I hate these tyrants and their soulless
meddling slaves, — ^such intellectual prostitutes as Bis-
marck. Every morning I am awakened by a regiment
of soldiers with music marching by. They move from
one barrack to another before five in the morning. The
music is often fine.

Your guess, as is usual with what concerns my
secrets, was very good. The expense which I promised
to reveal was for a flute and lessons. My instrument
cost me thirty -five thalers, and my lessons four thalers
per month. I have pinched everything to be able to
do this since the first of last December, when I began.
' My teacher, who is a member of the royal opera, says
I am the best scholar he ever had, and he has taught
fifteen years. I shall not take many more lessons and
am glad now that I began. Abby and I will play
together after a while. I hope you will be pleased with
my outlay. My instrument is very good. Remember
me to Grandmother with all love.

XXXVIII.

The character of a German student mess ; three friends^
a philosopher^ an unideal thinker, an artist ; com-
panion of a walk through the Hartz ; joy of the
country,

BERI/IN, May 28th, 1870.

SwBET Sister : — I know mother bade you write and
give me a rating for my delay, else I had not been hon-
ored by a whole letter from you. If you were not so
evidently in the right I should jaw back. As it is I
cry peccavi. Perhaps you will not imderstand this
peccavi; if not, father's Latin will reach so far. You

Letters. 165

know you told that Frenchy young officer that you
were no linguist ; but we studiosi are fond of poly-
lingual slang ; it sounds better than the dialect of the
plebes who call everything by its right name.

It would puzzle a Philistine to understand much of
what goes on at one of our messes. A half-dozen
whiskered and spectacled and otherwise metaphysically
ornamented faces gather about a round table in the
restaurant to consume soup, beer, mutton, kraut, etc.,
on which occasion the conversation is everything but
light, — often more indigestible than that euphonious
and democratic dish called klops. These are meat-balls
in which every manner of flesh has equal rights, — that
is the liberty to smell as peculiarly as is in the nature
of the fish, fowl, frog, or what not. There is really no
language spoken here but a supremely entertaining
wirrwarTy with German for a sort of background. But
it would be difficult to find a sharper set of thinkers or
more extensively informed men at their ages.

I have three friends whose characters affiDrd me the
most exhaustless fund of observation. The eldest is a
man of almost thirty years. He has been a student
for ten years in all parts of Germany and France,
although he hears few or no lectures now. A small
fortune gives him independence, and his life is dedi-
cated to his books. An ungainly form and excessive
bashfulness make him unfit for society. His learning
too would impede his efforts to be entertaining in a
drawing-room, while for me it makes him extremely
interesting. He wears the brownest of old coats, a
rusty stove-pipe, and low shoes. A face that has ac-
quired the abstraction of HegePs Absolute, is but
half visible behind a tawny fleece of beard. A pair of
the most mysterious eyes glimmer behind his spectacles.

1 66 A Young Scholar.

They have all the uncertain light of metaphysics in
them. To this day I do not know their color. He
has a fine, massive brow, Roman nose, and is slightly
bald. I love to listen to his deep, musical voice as
sometimes for an hour together he follows some pro-
found thought through all the heights and depths of
history, unfolding the most astonishing wealth of still
reflection and information. He is my philosopher. I
visit him sometimes for advice in my studies or to read
a philosopheme of Plato's or Spinoza's in company
with him. He is generally at home in his long gown,
with his student's pipe resting on the floor and his
head enveloped in a cloud of smoke. He has the blues
at times, when I do my best to cheer him up, and
generally succeed. I love him for his childlike sim-
plicity of heart and maiden-like purity of life. He has
almost thought himself out of the world, and now feels
alone, without a relation living or a friend nearer to
him, or so near as I. Sometimes he questions me
about life in America and seems to wonder at the rest-
less activity of our people.

My second friend is made of different stuff"; is
scarcely less learned than the first. His mind has
altogether a different direction. Politics, histor}', man-
ners, are his field. His exterior is more sharply cut,
his turn as practical as is compatible with a scholar's
nature. It is his custom to drop in at my room at al-
most any hour of the day or night and immediately
strike up an argument. We love to disagree. He has
all manner of loose, bad habits, and, what astonishes
me most, he is able to combine these with a tremend-
ous industry ; the most uuideal thinker I ever knew.
He says that it is a pleasure for him to hear me theorize
because I am consistent.

Letters. 167

The youngest is my pet. If I could describe him as
he is, you would fall in love with him I know. I never
saw so handsome a youth, nor knew so beautiful a
spirit. The softest of great brown curls hang over a
marble brow that is a perfect wonder for its soft curves
and clear heights. But I can't describe him. I can't
even imagine such wonderful great violet eyes as his.
Every feature is perfect and full of the highest poetry.
His head looks like one of Raphael's angel-heads
taken out of its frame. This is my artist and poet. Of
course he is no great scholar, but for his age he has no
superior at the University. We go together to the
Museum and praise the wonderful works of art, or
take walks through the beautiful park. My greatest
pleasure is to read with him from one book, — either
some English poetry or Greek. One cannot tell all
his sweet, innocent ways. There are no such boys in
America.

Well, you will have heard enough of my friends.
To-morrow I start on my walk through the Hartz.
An American acquaintance will accompany me, **one
of the finest fellows out, " as we say. True he is neither
a scholar nor handsome nor very refined, but he has a
whole, honest nature, and I am partial to him for his
real manhood. I shall be back when you receive these
lines and already a week or more at work. We take a
couple of shirts, handkerchiefs, stockings, slippers,
comb, etc., with a few medicines for sore feet, colic, or
the like, an opera-glass, guide-book, and umbrella. We
shall be gone not over ten days.

I need the recreation very much, as I have not been
out of Berlin for almost a year. All the spirit in a
fellow threatens to go out under the gray, monotonous
drizzle of city life and hard work. I don't expect any

1 68 A Young Scholar.

better fate than that of my old friend whom I described
to you, but I am not quite so far yet. He takes no
more delight, as the Greek poet says, in the ** crocus
curls of the dancing maidens.** I want to breathe the
wet hill-air and see the green mountains towering into
a soft June sky, hear the birds and falling water.
Berlin is as dry as the Sahara is arid. Even the park,
which is out of town, is beautiful rather by contrast
than in reality.

E is still in Vienna. He proposed to me a trip

to Constantinople for vacation, but that would cost me
too much and disturb my plans. He is already near
there. My love to all.

XXXIX.

A Yankee fellow-traveller ; the cathedral of Magdeburg ;
Hartz tourists ; loveliness of the scene ; an elementary
stage of susceptibility ; the ** epic joy of things ^\* sun-
set 071 the Brocken ; the descent.

Bbri*in, June 8tb, 1870.

The above engraving * will tell you that I have seen
the Hartz, and further, that I am again home without
mishap of any kind. It was an original tramp. No-
thing was wanting, — neither scenery, company, nor in-
cident, — to keep me, between laughing and dreaming,
splendidly amused. We footed it over one hundred
and twenty-five miles, almost every step of which road
presented a landscape worthy the pencil of a Lorraine.

But first, I must give you an idea of my chum. I
told you I believe that he was a Yankee, and the most
honest one that I ever knew. The fellow has no cult-

* An illustration of Hartz scenery at the head of his letter-
sheet.

Letters. 1 69

ure of any kind and nothing beside his character and
comical ways to recommend him, save a pair of great
watery blue eyes. He was scarcely less original than
the mountains. Indeed they had experienced far the
most trimming. Monday morning we took an early
train for Magdeburg. We were strapped and buckled
like grenadiers of the line.

In Magdeburg we stopped to see the famous cathe-
dral, the oldest piece of Gothic architecture in Ger-
many. It had the greatest interest for me, and marked
an epoch in my study of art. This was almost the
only structure spared in the Thirty Years* War. The
demon, Tilly, sacked the city after a desperate siege,
and massacred women and children in their flaming
homes. His wild Croats revelled in the murder of the
helpless and innocent who had taken asylum here. I
thought to what an organ blast of horror these great
vaulted spaces must have reverberated. The good
burghers of the city have forgotten that night, nor do
they dream of its possible recurrence. The world has
grown infidel, and the glory of God, which once de-
manded such zeal, is left to take care of itself.

The Hartz is a mountainous region about sixty miles
south of Magdeburg, in the midst of the sandy plain
which the unparalleled industry and skill of the North-
German bauer has turned into fruitfulness. Every
summer sees it filled with tourists from the great cities,
seeking health and recreation. Sallow business men,
who seem lost before the infinite idleness of nature and
who associate the shadow-hearted mountain water with
the hum of greasy wheels, wander vacantly about the
green ways. A more cheerful sight is the corpulent,
well-to-do burgher with his family, generally a wonder-
fully agreeable German matron and a mild, blue-eyed

170 A Young Scholar.

daughter. A fellow can easily imagine the girl one
of the fairy princesses, a glimpse of whose gold hair
and lily hands was wont, according to the legends of
the Hartz, to reward the daring knight, who with high
thoughts of love and glory penetrated these mount-
ain forests when they were full of dragons and en-
chantment, and before a Prussian commissioner of ways
had macadamized promenades in every direction.

But the most appropriate staflfage for these landscapes
is the light-footed student. He has an eye and a heart
for everything. Scholars are everywhere friends. I
cannot say how I exulted and revelled and dreamed,
after a year of imprisonment and labor, in the greenery,
the odor of pine forests, the mystical loveliness of sweet
wood-blossoms, the stupendous grandeur of granite
cliffs, and the purling and rushing of splendid, shadowy,
limpid water. How does the immaterial soul have a
joy in these things? What shape of matter is beauti-
ful, what grand, if matter is death ? Oh, blindness of
little souls not seeing that there is but one God, one
Incomprehensible ! It is here that the great thought
of Spinoza has irresistible force.

But you will wonder how I enjoyed all these things
with that compendium of Yankeedom at my elbow.
It was seldom he left oflF abusing the dishonest inn-
keepers who managed every day to swindle us out of a
few groschen. It was provoking enough, but I could
not afford to let it sour my whole trip. He is one of
those souls that are always complaining in a serio-comic
way, and on the occasion of each new cheat, relates over
and over again every similar misfortune he can recall
in his entire history. His admiration of the scenery
amounted only to astonishment at the singularities.
This is the first and elementary stage of susceptibility,

Letters. 171

at which most persons stop for life. For the great and
ever-recurring types of nature they have no sense.

The only natural men in a civilized era are the
cultivated. The ignorant are deformed, unlike the
simple children of nature in the Homeric age of the
world. Then that was born with men which now is only
to be acquired by the finest and deepest culture, viz :
**That epic joy in things,'* as I translate a favorite
phrase of my old professor, Haupt. Homer never men-
tions an object in nature but he gives it a beautiful
and characteristic epithet. Of course we have many
sensibilities which Homer had not, but the epic sense,
so to speak, is a lost sense to all but the learned. We
spent a night on the Brocken, the highest point in the
Hartz, and the famous assembling place of the witches
who, according to the popular superstition, on Wal-
purgis's night, come here on broomsticks through the
air to hold an orgy with the devil. One of the wildest
scenes in Goethe's forest is laid here at a similar meeting.
The horizon from this point embraces an area of sixteen
thousand square miles, that is, the entire Hartz and
many distant cities. We enjoyed what is here a very
singular good fortune, a clear sunset. The impression
was unearthly. The silence of the place and unusual
temperature made me feel alone. I seemed on a might-
ier planet with almost spiritual sight. The sky, which
appeared nearer and less concave, was girt high with
strata of motionless clouds of dark, ruddy, and golden
hue. Only overhead the clear ether burned a dark
azure. The sun fell, scattering a broken and unearthly
illumination over the glooming masses of mountain
below and beyond us, till gradually the whole scene
was darkened, and a loud piping wind set up through
the hollow night.

172 A Young Scholar.

I returned, without speaking, to my room in the
mountain-house. I thought of my own life, what has
been and is not, and the emotion was too holy to allow
a thought of what might have been, that thought which
employs one so much. The morning came on and we
descended the mountain in a cold, dense mist, which
blew about the great boulders and hurried over the wet
grass and little white chill flowers which alone grow
here. Soon we were below the cloud in the sweet,
wild Use valley with azure and silver spanning the
green heights. This stream is lyrical. I thought of
the verses Heine made on the Princess Use when a
student at Gottingen forty years ago. He came over
the Hartz too in a vacation. The enclosed photograph
is a point of the stream which is almost one continual
fall. If our life is to be as fresh and cheerful as the
water, we must start as high.

After seven days* marching, in which time our limbs
grew sore, we had made the grand tour of the Selkau
valley, Bodenthal-Ilse, Ecker valley, the Brocken, etc.
We returned on the railroad to Berlin royally pleased
with what we had seen, and I hungry for my books.
Your letter of May loth was awaiting me. It was
the culmination of my satisfaction because it was full
of you and good news of father's health. You cannot
think of Jacksonville, my little porch, and the long,
rose-scented summer days with more emotion than I.
The images of everything I love or have loved come
to me then.

I am glad to hear so splendid an account of Billy.
Our long summer vacation begins before the first of
August a few days. In my next letter, if I think of
it, I will try and explain to you why Greek plastic art
is valuable to us of this day who are not Greeks.

Letters. 1 73

XIv.

A studenVs room ; character of German students ; the
student philosopher^ ^^ EmanueV^ ; the Pomeraniaji
singer ; on irrational materialism ; the soul a dynamic
manifestation of matter; solution of the riddle of life.

BKRiJN, June 23, 1870.

Dkar Jok : — It was some time ago that I received
your last letter, but it was even then, I thought, very
late. You will have good reason to complain of me
because when you expect to hear something of my life
in Germany, I always put you off with a miserable
decoction of poor philosophy or flat verses. This time
I mean to write of trifles to your heart's content.
Perhaps the desire to theorize will take me toward the
end of the chapter, when you will be obliged to bear
with it.

If you were to call on me just now you would, after
ascending four flights of stairs, be shown into a room
that serves all the purposes domestic of two studiosi,
that looks out on the busiest street of the city and is
furnished not with any unseemly pomp, but adequate
in its appointments to all moderate wants. You need
not be astonished at its height for this is the literary
story in Berlin. After enquiring of the door-maid if
Herr Smith is at home you would be shown into the
aforesaid room ; but I forget, you were already in. I
know you would be glad to see me looking so perfectly
at home in a strange land and luxuriating in all my
favorite disorder, that is, a chaos of books, papers, etc.

Just let me see what is on this table : A History of
Art by Liibke, Otfried Miiller's Dorians (I translate
the titles), a volume of Curtius's Greek History^ Schu-

174 -^ Young Scholar.

bert's Views from the Night-side of Natural Science ^
Plato's Laws, Suetonius's Ccesars, Spinoza's Opera
Posthuma, Wiener's System of Nature, two pieces
of music for my flute, the flute itself, a salt box for
my chum's tobacco ashes (I wish he would keep it on
his own stand), a dozen tickets for books at the Royal
Library, a letter from home, a letter from a friend in
Paris, a guide through the Hartz, a catalogue of the
Museum, a lexicon, a book of manuscript notes and
studies on the sculpture in the Museum, inkstand, and
— nothing else, — yes, here under the music the first
volume of Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences,
Bless me, who would have thought that all these books
had wandered here since morning, when they were all
in their places ! You have a conscientious catalogue
of what is on my study table at this moment, ten min-
utes of four P.M.

Out of doors it is raining ; the windows are open ;
I am in my shirt sleeves. My chum is at the Academ-
ical reading-rooms.

But all this nonsense will not interest any mortal.
Perhaps you would rather hear about some of my
friends. To start with, I can say that in general you
would not be likely to find them much to your mind.
You would think, and with much justice too, that you
saw in them the want of nearly everything which you
are accustomed to consider the beneficial influences of
a severe religious and moral conviction. They are as
a rule governed by no principles which look to the
good of the world as the highest norm of action, nor do
they have much hope or care for the elevation of the
race. Such, you will exclaim, are my friends ! Ger-
man scholars ! I must admit the fact with a reserva*
tion in favor of but two.

Letters. 1 75

But how can I eudure such fellows? Well, I have
learned that there are almost, if not quite as great vir-
tues of a different kind from those noticed above as
missing. For instance, my room-mate denies that
there is such a thing as human rights or unselfish affec-
tion, makes no secret of unchaste conduct, and has
what he considers the good humor to tell me of this,
and says if I want a chance to blow my puritanism, I
can take a text whenever I choose. Now this fellow
is a thorough-going, consistent, industrious, remark-
ably acute, and well-informed young man, and one who
respects himself highly. He says that a man must
live naturally and rationally, and he charges me with
being only a half-head because, as he says, I have freed
myself from the form of religion, but am as pious as if
I were a Carmelite. He says he could love a beautiful
and spiritual girl if he knew one, but that in the mean-
time he doesn't propose to be a martyr to a theory. I
only repeat his notions because they are excellent rep-
resentatives of what by far the majority of people in
this country think on this subject. He is absolutely,
I believe, not conscious of doing anything low when
associating with the demi-monde. He says a man
must live in harmony with himself. What redeems
these Germans, to a degree at least, is the almost
Homeric naweti with which they seem just what they
are. He calls the Americans fanatical hypocrites, al-
though he thinks it, in an ethnological aspect, possible
that in America things are different. I have found it
of no use and only insulting to talk to him of the
degrading influence of such habits.

But what is there attractive about such people?
Well, they have all the intellectual virtues, as the
Americans have all the social virtues between them. I

176 A Young Scholar.

don't exactly see that those are less than these. Of
course it appears to each side as though what they
lack is of no worth, but for one who, like me, stands
impartially between, they have on neither side much
advantage. I know that there is a side of the American
character and American life infinitely better. I think
of the sweet circle of the American home where purity
and enthusiastic tenderness lend maiden and matron a
real sanctity. On the other hand, I know there is a
nobler side to German character and life. I think of
that wide, intellectual zeal which glows in Germany's
schools, of the bold, all-grasping energy of thought
prompted by the desire to know, for which the uni-
verse is an eternal wonder, but a wonder of law. But
I don't mean to say that there are not, in both coun-
tries, men combining the excellences of both. I know
that there are such.

I spoke of two exceptions to this normal character
among my friends. The elder is an extremely inter-
esting character. He is a student by profession, and it
seems for life. He has resided at nearly all the fam-
ous universities of Europe from Salamanca to Prague,
and has a treasure of information and uncommon learn-
ing which is for me an endless source of delightful in-
struction. More even than his accomplishments are
the charms of his great, tender nature. As you might
suppose, he is pretty well advanced in years for a
student, something over thirty. His person is tall and
awkward, and a negligent dress adds nothing to its
effect, but his soul is in his face, and the souloi his soul
in his deep, tearful, blue eyes. Sometime I shall hear,
I hope, the story of his youth, which I imagine to be
that of disappointed affection, for could anything else
make a man so tender and pure ? I visit him often in

Letters. 177

the evening in his room where, before lamplight, he
generally sits with his long pipe or sometimes with his
flute, lost in what must be a sad musing, for he has
often greeted me with a broken voice while saying that
he was so glad I came because he felt lonesome. I
have him talk to me, which he does with almost a
paternal affectionateness of manner, anxious to let me
have the advantage of his long experience in the bewil-
dering ways of philosophy. It is not always the same
mood which is swaying him. At times he rises to an
emotion which I can only liken to that of pure religious
fervor, but at that moment of devotion when the soul
forgets itself and thinks only God. I shall not soon
forget what he said to me the other evening, while
walking together by opening starlight beneath the
softly agitated trees in the city park. ** There were
heroes once,*' he said, ** so glad of being Romans that
it did not seem hard to them to die if Rome could live,
and shall not we who know that we are moments in the
Eternal Being, be content? or are we perhaps not
heroes? '* He reminds me so strongly of one of Jean
Paul's favorite characters, that I have in play called
him ** Emanuel,** upon which I must hear a criticism of
the genius of Richter so deep and clear, so full of strange
and beautiful thoughts, that I could imagine myself
listening to a passage from the Hesperus itself. I only
need to tap him with a remark to draw the finest floods
of sentiment and learning and thought. Don't grow
annoyed by my detailed account of one whom I really
love. It is a great pleasure for me to enumerate all his
excellences and even such weaknesses as give good
men their individuality. Were it not for these they
would all seem like models cut out of one piece of pure
goodness and not be distinguishable.

Z2

178 A Young Scholar.

My other friend is very different from the first.
Scarcely one year at the university, he has retained all
the freshness of the school-boy ; indeed he is not yet
nineteen and appears even much younger. I think
him the handsomest youth among three thousand stud-
ents, perhaps with undue partiality ; but whose judg-
ment is in such matters unbiased by moral and
intellectual qualities ? He has a soul like a song, as
pure and resonant as the lyre. It is grand to see him
throw back his long, sunny curls and with beaming
blue eyes, sing to his own composition a passage from
the Nibelungenlied, or declaim the great golden hexa-
meters of Homer. He is every inch an idealist, an art-
ist, and it is mostly in company with him I visit the
Museum. The question is whether so joyous a nature,
one so full of pulsating life, will keep his skirts free in
this stronghold of moral dissipation. His home is far
from here, in Pomerania, and can exercise no restrain-
ing or purifying influence on the boy. He has never,
as I suspect of my older friend, been disappointed in his
dearest wish, has not even been in love, but it is not
hard for me to detect in his guileless and frank nature
the symptoms of awakening hunger for something to
love and have and hold and caress, — that hunger
which drives some mad and some to death and many to
the devil, — not a few, especially the best natures, to
lives of desperate labor and fruitless, joyless endeavor
to fill in some worthy way an aching, insatiable void.
I don't know which of all these to wish for him, if it
comes to the worst.

So much of my friends. Perhaps they will seem too
much idealized. This is possibly true, for an unskilful
hand at character-drawing only knows how to delineate
types ; but they have not won anything through my

Letters. 1 79

inability to give you the men more as they are. I
love to tell them of you, and indeed they admire you
more than you will them, I fear, but I never succeed
in giving a real portrait of you. They see always more
the missionary than the man.

I have written, not an answer to your letter, but a
mass of stuflFit seems, just because I could ; but would
it pay for me to try and show you how I am not a ma-
terialist in the sense that your conception of matter
really represents the ground of all various being, the
divine substance, uncreated and self-existing? I be-
lieve in none of all this. This is equally irrational
with that form of superstition which gives the Divinity
the limits of a personality, the affections of human na-
ture, and an existence measured if not limited by time,
and distinct from the world.

Metaphysics is hard and very uncertain, in the par-
ticulars at least ; yet it is no vain curiosity but an in-
ternal necessity which compels man to seek the Ground
of the Intelligible in an Unintelligible. But to predi-
cate again of this intelligible reality, back of all phe-
nomenal being, the most complicated attribute of the
phenomenal world known to us, viz., consciousness, is
to forget that it was just as a ground for these mani-
festations that we first suppose a self-existent some-
what. The world of things as the world of souls is a
temporal world, that is, one in which there is no per-
manence. These things have no real^ only a modal
existence, as a house is only a condition of bricks, a
brick a condition of chemical elements, and these again
what we may call atomic combinations. But what is
an atom ? Why, it has as many parts as the universe,
and we find that there is not in matter the ground of
its own being. Nor is there in soul, for what is soul

i8o A Young Scholar.

but a dynamic manifestation of matter, just as gravita-
tion is, and equally incomprehensible, but, just as gra-
vitation or heat, convertible into the other forces and
daily made out of the chemical properties of food through
the organism of the sexes.

What you say of a ** thousand inward senses" by
which you perceive the fact of immortality, is to me as
talk of colors to the blind. These ** senses *' (?) are
neither reason nor love, for the one tells us that as we
are bom so we die, and the other that not our life, but
the infinite life of the whole, which is immortal, is the
divine good. As to faith, we have that in all things
which we believe and of course very often without
ground. I never heard of its being a sense by whose
immediate aid we become definitely certain, of course
not of a fact, it being a sense, but of an appearance,
and this moreover on our inside. It seems to me that
our frightened eye comes to the reason and begs her
fortune, offering, like a timid princess to a brown gypsy
girl, wonderful things, if it be only according to her
wish. Nobody but the princess could be in doubt as
to the answer. But you speak of a ** thousand senses ' '
and of course my philosophy, as well as my arithmetic,
would be unable to make out what or where these
could be. I think very often, when reflecting on the
possible grounds which can support men in their relig-
ious notions, of the words of my friend, ** But, perhaps,
are we not heroes? '*

But who can find fault with another for solving the
riddle of life as he will, seeing that every way it is so
hard? If we follow a cool, unbiased reason, she
points out to us, as the only reconciliation with our
fate possible, a dedication of ourselves to the whole in
love, which, perhaps, the Christ has attained, but

Letters. 1 8 1

scarcely another. ** He who loses his own soul shall
find it/' is the sense of his life. If we do not trouble
ourselves about facts so much, we can have as pleasant
a prospect as we wish, because it has no other origin
than the wish. But it is hard to constantly oversee
facts.

At the next writing, if you answer this letter
promptly, I shall most likely be in Dresden, where
I design to study the art gallery for a month, or such
a matter, of my vacation. From there I shall write
you about my art studies and some of the master-
pieces of Berlin and Dresden. My verses don't seem
to have pleased you so much as I expected when I
selected and copied them for you, but then I reckoned
more on you than on the verses. You must read them
with care, because they are not finished artistic per-
formances, but feeble efforts to express emotions by
which I am rather mastered than of which I am mas-
ter. Till you tell me more about yourself, how can
I ask you the questions I know I should wish to?
You promised me some personal experience, for which
I am extremely anxious. I am almost ready to bum
this letter. If my time allowed I certainly should
write it over.

XLI.

Domestic anxieties ; range of solid reading ; the infinite
beauty of the universe; style of living ; of dress and
food ; the story of ** Electra " / a poem.

B«RIJN, July 3d, 1870,

Your letter of June loth has just been read.
Father's health seems still critical. This is the first

1 82 A Young Scholar.

thing I look for up and down your letters' pages. If
you cannot have health in that wretched country,
leave it for heaven's sake and my sake. If you can-
not make money anywhere else, you can live at least.
What would it be for me to return with all the learning
of Europe to a desolate hearth ! When I think of
such a thing, then I want to die first. A human heart
is but a vessel full of fears and brightened hopes and
insatiable wants and pained joys. How hard it is to
make our love wide enough to embrace the world, and
calm as the universe, that knows no time !

I hope that you will be able to stay a year with me,
the year that I am in Italy. If father cannot come
then, why, we will, after some time, come together to
Europe, for I shall wish to come back, and perhaps I
shall make it a business trip. This would please
him better than to sit down with me a year in Rome or
Florence. What if I had a commission to purchase
works of art for an American museum, or some such
object to lend special interest to a visit to all the great
centres of Europe ? Let father get well with this an-
ticipation. We shall certainly do something like it.

Since my return I have been very busy. The ex-
cursion was most salutary and lent me vigor, which I
did not know I wanted. Nothing could be finer than
the wide intellectual activity my studies afford.

You wish to know what the result of my year's
work has been. Well, I have read almost as much
solid literature in the last twelve months as altogether
before this. In the history of philosophy and in Greek
speculation I have laid an excellent foundation upon
which to make a special acquaintance with the great
modern systems. Of these, I have already studied
Descartes and Spinoza ; I^eibnitz comes next. The

Letters. 183

literature connected with these systems is very great.
In art I have won my first real insight. This has cost
me a great deal of reading. Greek has grown almost
familiar and I^atin quite so. I mean hy familiar, that
fluency which enables me to read a volume of three
hundred or four hundred pages in a day. Of belles-
lettres I have read Uhland, Tieck, Herder, Novalis,
etc. Wheweirs Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences y
founded on their history, is almost all that I have read
in English. My practice on the flute has taken some
considerable time. My improvement in tone, precision,
and facility is very flattering. But most of all, my ex-
perience in the methods of scholars and the real nat-
ure of learning I esteem as my chiefest acquisition.

Whose heart would not bound with eagerness to
learn, so long as systems and sciences are known only
by the tremendous whisperings of Rumor ? But it is
reserved for those to whom the universe is an ever-en-
during, infinite wonder, and every part of it unspeak-
ably lovely, not to tire at the details of a scholar's
work. Sometimes I feel as though it were too awful a
thing to live, — too strange, too full of limitless emo-
tions, — and I almost want to cease. Then I wonder if
such feelings are healthy. I look at myself in the glass
but discover nothing but a face a little worn by work,
like one of the many thousands passing on the street,
of the many millions who have been, or of those who
yet will be. At night I see the little bright flecks of
star-dust that after almost endless time will be inhabit-
able worlds, where, no doubt, beings will feel as I feel.
Some will grieve for loss, and some will long for love,
and some will wonder at the world, making wreaths
perhaps for festival of unimaginable flowers, perhaps
of such as I gather, that are now only attenuated fire.

184 A Young Scholar.

By day the blue sky seems to hold me shut out from
the hollow universe; to bend my thoughts to earth,
to what is real. I drink deep of its invigorating breath.
Isn't life a mystery? Is it possible to explain why
things are ? Would not God wonder most of all why
He exists ? It may be explained why this thing is
just this thing and not another, but why or how any-
thing is, is an eternal and groundless riddle. Some
people think that when they go to heaven they will
know, but that can only make it all stranger.

I attribute all that is hypochondriacal in these reflect-
ions to my being, as far as my social nature is con-
cerned, virtually alone. It is not good for youth to
be so one-sided, so wholly intellectual, and this is a
reason for my wishing you with me. I make some
dreadful sacrifices for my education ; there should be
something uncommon to reward them.

You ask me so often what I eat and wear ; it seems
you have no conception of what I look like any more.
I dress very plainly, wear a very broad-brimmed felt hat,
blouse-coat, and gray breeches. Coat and vest are of
light black stuff mixed with white specks. Breakfast
is very light, — ^bread and milk ; dinner at one o'clock,
of soup, either chocolate soup or beer soup or pea
soup, then a plate of potatoes and kraut, or beans and
lentils, or some other vegetables whose English appel-
lations I do not know, with two kinds of meat, a dish
of plums or cherries, and a ** tulip,'* i, e,y three-quarters
of a glass of beer ; for supper I eat eggs and potatoes,
I am afraid to tell you how many, lest you think my
health in danger, but I assure you that nothing is
wasted in my physical economy of all I eat. No less
than eight hours' sleep will satisfy me and I take this
time. I must have some pictures taken before leaving

Letters. 185

all my friends here and then I shall send you one.
The enclosed lines, if not good, are not very bad, so I
send them without much thought, having composed
them in an hour a few days ago. What I strove to at-
tain was classic purity and calm height of soul, in which
no agitation becomes great enough to deform the noble
beauty of the human spirit. Electra was the noble
daughter of Agamemnon, who, on returning from a
successful siege of Troy, was slain by the paramour of
his wife, Clytemnaestra, she lending her aid to this act.
His son Orestes, still a child, was rescued from his un-
natural mother and reared at the court of an old family
guest to be his father's avenger. Electra, his sister
and elder, who had aided his escape, remained. Her
proud heart was subject to daily humiliation because
she would not cease to honor her father's grave with
flowers and tears, and ever prayed for the coming of
her brother to purge the house of its foul sin that
weighed upon her soul. Finally she hears that her
brother has been killed by his horses while in the act
of winning an Olympian victory. At this, her spirit,
so long held erect by hope, is broken and she turns
from the gods, to whom she had offered so many fruit-
less prayers, and from earth, whose beauty mocks her
misery, to the eternal silence ; but she goes like a
Greek heroine to the ** end of all, the poppied sleep.**
I cannot judge of the power of my verses, because my
mind is too full of the immortal beauty of the Sopho-
clean Electra to be impartial to the character. What-
ever she says must be great, because she says it. You
must think of the speaker of these lines as one of the
** divinely tall" daughters of heroic Hellas, bereft of
her father, the noblest of the Greeks, by a foul sin
which her heart abhorred ; as unable to bring retribu-

1 86 A Young Scholar.

tion on the offenders, which was thought by the antique
world to be imperatively required by divine justice ; as
now deprived of her brother whom she had loved and
cherished with a proud sister's affection. If you can
conceive the Greek beauty of this character, the plastic
nobility of form in it, then you will feel what I do. This
letter must come to a close. When writing home I let
my whole soul out, and say many things which perhaps
I only ought to think, which I certainly write to no one
else. You will know how to account for the too high
pressure, and sometimes the abnormal state of a stud-
ent's mind who, like myself, has nothing to do but
digest systems of philosophy and smack his lips over
works of art. When you get this I shall be almost
ready to leave for Dresden.

Mail your letter as usual to Berlin.

With love.

KI.KCTRA.

There is no grief bath access to the Gods :

No tears have ever fallen from heavenly eyes :
No lamentations reach unto them.

The clouds are beautiful, nor cease to pass
Above strewn flowers on my father's grave.

The springs of light break over me at dawn,
And the sweet mouths of nightingales

Are busy all the dusk in lo's wood.

My heart *s aweary of its fruitless grief,

And sick of life that 's inconsolable,
All things have end, and grief not least of them.

O brother, now among those having loved.
And father mine, whom I alone have wept,

Hear, hear, I come, I will be one with you
Who slumber, not awakening with the light,

About the knees of calm Persephone.

Letters. 187

XLII.

Description of Sans Souci ; rumors of war; no gov-
emment by pure reason ; home letters and attachment;
plans of travel to Munich; the lesson of an evil life ;
parental characteristics ; the rationale of copyright ;
the age of labor,

Beri^in, July 14th, 1870.

Dkar Mothkr : — ^Yesterday I made an excursion that
I have had in mind ever since reaching Berlin, I mean
to Potsdam and the gardens of Sans Souci. Perhaps
you have not heard of this celebrated residence of the
Prussian kings, the eye of Europe. The place is ten
miles by rail from here, situated near a beautifully
wooded expanse of water, and enjoys the peculiar favor
of the Hohenzollerns as well as of Providence. The
gardens, which are said to excel those of the Tuileries
at Paris, and consequently to be the finest in the world,
are chiefly the creation of Frederick the Great. Here
he built his pet residence, *'Sans Souci*' (French,
for ** without care '*)• Here he entertained the inimit-
able spirits of his time, Voltaire, De la Mettrie, etc.
Between philosophical essa5^s, military orders, and bril-
liant French conversation, was passed the greater part
of the life of the greatest hereditary monarch since
Alexander. But these liturgies of hero-worship sound
not unlike the eternal chant of the guides who spend
their lives in pointing out to strangers the relics of
great men. Such trivialities could not occupy me
amidst the focal splendor of art and nature collected
in these grounds.

The gardens are at least (I make a guess) four hun-
dred acres in extent, ornamented with three palaces,
one beautiful church in pure Romaic, grottos, temples,

1 88 A Young Scholar.

retreats, arbors, fountains, statues without number.
There are acres of roses, charming glades and broken
prospects, carriage-drives and shaven lawns, fantastic
shapes of flower-beds and half-hidden beautiful marble
columns with classic sculptures resting on them.
Above all, the forest trees are of the noblest growth.
In the Orange-house there is a room with forty-three
splendid copies of Raphael's best pictures. What a
sight ! In the palaces are rooms of gold and azure
silk, some in pure marble with crystal lights of ten
feet diameter ; one room roofed with sea-shells in
graceful and fantastic forms and literally lined with
semi-precious stones, amethyst, beryl, chalcedony,
sardonyx, etc., as they are all named in the Book of
Revelation. This is the way men spend money when
they have it without having earned it. The archi-
tecture is, for the most part, in the tasteless, baroco
style of the last century, which strove to make good
a lack of clear architectonic sense by an affluence of
ornament. It would make a Greek sick, but Geimany
has learned something since then and the structures
of a Schinkel might almost rival those of Ictinus,
the builder of the Acropolis, for harmonious division
of masses and vital organic necessity of all the parts,
if in the grace and classic finish of the single forms
he leaves much to be desired. A great deal of this
even is due to the inferior material with which the
German artist had to build.

But I cannot describe what I saw, I can scarcely
form an idea of it for myself. The time was scarcely
sufficient, although I took the whole day to it. The
crown-princess,* who has just arisen from childbed,

* Now the Dowager Empress Frederick, the eldest child of
Queen Victoria.

Letters. 1 89

was being wheeled about the grounds, followed by her
little ones, among them the future crown-prince, who
looks very much like Billy. She nodded to our little
party, and of course we took ofiF our hats.

The rumors of a war with France are rife to-day.
The king is said to have dismissed the French envoy,
who required a declaration on the part of Prussia that
she would not in any way attempt to interfere in the
Spanish Crown affair, with a refusal to treat in any way
with such an insolent demand, or to have any further
negotiations with the bearer of such instructions.
France seems anxious to fight, or at least wishes to
frighten Prussia. If Bismarck does anything, it will
be so unexpected and sudden that France will have
trouble to keep her feet. A war between these powers
would be a dreadful calamity.

The machinery of state is too unwieldy for the direct-
ion of pure reason. No single thinker or thought can
be placed in the centre and so gather together the lines
of power as to control it. A Napoleon only made him-
self the organ of his time, — put himself at the head of
an already moving avalanche. The cumbersome forms,
and precedents of statesmanship, the inertia of the
masses, the gigantic conflict of interests called up by
every question, make even genius powerless to inform
the whole with any vivifying and illuminating idea.
The state is like the shapeless masses of protoplasmic
life out of which the organisms of the earliest periods
arose. But I have trust in the almightinessof that law
which, through the struggle for existence, selection,
and destruction, brings order out of darkness. I hope
to live to see and help form some of the vertebrae of
scientific order in this clump of interests called the mod-
em state. We will make it impossible for the peace

igo A Young Scholar.

and lives of millions to depend on the health or temper
of a single, ill-bred bully, called king.

Here comes a letter from home ! This is lucky,
what's in it? Well, this is father's letter with money
and such a rustic account of melons and peaches, ber-
ries and oats ! A spread-eagle Fourth of July oration,
etc., but not half enough of the etc. Why did n't you
give me the best points of your speech ? Don't you see
how many long letters I write home without getting
tired ? If you have half the pleasure in reading my
letters that I have in writing them, they must be
clear gain all around. When I think of going home
and talking to you all, it seems as if I must go right
off. Sometimes I rise from my seat involuntarily, as
if I were just going, before a second thought stays me.

In a few days I break up and leave Berlin, where in
a year I have made some attachments, as I do every-
where. My nature is almost feline in its subjection to
habit and the power of daily contact. I never left a
place in my life, where I had lived any time, with
pleasure. I fear that a youth of wandering will cure
me of this at the expense of all power to feel attached.

I will explain now, as I think I have done before,
my plan for the summer. My Hartz journey was
taken in the short vacation of Passover. The term,
however, is out on the first of August, when the long
vacation begins. It has not been, at any time, my in-
tention to stay during these months (August, Septem-
ber, and October) in Berlin. What would be the use ?
Now during August I shall be in Dresden to study art.
Dresden is about forty miles by rail from Berlin. Sep-
tember I wish to spend on the way from Dresden to
Munich, stopping at Frankfort, Weimar, Nuremberg,
and I^ipzig. According to this plan I shall arrive at

Letters. 191

Munich on the first of October. There I wish to spend
the winter. This was the reason I desired money
for three months. My month in Dresden will not cost
me much, but then the next month will cost so much
the more, so that after two months and a half from
now, when I arrive at Munich, I shall be pretty dry of
my one hundred and nineteen thalers. The money
would perhaps reach, but then I should be in a new
city without immediate postal communication with
home and strapped. If I don't receive some more
money before leaving Dresden, say thirty thalers, I
shall make a very short trip of it, in order to get to
Munich with something in my pocket. It would be a
pity to lose this opportunity of seeing these cities, as
this will probably be my last one. If, on receiving this,
you send me a draft for a small sum on a Dresden bank,
I shall receive it before the first of September. Send
the letter to me, Dresden, Poste Restante, I^etters re-
main in the poste restante until called for. If you have
already sent some to Berlin I shall get it.

I hope mother will, after this, have an idea of where
I am going. She writes as if I were in the moon, with
a sort of hopeless inquiry as to my movements. I am
glad you like my old friend. You would be glad to
have him in Kansas you say. But how would he live
there ? He was here just before I sat down to write,
with a work of Paracelsus which I wished to see. My

pet, Paul G , goes home to Pomerania in a few

days, and I expect to see him for the last time. I con-
gratulate myself in having been of possibly some serv-
ice to him. The road to hell here for a handsome
and winning young fellow who loves life, and has
money, is horribly short. I don't think that you could
well have gotten an idea of such a state of things from

192 A Young Scholar.

any side of American life. But I left America before
I had grown aware perhaps of what was around me.

What a lesson this is, to teach me that the bad and
vile are only unfortunate ! Unfortunately it is true in
such a way as to take from them nearly all that is
amiable or worthy of any respect, but still, as far as
subjects for any feeling, subjects only of pity. What
a mockery of mingled love and hating, and intellectual
unclearness, is this doctrine of an undetermined will
which controls our actions ! This is to give us a right
to hate and chastise evil-doers. How Christ-like!
But a parent who has punished a beloved child knows
better than that. He will know what it costs those
who love to cause pain, and how far hatred is from
mingling in such an act, and how solely the punish-
ment is administered to deter the will, that is, to deter-
mine it.

I started to write to mother and now I am writing to
father, but you are for me only one thought, one
object of love with two sides, a dualism, if not a trin-
ity. I think that, taking it all in all, no one was ever
blessed with better parents than I, and this is the one
great factor in the making-up of our lives over which
we have not a shadow of influence. You and mother
are finely different, down to the smallest touches of
character, and, although I am like both, I am not like
either exactly. It is great entertainment for me to
trace at lucid intervals, when my own character lies
anatomically bared and transparent before me, the fine
nuances of traits which are characteristic of either of
you.

lyCt me propose a question for your consideration.
You know that the right of property in productions of
the mind is, and has been, one of the most difficult

Letters. 193

points in the philosophy of law, so much so that many
eminent men have doubted such right, and the rest
differed endlessly in trying theoretically to ground it.
Now it seems to me that we are to consider the author
as imparting his discovery or work to **all whom it
may concern,** upon the condition of their not seeking
to make profit out of its circulation. The character of
this contract (for I consider it such) is a little difiBcult.
That any man has the moral right to make the condition
upon which he will reveal anything to another, pro-
vided the condition be not immoral, no one will doubt.
The question is, how this condition becomes a contract
without the consent of both author and public. The
author could have made this contract singly with each
purchaser, but, as this would have been tedious or im-
possible, the state declares that the single act of copy-
right, or registering a work, shall stand for it. Now
no man is obliged to use a patented work, so that all
who do may be justly considered as silently accepting
the condition of the author. This acceptance, if it be
admitted as such, makes the contract complete, just as
a person who gets on board of a public conveyance is
thereby supposed to contract himself to pay for the pas-
sage. So in this case, such contracts, expressed only
on the one side and silently accepted on the other, are
in society very numerous. If any member of society
does not wish the secret of the author or artist on the
given condition he must act as if it had not been re-
vealed ; for him, it has not. The state simply wit-
nesses the contract. All contracts, in order to be valid,
must be made in a legally prescribed form, and noth-
ing hinders the state from prescribing in this case a
peculiar form, seeing that no one is deprived of any
privilege or right which he could otherwise enjoy

»3

194 -^ Young- Scholar.

thereby. I am aware that there are many other points
which come up for arrangement in this question, but,
for the present, it seems to me that the fiction of prop-
erty in a certain order of words or wheels is not neces-
sary to justify the state in defending the artist or
author in the enjoyment of his labor. Why the right
of an inventor, but not of an author, should expire
after a certain term is, I think, capable of a satisfactory
demonstration. On the supposition of ** property,'*
and not a *' contract,'* it would be difficult to explain
how, by rights, either could ever run out. The modern
state of course does n*t care much for principles. She
does what she thinks is fair when she means to do
right, at other times she does as the ** I^obbies** say
and pay. But all the thinkers of any speculative or
dialectical power at all are not satisfied till they see
why and how a thing is so. My attempted explana-
tion may be unclear for lack of care in statement, but
I hope your legal head will see what I mean. Give
me your opinion on the question and on my explana-
tion. I have not reflected very long on the matter,
but I take it as a lucky thought.

The weather is fearfully hot and unpleasant. My
lectures grow toward the end of the day tiresome.
My memory and attention are not half so good in the
summer as in winter, and as to making verses, why,
somehow this summer I feel as if I had about made my
last. The fountains of song are dry. The past grows
fainter and fainter, the present is full of everything but
emotions of passion and power, and I see time flying
too fast to expect to ever catch another handful of the
roses and thorns of youth before they are gone. This
is the age of labor in the storm, and pressure of ideas,
interests, social forms. The man of to-day will find

Letters, 195

his proper joy to be the glad strong thrill of battle,
which rejoices the strong, whether it be a revel of
swords and spears, or of keener thoughts. Wght,
light is what we want, our war-cry. Woe to the un-
happy darkness that gets between us and our goal !

Your aflFectionate son.

XUII.

The frivolous war; Bismarck's duplicUy and NapoleotC s
baseness; a visit of children ; the hate of joyless men ;
departure from Berlin.

B^RUN, July 30, 1870.

Does not every year teach us with more humiliating
certainty how little we really live for the world, how
almost exclusively for ourselves ? It may be a conserv-
atory provision of nature, this impotence which limits
our sympathy to a circle fiot exceeding the distinguish-
ing power of vision, — to which the fixed stars seem no
more remote than the horizon.

Indeed, I did not know that the lives of men could
be so indifferent to me, — ^but indifferent is too strong a
term. They are not so completely nothing that I have
been able to view the inauguration of this frivolous war
without the deepest indignation and depression. France
bears the world's wrath for her unheard of wickedness
in precipitating such a calamity upon civilization, but
she is rather unfortunate than alone guilty. The most
infamous plans of aggrandizement have been hatched
and then smothered between the cabinets of Paris and
Berlin for the last six years.* Bismarck would fain

* Reference is here made to the alleged agreement between
Bismarck and Napoleon pending the Austro-Prussian war, that
if France should not interfere in the Prussian scheme for an-

196 A Young Scholar.

make it appear as if the base proposals of France had
all this time been indignantly but silently rejected by
himself. Such a fable may deceive the credulous and
ignorant, but there are those who see in his conduct
only fear, and in his words now nothing but untruth.
This consolation remains, — the consolation of science,
that the providence of law, a disciplining hand of a
necessity, is here at work, which reckons in history
with contending passions and the masses of human
life, as in continent-building with the sea-water and
shapeless granite. What are a million frequenters of
Prussian brothels and as many Prussian bauers in the
eyes of that might which disposes civilization ? If one
coruscation of creative thought can be evolved from
their annihilation, it will be called cheap. But the
question seems harder when it is asked what value has
thought or aught else for such a world.

I feel that I am not sufficiently reconciled to the
reality of things. Just as I am disposed to call every
love which is not also a reverent worship, infamy, so I
reckon as nothing those lives passed in the enjoyment
of food and rest. A thinker must be wiser. No good
thing will be coerced. I shall let this war roll on
about me without the interest of a partisan, as there is
no undivided right on either side. It is a solemn at-
mosphere in which to pore over the gathered labors
of the race. It is hard not to feel the irony of battle,
after so many years of revolving the pages of Plato.
Perhaps his words of peace may still bear their long-
desired fruit. The student cherishes at least a kingdom
of the ideal in the midst of life.

nezing Schleswig-Holstein she should be compensated with
Pmssian influence in acquiring Luxembourg ; a promise Bis-
marck never intended to keep.

Letters. 197

There is no news I could send that you will not have
received much sooner. One does not mark much of
the war in Berlin. The nation is resolved to go very
far for her independence. Of course all talk about the
last man and dollar means no more here than it did
some time ago in the United States. The army is
powerful but not over-confident. The French have
something which intimidates the German to a degree.
They are more self-reliant and rash.

I shall try to pursue my original plan of visiting
Dresden and then of going to Munich. If the French
occupy the last place, I shall be obliged to come back
as far as Leipzig or Halle or perhaps Berlin. I have
no anxiety to join the army, as I might have if the
cause was a more human one. As it is, it seems
scarcely worth while to fight for Prussian independ-
ence, only to see it abused by Bismarck. Of course a
born German feels otherwise.

My work has been disturbed by the excitement some-
what, but as soon as I reach Dresden I shall resume
the activity so necessary to my rest. This afternoon
we have had a visit which has done me a world of good.
Westphairs little cousins of nine and six came up to
see him. I put books and everything aside for a regu-
lar play. The youngest is a sweet child, brimful of
gleeful life and affection. I had n*t seen anything so
sweet for such an age, that I kissed the little fellow to
my heart's content. If I were able I would get me
such a child right off to spend my superfluous affection
on. What a recreation, after long hours of labor, to
give one's self up to the sweet humors of a curly-
headed angel of four or six years ! It must be a sad
sight to see the nest empty, the little ones all fledged
and flown. Your letter of July 4th came in some

198 A Young Scholar.

days ago. I read with pain the account of that horror
which occurred in your neighborhood, for I remember
how cruel these western fanners are, not only to help-
less orphans in their power, but to their own children.
I have seen it, and remember well the hatred which
prevails between the narrow, joyless souls of men al-
ready hardened to their grasping labor, and their chil-
dren, those joy-hungry beginners of life. You have
not forgotten Dick Fuller and his poor Purley. The
sentiment which lynched that unfortunate man is at
least not a praiseworthy one. It is not unlike the
spirit which perhaps prompted his act. The wise and
good have no joy in the infliction of even necessary
punishment, as his certainly was. The law must in-
timidate crime, but if we feel rightly, we will not wish
to make ourselves the instruments of pain. Hate be-
gets hate. But I will not blame men for doing what
they hold praiseworthy ; only wish them, as I wish us
all, more light.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution
is a great step forward on a very long road. I hail it
with gratitude, but would lose no time in astonishment.
I am pleased that you understand Mill's political tract.
Before I came from home I had not read a line of
philosophical politics, and I thought I was alone in my
view. This would of course have been too remarkable.

Day after to-morrow I set off for Dresden. The
roads are open. The transport of soldiers fills every
conveyance at present. I have taken leave of most
every one in Berlin who cared to say good-by. To-
morrow is Sunday, when I shall visit, perhaps for the
last time, the Museum. This year in Berlin has
passed, as every year passes, leaving one wondering
at the noise and smoke of our preparations to live and

Letters, 1 99

the real insignificance of our lives. My existence is a
minimum of emotion and a maximun of hard work.
Write to Dresden, Poste Restante,

XWV.

The Nemesis of Napoleon and guilt of Bismarck ; di-
plomacy and character of Bismarck ; Dresden galleries,

Dresden, August 11, 1870.

My last letter, if I remember, was mailed the day
before my leaving Berlin. The troops had not all yet
been forwarded to the Rhine, and this was the cause
of my having a roundabout ride of eight hours, via
lyeipzig. I stayed overnight there and took this occa-
sion to visit some of the famous book-establishments.
You know it is the most renowned publishing centre of
the world. The city has much that is interesting. In
the afternoon of the next day I came on to Dresden,
and have taken a quiet little room for the remaining
weeks of summer. The pictures here are too splendid
for description, but of these after a while.

The country is very excited over the cheering news
from the theatre of war ; perhaps the last news when
you receive this will have another burthen, but all we
know now is that the French are retiring along their
whole line and forming before Metz. No one, I think,
envies Napoleon his place. Any moment may see a
tumult in Paris that will block everything and force
him to fly the country. The Nemesis of history is
howling on his track. But how unjust the world will
be to lay the entire blame of this war to his account !
All who are even superficially acquainted with the
diplomatic history of the last ten years know that

2CX5 A Young Scholar.

Prussia, or, much better, Bismarck, is really as guilty
as Napoleon, and only more fortunate that he has been
able to make Napoleon take the initiative. The moral
responsibility, however, of shedding so much blood
is for this reason none the less. If we reckon the
interests of humanity as nothing, for this is the es-
timate that European cabinets are accustomed to make,
we shall be obliged to suspend our judgment between
the two villains now at war.

In * sixty-six Bismarck promised Napoleon I^thringen
for his neutrality in the Austrian war and for his per-
mission to gobble up Hanover and the other German
states without molestation. Bismarck's unexpectedly
sudden and brilliant victory at Sadowa made him so
confident of his own strength, that he now refused to
allow Napoleon to proceed with his incorporation of
Lothringen into his empire. Besides this, the nation-
feeling had been so raised in Prussia that such an act
would have probably cost Bismarck his place. He chose
to be false to Napoleon. Since then, of course Napo-
leon has been sore, and Bismark, anxious to efface his
treachery by annihilating its object, has sought a war
with France. The secret treaty which Benedetti, the
ambassador of the French court, according to Bismarck's
latest revelation, should have proposed to him, is un-
questionably partly his own work. It now serves a
good turn in raising foreign sympathy for Prussia, or
rather hatred of France, which is just as valuable to
him. I am persuaded that Bismarck, who was afraid
of a reduction of the army at the next Reichstag, when
the law now in force expires, arranged this entire
HohenzoUern affair with Prim,* for every one could

*The Premier of Spain, who was then seeking a candidate for
the Spanish throne. Benedetti had demanded of the Prussian

Letters. 201

see that such a candidature would be met by France
with the most decided protest. Did not the English
journals even justify the French in their objections to
a Prussian prince as king of Spain ? Bismarck also
knew that Napoleon wished a pretext at that moment
for war and that such a complication could easily be
made to afford it. The emperor grew exacting ; the
Prussian king cut him short ; the declaration of hostili-
ties followed.

The present Chancellor of the North German Con-
federacy, his own creation, has been from the begin-
ning of his political life a supporter of the rankest
absolutism of the Prussian House. An unconcealed
despiser of popular measures and men, his youth was
one wild scene of debauchery, and his manhood knows
but one object, power. He neither respects human
rights nor loves his fellow-men. He tramples on the
constitution of the state, and then insults the represent-
atives of the people in a manner which would cost him
his life in many a state. A nation seems only worthy
contempt that will endure such a man. His unparal-
leled talents as a diplomatist secure his power in a
state which, like Prussia, is bent on an extension of
territory. I am bound to hope that he will succeed in
this war, because I hope it will, in freeing France of
Napoleon, enable Germany to gain in her civil affairs
greater liberty and self-control. Austria is reported as
menacing the German Confederation. This would be
bad. It makes me anxious too, for myself. In this
case, Munich could very easily be cut off from com-
munication with America.

I am hard at work on the galleries, have no acquaint-

king that no Hobenzollem should be a candidate, and King
William rejected the proposal.

202 A Young Scholar.

ances, and so my whole time. Raphael's Sistine Ma-
donna is here. I worship her. I expect a letter every
day from home by way of Berlin, where the post-oflSce
has instructions to forward my mail to Dresden. Be-
tween my flute and my critics, I manage to spend the
evening very pleasantly.

XLV.

A melancholy Saturday and its end; celebrating victory ;
loneliness ; a nature more sensuous than intellectual;
superfluity of life ; Raphael and the Pope; walks by
the Elbe.

Dresden, August 20, 1870.

It is now three weeks since I have seen a familiar
face, or spoken a word more than the formal greeting
of strangers, or, at most, a little chat with my land-
lady. Everything seems to have a limit — so my gen-
ius for living alone. My books have lost for once
their power to charm, my flute is hoarse, my eyes are
tired with studying pictures. Solitude takes revenge
at times for my familiarity, especially when she has the
weather as ally. Not a sunbeam, not a fleck of blue,
has been seen to-day. Nothing but a dun drizzle in
the dirty court-yard, which three bedraggled chickens
and a broken buggy alone enliven. The gallery was
only open from ten to one, so I have been the unwill-
ing spectator of this animating scene nearly all day.

Yesterday it rained too, but toward evening the
clouds broke up, the great sun-saturated clouds floated
in tremendous masses through a dewy, shimmering
azure as pure and endless as the souPs greatest wish.
A soft, rain-laden air swayed all the branches and

Letters. 203

flower-stems in the great park, where your melancholy
correspondent loitered till the sun was down. Then I
bought a bunch of roses of a sad-faced little flower-girl
for a groschen ; came to my room ; blew a half-dozen
of the softest airs imaginable on my flute ; read a few
pages of Catullus, and then the maid came in with my
supper.

I was scarcely through with this when I heard the
wild cheers of a great crowd on the square below. The
news of a great victory had just been received, and the
people were expressing their satisfaction in their own
way. This roused me from my melancholy. I went
below and cheered too, as loud as my rather loud lungs
would permit. I hallooed for King William and Bis-
marck and Germany, till I laughed at my mimic enthu-
siasm. Then I went back to my room in good spirits
and went to work on the school of Dutch Realists.

I think it is only my loneliness which makes me feel
so lonesome. The heart is so material, so controlled
by space and time, that it is really little comfort to
know that we have friends in the world, if they are not
near us. It does me good to write. I feel twice as well
as when I began this letter. If some one of you were
only with me, perhaps I could do double the work I
now perform, for it appears to me at times as if there
were no use in my living, because I don*t see anybody
to live for.

You may think such a subjection to the senses un-
worthy the student of philosophy, the disciple of pure
reason ; but I am more artist than thinker, far more
sensuous than intellectual. I love the hair-distinctions
of Aristotle, or the splendid ratiocinations of Kant, or
the geometrical logic of Spinoza, so that I often long to
lay my book down in the midst of a thought for the

204 A Young Scholar.

emotion that overcomes me, for the pure delight of a
bold thought which my own mind, running forward,
anticipates more rapidly than I can read; but the
beauty of a Grecian Eros, of a wonderful sunset^ of
Raphael's Madonna, will move me to tears. No
words can convey what I feel. This is a susceptibility
almost wholly created since I have been in Europe.
I mind very well how I used to shout and dance over a
mathematical triumph, but I do not remember that I
was ever so impressed by outward nature (art of course
I had no idea of) ; and this may be the reason, for I can-
not help noticing how it opens my eyes to the world
about me.

I sufiFer from a very curious complaint, too much
vigor. It reacts on me and makes me restless, discon-
tented, melancholy, because I can neither work it off,
nor run it off. Thursday I studied fifteen hours, and
then walked clear around Dresden, almost ten miles,
and when I came home could not sleep. With all my
uncommon bodily strength I could never work well,
because my mind was restless and wanted employment.
I could always study best when I was half sick. There
are so many played-out young men who have no en-
ergy, that I wish I could put a portion of my life into
their exhausted veins. It would be good for us both.
If you never felt how disagreeable it is to have a super-
fluity of life, why, you will not comprehend my case.
A man was not meant to be nothing but a student.

Our gallery has the most beautiful work in the
world, as the Madonna Sistina of Raphael, and hun-
dreds more works only inferior to this. Every day I
go and sit at the feet of this heavenly creation. It is
my matin devotion. It makes me purer but sadder,
for then it seems that the best of life is but a dream, a

Letters. 205

vision forever unattainable. They say this is the por-
trait, but slightly idealized, of the little baker-girl
whom Raphael loved, the little Fornarina whom he
found in a Roman suburb. He took her with him into
the Vatican when employed on his famous frescos.
Kvery day she was near him, till the Pope thought it a
scandal and asked Raphael rather angrily, who that
girl was. The artist's face flushed with indignation
and he answered, ** If your Holiness will allow me to
reply, she is my eyes.** The Pope understood his
words and temper, and as he could not afiFord to lose
him, why, the infallible man gave way. It seems to
me no wonder, if Raphael had a love like this, that he
painted angels and Madonnas fit for heaven, for he
must have been there himself.

I had progressed so far in this melancholy epistle
yesterday : to-day, (Sunday) I feel so very different
that I am almost disposed not to send it, but corre-
spondents, like married people, should communicate
good and bad. The weather is Elysian to-day and I
have enjoyed it. Up and down the beautiful Elbe,
past the stately residences and royal and noble castles,
on the shady, long, macadamized roads or promenades,
I have tramped since eight this morning, — at least
twenty miles. There are many places in the neighbor-
hood made sacred by the preference of Schiller, who
wrote much here. The birthplace of the warrior-poet
Komer is here, and scenes of the Napoleonic wars. It
is a question, if I^ouis comes as far as Dresden.

This winter I should like to go some into society, a
pleasure, or rather, for a student of men and manners,
a necessity which I have, up to this time, done com-
pletely without. It shall not intrench on my industry
and it will, I hope, open my eyes to many things

2o6 A Young Scholar.

which one cannot find in books. It will make some
better clothes necessary than I have at present, but I
shall be able to procure these if you only advance me
money for four, or, if you cannot do that, for three
months. I shall have of course my university expenses
to defray for six months out of my first exchange, so
that you see the necessity of its covering more time
than two months.

As to the war, I hope Germany will go on as she
has begun, and it cannot last long. You see what
nerve there is in educated Prussia. An army with
fifteen thousand university students in its ranks is not
going to be beaten by a horde of Turcos and Chasseurs
d' Afrique, however savage. We have not seen the up-
shot of this disturbance in Europe yet. Your letters
from now on, direct to Munich, Paste Restante ; that is
the office where they remain till called for. How is
the health of all the dear ones at home this autumn ?
for it will be fall when you read this. My twenty-first
birthday will be next Sunday. Does father want to
cut me loose now ? I have no inclination to set up on
my own hook. I don't think I ever shall have. We
will make partners for life, if he is willing, and his
advantage shall be after a while. Good-b3\

XLVI.

Solicitude for his father ; reasons for leaving Berlin;
origin of the Franco-Prussian war ; a Hohenzollem
King of Spain ; territorial spoliation of France antici-
pated; cost of culture.

Drssdsk, Aug. 28, 1870.

Since my last letter was posted I have received two
letters from home in rapid succession, the last with a

Letters. 207

draft on I^ondon. In your last you speak of a great
improvement in dear father's health. If you knew
how uneasy his protracted illness makes me, you would
not long neglect to write, if it be only a line. You will
do well to leave that pestilential region, and seek a
climate more favorable to a shattered constitution.
Father can live many years with the proper care and
surroundings, but how suddenly can he be taken from
us if his condition is not improved ! The past and
future are to the wise of equal worth, only the immod-
erate and foolish think that what is past is over.

You wish to know my reasons for leaving Berlin. If
you understood, as I have tried several times to ex-
plain, that no regular course is pursued at these uni-
versities, and that a student cannot know, till a short
time before the opening term, what lectures will be
read and who will read them, you would see that when
you have heard all the famous men in your branch at
any one university, it is advisable to go to another.
I heard in Berlin, Trendelenburg, Haupt, Curtius,
Harms, Diihring, Hiibner, Erdsmannsdorffer, and Bas-
tian, so another year at Berlin would not have the value
for me that a year at Munich will, because these, the
important men at Berlin, will read for the most part
the very subjects that I have heard. No student, who
is not held by a stipendium, stays longer than a year
at one school.

Besides these reasons, I desire to study the important
works of art at Munich and make the acquaintance of
Bavarian Germany. The library there is even greater
than that of Berlin, and a library is never half
full enough. Among a million books it is always
a question whether the student will find what he
wants, for to the making of books there is, and has

2o8 A Young Scholar.

been, no end. I travel so easily that it is no more
matter to go from Berlin to Munich than to move from
one street to another, but, as I think, that is always
trouble enough. Had I stayed in Berlin I should have
been among an altogether new set of students next
winter. The old ones have all scattered, and studiosi
from other schools move in. Father expected me to
"go through*' at Berlin, and before I understood the
modus operandi here I had this intention, but when one
is ready, one can take a degree at any university, no
matter where one has studied.

The progress of this Franco-Germanic war astonishes
the world, that is, everybody but Bismarck. Father
desired me to keep him posted on the internal situation,
and in order to have a right idea of this, we must
understand the origin of the war. This is to be sought
of course, first of all in a jealous hostility between the
two nations, partly founded in historic events, but for
the most part due to the interested fomentations of the
actual governments on both sides the Rhine. It re-
quires no extraordinary perspicacity to see how they
found their reckoning in this. Internal abuses are suf-
fered with patience in the face of foreign war. It is
well known that in 'sixty-six Bismarck made promises
to Napoleon which, after the successful event of the
Austrian war, he found too unpopular to fulfil. These
consisted mainly in the assurance that Prussia, in con-
sideration of the emperor's neutrality in the violent
rectification about to be made in the map of Germany,
would offer no interference to the acquisition of the
duchy of Luxembourg on the part of France. It is
said that Belgium was included in this stipulation, in
case Prussia should see fit to proceed with Bavaria,
Baden, and Wiirtemberg as she did with Hanover.

Letters. 209

This would have been a quid pro quo, but after the vic-
tory of Koniggratz, German national feeling ran too
high to suflFer this disgraceful, secret barter to go into
execution. Napoleon was obliged to bite his tongue
and keep still. He made other overtures to Prussia,
of which Herr von Bismarck gave the world a specimen
in the draft of a treaty which he made public shortly
after the declaration of hostilities. Thus it is that an
infamous diplomacy keeps the peace of Europe in con-
stant jeopardy.

Now as to the immediate cause of the present explo-
sion, it is not far to seek. That Napoleon after this
could not look with perfect equanimity on the uninter-
rupted aggrandizement of Prussia, is no more than
natural. That he sought this occasion to re-establish
the supremacy of French influence in European politics,
I cannot, however, be made to believe. On the con-
trary, it has all the appearance of an attempt on the
part of Prussia to assume for herself the potent voice in
the counsels of continental cabinets. The negotiations
between Prim and Hohenzollem were too evidently
cooked at Berlin to allow any other view of the matter.
It is incredible that the Spanish procurer. Prim, should
have made, and the Prince of Hohenzollem accepted,
an offer of the vacant throne of Spain without the
knowledge of the Cabinet at Berlin ; and why the offer
at all, when the most primary diplomatist could have
predicted its reception in Paris? Bismarck was not the
man to overlook an opportunity like this of throwing
the responsibility of the initiative on the French gov-
ernment and yet of taking them, as the event abun-
dantly proves, altogether unprepared for war. The
circumstance, moreover, that the authorization for the
present standing army of the German Confederacy ex-

^

2IO A Young Scholar.

pires with the current year, is very significant for any
one acquainted with the embittered contest that Bis-
marck, in the interest of the royal prerogative, has
carried on with the representatives of the people, and
which is still far from an arrangement.

It is a great pity that the task of uniting Germany,
it itself one of the noblest fruits of the science of poli-
tics and of a ripening national sentiment, should have
fallen to so unscrupulous hands. We are obliged to
wish Bismarck's efforts successful where they outrage
every feeling of right. The world looks with suspicion
on a state that is so rapidly growing powerful without
becoming better. The tone of the press and public sen-
timent generally is on both sides very embittered.
Contrary to every one's expectation, the French I^iberals
show themselves the most resolute of all in their deter-
mination to maintain the integrity of their national
honor. A very disagreeable and significant feature of
the war is the eagerness shown by Germany, under the
mantle of retributive justice, to make territorial acqui-
sitions at the expense of France. The press already
begins to deprecate the probable interference of the
neutral powers in case of such an attempt. The
duchies of Elsass and I^othringen have been French for
over two hundred years. They became such by con-
quest, it is true, but by this right alone Prussia retains
a much larger section of divided Poland, and that by
simple force of arms, whereas the German troops have
found in the peasants of these Gallicized provinces the
most bitter enemies. One can only regret that the
Germans, who express in such vigorous terms their in-
dignation and surprise at the unheard of conduct of
France, do not have more resolution in making them-
selves heard in the direction of affairs at home. A

Letters. 211

citizen who has not the slightest influence on the policy
of his own state, has in reality no right to complain
when a foreign power acts altogether against his
wishes. We are justified in hoping that whatever the
event of the struggle, it will contribute to enlighten the
world on the solidarity of human interests, and hasten
the day when a just distribution of power will make
such wars impossible. In all probability, before you
receive these lines the contest will be decided. The
situation of the Prussian army is still critical in the
highest degree.

Father's fears that I may be too agitated over the
progress of the war to prosecute my studies, are un-
founded. He forgets that I am by no means so in-
veterate a politician as himself. I read the morning
bulletin while taking my breakfast, and after supper I
have an hour for the daily journal in a neighboring
restaurant. Beyond this I scarcely think of public
matters.

I am in a better humor to-day than when I last wrote,
but it does really take nerve to live so all alone as I do.
Culture only makes our social wants greater, our whole
nature more susceptible, but I am obliged to purchase
this at the price of living in an inhabited solitude, for
such is, and must be, the world to me while wandering
in search of what Solomon most desired. My health
continues excellent. I leave for Munich in a few days.
To-day is my twenty-first birthday. Father can hang
up his switches now.

P. S. — My landlady in the next room is indulging
in one of her Homeric, inextinguishable laughs, which
are so infinitely loud and merry that they never fail to
make me laugh too, all over.

212 A Young Scholar.

XLVIi.

Pleasure in Munich quarters; the mania of Louis I. ;
old Nuremberg characters; German railway service ;
Germany bent on the humiliation of France ; know-
ledge of great civilizations necessary to culture,

Munich, Sept. nth, '^o,

Could you but look in at me this evening, and that
with eyes appreciative of a student's happiness, you
would behold a vision of what ought to be unmingled
bliss. I am surrounded by what appears to me the
luxury of Sybaris : indeed my room is this time com-
fortable, not an insult and an outrage to my sense of
beauty, as was the last habitation I occupied in Berlin.
The effect of one's dwelling upon the mind, especially
on the manners, is incalculable. Where everything is
bald and ugly about us, how difficult not to conform in
a degree to our surroundings ! Now I have pictures and
window flowers ; a large stuffed bird ; a beautiful gilt
French clock under a glass case ; a crucifix of ivory
with a gilt cross and hung with artificial snowballs,
also under a similar glass receiver ; sofa and chairs all
cushioned ; a tasteful porcelain stove ; the cleanest bed
you ever saw, etc. My own lamp is burning so brightly
on my centre table, and it is so suggestive of my child-
hood to sit and hear the loud winds piping at the cor-
ners* (but here they are blowing from the Alps), that,
what can I do but write home ?

I have been a nomad for a month, so that to be
settled again and to look forward with keen anticipa-
tion to the long, lamp-lit winter nights, when I shall
sit here so still and so busy with my poets and philo-

* This is a common prairie experience.

Letters. 2 1 3

sophers, is a joy indeed. This room is even cheaper
than the one I first occupied in Berlin — thanks to the
building mania of Louis I., who paid people for erect-
ing fine houses in Munich that were to want inhabit-
ants. He was bound to have at least the skell of a
splendid capital, if the people, the kernel, were not to
be so easily brought together. I was here you know
for a short time a year ago, so that the city is not
exactly strange. It appeared to me then that I had
studied the galleries here. Oh, how we live to learn !
They were the first works of art I had seen, and my
simplicity was natural enough.

You will have received a letter from me mailed not
long before my departure from Dresden, so that there
is nothing of my stay there which would be of interest
to communicate. From there I came directly to Nu-
remberg, the most German city of Germany, the birth-
place and home of Hans Sachs, Diirer, Vischer, and
other well-known masters of old German art and in-
dustry. Nuremberg was a free city of the empire till
eighteen hundred and six, and, in the Middle Ages,
the chief industrial centre east of Brabant and Cologne.
Its burghers, stiff old citizens, wealthy tradesmen, and
solemn city councilors, who built their many-gabled,
many-storied Gothic dwellings, clothed themselves in
gold-embroidered cloth, and their worthy ** fraus** and
** frauleins '* in stiff lace and skirts of ceremony, were a
strong and original race of men. We can forgive
their antipathy to Jews and much narrowness of mind,
when we consider that their homes were the cradles of
modem social life, and their civic freedom the nursery
of our civil liberty, besides their incalculable services
to industry and the useful inventions which were made
in their work-shops.

214 A Young Scholar.

The student of art can not accuse the home of Dtirer,
Vischer, and Stoss of Philistinism. How different these
old pillars of the reformation in Germany from the
English Puritans, who considered Beauty as the first-
born of hell ! It is the fruit of this wide sympathy,
this open sense for all that exists, that makes Germany
to-day the most learned country on earth. How hard
a sense to communicate ! how invaluable to those who
possess it ! The revolutions in the methods and means
of manufacture, as the changes in the courses of trade,
have robbed Nuremberg of by far the greater part of
its former splendor ; still its edifices remain in all their
quaint magnificence and disorderly proportions to tell
of better days. I spent almost a week there, and lost
not an hour of the time. From Nuremberg to Munich
is in reality but a short ride, but by one of these Ger-
man snail trains is made an outrage of seven hours.
One would think these roads gotten up for the trans-
portation of people with acute inflammation of the brain
and infants, with occasionally a cargo of insane. They
often make scarcely ten miles an hour, and there are as
many oflScers usually as passengers. At the depots
it is dangerous to back, or go to the right or left, or
to sit down for fear of being arrested by the police and
sent to bed. They seem to think that every one is
trying to commit suicide on the railroad track.

I cashed my exchange on London a few days ago, so
that I am supplied till the middle of next month. If,
however, your next draft comes sooner nothing will be
hurt, for the danger of foreign interference in the war
is by no means over, in which case we cannot know
what would come of the postal connection with
America.

The only wise thing for the French Republic to do,

Letters. 2 1 5

is to oflFer Prussia, if she will withdraw her arms from
French soil, to pay the German war-budget and leave
the fate of the duchies, Elsass, and Lothringen, to a
vote of the inhabitants. The republic is not responsi-
ble for the war. The party now in power was against
hostilities so long as there was any hope of avoiding
the conflict, and the disgrace of the French arms has
been the work of the Empire. They could, in the
interest of peace, make this offer without humiliation,
because they come to power when the country is al-
ready prostrate. But Germany will be likely to insist
on an unconditional surrender of the Gallicized prov-
inces, and the party leaders in Paris will fear the un-
popularity of any concessions, so that there is great
probability of a protracted struggle, and, in case of an
exhaustion of Germany, we may look for first Austrian
and then, not impossibly, English interference.

The German nation is bent on the humiliation and
laceration of France. There is a mean streak in the
German which comes out very offensively in this war ;
but the action of all parties is so uncertain that it is
impossible to predict the turn matters may take in
twenty-four hours. The proclamation of the republic
in Paris may determine Bismarck to figure for the re-
storation of Napoleon, or, if that seems too outrageous,
as least to exercise the influence of Prussian arms in
favor of the dynasty of Orleans. Anything will be
more acceptable to the house of HohenzoUem and its
satellites than a democracy on the Seine. But the
position of a prince in France supported by German
bayonets, would be the most unenviable situation one
could well imagine. The republic could not have been
actualized in a more auspicious moment. It will be, I
fear, impossible for her to escape the odium of a peace

2 1 6 A Young Scholar.

with Germany, which she will be obliged to conclude
under such bitter conditions.

Europe is undoubtedly on the eve of some radical
political changes. How these will affect my further
stay here, is difficult at present to foresee. This year
will conclude the course of exact academic study which
I wish to take, that is, the Classic languages and
German Philosophy, so that a residence at the Univer-
sities of Italy and France will be hereafter of more
value to me than a longer stay in Germany. The ad-
vantage of an accurate acquaintance with the spirit,
language, literature, art, and manners of a people like
the Italian, or in fact of any great and ancient civilized
nation, is so great, that, as an element of culture, it
cannot be equalled by any quantity of the severest drill.
Besides this, the great fields for the scholar's investiga-
tion are now the renaissance of learning and art in Italy ;
the magnificent period of Spanish genius and power in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the an-
cient civilization of India.

Classical antiquity has been so thoroughly ransacked
that the edifice of our knowledge of it stands about
complete. Its value is priceless, but there is little to add
by the investigator. On the other hand, these periods
of scarcely less intellectual grandeur, which have now
also become for us antique and classic, are almost un-
known — ^that is, we have not a clear, scientific insight
into the course and causes of development in these
periods, as we have of Grecian and Roman civilization.

The American scholar, who has made these periods
aspecialsubject of study, will have an almost clear field
and invaluable capital. It is for this reason that, after
I have familiarized myself with the German scholar-
ship, its methods and aids, I desire to make an appli-

Letters. 2 1 7

cation of them to these subjects. The laborers are
already flocking from the German schools to these
fields, and every week sees the publication of some
monograph, brochure, or book detailing the findings
which have just been made. There are on my table
at this moment six such works, unbound pamphlets,
the dispatches, so to say, of busy pioneers.

But my real work here, if I am ever allowed to un-
dertake it, comes later. I think I shall like Munich
very much. The changes of temperature here are very
sudden, and this makes the place in the summer very
unhealthy. But I shall not be exposed to this danger,
because I dress warmly and, moreover, the warm
weather will soon be over. Father has not written to
me for so long that I am really hungry to hear from
himself. To hear about one is not a tithe of the comfort
it is to hear from one. My love to Abby and brother
and most anxious prayers for father's health.

XLVIII.

Cost of living in Mu7iich ; American sttidents of art ;
a Greek artist ; obstacles to the development of the
American art-sense ; Greek and flute-playing,

Munich, Sept. 24th, 1870.

The last mail has brought your letter of September
4th, to my very great delight ; how much greater if
you had thought it worth while to write more than a
single sheet, or, what had been still better, compelled
that scribophobious father of mine to write !

My last described my pleasant quarters in Munich,
and gave expression to my expectations for the winter,
so that it will set you at rest, I hope, concerning my

2 T 8 A Young Scholar.

immediate future. I am always sorry to have written
an alarming letter home, for, however badly frightened
I may be, I see that it scares you twice as much. In
all my letters from Dresden, I sounded the alarm and
called for money till I have reason to believe you will
be frightened indeed, since I see that you were about
to send me a new draft on my first Dresden letter of
August nth. What I feared was first, of course, a
repulse of the German arms, and, after that seemed not
probable, the still greater danger of armed intervention
loomed up before me.

It is bad to be without money or friends in America,
but a thousand times worse here. Six hundred dollars
a year is sufficient for all my wants, if I can only con-
trol it at the right times. This winter I expect to
make it afford me some social advantages besides all
my school and ordinary expenses. The only practi-
cable circles for a student, unless he is a native of the
city and has old family connections, are rather fine,
and not to be well-dressed is, in Europe, absolutely
unpardonable except among those who cannot afford
it. People here will live on soup and salt in order to
make the show of gentlemen. My money however
will be all that I could wish, especially here, where
almost every necessity of life is cheaper than in Berlin.

The danger of disagreeable complications in the war
IS still not over. For instance, interference on the part
of England, in case Prussia should seem to go too far
in her demands, — and this is most likely, — would
make money exchange, if not the ordinarj' mails, im-
possible. It was for this reason that I wished you to
send me, so as to reach here about the middle of Octo-
ber, when an advance would be regularly due me, a
sum sufficient to secure me for any eventualities. It

Letters. 2 1 9

must be pretty much all one to you whether you send
one hundred dollars every two months, or two hundred
dollars every four months ; but it is not all one to me,
especially in these times, when it only takes six weeks
to capture an emperor and annihilate the most arrogant
army in the world.

I must tell you about my experience here with the
young Americans who are studying art, not as I, that
is, theoretically and merely as a side study, but regular
painters and sculptors, many of them for years in the
profession. There are several rival professors with
numerous disciples in Munich, and the Americans are
pretty well divided among these sects in art, as they
are accustomed to be in religion at home ; but their
nationality brings them together and obliges them to
be friends, so to speak, or at least to tolerate each
other. I made the acquaintance of the entire circle
soon after coming here, for we all eat at one restaurant
for the sake of chat, etc. Some of the boys are not
without talent ; one or two have gifts of rather high
order ; but they almost all acknowledge the superior-
ity and greater originality of a young Greek, who
is a fellow-scholar at the Academy and associates
principally with us Americans. He is, in fact, by
all odds the most gifted student of art in the city,
although he will never be a really great artist for the
lack of ideality and moral comprehension. His sens-
uous nature is absolute. He knows no good and
bad, no high and low, no pure and vile. He sim-
ply revels in nature like a creature of keenest instinct
whom all forms and beings and colors delight, but who
has no idea of the world. There is a feature of the old
Greek in this, but it is without that far-seeing, world-
ordering love of beauty which made the Greeks not

220 A Young Scholar.

only artists, but cosmologists. The fellow is keen and
quick to understand even every great generalization,
although he never makes them for himself, and does
not step up higher through a new thought. He has
no respect for either the work or opinions of his Ger-
man and American colleagues, but has got it into his
head that I know more about art than any of them,
and tells them so. The principles of art and the char-
acteristics of the great masters are the only subjects
of our conversations at dinner and in our after-dinner
walks, so that I have had occasion to tell about all I
know of the subject, and as the rest of the company
have either not been interested enough in their profes-
sion and its history to study these matters, or have not
known how to go to work with books and galleries, as
I have, the result is that I know more about art gener-
ally and have a more certain discrimination in works
of art than any or all the rest of the Americans to-
gether. The Greek, who is an old student and a gifted
nature, is still my superior in discriminations of styles.
He is marvellous in his sense for the effects of color.
The slightest tone does not escape his observation,
and he can go into real ecstasy over Rubens' s carna-
tion, — ^who paints flesh so you can, as the Greek says,
pinch it.

Americans succeed best in portraiture. There is no
people with so much sense and so little imagination as
the Americans. They have also little or no healthy
sensuousness. It requires intense stimulants to arouse
and satisfy the senses. We are the most abstinent
people and the most intemperate ; the most practical
and most gaudy ; the most chaste and the most addicted
to unnatural excesses ; the most influenced by prudery,
which is a monkish variety of lechery. This great

Letters. 221

disharmony in the national character, which, like
a fissure in a geological formation, goes from top to
bottom of our society, and which, to the intelligent
eye, is the same, whether it makes the youth ashamed
of his first love, or makes Beecher preach a don't-
think-about-the-reason-why-^(7(7flrm^w, must be cured
before a great art can take root among us. But this
is only one of the obstacles which the national character
puts in the way of the creative genius. The artists
here from America have more hope than I for the future
of their art, for I cannot detect in the national char-
acter those qualities which are ever wont to precede a
period of great splendor of aesthetic creation. I feel
myself equally under the spell of the time, equally un-
able to actualize the thought which must and will build
up the future with the plastic power of the idea — that,
working in nature, finishes the organism of a great
tree to the last leaf-tip. The intellect of Europe is
comprehending the situation, but the heart of Europe
is not weighing it. America is still endeavoring to
live by the wasting traditions of a past almost obsolete.
The future is not far, but it is not yet at our gates. It
is with the world as with many individuals. The most
disagreeable act of the day is getting up in the morning,
and we all see that it is about time.

In my last letter I spoke about making studies in the
literatures of Italy and the renaissance generally. I
do not mean this to be done at the expense of my
Greek studies, but they are to accomplish very different
ends. In Greek philology I do not expect to make
any original studies. The subject is too well worn.
Yet I hope so far to master the present science as to be
able to take a Greek professorship with credit, if such
a $tep should seem the best thing to do when I return.

222 A Young Scholar.

For this reason I shall continue my Greek studies all
the time I am in Europe. Father is very properly
anxious for me not to neglect this subject which I
have chosen for a specialty.

My flute has become a great source of consolation to
me already. I play solos from operas, cavatinas from
Meyerbeer, Rossini ; waltzes, songs, arias, etc. This
winter I must have some number one instruction in
order to form and perfect a style in the delivery, as it
is called, and which is, for the flute, the chief point.
The flute is almost like the voice. The soul speaks
directly through it, and a flute-player without sentiment
and feeling is unendurable.

XUX.

Parental mental characteristics ; realism in art without
appreciation of nature ; canons of portraiture and
landscape pahiting ; art a religion; a statue of Mary ;
verses.

MiJNCHKN, Oct. 8th, 1870.

Dkar Mother : — Your long letter of September 19th
with father's note and a draft for one hundred and
ninety-two florins has just been read. You request an
immediate reply. A letter is, however, regularly due,
and besides, such a gospel from home always sets me
in a frenzy to write, so that this time you are pretty sure
of hearing from me promptly.

You thought I was on the eve of a sick-spell, but
that is not doing justice to my susceptibilities, or, if
you will, it is rating my equilibrium too high ; for
why should I not sometimes get blue without having
a bad digestion or being jaundiced? I know your
pathological hobbies of old, and must allow that they

Letters. 223

were not so blind, even if they did lead you sometimes
to prescribe podophyllum for a bad memory. All your
letters have reached me — ^at least, all you mention hav-
ing written in this last, and, if I remember, I replied
to that which contained your ruminations on the
expression, ** the epic joy in things.'*

It must be grand fun for you to write letters. You
worry and shake a great idea a minute or so, and if
it does not forthwith give up, you take a handful of
hair, a claw, or some trophy, and throw it down for
the beast itself. I can always tell from the spoils
you bring in what species and generally what the size
of the fellow was you should have taken. But it is
not the clear possession of a thought which charms
you so much as the exciting struggle with it when
you feel about how big it is, and that, if you cared to,
you might hold him, then you let him slip. So it is
that your letters have for me, who am used to follow-
ing things to their farthest accessible corner, the great-
est charm. They suggest more ideas than I need to
work up for a whole day. The discipline of the Ger-
man schools would have taken that out of you ; they
would have clipped your Pegasus and taught him not
to sky-rocket about so much, but fly longer and steadier
flights. We can only master the ideas of others by
method, and this obliges us to bring order into our
own.

In so many years one would think you would have
learned other habits of thought from father, whose
mind is system itself. In the few lines he has written
me on the second sheet of your letter, I can read the
whole difierence between your natures. I can feel
distinctly these two elements in my own nature, and
the process of my culture is the process of their union.

224 -^ Young Scholar.

It takes a white heat of study to make a chemical
compound of them.

I have a number of scraps on art, single thoughts
put down as they occurred to me, which I might
excerpt for my letter, but when I look them over and
see how special they all are, and of course for you at
home unintelligible, I think that it would be waste
time ; but some of the most general may not be un-
interesting. You must remember that I have but a
small proportion of my time for the study of art, and
the progress which I have made in a year will not
seem so small when you consider that among a dozen
professional artists, young men all older than I, I
still am considered, how justly I will not say, as hav-
ing the clearest vision on the subject.

That Greek of whom I told you, goes by instinct
that has been sharpened by many years* acquaintance
with the best galleries of Europe. Moreover, he has
no ideas, only feelings. In the following scrap it is
to the ideas, not the style, that I would direct your
attention :

Without reverential and profound appreciation of
nature as the only divine fountain of life, realism in-
evitably degenerates into thingism. The necessity of
moral abstractions has destroyed for a time the epic
delight in the appearances of nature simply as such.
It is the task of a sounder philosophy to restore this,
deepened by our deeper sense of the significance of life.
Architecture, as music, is an aesthetic abstraction.
The pleasure that it imparts by virtue of its poesy alone
is greater than that of either of the sister arts of the
brush and chisel ; but these have of course the incom-
parable advantage that nature speaks through them
and that they are wholly occupied in conveying matter

Letters. 225

not their own. The claims of portraiture to the rank
of a fine art are based upon its power to withdraw the
individual appearance from the oppression of the sur-
rounding world in which it is made, by contrast and
disturbing influences of all kinds, to seem weak, or
ugly, or unamiable.

The object of portraiture is therefore to make appear
the worth of a character to itself, not its social or civil
worth. This of course demands repose, as all action
is the resolution of a relation to others. Masculine
beauty is much better adapted to plastic representation
than feminine, especially than modern female beauty.
The Greek woman, who was less tall and altogether
less sensuous, possessed much greater linear grace and
architectonic beauty than the modern, although even
she was a far inferior subject for the chisel to the
Dionysius, Eros, or Apollo. Pure form is incapable of
rendering the sensuous power of the modern woman.
Our ideal, and it is with this alone that the sculptor
has to do, is a creature of flame, an embodied desire,
not a white-limbed maid nor girt-up Oread, nor even
the all-golden Aphrodite.

Nothing is more tasteless than the general impres-
sion that a landscape owes its significance chiefly to
the formations of its eminences, in which delusion the
majority of landscape painters paint nothing but hills
and mountain scenery. The astonishing effects of
light which they attain in this way are generally much
more kaleidoscopic than poetic. Contrast is the first
canon of composition, but such contrast as on^ feels ^
not such as one sees. Another matter, in which there
is much sinning by landscapists, is the over-great use
of staff age (the figures in a landscape). Nature only
assumes her majesty when alone ; at least it is only in

226 A Young Scholar.

the solitude that we feel that Isis is not simply a mother
of men, and have an awing that the significance of
being is not exhausted in the human word happiness.

As you have a few of the most general sort of notes
which I have had occasion to make, those in the history
of art, the particular schools and masters, the parallels
between certain developments, etc., would be too re-
mote. You will see, I study art with all my might.
It is to me a religious matter, as it always has been
when it was successfully cultivated. What meaning, I
ask, can any one part of the universe have for a man
for whom the whole is meaningless ? You should have
heard how with this question I shut a fellow up the
other day, who was an artist and speaking with con-
tempt of the German speculators, **who talk about
the infinite.** Christianity was once, and so was
paganism, adequate to warm the minds of men to
great things. They no longer are. And still art must
gnaw at their empty rind, but a better time is coming.

This summer has been very barren of verses. Some-
how, after the first songful effervescence of passion in
boy's blood has subsided, things look very cool, and I
have got criticism on the brain. There is no writing
lyrics when a fellow is not in love or being shoved out
through the vale of tears and lamentations. When
one is once clear out of the whole thing verse looks
rather ridiculous than musical, and would be, if it were
not so bitterly earnest.

There is in one of the public squares here a statue in
gold, very beautiful, of Mary and her Child, on the
capital of an Ionic column. It is a famous shrine and
worshippers are never wanting at the iron railing that
surrounds it. The poor and afflicted, old men and
women and little children, come here to experience

Letters. 227

wonderful powers and go away refreshed, as in time of
old. A few days ago I saw there a flock of novitiates,
young nuns. Some of the girls were the most beauti-
ful I have ever seen, I think really wonderful. I went
right near to catch, if possible, the words of their
prayer. But the noise of the passengers on the street
was so great that I could only hear after each pause
the lyatin words, ora pro nobis ^ **pray for us.'* The
effect was really saddening. I could not help but think
what their prayer might be. When I went home I
composed a couple of I^atin verses, and here is a trans-
lation of them :

Mary in heaven, pray for us,
That we may serve thee without stain ;

And of thy love give unto us
That lack love, most of all men.

Mary in heaven, pray for us,
That we may faint not by the way ;

And let thy sweet Son comfort us
That have no comfort^ as men say.

They have no recommendation but this simple direct-
ness.

School begins in three weeks. Father's arrange-
ment about the money is very satisfactory. It will
come in time. You know that at the opening of school
and winter my expenses heap themselves up all at
once, so that I must be able to control part of what
comes regularly in the following months. Father's
good news about his health is the best of all news.
The winter I hope will help him out. There is no war
news, save that the strangulation of Paris is about to
begin. You speak of coming to me in a year. Oh,
that you may ! Where shall I be then ? I want to go

228 A Young Scholar.

to Italy. Three years in Germany are enough ; then
I would come back here to take a degree before going
home.

I..

Effects of the malaria of Munich ; studies in medusval
German^ Modern Greeks political history^ and finance,

Munich, Oct. 26tli, 1870.

Since my last letter I have been quite sick, but am
now so far recovered as to consider myself out of dan-
ger. The infamous climate of this place is the cause
of my disorder. If I had known ^e reputation of
Munich for fevers and malaria I had certainly not come
here. My friends tell me I may be glad to have es-
caped a typhus. What I had was, as near as I can
judge, one of those old bone-breakers which attacked
us all you remember on occasion of uncle's illness of
the small-pox.

I must have first caught a severe cold. It took me
with a fever and trembling, a stretchiness of the limbs,
etc. At night I was advised to take a strong punch to
produce a sweat. This certainly did make me perspire,
but I did not sleep a wink the entire night for suffering
with pains in my joints, and then my mind was busy
with Greek history which I had been reading. No
effort of the will could bring it off the subject. In the
morning, after such an eternity of misery, I was
completely exhausted, parched-up and thoroughly
wretched. The doctor came and told me not to be un-
easy, to keep my bed, to eat nothing but soup and to
take no medicines. He did not approve the punch I
had taken, and said that no sort of medicaments was
of any account in this case — that it was simply a bad

Letters. 229

cold and with care would pass off of itself. These
physicians have very little confidence in drugs it seems.
In a day or two I was able to go about, and now I am
pronounced well, although I feel much under the
weather.

It has been a hateful damper on my spirits just be-
fore the opening of my lectures. I counted on begin-
ning them with so much nerve, and now I don*t feel at
all like work, but this state of things will not last.
The winter is not sickly here and fall is nearly over,
and in the spring I shall go from here. I have some
very warm clothes which I hope will protect me against
the searching, damp winds that blow here.

A letter firom home is due over three days, and this
is therefore a little late because I wanted to hear from
you before I wrote ; but I cannot wait any longer. You
will have had time to answer my first letter fi-om Miin-
chen by this time. I hope father's health is, as he ex-
pected it would be, firmer this fall and winter. When
I get sick, I don't care a fig to live, I only want to be
done with the sickness.

There are no items of particular interest touching my
studies. This winter I shall read the Niebelungen
Lied and the minne-singers of mediaeval Germany.
The language is very different from modem German
and requires a particular study. I shall also have
some chance to practice speaking modem Greek. It
is not so different from classic Greek but that I can
read it with little difiBculty.

My intention is to devote considerable time to politi-
cal history this year — a subject which I have to some
degree neglected. The last period of over fifty years
since the restoration of the Bourbons and fall of Na-
poleon I. is the most important as well as most interest-

230 A Young Scholar.

-

ing. I also wish to make a special subject of attention
the history of commercial crises, also the theory of
finance. These will be side-studies for a year. My
regular work on the Greek language and literature and
on speculative philosophy will, as usual, take the body
of my time. I have become ambitious to acquire the
German language so as to be able to use it like the
English for literary purposes. I do not know if I shall
succeed. Such a feat is seldom performed in less than
a dozen years of familiarity with a language. The ad-
vantage of such an accomplishment in America would
be very great, for the influence of German thought and
of the German element is bound to gain ground after
this great assertion of national power, and I shall be
obliged to make common cause in many things with
the Germans in America. You must excuse this short
letter, because I do not feel exactly rhapsodical to-day,
and of ordinary matters the end is here. My love to
the family and anxious wishes for dear father's health.

Capitulation of Metz ; French democracy is socialistic;
European peace in jeopardy ; unrest of the masses ; the
task of American statesmen; future of America ;
American students specialists ; immaturity of mind,

Munich, Oct. 28tli, 1870.

D^AR Fathkr : — You express a desire to receive
some word from me direct, and I give you this letter.
My health has continued to improve, although I feel
still under the weather. Nothing could have come
more inopportune than this illness, because it unstrings
me for a cheerful and vigorous entrance on my winter's

Letters. 231

work, and so much depends on the omens with which
one begins an undertaking.

This morning we have received the news of Metz's
capitulation, a haul of one hundred and fifty thousand
men. Is it not.unparalleled ? But the French have for
some time been accustoming themselves to the idea of
the loss of this place. Its bad consequences for them
are the liberation of the investing force, which will be
immediately turned to account, either in re-enforcing
the siege of Paris, or, what seems more likely, in form-
ing an army for the occupation of southern France. It
would so thoroughly finish the disorganization of the
country's resistance, that peace could be dictated even
before the capitulation of Paris, which, however, can
not possibly be long delayed.

The French, who had no other idea when they began
this war than to annex Prussia up to the Rhine and
dissolve the North Confederation, which is all that gives
Germany the political character of a nation, must keep
quiet, when they are deprived of territory not nearly
so important as their intended robbery. The neutral
world may have tte right to complain that Germany
refuses to recognize the inviolability of nationalities,
and we have every reason to lament a step which re-
vives the worst precedents of the past. But France
cannot complain without adding impudence to violence,
and it is not the fate of France that I regret, but the
violation of the idea in the person of France, upon
which alone it is possible to construct a system of inter-
national law that will spare the civilized world at least
a proportion of the wars which now afflict us.

It is not wise to give ourselves up to the delusion
that the French are either capable of democratic gov-
ernment or even generally attached to republican lib-

232 A Young Scholar.

erty. It is not a necessity of their moral natures to
be socially and politically freemen. They will take
* * corn and games ' ' from the hand of Caesar so long as
they are forthcoming. It is not democracy in the
American or Attic sense which inclines the French to
revolutions, but socialism. The over-hasty sympathy,
which has found such various expression in America,
gains us no friends in France. They are incapable of
gratitude. Their aspirations have nothing in common
with the sober love of independence which character-
izes our people.

The position of aflFairs in Europe is such, that a per-
manent peace cannot be looked forward to for many
years. France will be broken, but not annihilated,
and she will leave no occasion unimproved to take
vengeance for this defeat. Austria is involved, it
seems, in the process of dissolution, and the future of
the elements which compose that empire is not to be
foreseen. Of these things we may be sure — that Ger-
many and Russia will endeavor to have a finger in the
pie, and that they will meet a desperate resistance on
the part of Austrian nationalities, who have no desire
to share the fate of Poland. Even this unhappy coun-
try's future is not quite hopeless. Russia will improve
this occasion, in which she finds herself liberated from
the fear of the Crimean allies through the overthrow of
French influence and through the general contempt
into which England has sunk, to go forward on the
Black Sea and in Turkey.* Whether or not the Eng-
lish will not make a final desperate eflfort here to re-
trieve their prestige is at least uncertain. If they do

* A prediction verified by the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 and
the treaty of San Stefano. Note also the attempt of Great
Britain to regain prestige at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

Letters. 233

not, they may expect to see their Indian possessions
crowded by Russia on the north, where she has been
for many years getting a larger foothold.

In addition to the danger from these sources, the
time is almost ripe again in Europe for another revolu-
tionary movement of the masses, such as took place in
1820 and again in 1848. The democratic elements are
confident of the future, and a combination of the
princes, such as the Holy Alliance under the direct-
ion of the Austrian minister, Metternich, which long
held the aspirations of all Europe for constitutional
government in check, is no longer possible. On the
other hand, the powerful middle class is hostile to
democratic ideas because the socialistic character of
these ideas here makes them fear for their property.
The proletariat of Europe is becoming greater, more
self-conscious and clear as to his aims every year.
Under these circumstances no human sagacity can
foresee what the next decennium may bring forth.

How thankful on the other hand is the task which
presents itself to American statesmen who have the
insight and the lyill to conduct aright the energies of a
great people ! The easy maintenance of peace, the
rapid extinction of our national debt, the purification
-and reform of our civil service, the elevation of popular
education, the encouragement of a national art, the
gradual realization of scientific principles of govern-
ment — these will bring order and clearness into the
functions of society and insure the industry of the
land a rational and healthy life. To do all this with
the moderation of genuine political wisdom would be a
task to the wish of a Pericles.

Is this the course that things will take in America,
or will a general uncleamess, seconded by a mercenary

234 A Young Scholar.

and short-sighted demagogism, gain ever more and
more the upper-hand in our affairs ? I hope not and
think not, but it is not so impossible as a great many
surface optimists, entirely ignorant of the causes
which affect the life of nations, believe. There are
two sorts of absurd political theories, viz : the practical
and impractical. Whether a certain system shall be
of the first or second class depends upon the locality
and time, much more than on any other intrinsic char-
acteristics. For instance, the Chinese system would
be an impractical absurdity for America. Where it is,
it is a very practical thing, but no less absurd to the
eye of reason which requires conformity to the natural
laws of social growth, of trade and industry. Plato's
republic is intrinsically more reasonable than many
actual forms of government, but its misfortune is not to
have found the time or place yet where it is possible.
We must keep this fact in mind when we are met by
the objection that certain reforms are not practical. All
that makes them so is the objection.

I did not intend to fill these pages with politics when
I began. I would like to talk over your work with
you if it were possible, or, better, lend a hand. I know
that I wasmever much account at building fence, but
there were few who could chase hogs, when the fences
were poorly built, with more bitterness than I. It
seems from mother's last letter that poor Billy has been
badly taken down this fall. It must leave you your
hands full, when he is laid up. Are you finally settled
down to farm life, if your health remains good ?

It would be grand if mother could come and stay a
year with me and then you come the last year and we
go home together. If that is not possible, I promise
myself later a trip to Europe with you, which nothing

Letters. 235

common shall hinder. As I laid out my plan of study
to begin with very broadly, it must be more or less a
failure, unless I am allowed time to carry it through.
Students who have specialties, and this is the case with
all I have yet known here from America, can better
afford to break up than I, because they do not have so
many irons in the fire, but they miss a culture upon
such a catholic basis as I am building mine on. I recog-
nize the immaturity of my mind with pleasure, because
there is a promise in it that time will give me a control
of my intellectual resources that I do not now dream
of. Severe study in my opinion is, other things being
favorable, inclined to prolong one's youth by keeping
the mind and feelings open long after they had other-
wise taken the permanent form of maturity. When
the long winter nights set in, you will certainly find
time to write me oftener and at length.

LII.

Lectures in Munich; their comprehensiveness; valves
of a home ; the homely comfort of lo^ for others.

MiJNCH^N, Nov. 13th, 1870.

After my last two letters you will be no doubt glad to
learn that I am completely on my feet again and glori-
ously at work. I have been now two years in Europe.
The first year was spent in getting a start, the last only
has had visible results of a kind to satisfy my idea of
what constitutes the privileges and pleasures of the
scholar. But now the highway is before me, every
step repays itself and is no longer taken iff4jie hope of
sometime being valuable, as when a man is mi|^ng his
way through I^atin syntax or translating Germarf^er-

2^6 A Young Scholar.

rises. This half-year I have only three regular lectures
and one public — that is, one which only occupies one
hour in the week. It is by a noted professor of aes-
thetics and on a subject of very great literary interest ;
the works, lives, and literary associations of Goethe
and Schiller. My three regular or private lectures,
which occupy together thirteen hours a week, are on
the history of Greek literature ; the political and eccle-
siastical reformations in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries ; the development of philosophy since Kant.
On each of these extremely interesting subjects we
have the most thorough men. Their names would not
be known to you, but scholars mention them with
respect.

I wish I could give you an idea of what a lecture
here really is. I do not know what notion you have
of the development of philosophy since Kant, or of the
manner in which a professor would try to give a stud-
ent an idea of this great intellectual process. But
what you will be most likely to err in is the under-esti-
mation of the details ; the innumerable cross influences
of thought ; the minute and often obscure anticipations
of one thinker by another ; the genesis of each system
as laid down in the successive works of an author ;
their mutual dependence and their relation to the pop-
ular creeds and notions of their time. Besides these
matters, which are more strictly philosophical, such a
lecture cannot overlook the literary labors, more prop-
erly speaking, of men not philosophers, but who are on
one side on the border-line between aesthetics and spec-
ulation — heaux-esprits, men of genius and originality,
but not actual founders of systems. The number of
such in Germany has been legion. If a lecture finished
the matter, it were well ; but the professor does little

Letters. 237

more than tell one how and what one must read, and
what to look for.

Your last letter is full of interest.

I know numbers of young Americans here who hear
from home once in three months, and write as often
themselves. Those must be homes where they come
from ! When it comes to that I would not write home
at all. Not to have a home, or, worse, not to have had
a home, is an excuse for any villany whatever. When
the communists get us all to live in ranches then we
will be brutes indeed. It is the greatest evil of German
life that the home is so little cherished. You have a
divided aflfection, and speak of the little weather-stained
house at Island Creek still as your home, but that is a
sort of cat-like instinct of locality it seems, or perhaps
it is true that home is always with father and mother.
I can easily think so. The only worthy motive I can
discover for a man's marrying after the minstrel days
of youth are behind him, and this occurs now-a-days
most astonishingly soon, is to secure a home for his age,
when father and mother are no more. It is, however,
much more worthy of our respect and more compatible
with a high conception of life's most sacred relation,
when an old bachelor gathers a home about him from
the cast-off little ones of the world, and preserves in
their love the fresh sensibilities that wither without
a home, than when he stoops to marry out of such
meditated grounds of convenience. So it seems to me.

I am anxious to know how father considers the
period of age which is for him and you still some way
off, but yet all too near. There is something in his
character which always makes me fear that a suspen-
sion of the vigorous, ambitious functions of life, will
make him comfortless. This is a dangerous age.

238 A Young Scholar.

The world is in the crucible of new ideas, new comfort,
and the old are losing power and these new are hard to
reach. There is a genuine, homely comfort that does
not change with the eras. It is the love of others — the
presence in age of words and acts of tenderness from
the stronger and younger. These cheer us without
our eflFort. The more comfortless the world appears
— the hollower, colder, emptier of gods — the more we
must cling together. The less we can afford to live
for ourselves the less it pays to do so. You will be
tired of this moral lecture, and perhaps all think that
my advice is that of a speculator, sitting on the banks of
Isar and imagining a case in America.

LIII.

The condition of France ; Slavishness of Germans to
monarchy ; American freedom.

Munich, Dec. 4th, 1870.

. . . The war is drawing, so we all think, to a close.
The fighting about Paris has been heavy for several days,
not however so gallant as one would expect of French-
men animated by despair. The army of one hundred
and fifty thousand men runs away when it has lost
seven or eight thousand in killed and wounded. These
are not Spartans. All credit to the incomparable
exertions of the few republican leaders who really
animate and direct France at this time, but their sup-
port is very luke-warm where nothing but the most
absolute self-sacrifice on the part of the whole country
can save her.

Monarchy is far from exploded in Europe yet. If
Gambetta should succeed in maintaining himself

Letters. 239

against the German army, he would fall before the
selfish and conservative majority in France. The
country is so worthless in every sense that, bad as the
precedent would be, I could almost wish to see it re-
duced to a second-rate power — made the peer of Spain
and Portugal. The Germans have not yet dreamed of
what free government means. The government sends
men to prison for saying that the forcible annexation
of foreign territory, the very outrage which Germany
had to fear from France, is wrong, and the nation
laughs at the ridiculous figure which it thinks a man cuts
by going to prison for his sentiments. ** Why did n't
the fool hold his tongue ? *' For the same sentiments
representatives of the people, who have always been con-
sidered as clothed with tribunitial sanctity, are threat-
ened with expulsion from Parliament and stormed down.
O, America, I often think how grandly you contrast
with these emblazoned monarchies in your suit of
simple, civil drab, powerful enough to defy the con-
federated world on your storm-bound shores, rich
enough to bless with homes the pariahs of all Europe,
and free enough to scorn with the scorn of scorn these
miserable idolaters of power ! There never was such a
hater of monarchy as I am. But I will not make this
letter any longer.

English and American political economists ; time for
side-work ; plans for study in Athens; Mormon poly-
gamy in America ; the calamity of a war between
America and England; Schelling's metaphysics glori-
fied (Esthetics,

MiJNCHKN, Dec. loth, 1870.

I make all haste to acknowledge the receipt of your
much-desired letter of Nov. 15th, which with Wsprom-

240 A Young Scholar,

ise of bread gladdened my eyes this morning. Not
long ago I read the great Malthus on the Principle of
Populatio7i, a work of two portly volumes, and am at
present deep in our Carey's very famous work on
Social Science, There are a half dozen or so great
English and American political economists, classics in
their way, whom I have undertaken to read this win-
ter. It is by no means so abstruse as generally sup-
posed ; at least a student of Spinoza and Hegel does not
find it so. A mathematical head is, however, a condi-
tion sine qua non of all intelligible study of this kind.

My acquaintances are bothered to know where I get
the time for so much side- work, and you too may per-
haps think that my academical studies must suflFer, but
it is not the case. I make a specialty of Greek, but
only in this way, that I continue steadily to make my-
self master of the field without being in a hurry to get
over it all at once. While I take up one subject, run
through it in a few months, and then lay it down, I
keep steadily at my Greek, and shall continue to do so
as long as I am here. The study of art, as I now pur-
sue it, takes scarcely any time. Last winter, while I
was putting myself straight in the general history of
the fine arts, I was obliged to read a great deal, but now
I continue the subject chiefly by the occasional inspec-
tion of new works and the perusal of lectures, pam-
phlets, etc., on single topics which appear from the
press in Germany in considerable numbers.

I have a proposition to make which I very much
hope will meet your approval. The next half-year
I desire, as I believe I have already signified, to
spend at Vienna. Instead of going from there directly
to Italy, it seems to me that a residence of six months
at the University of Athens, in Greece, would be for

Letters. 241

my purposes of the utmost advantage. The climate
in Athens is extremely healthy, which cannot be
said of all parts of modern Greece. The school is
good ; or, rather, I should desire nothing except prac-
tice in speaking Greek, and the opportunity of living
myself, so to speak, into the idiom. Modern Greek,
it is true, diflfers considerably from ancient Greek, but
not so much as to make it anything else than Greek.
Besides this practical advantage, the ideal advantage
would be incalculable. Think of speculating on the
archetypes of the ** Good and Beautiful '* in the mus-
ical idiom of Plato beneath the shades of the Athenian
Academy ! Besides, I have two very good friends who
are going to Athens at the same time, so I should not
be alone. As to the robbers, they make a much greater
noise away from than at home. People think in Germany
that Greece is bad, but Kansas worse. An English lord
runs a chance of being gobbled up on an excursion
through the mountains, but hundreds of poor students
go over Greece every year without accident. There is
a fine library at Athens, and of course my studies in
literature, philosophy, criticism, history, would not
rest. From Greece it is a short flight to Italy over the
waters where the tireless Ulysses and his charming
companions furrowed the sounding sea-fields a thou-
sand and more years before Christ. Say what you
think of my plan, but this is some time ahead, farther,
indeed, than wise men count with certainty.

It would interest me to hear what a civilized man in
this century could say for polygamy. Perhaps Pratt
is only an eccentric adherent of Malthus*s doctrine of
over-population, and would attempt in his way to
check the evil of all communities. But Malthus is

generally so abominably misunderstood that one dis-
16

242 A Young Scholar.

likes to name him in society for fear some one who
does understand him will think one is another igno-
ramus. It seems to me that if a serious set of people
declare themselves attached to polygamy, and if they
find it does not run counter to the finest instincts of
their nature, there is nothing to be said which can re-
fute their position. There are some serious matters of
taste, but I cannot prove from my ** inner conscious-
ness,*' as they say, that a race of beings is impossible
who would normally practice polygamy. Nature pro-
duces even greater apparent monstrosities. Think, for
instance, of the spiders and their method of procrea-
tion. All one can positively say is, that it is impossi-
ble to be a conscientious polygamist and take any part
in that wonderful inheritance of beauty which artist's
hand and poet's pen, inspired by the religion of a sin-
gle love, have produced and lefl to all times. An
argument from the Bible can, I think, be made as usual
for both sides, and a not less strong one for celibacy.
The necessity, however, of disputing at all upon such a
question in America is humiliation, and not less so the
fact that the greater part of the nation would rest the
issue on the authority of an old Jewish codex of super-
stition. One ray of the white light of truth falling in
this world of prismatic colors and gaudy opinions, re-
wards us with the sober certainty of day for years of
seeking. Spectres, which in the dark or gloom are
lords of fear, shake their innocent rags in the light to
keep oflF the crows. There is scarcely anything so pro-
foundly ridiculous to him who has comprehended that
necessity which is in the nature of Nature and het
mysterious development, as the impotent responsibility
felt by certain persons for the progress of history and
society.

Letters. 243

What do you think about the probability of a war
with England ? * It would be a tremendous calamity ;
beyond compare with this lamentable affair with
France, bad as it is. The political world had nothing
to expect from either France or Germany. They count
nothing in the forces of good. But the devastation
which would follow, and the hatred which would be
engendered by a war with England between the free
nations of the world, would indeed be a serious check.
Peace on almost any conditions must be the wish of
every friend of his race who comprehends the situation.
The event of such a war would be the almost entire
destruction of England, and the world can poorly af-
ford to lose her influence. On the other side, America
would sufier a serious ideal loss in the estrangement
at this moment of our civilization from the influence of
the English mind. Besides, it would cost us untold
money and leave us involved in relations with Canada
and perhaps other parts of the world that would be
detrimental in the. extreme to the purity of our politi-
cal institutions and maxims. If England and America
cannot get along without war, how are we to lecture a
Nicholas of Russia, a Bismarck, or a Napoleon for
breaking the peace ?

I must thank mother for her letter. It was full of
good things, as usual, especially her estimate of art as
a lever of culture. If the language were German, the
thoughts a little closer and the illustrations not quite
so grotesque, I could easily imagine myself reading

^The ** Alabama claims,'' and the Canadian fisheries were
questions at that time in somewhat acrimonious dispute be-
tween the United States and Great Britain. The " Treaty of
Washington," prescribing the basis of their settlement, was
ratified the next year.

244 A Young Scholar.

Schelling, whose metaphysics were only glorified
aesthetics. But the gem of the bundle was sister's
picture. I am so proud of it I shall show it to-day at
dinner to all my friends. I am pleased to hear that
she and brother dance. Not long ago a friend per-
suaded me to take dancing lessons at the school where
he was, and I had consented, but, as the time drew
near, the undertaking appeared every day more ab-
surd ; so I broke it oflF. That is as near, I suppose, as
I shall come to knowing how to dance. The weather
is bitter cold.

Patience is Tvillingness to sacrifice ; the French estimate
of political liberty ; quality of French aid to the Ameri-
can Revolution; Bismarck's war policy ; commufiism
the foe of liberty ; mental equipment of a statesman,

Munich, Dec. 29th, 1870.

I had finished a letter last evening, after waiting
several days for one due me. This morning I was to
post it, but here is your favor of the first of December
just arrived and it demands a new sheet. You seem
to accuse me of impatience under trouble and think
a serious misfortune would quite break my spirits.
There are certain qualities in my character (no doubt
you'll laugh as you read) which have always been
hidden under the majsk of their very opposites, and
which have had both the fortune and the misfortune to
be successfully concealed from my nearest friends, not
to mention others. I aver that, however restless I may
appear under the constraint of illness or disappointment
for a time, scarcely any one has a profounder fund of
patience than I. It is a willingness to sacrifice —

Letters. 245

phrenologists would call it lack of vitativeness. To
such a character, small disappointments are as trouble-
some as great ones. Your firmness under the afflictions
of disease and the oppressive consciousness that the
entire welfare of loved ones depends on you, has a
much sounder source. It springs from the all-conquer-
ing sense of life and the necessity of living.

The greater part of your letter was taken up by a
criticism of my ideas of French character. No doubt
I wrote a little bitterly of them, for I had indulged the
hope that this national misfortune would work a salu-
tary change in their way of thinking. I do not deny
the French genius, or even generosity. They are un-
doubtedly brave, but always more gallant where glory
is to be acquired, than where the simple duty of de-
fending their rights requires their exertions. That
genius and social refinement of a certain kind can co-
exist with political slavery is certain. Germany herself,
if no other country, would prove this. The fact is as
I have stated it. The French do not consider political
liberty as one of the conditions of moral dignity and
worth. It is for other than moral reasons that they
desire to be free, but no other motive can exist as a
pledge of the continuance of democratic liberty. The
French dislike an unsuccessful despot, or one who in-
terferes with their social license, or who insults their
vanity by an overbearing behavior, but, if he can con-
tribute to the prestige of the nation and add something
to their luxury and magnificence, thej' will immolate
their liberty at his altar over and over again. I accuse
them of ingratitude not without grounds. One can
liken the French nation to a brilliant dandy, who can
be generous on occasions, but who is too isolated in
his vanity to feel real gratitude for sympathy. It

246 A Young Scholar.

would seem to him an acknowledgment of weakness,
and to be weak, is, with such a person, the first of
crimes. Such people, says the great Roman historian,
Tacitus, can never forgive a benefit. Any one ac-
quainted with the European history of our Revolution
knows that it was seldom sympathy with the little
band of British colonies which sent noble adventurers
to our standards, but a desire to make a test with us
of democratic government. The idea of republican
liberty was at that time beginning to seethe in the
blood of Europe. America and Americans will not
forget such men as La Fayette, although the French
neither then deserved, nor now deserve, a grateful re-
membrance. The Bourbons were our allies to injure
England, certainly not from any admiration of colonial
democracies. The French cherish a mean envy and
spite toward us, because we were successful in main-
taining in grand repose that freedom which they have
several times acquired by spasmodic efforts, and as
often lost by a frivolous want of principle. Napoleon
III. would have laid more firmly the foundations of
his dynasty in the heart of the French people had he
been successful in destroying our nationality by an in-
terference in our late Civil War. There were men in
France who accused him of trying in this way to curry
popular aflFection.

The only sort of excuse which the Germans have for
continuing this deplorable war for the acquisition of
Fretich territory is that trait of the French character
which could never forgive Germany her success in
warding oflF their murderous aggression. The Ger-
mans know they will have to fight again and are deter-
mined the next time to have the advantage of the
ground. This I say is their real excuse. They pre-

Letters. 247

tend however to have others. Bismarck does not
exactly fight to destroy the republic, but he is no
doubt glad to be able to kill two birds with one stone.
I am still of the opinion that a nobler policy on the
part of the Germans would have been to their and the
world's advantage. It would have enabled them to
take the initiative in a great European alliance for the
maintenance of national integrity, and every one
knows what a contribution this idea would be to the
infant code of international law. A really great states-
manship, it seems to me, would have secured these re-
sults from the situation, but Bismarck is a powerful
man, not a great man. He lacks that insight which
comes of universal love. Germany, as you say, is set-
ting a precedent which may oppress herself sometime.

As to the commimism of European radicals, and
especially of the French, I can only say that there are
two sorts of equal laws — those which regulate every-
thing for everybody alike, and those which simply
make it possible for every one to regulate what concerns
him as he likes. These gentlemen believe in the first
class ; I in the second. We agree thus far, viz. : that
all monopolies and franchises are bad. But they wotdd
destroy all such corporations by making the state one
all-absorbing commune^ while I desire to see the talents
and faculties of men find their normal exercise and
that reward which the laws of competitive industry
will secure them. The association of labor is a grand
principle whose beneficent effects are yet to be per-
ceived, but it can be a practical success only under the
form of voluntary co-operation. So much of poUtics.

My political studies have not as yet been very con-
siderable. An extensive acquaintance with the work-
ing of different civil institutions and the state of society

248 A Young Scholar.

under them, as well as an intimate knowledge of his-
tory, must unite in the mind of a philosopher before
we produce a statesman. It would be difficult for a
person to be more favored than I by the circumstances
of my life for forming sound political views. The
result, however, will depend on my capacity. No
quantity of light will make things clear to the blind.
Perhaps I am too much an idealist. I always loved
mathematics too much to be intelligible to certain per-
sons.

I do not know what to say of your intention of not
making Humboldt a permanent home, save that you
will know best what to do and that my home shall
ever be where you and mother are. I shall be glad to
see anything from your pen whatever, if it is only the
report of a railroad dinner. I do not consider such
things, as mother does, to be nonsense, for I know
they are necessary in the economy of society, as society
is. They serve a very considerable purpose in calling
every one's attention to what are the material interests
of a community, and preserve men from a close-fisted,
miserly, everybody-look-out-for-himself way of doing
business. Thanks to Billy for his warm-hearted lines.
We are having a Christmas vacation of two weeks.
This letter has managed to get behind.

LVI.

Formal logic ; the principle of all things ; need of phi-
losophy ; truth of Thales and Anaximander ; the
nobility of pantheism ; plans for the future ; zeal
of the French under Gambetta.

Munich, Jan. 8, 1871.

It scarcely seems to me two weeks since I answered
father's last letter which lectured me so severely for

Letters. 249

my, perhaps, over-unkindjudgment of the poor French.
I pity them now with all my heart and would gladly
forget that they were ever the reckless suitors of la
gloire at the cost of the world's peace.

Your metaphysical catechism without the answers
came to hand yesterday. You wish to know, if I un-
derstand you, whether the method of speculative think-
ing is that of formal logic, or whether it obeys peculiar
canons of its own. Formal logic, as I have studied it
in the Analytics of Aristotle and the text-books of the
modems, is not a method of thought but a test of
conclusions. The discoveries of the sciences which
are called exact, as well as the philosophemes of the
metaphysicians, are not the products of logical think-
ing but oi general hypothesis. Formal logic has no re-
gard to the soundness of the premises, but solely to
their form and the legitimacy of the conclusions. A
system of speculative philosophy cannot be developed
without the aid of syllogistic reasoning, but the specu-
lative thought is not so derived. The real speculative
element is the hypothesis.

The phenomena of mind and being point alike tow-
ard a great unseen principle, and the measure of a
philosopher's ability to approach this is the compre-
hension which he possesses of all the data of being in
their unity. The first chapter in the history of specu-
lation will illustrate this. Thales, the first philosopher,
taught that the principle of all things is water. This
seemed to him the commonest and simplest of all the
elements, to be itself characterless and, as moisture,
the principle of growth. Solids are formed of fluids
and gases of fluids. The sea, that seemed to him
boundless and bottomless, embraced in his system in
its bosom the world as a kernel formed of itself.

250 A Young Scholar.

These were no doubt all reasons why he taught the
elementary character of water. But what has formal
logic to do with such reasons or with that first philo-
sophic necessity of unity in the mind of Thales, which
made these appearances reasons to him ? Speculation
is of the nature of induction, but formal logic begins
where the induction is complete.

I cannot deny myself some further remarks on this
subject than may seem necessary to answer your ques-
tion. Philosophy is, in the estimation of the world to-
day, below par, and, as is usual in such times, the
world has the greatest need of universal ideas. * * What
is the use,*' cry these ** fingering slaves," as Words-
worth calls them, ** of a hypothesis which it will only
require one generation to outgrow ! Truth, truth ;
give us the plain truth ; a metaphj^sical system is no
better than a fable.*' If I were to be bullied out of
my better senses, as many persons have been by the
clamor of public opinion, I should close my Plato and
Spinoza forever. To do what ? Why, to applaud such
men as Ben Butler and Bismarck, and in my old days
join the Methodist church.

Let us see of what sort of use philosophy has been.
Did not Thales, who took the first tottering steps in
that sublime march of mind that has led the human
soul upon so many glorious heights, advance the wis-
dom of the race when he simplified the phenomena of
change and growth — which so utterly confused his co-
temporaries as to seem to them constant miracles— by
the supposition, false enough as regards its direct object,
that water is the principle of all matter, but profoundly
wise and true as regards the great doctrine of the unity
of substance ? Anaximander, Thales' s scholar, saw the
insufficiency of water as a principle. He saw that it
too had qualities, and only belonged to a class of

Letters. 251

bodies which must all be accounted for by a higher
hypothesis. He taught that there must exist a sub-
stance infinite in quantity and absolutely without qual-
ity which he called the ** Indefinite.'*

Many modern chemists speculate in the same way —
namely, that the atoms of which the elementary mole-
cules, or smallest chemical factors, are composed, are
in all the elements homogeneous and without quality,
for quality is simply the product of their peculiar com-
bination. What an advance on the first thought of
Thales's ! Who will venture to say that these specula-
tions are false? What is truth, if that which brings
light into darkness and order into chaos is false ?

Soon it occurred to thinkers that mind must be ac-
counted for as well as matter. The necessity of a higher
hypothesis was created, and we come to Parmenides
and Plato. For my part I am not ashamed to admit
that it is as much the divine activity of thought itself,
as any imaginary coincidence of thought and thing
called truth, that gives for me worth to ideas. In this
sense of truth there are many things which are true
that are not worth knowing, and there are many things
to which no thing answers that constitute wisdom.
Indeed this servile realism, which I hate, is the un-
natural child of an absurd and debasing theory, viz. :
the dogma that denies man any participation in the
divine essence of things, — that makes him an image
and piece of manufacture whose whole being and
activity consist in a miserable effort to reflect the facts
of a soulless and material nature. I am a pantheist.
It is our strength, our glory, our salvation to carry in
our bosoms the imperishable sense of our identity at
heart with that transcendent life which is not subject
to, but which involves, necessity.

It seems to me from your letter, that neither your

252 A Young Scholar.

young lawyer nor yourself were any too clear on the
matter of your dispute. Formal logic does not deal
with abstractions, but with the relation of statements,
be they indifferently true or false. No man can im-
agine that he arrives at the truth by any other than
the method of induction, and it is Mill's great service
to the science of logic, to have shown that the major
premise of every syllogism is the result of a prior in-
duction. Formal logic, however, as a science, deals
with the exact quantities of the syllogism, and leaves
the induction of her premises to the inventive and com-
bining intellect. When rightly understood your quest-
ion falls to the ground.

We shall have to agree upon my movements for the
coming year pretty soon. I wish to go to Vienna in
the spring and attend the university there through the
summer term ; then to go down the Danube and Black
Sea to Constantinople and on to Athens, where I am
certain it will be to my interest to spend six months or
more. There is a university and fine library there,
and living is not more expensive than in Germany.
Travel might make it cost a trifle more, but if need be
I can see less and get along with what I receive. The
climate in the city of Athens is excellent. This winter
I have had another spell of a little home-sickness. I
only stay because I hope to enjoy home and make
home so much more by what I gather here. I dbn*t
know where Humboldt is, but the place has more in-
terest for me than Rome or Venice. Where shall we
make our home when I return? On the Pacific? or
shall we go east to the centres of Puritan civilization ?
Do you want to live in the city or country when you
are old ? What does father think of all these things ?
Of one thing I am determined — that is, that we shall

Letters. 253

live together, but that is yet some years oflF, and such
fancies only make me more discontented to stay in
Europe alone, alone !

Another heavy reserve of men has been ordered to
take the field. This morning troops of hussars and
gigantic cuirassiers passed with sounding bugles by
my window to the depot. The French have given the
Germans their hands full. Gambetta, with his repub-
lican zeal, energy, and sonorous lies, has really done
wonders. He is one of the first men of the age. The
event of the struggle looks more uncertain every day,
although the fall of Paris, which cannot be far dis-
tant, will turn things, I think, overwhelmingly in
favor of the Germans. It will relieve a half million of
men.

LVII.

Bohemian life and idealists ; wants of the gods ; the
nebulous mass of political economy ; the general hypo-
thesis ; misery of France.

Munich, Jan. 24^ 1871.

Your letter containing a duplicate of my last draft
was received day before yesterday. I wish nothing
more devoutly than that I could myself take hold of
this heavy machine of expense which father and you
have dragged so far, and draw it alone. It seems to
me that business, after my severe labors in Europe,
would be mere play. This Bohemian life of mine
appears at times almost unendurably irksome, mere
headwork where every other function of being is in
suspension. Again I think, when I am in clearer spir-
its and see some Philistine with his prosy family enjoy-
ing an afternoon in a coflFee-house, or taking an idyllic

254 -^ Young Scholar.

stroll in standing collar and stove-pipe hat, that it is
certainly a great privilege to be allowed for some years of
our youth to contemplate this flat existence from the
windy height of the schools, before descending into it,
where every man ** walks with his head in a cloud of
flies.''

The German schools make idealists for the simple
reason that where men are cut oflf from all healthy,
beautiful life in nature, and their minds still crowded
with the images of the world's most splendid life of all
times, they must necessarily grow estranged to the
reality about them and deal with it only as the vile in-
strument of necessity. I learn to trust more and more
to the all-adapting influence of time. In time what is
painful or irksome, or even disgusting, ceases to be so.
How many heaven-scaling spirits at twenty, have taken
office and grown round paunched at forty ! Poets la-
ment this mighty falling-ofF, but I think it rather great
gain to be rid of so many comfortless desires. It is an-
cient wisdom that to have few wants is to be like the
gods, who have none ; and is a man not all but one of the
Happy Ones whose whole necessities are toasted toes
and a good meal ? To the likeness of this favor we
all come at last, whatever we may have been when the
blood \^as in flower and the soul as bright and full of
hidden stars as a June sky. O for the divine repose
of a Spinoza, that more than earthly mood which
lightens through my soul in short gleams, and which
was poured out upon the great saints of the race as the
sunlight ! They saw the infinite in the smallest, and
wandered in glorious self-forgetfulness and holiest ador-
ation through this life, from silence to silence. But
now is the season of work and the din of work over-
cries the music of the spheres and I fed myself alone.

Letters. 255

My studies have been this winter successful and
even more attractive than they were in Berlin. I have
acquired a great taste for political economy and am
determined to leave nothing undone that can help me
to as full a comprehension of this extremely important
matter as is at this time possible. One has some read-
ing to do. Smith and Malthus, Ricardo, McCulloch,
Mill, Carey, Say, List, Bastiat, and their like, did not
live in vain, but wrote abundantly whatever thing
they thought, be it a wise thing or otherwise. Mathe-
matical combination and analysis, keen and compre-
hensive, are the requisites for gaining ground in these
nebulous masses of figures and facts and theoretical
gas.

My last letter I hope will have been intelligible and
have satisfied you as to the real nature of speculative
thinking, viz., the general hypothesis, which is the
same as the inventive faculty in minor matters, or the
gift by which a Newton arrived at the single laws of
Nature. In the positive sciences, however, these hy-
potheses can be subject to the test of experiment and
supplementary observation, which soon determines
their value. In speculative philosophy proper, this is
generally not the case, and, where it is possible, it can
only be from an advanced universal standpoint, and the
advance of this is the slow movement of history.

The course of the war has become extremely painful
to me. It is impossible for any but the blindest par-
tisan to behold, unmoved, a spectacle such as France
presents to-day, although what they are suffering is
still not equal to what they intended to inflict. Yet
our pity is moved ; it is that god-like pity of human
nature which sees nothing but the misery. You re-
ceive, I think, very colored accounts of affairs in

256 A Young Scholar.

France. The cold hopelessness of their position and
the ironical self-possession of their enemies make one's
heart bleed for them. They are so proud and must
fall so low, that I, for one, find no satisfaction at the
spectacle of their humiliated vanity, because it is too
painful. Historj'', however, will call it just ; but jus-
tice is only a sonorous euphemism for necessary misery,
and the sooner we all feel this the better. The German
armies have been tremendous sufferers in their extended
operations, and have melted down forty per cent, or
near about.

P. S. — Greet dear Grandmother for me, and tell her
I wish her all the joy of her new home.

I.VIIL

German self-glorification; localization the profoundest
principle of political wisdom ; French Constitutional
Assembly; American war with England is political
capital.

MuNCHEN, Feb. 6, 1871.

In spite of the great occurrences which have fallen
between my last letter and this writing, I am at some
loss to-day for a subject. Decoration and illumination
are the order of the day. Public joy, which you know
is always so noisy and so little joyful, has hung our
city with flags, — ^flags of courtesy, imperial flags, grate-
ful Prussian flags, patriotic Bavarian flags, etc., till the
place resembles a vast shop of calico for negroes' wear.
Should I succeed in describing these festivities of
national vanity, it is to be doubted whether such an
achievement would rank among the classics of our
future epistolary literature. We cannot sympathize
with individuals in their triumphs over the weakness

Letters. 257

of others ; how much less then can we be expected to
take part in the brutal self-glorification of headless and
heartless masses, to whom every occasion of victory is
an occasion of satisfaction, even should it seal their
own political degradation and restore their enemies to
the self-respect of freemen. The profoundest principle
of political wisdom demands a constant localization
and decentralization of social action in the interests of
civilization, of pubUc prosperity and, above all, of pub-
lic morality ; for so only can communities be made
sensible of their responsibility. So long as men herd,
they are cattle. Political science cannot be better
defined than as the science which enables men to dis-
pense with politics.

All the world awaits in suspense the meeting of the
French Constitutional Assembly. There is not so
much anxiety as to their action in regard to the terms
of peace, for it is thought that they will have no choice
in the matter, but as to the form of government with
which they will be pleased to present France. The
Government of National Defense has, in the name and
in the forms of republican liberty, urged the country to
greater eflForts .than could have been eflFected by the
most popular prince. But we must not forget that
these efforts have still wanted success and France is
said never to forgive a failure.

I am willing to confess my political insight at a loss
to divine the course affairs will take in this unhappy
country. If the nation has learned the lesson which
this calamity is so well calculated to teach, the people
will have benefited by their reverses, as the Austrian
state was liberalized immensely by its military disasters
in 1866.

You speak with great confidence of the event of a

«7

258 A Young Scholar.

war between Great Britain and the Union. I think,
too, that there could be no doubt of the final annihila-
tion of England's foreign influence and the loss of her
transmarine possessions, as the result of such a war.
We would lose nothing but money, character, and civ-
ilization by the enterprise. The present administra-
tion of personal jealousies and littleness would not
hesitate at such trifles, I fear. There is nothing more
certain in the world than that the English people do
not wish to quarrel with us, and that they are willing
to make almost any concessions which can be de-
manded with a show of justice. But our government,
for the sake of a political handle, has declined to take
any decisive steps toward a settlement of the difficulties
between the countries, preferring, for political capital,
to keep things in a dangerous suspense.

In your last letter father gives his consent to my
going to Greece. I can assure him that it will be
greatly in the interest of my actual studies, and is not
by any means the gratification of a scholar's dream.
Vienna is on my way to Athens, and I see no reason
why I should not rather spend the summer there than
at Munich, where there is nothing new to see. I must
close here if I am not to miss my 10 o'clock morning
lecture, for I have a mile's walk to the university and
only fifteen minutes to do it in.

LIX.

Reflections on a grandmother^ s death ; personality only

phenomenal; superficiality of men^ s thought ; longing

to lose self; the pathos and tinted fancy of Tennyson ;

the debt of France,

MuNCHKN, Feb. 26, 1871.

I was living in hope that, after so many poorly filled
small sheets, your next letter would come freighted

Letters. 259

like a rich argosy of the post, but it, too, was late and
thin, and weighted with the shadow of death. Grand-
mother is no more. She will sleep soundly after her
unquiet life. See, it is left for the living to fashion
regrets and to stand troubled at the grassy portals of
peace ! Would you know with what eyes we, the
latest children of the world's thought, contemplate
this ever-dreadful death? After long and painful
wanderings of the soul in search of fabulous joys and
potent incantations to turn the stars in their courses
and bring life to the veins of death, the human Psyche
is returning to the beautiful ways of health from which
she went out in the heroic morning of the world. Ours
is again the epic quiet of that time, deepened, it is
true, with infinite pity of all life and a profounder joy in
all being than even the emotion of Hellenic days, yet
akin to it, and we can comprehend in all their sublime
comfort the simple Homeric words : ** As the race of
leaves, so is the race of men ; the wind scatters them
earthward, and the budding forest bears them anew.*'

This is wisdom in a man, to contemplate the nothing-
ness of his particular life midst the infinity of life.
It is the awfulest revelation of philosophic thought,
that personality is only phenomenal. Think ! what
assurance have we of ourselves, what proof from min-
ute to minute of our identity ? Might it not be the
freak of a god to substitute every night for me another
soul, with my form and memory, while I pass away ?
And what if I knew that what might be were so, and
that he who rises is not he who lies down, should I be
afraid to sleep? But this is death and personality.
Certain am I that there is but one life, and that this
is the transcendent life of the divine whole, which is
mine by as good a title as that which is called my
proper life aiid is only phenomenal in the other true

26o A Young Scholar.

life which we live in our innermost soul of contempla-
tion where all things are one. I know I stammer in
pronouncing these almost incommunicable thoughts,
but my tongue may grow stronger.

It is true that the greater part of the world still lives
so superficially that they have no interest in the con-
templation of such things. What meaning has it to
most men that personality is phenomenal ? Can such
a thought break their selfishness, banish their fear,
inspire them with a consciousness of divinity ? They
feel themselves in a world of space and impenetrabil-
ity, where one thing must move to give another place.
It is a beautiful world, and one in which a philosopher
can have his delight, but it is not a good world to
teach pantheistic ideas. But I feel that there is so
much for me to live through in my own being, so
much darkness to dispel, so much that is hard which
must be softened before I can speak as one having
authority.

All sorrow is inconsolable, at least mine is so. I
take life, with its sorrows and all its nameless bitter-
ness and all its joys, to live it, not for the sake of these
things, nor for anything, for in the end there is no
purpose. Go out beneath the stars and all alone, look
up into this wilderness of worlds, which are from eter-
nity to eternity, feel in your heart the bitterness of
some great loss or unfulfilled desire, and feel besides
the infinite insignificance of your most serious endeav-
ors and expectations, and you will be of harder stuff
than I, if you are not overcome by an almost irresisti-
ble longing for the end, to cease from being, to lose
this feverish, painful self in the eternal coolness and
stillness and rest of the universe, ** to be blown about
the desert dust or sealed within the iron hills.''

Letters. 261

This quotation from Tennyson reminds me that you
mentioned you were reading his poems in order. I
studied him, you know, at Heidelberg, and since have
often turned over my favorite pages with great pleas-
ure. What delights in Tennyson is his fine pathos and
exquisitely tinted fancy of the vast problems of being
as they absorb Wordsworth, or overwhelm Swinburne,
as they themselves seem solved under the magic touch
of Shakespeare, or as they stand with sphinx-like,
inexplicable significance before the soul of Dante.
His In Memoriam is more like the petulant upbraiding
of a misunderstood necessity by a dogmatical super-
naturalist than thegrief of a wisepoet in deepest accord
with the secret heart of things. But it is an ungrateful
task to find fault where there is so much of sweetness
and freshness and vivid color. The Lottis-Eaters^
Aylmet's Fields Guinevere^ In Memoriam^ and much
else will insure their author a lasting name. Contem-
porary German poetry contains nothing equal to these
productions.

The armistice expires to-day and we expect confid-
ently to hear that peace has been concluded in to-mor-
row's journals. The money indemnity, in addition to
the territory required, makes it hard for France. Her
debt previous to the war and her debt contracted by the
war, plus the enormous sum demanded by Bismarck,
will tax to the utmost her resources, diminished by the
terrible devastations which she has suffered and the
direct subtraction of two millions of her population in
the annexed provinces. War is a costly entertainment,
as the glory-loving French have found out.

262 A Young Scholar.

The character of Munich ; of Salzburg and Vienna ;
want of English works of historic philosophical interest;
pantheism the ground of voluntary self-sacrifice,

Vienna, March 16, 1871.

In my last letter I promised you that you would pro-
bably next hear from me at Vienna. You see I go
when I have a mind to. I enjoy that supreme freedom
which all boys so ardently desire, and which most men
find in the end of so little moment as to barter it away
on the altar of Hymen.

I bade Munich adieu, — Munich with its monuments
of high endeavor and small achievement, with its
beautiful pictures and ugly women, pious processions
and unequalled beer, with its professors and apple-
women. It requires less exertion to live in Munich
than in any place I have ever seen. As in the lotus-
eater's land, it seems there always afternoon. You go
from your room to your lecture, to the park, to the
caffe, to the concert hall, to a friend's, — but all so stilly,
without anxiety or hurry, that, work as you may, you
can scarcely call yourself in Munich at work. But the
truth is, one cannot do so much under such narcotic
influences, as, for instance, in Berlin, where I was wider
awake than ever before in my life.

My trip to Vienna has been without any disturbing
incident. I stayed over a day at the old city of Salz-
burg, the most beautiful seat of the formerly so power-
ful archbishops of Salzburg in the Austrian Tyrol. It
is a mountain city, the birthplace of Mozart, Haydn,
and Paracelsus, commanded by a mighty castle-fort-
ress. To describe the panorama of snowy mountain

Letters, 263

tops in a girdle about the city, as I saw them break-
ing the azure splendor of a spring sky, would take a
more graphic pen than mine. The scenery of Salzburg,
although of quite different type, rivals the picturesque
environs of Heidelberg. There is nothing of note to be
seen between Salzburg and Vienna.

I arrived here yesterday and before night was quar-
tered in a comfortable room not far from the famous
Prater, the magnificent park of Vienna, which is said
to make so brave a show in fine weather when it is
frequented by the gorgeously appointed equipages of
the Austrian nobility, the most exclusive and the most
powerful on the continent. It is little I can say as yet
of the city from personal examination, but the first
impression is extremely favorable. One thing forces
itself, however disagreeably, on the stranger's notice,
that is, the impudence and extortion of coachmen,
carriers, and servants of all sorts. Money goes a mighty
short way here, if one does not abbreviate one's connec-
tions with these creatures to a minimum.

I shall hear but few lectures this summer ; on the
other hand, however, I shall do a much greater amount
of reading than usual. I shall have access to the Royal
Library, the University Library, and the libraries of
several cloisters. My greatest want, and one which I
can find no way of removing, is English books.
Scarcely the classics are to be had, and as to works of
historic philosophical interest, they might as well not
exist for me. To buy them is out of the question. If
I were simply a German scholar, I might get along
with the German summaries and accounts of English
works to be found in special treatises in German on
different topics of English literature, but I desire a
special detailed acquaintance with the books them-

264 A Young Scholar.

selves. I shall be obliged, I suppose, finally to go to
England for this.

You understood me aright in my request not to show
my verses about. I shall never be ashamed of panthe-
ism, nor shall I ever conceal for fear sentiments which,
in greater or in less measure, have made all the heroes
history records. Without a sense of that absolute
solidarity of interests which pantheism alone explains^
but does not necessarily create, or, as a belief, accom-
panies (for consequence in thinking is not everybody's
strong point), without this sense, I say, there is no
such thing thinkable as voluntary self-sacrifice for the
good of others. And this alone is heroic. There is no
merit in good which is done for the sake of heaven ;
there is merit alone in love which has another for its
object and end. What I feared was the verses would not
be understood, and consequently, I be misunderstood.
When the day comes for supporting my ideas with my
voice, I shall not be afiraid even of being thought a
fool, but there is no use of earning gratuitously be-
forehand this reputation. I know perfectly how the
world thinks, what it thinks foolishness and what scan-
dal. What I shall then have to say must be maturely
considered in all its relations to life, and must be de-
veloped as the organic product of the world's thinking
in the past, if it be said at all. For I have patience
and know that I live in a universe of unlimited time,
and that my personality makes no computable part of
it. First of all, I must realize in my own spirit all the
majestic repose and heavenly self-forgetfulness which
I discern so clearly in my idea. It is a work of self-
correction and self-control in which the disuse of every
trivial manner, every hurried or passionate word, even
every personal uncleanliness, not to mention vices and

Letters. 265

falsehoods of action which stick to us long after we
have given over lying, that can be of the greatest
service. Blamelessness in life is not the end which
I seek, but is a negative condition of this end.

You may expect in my next an account of Vienna,
and what I'shall have managed to see between now
and then. I think, on maturer consideration, you will
agree with me, that to spend an idle year at home just
in the midst of my work, would be, in every sense
save that of the heart, lost time, but one year from
home is as hard as another, and if I followed my first
inclination, I should not stay here at all.

I,XI.

A day's study; Vienna; jealousies of the peoples of
Austria ; the Germans lose their freedom in the glori-
fication of a successful despotism ; tlie Assembly at
Versailles and Thiers; apostrophe of a Greek to
America.

Vienna, April 2, 1871.

Since in Vienna, the weather has been so indescriba-
bly bad that I have scarcely ventured to go out, save
to the University reading-room at nine in the morning
and back again, taking dinner by the way at two in
the afternoon. At home I read modern Greek and the
minne-singers, play my flute, and when these resources
give out, I either absorb myself in transcendental specu-
lation, or think of what I shall next have to eat, or I
go to sleep on the sofa. The eating question is at pre-
sent a chief of my concerns. My appetite is insatiable.

To-day we have good weather and the city is turned
out to enjoy the long-desired sunshine, notwithstanding
the high wind and blinding sand. This seems to be
an infinitely greater nuisance here than I found it in

266 A Young Scholar.

Berlin, where, you know, the people are called in sum-
mer the Bedouins of Prussia and are supposed to eat
sand without any injurious efiFects, all from long habit.
But Vienna is a magnificent city, far more imposing
than the Prussian capital although considerably less
populous. There is a cheerful aspect to» everything,
united with greater pomp. The inhabitants are much
more southern in character, fonder of amusement and
less industrious. The politics of Austria, at present,
present a most instructive spectacle. The efforts of
the state are to get safely through a transition from
an unlimited to a constitutional monarchy and to retain
in it a half-dozen jealous and ambitious nationalities.
Austria threatens to cease to be a state and to go to
pieces ; that is, to dissolve into the national elements
of which the great conglomerate Empire is composed.
The fact is the Germans in Austria, about one fifth the
entire population, aspire to rule the roost alone, and
will not listen to any rectification or adjustment which
would rob them of a preponderance of influence in the
councils of the state. There exists a hatred and con-
tempt of the Slavonic and other nationalities here that
is only exceeded by the negrophobia at home. This
brotherly sentiment is not lost on the Slavs. They
return everything with interest after their fashion, as,
for instance, lately in Prague where the Bohemian
students made a riotous attempt to terrorize a German
professor for writing a I^tin ode in celebration of the
German victories.

Prussia and all Germany, as was foreseen by every
one acquainted with the history of the last eighty years,
have entered upon a period of decided reaction. The
church and monarchy have been strengthened enor-
mously by the late national successes, as must ever be

Letters. 267

the case where a people feels that it is led and led suc-
cessfully. The feeble efforts that may have been made
to get the control of government into the people's hands
are given over, and, in the glorification of successful
despotism, the interests of freedom are forgotten.

The lamentable state of affairs in Paris, too, contrib-
utes to dishearten Republicans all over Europe. I fear
a bloody end awaits the madmen of Montmartre and
Belleville, who seem to utterly forget that they are com-
pletely in the hands of the German forces, and that
Bismarck will never entrust to them and such as they
the government of a state which owes him five thou-
sand million francs. Their insane communism would
bankrupt the wealthiest country in the world in two
years. But, on the other hand, it must be allowed that
the revolt in Paris did not take place without great
reason. That infamous and cowardly Assembly at
Versailles has no other desire than to murder the Re-
public on the first opportunity. Thiers, much against
his will, but in hopes to soothe the excitement in Paris,
pledged himself to the Republic, and pretended that
he could speak for the Assembly as well ; but this
body observed on all such occasions an ominous re-
serve, or broke it only to give expression to its bitter
hostility to all democracy in France, and to its inten-
tion to take things into its own hands so soon as peace
had been fairly concluded, and the odium of the affair
been devolved upon the Republic. Who can wonder if
Frenchmen grew wild at the thought that, after all the
infamy of the Empire, France must again be bridled
and bestrid by some pretender to divine right ?

Well, it is a fearful abyss of monarchy and corrup-
tion to which the French nation has sunk under the
Empire and war, or rather from which it never ascended

268 A Young Scholar.

since the Reign of Terror iu 1793. Indeed, when one
surveys the gloomy stage of European politics, one is
inclined to think the enthusiastic apostrophe of a mod-
ern Greek statesman to the American people not exag-
gerated. **0 blessed people of America,** he says,
** we have, but you exercise, the wisdom of the ancients.
We celebrate, you enjoy, the golden gifts of liberty
alone ! ** In my opinion, there exists no other people,
that is, sovereign community, which is not held to-
gether by some foreign pressure save the American
people. All others are either simply great herds of
individuals, or narrow-hearted little communities of
half barbarians, as the so-called peoples of South
America. My sheet you see is full, so adieu.

I,XII.

Pantheism the religion of absolute love; Viennese laborers;

Dbllinger's stand against the ultramontane policy ;

Viennese society; the ^^ Independent s^^ estimate of

Goethe.

Vi:bnna, April 16, 1871.

An oversight at the post-oflSce in Munich occasioned
a delay of ten days in the forwarding and delivery of
the letter which, as you will remember, I thought pos-
sibly lost. Your last, of March 22d, has come direct,
so that ** communications are re-established,'* as the
war bulletin has it. Father, you say, thinks pantheism
destitute of all power to animate and inspire ; he fears
it leaves me nothing to live for ; that it is onlj'' another
name for nihilism, etc. ; but he shall see when I come
home if I have become a philosophical blasS, or if I
have not rather first acquired my mental and emotional
health in Europe. Pantheism, as a system of speculat-
ive philosophy has purely theoretical, not pathologi-

Letters. 269

cal power, but pantheism, as the religion of absolute
love which penetrates all being with the ichor of
divine significance, alone can raise man above himself,
and, while it does not, as all other religions, obscure
his mental vision and lull him in the fatal slumber of
bigoted error, it fills his life with heroic cheerfulness,
and teaches him to despise whatever has only self for
its end and aim. But it is no religion for the great
mass of men. Who does not feel within him some
stirring of divine might, the might of self-sacrifice, let
him keep afar from the sacred light of truth, and
aspire at most to be only a favorite creature of the
great gods, but never feel his blood-kinship with them.

My life shall be a witness of my faith. I have
passed forever the valley of the shadow of death, and
from henceforth, live with a strength and a comfort
which nothing can take from me. I dedicate my life
to labor, while my soul rests in the certainty of di\dne
accomplishment. **Not we act,*' says Fichte, **but
the universe acts through w^.*' How many compan-
ions of my purpose shall I find in life ? Shall I be
utterly alone in this region above the turmoil and
feverish strife of men, of a world for which I must
labor and which I love ? But loneliness is for me no
more isolation, for I do not live with God but in God.
I should not write these almost wordless thoughts of
my soul to you, if I did not reckon upon their finding
some echo in you. To all the rest of the world I ob-
serve a silence on these things.

Now I must not take up all this letter in such effus-
ions. You propose a half-dozen subjects for me to
write about when I run short of matter ; the prices of
labor, of goods, etc. ; whether I made any lady ac-
quaintances in Munich, etc. In Vienna, the costliest

2 70 A Young Scholar.

city with the exception of Paris, on the continent
laborers* wages range from forty to seventy-five cents
per day. The half of this is not paid in the country.
The poor live on brown bread, onions, a little side-
meat or sausage, and cheap beer. They dwell like
rooks in a sea-cave, and wear patches, second-hand
garments, or the coarsest imaginable material when
they are able to buy it new. In the price of provisions
there is not much diflFerence between the markets of
Europe and America. There are used here, however,
far less sugar and spices in the cookery than at home.
Vienna is growing with a rapidity only exceeded by
our western cities.

As I wrote you before, the aspect of political affairs
is very discouraging. The papers do nothing but la-
ment over the impending ruin, the dissolution of the
Empire. You will, no doubt, have heard of the excite-
ment which the Munich professor of theology, Dol-
linger, has created in Austria and Catholic Germany
by his resolute refusal to accept the new dogma of
papal infallibility. The young king of Bavaria has
taken his part against his bishop ; the factdty of the
University congratulated him on his manly and power-
ful defense. In fact, there threatens a new Reformation
in the bosom of the Catholic Church. The Common-
Council of Vienna has voted him the thanks of the city
for daring to take up the glove which the Jesuits of
the nineteenth century have hurled down in defiance
of all reason, human and divine. It is something un-
heard of since I^uther. DoUinger is an old man, the
preceptor of nearly all the bishops of the church in
Germany, the first scholar in ecclesiastical history liv-
ing. You see the Jesuits will have their hands full to
prevent an open schism.

Letters. 271

— ^i» III!

In France things seem to have reached the bottom
of hopelessness. Whatever may happen, one thing
seems certain to be the end of all, a restoration of the
monarchy and a political reaction, a new reign of the
police, etc. — the next morning's headache after a drunk.

The lyondon Conference seems to have given Russia
courage to begin a series of agitations and interferences
in the East which she may hope will lead to a war and
the acquisition of new territory.

I^adies' society is about as unintelligible a phrase to
me as you can well imagine. My ideas of what it is
like are derived altogether from books, and this is a
scanty source, as I don't read novels. I can remember
having spoken about ten minutes to an American lady
in a coflFee-house in Munich. One can get into society
here, if one cares to dress, to hunt introductions through
your professor or consul, or to improve all opportunities
that chance throws in your way ; but it does n't pay.
Mixed society is little cultivated here. I^adies and
gentlemen meet at balls or at formal dinner parties,
but seldom on any other occasions. The reason of this
is to be found, perhaps, in the existence of a great
class of women in these large cities called the demi-
monde. Men seldom marry before thirty or thirty-five
years of age, and many never. They find the satisfac-
tion of their social wants, such as they have, easier
outside than inside the pale of good society. A girl
without money, however beautiful or amiable, stands
no chance to find a husband. She goes to swell the
ranks of social outcasts. Half the births in Vienna are
recorded as illegitimate, and, in fact, a much larger
proportion is so. The whole tone of society is some-
thing of which an untravelled American can form no
idea. Where morals are so universally loose, vice

272 A Young Scholar.

seems to lose a great part of those features which make
it repulsive in more virtuous countries. At least it is
not accompanied by such general depravity of character.
The review of Taylor's Faust in the Independent is
a piece of the most outrageous, presumptuous igno-
rance and contractedness I ever read. It is below
criticism. How imperially would the great Goethe
have looked down and smiled upon this little masculine
prude, with his little Sunday-school view of life and hy-
percritical, little, verbal criticism ! Coleridge objected
to translate Faust^ but it never occurred to him to call
the poem ** dreary,*' and its reputation ** conven-
tional." The devil says dirty things in /a«^/. It is
a great pity that such geniuses as Shakespeare and
Goethe would not be persuaded to leave oflF such
naughty words ; that they persist in painting life
to the life. If they had only been persuaded, then
their works would not be called ** dreary," and might
be read before mite-societies by young candidates for
the ministry, and other such broad-minded individuals.
I^ng may they wave !

LXIII.

The two great problems ; freedom of the will^ and first
causes; the teleological argument refuted; laws of
nature laws of mathematics ; the atom ; the divine
significance of all life and its lesson ; culture results of
three years ; plans for rounding out a scholar's equip-
ment; need of further study ; the wishes ** to know^^
and to make others happy.

Vienna, May 2, 1871.

Need I say that your letter of March was received
and read with the greatest pleasure? I cannot be

Letters. 2 73

sufficiently grateful for the affectionate tone in which
it criticises my position. I should be won by it to
give over my opposition for sweet agreement's sake,
were it not that the subject under discussion is of the
highest moment both to you and me, as to all men.

My complaint that your previous letter was cruel,
you must not take exactly. There was nothing meant
but a mild reproach for certain polemical acridities
that seem, after having served you so many a good
turn in public life, to have become almost inseparable
from your style. Perhaps I, too, have failed to observe
all those bland proprieties of speech which soften con-
tradiction. But then I have no ground to be so sensi-
tive when I reflect that plain speech is justly a preroga-
tive of parental authority.

In reviewing your argument for its [the letter's]
points y I discover so many things inviting a reply,
that I must despair of refuting them all in the limited
space of a letter. There is observable an admirable
connection, a sequence of thought, in all you write,
and I can for that reason hope, by attacking what
seem to me the fundamental errors of your position,
to bring the entire edifice to fall.

There are two great problems which stand as land-
marks between the exoteric and esoteric world — the
people and the philosophers. Who has not solved
these must be content to count with the masses, though
he were a Napoleon, a Shakespeare, or a Newton.
One of these is of moral, the other of theoretical
interest. They are the so-called freedom of the will
and the teleological argument for the existence of
God.

It exceeds the ordinary man's comprehension to

understand how the voluntary character of our acts
18

2 74 A Young Scholar.

is Qo evidence that our volitions themselves are not
the necessary products of our situation aud habit of
mind. That I can do what I choose to do is evidence
to him that the responsibility for the causation of ray
acts stops with me, whereas throughout all nature we
know that there are no first causes, that there exists
a regresms ad infinitum. You will not need to be
told the part this error plays in nearly all systems of
theology. It substantiates the individual ; that is, it
gives the individual an independent existence co-or-
dinate with the exterior universe and with God, to
whom he is, by virtue of his character as a creature
and dependent, again subordinate. Reward and
punishment are the reins by which he is directed,
and this relation of quid pro quo is the only real one
that exists between the Christian aud his God, or
really can exist. You will not pretend to vindicate
to man from this relation the quality of divinity, and
yet, in contesting my right to use the word divine,
you declare that "man's divinity consists in his
relation to God and immortality."

If endless existence can make that divine which is
otherwise not so, then you must admit in matter a
superior divinity to your own ; for if you have the end-
less future before you, it has besides this the nobility
of an infinite antiquity. What I understand by this
word, I will explain farther on. In this digression
about free-will, all I desire to do is to show in what
relation this error stands to my view of the phenomen-
ality of the individual, that is, to the doctrine of a di-
vine whole of which all individual lives are but moods
or expressions, whose real interests, as whose reaUty,
are referable only to this whole. Love is the recogni-
tion of this divine truth as all may understand it, and

Letters. 275

it is not necessarily accompanied with that degree of
theoretical insight which is requisite to comprehend the
great philosopheme of life.

The second of these almost insurmountable diffi-
culties, the theoretical one, takes, as in your letter, the
form of the question, ** How else are we to account for
the adaptations we discover in nature except by the
assumption of a wise Creator? ** In all my reading I
have not met with a better exposition of the insuffi-
ciency of the solution than I myself gave in letters to
you from Heidelberg, viz., that, as intelligence it-
self is a product, first of a certain organism and then
of experience of these apparent adaptations in nature,
it can in no sense be adduced as in itself the origin and
fountain of what we term the wisdom of a plan. In
other words, plan and planner are alike the products of
absolutely necessary laws.

Since Bacon we have been taught to believe that all
wisdom is the product of experience. An intelligence
which exists before all experience is something of which
we have no conception, and in fact self-contradictory.
The blunder committed in both cases is that, in con-
templating the world, the subject, that is the person
so contemplating, counts himself out, and the objective
phenomenal world is viewed as the essential world per
se. Until this naive standpoint, which entirely ignores
the subject, is passed, there is no use trying to infiltrate
speculative ideas into a man. When you have referred
the order of the world back to the wisdom of God, you
are satisfied to ask no more questions. The divinity is
something absolute and admits of no explanation, but
it is just this divine character of absolute necessity
which science and reason teach us to find in the world.
To the philosopher the world does not seem to point to

2 76 A Young Scholar.

an extra-mundane Creator, but, in the infinite vicissi-
tudes of life and growth, decay and death, he greets
the ever-present, everlasting divinity. The laws of
nature are but the laws of mathematics, and the
adaptations which we admire are the product of a
law, which Darwin has revealed, of natural selection
by means of the struggle for existence. How this has
worked in every case, is the question for the investigat-
ors of coming centuries. We can trace its workings
in nature wherever the short space of time in which our
observations have been made embraces the genesis of
any such adaptation.

As to the atom, I deny neither its existence nor its
materiality, but its substantiality ; that is, I consider it,
too, ** phenomenal." What I showed was, the mate-
rialist who holds to its substantiality must admit that
it must be smaller than the smallest conceivable space,
since the conception space is, according to him, a func-
tion of the atom. Just as it cannot be perceived because
it cannot reflect a vibration of two or more light-atoms,
so it cannot be conceived by any action of atoms.
The question is very subtile and only meant to be a
reductio ad absurdum of raw materialism.

My use of the word divine is consonant with my en-
tire view of things. Kvery manifestation of the divine
life is divine, the horse as well as the man. We are
of and in and through the one infinite, All-god. The
horse is not only a beast of burden with a price, but a
being endowed with courage and beauty and might.
But right here is the root of my aesthetics, and indeed
it is, what all true poets and artists since Homer have
felt, the divine significance of being independent of ac-
cidental attributes. That a thing w, is cause of endless
wonder, of a nameless sensation of admiration in the

Letters. 277

true poet. To him the whole universe is holy, is di-
vine. There is no such thing as common, cheap, vul-
gar, etc., virhen we feel the genial inspiration of the
muse. One thing may be a wider manifestation of the
divine than another, yet all are of the same absolute,
infinite, inexpressible source. Christians were ashamed
to recognize their relationship with the negro while
they humbled themselves before God. The pantheist
is infinitely glad of his kinship with all life, and feels
himself one with the divinity. Theirs is a religion for
slaves and masters, a religion of rewards and punish-
ments, of hope and fear. Mine is a religion for brothers,
of heroism and love. It seems to you ** narrow and
semi-civilized.^' To me it seems far too heroic, far too
pure and beautiful for many who think themselves at
the head of civilization.

I feel how imperfect and incomplete is everything I
have written. A subject that requires volumes cannot
be disposed of in two sheets, but you will see, if you
reflect on what I have written, that I mean to attack
the times with a different programme than reformers
hitherto. Spinoza and Schleiermacher, my teachers,
were satisfied, the one with the bare statement of his
theory, the other with a lame accommodation of his
views to the church, and consequently with an unclear-
ness and double meaning that hindered his influence
firom working as he really wished it to.

A word about my stay in Europe. When I came to
Germany I arranged a plan of study for the time of
my expected residence abroad. It was uncommonly
extensive. Teachers and fellow-students have warned
me that I ran great risk of superficiality, and that only
uncommon talent and uncommon industry could war-
rant its completion in the time allowed. I calculated

278 A Young Scholar.

this, according to your own wish, at about six years.
Following this plan I have arrived almost at the end of
the third year and have every reason to congratulate
myself on its success. My aim from the first has been
culture, but I have made the important discovery (in-
deed I made this very soon) that only a thorough and
comprehensive knowledge of a subject contributes
to strengthen the mind. All outside acquaintance
with a science, a language, a literature^ a system, a
people, or whatever else, only burdens the thinking
faculty.

My education is my profession. . I must excel in it if I
am to be of use to the world or of advantage to myself.
In America my life will no doubt be full of intellectual
effort, and I shall not cease to learn because I lay off
the academic gown, but I shall be far from those
libraries, museums, teachers, peoples, and associations,
which furnish us the material of our knowledge.
Mother wishes me to come home after another year,
but she does not comprehend how ruinous this would
be to my future usefulness, at least to my weight as a
scholar. I should certainly have, even then, an un-
commonly good education, and should have no reason
to complain, as I am only most thankful for all your
priceless goodness to me. But, for the purposes I have
in view, there would be still much wanting that I never
could acquire in America.

I have especially reserved for the last two years of
my stay my historical studies, as also the Italian and
French literature. I have sacrificed to my thirst for
knowledge everything that other men hold highest.
I have but one selfish wish, and that is to know.
Money, fame, love, youth — all, desirable as they are,
must go. Only the love of home will not leave me,

Letters. 2 79

and it still reminds me that I belong to the gentle race
of men, and am not a scholastic abstraction.

But my exile will come to an end, and then I shall
be at home never to leave it again. I long to be back
with you and mother. I think I could make our life
so much sweeter than it was, because I have conquered
myself completely, and should have but one thought,
to make you happy, and when we try this with all our
hearts we cannot fail. You must judge whether my
stay in Europe three more years is possible. Whatever
your decision, I shall receive it with affectionate obedi-
ence and not regret the unattainable. How much
have I already seen of my youthful dreams, yes, the
warmest and most golden dreams of life, float off into
the realms of empty and vain things ! I overcame the
pain of this when I had no comforting faith, when I
felt that I was losing my heart's blood. To miss a
certain finish on my scholarship would be to me now
a nothing.

LXIV.

/n Europe and Asia a scholar a title of respect^ in
America a scholar an object of pity ; caste feeling
limits usefulness ; society as a source of progress ;
Shakespeare^ s support in refuting teleological argu-
tnent,

Vienna, May 8, 1871.

Your letter enclosing a most welcome remittance has
been received. How could you let so brilliant an oppor-
tunity for writing me an interesting letter as a visit
home certainly affords, pass unemployed ? The scanty
sheet which I received seemed only meant to enfold
the precious bit of paper which, I must confess, dimin-

28o A Young' Scholar.

ished somewhat my disappointment. Why no word
about Henry's little boys ? I loved those children with
all my heart, which is a somewhat peculiar heart, and
not always able to give a reason for its tender spots.

My ** most potent, grave, and reverend seigniors *' are
concerned lest I may foolishly waste my youth in the
pursuit of knowledge and acquire a mighty contempt
for the wealth of this world. Aforetime this was
thought the sign of a noble and ingenuous disposition,
but the times change and the world changes with them.
In Europe and in Asia the character of a scholar
is a title to the respect of all classes. The prince lets
the reserve of rank fall in his presence, and the peasant
recognizes in him with profound deference his real
superior, not his better only in the Herald's office or at
the banker's. If American scholars are looked upon
as rather objects of pity than respect, they have only
themselves to blame. Have they made the people feel
that culture is one of the powers which control the
affairs of state and public opinion ? They must first
acquire that culture which gives a man the distinction
of scholarship, and they must not be afraid to lay the
ban of science and of taste upon many of the people's
favorite opinions. Cliques and sects educate men in
America to champion their creeds, and the voice of
impartial learning is never heard. What wonder, then,
that the scholar's gown commands no respect ?

There is much to improve in the general character
of the learned in Europe. They should lose a great
part of that caste feeling which limits their influence to
a very contracted circle. The masses are left to the
priests, as hopelessly sunk in ignorance and barbarism.
The result of this indiflFerence as to the fate of the great
body of society is a visible degradation of the moral

Letters. 281

standard among the learned themselves. It is only
from a great moral purpose that great moral strength
can be derived. * * The love of truth for the truth's sake ' '
is one of those brilliant phrases which serve to lend a
false light to the indiflFerence and selfishness of narrow-
hearted students. That scholarship which neglects the
great social and living ends of mankind is destined to
shrink into the soulless formalism and vicious abstrus-
ity of scholasticism, or into Byzantine pedantry.

We owe every great increment to our insight, to
some act of the people. Society, not the learned, is
the source of truth. The thinker casts up the accounts
which humanity sets down. I admit, this was not
always my opinion. I was much rather inclined to
ascribe the progress of mankind to the decisive deeds
of her great minds, and to find in the masses only that
stupidum pecus, or stupid herd, whose sole force was
the vis inerticB with which they resist the light. There
is a certain truth in this view, viz., that the masses
refuse to accept all the consequences of the position
which they may have taken, but it does not follow,
because they do not comprehend just where they are,
that they are not here. Within the last two years we
have seen this doctrine of Schelling's, that conscious-
ness is not a necessary concomitant of all psychologi-
cal operations, developed by Hartmann into a system
which he calls in few words, the '* Philosophy of the
Unconscious.*'

Well, I must come back from this excursion into the
regions of social science. How surprised was I the
other day, when reading Shakespeare, to find the sub-
stance of that idea with which I attempted (and as I
still think with success) to refute this argument from
the adaptations in nature for the existence of a wUe

282 A Young Scholar.

author of these same. I argued that intelligence is
a product of nature and impossible without experience
of laws and order, which of course must exist before
they can be the objects of experience ; therefore intelli-
gence cannot be the primary origin of any order or
adaptation. Shakespeare says in The Winter's Tale,

** Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean '' ;

and

*' This is an art
Which does mend nature, — changed it rather ; but
The art itself is nature." *

How many men have admired the point of these
lines without grasping their profound significance.
Shakespeare himself was, no doubt, unconscious of the
reach of this utterance. It is an example for Hart-
mann's philosophy. What is it that does not come
within the full orb of that capacious soul ! The world
seems like an illustration to Shakespeare.

E writes me that he hopes to stand his examina-
tion this fall in Wiirzburg, where he now is. He then
will make a short tour through Italy, and home. We
shall probably manage to meet in Trieste. I think of
going this way to Greece, as cheaper than the route
through Constantinople. The Danube is a very mo-
notonous stream. You must not publish criticisms
of persons which I write home, not for the world !
because I am religiously opposed to giving any soul
offense.

♦These quotations are to be found early in Scene 3 of Act IV.
in The Winter's Tale,

\

Letters. 283

lyXV.

TTie poesy of the prairies ; philosophic and art studies
quicken a love of nature ; character of western institu-
tions of learning ; the solidarity of all interests ; prom-
ise of co-operation ; transformations of the struggle for
existence,

Vienna, May 25, 1871.

Your Sunday morning letter came all the way to
Vienna without losing the light and fragrance of a
western Spring, the mystic charm of a blossoming
prairie. It is true this was not on the paper, but
woven in with the words and was for my mind's nose
(to vary Hamlet) most sweet incense. Do you know,
I think the poesy of our great prairies a more ethereal
spirit even than of ocean scenery, or the bosky, shad-
owy recesses of the German forests. The sea has
something more elemental, I admit ; the restless, end-
less waters and the moving pomp of clouds, the shifting
colors of dawn and noon, and night with only the in-
finite azure of heaven in rest, — all this lends the ocean
a spiritual significance which no landscape possesses.
The sea is the type of Spinoza's soul. It is panthe-
istic, eternal change, cradled in an eternal sameness.
But the prairie partakes largely of this elemental char-
acter too, and, besides, it introduces, in the colorless
region of the pure idea, the first dawn of feeling. It
is, as when the cloudless night-ether is thrilled by the
yet invisible sun ; for in the solitude of the elements
we are warned by the flowers at our feet of the presence
of that divine life which is in soul and flower alike.
But this volatile spirit is gone when the hand of culti-
vation stamps the mark of man's necessities upon the

284 A Young Scholar.

virgin soil. A higher reflection will console us; so
cheer on the plow !

You can scarcely conceive how abnormally sensitive
my, for the most part sedentary, life, pent up in great
cities, has made me to the beauty of nature. My philo-
sophical studies have contributed, perhaps more even
than this deprivation, to quicken the rapport between
me and the visible universe. You know I am a pan-
theist ; and in addition to these causes may be reck-
oned, as no less important, my study of art. How
such a study elevates and purifies and intensifies the
sensuous nature ! We grow to take a delight in mere
tones of color, in rhythmical lines, which seem childish
to the unimpressible rationalist. It is impossible to
translate all feelings into ideas.

You speak glowingly of the prosperity of your new
State. I should be glad to identify myself with the
interests of Kansas, even if for a long time I should
have much uncongenial work. An institution of learn-
ing in the West, however munificently endowed, must
in the nature of things long remain a mere diploma
factory for the benefit of aspirants to the learned (?)
professions which pay ; /. ^., law, medicine, theology,
etc. But, notwithstanding, such a point presents a
real scholar with the best opportunities for sowing the
seeds of genuine culture, — although he is expected
merely to decorate with a sort of intellectual evergreen
which has grown in other men's minds and keeps its
color without roots. Depend upon it, the next thirty
years will witness a revolution in the way of thinking
with us not less important, and, in its consequences,
even far more reaching than the results of the glorious
agitation which has made America indeed what she
boasts to be, the home of the free.

Letters. 285

European thinkers have prepared a revolution, a
new era, which the masses here are too lethargic to
achieve. America must accomplish in the majesty of
strength and moral assurance, and in the sunlight of
clear insight, what weighs upon that unhappy city,
Paris, like a nightmare.* It is not better insight or a
better will, which preserves the other great cities of
Europe from the convulsions that are just drawing to
a close in the French capital ; it is apathy, the blind
custom of submission.

The unequal distribution of wealth in our age is
becoming an intolerable oppression. The poor are
being educated, they are acquiring sensibilities, wants,
feelings, which were strange to the pariahs of former
times, and yet the means of gratification are beyond
their reach. I am not a French communist. I do
not believe that the state can remedy this evil. It
must be the masses themselves who seize the great
ideas of the solidarity of all interests, of the vanity
of self, of the religious necessity of co-operation. The
co-operation of the poor will level wealth, and that
without a single violent interference with the natural
laws of industry and trade ; but the world must
undergo a new birth, such as was the regeneration
of the pagan world by the Christian gospel, before
co-operation in this sense is possible.

I am no believer in a millennium, but I do believe
that the eternal struggle for existence, which is the
very principle of life, takes higher forms. From a
struggle with weapons of murder, as life is among
cannibal men, it became a struggle of business
interests, and such is the chief content of life to-day ;

* The aspiration for freedom, then set back by the straggle
with the Commune.

286 A Young Scholar.

but the time will come when the possession of enorm-
ous wealth will no longer be an object of universal
desire, as we are already past that period in which
the frame of a bruiser was the most valuable gift of
nature. I am not sanguine as to the maturity of the
people for this idea, — the pantheistic idea as I cherish
it, but between its full realization and aflFairs as they
are, are a hundred stages. Nature makes no leaps,
she has time and she takes time, but if in my life-
time I can see that a number of resolute spirits have
comprehended the evil and its remedy I shall not be
disappointed. Politics is the great school of the
people. The political partisan is obliged to keep in
view the interests of a great commonwealth, and it
is impossible for him to refer these always to his own
private ends. He learns to go out of himself, and this
is our salvation.

After two months of almost continuously bad
weather we are enjoying a pleasant spell of late
spring sunshine. My health is good. I take very
great interest in your accounts of your work at home,
but I can answer nothing. I have no idea what home
looks like, where your fields are, what your stock is,
and who your neighbors. You will perhaps have no
better idea of my surroundings, although you only
have to imagine a room on the ground-floor and look-
ing out on a street of four-story houses without yards
or trees. The parks and squares of the city are not
visible from my window.

I lack for nothing which can make my solitary
existence cheerful but the society of the loved ones at
home. I could live for less money, but it would be
injurious to me. I make of my minor inclinations,
which are sometimes expensive, allies against more
dangerous ones. You will understand.

Letters. 287

I.XVI.

The immortality of love; pantheism a doctrine ; divinity
the ground oj phenomenal nature ; pure being defined;
moral consequences of this doctrine ; a Corpus Domini
Sunday in Vienna ; a mystic rapture and its reaction ;
a review of fowett's '' Plato '\' a case of pedantry
without learning ; Liberal defeat in Austria,

Vienna, June 7, 1871.

Dkar Mother : — How often do I pause when I
have written these tenderest of words, and repeat
them over and over, as if I could win from their heart-
felt tone the matter of a whole letter ! What they do
not convey is of but accidental importance. Yes, a
whole life is not poor that has no other gold at heart
than that which rings in these pure old Saxon words.
It is not the shifting circumstance, the phenomenal
garment of life, which we cherish ; it is our love, and
this is eternal ; but then that is a great mystery. The
vulgar make them carven images of the infinite or
liken it to the endlessness of time ; but the reality of
things is not in time. It is where the distinctions of
before and after fall away in the reflection of Being
upon itself, in the For-itselfoi Hegel, the closed circle
of the Absolute. Our immortality is a quality, says
the great dialectician of Berlin, not an endless succes-
sion of existences that have no bond but that of an
ever-fading memory. *

* Suggestive of Hume's difl&culty . * * There are two principles
which I cannot render consistent, nor is it in my power to re-
nounce either of them, viz., that all our distinct conceptions are
distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real
connection among distinct existences. Did our perceptions either
inhere in something simple or individual, or did the mind per-
ceive some real connection among them, there would be no diffi-
culty in the case." Hume's Works, vol. ii., p. 551 (1874).

288 A Young Scholar.

But are not these abstrusities very out of place in a
letter ? See to it that you are not to blame, as well as
I, by propounding such questions as in your last,
whether, namely, pantheism be not another name for
that popular trinity of ideas, * * the true, good, and
beautiful.'* Do pay attention to what I am going to
write and you cannot fail of getting a clearer concep-
tion of what philosophical pantheism means. It is a
doctrine which asserts that the divinity must be con-
ceived as the reality, the ground (Spinoza says sub-
stance) of the phenomenal world, which, as phenomenal,
cannot have in itself the ground of its own being, for
that which really is, and not merely exists as phenome-
non, cannot be subject to extinction and is not pro-
duced. Matter is the phenomenal form of this being,
but matter is a representation of the senses, and all
questions as to what matter is in itself, that is, what the
atom is, are senseless, and involve a contradiction, in
so much as they inquire after the substantial nature of
that whose entire nature is phenomenal. Pure being,
or the absolute^ is not an object of our thinking, so that
we do not know about it, but it is one with thought ;
in other words, it is the inseparable reality, which is
one and the same in all things. It is the unthinkable,
and yet the condition of all thought, the invisible con-
dition of all seeing. It is the one thing which is, and
it alone is, and is God.

Yet all the world is its revelation and we are mo-
ments in the eternal being. Necessity is its nature, love
its realization, beauty its significance. Thus pantheism
is not another name for these three ideas, but the stand-
point from which alone they can be adequately con-
ceived, and from which their inner identity appears.
The absolute necessity or sameness in the succession

Letters. 289

of events is the law of truth. The phenomenality of
the individual and necessary transfer of our interests
from self to the absolute, whose manifestation is the
world, is the law of love or the good. The recognition
in the single forms of life of significance which has
only the ground of all being for its farthest bound, is
the law of beauty. So this is a popular definition of
my pantheism, which is in great part that of Spinoza.
As it is the simplest, so is it the deepest and most diflS-
cult conception of the world. It requires of its disciple
the profoundest inner penetration of being, the resolu-
tion of all phenomenal existence into its absolute being
and absolute necessity. It requires, moreover, the
completest conquest of self, without an ascetic self-morti-
fication, which is only another way to obtain the sweets
of heaven. It gives its disciple the sense of divinest
dignity and strength, and the only freedom, which is a
harmony with the law, not a power to disobey. When
my desires are measured by my capacity I am free.

June 8th — ^This is a day of high solemnity in the
Catholic world. It is the feast of Corpus Domini, and
the ecclesiastical pomp of Austria's ancient capital has
celebrated in long procession and mystic rite the sacred
memory of the last supper of the first disciples with
their beloved master. How easy for the susceptible
mind, even of a disbeliever in the supernatural machin-
ery of the Christian tradition, to bury itself in the
melodious twilight, and holy calm of this festival !

I arose this morning at an early hour, after a delight-
ful night's repose. In soul and body I felt the enliven-
ing quiet of a summer dawn, glad of my innocence and
health. I could, it seemed to me, have died for this

beautiftil world without a murmur, without fear.

19

290 A Young Scholar.

Everything that met my eye was beautifiil, wonderfully
significant, with a meaning which I understood, but
could not translate in words. The flowers in my win-
dow seemed the first I had ever seen and appeared
imperishable, divine thoughts in light. My room
seemed a sanctuary and my books luminous with the
spirit of their great authors. Every passer on the street
seemed a friend to whom I need but speak to hear the
kindly voice of recognition.

Why should I, in such a Sunday temper, not lay
aside my pride of thought and my republican scorn,
and attend the expected ceremony with the heart of a
simple Catholic and legal subject of the imperial house
of Hapsburg ? So I did. For two hours I forgot I was
a disciple of Spinoza and a bom freeman who would
bury the world in fire rather than bend the stubborn
knee. I took my place among the spectators ; the sky
was of the softest blue ; the sun was covered by a float-
ing cloud ; with solemn music the procession moved past
the great decorated altar erected in the open air, where a
reverend bishop conducted the ceremony of high mass.

First came the monks with innumerable banners,
then the charitable orders of laymen, the city council-
men, the Parliament, the ministry, the military digni-
taries, the court oflficials, the nobility, the imperial
majesties ; again officers, monks, courtiers. It was
a brave show of gold and brocade, of monk*s serge
and laymen^s broadcloth.

But my exalted sentiments grew gradually cooler.
I began to feel the absurdity of this military tinsel
and royal buncombe and sacerdotal vanity. The
multitude began to revive in me images of their real
life, — its selfishness and lewdness. I thought of the
horrors of Paris, the mighty injustice of our time,

Letters. 291

and that the same chasm which had yawned there
and swallowed its thousands, was here covered only
by the thinnest incrustation. It was time for me to
go. So I slipped away and, as the sun in the mean-
time had climbed to noon and was glowing in all his
oppressive majesty, I sought the cool garden of a
neighboring restaurant, where, at a quiet little table
under green elm branches, I ate my soup and beef-
steak and washed it down with a healthy glass of beer.
Here I thought better of the world again, for a good
digestion is a mighty peace-maker, and I laughed to
myself at my sentimental experiment of the morning.
It had been but a partial success. I had even so far
lost my pious self-possession as to laugh inwardly at
the idea that my fellow-devotees would have all kissed
the pope's toe if they could. This sort of killed the
rapport between us.

What a diflFerence between this mummery and living
religion, which, for the intellect of our age, is none
other than pantheism ! The windows of the soul are
opened ; the sound of the eternal waters of life fills
us ; the breezy, blossoming, shining might of nature
purifies us ; the glory of infinite love and freedom
delivers us. So I thought, as I strode homeward
through the crowded streets where everything was
fast resuming its work-day exterior. Since in Europe
I have lived too much in cities. It is here so hard
to preserve that religious regard for strangers which
we should never lose. The city is the home of cynics,
misanthropists, and criminals, and in the city there
is no hospitality.

The Tribune's review of Jowett's Plato that you sent
me has reached me. The reviewer evidently and con-
fessedly knows little or nothing of Greek thought.

292 A Young Scholar.

He indulges in sophomorical generalities. I have not
room to enlarge on a subject like the genius of Plato,
I should need to fill a book, were I to commence.

Did not R tell you that he had dropped com-
munication with me ? He has a learned curiosity about
the language of the Hottentots and is ignorant of
the language of Kant and Goethe. This school-boy
vanity to know something of many things is ridiculous
in a man. When he ran away from his declaration, all
he had to do, no doubt, to regain his self-respect, was
to repeat the alphabets of forty-languages, and reassure
himself that they were still fast in his memory. But
he was a good fellow in spite of his vanity. It is only
a pity he ever married. Had he come to Germany
and seen what it takes to make a scholar, he would
have been either cured of his notions or have set to
w^ork and acquired some solid information. He has
not heart enough to be happy as a husband and father.
His controlling passion is a love of shining, not of
seeing the light, and when he is suflSdently convinced
that, by some dogged blunder or other, he has missed
making a great stir in this world, he will become a
most ardent candidate for the eternal crown in the
next. It is against such natures that pantheism is
powerless. It offers nothing that they desire, for their
whole desire is self.

The lyiberals have just suffered a stunning defeat in
the Austrian Parliament. The Hohenwart ministry,
which is charged with intentions hostile to the con-
stitution and the solidarity of the German population,
that is their predominance, by the establishment of a
Bohemian state, ct la Hungary, has defeated the Liberal
majority of the Reichstag on the test question of the
budget. The majority of the Reichstag had expressed
their lack of confidence in the present ministry in an

Letters. 293

address to the Crown. The Emperor, however, re-
turned their paper of grievance with the gracious
signification of his trust that they would co-operate
with his ministry in restoring the country to a much-
needed tranquillity. The I^ft, which had voted the
address, then resolved to resort to the last means in
the hands of a Parliament which has to deal with a
constitutional sovereign. They resolved to refuse the
public money to this ministry, but on the test vote
they were deserted by a number of their party suf-
ficient to give the Government an easy victory. In the
address they had said A. but had not the courage to
say B, This is a constitutional state with a vengeance.
The blood-hounds of Versailles, who have murdered
more poor, deluded workmen and artisans of Paris —
men who, in the desperation of a sack and storm
where no mercy was given, shot sixty-four hostages
and fired the palaces of their oppressors — than the
guillotine of the old revolution beheaded, are about
to restore the pokey old Bourbon dynasty. France
barters liberty for servile king-worship, as a heathen
sells his child to purchase jewel eyes for some lop-
eared, mahogany idol. Anathema sit I

lyXVII.

The sane courage of philosophic insight; Bacon and
Comte enemies of speculation ; the moral energy of
pantheism; virtue defined; moral responsibility;
eradication of selfishness; nature of mysticism; a
new faith always seems immoral; a French agri-
culturist ; fearless and honest intellectual industry.

Vienna, June 12, 1871,

D^AR Father : — ^Your letter of May 28th, although
accompanied by mother's afiectionate lines, deserves by

294 A Young Scholar.

reason of its more serious character to take precedence
in my reply. I was overjoyed to receive so voluminous
a remembrance fh)m home, after so long a period of
slender notes, — apparent imitations of Caesar's dis-
patches. But then there is no good thing that is
wholly good. I was painfully affected to see how
little you sympathize with those views which appear
to me to be the guaranties for the future of a stronger
and purer manhood in the world.

Your letter contained some thoughtful remarks on
the tendency of highly gifted men to insanity. This
is one of the saddest of the numerous testimonies to
the feverish and unsettled character of our epoch.
Since the religious and intellectual revolutions, or
rather incomplete revolutions and therefore more prop-
erly convulsions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-
ries, the ground has quaked under us as never before.
But could Philosophy have a better title to the respect
of the world than is the fact that she alone has shielded
her sons from harm? Not a name on her immortal
roll is darkened. Poets and religious thinkers have
been blasted by these storms ; — natures whose exquisite
sensibilities lacked the clear order and measured power
of intellectual health, the courage and the heart which
comes of insight.

Bacon was the father of empiricism, which, in its
one-sided consequence, denies philosophy the right of
existence. The world in which he lived and which he
studied was not the divine world of the philosopher,
but a mere mechanism whose points and bars he ex-
amined. No wonder then that he was not filled with
awe and reverence for its laws.

The eccentric Frenchman, Comte, was the arch-
enemy of all si)eculation and all philosophy which he

Letters. 295

could not bring under some rubric of mathematics or
chemistry. Of course he lacked, as all such thinkers
must lack, the first and fundamental principle of moral
wisdom. When materialists and positivists, who are
the same, come to deal with social and religious ques-
tions, they are sure to make a fiasco.

But the serious matter in your letter is your asser-
tion that pantheism must be destitute of all moral
power — 2i mere theory without all truth for the inner
man. A system of thought, you say, adapted to the
wants of our age, must be a powerful reformatory doc-
trine, must make men better, and this you consider
pantheism incapable of doing. We are in this last
opinion a whole heaven apart. To be short, I main-
tain that there is absolutely no other principle of moral-
ity than pantheism, that there is nothing in heaven or
on earth morally good but that recognition of the
identity of interest between all life which we call love,
and which is unthinkable upon any other supposition
than that the interest we take in the world about us is
based on an identity of being. Everything else is but
one form or another of selfishness, and not moral.

The only rational definition of virtue is the disinter-
ested interest an individual takes in others. If you
deny the existence of such a sentiment, then how can
you talk of morality ? There is then no distinction
between good and bad but that of prudent and impru-
dent selfishness. The man who does not steal for fear
of punishment or in hope of being better rewarded for
leaving it alone, and not out of respect and solicitude
for his neighbor's welfare and the general security of
society, is not a moral man ; nor is he who avoids a
life of lewdness for reasons of the same sort, and not
because he is prevented by that profound harmony of

296 A Young Scholar.

the emotiotial and sexual nature which shrinks with an
involuntary aversion from all connections not ennobled
and justij&ed by the devotion of the whole soul in pure
and exclusive love. Such men may be everything else,
they are not moral.

Pantheism you say denies man's responsibility. I
agree with you as to the fact, but with this difiFerence,
that I consider this so-called responsibility of one to
another as a very hollow conception. It serves its
turn till we have a better. If a man is so unfortunate
as to lack feeling for what is right and in the interest
of society, we are obliged to bring motives to bear
upon his conduct which are intelligible to him. He is
to be pitied. His weakness or his contracted nature,
which deprives him of feeling for everything but cer-
tain selfish ends, is his misfortune. Hate, retaliation,
revenge, condemnation, these are all afiFections of the
mind incompatible with that philosophic insight which
comprehends everything in its causes. All evil is a
want, a vacancy, and not properly the object of any
passion. Good alone is positive, a something, and the
object of our esteem. Does a heart that beats with
love for all life, or a spirit full of noble and heroic
purpose, cease to be the wonderful and heavenly thing
it is, because these qualities are directly the fruit of a
propitious birth and education ? What impotence of
the understanding is it which brings so many people
constantly back to this absurd objection to ^11 rational-
ism. **Ah, then a man is not responsible?** What
do they want to do with a poor sinner ?

We must understand that no individual existence is
justified in itself. This sounds Calvinistic, but it is
better, — pantheism. That doctrine, really polytheism,
which makes as many independent beings as there are

Letters. 297

ephemeral men and which puts every creature on a
basis of his own, is the very opposite of piety and
sense. To refer all love to self is as false as that
shallow idealism that denies the existence of the out-
ward world, and transfers it all to the brain and senses
of the observer, as if the observer together with his
brains and senses were not parts of this same outward
world. The mistake in both cases is that that is re-
ferred to self which must be referred to God, For it is
true that everything, as well our perceptions as our
aflFections, must be referred for their reality to the one
absolute ground of being, so that what we see and
what we love in everything is the one divinity.

It is a peculiarity of pantheism that it does not seek
to work morally by holding out enticing motives to
virtue, but by producing in mind and heart a real en-
lightenment and fervor. It is of the essence of moral-
ity, as of pantheism, to direct the attention away from
self, and how can this be done where mere inducements
to being good are presented? Pantheism inculcates
morality in a moral way, or, in philosophical language,
its form and content are identical. All other ethical
doctrines make use of illegitimate and immoral means.
These are necessary in the infancy of moral ideas, as it
is necessary to give a little boy gingerbread to induce
him to learn his letters, but it is expected that the
mature scholar studies for learning's sake.

The soul that has been seized by the truth of pan-
theism must necessarily feel and see the vanity and
nothingness of all selfish aims. He is accustomed to
ascribe all things to the infinite source of life, and how
can he take pleasure in vindicating the glory of his
own performances, which are not his own, to himself
who is but a transient gleam from the central source

298 A Young Scholar.

of all light ? He must feel the deepest kinship with
the wonderful world of souls about him, and no less
with those to be in all time as with those who have
been. How absurd, then, must appear to him, arro-
gance and pride of place, the cruelty of power and
prejudice? And yet how sublime is that pride, or
rather joy, he feels in his wonderful existence, in this
very divine kinship with all being ! Were a radiant
angel from unknown distances to visit our planet, he
would go to greet him with the fearless consciousness
that they carried in their souls the same life. Let
Christians and pagans bend their knee in worship.
My worship is a worship of strength. I do not pray
for the eternal salvation of that which is but a husk of
life, — the form of self.

Every one feels that he is himself, and not another,
and this self is in every one the same identical /. The
difference is in the memory we must say, but as two
things which are just alike are not the same, so we
have no criterion of self. The individual is phenome-
nal. How do we know but that some unknown power
may take away our life every night and substitute an-
other / in its place. We can well imagine that a
memory could be produced in other ways than by ex-
perience, as the instinct of certain animals is innate,
and their brain, as their limbs, takes a mature form
without that exercise necessary to develop body and
mind in man and the higher, more complicated organ-
isms of the animal kingdom. He who grows attached
to self, as the one great consideration in this life, is a
great fool, and, unless he can persuade himself of the
truth of certain Hebrew fables, he may expect that his
death will be the final extinction of all he has learned
to love. But I repeat that pantheism does not wish to

Letters. 299

reform men by inducements of fear or reward, but by
the innate power of enlightenment which its views
carry with them.

You see I am not of a mind to abandon my philo-
sophy as a mere closet theory. Pantheism is revealed
mysticism. The unclear efforts of deeply religious
minds have always been to the denial of self, the glori-
fication of God, and the abstraction from the conditions
of time and place upon which personality depends.
But the lack of the genuine philosophical element of
clear conception entangled them in a net of false ideas,
allegorical figures of speech, extreme views, and con-
tradictory notions. One endeavors in vain to see what
Christ meant by the kingdom of heaven. His prayer
is that this kingdom come on earth, and that God's be
the glory and power forever, — a genuine pantheistical
prayer. In other places he seems to expect this king-
dom hereafter, and in this sense it is that his disciples
and the Christian world have understood him.

But enough for the present of this subject. Read
with care what I have written, and consider if it alone
is not in harmony with the knowledge of our age and
our ideals of moral purity and height. Remember,
too, that every step forward costs a great exertion, and
that a new faith always seems immoral because it is
too moral for the taste of the masses. Remember how
the early Christians seemed to the pagan world to be
the scandalous despisers of all things holy and the dis-
turbers of civil authority, while their feasts of love
gave occasion to the most infamous suspicions and
slanders.

Your high-falutin description of all the forty black-
birds to be baked in my philosophic pie is very
good, only I shall not attempt the gorgeous quite to

300 A Young Scholar.

the degree you suppose. I have still much to learn in
husbanding my power. There is great danger of a
young thinker going out in a brilliant fizz^ for the
temptation to lavish our ideas right and left is great.
Organic rhythm in the edifice of our ideas and fine tena-
cious consistency in all the parts, is preferable to
gaudy ornamentation, — a barbaric splendor of detail.
The Greek temple, not the Indian pagoda, should be
our model.

While I think of it, I must mention a wish of a
friend of mine, a young Frenchman. He is a student
of law, but by inclination and home-associations a
farmer. His wish is to go to America and live a year
in the family of some intelligent and prosperous
western countryman, in order to familiarize himself
with our system of agriculture. He would then have
an opportunity to make a more favorable invest-
ment in land than if he were obliged to buy within a
short time. He has a respectable property in the
south of France which would turn him some seven or
eight thousand dollars. Of course he would take hold
and be of what service he could, but not as a hired
man, as he would expect to pay something for his
board. Do you know a farmer whom you could, re-
commend ? It would (this is my own opinion) be all
the better if there were a daughter in the family who
might like such a match. He is an exceptionally
decent Frenchman, well educated and speaks already
tolerably good English.

It has grown suddenly very warm in Vienna, so that
I do really more reading than hard continuous study,
in order not to lose time. It is my habit to put off
my literary studies till summer. I make no more
verses, but I read other men's with more judgment

Letters. 30 1

and healthy appreciation. I take, too, more interest
in political questions since I begin to see the conse-
quent political tendencies of my own philosophical
principles. These give me a mastery of the situation
at all times that I have not had before. It is my earn-
est endeavor to deserve the sacrifices you make for
me by fearless and honest intellectual industry. We
are both working, I hope, in diflFerent ways for the
same noble end. We are allies. If it is impossible to
support me three years longer in Europe, why then I
shall come home, and make the best use possible of
what I have acquired. I feel the importance of these
years in the preparation for a life of such usefulness as
I would propose for myself; but these great interests
of the race do not hang upon individuals, and in all
cases I could do my part.

This summer I am twenty-two years of age, and I
am still wrestling with the great questions of life, but
already with the certainty of victory. In the past
three years I have made, perhaps, less progress in
knowledge than in power. I was too much absorbed,
but from now on I shall collect with increased rapid-
ity that abundance of knowledge which gives us in
life a formidable ally against the misshapen births of
errdr and ignorance. I wish to start toward the first
of September for Greece. I have money to last till the
first of August. I should like very much to be able to
start with a considerable sum, because it is a little out
of the world down there. Mother will excuse me, after
this long letter, for not answering her in detail.

302 A Young Scholar.

LXVIII.

Voices of a western summer; the harmony of the Greek
development; study of early Christian literature;
little love of the stage,

Vienna, August 8, 1871.

After several days' impatient waiting, I received,
I believe it was last Wednesday, your letter with the
post-mark of June 19th. Harvest time in the country
is certainly a sufficient reason for neglecting every
thing not involving capital consequences. The busi-
est season with you is for me, if not the most vacant
of the year, at least occupied in lightest work. The
severe heat makes it impossible to continue my usual
exertions without serious danger of injuring my
health. I do not suffisr, as you, from the distraction
of a summer luxury of flowers, from the stillness of
mtu'murous woodlands and ripening wheat-fields,
broken by the cooing of wild wood-doves. Such sopo-
rific surroundings make a dreamer of me. I live in
the land of Virgilian idyls. My soul floats in the
golden haze of a Correggian chiaroscuro.

Your letter worked these images of bucolic repose,
but these are only images, for the plaintive murmur
of turtle-doves in the hollow timber or about summer-
colored wheat-fields does not reach me here. The
storm-goaded, broad, shimmering Atlantic welters be-
tween us. What I do hear is the sweet prattle of
school children in the street and the million-voiced
complaint of toil. I<abor, the inevitable lot of man,
the oppressor of every generation, and yet our only
protector ! Kingly labor ! I heard the rector of Ber-
lin University, the famous physician and naturalist.

Letters. 303

Du Bois-Reymond,* recommend work as the tldnker's
compensation for a heaven full of angels, which his
syllogisms or his scalpel had abolished. I do not
share his soulless view of life, but I shall never forget
the grand pathos of those cold, hard words with which
he closed our labors of a year.

You wish to know what I expect to accomplish by
going to Greece besides perfecting my knowledge of
the language. That itself is a major consideration
with me, as you know my intention is to make Greek
a specialty, not only the language, but the entire
cyclus of Hellenic science. The great value of the
remains of Greek civilization for the culture of our
time is to be found in the wonderful harmony in every
department of Greek thought, art, politics, trade,
morals, and manners. This is the only people in his-
tory whose development has been normal. The other
nations of antiquity either swamped, stagnated at an
early period, or were from the first one-sided and con-
tracted, as the Romans. The nations of modem times
are still less able to give us an idea of the normal
development of human society. Our religion is an
Orientalism engrafted on our race. Our art is, since
the Renaissance, a mixture of antique and Christian
elements. The intelligence of the age and its political
institutions are in no way reconcilable. We are in a
transition state, or perhaps our situation may be bet-
ter characterized as dyspeptic. The time will come
when we shall have fully assimilated all these foreign
elements, and then our progress will assume the
same character of logical consequence, which is the

*Ktnil Heinrich Du Bois-Raymond was bom in Berlin in
1818, and at forty became professor of physiology in the Uni-
versity there. He died 28th December, 1896.

304 A Young Scholar.

admiration of the thinker in the annals of Greek
society.

But this is not answering your question. I shall
profit, no doubt, very much by an acquaintance with
a people so peculiar and, in many respects, remarkable
as the modem Greeks. Then I shall be able in Greece
to survey, so to say, from without the edifice of German
thought that which appears to me so grand a mass
from within. I shall study in Greece the New Tes-
tament and early Christian literature with the aid of
the most valuable German investigations in this de-
partment. My views will bring me, no doubt, in
collision with the churchmen of America, and I can-
not afibrd to do without the tremendous weapons
which the philological criticism of our time has
forged against the original documents of Christianity.

But this is of course a minor matter. My Greek
reading will occupy me chiefly. At present I am en-
gaged in voluminous readings of contemporary Ger-
man belles-lettres. A few weeks' work in this field
will be of great value to me, as it will give me the
last finish of a real German's education. Foreigners
read Jean Paul, Goethe, Heine, Uhland; but these
represent the Germany of the past.

Our lectures are out. The semester closes here
earlier than in Germany. The tone of the flute grows
gradually softer and my command of bravura-pas-
sages encouragingly better. Perfection in managing
an instrument that is next in expression to the voice
I find to be an extremely difficult affair. Only the
patience of a German student is equal to the task.
I hope you will not let me wait till the tenth of August
for my remittance. If I get a sufficient amount I may
leave for Greece the middle of next month.

Letters. 305

The notice of Billy's d^but as a clog-dancer was as
flattering as such a performance could well deserve.
It is very well, if brother's ambition is not bounded
on more than one side by the reputation of Tommy
Queen. I have a great curiosity to see sister play,
for instance, the r61e of a sentimental boarding-school
miss desperately in love with a lieutenant of dragoons,
or father in the character of a pottering old house-
tyrant who has to deal with a fast son and indulgent
mother. I think I could play the part of a French
dancing-master about as well. In fact I could never
act in any capacity, and I am certain that this is your
case. Father might carry some r61es, I think, very
finely, but I have my serious doubts as to sister's his-
trionic talents. Billy ought to act comedy to the life,
and in a few years he will be able, perhaps, to person-
ate Romeo with no less naturalness. Without being
an enemy of the stage, I must confess that, of all
forms of art, it is this with which I have least sym-
pathy. My taste is most likely one-sidedly idealistic,
but I never left the theatre in my life other than
hugely disappointed. This letter is tardy and more-
over poorly written. But my intention and love are
always the same.

I.XIX.

To Greece; labor checks the cuMvity of the brain; of
letters in American journalism; Greeley* s apprehen--
' sum of law and pantheism; the Bohemians recalci-
trant; a SabbatVs meditation.

Vdsnna, Aug. 10, 1871.

Dkar Fathkr : — ^As you see, I observe the most
strenuous equity in addressing my letters, that is, I

30

3o6» A Young Scholar.

write to you when I hear from you ; not as if only
such letters were meant for you, but because mother,
who has more time or patience or a greater vocabulary
and writes oftener, writes better when she answers me
directly. I have cashed my exchange and again feel
the ground solid under my feet, which same feet itch
to be on the way to Greece. Now if you understood
I<atin, I should quote you the most beautifiil lines in
the world from Catullus, who once made the same jour-
ney after bidding his companions farewell. I shall not
wait till the first of September, but break up on the
coming twentieth.

How glad I am to hear that you have recovered
health and strength ! Your work is more oppressive
than mine, even if less straining. Labor of the hands
is dulling to the mind and sensibilities. I shall not
forget what a torture farm-work was for me, not because
I lacked strength or will, but because it acted as a check
upon the restless motion of the brain. It was like a freeze
in spring on the ground where a thousand things are
shooting into light. To work well one must be entirely
occupied in the business on hand..

The proposition youjmake,^ to the effect that I should
contribute a series of letters to some American journal,
meets my fullest approval. I have been considering the
matter some time myself. Not to speak of what I
might earn, which, however little, would in our cir-
cumstances be a great consideration, I should profit in
the highest degree by such an exercise of my pen.
The first question is, what to write ! I certainly do
not lack material, but it will require no little art to
select from this for an American public. The usual
subjects for foreign correspondents, descriptions of
places, of people, of monuments of art, incidents of

Letters. 307

travel, etc. — are so well worn that, with my modest
means of hunting up sensations, I should not make
much in this way. It seems to me, as you suggest,
that I had better confine myself more or less to the
inner side of students' life in Europe, and endeavor to
give an idea of the currents of thought and feeling in
the learned world.

Another question is, who will publish such matter ?
I do not feel competent to write upon such subjects for
The Nation, and the Tribune is, I fear, too deeply
bounded by public opinion to allow me the necessary
tether. I have radical views which, it is true, admit
of a moderate statement, but which in any form will
give offense. But this matter I leave to you. By my
next letter I hope to send you a specimen contri-
bution. It is going to be very difficult for me to get
under way. My studies have so estranged me from
the style of thought and exposition required by a writer
for the periodical literature of America.

Yesterday I received mother's letter enclosing
Greeley's address on the occasion of laying the corner-
stone of Buchtel College. I could not help thinking
with what exquisite satire Prof. Prantl, the author of
the first history of I/)gic and the keenest philosophical
critic in Germany, would illustrate this gorgeous ad-
dress. Such a confusion of ideas, such juggling with
nebulous conceptions, and such thick-skinned igno-
rance on such an occasion ! This caucus-metaphysician,
Greeley, says that to his ** apprehension law is the dic-
tate of an intelligent will, or it is nothing." To his
apprehension law is certainly nothing — ^that is, he has
never, even in a dream, had an apprehension of law.
I should be curious to witness a repeal of the laws of
geometry and numbers, which are the laws of mechan-

3o8 A Young Scholar.

ics and chemical affinities. Perhaps this great lobbyist
will undertake to gratify me. But this is not the worst ;
he confounds the conceptions, law and force, so that
gravitation, magnetic-attraction, electricity, etc., -all
appear to him enactments of an intelligent will ! ! The
law of gravitation and the force of gravitation are two
very different things. The first is a simple statement
in mechanics of the geometrical theorem that the super-
ficies varies as the square of the bounding sides ; the
latter, the force of gravitation, is a reality, a fact that
no more admits an explanation than a clump of mud.

What right has he to speak of matter as * * blind ^ inert,
unconsciotis, soulless'' ? Has ever he seen an atom of
such matter ? He denies matter the functions which
all matter has, and then he perorates over the empty
conception of his own imagination. It is not surprising
that a man, so confused in the simplest considerations
of the material world, should be so well acquainted
with its Author. In fact, he speaks of the moral and
other qualities of God like a Methodist, and why not ?
Is not this God of his as much his own work as if he
had carved him out of box- wood ? But it is the privi-
lege of genius and piety ** to give to airy nothing a
local habitation and a name.** Greeley saw the time
when he believed less, but he is another of those little
boats which do not venture on the sea of speculation
too far firom shore. Such men when they g^ow old, as
Prof. Prantl says, ** go home,** that is, they return to
the sheep-fold which they never should have quitted.

But, if Greeley*s conception of materialism is shallow
and confused, his definition of pantheism must be
called maudlin. It is beneath criticism. The pan-
theist*s God is a ** kind of God ** blended and con-
founded with the material universe, ** a resultant of

Letters. 309

forces which he did not create, which he cannot modify,
and of whose very existence he has no r^a/ perception.* '
Does he imagine that any rational creature, not to speak
of a thinker like Spinoza, ever satisfied himself with
such sop for idiots ? Pantheism would be more access-
ible to Greeley if it were in the moon or at the centre
of the earth than in the pages of Spinoza and Hegel.

We are having very interesting times at present in
Austria. The Czechs (Bohemians) persist in refusing
to send their delegation to the national Parliament till
their sub-nationality has received a recognition similar
to that of Hungary. It is expected the Emperor will
be crowned at Prague before the present ministry takes
its hand from the work of conciliation. The Germans
are outraged and talk of the great catastrophe with
very significant emphasis.

You will hear from me again before my departure
from Vienna. I cannot as yet determine the exact
expenses of my trip but I think I shall have money till
the first of October. My friend the Frenchman will
probably come to you in the spring, after making his
examination in Paris as a doctor of law.

(Enclosed in the foregoing letter.)

A Sabbath Meditation,

And after the labor of six days the world, which had
not been, was completed. On the seventh there was
rest, a pause after the creation of stars and flowers and
souls, a pause of divine silence, — the profoundest being
of divinity was realized. Six days which are time, and
the seventh which is beyond time. Beautiful and
thoughtful legend of the labor of the Most High !
How many blossoms of feeling have the poets gathered
for us from the steeps of life, or from wonderful, hid-

3IO A Young Scholar.

den places accessible to the feet of genius ! What glo-
rious insight do we not owe to the inspired meditations
of the wise ? Life we think worthless without this
abundance of music and light, and it is seldom we are
seized by an overpowering sense that the worth of ex-
istence, the significance of being, is something far other
than can be expressed in words, or tones, or touches
even of supremest love ; seldom that the sabbath of
infinite peace enters our hearts, this divine goal to
which all beauty and sorrow and joy and terror of life
alike look ! Man may not look for happiness, nor any
form of happiness, here or hereafter. The infinite
hath no purpose, but saith to all life *' it is good." It
is not forbidden us to labor and to love and to grieve ;
nay, it is of divine necessity that we do, yet God's
Sabbath be with us in the midst of these.

This meditation is to be read with great indulgence,
as regards both style and content. It is the cobweb
of a summer Sunday afternoon.

LXX.

The beauty of the Austrian Tyrol ; enterprise of the

Greeks,

(A Fragment,)

Trieste, Italy, Aug, 25, 1871.

You are so far away it seems almost ridiculous to
try and keep you posted as to my whereabouts while
on the road. When you shall have read these lines I
hope to have been two weeks already in Athens. I
left Vienna rather sooner than I had intended but
when one is tired of a place and as free to move as I,
why should one stay? The region between Vienna
and this city, with the exception of a few miles toward

Letters. 311

the end, is the most beautiful I have ever seen. The
Rhine cannot compare with it. It is known as the
Austrian Tyrol, the Pannonia of the Romans, the high-
way of the armies and wandering peoples whose fortunes
established the nationalities of modem Europe. Every
view of it is worthy the pencil of the greatest master.

Here I am in an Italian city on the Adriatic. What
a change from a German town ! And yet Trieste is
under the influence of a German government. The
harbor swarms with men from all lands, although next
to the Italians the Greeks and Turks seem to be in the
greatest numbers. The modern Greeks are the most
enterprising people in the world. In every harbor city
of Europe they compete with the natives and the Eng-
lish. Greeks do in Europe what other people can do only
in America — make enormous fortunes out of nothing.
The Italians make the impression of a played-out race.
They seem all to be dressed in dirty, old, fine clothes.

We sail on the twenty-seventh, and, just think ! our
voyage will last eight days ! We stop at Ancona,
Brindisi (Italy), Corfu, Syra, and Athens. Forward
my letter to Aunt Sallie if it pleases you.

You will have to wait for my promised contribution.
It is hard for me to make a start.

I.XXI.

Emotions of the scholar upon reaching Athens ; passage
and companions from Trieste ; Corfu ; a night on
the ^gean ; the reality of Athens ; a studenVs mode
of living ; opportunities to gain the modem idiom,

ATHiBNS, Sept. 6, *7i ; old style, Aug. 24.

In a letter on an occasion so momentous to me as
my arrival in Athens, you will no doubt expect to find

312 A Young Scholar.

some echo of those memories or emotions which must
rise on the soul of the scholar who treads for the first
time upon Attic soil. I call them memories for
Athens is not strange to him. But the constitution
of human nature is such that it does not admit of much
concentration in our enjoyments. I have been here
quite four days, but the shadowy hotirs of reverie
which I expect are still to come.

For the present I will describe my passage from
Trieste and my arrival. We had on board a company
of Italian opera singers, some English lords going to
hunt in the Caucasus, and a mob of less degree of all
nationalities and colors. But we may leave these
wandering stars and vacant snobs to the care, the one
party of their director, the other of their chief stand-
by, the bottle-man, for we have the Adriatic before us,
soft and blue as an opal. The fluctuations of its sur-
face are too weak to ruffle. To the right we see the
coast of Italy fade away where so many white sails
stand out against the evening sun. They are all bound
for Venice in whose presence and influence we seem to
be, although the city is below the water line to the west.

Our first sunset, the finest indeed we enjoyed, I shall
never forget. I had not conceived the luxury of color
which the heavens and sea can display. There were
tints of such infinite depth and purity, such tone that
the eye must see them to realize their possibility. The
Arabs on board, who had preserved till evening a dig-
nified silence sitting with crossed legs on their carpets,
rose and looking to the east muttered their prayers,
then bowed themselves to the deck before the great
Allah whom they adore in the highest of many
heavens. It was the most impressive act of worship I
ever witnessed.

\

Letters. 313

Two days of Elysian weather brought us to Corfu.
The breeze upon the sea had made it delightfully cool,
but when I went ashore I was almost scorched. The
city is built on a hill, with narrow streets crowded with
donkeys and sun-burnt venders of ihiit, naked child-
ren, and villainous looking Greeks and Italians. We
left Corfu with a stiff head-wind, and for forty-eight
hours, till we reached Syra in the Grecian Archipelago,
I suffered the nauseous qualms of sea-sickness. Think
of suffering in emetic spasms for two days ! But if
these had been much worse they would have been well
repaid by the magnificent night-passage from Syra to
the Piraeus, the harbor of Athens. The moon was full
and the sea in a splendid agitation, which, strange to
say, did not affect me as usual.

We passed the beautiful islands of the Archipelago
while I stood till far in the small hours of the night
alone at the prow. All hands were turned in, and
only the firemen, who came up at turns to take the
air, and the silent man at the wheel kept watch.
Oh, how the waves danced and the shadows gambolled
and ran over the sea ! How ghostly the islands rose
and sank out of sight ! The silver masses of clouds
melted into the wonderful Ionian heaven or drank
up the floods of moonlight. I thought how thou-
sands of years ago a night like this was broken on
these seas by the dash of ten thousand Persian oars.

I went below at last but could not sleep and at the
first dawn was on deck again. We were rounding
Cape Sunium, the extreme point of Attica. If any-
thing could have heightened the impressions of the
night it would have been this sunrise. Presently
we were at Piraeus, and here the less poetry you bring
with you the better. Such a pack of wolves in human

314 -^ Young^ Scholar.

shape as these boatmen who take you from the steamer
I never saw before. Impudence and audacity com-
bine to rob the stranger at every turn.

From the harbor to Athens is about five miles, so it
was not long till I had the Acropolis in view. Here
I am. The city is hot and dusty. It is little of the
groves of the Academy one sees in the modem capital
of Greece. Even the strongest imagination is op-
pressed by the present reality, in building up that
Athens of another day, when the scattered rocks and
dust of to-day were beautifiil, quiet temples, or splendid
places of resort for the trading, debating, councilling
Athenians of long ago. The Ilissus is dry, and the
mountains about the city, whose names have loaded
so many a verse with the scent of thyme and hum of
the honey-maker, are deprived of their woods and
fertility. Only the everlasting heavens and the blue
Saronic Gulf in the distance still clothe the scene as
when Cecrops settled on the Acropolis. Yet the mod-
em town is not ill. It is clean and for the most part
well built, and displays the greatest activity. The
Greeks are not idle. They possess even public spirit
in an eminent degree, and this gives the place some-
thing of an American air. But another time more
about Greece and the Greeks.

I must tell you now how I am fixed here, or, rather,
in what a fix I am. A fiimished room as in Germany
is not to be had in Athens except under the most
exorbitant conditions. So I was forced to secure an
empty apartment and furnish it at my own expense.
Bed and bedding, towels, table, chairs, wash-stand,
and all the other indispensable requisites have cost
me about forty dollars. I shall sell my things again
when I leave, at not too great a sacrifice as I am told.

Letters. 315

On the whole living is not dearer here than in Ger-
many, and I shall come out with the same money if it
is regularly sent.

Another circumstance is the threatened approach
of cholera to Constantinople and Athens, which would
occasion the flight, especially from here, of every-
thing that can go.

You must have patience with my promised contri-
bution. I have been so harassed since my arrival
here by all manner of cares, that I almost wish. I had
stayed where I was. I am living at the foot of lyyca-
bettus and have from one window a full view of the
Parthenon. I make my own breakfast, which con-
sists of a cup of coffee (I have a machine), a piece of
bread, and a bunch of grapes. Dinner I have in an
eating-house and supper as I feel, when hungry in
the same restaurant, and when not at home.

I have the best opportunities for speaking Greek,
which I do not feil to improve, so that I hope in nine
months' time to have a fluent command of the modem
idiom. The professors of the University are educated
in Germany and, if not exactly such as I have heard
at Berlin and Munich, still of respectable classical
attainments. I have been introduced already to three
of the faculty. There are several very hospitable
American families here, as I understand, but I have
not met any at their houses yet. Do not forget that
it takes a month for letters to reach me. As I have
received no mail since coming here, I begin to grow
uneasy about the fate of my next letter.

Direct to me, Poste Restante^ Athens, Greece.

3 1 6 A Young Scholar.

LXXII.

The hypothesis of the deterioration of species ; the subtle
sympathy of women ; ever-living associations of Attica ;
the poetry of a walk to Eleusis ; social life in Greece
and resemblances to American life,

ATHENS, Sept. 23, 1871.

As my last letter was almost entirely occupied with
an account of my coming to Athens, I think to fill this
with more particulars of my surroundings. It was
quite a month before yotu: letter of August 8th reached
me, being forwarded from Vienna to my address here
with an extra charge of postage to the amount of one
firanc. The expense of letter-writing from and to
Greece is very great. Be careful to secure the thinnest
paper and to write fine, tmless you suffer fi-om a
superabundance of stamps.

I have read many hostile criticisms of Darwinism,
but never anything so glaringly exposed the writer's
ignorance of the theory he had undertaken to combat

as the paper you sent me. That G should attempt

to construe a deterioration of species on the hypothesis
of Darwin, is only more pitiable than ludicrous. A
deterioration indeed could obtain, where the conditions
of life were so modified as to deprive the nobler organ-
ism of the means of existence. The dilemma in this
case, however, is deterioration or extinction. The

style of G 's remarks, too, is vulgar and unworthy

a subject which, as he himself confesses, is occupying
the best intellects of the world. To what purpose in
such a case, are the frivolous and unconsidered object-
ions which he makes ? Mrs. C 's affectionate re-
membrances of me give me the liveliest pleasure. She
is a woman of beautiful ideals, and no intellectual limit-

Letters. 3 1 7

ation can deprive these delicate instincts of their value.
What a difference between yourself and her ! There
is something Titanic at the heart of you, something of
measureless power and jagged splendor. Such a wo-
man could be the soul of a tremendous conspiracy in
which the heroic remnants of manhood gathered to
make a last stand against a universe of wrong. Nat-
ures such as hers shed calm through the stormiest
spirits; they will preserve hope like an ark through
troubled oceans.

Perhaps no woman is capable of a philosophy, that
is, of squaring a whole life to the rule of impersonal
reason, but there are women for every philosophy of
life, natures which resound clearest to the touch of each
particular master-thought. The value to the thinker
of this subtle sympathy is immeasurable. It is through
this that womanhood, whose other claims the scholar
may evict, re-establishes her right of participation in
our lives. What a digression !

You asked for particulars of life here, and it was my
intention to give them you. How shall I modify the
judgment, or rather sentence, passed upon Athens in
my last letter so as to do justice to what I have since
seen and, at the same time, not appear a hasty and su-
perficial critic ? The peculiarities of the climate must
excuse me, and the fact that I had not visited when I
wrote the best points of view. The remains of the
ancient city are not numerous, but of extreme interest,
and, in part, still of exquisite beauty. To me the
points of association are almost more attractive than
the ruins, but to appreciate even these in the way they
deserve requires much study and the affectionate brood-
ing of a cultured imagination.

The plain of Attica with its dear air, picturesque

3i8 A Young Scholar.

mountains, and sky of such ethereal tones as if bom
of the ecstatic eye of Claude I^orraine, girt by the blue
gulf and strait of Salamis, with bold islands in the
distance, satisfies the greatest expectations of what
should be the seat and cradle of ancient genius, the
birth-place, of scienGe,'and favorite haunt of song. I
have been over the Acropolis amidst the shattered mag-
nificence of the Parthenon. I have seen the exquisite,
tender tracery of the ruined Erechtheiiim, fluted column
and capital, frieze and mighty architrave, sculptured
metope, polishediwall and floor, the graceful strength of
supporting 'Oaryatideis, the mournftd traces of vanished
glories which' Polygnbtos's pencil left in the pinako-
thekb,' or: the spot where the great bronze Athene of
Phidias 'sfood with shield and lance. I have* sat in the
seat of the priest of Dionysius in the great theatre
sacred to this god, where the dramas of Sophocles were
played before thirty thousand spectators. I have been
in the prison where Socrates drank the hemlock of
envious Athenians and frightened bigots. It is now a
filthy chamber in the solid rock of a hill. Near it,
too, are the stone steps and platform firom which De-
mosthenes harangued his assembled fellow-citizens.
Here is the hill of Mars where the ancient court of
Athens sat, and where Paul warned the degenerate
sons of Marathon* s heroes that a new light had come
into the world. Olive trees still shade the site of
Plato's Academy.

I Uve in the grounds of the old Cynosarges where
Antisthenes, the first cynic philosopher, taught the
vanity of life and the meanness of man. Not far from
here was the I^yceum of Aristotle. There are a hun-
dred other places of interest and hallowed memory in
the compass of a twenty minutes' walk.

Letters. 319

The other day a friend and I went to Eleusis, the
old seat of the Mysteries. It was a walk like the road
to heaven. We took the cars (the only ones in Greece)
to Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, about five miles dis-
tant. From there we then went afoot along the coast.
We threw stones into the gulf of Salamis where the
Persians were mustered in that glorious day against
the little navy of Greece. It is where they were de-
feated by Themistocles, whose tomb looks over these
waters. What a long rest after such a day ! I found
the spot where, in my opinion, Xerxes must have sat
to behold the fight. We went on, and, as a shower
came up, we hid ourselves in a cave directly opposite
the ancient city of Salamis, from which old Telamon
sent his son, Ajax, to Troy. No doubt the ** lubberly
Ajax,'* as Thersites in Shakespeare calls him, has
rested in the same shelter.

But how shall I describe the Thriasian plain — the
plain of Eleusis — where Ceres first planted grain for the
use of man ? It is best not to attempt it. We stopped
at a shepherd's lodge at noon, where a half dozen
great, dirty figures in goat-skins, resembling the satyrs
that followed Pan, received us and treated us to fish
and bread and honey. They would not take money,
but exercised hospitality as a virtue. ' At Elefusis we
had coffee and after resting looked up the ruins of the
great temple, the largest in Greece. But little remains
of this work, built by the architect of the Parthenon,
Ictinos, and representing a new principle in the con-
struction of Grecian sacred buildings. It was two
hundred feet square, enclosed on three sides by un-
broken massive walls, with a portico on the fourth.
The columns, four magnificent rows, traversed the
interior as in the order of a Gothic cathedral. It was

320 A Youngs Scholar.

hypaethral, or open to the sky in the centre. The
famous Mysteries of the "great goddesses/' Demeter
and Persephone, were celebrated in this temple, to
which a solemn procession from Athens yearly came
over the sacred way through the pass of Daphne, by
which we returned. We had made a march of twenty-
five miles and, notwithstanding what we had seen and
enjoyed, were glad to rest at home. So much about
my tramp.

I^ife in Athens resembles American life very much ;
much more than life in the German cities does. The
people are very fond of social parties, a thing which
in Germany has given way to the attractions of the
beer-houses, concert-halls, etc. Especially the men
in Germany seek their amusement together in clubs
and knots of old companionship, where they play
cards, or talk politics or science, as they are of one
class or the other. Beer, however, never fails. The
women are left pretty much to shift for themselves.
But here we have the American style of parties. They
are, it must be confessed, infinitely more insipid than
a German kneipe,

I have several introductions which I occasionally
make use of to hear Greek and practice my tongue.
If we call after dinner, we are served with coffee, a
very sweet, black decoction in small cups with the
grounds, which the Greeks have learned of the Turks
to make. A Greek has the greater part of the virtues
of an American ; he is strictly religious — ^in fact, a per-
fect ass in everything that concerns his church. He is
very patriotic, public-spirited, disinclined to aristoc-
racy, always dissatisfied with the men in power, and
he is less truthful, and is more an Oriental than
Occidental in his estimation and treatment of women.

Letters. 321

On the other hand he is, perhaps, more natural— that
is, less artificial in his life and sentiments.

Since I wrote you last I have recast and rewritten
my promised contribution. You will begin to believe
I don't intend to send it, but you will be wrong. The
first article is the difficult one, for it must preface the
series and explain as well as introduce what I intend
to write. We are living here in fear of cholera, which
is reported to be in Constantinople. The last time the
Greek government kept it off, and it is hoped the same
strict quarantine will have the same result this time.

Write to me in care of American Consul.

I^XXIII.
Concerning news of his sister's death.

ATHENS, Oct., 1871.

Dear Father : — I have just received mother's letters
of September 15th, and your note with draft of same
date. My heart is too full and my eyes too fiill to
write more than these words. This is the first grief I
ever felt. I have been two hoiurs reading mother's
letter, and it seemed all so unreal, a nightmare of the
soul. I will not recall your agony in mine. Heaven
knows I did not think I cared enough for life to be
shaken so to the depths of the soul. Oh, love ! it is
more cruel than hate ! My sorrow is too firesh to write,
but I must not let the only mail that goes for a week
start without these lines. Do you let mother know I
have gotten her news. She did not tell me how Abby
died nor when. This is the first letter I have had
firom home for five weeks. My soul had presentiments
of evil. My own health is good. I shall write soon.
Good-by, dear father.

21

322 A Young Scholar.

I.XXIV.

Grief at the loss of his sister; piety the sense of oneness
with an almighty existence ; sacrifice the less to the
greater ; the pen of a scholar in a newspaper article ;
loving remembrance of kindred.

Ah me ! for every bosom-nestling joy
Behold some sudden doom far in llie sky.

B. C. s., 1868.

ATHENS, Oct. 25, 1871.

Dear, dear Mother !

But see ! A half hour has fled since I have written
these words. My soul has been out with the rays of my
lamp in the storm that is beating upon the Acropolis.
How it welters and thunders in the great heavens
which for months have been seamed with purple
mornings, glorified by Elysian days, and which have
encompassed in their sacred infinity the choral move-
ments of the mighty stars. Where in the heavens or
earth is the memory of their summer felicity ?

Two weeks have sped since that fatal messenger
came, — came and whispered to my heart the great
sorrow. It was but a whisper, or voiceless touch of
speech ; no heart-rending images of death ; no kindred
lamentation ; no farewell ; no last kiss and agony ; an
awful whisper to me alone, far off, desolate. Oh,
mother, I was stunned, suffocated, speechless. My
heart burned ; the whole world grew hollow about
me ; grief seized hold of me as I have never felt its
agony before. Tears, when they came, were my relief.
But tears alone, without a bosom of sympathy to shed
them on, fall like fire. The dark hour passed only to
come in surges at intervals of memory, with the bitter
thought which my soul can scarcely realize.

Letters. 323

You do not know how in these last years the images
of home have grown dear to me. They have grown
with my culture to build a balance of personal interest
to poise the great interests of science and history. I
need this natural love far more than other men, be-
cause it is all I have dedicated to myself in life. But
even this is not left me ; its rose, its jewel has been
taken away.

But it is wrong for me thus to renew grief in you.
In time, from a mist of tears, my higher self rises
above the troubled waters where I was plunged. It is
not this life, which exults and despairs with the natural
pulses of the heart, I would abolish, but it is the higher
life I would cherish in which, although we grieve, yet
we view ourselves with divine equanimity as another.
There is a calm within the storm — a retreat for the
inmost soul, in which God*s insight abides, and that
comfort which is without name or likeness. Let us
then dry our tears and, coming closer to fill up the
vacant place, say that sister, once the beautiful gift of
God moving among us, shall be henceforth the sweet
genius of our hearth, a sacrament of love between us,
a spirit ever present where two of us shall meet.

If my thoughts could serve to deaden in you the too
quick sense of grief, I would they were well said, but
pantheism cannot serve as a mere shelter against mis-
fortune to which one may fly as to the false hopes of
idle creeds. It requires that we make it our daily con-
versation ; that we exercise piety, which is self-forget-
fulness, not the presumption of our own immortality,
which is foolishness. But it is piety in which we are
all wanting, that selflessness which is all tenderness
and unfeigned love ; which, although given to the
creature, yet rests not in him, the single manifestation,

324 A Young Scholar.

but in its divine source. It is the ever present sense of
how we are carried and sustained in the arms of an
Almighty existence, how we are of, and one with, this
being whose law is love, that is, whose whole mys-
terious being is solved in our absolute selfless devotion.

You say that I must come home this year. I^t it be
as you wish. I have learned to put such an estimate
upon things as will sacrifice the less thing to the
greater ; for what other object can I have in aspiring
to the widest culture than to do well for those I love ?
and if this cannot be without their pain, why should it
be at all ? I do not know what poor father will do.
Our whole future looks dark to me, and I should only
like to have in my culture such an instrument as would
maintain us more easily. Much depends on the two
years I expected to stay here— just that addition which
would lift me beyond a great deal of that competition
in the world of letters which makes a scholar's bread
so sour. But I say these are all considerations which
you shall dispose of as you think you must. A thou-
sand dollars would bring you to Europe, keep you a
year with me, and take you home again.

Previous letters will give you an idea of my situation
here. There are many incidents of interest, but not
for this letter, which is too full of sad philosophy.

I sent father my promised contribution, but it is an
odd piece of writing and, I fear, will find no publisher.
How hard it is for me, whose education has been a de-
parting from the ways of thinking that make a popular
writer, to pen a newspaper article. The immense seri-
ousness of my style will not be frightened away by an
effort to be light and graceful. Practice in writing
must help me, however, to put my ideas in a more
gainly dress.

Letters. 325

A spell of bad weather has set in, but it will not last
long. Our winters here are green and mild, every one
says, so that fires are dispensed with pretty generally.
My health is good, but I have a care not to take cold,
as the ague is pretty sure to result from it. My friend
has been shaking off and on all summer and fall.

I must refer once more before closing, to the sad sub-
ject which fills this letter. Why did you not tell me
how and when sister passed away ? You give me no
account, but said it was a sudden and not painful death.
My flute, that I learned in order to play with Abby,
lies untouched. I cannot endure to take it up, but I
shall not let it be forgotten. Kiss brother for me. Oh,
we are all desolate. When I think that I have no sis-
ter I feel poor, almost ashamed among men, for how I
had gloried in this treasure of my home !

The dear old folks, Aunt I^etty and Linny, Uncle
Henry and all those far and near whom you will see, if
they have not forgotten me, will care perhaps for my
love and remembrance. Henry's little boys are not
forgotten, Charley and Grant. Most of all I think of
poor father, how he must be lonesome and heart-sore
in his struggle with the world. My first wish is to take
it from his hands on to younger shoulders. Write me
a long letter and speak your heart freely, after consid-
ering everything. Your wish is sacred to me.

It is far in the night. Once more the stars look out
on the great Acropolis, and light up with a spiritual
gleam that ghostly wreck of beauty, the Parthenon.
Till I write again, good-by.

326 A Young Scholar.

lyXXV.

The resolution of grief ; the difficulty of poverty of spirit ;
adayat^gina; modem Athenians ; American mis-
sionaries ; early Christian writings; the King of
Greece ; a consideration of the value of further study,

Athens, Nov. loth, 1871.

Over a week ago I thought I had gathered strength
to write to you, not as from the shadows of desolation
where the soul is alone with her loss, but from where
the spirit, turning once more lightward, feels again in
the divine presence. I was alone among the moun-
tains, in the shadow of temple-ruins, and rocked upon
the jewel-waters of the sea to the plaintive strains of
brown-throated oarsmen, and I repeated in the twilight
of the stars that wax not old, the lamentations of ages
which were in the infancy of man, till the night of despair
which had closed over me was rolled away, and the
grief which seemed only mine was mingled with all
solemn and eternal things. We all seek consolation
according to the constitution of each.

How bitterly in your letter of October 5th you speak
of the world and fate ! Swinburne says, ** There is no
help, for all these things are so, and all the world is
bitter as a tear.*' But in the eyes of piety the world is
other, and these words are blasphemy, even worse than
that cowardly system which men call religion, and
by which they endeavor to solve the great problem
of life without giving up self, as divine necessity re-:
quires. Nay, they rather trust to the operations of
magic, for such are all their sacraments and ceremonies,
to rescue them entirely from death.* There are tears

*In the sacramentarian theory saving-grace is tied to the
performance of ecclesiastical rites, without which there is no

Letters. 327

enough, and unfulfilled desires enough, one would
think, in every life to teach us all the wisdom of self-
limitation ; but that poverty of spirit, which is the
wealth of the soul, is difficult to attain.

Let me write of other things, for somehow I am only
cheerful with strai^gers, and all love makes me serious,
so that my letters home rather resemble sermons than
letters. My friend and I went to^Egina together a
couple of weeks ago. The island lies about twelve
miles off the harbor of Athens in fair view. Once it
was an independent state with half a million inhabi-
tants, with depots and colonies in Egypt and Italy and
Gaul and a navy which commanded the seas. Now a
few goats and vineyards on the old terraces occupy
iEgina.

The immediate object of our visit was the ruin of the
old Athena temple on its northeastern angle. We landed
from our little boat near the foot of the mountain from
the summit of which the far-shining columns look over
the blue Saronic Gulf. On our way up we were
greeted by laborers in the fields with a **Well met,'*
or ** Good hour,'* and one old man held up his water-
jug, a double-handled amphora of antique pattern, and
called to us to come and drink. Even the robbers of
Greece, it is said, are hospitable and never harm the
stranger who comes to them as a guest. On our return
we had a propitious breeze which rested our oarsmen.

promise of salvation. St. Augustine of Hippo was so charitable
as to conjecture that there was a painless, changeless limbo in
which the souls of infants who died unbaptized remained for-
ever, but for unbaptized sinners there was never any rest.
The Greek Church, in the presence of which this letter was
written, no less than the Latin Church, lays fundamental stress
on sacraments.

328 'A Young Scholar.

We had taken our dinner along, fish baked in olive oil,
goats' cheese, grapes and bread, and for the boatmen a
quart of resinous wine — that is, wine preserved by a
strong admixture of turpentine, much used by Greeks
of all ranks, and said to be very healthful ; — ^but I tasted
only the turpentine in it. The day was delightful and
not soon to be forgotten by either of us.

The modem Greeks have, in my opinion, scarcely
any resemblance to the ancient Hellenes, but they are
an original and gifted race notwithstanding. They
are envious and busy-bodies, as are the people of all
small states. They are naturally vain-glorious, and
double-faced in dealing with foreigners, as is natural
for a people which has had to do with Orientals on the
one hand and English on the other; but they are
patriotic, brave, public-spirited, generous, true to their
friends and curious to learn. They have no manners,
but stare at a stranger in a most provoking manner,
but without the intention to offend. The costumes of
the peasants are very picturesque, and the people them-
selves the handsomest I have ever seen. The young
men have a port like angels, and walk with such a
bounding elasticity that they seem rather to glide than
go. The women of the same class have often a grace
and fineness which elsewhere one sees only among the
educated and refined.

My good friend and I have attended worship several
times at the houses of American missionaries. They
are Greeks by birth, all three of them, with American
wives and education. Of course they preach in Greek
and to a little circle of simple-hearted, good people
whom they have attracted to them from the great na-
tional Orthodox Church. Their meetings are held in
the houses of the respective pastors and call to mind

\

Letters. 329

the early churches of Corinth and elsewhere, which
held service in the houses of the wealthier brethren.
Then the language is almost the identical dialect of the
early Christians, which could almost persuade one that
we are in the presence of such an assembly. But
since Paul preached here the church seems to have lost
in talented foremen, although the heathen are certainly
less numerous. Here and there one sees a Turk with
his jaunty fez and bag-trousers, and then such heathen
as we from the universities of Germany bring a slight
reinforcement to their dwindled ranks.

I hear a lecture on ecclesiastical history five times a
week, and am reading up the great German work of
Neander on the same subject. Besides, I am making
studies in the Greek fathers, and sifting the documents
which vouch for the New Testament writings. I wish
I could give the great mass of honest but deluded
Christians of America a glimpse into the character of
the early church, such as it really was, and not as the
mythologizing traditions of the later church make it
appear. It would astonish many a good man to hear
that we have not of a certainty a single word written
by any man who even saw Christ, and that the practice
of forging writings under the names of famous person-
ages was at that time in the Christian and heathen
world so universal that no credit is given by scholars
to the accredited authorship of a work till other evidence
establishes it. But to be able to weigh impartially the
evidence for and against Christianity, one must have
acquired the historical sense (it is almost a sixth sense)
that is, an insight into the processes of historic devel-
opment of nations and civilizations. No one is more
convinced than I of the necessity of a religion, that is,
a view of man* s relation to the divinity which binds him

330 A Young Scholar.

over to give up his subjectivity, namely, his individual
will, to the great ends of the whole. But there are many
religions better and worse, and among these Christ-
ianity occupies the first historic place, more due, no
doubt, to the fact that Indo-European races embraced it,
than to its intrinsic superiority to Buddhism ; but it is
antiquated for the enlightened consciousness of our age,
which has outgrown religion of a mythological, super-
natural character. I speak of course not of the masses
whose tendencies are still very greatly to fetishism and
idolatry, but of the really cultivated.

It begins to get a little cool in Athens, but not so
much as to make a fire even comfortable. The Na-
tional Assembly has opened with a ministerial crisis.
Questions of considerable interest are on the tapis for
this session. The King is not loved and, as it appears
to me, does not deserve to be. He takes no interest or
pride in Greece as Greece, but merely as the little stage
where he can lord it for his hour. He reads French
novels, such as Paul de Kock's, and, as his enemies
assert, does not know who built the Parthenon. His
mother, queen of Denmark, is here on a visit.

Now about my coming home. You know that I
shall not murmur to do what you require, but I only
beg of you to take a second thought, and not do what
you will repent. The loss to me of the two years
which I exi)ected to spend in Italy and France will be
felt as long as I live. All my work heretofore has been
arranged with a view to spending this time in Europe.
Besides it would be a far greater relief to you to come
next summer to me in Italy and spend a year with me
abroad, than simply to have me come home with my
work half done. As to coming back to Europe to
study, that is out of the question, I shall require to

Letters. 331

go to work and carve me out a place in the world and
a home for us all. If I have no friends to help us at
this critical time for my future, I shall not consider
that I have any friends at all. You must either come
to me, or I go to you. As to which of these courses is
the wiser, there can be no question. The only ques-
tion is, where is a thousand dollars to come from ?
There are a good many thousand dollars for me in the
two years which I wish to stay here, and it is my wish
and has always been to have you come to Europe. I
shall feel like a stranger in the lands of my education
till I see you here. Father no doubt, if he retains his
health, can support me here for this time, and it can-
not escape his clearer understanding in such matters,
how necessary a superior education will be to me with
my character and views, but I cannot expect that he
can aflFord to send you. I wish to undertake this my-
self, and to do it, I am willing to pledge my earnings
on my return for any time. It is necessary for me as a
man to consider, besides the tender impulses of family
affection, the substantial interests of the future, with-
out which no family life is shielded from the grinding
pressure of the world. How gladly I would fly to your
bosom now, without a moment's delay, were not these
at stake ! But again, I submit my will to yours in this
matter, and promise you that whatever happens, I shall
accept the situation cheerftiUy to make the best of it
for us all. But I beg that I be not called away from
Greece before next April. You must take heart, and
let your love for me, which is returned as no son ever
loved a mother, comfort you. I shall live for you and
for father, the object of our common love, with all my
heart and soul. When I do return I shall come to you
like your own youth again. It is for this that I have

332 A Young Scholar.

withstood every temptation and grappled with every
difficulty that I thought might conceal treasures for
my life, that I might be worthy one day to return to
your bosom as pure in body and soul as when I nestled
there as at the fountain of my life. These are words
of love not for the ears of any, save father if you wish.

lyXXVI.

The pain of interrupted studies ; the real priests of

truth,

ATHENS, Dec. 9, 1871.

Before the post leaves to-day, I shall try and finish
these lines for the mail, the last, most probably, you
will receive from me in Europe. I expected by yester-
day' s steamer money and marching orders, but as they
did not arrive, the next weekly packet must bring
them. The letters which I have written home since
receiving the news of our bitter loss, were intended to
avert this catastrophe in my studies, but they were not
received in time and it is questionable if they would
have helped had they been read.

I desire in this letter to state things just as they
appear to me, for on my return I am resolved to let no
murmur nor shadow of discontent weaken my eflForts in
fulfilling the sacred duty of consolation. Had I not
arranged my studies firom the very beginning with a
view to a residence of six years abroad, I should have
accomplished more, or rather I should have concluded
more. I studied for culture, not for a profession ; but
I hoped, in taking so liberal a school-time, to embrace
in this culture the exact knowledge of a profession,
and I should certainly have succeeded.

What can I do now ? To take a little professorship

Letters. 333

in some sectarian college would cost me, I fear, my life
in a short time. Politics are off on one side, so that I
see no other field open but that of journalism. With
a year's practice in the art of writing for the American
public, perhaps I can attain such control of my pen as
will support me in Europe for the remainder of my
desired stay. How can I abjure my thirst for a com-
manding culture, a standpoint over my times, and an
insight into the remotest history of my race ? With-
out the bonds of blood which attach me to America I
should spend this little life of mine in the cities of
Europe, in the atmosphere of the universities and mu-
seums, in the society of kindred spirits. How few the
wants of such a life, yet how immeasurable its interests
and desires !

As to the usefulness of such an existence, we need
only to reflect that those who cherish the sacred flame
of knowledge are not less indispensable to the world
than those who propagate its light in dark places.
These, the real priests of truth, make less stir among
the multitude than the heralds of her worship who call
to sacrifice through the market-places. They remain
in the temple's adytum to receive the inspirations of
the divinity. But the claims upon one are such that I
cannot follow the natural bent of my soul. It is un-
just to charge such a disposition with selfishness, love
of pleasure, etc. What do others do? They make
money and seek social position and enjoy, as may be
in their power, the luxuries of life. Does it become
such to abuse as an egoist the poor ascetic student,
whose claims upon the world are so few, and whose
sympathy with all that is great and good in it is so
deep ? The vanity of g^eat possession and the show
of this world are beginning to be felt by the deepest

334 -^ Vaung" Scholar.

spirits of our own time, as once before in the histoiy
of the race.

But enough of this. In case my money comes all
right, I may be at grand&ther's a week after you re-
ceive this.

LXXVII.

Mountain robbers in Greece ; death a liberator ; revised
plans for the future ; dread of American noise and
tyranny of public opinion,

ATHENS, Dec. 23, 1871.

This morning I received your first letter from Ohio,
full of a mother's inconsolable sorrow, which was far
more eloquent in the broken, incoherent sentences of
mental agitation and distraction, than in the language
of grief it spoke. If what you say is true, that by
reason of a two weeks' delay in the mails, I shall not
likely receive my exchange before the first of Decem-
ber, it being now the twenty-third, the letter must be
lost, as the letter of August twenty-eighth announcing
sister's death never came to my sight.

I shall undertake a trip through the Peloponnesus
which will occupy between two and three weeks. It
is a matter of too great interest to me to let an op-
portunity so rare pass unemployed. I have been to
Thebes since I wrote to you last, but I will spare all
descriptions for fire-side talk, seeing my return is so
near at hand, and a map of Greece perhaps not in all
Island Creek.* Only this I must not forget to men-
tion, that in the Peloponnesus there are no robbers,
such as those whose depredations in the north of

* The early home of bis parents and his birthplace, where at
this time bis mother was visiting.

Letters. 335

Greece are so terrible. At present the government
forbids strangers to leave Athens in any direction for
the provinces except by sea, as within the last few days
a famous chief with numerous banditti is known to be
in the vicinity.

How sad I am to hear that you are suffering from a
complaint of whose vicious nature I have always had
an idea, I know not whence or with what good reason.
Spare yourself everything, for you do not know how
unjustly you despair of life, seeing how dear you are
to us all and before all to me. Sister is dead, but when
you bore her you knew you bore a mortal. It is well
with her. With us, although all is not well, yet life
has of everything it ever had, of love and hope and
duty, but above all, of love. Among the many com-
forters too, death is not the least, for it cures our aches,
pays all our debts, releases from every wearisome obli-
gation. The thought of death is a part of life, and for
me it comes in still, sad hours with a power of release,
and I bow my head full of cares and wearisome desires,
partaking in advance of the great liberation.

I shall return to America, but to what good end is
hard to see, save the little service and.comfort I shall
be to you. I/ife in America will be intolerable to
me. I know it from what I feel in coming in contact
with Americans here, from American journals and my
own recollections. My own ideas and character require
years yet of formative labor and experience. The
hunger in my soul for knowledge, contact with the life
and spirit of all ages and climes, the restlessness of my
nature — such a subtile mixture of sensuous impressi-
bility and bald intellectuality — will never let me settle
into the grooves of a Philistine existence, as one must
do who will live with conventional order and propriety.

336 A Young Scholar.

Foreseeing this in my own character, I shall keep far
from all manner of connections which bind a man to
regulate his life by the necessities of others. It is a
sin for a man with my disposition to involve himself in
any way that can hamper the growth of his own soul.
But there are relations not of our own making, such as
my duty to you, and in the fulfilment of this I shall
seek a dispensation from all others.

All this you will see only means that I return to
America with the idea of returning to Europe, and the
next time not for a year or so, but possibly for all my
life. My first care is to make my pen support me, and
to this end I am determined to devote my energies
henceforth. My education will be broken off but not
finally given up. For a life which is not all culture
seems to me, by so much as it is not, lost. My home
is in the centres of the world*s intellectual life : Berlin,
Paris, Florence, Munich, London, and among the
storied lands of history. As much as is possible, I
wish you to partake of this with me.

Do not imagine I shall be lost to the world because
I shall be lost to the noise and fuss of life in America.
I hate the tyranny of such an existence, the despotism
of public opinion ; but of all these things I hope soon
to speak with you. Do not lose hope of seeing me.
The journey is not a matter of solicitude to me. Father*s
election * rejoices me very greatly, as it will be the occa-
sion of withdrawing his mind from his many troubles.
Poor soul ! I do not know why, but a profound pity has
seized me for him. May his hopefulness endure him
through life ! Aunt Sallie wrote me a kind letter ad-
vising me to read Paul. Dear soul ! she has no idea

* He was chosen the preceding autumn to a representative's
seat in the Kansas legislature.

Letters. 337

how many of those epistles are spurious, and less idea
how little weight I can attach to even such as are not.
My health is good, but I fear the eflFects of anxiety upon
it. Our winter is very mild. You will not answer this
letter in case money has been sent me ta come home.

I^XXVIII.

A modicum of hope and courage ; constitutional govern^
ment in Greece; renewal of mirades,

ATHENS, Greece, Feb. 3rd, 1872.

Such weighty matters of western politics no doubt
will have engaged you this winter that you do not
greatly miss the scanty spiritual refreshment afforded
by my letters. Notwithstanding, I should have writ-
ten oftener if the uncertainty of your movements and
my expectation of starting home after every mail-day,
had not hindered. This anxiety has not only hindered
me in my correspondence, but no less in my studies.

I have suffered very much this winter in spirit. The
world never looked quite so hard and bitter to me.
You know my modicum of hope and personal courage
is very small. Where others gird themselves more
firmly for the contest which threatens to overwhelm,
I take refuge in the spirit of sacrifice. I am always
ready to put the mark of my ambition a notch lower.
** Anything for peace of mind ** is a cowardly motto
no doubt, but one which nature has stamped upon
every fold of my character. Last fall I was averse to
giving up my work in Europe, because all my fiiture
seemed to hang upon it. Now I have only one desire,
that is to go home. I have once given up my plans
for the immediate fiiture, and now the ground bums

aa

338 A Young Scholar.

under my feet. When I get home and have gath-
ered myself up I shall see what is still open for me to
do, and shall take hold.

I would I had a taste for politics. My taste for
letters I fear is far beyond my capacity of execution.
The only thing for which I seem eminently fitted is to
enjoy the works of other men and the still more admir-
able works which God has not made through the hands
of men. But this is a confession which perhaps all the
world would make.

Mother's letters of Christmas and January ist reached
me in company yesterday. She expected to be with
you by the first of February. How I long to greet
you both once more face to face. It seems all my mel-
ancholy must flee when once more under the pater-
nal roof. It is not good for a youth to be deprived for
so many years of the fostering love of home. It is the
milk upon which the spirit of man grows ripe and
strong and cheerful. The comprehension of the world
and history which I have acquired in these four years
of absence, I should never have attained at home.
But men grow fat on fallacies, while truth is hard of
digestion.

I wonder if the same unclear spirits of jealousy and
lust of gain, petty ambitions and demagogism, control
the councils of Kansas as make constitutional gov-
ernment in Greece a painful farce. It is a wretched
state of things where a people is too much alive to
submit to an autocrat and too corrupt to govern them-
selves ; but this is the state of Greece. There is a
general feeling that the brigands in the mountains are
the best blood of the nation ; men with the courage to
put into practice on a heroic scale the principles upon
which they see every one live.

Letters. 339

The theory of Greek politics is simple. There are
no parties with diflFerent political, economical, or social
theories, as elsewhere, but there are some half dozen
party leaders — men who have succeeded in attaching
to their persons a mob of hungry advocates and half-
educated or unsuccessful members of other professions
— whose ambition it is to fill a place in the civil service
of the state. There are accordingly about six candi-
dates for every position whose only chance of success
depends upon the unscrupulousness with which they
serve their party head in his efforts to balk the govern-
ment. Nothing is left untried. Things come to a
crisis when a ministry is no longer able to administer,
the government being impeded on every side and hav-
ing to do with a thoroughly unmanageable legislature.
A change of ministries is tried ; the bear becomes bull^
and as Premier assumes the defensive in the identical
position from which he has just driven his antagonist.
But as there are some five bears to one bull all the
time it is impossible for any government to maintain
itself. There have been three ministries since I have
been in Athens. You may imagine what becomes of
the civil service in such a state of things and will not
find it at all remarkable that a half dozen brigands
can terrify all Attica up to the very gates of the
Capital.

You may ask, where are the great masses interested
only in good government? They are incapable of
conceiving the possibility of an honest administration.
Men learn by experience, but this unfortunate people
has had no such experience as that of an honest ruler ;
yet instead of schools, social refinement, and good gov-
ernment, the I/>rd has continued to them since the days
of the Apostles his miraculous presence. Signs and

340 A Young Scholar.

wonders still encourage the saints. Protestant Chris-
tians are blessed with such measures of faith that it is
enough for them to have heard about some wonderful
things to believe them ; but the simpler children of
the Church, whose gifts are not so great, require their
renewal and this of course is not withheld. Relig-
ious liberty is a glorious thing to decorate the para-
graphs of the constitution. In practice, however, it
does n' t seem to succeed. American tolerance resembles
that child's appetite who could eat anything made of
sugar.

Enough of such matter. When you receive this I
hope you will have already sent my last draft whose
paper wings are to carry me home. The journey is long
and expensive, but it promises to put an end to my
anxiety and to your pains.

If mother is not with you, send her this letter with-
out delay.

I,XXIX.

Joy in returning ; a royal baptism; modem Greek reli-
giousness ; the Turkish problem ; an epoch of political
organization ; training for a diplomatic career.

ATHENS, Feb. 24, 1872.

If my anxious expectations are fulfilled, you will
read this letter but a few days before my departure for
home. Since I have concluded to return to America
in the spring, my patience has all of a sudden deserted
me. With the prospect of still two years before me I
bore up, but the thought of an early reunion with the
dear ones at home, it seems, has unnerved me, and I
sufier incredibly from impatience to be off.

How glad I was to receive your cheery letter from

Letters. 341

the halls of legislation ! It breathed the matter-of-fect
air of its birthplace, and made me think of you as in
your element, tiiat is, pushing with the world but never
afraid to push the world when in your way. You wrote
it seems before having received information of my
rather suddenly taken desire to leave Europe, and men-
tion your intercession with mother to prolong my time.
I am far from overlooking the justice of mother's desire
in this instance, and this it is which in the end has al-
most convinced me that it is to my own interests to ac-
cede to a wish which, after our great common affliction,
must be entertained equally by all — that of seeing the
remnants of the family once more together. I shall
imbibe new strength from renewed contact with the
sources of my being, the love of home, and its sacred
interests.

I was present to-day at the baptism of a royal infant
of Greece in the Metropolitan Church of Athens. The
pomp of the orthodox ritual is greater than even that
of the Catholic. It is as a fragment of the Byzantine
empire preserved to our day with the very scent and
lustre of the Grecian Middle- Ages upon it. The temple
itself, a most gorgeous basilica, is an eloquent archi-
tectural interpretation of the spirit, or better, want of
spirit, of those times. Nothing is left unaffected which
can be attained in architecture by a profusion of colors
and forms. Everything is kaleidoscopic, piebald, zig-
gag, affected, — a thousand times the effort which is
apparent in the Parthenon, with a thousandth part of
the latter*s aesthetic effect. The priests are in keeping,
that is, their sacramental dress is in keeping, the priests
themselves being neither modern nor Byzantine, but
mere mumblers of old incantations.

What astonishes the stranger most of all things in

342 A Young Scholar.

Greece is the incredible religious fenaticism of this
people — that is, their attachment to their Apostolic
Orthodox Church. The viler and lower the Greek the
greater his pride in this hollo west of all religious forms.
Besides the ordinary grounds of attachment to fossilized
ideas and institutions, viz., the intellectual inertia of
the masses, his envy of all independent spiritual life,
and innumerable individual interests connected with
everything established, serve to augment his regard for
his church.

There is in the Orient another powerful reason for
this high esteem of the Greeks. It is the fact that their
faith secures to them, among the numerous and scat-
tered Christian nationalities of this part of Europe and
Asia, a predominance which they could maintain in no
other way. Now it is upon this predominance of the
Grecian element that the so-called ** Great Idea ** rests —
that is, the idea of a re-establishment of the Greek Empire
at Constantinople in the event of an expulsion of the
Turks. In my opinion the thing will never be. In
fact, the last few da3'^s have seen what seems to be a
fatal blow struck at the hopes of all those patriots who
have dreamed of a renewal of the days of Constantine
the Great. The despotism of the Grecian hierarchy
has finally provoked in Constantinople among the great
Slavic element, the Bulgarians, open opposition and
schism, and it is in full way to divide into two irrecon-
cilable camps the Christians of Turkey. Under such
circumstances it is plain to every one that, in the event
of a dissolution of the Ottoman power, the heavily
Slavic provinces, which really comprise all of Turkey
in Europe, will gravitate to Russia, the great centre of
pan-Slavonistic tendencies.

The task of reconciling nationalities is far too ad*

Letters. 343

vanced political business for Europe. America can
scarcely succeed in it with her unparalleled advantages
and political culture. The so-called Oriental question
is a Gordian knot, admitting of no other solution than
that which some Russian Alexander will give it with
the sword.

An idea has been long engaging me without as yet
having culminated in any resolution, but at least gradu-
ally gaining strength. It is touching my own future.
Our epoch is decidedly an epoch of political organiza-
tion and ideas. The philosophical thought of ttie day
is lower than it has been for ages. The religious life,
which always discovers correlative S3rmptoms, has been
shorn of all its wide efiulgence and reduced to an in-
tense but narrow Christolatry, with no other content
than a simple ethical one. As to art, the artists them-
selves are the first to lose faith in the miraculous pow-
ers of their Muses. The conclusion is that I do not
believe I shall find in any of these spheres an activity
sufficiently profound to absorb my energies. It is im-
possible to swim against the current. All great refor-
mations and achievements have taken the current at its
turn, and therefore seem to have turned //. But for
ordinary political labor I seem to want many essentials
of character and person.

There is, however, a sphere of politics for which I
feel a certain adaptability, and toward success in which
my scholastic tendencies would only contribute. This
is diplomacy. Every one knows how illy America is
supplied with available diplomatic culture. My idea is
that, upon a reformation of our civil service which
cannot be indefinitely postponed, the system of ap-
pointments to posts abroad will require the first and
most rigid revision, in which case a special prepara-

344 -^ Young- Scholar.

tion for the duties of such a position will be indispen-
sable. Now why should I not have a future here?
Let me devote myself for several years yet to political
science, international law, the minutUe of political
history, to a perfect acquisition of the French language
and acquaintance with all the forms of diplomacy, and
then, perhaps, signalize myself by a work on some
matter of special interest to my profession, and why
should I not be able to make a start in the diplomatic
career? I could utilize my studies in contemporary
politics and journalistic correspondence. I would de-
pend for success upon a more thorough acquaintance
with my profession than could be easily found in an-
other. Your success in a candidature for Congress
would be by far the most propitious omen I could pray
for in launching out. In fact it would launch me.

To-day I expect a letter from mother ; if none comes
I shall mail these sheets for to-morrow*s steamer. You
will not answer this letter, I hope — ^that is, I hope to be
with you before an answer would reach me.

LXXX.

Homeward bound.

April, 1872.

D]BAR Fa'Thbr : — I hasten to inform you that I have
received the draft sent by mother, February 26th, and
that I shall embark next Friday for America. I go
via Marseilles, Paris, Havre, New York. My health
is first rate and I anticipate a prosperous voyage. All
my books, save my Greek texts and dictionaries, with
a few other exceptions, are in Vienna with my land-
lady. I shall not pay freight on them, as they are safe

Letters. 345

for any length of time where they are, and should I
return to Europe I should be saved a very considerable
expense. I<et mother have no apprehensions about
the dangers of a Mediterranean voyage of four days.
I sail from Havre on the twentieth of April with a
steamer of the Hamburg American Packet Co., whose
boats the Ambassador highly recommends. I must
post in great haste as the mail closes in a short time.

CONCLUSION.

THK PROFESSOR.

WITH Byron Smith's return to his parents in
Kansas this series of remarkable letters
ceases. The conditions necessary to their
production were changed. From the reveries of the
half-cloistered student and still days of converse with
the entombed spirits of the mighty dead, he turned to
the task of self-maintenance and the duties of active
life. A student he remained all his life, animated by a
ceaseless craving ** to know,'* and with a mind recep-
tive on all sides, but the tenor of his career was changed.
If he cherished a plan for returning some day to Europe
and resuming his studious diligence at the universities
and galleries of her intellectual centres, he never
lamented to others his deprivation of their splendid
opportunities. He deplored nothing, but faced with
radiance and courage the conditions of American life
in the West, those conditions that, as his letters evince,
he had at times contemplated from abroad with
dismay.

In the early September days of 1872 he appeared in
Lawrence, Kansas, as the instructor of Greek in the
University of that State. He had just entered the
twenty-fourth year of his age. Tall and slender of
figure he moved with the grace and elasticity of an

346

Conclusion. 347

athlete. His eye was dark and lustrous and with its
bright gleams was a tell-tale of the man's enthusiasms
and of his quick perceptions. His dark brown, soft
hair clustered in ringlets about a face of unusually
fair skin, under which the mantling blood spread hues
of the rose. People turned to observe him a second
time, for the beauty of youth and intelligence was upon
him. In manner he was retiring and deferential to all
men, even to persons of lowly gifts and acquisitions,
but there was an alertness of attention and a lively in-
terest in what was passing that caused him to engage
readily in conversation. He was naturally a mental
gladiator, skilful in the fencings of argument, brilliant
in dialectic, impetuous with animation. Yet in the
presence of a number of persons his bearing was so
modest that he seldom opened conversation and seemed
to be led rather than to lead. He was so easily master
of his stores of knowledge, acute observations and
genial fancies, that there was no effort, nor reflex sense
of effectiveness, nor conscious display apparent in his
speech ; his eloquence — and eloquent he was — ^seemed
fall of spontaneity and child-like eagerness. But he
was at his best when with but one or two companions,
as by the friendly hearth, where he delighted in exposi-
tion of a theory or an idea. In the class-room or at
his club, when his friends sought him out and gathered
round him, he seemed swept on by the flow of thoughts
surging in him. Yet he was not declamatory. In
such conditions supremacy was accorded him and even
forced upon him, and one could not but be reminded
of Samuel Coleridge among his friends, where conver-
sation turned to monologue, and rejoinder to listening.
His voice was low and mellow, his pronunciation tinged
with a breadth of vowel sounds and a slight accent

348 A Young Scholar.

peculiar to himself, and he seemed like a rich organ of
infinite parts with its matruals always uncovered for
his companions to improvise upon and draw forth full
chords of love, wisdom, and sentiment. Of ambition
he displayed nothing ; the pre-eminence that came to
him seemed unsought. Withal he had an invincible
courage of his opinions, and no one was long left in
doubt as to them, although he was not aggressive, and
always had a courteous grace and tact that indisposed
others to contradiction. What scope of influence fell
to him when he became a teacher of young and ardent
spirits, who revere with chivalrous devotion those who
awaken them to new life and set the pulses of mental
power throbbing in them !

At this time the University of Kansas was in her in-
&ncy and on an American frontier. She was harassed
with preparatory classes which, like milk teeth, were
soon to be shed, and her foster nurse, the legislature,
was not in those days affectionate, but rather penuri-
ously proud of its ward. It was a time of planting
rather than of achievement, and how well the officers
of the University planted is shown by the present high
standing and dignified work of that institution. In
1872 the Chancellor, an Aberdeenshire man who had
commanded a brigade of Pennsylvania troops in the
Civil War, mingled teaching the necessary Greek and
philosophy with his administrative duties. Indeed, his
function was not tmlike a protozoan of a colonizing
type, having in himself the potencies of the future,
and every term he would bud and give off a depart-
ment. Then, too, the classical side of the University
had been most neglected, for the sentiment in the State
was strong for science as touching practicalities, and
sceptical as to the propriety of teaching youth dead

Conclusion. 349

languages that did well enough for the cultivation of
the leisured rich, but had no adaptation to busy and
working life.

On the arrival of B5rron Smith at Mt. Oread, as it
was called, — a bluff overlooking a lovely plain formed
by the confluence of the Kansas and Wakarusa rivers,
on the summit of which stood the just roofed and half-
plastered great University building, — the department
of Greek began to bud. At first he was an instructor,
or technically an adjutant of the Chancellor, but when
the second semester came on Smith's department was
officially organized and he installed in a professor's
chair. Nothing could have been more fortunate for
the cause of classical learning in Kansas than this ar-
rangement. The youngest of all the teachers in the
University, he was by all odds the most versatile and
accomplished. This radiant child of Apollo stirred
the hearts of the young, as the spring sun does the
earth, with quickenings of manifold and beautifiil life.
The wonder and awe of sentient being awakened in
them. In the womb of their own souls there were
mysterious and fecund possibilities moving.

Here was a man whose feet, almost from the cradle,
had turned aside from the paths commonly adjudged
to be practical, and had exchanged the slopes and
glades of Parnassus only for the walks of the Academy.
He had put the mind above the hand, seeking culture
rather than utility. Yet what a workman he was !
How well-centred he stood towards nature ! From
what poise he sped to the heart of things ! He
knew the secrets of the laboratory and the cabinet ;
but these were no formulas of science for him, for they
were the records of a vitalized natural history, — not,
as they often are to many, man's history of nature,

350 A Young Scholar.

but nature's history of man and man's environments.
He was one of the most vital of men, comprehending
his fellows, ardent to reach the veracities in them, eager
to participate in their progress, whether that were the
breaking of a fetter or a new achievement. To scores
of his associates at this time he was a revelation of
what culture and discipline could be gained on classic
ground and of its singular worth. From his day the
right of Greek to be a part of the student's heritage
went unquestioned on Mt. Oread.

In his method of instruction his character is in some
degree disclosed. The text he taught was ever a vital
thing. It had come from some soul of the golden past
and it therefore was a soul itself. Hence glossary,
grammar, and orthoepy were not ends in themselves
but instruments, — ^keys to unlock some thought. If
he was exacting about irregular verbs and particles, or
chased down a dialectic form, it was not as an exercise
of acumen, but because there was some subtle product
of mind lurking there. His great requirement was
that his pupils should study with understanding ; that
thought should kindle thought, and he scorned the
refuge of the pedant who, half-trained himself, puzzles
his class with grammatical obscurities that are mas-
tered only as a feat of diligence or memory, and have no
other service. Yet it must not be inferred that he was
patient with slovenly work. On the contrary, no man
cared more for the refinements and elegancies of study ;
only he looked upon details as tributary to some whole.
Discipline had value in his eyes because it was the
royal road to culture.

It happened in those days of beginnings that in the
most advanced class of his second professional year was
one girl. The feeble impulses towards classical train-

Conclusion. 351

ing at that time in so new a State had borne her alone
of all the students to her Junior year. With her he
read in that year the entire Iliad in order that she
might catch the Homeric spirit, saying the use of a
literature to acquire its contents was the surest way to
the conquest of its philological diflSlculties. He cared
for a syntactical subtilty for the kemal of human soul
there was within it. Here it may be recorded that to
this pupil he pledged the surrender of that celibate free-
dom he once thought suitable to such a scholarly life as
seemed to await him, and not many years after, when
a betrothal widowhood had befallen her, she in turn
sat in his professorial chair in his old class-room and
carried on his work in his spirit.

Professor Smith at once took by willing consent a
commanding position in the scholastic and social com-
munity of Lawrence. It was the silent rising of Sirius
into the empyrean. The fact was that a human being
that did not engage his attention or ardor was a £ituous
sort of soul, for he was so responsive to all real men-
tality and especially to that of youth , that one could play
upon his rich nature even with a perplexed look or an
honest blunder. Contempt was a sentiment he hardly
understood, although he had scorn of cant and pervers-
ity. A man must be so who cherishes human life
as a matter, not of duty, but of natural constitution.
He would linger at his desk, or prolong a walk, or
discourse in a room with animation, for the delight of
contact with student or companion. And then his
ascendency began at once under the spell of a vera-
cious spirit and a mind skilled to touch the heart of
a matter.

During his first winter his whole family were together
in I^awrence. In the spring his parents returned to

352 A Young Scholar.

Humboldt and the young professor had to seek a new
dwelling-place. It is a mark of the ingenuousness of
his nature that he sought another home with a reput-
edly orthodox Episcopal clergyman, who was then a
colleague of his in the University. He could not im-
agine that truth-seeking men would be estranged by
creeds. That Paganism or Scepticism and Christianity
should dwell amicably under one roof, was in his eyes
something like sisterhood, for were not both emanations
from the one great life that filled all things ? It may
be that he was attracted by three little children of the
house he sought, for he was very playful and merry
with them, as were they with him, and an outburst of
childish glee was an indication that the ** professor"
was with them. It came about, therefore, that the two
young teachers sat at the same table thereafter, so long
as they were both connected with the University.

Here a rare malady attacked Professor Smith, and it
was one destined to have decisive effects on his career.
Its eventual cure proved it to have been renal neur-
algia, but for months it was an obscure disease to his
medical advisers, among whom were some of the most
eminent physicians of St. lyouis and Philadelphia. It
was overcome by the simple expedients of a man who
was not eminent, but was a faithftil, careful family phy-
sician of high personal character, such as prudent pa-
tients take into their hearts and keep there ** forever
and a day.'* The disease attacked him at intervals of
about six weeks with paroxysms that usually lasted
several days. During that time he was wrung with
darting, protracted pains through the lonely watches
of the night and the still more tedious hours of day in
a darkened room. At such times he was utterly inca-
pacitated and unnerved. His fortitude only availed to

Conclusion. 353

keep him from outcry and repining, but lie scarcely ate
or slept until the torture wore away. When the tyranny
of pain abated he returned to his duties, with a touch
of weariness temporarily upon him, but with his ardor
and strength unimpaired. There are maladies that hurt
cruelly, but do not weaken.

For two years and a term Professor Smith lived in
Lawrence. His athletic form and radiant face became
familiar in the society-meetings of the students, in the
homes of citizens, in a social club that formed about
him, and occasionally on thelyceum platform. Every-
where he made the impression well depicted by one of
his pupils in these words, '' He gathered learning as an
absolute good, not, as a loose expression has it, * for
the good learning will bring.* Thus it was also that
he believed it never to be necessary to choose the least
of two evils, considering it at all times possible to choose
an absolute right. . . . He was radically truthful.**

It is to be expected that a nature not given to com-
promise, and impelled by the fine ardor of young years,
could not entertain the unconventional views that Smith
did without bringing upon him the resentment of dog-
matic traditionalists. There are people who, despite
all his sweetness and veracity, would think Jesus dis-
loyal to himself, if he did not believe in plenary inspira-
tion, or the imputation of sin, or the apostolic succession,
or sacramental grace. Kansas was not destitute of
them, and they began to whisper that scepticism was
fostered in a State institution by the retention in it of
an unbeliever. They did not complain of the quality
of the Greek furnished, nor did they concern them-
selves with the logic of their position in asserting that
the State should exercise religious discrimination.

They were mostly ecclesiastical politicians, of whom
23

354 ^ Young Scholar.

Methodism then furnished the West with a no incon-
siderable number of blundering heads. While the
young professor was on the scene they only whispered.
He was entrenched in the respect and admiration of
those who knew him and his fascinations dispelled per-
sonal antagonisms. When another man took his duty
while he was in quest of health, his adversaries were
able to confirm the substitute in his room and to end
his connection with the University.

THK JOURNAI.IST.

In the summer of 1874 his home was again broken
up by the removal to Philadelphia of his clerical col-
league and host. Upon the eve of the following Christ-
mas Professor Smith appeared unannounced at the door
of his friend in Philadelphia, and told how the parox-
ysms of his malady had grown intolerable and that he
was in quest of the best medical advice in order that he
might either obtain relief or ascertain whether a simple
fight of fortitude with pain was all that he could look
forward to. His entire recovery, as has been already
said, followed that winter, and he then became one of
the editorial staff of the Philadelphia Press, which was
under the management of W. W. Nevin, its proprietor
being absent for a long time in Europe as a Commis-
sioner for the impending Centennial Exhibition of 1876.
He had now reached a career to which he seemed to
have a birthright, as his father was a journalist more
than anything else, and his life had been passed in
acquaintance with the rural press. It was a profession,
too, that had often seemed to him the natural sequel to
studies as general as his had been, while his penetration
into social, economic, and political problems, — the great

Conclusion. 355

staples of newspaper writing, — was enhanced by the
truly religious sense of duty to the welfare of mankind
he entertained. The good of mankind was the im-
perative ethical cycle through which his intellect and
conscience moved.

Brief as was Professor Smith's experience in the edi-
torial room it was unusually fortunate and happy for a
beginner. At that time the editorial spirit had not been
asphyxiated by the encroachments of reportorial work.
Newspaper men talked of paragraphing as the highest
example of editorial skill, and a clever ** scoop'* was
regarded even then as a reporter's triumph. But ob-
taining a bit of sensational news in advance of all com-
petitors, with its degradations of sensationalism, had
not yet become the sole criterion of journalistic ability.
A ** scoop " accomplished by the use of legs was popu-
lar in the reporter's room, but there was still a recog-
nized "scoop," accomplished by the use of brains, for
the editor to achieve, and men read with respect the
"views" of their favorite paper on a wide range of
foreign and domestic intelligence. Moreover The Press
was then managed by a man who belonged to a disci-
plined and gifted branch of a family prominent in
Pennsylvania for intellectual force, and he loved ver-
satility and culture in its columns. What is more to the
point, its independence was not compromised under
him by partisan log-rolling, nor deteriorated by greed for
advertisements, nor degraded by servility to fatuous
fancies of what the people wanted. There was in those
days a function for an editor, and an editor was more
than a simple manager peddling copies of the paper.
There lingered in the American newspaper-world a
respect for good work, judged from the standpoint of
literary excellence and worthy matter. On The Press

356 A Young Scholar.

the young editor wrote with his charming lucidity and
sparkle of insight and well-mastered erudition. He
worked slowly, feeling keenly that his audience Jiad
changed and there was a style suitable thereto to be
acquired. He was fastidious, veracious, and faithful
to that most exacting of masters, his own self-respect.
Of his performances his superior said that in his
journalistic experience he had encountered nothing
more satisfactory or promising. Apparently these
young hands had hold of the ladder of influence, &me,
and fortune.

The stroke of one midnight ended all this fair promise
and Professor Smith's career was hopelessly over. It
was the season of the year when the sun hangs lowest
in the sky, the shadows are deepest and longest and the
little days have a dun dreariness. One of those storms
came on when the snow falls fast and sleety and lies,
like a saturated sponge, deep on the ground. Every
footprint fills with water and makes a steelly indenta-
tion, while dripping icicles hang from the eaves and the
trees put on a glassy coating. On that night the
young journalist returned, as was his wont, to his new
home in the early hours of the morning. The only
night-cars available for him left a half-mile to be
traversed on foot through deserted streets. He reached
his room drenched and a gush of blood fi-om the lungs
announced that he was in the grip of an unrelenting
disease. The brief day of work for this brilliant spirit,
so full of erudition and enthusiasm, so puissant in its
skill and loveliness was over. To a friend who called
during the day and found him in bed, he remarked

Conclusion. 357

with a shade of sorrow on his face, * * I have had a
haemorrhage, and its meaning is unmistakable. I had
thought to master the problems of political economy,
for I wanted so to know them, but now I never shall.**

The same medical care that had emancipated him
from his neuralgic trouble attended him, but the phy-
sician said the indications were of an unpromising
character and pointed to destruction of pulmonary tis-
sue. The kindest nursing awaited him, for he had
found a home in Philadelphia in the comfortable
dwelling of a homoeopathic physician who with his
young wife was deeply under the spell of his captivat-
ing nature. He had seemed to enter the house as the
herald of a new life, wonderful in its possibilities,
glorious in its power. These gentle souls felt all the
pathos of the impending extinction of so splendid a
life, and at times even to anguish. Nothing that solic-
itude could supply of time or service did their hands
withhold.

The illness was not one of pain ; rather it was a
wasting of vitality. The professor gathered books
upon his bed and, during the tedious days of confine-
ment, devoured them as if mindful that what he had
to do must be done quickly. He still loved to see
the countenances of his friends about him, was still
alert for discourse on high themes, and his serenity
was unruffled. For a time there seemed a chance that
the lesions of his lung might heal, and the doctor
talked of more favorable climates in the South where
some years of usefulness might be in store for him.
As spring came on a second haemorrhage dispelled
these vague hopes and the professor abandoned all
expectations of recovery. His mother came on and
he nestled like a child in her soothing arms, comforted

358 A Young Scholar.

by the yearning love that was ceaselessly welling in
her heart. What arms a mother's are ! What magic
in her soft hands ! How they say to the most self-
sufficient and matured manhood, ** Rest, child ! **

Balmy days came and the mother bore her precious
charge to her Kansas home with its rare atmospheres
and glorious azure skies. But the sick man grew
thinner and his face more lucent with the waste of
disease. Still further west there were foot-hills and
parks famed for their kindness to consumptives.
There was a faint hope that the patient's days might
be prolonged there, or at least ameliorated. A mater-
nal uncle invited him to Colorado, and he passed the
winter in Boulder. In the spring he was more of a
shadow than ever, — ^so thin, so light. Again his
mother was with him, but he faded away painlessly,
still talking of the high themes he loved. He did not
solace himself with vain hopes of recovery, but faced
death placidly and bravely. On the 4th of May, 1877,
without distress or uneasiness, his head lay tranquilly
on its pillow ; his breath came more and more softly,
and then almost imperceptibly stopped. The scholar's
life was over. Byron Caldwell Smith was dead.

A broken-hearted woman bore the body to a broken-
hearted father, and they laid it in a grave on the banks
of the Neosho River, near Humboldt, by the side of
Abby, his only sister.

With his own estimate of life and its consummation
let this biography close. From Berlin he sent these
notes and verses to his father :

** I do not know whether I do wisely in sending you
such verses as the accompanjdng or not. I have never
seen that any great or little poet has written such
things, although I have read much which was calcu-

Conclusion. 359

lated to move the same chords as these. This feeling,
as I have said, cannot be expressed in the music of
numbers. It is the highest product of philosophic
thought ; yet there is something poetic in the contem-
plation of this supreme mood, in which the antitheses
of feeling are overcome and the soul rests in its iden-
tity with the Infinite. The many thousand lights and
shades of being are swallowed up in its all-involving
fire-gloom, that takes possession of the soul as the sky
is filled with ether. It is the privilege of a Christ and
Spinoza to live in this element, and of less holy men
to taste at sacred moments its divine repose."

** There is a mood that 's far too deep for song.
In it are no sweet objects of desire,
No tender visions fashioned of soft fire,
The honeyed tongue of music must do it wrong ;

" Nor any mighty waxing of the heart

With beat of holy scorn, or great intent
Which is on some supreme devotion bent,
Or wills to take a more than mortal part ;

" Nor such as thought of what all space contains
Might make in Plato's vast and lucid soul.
Where all the laws of order have control,
And throned Beauty monoeidic* reigns.

«< »T is the indiflference of joy and grief.
The utter oneness of all, time creates,
Poretouch of that deep silence, which awaits
All spirits with the fulness of relief

* ** Monoeidic," literally, " of one form " ; Plato's epithet of
the First Beautiful or Ideal Beauty, which is only partiall}' ex-
pressed in the multiform objects of beauty in the world. These
only reflect single rays of monoeidic Beauty.

INDEX.

Abby, his sister, 24, 30, 32, 33,
37, 133, 141, 244 ; death of,
321-323, 325 ; dramatic sense
of, 305 ; letter to, 164

Absolute, closed circle of the,
287 ; necessity, 275, 288 ;
unthinkable, 288

Acrid polemics, 273

Acropolis, a visit to the, 318

Adriatic voyage, 312

^gean Archipelago, voyaging

in, 313
iEgina, visit to, 327
Esthetics, root of, 276
Age, changes of, 59; coming
of, 206, 211 ; intellectual
provision for old, 61 ; love
for those in old, 79 ; moods
for old, 48, 54 ; reveries of
old, 71
America, a Greek's apostro-
phe to, 268; an apostrophe
to, 239 ; duty of, 285 ; the
task of, 233
American, and German char-
acter contrasted, 176; art-
students, Munich, 219, 220 ;
character, disharmony of,
220 ; metaphysician and art,
157 ; missionaries in Athens,
328 ; opinion, despotism of,
336 ; Revolution, the French
m the, 246; scholars, their
limitations, 280; Southern
family, 93-95 ; students in
Germany, 76, 77, 114, 235

361

Americans, immobility of, 83
Anaximander's * * Indefinite, **

250
Antique art demands culture,

153
Arabs on shipboard, 312

Art, critical theories of, 224-
226 ; definition of, 60 ; future
of, 221 ; growing delight in,
153, 284; his susceptibility
to, 20^ ; programme of
studies in, 81, 82, 87, 91, 92;
revival of German, 188;
students of, in Munich, 219

Art-museum, metaphysical
student in an, 157

Artist-student, the Pomera-
nian, 167, 178, 191

Athens, apartments in, 314,
315, 318; arrival in, 311;
impressions of, 314, 317,
315; life in, 320; proposed
study in, 240, 252, 258

Atoms, hypothesis of, 251, 276

Attic plain, 317

Australian natural history, 147

Austria, peril of, 232

Austrian, Liberal defeat, 292 ;
politics, 266, 309; Tyrol,
Deauty of the, 310

Autumn, Heidelberg in, 28;
reflections in, 104, 116

B

Bacon's empiricism, empti-
ness of, 2^
Badness a misfortune, 192

362

Index.

Bailey, Mrs. Margaret L.,

verses of, 158
Baptism, a royal, 341
Basilica, a Greek, 341
Bastian, Adolph, psychology

of, 147

Beattie on nature's charms, 23

Beauty, description of a South-
em, 94, 154 ; doctrine of, 288

Beer saloon, the German, 44

Being, ground of, 179

Berlin, arrival in, 86, 87 ;
Christmas in, 120; farewell
to, 198 ; impressions of, 96,
97, 124, 136, 167, 168; leav-
uig, 207 ; sand of, 266

Betrothal, Smith's, 351

Biblical arguments, many-
sided, 242

Billy, his brother Gerrit,
called, 75, 114, 117, 152,
172, 189, 234, 305

Bismarck, Karl Otto von.
Prince, betrayal of France
l>y» I95f 200, 208, 209;
character of, 164, 189;
French policy oif, 215 ;
French Republic and, 247;
love of power of, 247

Bohemian country people, 91

Books, and Philistia, 155 ; as a
means of culture, 162

Bremen, impressions of, 18

Brocken, a night on the, 171

Buckle, Henry Thomas, his
history, 146

Budding chancellor, a, 348

Byron, Lord, 52

Caldwells, the. See Mother
Campbell, Rev. Alexander, 3
Carlisle student at the Or-

pheum, 121
Carpet-baggers' rule, 26
Caste, the learned, 280
Cecrops, daughters of, sculp-
ture, 157

Change of life in men, 59
Character, analysis of, 98, 99 ;
of Professor Smith, 346-353
Children, his love of, 197, 280,

352
Christian and pantheistic

morals, 277
Christianity, dualism of, 74;

place of, 329, 330
Christolatry, 343
Church-history studies, 329
City the home of cynics, 291
Civil government, develop-
ment of, 146; limitations

of, 27 ; Professor T on,

60 ; simple function of, 140 ;
unwieldmess of, 189
Classical knowledge, compara-
tive view of, 216
Classics in Kansas, 348, 351
Clerical quarters, his, 352
Cologne cathedral, 19
Colorado, retreat to, 358
Comte, Auguste, loi ; failure

of system of, 294
Coming of age, 2to6, 211
Communism in Europe, 247
Co-operation, benefit of, 285
Copyright, a theory of, 192-
194

Corfu, a stop at, 313
"Corpus Domini," feast of,

289
Cost of living, Berlin, 88, 96,

114; Munich, 217; plan to

defray, 331
Creation a metamorphosis, 64
Culture, it makes men natural,

171 ; programme of, 84, 277 ;

progress in, 301; scheme

broken, 332; singleness of

aim in, 116; studies for,

127-129, 139, 182, 235, 240 ;

studies proposed for Italy,

216

D

Darwinism, social effects of,
80

Index.

363

Dealli, Abby's, 321-323 ; Aunt
Ellen's, 126 ; beneficence of,
78; Byron C. Smith's, 358;
grandmother's, 259 ; grief
at, 115; love andy 50; not a
terror, 66, 71
Deathbed courtship, 129, 150
Democracy in Europe, 235
Depression, counsels against,

137, 138
Design m creation considered,

56, 62-66. See Teleology
Deterioration of species, G

on, 316
Dialectics the grammar of

thought, 67
Diplomatic career contem-
plated, 343
*• Disciples of Christ," 314
Divinity, nature of, 275, 276
DoUinger, Ignaz, revolt of, 270
Dramatic sense, lack of^ 305
Dramatists, old English, a

resource in age, 61
Dresden, impressions of, 199,

202, 205 ; plans for going to,

191
Drunkenness, how to deal

with, 43
DuBois-Reymond, Emil Hein-

rich, 150 ; on labor, 202

E

Earthly Paradisey Morris's,
32 ; tales in, 38, 39

Easter vacation in Berlin, 152

Economic studies, 240, 255.
See Political studies

.Education, as a profession,
278; defects in American,
24; thoroughness of Ger-
man, 29 ; zeal for, 41, 54. See
Culture, Scholar, Studies

Egoism, wretchedness of, 138

"Electra," legend of and
verses on, 185, 186

Eleusis, a trip to, 319

Elsass - I/Othrin^en, German
annexation 01; 210, 215

Emancipation of mind, 60
** Emanuel," the student phi-
losopher, 165, 168, 176-177
Emigration fever in Germany,

Empress Frederick, a glimpse

of, 188
England, calamity of a war

with, 243, 258
Epoch, nature of this, 343
Ethics of Spinoza, 52
" Euphrone," a poem, *io6,

107, 119
Europe, restlessness of, 232

Faith as opposed by truth, 55 ;
his personal, 66; not a
source of knowledge, 180
Family, influence of, 33
Father, his, advancing years
of, 237; concern for, 252;
dramatic talent of, 305 ; farm
labors of, 302, 306; filial
counsel to, 136-138; health
of, 207, 217, 227 ; legislative
career of, 341 ; resemblance
of son to, 66; pantheism
opposed by, 268, 273 ; refer-
ences to, 5, 33, 37, 58, 75-76,
113, 119, 140, 148, 161, 182,
190, 192, 223, 234
Faust criticised, 272 ; on hear-
ing Gounod's opera of, 36
Feeling and intellect, 51 ;

formation of, 73
Feuerbach, I/. A., aims of, 81
Fiction, reading, 88, 97
Flute-playing, 164, 183, 222,

304
Force, material view of, 142
France, guilt in Prussian war
of, 195, 231 ; humiliation
by Germany of, 215, 256,
271 ; war-debt of, 261
Franco-Prussian war, ending
of, 538; French misery in,
255; French debt incurred
in, 261 ; frivolity of, 195 ;

^

364

Index.

German pnrpose in, 246;
guilt of parties to, 1 99-201,
21^ ; opening of, 182, 189 ;
origin of, 208 ; surrender of
Metz, 241

Frederick the Great, 187

Freedom, is harmony with law,
289 ; of the Will, 273-274 ;
preservation of personal, 5^6

Fremont campaign of 1856 m
Wheeling, o

French, character, 231, 238,
245-247 ; Constitutional As-
sembly, 257, 267 ; farmer, a,
300, 300 ; Republic* duty in
1870 of, 214-215 ; Republic,
throttling the, 267

Fuller, lynching of Dick, 198

Gambetta, Iy6on, 238; his

leadership, 253
Gautier-Dagoty, Jacques, 94
George, King of Greece, 330
German, arrogance in Austria,
266 ; art revival, 188 ; ^^//^j-
/^//rif5 reading, 304; burgher
tourist, 169 ; character,
catholicity of, 29 ; character,
national, 245-247; emigra-
tion fever, 31 ; idealists, how
made, 254 ; love of children,
30; morals, 271; Pennsyl-
vania stock, 3, 4 ; policy in
Franco-Prussian war, 215,
231 ; politics, 35 ; resolve
for nationality, 197 ; room-
mate, 133, 141, 166, 174-176 ;
scholarly thoroughness, 128 ;
sobriety, 45 ; three friendly
students, 165-167, 174-179;
tyranny, 239; women, con-
dition of, 31
Germany, American students
in, 76-77, 114; political re-
action in, 266; unity of, 210
God, not the creature of law,
146 ; not a person, 179 ; pan-

theistic doctrine of, 288;
presence of, 323

Gods above wants, 254

Goethe, catholicity of, 70-71 ;
his Faust under criticism,
272 ; his lyrics not poetical,
122-123

Goodness, how made moral,
295-299 ; when real, 264

Government. See Civil gov-
ernment.

Grandfather, writing to, 116

Great men, 99

Greece, object of visiting, 303

Greek, character, modem, 311,
314, 320, 328, 338; culture
through, 25; ^litics, 330,
339 J progress m study of,
46 ; student in Munich, 219-

220, 224; studies, aim in,

221, 240

Greeks, religious fanaticism

of the, 342
Greeley at Buchtel College,

307-309
Grief, contest with, 326; the

retreat from, 323, See Sor-
row
Ground of being, 179

H

Hartmann's philosophy, 281,

282
Harz Forest, a tramp in the,

150, 163, 167, 168-172
Hate, no place for, 119
Haupt, Moritz, 114, 171
Hebraic ideas of immortality,

n8
Hegel, G. W. F., his view of

history, 135
Heidelberg, longing for, 131,

149; Lyceum at, 24, 27, 29,

34 ; impressions of, 46, 53 ;

rationalism at, 109
Heidelberg Castle, ruins of, 21
Heine, Heinrich, quotations

from, 83, 172

Index.

365

Hemorrhages, 356, 357
Herakleitos the Dark, 137
Heroes, weaknesses of, 177
Hohen wart's ministry, 292, 309
*' Holy Alliance," 233
Homage inquired into, 66
Home, desire to return, 337,
340; freedom in writing,
186; love of, 24, 162, 182,
190, 237, 278, 323 ; strange-
ness of a remote, 286
Home-coming, consequences
of, 324, 330, 335 ; motives to
delay, 301 ; plans for, 279,
284
Homer, his epic sense, 171 ;
his heroes, 137; quotation
from, 259
Homesickness, 24, 162, 182,

252, 265
Homeward bound, 344
Hopes, extravagant religious,

57 ; feebleness of his, 337
Hiibner, Bmil, 114
Human-nature, synthesis of,

lOO-IOI

Hume's diflEiculty, 287
Hymn to Proserpina^ loi
Hypothesis, function of, 249-
252, 255

Ideals, degeneration of, 254
Identity, persistence of, 298
Idyllic Philistine, 253
Ignorance, boldness of, 155 ;

deformity of, 171 ; genuine

and acquired, 112
Illegitimate births in Vienna,

271
''Illinois College" days, 11,

12
Illness, fatal, 366 ; in Munich,

228, 230
Use river. 172
Immortality, a quality, 287 ;

moral eflfect of, 78, 79, 103 ;

origin of doctrine of, 118 '

Independent^ The^ on Faust^

272
Individuality, phenomenal,

274, 289; polytheistic, 296,
298

Industry a goddess, 35. See
Labor, Work

"In Excelsis," 107

In Memorianiy Tennyson's,
48-52, 261 ; verses on, 107

Insanity, exemption of phi-
losophy from, 294

Instruction, character of his,
350

Intelligence, a product, 179,

275, 282 ; as cause, 64, 65 ;
in nature, 143-146. See
Teleology

Interment, his, 358
Inward senses denied, 180
Italian anticipations, 76, 81,
182, 216

Jacksonville Journal^ 7, 11, 26
Jacksonville, memories of, 172
Jesus of Nazareth, 123, 180,

359
Johnson, Samuel, on seasons,

46
Jones, Col. Charles, lynching

of, 154
Journalistic, career, 354 ; cor-
respondence discussed, 34,
36, 42, 306, 315, 324

K

Kant, Immanuel, influence of,

139. 142
Klops, 165

Labor, compensations of, ^ ;
manual, repressive to mmd,
89, 306. See Industry,
Work

366

Index.

Landing at the month of the

Weser, i8
Landlady, daughter of the, 211;

polUrabendofy 130
Landscape painting, 225
Laws of natnre necessary, 64-

66, 276 ; not made, 142, 143 ;

prevalence of, 145, 147 ; state

IS under, 189
Lenau, Nikolaus, translation

of, no
Learned caste, 280
Learning as a German insti-
tution, 40
Lawrence, Kansas, life in, 346-

354
Learning, degradation of,

280, 281
Liberty and superstition, 67 ;
effect on women of, 31 ; not
conventional, 146
Library, Berlin Royal, 124, 139
Life, aesthetic realm of, 125;
blind forces of, 104 ; in God,
269, 277, 297, 298 ; maturing
impressions of, 83 ; mystery
and awe of, 183; plans for
settlement in, 252, 332, 336,
34^ ; sweeter for its limita-
tations, 1 15 ; transcendency
of, 259
Liquor question, 42-44
Logic, function 01, 249-252
Loni's Prater pantheistic, 299
Louis I. of Bavaria, 213
Love, as a doctrine, 2^ ; com-
fort of unselfish, 79, 103,
104 ; confronting death, 50 ;
home, 162 ; insight of, 274,
277 ; not self-referable, 297-
299 ; of children, 197 ; puri-
fication of, 73-75, 99-101 ;
sufficiency of, 130

Love-passion, strength of the,

47
Luxembourg (Lothringen),

barter for, 200, 208
Lyceum work, Heidelbuig,

24, 27, 29, 34

LycidaSy and Tennyson, 52;
quotation from, 35

M

Madonna, a Munich shrine
to the, 226 ; Sistine, 202,

204
Magdeburg cathedral, 169
Man's insignificance, 259
Marriage, ideal of, 125 ; land-
lady's, 130 ; motives to,

237.

Materialism and faith, com-
bat of, 139

Materialist, the hopes of a,
102, 103

Mathematical studies, 10, 11

Matter, dynamic, 142, 179;
phenomenal, 288

Metaphysics, modem German,
80. See Philosophy, Spec-
ulative

Methodists in Germany, 132

Metz, capitulation of, 2^1

Mexico City, population of
ancient, no

Mill, JTohn Stuart, 146; his
Logic, 252

Miracles, Greek and Protest-
ant, 339

Missionaries, Athenian, 328

Monarchy, how perpetuated,
40

Monotony of study, effect of»

I33» 134
Moral responsibility, 296

Morris, William, characteris-
tics of, 38; his Earthly
Paradise, 32

Mother, charm of the name,
287 ; solicitudes and mental-
ity of his, 222, 223, 243, 317 ;
sorrow and sickness of, 335 ;
references to his, 8, 22, 29,
37, 61, 72, 73, 98, 116, 124,
149, 192, 234

M 's courtship, 130, 150

Index.

367

Munich, art in, 87, 91 ; art-
students in, 219; impres-
sions of, 217, 262; lectures
in, 236; malaria in, 228
Music, emotion caused by, 105
Mystic^ Thet of Tennyson, 156,

159

N

Napoleon I., organ of his
times, 189

Napoleon III. in Mexico, 246 ;
Nemesis of, 199; political
chicanery of, 208, 209

Nature, as a cure for depres-
sion, 22 ; as an awakener of
emotion, 46 ; eternal, 56, 64,
66 ; leads to God incompre-
hensible, 170; precedes sci-
ence, 102; Spmoza's view
of» 53 J synthesis of human,
74, 75, 100, loi

Necessi^, absolute, 144, 275,
276, 288

Nepomuc, Saint, 92

Neuralgic troubles, 552

Nevin, W. W., editor, 354,

355
Newspaper enterprise, 555

New Testament, studies of
the, 304; uncertainties of
the, 329
New York street-walkers, 96
Nuremberg, impressions of,
2I3» 214

Ohio valley, settlement of the

upper, 2
Opera, seeing, 35
Ora pro nobis, 227
Oriental question, the, 342,

343

Orpheum," visit to the, 120,

121

((

Pantheism, doctrine of, 288;
glory of, 251 ; heroism of,
264, 277; German architec-
ture and, 20; Greeley on,
308 ; its consolation, 323 ;
morality of, 295-9; religion
of life in, 291 ; religion of
love in, 269
Paris communal massacres,

293 ; communism in, 267
Parthenon sculptures, 157
Patience, his fund of, 244
People as reformers, the, 281
Perpefuum mobile of the uni-
verse, 143
Personal appearance, 346 ;
habits, 184. See Temper-
ance; Puritjr
Personality of God, 179 ; phe-
nomenal, 259
Phidian sculptures, 157
Philadelphia, a home in, 357 ;
Press, 354 ; removal to, 354
Philosopher-student, 165, 168,

176, 177
Philosophic combat in Eu-
rope, 133
Philosophical lectures, nature

of, 236
Philosophy, and insanity, 294 ;

world's estimate of, 250. See

Pantheism ; Spectdative.
Physical vigor, 204
Piraeus, 313, 319
Plan and planner in nature,

56, 62-66, 144-146, 275. See

Teleologi[
Plato on immortality, 118;

N. Y. Tribune on Jowett's

version of, 291
Poetical limitations, his, 61,

96, 106, 118, 181, 226
Poetry, personal influence of,

105
Political conditions in Amer-
ica, 233; science defined,
257 ; studies, 247 ; views,
originality of his, 198

368

Index.

Politics, phil06ophic growth
of, 140 ; school of the peo-
ple, 386
fblterabend, 130
Polygamy, Mormon, 241
Pomeranian artist friend, 167,

178, 191
Portraiture, object of, 225
Potsdam, a visit to, 187
Prague, impressions of, 92 ;

riot in, 266
Prairie, influence of the, 283
** Primnla Veris," two render-
ings of, 110-112
Professors, calling on, 108
Prohibitory laws, 42-44
Prussian army, quality of the,

206
Psychology of Bastian, 147
Public dinners, uses of, 248
Puritanism, its notion of

Beauty, 214 ; rigor of, 44
Purity, his personal, 332

R

Race origin, his father on, 147
Railway travel in Germany,

214. See Travel
Rank and type of character,

98, 99 ; of mental functions,

70
Ra|>hael and the Pope, 205
Rationalism, decline through,

Realism, degeneration in art
of, 224 ; philosophical, 251

Reforms, illogical, 113; prac-
tical, 234

Religion, fallacies in, 56, 57 ;
impotency in, 161; justifi-
cation of systems o^ 156;
narrowness in, 43, 44 ; op-
position to a new, 299 ; pain
of changing a, 38; when
fruitless, 326

Removal of family to Kansas,

58
Reward and punishment doc-
trine, 274, 295, 297

Riddle of existence, 183
Robbers in Greece, 327, 334,

338
Roommate, a German, 133,

141, 166, 174-176

Royal pomp, 152

R *s egoistic pedantry, 192

Russia in the Bast, 232

Sabbath meditation, a, 309
Salamis, a view of, 319
Salzburg, impressions of, 262
Sans Souci palace, 187
Saviour of the world, a, 103
Scepticism punished, 353
Schleiermacher, F. E. D., er-
ror of, 277
Scholar, function of the, 333 ;
paradise of a, 149 ; privilege
of a, 137 ; rank in Europe
of a, 280; sacrifices of a,
106, 184, 278 ; true aims of a,
25, 26, 42, 55
School-days, 9-1 1
Science follows nature, 102
" Scoops," journalistic, 355
Scotch-Irish settlers in Amer-
ica, 2, 4
Sea, mystery of the, 14-18,

283
Seasons, influence of, 46
Sectarian opposition, 353
Selection, law of, 145
Self-denial, pantheistic, 297-

299
Self-love, transformation of,

100
Self-mastery, 134, 264, 269,
279 ; early struggle for, 161-
162
Sensuality and its cure, 73-75,

99-101
Sentimental experiment in

Vienna, 290
Sex-equality, 122
Shakespeare's teleology, 281
Shrine, worshippers at a
Munich, 227

Index.

369

Sistine Madonna, 202, 204
Slavic resentments in Austria,

266
Smith, Col. George P., 5. See

Father
Smith, Gold win, on history,

lOI

Society, going into, 271 ; iso-
lation from, 133-134; the
source of reform, 281

Solitude, endurance of, 36 ;
revenges of, 202, 203, 211 ;
uses of, 82, 97

Sorrow, inconsolable, 260 ; re-
sources of a soul in, 49. See
Grief

Soul-growth, vicissitudes of,

154
Southern Confederate States,

reconstruction in, 26
Spanish crown, Hohenzollem
incident, 189, 200, 209 ; rev-
olution of 1868, 40
Spinoza, Baruch, lofty spirit
of, 359 ; on nature, 52, 53 ;
repose of, 254 ; point of view
of; 288, 289 ; way of life of,

134
Speculation and art, 226

Speculative intellect, rank of,
70; philosophy, derivation
of, 249-52, 255 ; studies, 117,
I35> I39« See Metaphysics,
Philosophy

Spring, influence of, 149 ; on
the prairie, 283

Strength, test of physical, 109

Struggle for existence, trans-
formation of the, 285

Student, energy in a, 204 ; in
war-time, 196; mess of a,
165 ; room of a, 173 ; sacri-
fices of a, 106, 184, 278

Student-friends, three, 165-

167, 174-179
Studies, programme for nni-

versity, 84, 87, 95 ; progress

in, 182

Study, object of, 135; pain
24

of interrupted, 332, 335;

scheme of, 127-129, 229, 230,

277 ; Viennese facilities for,

263
Suicide, bankruptcy of, 163
Summer in Vienna, 300, y>2 ;

repression of, 194 ; vacation,

190
Superficiality of the world, 260
Swinburne, A. C, art of, 151 ;

not a sensualist, 73-75, 99-

loi ; quotations from, 90,

137, 326
Symphony in verse, 159

Teacher's trade, 55
Teachine period, his, 348, 354
Telemachus, legend of, 37
Teleological argument, 56,

62-66, 144-146, 275-2^7 ;

Shakespeare's, 281
Temperance, habits of, 27, 42,

43, 103. See Prohibitory

laws
Temple of Kleusis, 319
Tennyson, Alfred, his art, 48-

52; his Mystic^ 156, 159;

qualities of, 261 ; quotations

from, 72, 80. See In Me-

moriam
Thales, his search for unity,

249, 250
Thinker's building rhythmic,

300
Thought, materialism of, 143 ;

the ground of things, 251
Tilly's sack of Magdeburg, 169
Travel, how to, 82 ; from Hei-
delberg to Berlin, 86. See

Railway
Trendelenburg, F. A., 102, 109;

his sickness, 132, 141
Trieste harbor, 312
Truth as oppos^ to faith, 55
Turkey, effect of dissolution

of, 342
"Turk's head," test of

strength with, 109

370

Index.

Type and rank of cbaracter,
I'yrol, beauty of the, 310

U

Unity, philoeophical. See
Thales

University, lectures in Munich,
236 ; lite in Berlin at the, 87,
89,95, 108, 114; migratory
way of students at a, 315 ; of
Athens, 315 ; of Kansas, 348-
354 ; preparation for Berlin,
34

Vacation, a summer, 190 ; a

tramp in, 68
Venus, a modem temple of,

120
Verse, a symphony in, 159
Verses, on cure of youthful
despondency, 22; "Electra,"
186 ; " Euphrone," 107 ;

G *s, 154; " In Excelsis,"

108 ; In Memorianty 107 ;
Primula Verts, no, 112 ;
Ora pro nobis, 227 ; repose
in sorrow, 126 ; supreme
mood, 35Q
Victory, celebrating, 203, 256
Vienna, arriyal in, 263 ; im-
pressions of, 265, 271 ; labor
in, 269, 270 ; proposed study
in, 252, 258
Vigor, excess of, 204
Vileness a misfortune, 192
Virtue defined, 295-299
Vital force defined, 143
Vitatiyeness, lack of, 245

Voya^n^ at sea, 14-18.
Adnatic, £gean

W

See

Wages in Vienna, 270
Waldeck, funeral of Prince,

163
War between England and

United States, 243, 258 ; ru-
mors of, 183. &e Franco-
Prussian war

Wealth, unequal distribution
of, 285

Western college, work of the,
284

Western horror» a, 198.

Winter* s Tale quoted, 282

Wisdom, defined, 105 ; guide
to content, 138 ; in nature,
143-146

Wheeling, election campaign
of 1856 in, 6

Woman as an art subject, 225 ;
defence of the American, 85

Women, German and Ameri-
can contrasted, 31 in Ger-
man uniyersities, 122 ia
Vienna, 271 ; sympathy of,
317 ; three Southern, 93, 94,

154
Wordsworth, William, art of,

52, 69, 134

Work, dedication to, 161 ;

necessary to him, 123 ; the

creed of, 150, 302,

Yankee fellow-trayeller, 167,

168, 170
Youth, passing away of, 38

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