1
BOSTON
PUBLIC
UBR^CRY
THE WOEES
OF
. RALPH WALDO EMEESON
VOL. IV.
ENGLISH TEAITS
AND
EEPKESENTATIVE MEN
BY
EALPH WALDO EMEESO:^'
ILontion
MACMILLAX AND CO.
1884
CONTENTS.
ENGLISH TRAITS.
CHAP.
PAGE
I. First Visit to England ... 1
II. Voyage to England
19
III. Land ....
27
IV. Race . . = . -
36
V. Ability - . c .
GO
VI. Manners
•
83
VII. TnuTH .
•
9i
VIII. Character
103
IX. Cockayne
117
X. Wealth
125
XL Aristocracy .
HO
XII. Universities .
161
XIII. Religion
173
XIV. Literature
187
XV. The "Times'^
210
XVI. Stoneiienge .
220
XVII. Personal
235
XVIII. Result
241
XIX. Speech at Man chest
ER
249
VI
CONTENTS.
EEPRESENTATIVE MEK
LECT.
I. Uses of Great Men
II. Plato ; or, The Philosopher
Plato ; New Readings .
III. SWEDENBOIIG ; OR, ThE MySTIC
IV. Montaigne ; or, The Sceptic
V. Siiakspeare ; or. The Poet
VI. Napoleon ; or, The Man of the World
VII. Goethe ; or, The "Writer
PAGE
257
283
315
323
367
397
423
453
ENGLISH TEAITS
ENGLISH TRAITS.
CHAPTEE I.
FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND.
I HAVE been twice in England. In 1833, on my
return from a short toui' in Sicily, Italy, and France,
I crossed from Boulogne, and landed in London at
the Tower stairs. It was a dark Sunday morning ;
there were few people in the streets ; and I remember
the pleasure of that first walk on English ground,
with my companion, an American artist, from the
Tower up through Cheapside and the Strand, to a
house in Russell Square, whither we had been recom-
mended to good chambers. For the first time for
many months we were forced to check the saucy habit
of travellers' criticism, as we could no longer speak
aloud in the streets without being understood. The
shop-signs spoke our language ; our country names
were on the door-plates ; and the public and private
buildings wore a more native and wonted front.
Like most young men at that time, I was much
indebted to the men of Edinburgh, and of the Edin-
burgh Eeview, — to Jefirey, Mackintosh, Hallam, and
.* VOL. IV. B
2 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
to Scott, Playfair, and De Quincey ; and my narrow
and desultory reading had inspired the wish to see
the faces of three or four wiiters, — Coleridge, Words-
v/orth, Landor, De Quincey, and the latest and
strongest contributor to the critical journals, Carlyle ;
and I suppose if I had sifted the reasons that led me
to Europe, when I was ill and was advised to travel,
it was mainly the attraction of these persons. If
Goethe had been still living, I might have wandered
into Germany also. Besides those I have named (for
Scott was dead), there was not in Britain the man
living whom I cared to behold, unless it .were the
Dulie of Wellington, whom I afterwards saw at
Westminster Abbey, at the funeral of Wilberforce.
The young scholar fancies it happiness enough to live
with people who can give an inside to the world;
without reflecting that they are prisoners, too, of
their own thought, and cannot apply themselves to
yours. The conditions of literary success are almost
destructive of the best social power, as they do not
leave that frolic liberty which only can encounter a
companion on the best terms. It is probable you left
some obscure comrade at a tavern, or in the farms,
with right mother-wit, and equality to life, when you
crossed sea and land to play bo-peep with celebrated
scribes. I have, however, found writers superior to
their books, and I cling to my first belief, that a
strong head will dispose fast enough of these impedi-
ments, and give one the satisfaction of reality, the
sense of having been met, and a larger horizon.
On looking over the diary of my journey in 1B33,
I,] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 3
I find nothing to publish in my memoranda of visits
to places. But I have copied the few notes I made
of visits to persons, as they respect parties quite too
good and too transparent to the whole world to make
it needful to affect any prudery of suppression about
a few hints of those bright personalities.
At Florence, chief among artists I found Horatio
Greenough, the American sculptor. His face was so
handsome, and his person so well formed, that he
might be pardoned, if, as was alleged, the face of his
Medora, and the figure of a colossal Achilles in clay,
were idealisations of his own. Greenough was a
superior man, ardent and eloquent, and all his opin-
ions had elevation and magnanimity. He believed
that the Greeks had wrought in schools or fraternities,
— the genius of the master imparting his design to
liis friends, and inflaming them with it, and when his
strength was spent, a new hand, with, equal heat,
continued the work; and so by relays, until it was
finished in every part with equal fire. This was
necessary in so refractory a material as stone ; and
he thought art would never prosper until we left our
shy jealous ways, and worked in society as they.
All his thoughts breathed the same generosity. He
was an accurate and a deep man. He was a votary
of the Greeks, and impatient of Gothic art. His
paper on Architecture, published in 1843, announced
in advance the leading thoughts of Mr. Euskin on
Tnorality in architecture, notwithstanding the antago-
nism in their views of the history of art. I have a
private letter from him, — later, but respecting the
4 ENGLISH TEAITS. [CHAP.
same period, — in which he roughly sketches his own
theory. " Here is my theory of structure : A scien-
tific arrangement of spaces and forms to functions
and to site ; an emphasis of features proportioned to
their gradated importance in function; colour and
ornament to be decided and arranged and varied by
strictly organic laws, having a distinct reason for
each decision ; the entire and immediate banishment
of all make-shift and make-believe."
Greenough brought me, through a common friend,
an invitation from Mr. Landor, who lived at San
Domenica di Fiesole. On the 15th May I dined mth
Mr. Landor. I found him noble and courteous, living
in a cloud of pictures at his Villa Gherardesca, a fine
house commanding a beautiful landscape. I had
inferred from his books, or magnified from some
anecdotes, an impression of Achillean wrath, — an
untamable petulance. I do not know whether the
imputation were just or not, but certainly on this
May day his courtesy veiled that haughty mind, and
he was the most patient and gentle of hosts. He
praised the beautiful cyclamen which grows all about
Florence ; he admired Washington ; talked of Words-
worth, Byron, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher.
To be sure, he is decided in his opinions, likes to
surprise, and is well content to impress, if possible,
his English whim upon the immutable past. No
great man ever had a great son, if Philip and Alex-
ander be not an exception ; and Philip he calls the
greater man. In art, he loves the Greeks, and in
sculpture, them only. He prefers the Venus to
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 5
everything else, and, after that, the head of Alex-
ander, in the gallery here. He prefers John of
Bologna to Michael Angelo; in painting, Raffaelle;
and shares the growing taste for Perugino and the
early masters. The Greek histories he thought the
only good ; and after them, Voltaire's. I could not
make him praise Mackintosh, nor my more recent
friends, — Montaigne very cordially, — and Charron
also, which seemed undiscriminating. He thought
Degerando indebted to "Lucas on Happiness" and
"Lucas on Holiness" ! He pestered me with Southey;
but who is Southey 1
He in^dted me to breakfast on Friday. On Friday
I did not fail to go, and this time mth Gre enough.
He entertained us at once with reciting half a dozen
hexameter lines of Juhus Caesar's ! — from Donatus,
he said. He glorified Lord Chesterfield more than
was necessary, and undervalued Burke, and under-
valued Socrates ; designated as three of the greatest
of men, Washington, Phocion, and Timoleon; much
as our pomologists, in their lists, select the three or
the six best pears "for a small orchard;" and did
not even omit to remark the similar termination of
their names. "A great man," he said, "should make
great sacrifices, and lull his hundred oxen, without
knowing whether they would be consumed by gods
and heroes, or whether the flies would eat them." I
had visited Professor Amici, who had shown me his
microscopes, magnifying (it was said) two thousand
diameters; and I spoke of the uses to vvdiich they
were applied. Landor despised entomology, yet, in
6 ENGLISH TKAITS. [chap.
the same breath, said, "the sublime was in a grain
of dust." I suppose I teased him about recent
writers, but he professed never to have heard of
Herschel, not even hy name. One room was full of
pictui'es, which he likes to show, especially one piece,
standing before which, he said " he would give fifty
guineas to the man that would swear it was a
Domenichino." I was more curious to see his library,
but Mr. H , one of the guests, told me that Mr.
Landor gives away his books, and has never more
than a dozen at a time in his house.
Mr. Landor carries to its height the love of freak
which the English delight to indulge, as if to signahse
their commanding freedom. He has a wonderful
brain, despotic, violent, and inexliaustible, meant for
a soldier, by what chance converted to letters, in
which there is not a style nor a tint not known to
him, yet mth an English appetite for action and
heroes. The thing done avails, and not what is said
about it. An original sentence, a step forward,
is worth more than all the censures. Landor is
strangely undervalued in England ; usually ignored ;
and sometimes savagely attacked in the Reviews.
The criticism may be right, or wrong, and is quickly
forgotten ; but year after year the scholar must still
go back to Landor for a multitude of elegant sentences
— for wisdom, wit, and indignation that are unfor-
getable.
From London, on the 5th August, I went to High-
gate, and wrote a note to Mr. Coleridge, requesting
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 7
leave to pay my respects to him. It was near noon.
Mr. Coleridge sent a verbal message, that he was in
bed, but if I would call after one o'clock, he would
see me. I returned at one, and he appeared, a short,
thick old man, with bright blue eyes and fine clear
complexion, leaning on his cane. He took snuff
freely, which presently soiled his cravat and neat
black suit. He asked whether I knew Allston, and
spoke warmly of his merits and doings when he knew
him in Eome ; what a master of the Titianesque he
was, etc. etc. He spoke of Dr. Channing. It was
an unspeakable misfortune that he should have turned
out a Unitarian after all. On this he burst into a
declamation on the folly and ignorance of Unitarian-
ism, — its high unreasonableness; and taking up
Bishop Waterland's book, which lay on the table, he
read with vehemence two or three pages written by
himself in the fly-leaves, — passages, too, which, I
believe, are printed in the "Aids to Eeflection."
When he stopped to take breath, I interposed, that,
"whilst I highly valued all his explanations, I was
bound to tell him that I was born and bred a Uni-
tarian." "Yes," he said, "I supposed so;" and
continued as before. "It was a wonder, that after
so many ages of unquestioning acquiescence in the
doctrine of St. Paul, — the doctrine of the Trinity,
which was also, according to Philo Judseus, the
doctrine of the Jews before Christ, — this handful of
Priestleians should take on themselves to deny it,
etc. etc. He was very sorry that Dr. Channing, —
a man to whom he looked up, — no, to say that he
8 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
looked u]) to him would be to speak falsely, but a
man whom he looked at with so much interest, —
should embrace such views. When he saw Dr.
Ohanniug, he had hinted to him that he was afraid
he loved Christianity for what was lovely and
excellent, — he loved the good in it, and not the true ;
and I tell j^ou, sir, that I have known ten persons
who loved the good, for one person who loved the
true ; but it is a far greater virtue to love the true
for itself alone, than to love the good for itseK alone.
He (Coleridge) knew all about Unitarianism perfectly
well, because he had once been a Unitarian, and knew
what quackery it was. He had been called ' the ris-
ing star of Unitarianism.' " He went on defining, or
rather refining : " The Trinitarian doctrine was realism ;
the idea of God was not essential, but super-essen-
tial ;" talked of trinism and tetraUsm, and much more,
of which I only caught this, " that the will was that
by which a person is a person ; because if one should
push me in the street, and so I should force the man
next me into the kennel, I should at once exclaim,
'I did not do it, sir,' meaning it was not my will."
And this also, "that if you should insist on your
faith here in England, and I on mine, mine would be
the hotter side of the faggot."
I took advantage of a pause to say, that he had
many readers of all religious opinions in America,
and I proceeded to inquire if the " extract " from the
Independent's pamphlet, in the third volume of the
Friend, were a veritable quotation. He replied, that
it was really taken from a pamphlet in his possession,
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 9
entitled "A Protest of one of the Independents," or
something to that efiect. I told him how excellent
I thought it, and how much I wished to see the entire
work. "Yes," he said, "the man was a chaos of
truths, but lacked the knowledge that God was a
God of order. Yet the passage would no doubt strike
3^ou more in the quotation than in the original, for I
have filtered it."
When I rose to go, he said, "I do not know
whether you care about poetry, but I will repeat
some verses I lately made on my baptismal anniver-
sary," and he recited with strong emphasis, stand-
ing, ten or twelve lines, beginning,
"Born unto God in Christ "
He inquired where I had been travelling ; and
on learning that I had been in Malta and Sicily, he
compared one island with the other, " repeating what
he had said to the Bishop of London when he re-
turned from that country, that Sicily was an excellent
school of political economy ; for, in any town there,
it only needed to ask what the government enacted,
and reverse that to know what ought to be done ; it
was the most felicitously opposite legislation to any-
thing good and wise. There were only three things
which the government had brought into that garden
of delights, namely, itch, pox, and famine. Whereas,
in Malta, the force of law and mind was seen, in
making that barren rock of semi-Saracen inhabitants
the seat of population and plenty." Going out, he
showed me in the next apartment a picture of All-
10 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
ston's, and told me " that Montague, a pictui^e-dealer,
once came to see him, and, glancing towards this, said,
' Well, you have got a picture ! ' thinking it the work
of an old master ; afterwards, Montague, still talking
with his back to the canvas, put up his hand and
touched it, and exclaimed, ' By Heaven ! this picture
is not ten years old:' — so delicate and skilful was
that man's touch."
I was in his company for about an houi', but find
it impossible to recall the largest part of his discourse,
which was often like so many printed paragraphs in
his book, — perhaps the same, — so readily did he fall
into certain commonplaces. As I might have fore-
seen, the visit was rather a spectacle than a conver-
sation, of no use beyond the satisfaction of my curi-
osity. He was old and pre-occupied, and could not
bend to a new companion and think with him.
From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. On
my return I came from Glasgow to Dumfries, and
being intent on delivering a letter which I had brought
from Eome, inquired for Craigenputtock. It was a
farm in Mthsdale, in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen
miles distant. No public coach passed near it, so I
took a private carriage from the inn. I found the
house amid desolate heathery hills, where the lonely
scholar nourished his mighty heart. Carlyle was a
man from his youth, an author who did not need to
hide from his readers, and as absolute a man of the
world, unknown and exiled on that hill-farm, as if
holding on his own terms what is best in London.
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 11
He was tall and gaiint, with a clifF-like brow, self-
possessed, and holding his extraordinary powers of
conversation in easy command ; clinging to his
northern accent with evident relish; full of lively
anecdote, and with a streaming humoui', which floated
everything he looked upon. His talk, playfully
exalting the famiHar objects, put the companion at
once into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs,
and it was very pleasant to learn what was predes-
tined to be a pretty mythology. Few were the
objects and lonely the man, " not a person to speak
to within sixteen miles except the minister of Dun-
score ;" so that books inevitably made his topics.
He had names of his own for all the matters
famiHar to his discourse. "Blackwood's" was the
"sand magazine;" "Fraser's" nearer approach to
possibihty of life, was the "mud magazine ;" a piece
of road near by that marked some failed enterprise
was the "grave of the last sixpence." When too
much praise of any genius annoyed him, he professed
hugely to admire the talent shown by his pig. He
had spent much time and contrivance in confining
the poor beast to one enclosure in his pen, but pig,
by great strokes of judgment, had found out how to
let a board down, and had foiled him. For all that,
he still thought man the most plastic little fellow in
the planet, and he liked Nero's death, " Qualis artifex
pereo ! " better than most history. He worships a
man that vdll manifest any truth to him. At one
time he had inquired and read a good deal about
America. Landor's principle was mere rebellion, and
12 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
that he feared was the American principle. The best
thing he knew of that country was, that in it a man
can have meat for his labour. He had read in
Stewart's book that when he inquired in a New York
hotel for the Boots, he had been shown across the
street, and had found Mungo in his own house dining
on roast turkey.
We talked of books. Plato he does not read, and
he disparaged Socrates ; and, when pressed, per-
sisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon he called
the splendid bridge from the old world to the new.
His own reading had been multifarious. Tristram
Shandy was one of his first books after Eobinson
Crusoe, and Eobertson's America an early favourite.
Rousseau's Confessions had discovered to him that he
was not a dunce; and it was now ten years since he had
learned German, by the advice of a man who told him
he would find in that language what he wanted.
He took despairing or satirical views of literature
at this moment ; recounted the incredible sums paid
in one year by the great booksellers for puffing.
Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted now,
no books are bought, and the booksellers are on the
eve of bankruptcy.
He still returned to English pauperism, the crowded
country, the selfish abdication by public men of all
that public persons should perform. "Government
should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish folk
come wandering over these moors. My dame makes
it a rule to give to every son of Adam bread to eat,
and supplies his wants to the next house. But here
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 13
are thousands of acres which might give them all meat,
and nobody to bid these poor Irish go to the moor
and till it. They burned the stacks, and so found
a way to force the rich people to attend to them."
We went out to walk over long hills, and looked
at Criffel, then without his cap, and down into
Wordsworth's country. There we sat down, and
talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not
Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he
had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit
to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to
place himself where no step can be taken. But he
was honest and true, and cognisant of the subtile
links that bind ages together, and saw how every event
afifects all the future. " Christ died on the tree : that
built Dunscore kirk yonder : that brought you and
me tosrether. Time has onlv a relative existence."
He was already turning his eyes towards London
with a scholar's appreciation. London is the heart
of the world, he said, wonderful only from the mass
of human beings. He liked the huge machine. Each
keeps its own round. The baker's boy brings muffins
to the window at a fixed hour every day, and that is
all the Londoner knows or mshes to know on the
subject. But it turned out good men. He named
certain individuals, especially one man of letters, his
friend, the best mind he knew, whom London had
well served.
On the 28th August, I went to Eydal Mount, to
pay my respects to Mr. AVordsworth. His daughters
14 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap
called in their father, a plain, elderly, white-haired
man, not prepossessing, and disfigured by green
goggles. He sat down, and talked with great sim-
plicity. He had just returned from a journey. His
health was good, but he had broken a tooth by a
fall, when walking vvith two lawyers, and had said
that he was glad it did not happen forty years ago ;
whereupon they had praised his philosophy.
He had much to say of America, the more that it
gave occasion for his favourite topic, — that society is
being enlightened by a superficial tuition, out of all
proportion to its being restrained by moral culture.
Schools do no good. Tuition is not education. He
thinks more of the education of circumstances than of
tuition. 'Tis not question whether there are offences
of which the law takes cognisance, but whether there
are offences of which the law does not take cognisance.
Sin is what he fears, and how society is to escape
without gravest mischiefs from this source — ? He has
even said, what seemed a paradox, that they needed a
civil war in America to teach the necessity of knitting
the social ties stronger. " There may be," he said,
"in America some vulgarity in manner, but that's
not important. That comes of the pioneer state of
things. But I fear they are too much given to the
making of money ; and secondly, to politics ; that
they make political distinction the end, and not the
means. And I fear they lack a class of men of
leisure, — in short, of gentlemen, — to give a tone of
honour to the community. I am told that things are
boasted of in the second class of society there, which,
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 15
in England, — God knows, are done in England every
day, — but would never be spoken of. In America I
wish to know not how many churches or schools, but
what newspapers 1 My friend, Colonel Hamilton, at
the foot of the hill, who was a year in America,
assures me that the newspapers are atrocious, and
accuse members of Congress of steahng spoons ! "
He was against taking off the tax on newspapers in
England, which the reformers represent as a tax
upon knowledge, for this reason, that they would be
inundated with base prints. He said he talked on
poHtical aspects, for he wished to impress on me and
all good Americans to cultivate the moral, the con-
servative, etc. etc., and never to call into action the
physical strength of the people, as had just now
been done in England in the Eeform Bill, — a thing
prophesied by Delolme. He aUuded once or twice to
his conversation with Dr. Charming, who had recently
visited him (laying his hand on a particular chair in
which the Doctor had sat).
The conversation turned on books. Lucretius he
esteems a far higher poet than Virgil : not in his
system, which is nothing, but in his power of illustra-
tion. Faith is necessary to explain anything, and to
reconcile the foreknowledge of God with human evil.
Of Cousin (whose lectures we had aU been reading
in Boston) he knew only the name.
I inquired if he had read Carlyle's critical articles
and translations. He said, he thought him sometimes
insane. He proceeded to abuse Goethe's Wilhelm
Meister heartily. It was full of all manner of fornica-
16 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
tion. It was like the crossing of flies in the air. He
had never gone farther than the first part ; so dis-
gusted was he that he threw the book across the room.
I deprecated this wrath, and said what I could for
the better parts of the book; and he courteously
promised to look at it again. Carlyle, he said, wrote
most obscurely. He was clever and deep, but he
defied the sympathies of everybody. Even Mr.
Coleridge wrote more clearly, though he had always
wished Coleridge would write more to be understood.
He led me out into his garden, and showed me the
gravel walk in which thousands of his lines were
composed. His eyes are much inflamed. This is no
loss, except for reading, because he never writes prose,
and of poetry he carries even hundreds of lines in his
head before writing them. He had just returned from
a visit to Staff'a, and within three days had made three
sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and was composing a fourth,
when he was called in to see me. He said, " If you
are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to
hear these lines." I gladly assented ; and he recol-
lected himself for a few moments, and then stood
forth and repeated, one after the other, the three
entire sonnets, with great animation. I fancied the
second and third more beautiful than his poems are
wont to be. The third is addressed to the flowers,
which, he said, especially the oxeye daisy, are very
abundant on the top of the rock. The second alludes
to the name of the cave, which is " Cave of Music ;"
the first to the circumstance of its being visited by
the promiscuous company of the steamboat.
I.] FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND. 17
05
This recitation was so luilooked for and surprising,
— he, the old "Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting
to me in a garden-walk, like a schoolboy declaiming
— that I at first was near to laugh ; but recollecting
myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet, and
he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right
and I was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear.
I told him how much the few printed extracts had
quickened the desire to possess his unpublished poems.
He repHed, he never was in haste to publish ; partly,
because he corrected a good deal, and every alteration
is ungraciously received after printing ; but what he
had written would be printed, whether he Hved or
died. I said, " Tintern Abbey " appeared to be the
favourite poem with the public, but more contempla-
tive readers preferred the first books of the " Excur-
sion," and the Sonnets. He said, "Yes, they are
better." He preferred such of his poems as touched
the afi'ections, to any others ; for whatever is didactic,
— what theories of society, and so on, — might perish
quickly; but whatever combined a truth with an
affection was KTrjfxa es aei, good to-day and good for
ever. He cited the sonnet " On the feelings of a high-
minded Spaniard," which he preferred to any other
(I so understood him), and the "Two Voices;" and
quoted, with evident pleasure, the verses addressed
" To the Skylark." In this connection, he said of the
ISTewtonian theory, that it might yet be superseded
and forgotten ; and Dalton's atomic theory.
When I prepared to depart, he said he wished to
show me what a common person in England could
VOL, IV. C
18 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
do, and he led me into the enclosure of his clerk, a
young man, to whom he had given this slip of ground,
which was laid out, or its natural capabilities shown,
with much taste. He then said he would show me
a better way towards the inn ; and he walked a good
part of a mile, talking, and ever and anon stopping
short to impress the word or the verse, and finally
parted from me with great kindness, and returned
across the fields.
Wordsworth honoured himself by his simple ad-
herence to truth, and was very willing not to shine ;
but he surprised by the hard limits of his thought.
To judge from a single conversation, he made the
impression of a narrow and very English mind; of
one who paid for his rare elevation by general tame-
ness and conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions
were of no value. It is not very rare to find persons
loving sympathy and ease, who expiate their depart-
ure from the common, in one direction, by their con-
formity in every other.
II. 1 VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 19
CHAPTER II.
VOYAGE TO ENGLAND.
The occasion of my second visit to England was an
invitation from some Mechanics' Institutes in Lanca-
shire and Yorkshire, which separately are organised
much in the same way as our New England Lyceums,
but, in 1847, had been linked into a "Union," which
embraced twenty or thirty towns and cities, and
presently extended into the middle counties, and
northward into Scotland. I was invited, on liberal
terms, to read a series of lectures in them all. The
request was ui^ged with every kind suggestion, and
every assurance of aid and comfort, by friendliest
parties in Manchester, who, in the sequel, amply
redeemed their word. The remuneration was equi-
valent to the fees at that time paid in this country
for the like services. At aU events, it was sufficient
to cover any travelling expenses, and the proposal
offered an excellent opportunity of seeing the interior
of England and Scotland, by means of a home, and a
committee of intelligent friends, awaiting me in every
town.
I did not go very willingly. I am not a good
20 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
traveller, nor have I found that long journeys yield
a fair share of reasonable hours. But the invitation
was repeated and pressed at a moment of more leisure,
and when I was a little spent by some unusual studies.
I wanted a change and a tonic, and England was
proposed to me. Besides, there were, at least, the
dread attraction and salutary influences of the sea.
So I took my berth in the packet-ship Washington
Irving, and sailed from Boston on Tuesday, 5th
October 1847.
On Friday at noon, we had only made one hundred
and thirty-four miles. A nimble Indian would have
swum as far ; but the captain affirmed that the ship
would show us in time all her paces, and we crept
along through the floating drift of boards, logs, and
chips, which the rivers of Maine and New Brunswick
pour into the sea after a freshet.
At last, on Sunday night, after doing one day's
work in four, the storm came, the winds blew, and
we flew before a north-wester, which strained every
rope and sail. The good ship darts through the
water all day, all night. Like a fish, quivering with
speed, gliding through liquid leagues, sliding from
horizon to horizoji She has passed Cape Sable ; she
has reached the Banks; the land-birds are left;
guUs, haglets, ducks, petrels, swim, dive, and hover
around ; no fishermen ; she has passed the Banks,
left five sail behind her, far on the edge of the west
at sundown, which were far east of us at morn, —
though they say at sea a stern chase is a long race, —
and still we fly for our lives. The shortest sea-hne
II.] VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 21
from Boston to Liverpool is 2850 miles. This a
steamer keeps, and saves 150 miles. A sailing ship
can never go in a shorter line than 3000, and usuallj^
it is much longer. Our good master keeps his kites
up to the last moment, studding-sails alow and aloft,
and, by incessant straight steering, never loses a rod
of way. Watchfulness is the law of the ship, — .
watch on watch, for advantage and for life. Since
the ship was built, it seems, the master never slept
but in his day-clothes whilst on board. " There are
many advantages," says Saadi, "in sea- voyaging, but
security is not one of them." Yet in hurrying over
these abysses, whatever dangers we are running into,
we are certainly running out of the risks of hundreds
of miles every day, which have their own chances of
squall, collision, sea-stroke, piracy, cold, and thunder.
Hour for hour, the risk on a steamboat is greater;
but the speed is safety, or, twelve days of danger,
instead of twenty-four.
Our ship was registered 750 tons, and weighed
perhaps, with aU her freight, 1500 tons. The main-
mast, from the deck to the top-button, measured 115
feet; the length of the deck, from stem to stern,
155. It is impossible not to personify a ship ; every-
body does, in everything they say : — she behaves
well ; she minds her rudder ; she swims like a duck ;
she runs her nose into the water ; she looks into a
port. Then that wonderful esprit du coiys^ by which
we adopt into our self-love everything we touch,
makes us all champions of her sailing qualities.
The conscious ship hears all the praise. In one
22 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
week she has made 1467 miles, and now, at night,
seems to hear the steamer behind her which left
Boston to-day at two, has mended her speed, and is
flying before the gray south wind eleven and a half
knots the hour. The sea-fire shines in her wake, and
far around wherever a wave breaks. I read the
hour, 9h. 45', on my watch by this light. Near the
equator you can read small print by it; and the
mate describes the phosphori*^. insects, when taken up
in a pail, as shaped like a Carolina potato.
I find the sea-life an acquired taste, like that for
tomatoes and olives. The confinement, cold, motion,
noise, and odour are not to be dispensed with. The
floor of your room is sloped at an angle of twenty
or thirty degrees, and I waked every morning with
the belief that some one was tipping up my berth.
Nobody likes to be treated ignominiously, upset,
shoved against the side of the house, rolled over,
suffocated with bilge, mephitis, and stewing oil. We
get used to these annoyances at last, but the dread of
the sea remains longer. The sea is masculine, the
type of active strength. Look what egg-shells are
drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with
men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney
conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-
coloured circle an eternal cemetery 1 In our grave-
yards we scoop a pit, but this aggressive water opens
mile-wide pits and chasms, and makes a mouthful of
a fleet. To the geologist, the sea is the only firma-
ment ; the land is in perpetual flux and change, now
bloAvn up like a tumour, now sunk in a chasm, and
II.] VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 23
the registered observations of a few hundred years
find it in a perpetual tilt, rising and falling. The
sea keeps its old level ; and 'tis no wonder that the
history of our race is so recent, if the roar of the
ocean is silencing our traditions. A rising of the
sea, such as has been observed, say an inch in a
century, from east to west on the land, will bury all
the towns, monuments, bones, and knowledge of
mankind, steadily and insensibly. If it is capable of
these great and secular mischiefs, it is quite as ready
at private and local damage ; and of this no lands-
man seems so fearful as the seaman. Such discom-
fort and such danger as the narratives of the captain
and mate disclose are bad enough as the costly fee
we pay for entrance to Europe ; but the wonder is
always new that any sane man can be a sailor. And
here, on the second day of our voyage, stepped out
a little boy in his shirt-sleeves, who had hid himself
whilst the ship was in port, in the bread -closet,
having no money, and wishing to go to England.
The sailors have dressed him in Guernsey frock, with
a knife in his belt, and he is cHmbing nimbly about
after them, "likes the work first-rate, and, if the
captain will take him, means now to come back again in
the ship." The mate avers that this is the history of
all sailors ; nine out of ten are runaway boys ; and
adds, that all of them are sick of the sea, but stay in
it out of pride. Jack has a Hfe of risks, incessant
abuse, and the worst pay. It is a little better with
the mate, and not very much better with the captain.
A hundred dollars a month is reckoned high pay. If
24 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
sailors were contented, if they had not resolved again
and again not to go to sea any more, I should
respect them.
Of course, the inconveniences and terrors of the
sea are not of any account to those whose minds
are preoccupied. The water -laws, arctic frost, the
mountain, the mine, only shatter cockneyism ; every
noble activity makes room for itself. A great mind
is a good sailor, as a great heart is. . And the sea is
not slow in disclosing inestimable secrets to a good
naturalist.
'Tis a good rule in every journey to provide some
piece of liberal study to rescue the hours which bad
weather, bad company, and taverns steal from the
best economist. Classics, which at home are drowsily
read, have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the
transom of a merchant brig. I remember that some
of the happiest and most valuable hours I have owed
to books, passed, many years ago, on shipboard. The
worst impediment I have found at sea is the want of
light in the cabin.
We found on board the usual cabin library ; Basil
Hall, Dumas, Dickens, Bulwer^ Balzac, and Sand, were
our sea-gods. Among the passengers there was some
variety of talent and profession ; we exchanged our
experiences, and all learned something. The busiest
talk with leisure and convenience at sea, and some-
times a memorable fact turns up, which you have
long had a vacant niche for, and seize with the joy
of a collector. But, under the best conditions, a
voyage is one of the severest tests to try a man. A
IT.] VOYAGE TO ENGLAND. 25
college examination is notliing to it. Sea-daj^s are
long, — these lack-lustre, joyless days which whistled
over us ; but they were few, — only fifteen, as the
captain counted, sixteen according to me. Reckoned
from the time when we left soundings, our speed was
such that the captain drew the line of his course in
red ink on his chart, for the encouragement or envy
of future navigators.
It has been said that the King of England would
consult his dignity by giving audience to foreign
ambassadors in the cabin of a man-of-war. And I
think the white path of an Atlantic ship the right
avenue to the palace front of this seafaring people,
Wiio for hundreds of years claimed the strict sove-
reignty of the sea, and exacted toll and the striking
sail from the ships of all other peoples. When their
privilege was disputed by the Dutch and other junior
marines, on the plea that you could never anchor on
the same wave, or hold property in what was always
flowing, the English did not stick to claim the channel,
or bottom of all the main. "As if," said they, "we
contended for the drops of the sea, and not for its
situation, or the bed of those waters. The sea is
bounded by his majesty's empire."
As we neared the land its genius was felt. This
was inevitably the British side. In every man's
thought arises now a new system, English sentiments,
English loves and fears, English history and social
modes. Yesterday, every passenger had measured
the speed of the ship by watching the bubbles over
the ship's bulwarks. To-day, instead of bubbles, we
26 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
measure by Kinsale, Cork, Waterford, and Ardmore.
There lay the green shore of Ireland, like some coast
of plenty. We could see to^yns, towers, churches,
harvests; but the curse of eight hundred years we
could not discern.
III.] LAND. 27
CHAPTEE III.
LAND.
Alfieri tiioiiglit Italy and England the only countries
worth living in; the former, because there nature
vindicates her rights, and triumphs over the evils in-
flicted by the governments ; the latter, because art
conquers nature, and transforms a rude, ungenial
land into a paradise of comfort and plenty. England
is a garden. Under an ash-coloured sky, the fields
have been combed and rolled till they appear to have
been finished with a pencil instead of a plough. The
solidity of the structures that compose the towns
speaks the industry of ages. Nothing is left as it
was made. Rivers, hills, valleys, the sea itself, feel
the hand of a master. The long habitation of a
powerful and ingenious race has turned every rood of
land to its best use, has found all the capabilities, the
arable soil, the quarriable rock, the highways, the by-
ways, the fords, the navigable waters ; and the new arts
of intercourse meet you everywhere ; so that England
is a huge phalanstery, where all that man wants is
pro\dded within the precinct. Cushioned and com-
forted in every manner, the traveller rides as on a
28 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
cannon-ball, high and low, over rivers and towns,
through mountains, in tunnels of three or four miles,
at near twice the speed of oui' trains; and reads
quietly the Times newspaper, which, by its immense
correspondence and reporting, seems to have machi-
nised the rest of the world for his occasion.
The problem of the traveller landing at Liverpool
is. Why England is England 1 What are the elements
of that power which the English hold over other
nations^ If there be one test of national genius
universally accepted, it is success; and if there be
one successful country in the universe for the last
millennium, that country is England.
• A wise traveller will naturally choose to visit the
best of actual nations ; and an American has more
reasons than another to draw him to Britain. In all
that is done or begun by the Americans towards right
thinking or practice, we are met by a civilisation
already settled and overpowering. The cidture of
the day, the thoughts and aims of men, are English
thoughts and aims. A nation considerable for a
thousand years since Egbert, it has, in the last
centuries, obtained the ascendant, and stamped the
knowledge, activity, and power of mankind with its
impress. Those who resist it do not feel it or obey
it less. The Russian in his snows is aimins; to be
English. The Turk and Chinese also are making
awkward efforts to be English. The practical com-
mon-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction
which labour, laws, opinion, religion take, is the
natural genius of the British mind. The influence of
III.] LAND. 29
France is a constituent of modern civility, but not
enough opposed to the English for the most whole-
some effect. The American is only the continuation
of the English genius into new conditions, more or
less propitious.
See what books fill our libraries. Every book we
read, every biography, play, romance, in whatever
form, is still English history and manners. So that
a sensible Englishman once said to me, " As long as
you do not grant us copyright, we shall have the
teaching of you."
But we have the same difficulty in making a social
or moral estimate of England, as the sheriff finds in
drawing a jury to try some cause which has agitated
the whole community, and on which everybody finds
himseK an interested party. Officers, jurors, judges,
have all taken sides. England has inoculated all
nations with her civiHsation, intelligence, and tastes ;
and, to resist the tyranny and prepossession of the
British element, a serious man must aid himself, by
comparing with it the civiHsations of the farthest east
and west, the old Greek, the Oriental, and, much
more, the ideal standard, if only by means of the
very impatience which EngHsh forms are sure to
awaken in independent minds.
Besides, if we will visit London, the present time
is the best time, as some signs portend that it has
reached its highest point. It is observed that the
English interest us a Uttle less within a few years ;
and hence the impression that the British power has
culminated, is in solstice, or already declining.
30 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
As soon as you enter England, which, with Wales,
is no larger than the State of Georgia,^ this little
land stretches by an illusion to the dimensions of an
empire. The innumerable details, the crowded suc-
cession of towns, cities, cathedrals, castles, and great
and decorated estates, the number and power of the
trades and guilds, the military strength and splendour,
the multitudes of rich and of remarkable people, the
servants and equipages, — all these catching the eye,
and never allowing it to pause, hide all boundaries,
by the impression of magnificence and endless wealth.
I reply to all the urgencies that refer me to this
and that object indispensably to be seen, — Yes, to
see England well needs a hundred years ; for, what
they told me was the merit of Sir John Soane's
Museum, in London, — that it was well packed and
well saved, — is the merit of England ; — it is stuffed
full, in all corners and crevices, with towns, towers,
churches, villas, palaces, hospitals, and charity-houses.
In the history of art, it is a long way from a cromlech
to York minster ; yet all the intermediate steps may
still be traced in this all-preserving island.
The territory has a singular perfection. The
climate is warmer by many degrees than it is entitled
to by latitude. Neither hot nor cold, there is no
hour in the whole year when one cannot work. Here
is no winter, but such days as we have in Mas-
sachusetts in November, a temperature which makes
no exhausting demand on human strength, but allows
1 Add South Carolina, and you have more than an equivalent
for the area of Scotland.
III.] LAND. 31
the attainment of the largest stature. Charles the
Second said, "it invited men abroad more dsLjs in
the year and more hours in the day than another
country." Then England has all the materials of a
working country except wood. The constant rain, —
a rain with every tide, in some parts of the island, —
keeps its multitude of rivers full, and brings agricul-
tural production up to the highest point. It has
plenty of water, of stone, of potter's clay, of coal, of
salt, and of iron. The land naturally abounds -^Wth
game, immense heaths and downs are paved with
Cjuails, grouse, and woodcock, and the shores are
animated by water-birds. The rivers and the sui'-
rounding sea spawn with fish ; there are salmon for
the rich, and sprats and herrings for the poor. In
the northern lochs, the herring are in innumerable
shoals ; at one season, the country people say, the
lakes contain one part water and two parts fish.
The only drawback on this industrial conveniency,
is the darkness of its sky. The night and day are
too nearly of a colour. It strains the eyes to read
and to write. Add the coal smoke. In the manu-
facturing towns, the fine soot or blacks darken the
day, give white sheep the colour of black sheep, dis-
colour the human saliva, contaminate the air, poison
many plants, and corrode the monuments and build-
ings.
The London fog aggravates the distempers of the
sky, and sometimes justifies the epigram on the
chmate by an EngHsh wit, "in a fine day, looking
up a chimney ; in a foul day, looking do^vn one-"
32 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
A gentleman in Liverpool told me that he found he
could do without a fire in his parloui' about one day
in the year. It is however pretended, that the enor-
mous consumption of coal in the island is also felt in
modifying the general climate.
Factitious climate, factitious position. England
resembles a ship in its shape, and, if it were one, its
best admiral could not have worked it, or anchored
it in a more judicious or ejffective position. Sir John
Herschel said, " London was the centre of the terrene
globe." The shopkeeping nation, to use a shop word,
has a good stand. The old Venetians pleased them-
selves with the flattery that Venice was in 45°, mid-
way between the poles and the line ; as if that were
an imperial centrality. Long of old, the Greeks
fancied Delphi the navel of the earth, in their favour-
ite mode of fabling the earth to be an animal. The
Jews believed Jerusalem to be the centre. I have
seen a kratometric chart designed to show that the
city of Philadelphia was in the same thermic belt,
and, by inference, in the same belt of empire, as the
cities of Athens, Rome, and London. It was drawn
by a patriotic Philadelphian, and was examined with
pleasure, under his showing, by the inhabitants of
Chestnut Street. But, when carried to Charleston,
to Kew Orleans, and to Boston, it somehow failed to
convince the ingenious scholars of all those capitals.
But England is anchored at the side of Europe,
and right in the heart of the modern world. The
sea, which, according to Virgil's famous line, divided
the poor Britons utterly from the world, proved to
III.] LAND. 33
be the ring of marriage with all nations. It is not
clown in the books, — it is written only in the geologic
strata, — that fortunate day when a wave of the Ger-
man Ocean burst the old isthmus which joined Kent
and Cornwall to France, and gave to this fragment
of Europe its impregnable sea wall, cutting off an
island of eight hundred miles in length, with an
irregular breadth reaching to three himdred miles ; a
territory large enough for independence enriched with
every seed of national power, so near, that it can see
the harvests of the continent ; and so far, that who
would cross the strait must be an expert mariner,
ready for tempests. As America, Europe, and Asia
lie, these Britons have precisely the best commercial
position in the whole planet, and are sure of a market
for all the goods they can manufactiu-e. And to
make these advantages avail, the Eiver Thames must
dig its spacious outlet to the sea from the heart of the
kingdom, giving road and landing to innumerable
ships, and all the conveniency to trade, that a people
so skilful and suJfficient in economising water-front by
docks, warehouses, and lighters, required. When
James the First declared his purpose of punishing
London by removing his Court, the Lord Mayor
replied, "that, in removing his royal presence from
his lieges, they hoped he would leave them the
Thames."
In the variety of surface, Britain is a miniature of
Europe, having plain, forest, marsh, river, sea-shore ;
mines in Cornwall ; caves in Matlock and Derbyshire ;
delicious landscape in Dovedale, dehcious sea-view at
VOL. IV. D
34 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
Tor Bay, Highlands in Scotland, Snowdon in Wales ;
and in Westmoreland and Cumberland, a pocket
Switzerland, in which the lakes and mountains are
on a sufficient scale to fill the eye and touch the im-
agination. It is a nation conveniently small. Fonte-
nelle thought that nature had sometimes a little
affectation : and there is such an artificial complete-
ness in this nation of artificers, as if there were a
design from the beginning to elaborate a bigger Bir-
mingham. Nature held counsel with herself, and
said, "My Romans are gone. To build my new
empire I will choose a rude race, all masculine, with
brutish strength. I will not grudge a comj^etition of
the roughest males. Let buffalo gore buffalo, and the
pasture to the strongest ! For I have work that
requires the best will and sinew. Sharp and temper-
ate northern breezes shall blow, to keep that will
ahve and alert. The sea shall disjoin the people from
others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. It shall
give them markets on every side. Long time I will
keep them on their feet, by poverty, border-wars, sea-
faring, sea-risks, and the stimulus of gain. An
island, — but not so large, the people not so many
as to glut the great markets and depress one another,
but proportioned to the size of Europe and the
continents. "
AVith its fruits, and wares, and money, must its
civil influence radiate. It is a singular coincidence
to this geographic centralit}^, the spiritual centrality,
which Emanuel Swedenborg ascribes to the people.
" For the English nation, the best of them are in the
III.] LAND. 35
centre of all Christians, because they have interior
intellectual light. This appears conspicuously in the
spiritual world. This light they derive from the
liberty of speaking and writing, and thereby of
thinking."
36 ENGLISH TKAITS. [chap.
CHAPTER IV.
RACE.
An ingenious anatomist has written a book ^ to prove
that races are imperishable, but nations are pHant
political constructions, easily changed or destroyed.
But this wiiter did not found his assumed races on
any necessary law, disclosing their ideal or meta-
physical necessity ; nor did he, on the other hand,
count mth precision the existing races, and settle the
true bounds ; a point of nicety, and the popular test
of the theory. The individuals at the extremes of
divergence in one race of men are as unhke as the
wolf to the lapdog. Yet each variety shades down
imperceptibly into the next, and you cannot draw the
line where a race begins or ends. Hence every writer
makes a different count. Blumenbach reckons five
races; Humboldt three ; and Mr. Pickering, who lately,
in our Exploring Expedition, thinks he saw all the
kinds of men that can be on the planet, makes eleven.
The British Empire is reckoned to contain
222,000,000 souls, — perhaps a fifth of the population
of the globe ; and to comprise a territory of 5,000,000
^ The Races, a Fragment. By Robert Knox. London : 1850.
IV.] RACE. 37
square miles. So far have British people predomi-
nated. Perhaps forty of these millions are of British
stock. Add the United States of America, which
reckon, exclusive of slaves, 20,000,000 of people, on
a territory of 3,000,000 square miles, and in which
the foreign element, however considerable, is rapidly
assimilated, and you have a population of English
descent and language of 60,000,000, and governing
a population of 245,000,000 souls.
The British census proper reckons twenty-seven
and a half millions in the home countries. What
makes this census important is the cjuality of the
units that compose it. They are free forcible men,
in a country where Hfe is safe, and has reached the
greatest value. They give the bias to the current
age; and that, not by chance or by mass, but by
their character, and by the number of individuals
among them of personal ability. It has been denied
that the English have genius. Be it as it may, men
of vast intellect have been born on their soil, and
they have made or applied the principal inventions.
They have sound bodies, and supreme endurance in
war and in labour. The spawning force of the race
has sufficed to the colonisation of great parts of the
world ; yet it remains to be seen whether they can
make good the exodus of millions from Great Britain,
amounting, in 1852, to more than a thousand a day.
They have assimilating force, since they are imitated
by their foreig-n subjects ; and they are still aggressive
and propagandist, enlarging the dominion of their
arts and liberty. Their laws are hospitable, and
38 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
slavery does not exist under them. What oppression
exists is incidental and temporary ; their success is
not sudden or fortunate, but they have maintained
constancy and self-equality for many ages.
Is this power due to their race, or to some other
cause"? Men hear gladly of the power of blood or
race. Everybody likes to know that his advantages
cannot be attributed to air, soil, sea, or to local wealth,
as mines and quarries, nor to laws and traditions, nor
to fortune, but to superior brain, as it makes the
praise more personal to him.
We anticipate in the doctrine of race something-
like that law of physiology, that, whatever bone,
muscle, or essential organ is found in one healthy in-
dividual, the same part or organ may be found in or
near the same place in its congener ; and we look to
find in the son every mental and moral property that
existed in the ancestor. In race, it is not the broad
shoulders, or litheness, or stature, that give advantage,
but a symmetry that reaches as far as to the wit.
Then the miracle and renown begin. Then first we
care to examine the pedigree, and copy heedfully the
training, — what food they ate, what nursing, school,
and exercises they had, which resulted in this mother-
wit, delicacy of thought, and robust msdom. How
came such men as King Alfred, and Koger Bacon,
William of Wykeham, Walter Ealeigh, Philip Sidney,
Isaac Newton, William Shakspeare, George Chap-
man, Francis Bacon, George Herbert, Henry Vane, to
exist here 1 \Vhat made these delicate natures ? was
it the air 1 was it the sea *? was it the parentage ?
IV.] RACE. 39
For it is certain that these men are samples of their
contemporaries. The hearing ear is always found
close to the spealdng tongue ; and no genius can long
or often utter anything which is not invited and
gladly entertained by men around him.
It is race, is it not ? that puts the hundred millions
of India under the dominion of a remote island in the
north of Europe. Eace avails much, if that be true,
which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all
Saxons are Protestants ; that Celts love unity of
power, and Saxons the representative principle. Eace
is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two
millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the
same character and employments. Eace in the negro
is of appalling importance. The French in Canada,
cut off from all intercourse with the parent people,
have held their national traits. I chanced to read
Tacitus " on the manners of the Germans," not long
since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I
found abundant points of resemblance between the
Germans of the Hercj^nian forest, and our Hoosiers,
Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.
But whilst race works immortally to keep its own,
it is resisted by other forces. Civilisation is a re-agent,
and eats away the old traits. The Arabs of to-day
are the Arabs of Pharaoh ; but the Briton of to-day
is a very different person from Cassibelaunus or Ossian.
Each religious sect has its physiognomy. The Metho-
dists have acquired a face ; the Quakers, a face ; the
nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter
by his manners. Trades and professions carve their
40 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
own lines on face and form. Certain circumstances
of English life are not less effective ; as, personal
liberty ; plenty of food ; good ale and mutton ; open
market, or good wages for every kind of labour ; high
bribes to talent and skill ; the island life, or the million
opportunities and outlets for expanding and misplaced
talent ; readiness of combination among themselves for
politics or for business ; strikes ; and sense of superiority
founded on habit of victory in labour and in war ; and
the appetite for superiority grows by feeding.
It is easy to add to the counteracting forces to
race. Credence is a main element. 'Tis said that
the views of nature held by any people determine all
their institutions. Whatever influences add to mental
or moral faculty, take men out of nationality, as out
of other conditions, and make the national life a
culpable compromise.
These limitations of the formidable doctrine of
race suggest others which threaten to undermine it,
as not sufficiently based. The fixity or inconvertible-
ness of races as we see them, is a weak argument for
the eternity of these frail boundaries, since all our
historical period is a point to the duration in which
nature has wrought. Any the least and solitariest
fact in our natural history, such as the melioration of
fruits and of animal stocks, has the worth of a ;power
in the opportunity of geologic periods. Moreover,
though we flatter the self-love of men and nations by
the legend of pure races, all our experience is of the
gradation and resolution of races, and strange resem-
blances meet us everywhere. It need not puzzle us
IV.] EACE. 41
that Malay and Papuan, Celt and Eoraan, Saxon and
Tartar should mix, when we see the rudiments of
tiger and baboon in our human form, and know that
the barriers of races are not so firm but that some
spray sprinkles us from the antediluvian seas.
The low organisations are simplest ; a mere mouth,
a jelly, or a straight worm. As the scale mounts, the
organisations become complex. We are piqued with
pure descent, but nature loves inoculation. A child
blends in his face the faces of both parents, and some
feature from every ancestor whose face hangs on the
wall. The best nations are those most widely related ;
and navigation, as efifecting a world-wide mixture, is
the most potent advancer of nations.
The English composite character betrays a mixed
origin. Everything English is a fusion of distant
and antagonistic elements. The language is mixed ;
the names of men are of different nations, — three
languages, three or four nations ; — the currents of
thought are counter : contemplation and practical
skill ; active intellect and dead conservatism -, world-
wide enterprise, and devoted use and wont ; aggressive
freedom and hospitable law, with bitter class-legisla-
tion ; a people scattered by their wars and affairs over
the face of the whole earth, and homesick to a man ;
a country of extremes, — dukes and chartists. Bishops
of Durham and naked heathen colliers ; — nothing can
be praised in it without damning exceptions, and
nothing denounced without salvos of cordial praise.
Neither do this people appear to be of one stem ;
but collectively a better race than any from which
42 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
they are derived. Nor is it easy to trace it home to
its original seats. Who can call by right names what
races are in Britain? Who can trace them historically 1
Who can discriminate them anatomically, or meta-
physically 1
In the impossibility of arriving at satisfaction on
the historical c|uestion of race, and, — come of what-
ever disputable ancestry, — the indisputable English-
man before me, himself very well marked, and nowhere
else to be found, — I fancied I could leave quite aside
the choice of a tribe as his lineal progenitors. Defoe
said in his wrath, "the Englishman was the mud of
all races." I incline to the belief, that, as water,
lime, and sand, make mortar, so certain tempera-
ments marry well, and, by well-managed contrarieties,
develop as drastic a character as the English. On
the whole, it is not so much a history of one or of
certain tribes of Saxons, Jutes, or Frisians, coming
from one place, and genetically identical, as it is an
anthology of temperaments out of them all. Certain
temperaments suit the sky and soil of England, say
eight or ten or twenty varieties, as, out of a hundred
pear-trees, eight or ten suit the soil of an orchard, and
thrive, whilst all the unadapted temperaments die out.
The English derive their pedigree from such a
range of nationalities, that there needs sea-room and
land -room to unfold the varieties of talent and char-
acter. Perhaps the ocean serves as a galvanic battery
to distribute acids at one pole and alkalies at the
other. So England tends to accumulate her liberals
in America and her conservatives at London. The
IV.] RACE. 43
Scandina-sdans in her race still hear in every age the
murmurs of their mother, the ocean ; the Briton in
the blood hugs the homestead still.
Asain, as if to intensate the influences that are
not of race, what we think of when we talk of English
traits really narrows itself to a small district. It ex-
cludes Ireland, and Scotland and Wales, and reduces
itself at last to London, that is, to those who come
and go thither. The portraits that hang on the walls
in the Academy Exhibition at London, the figures in
Punch's drawings of the public men, or of the club-
houses, the prints in the shop-windows, are distinctive
English, and not American, no, nor Scotch, nor Irish ;
but 'tis a very restricted nationality. As you go north
into the manufacturing and agricultural districts,
and to the population that never travels, as you go
into Yorkshire, as you enter Scotland, the world's
Englishman is no longer found. In Scotland, there
is a rapid loss of all grandeur of mien and manners ;
a provincial eagerness and acuteness appear ; the
poverty of the country makes itself remarked, and a
coarseness of manners ; and, among the intellectual,
is the insanity of dialectics. In Ireland, are the same
climate and soil as in England, but less food, no right
relation to the land, political dependence, small ten-
antry, and an inferior or misplaced race.
These queries concerning ancestry and blood may
be well allowed, for there is no prosperity that seems
more to depend on the kind of man than British
prosperity. Only a hardy and wise people could have
made this small territory great. We say, in a
44 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
regatta or yacht-race, that, if the boats are anywhere
nearly matched, it is the man that wins. Put the
best saiHng master into either boat, and he "vvill win.
Yet it is fine for us to speculate in face of un-
broken traditions, though vague, and losing them-
selves in fable. The traditions have got footing, and
refuse to be disturbed. The kitchen-clock is more
convenient than sidereal time. We must use the
popular category, as we do by the Linnaean classifica-
tion, for convenience, and not as exact and final.
Otherwise, we are presently confounded, when the
best settled traits of one race are claimed by some
new ethnologist as precisely characteristic of the
rival tribe.
I found plenty of well-marked English types, the
ruddy complexion fair and plump, robust men, with
faces cut like a die, and a strong island speech and
accent; a Norman type, with the complacency that
belongs to that constitution. Others, who might be
Americans, for anything that appeared in their com-
plexion or form : and their speech was much less
marked, and their thought much less bound. We will
call them Saxons. Then the Eoman has implanted
his dark complexion in the trinity or quaternity of
bloods.
1. The sources from which tradition derives their
stock are mainly three. And, first, they are of the
oldest blood of the world, — the Celtic. Some peoples
are deciduous or transitory. Where are the Greeks ?
Where the Etrurians'? Where the Romans'? But
IV.] EACE. 45
the Celts or Sidonides are an old family, of whose
beginning there is no memory, and their end is likely
to be still more remote in the future ; for they have
endurance and productiveness. They planted Britain,
and eave to the seas and mountains names which are
poems, and imitate the pure voices of nature. They
are favourably remembered in the oldest records of
Europe. They had no violent feudal tenure, but the
husbandman owned the land. They had an alj^hal^et,
astronomy, priestly culture, and a sublime creed.
They have a hidden and precarious genius. They
made the best popular literature of the middle ages
in the songs of Merlin, and the tender and delicious
mythology of Arthur.
2. The English come mainly from the Germans,
whom the Romans found hard to conquer in two
hundred and ten years, — say, impossible to conquer,
— when one remembers the long sequel; a people
about whom, in the old empire, the rumour ran, there
was never any that meddled with them that repented
it not.
3. Charlemagne, halting one day in a town of
Narbonnese Gaul, looked out of a window, and saw
a fleet of Northmen cruising in the Mediterranean.
They even entered the port of the town where he
was, causing no small alarm and sudden manning and
arming of his galleys. As they put out to sea again,
the emperor gazed long after them, his eyes bathed
in tears. "I am tormented with sorrow," he said,
"when I foresee the evils they will bring on my
posterity." There was reason for these Xerxes' tears.
46 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
t>5
The men who have built a ship and invented the rig,
— cordage, sail, compass, and pump, — the working in
and out of port, have acquired much more than a
ship. Now arm them, and every shore is at their
mercy. For, if they have not numerical superiority
where they anchor, they have only to sail a mile or
two to find it. Bonaparte's art of war, namely of con-
centrating force on the point of attack, must always
be theirs who have the choice of the battle-ground.
Of course they come into the fight from a higher
ground of power than the land-nations; and can
engage them on shore with a victorious advantage in
the retreat. As soon as the shores are sufiiciently
peopled to make piracy a losing business, the same
skill and courage are ready for the service of trade.
The Heimsh'ingla,^ or Sagas of the Kings of Nor-
way, collected by Snorro Sturleson, is the Iliad and
Odyssey of English history. Its portraits, like
Homer's, are strongly individualised. The Sagas
describe a monarchical republic like Sparta. The
government disappears before the importance of
citizens. In Norway, no Persian masses fight and
perish to aggrandise a king, but the actors are
bonders or landholders, every one of whom is named,
and personally and patronymically described, as the
king's friend and companion. A sparse population
gives this high worth to every man. Individuals are
often noticed as very handsome persons, which trait
only brings the story nearer to the English race.
1 Heimskriugla. Translated by Samuel Laing, Esq. London,
1844.
IV.] EACE. 47
Then the solid material interest predominates, so
dear to English understanding, wherein the association
is logical, between merit and land. The heroes of
the Sagas are not the knights of South Europe. No
vapouring of France and Spain has corrupted them.
They are substantial farmers, whom the rough times
have forced to defend their properties. They have
weapons which they use in a determined manner, by
no means for chivalry, but for thek acres. They are
people considerably advanced in rural arts, living
amphibiously on a rough coast, and drawing half
their food from the sea, and half from the land.
They have herds of cows, and malt, wheat, bacon,
butter, and cheese. They fish in the fiord, and hunt
the deer. A king among these farmers has a varying
power, sometimes not exceeding the authority of a
sherifi". A king was maintained much as, in some of
our country districts, a winter-schoolmaster is quar-
tered, a week here, a week there, and a fortnight on
the next farm, — on all the farmers in rotation. This
the king calls going into guest-quarters ; and it was
the only way in which, in a poor country, a poor king
with many retainers could be kept alive, when he
leaves his own farm to collect his dues through the
kingdom.
These Norsemen are excellent persons in the main,
with good sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt
action. But they have a singular tui^n for homicide ;
their chief end of man is to murder, or to be murdered;
oars, scythes, harpoons, crowbars, peatknives, and hay-
forks, are tools valued by them all the more for their
48 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
charming aptitude for assassinations. A pair of kings,
after dinner, will divert themselves by thrusting each
his sword through the other's body, as did Yngve and
Alf. Another pair ride out on a morning for a frolic,
and, finding no weapon near, will take the bits out of
their horses' mouths, and crush each other's heads
with them, as did Alric and Eric. The sight of a
tent- cord or a cloak -string puts them on hanging-
somebody, a wife, or a husband, or, best of all, a king.
If a farmer has so much as a hayfork, he sticks it into
a King Dag. King Ingiald finds it vastly amusing to
burn up half-a-dozen kings in a hall, after getting
them drunk. Never was poor gentleman so surfeited
Avith life, so furious to be rid of it, as the Northman.
If he cannot pick any other quarrel, he will get him-
self comfortably gored by a bull's horns, like Egil, or
slain by a land-slide, Hke the agricultural King
Onund. Odin died in his bed in Sweden ; but it was
a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of old age.
King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle, as
long as he can stand, then orders his war-ship, loaded
with his dead men and their weapons, to be taken
out to sea, the tiller shipped, and the sails spread;
being left alone, he sets fire to some tar- wood, and
lies down contented on deck. The wind blew off the
land, the ship flew, burning in clear flame, out between
the islets into the ocean, and there was the right end
of King Hake.
The earty Sagas are sanguinary and piratical ; the
later are of a noble strain. History rarely yields us
better passages than the conversation between King
IV.] RACE. 49
Sigurd the Crusader, and King Eystein, his brother,
on their respective merits, — one the soldier, and the
other a lover of the arts of peace.
But the reader of the Xorman history must steel
himself by holding fast the remote compensations
which result from animal vigour. As the old fossil
world shows that the first steps of reducing the chaos
were confided to saurians and other huge and horrible
animals, so the foundations of the new ci\dlity were
to be laid by the most savage men.
The Noimans came out of France into Endand
worse men than they went into it, one hundi-ed and
sixty years before. They had lost their own language,
and learned the Romance or barbarous Latin of the
Gauls ; and had acquired, with the language, all the
\aces it had names for. The conquest has obtained in
the chronicles the name of the "memory of sorrow."
Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These
founders of the House of Lords were greedy and fero-
cious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates.
They were all alike, they took everything they could
carry, they burned, harried, violated, tortured, and
killed, until everything English was brought to the
verge of ruin. Such, however, is the illusion of anti-
quity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now
existing boast their descent from these filthy thieves,
who showed a far juster conviction of their own
merits, by assuming for their types the smne, goat,
jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally
resembled.
England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the
VOL. IV. E
50 ENGLISH TRAITS. [CHAP.
tenth and eleventh centuries, and was the receptacle
into which all the mettle of that strenuous population
was poured. The continued draught of the best men
in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to these piratical
expeditions, exhausted those countries, like a tree
which bears much fruit when young, and these have
been second-rate powers ever since. The power of
the race migrated, and left Norway void. King Olaf
said, "When King Harold, my father, went westward
to England, the chosen men in Norway followed him :
but Norway was so emptied then, that such men have
not since been to find in the country, nor especially
such a leader as King Harold was for wisdom and
bravery."
It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in
1801, the British government sent Nelson to bombard
the Danish forts in the Sound; and, in 1807, Lord
Cathcart, at Copenhagen, took the entire Danish fleet,
as it lay in the basins, and all the equipments from
the Arsenal, and carried them to England. Kong-
helle, the to"\vn where the kings of Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark were wont to meet, is now rented to a
private English gentleman for a hunting ground.
It took many generations to trim, and comb, and
perfume the first boat-load of Norse pirates into royal
highnesses and most noble Knights of the Garter : but
every sparkle of ornament dates back to the Norse
boat. There will be time enough to mellow this
strength into civility and religion. It is a medical
fact, that the children of the blind see ; the children
of felons have a healthy conscience. Many a mean.
IV.
RACE. 51
dastardly hoy is, at the age of puberty, transformed
into a serious and generous youth.
The mildness of the following ages has not quite
effaced these traits of Odin; as the rudiment of a
structure matured in the tiger is said to be still found
unabsorbed in the Caucasian man. The nation has
a tough, acrid, animal nature which centuries of
churching and civilising have not been able to
sweeten. Alfieri said, " the crimes of Italy were the
proof of the superiority of the stock;" and one may
say of England, that this watch moves on a splinter
of adamant. The English uncultured are a brutal
nation. The crimes recorded in their calendars leave
nothing to be desired in the way of cold malignity.
Dear to the English heart is a fair stand-up fight.
The brutality of the manners in the lower class ap-
pears in the boxing, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, love
of executions, and in the readiness for a set-to in the
streets delightful to the English of all classes. The
costermono-ers of London streets hold cowardice in
loathing : — " we must work our fists well ; we are all
handy Tvdth our fists." The public schools are charged
with being bear-gardens of brutal strength, and are
liked by the people for that cause. The fagging is a
trait of the same quality. Med^vin, in the Life of
Shelley, relates that, at a mihtary school, they rolled
up a young man in a snowball, and left him so in his
room, while the other cadets went to church ; — and
crippled him for life. They have retained impress-
ment, deck-flogging, army-flogging, and school-flog-
ging. Such is the ferocity of the army discipline,
52 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
that a soldier sentenced to flogging sometimes prays
that his sentence may be commuted to death. Flog-
ging, banished from the armies of Western Europe,
remains here by the sanction of the Duke of Welling-
ton. The right of the husband to sell the wife has
been retained down to our times. The Jews have
been the favourite victims of royal and popular per-
secution. Henry III. mortgaged all the Jews in the
kingdom to his brother, the Earl of Cornwall, as
security for money which he borrowed. The torture
of criminals, and the rack for extorting evidence,
were slowly disused. Of the criminal statutes Sir
Samuel Eomilly said, " I have examined the codes of
all nations, and ours is the worst, and worthy of the
Anthropophagi." In the last session, the House of
Commons was listening to details of flogging and
torture practised in the jails.
As soon as this land, thus geographically posted,
got a hardy people into it, they could not help be-
coming the sailors and factors of the globe. From
childhood, they dabbled in water, they swam like fishes,
their playthings were boats. In the case of the ship-
money, the judges delivered it for law, that "England
being an island, the very midland shires therein are
all to be accounted maritime :" and Fuller adds, "the
genius even of landlocked counties driving the natives
with a maritime dexterity." As early as the Conquest,
it is remarked in explanation of the wealth of England
that its merchants trade to all countries.
The English, at the present day, have great vigour
of body and endurance. Other countrj'^men look slight
IV.] RACE. 53
and undersized beside them, and invalids. They are
bigger men than the Americans. I suppose a hundred
English taken at random out of the street, would
weigh a fourth more than so many Americans. Yet,
I am told, the skeleton is not larger. They are round,
ruddy, and handsome; at least, the whole bust is
well formed ; and there is a tendency to stout and
powerful frames. I remarked the stoutness, on my
first landing at Liverpool; porter, drayman, coach-
man, guard, — what substantial, respectable, grand-
fatherly figures, with costume and manners to suit.
The American has arrived at the old mansion-house,
and finds himself among uncles, aunts, and grand-
sires. The pictures on the chimney-tiles of his nursery
were pictures of these people. Here they are in the
identical costumes and air which so took him.
It is the fault of their forms that they grow stocky,
and the women have that disadvantage, — few tall,
slender figures of flowing shape, but stunted and
thickset persons. The French say that the English-
women have two left hands. But, in all ages, they
are a handsome race. The bronze monuments of
crusaders lying cross-legged in the Temple Church at
London, and those in Worcester and in Salisbury
Cathedrals, which are seven hundred years old, are
of the same type as the best youthful heads of men
now in England ; — please by beauty of the same char-
acter, an expression blending good-nature, valour, and
refinement, and, mainly, by that uncorrupt youth in
the face of manhood, which is daily seen in the streets
of London.
54 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
Both branches of the Scandinavian race are distin-
guished for beauty. The anecdote of the handsome
captives which Saint Gregory found at Rome, a.d.
600, is matched by the testimony of the Norman
chroniclers, five centuries later, who wondered at the
beauty and long flowing hair of the young English
captives. Meantime, the Heimshingla has frequent
occasion to speak of the personal beauty of its heroes.
When it is considered what humanity, what resources
of mental and moral power, the traits of the blonde
race betoken, — its accession to empire marks a new
and finer epoch, wherein the old mineral force shall
be subjugated at last by humanity, and shall plough
in its furrow henceforward. It is not a final race,
once a crab always crab, but a race with a future.
On the English face are combined decision and
nerve, with the fair complexion, blue eyes, and open
and florid aspect. Hence the love of truth, hence the
sensibility, the fine perception, and poetic construc-
tion. The fair Saxon man, with open front, and
honest meaning, domestic, aff'ectionate, is not the
wood out of which cannibal, or inquisitor, or assassin
is made, but he is moulded for law, lawful trade,
civility, marriage, the nurture of children, for colleges,
churches, charities, and colonies.
They are rather manly than warlike. When the
war is over, the mask falls from the aftectionate and
domestic tastes, which make them women in kind-
ness. This union of qualities is fabled in their
national legend of Beauty and the Beast, or,- long
before, in the Greek legend of Hermaj^hrodite. The
IV.] RACE. 55
two sexes are co-present in the English mind. I
apply to Britannia, queen of seas and colonies, the
words in which her latest novelist portrays his heroine :
" she is as mild as she is game, and as game as she is
mild." The EngHsh delight in the antagonism which
combines in one person the extremes of courage and
tenderness ; Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends his love
to Lord CoUingwood, and, like an ijinocent schoolboy
that goes to bed, sajs, " Kiss me, Hard}^," and turns
to sleep. Lord CoUingwood, his comrade, was of a
nature the most aftectionate and domestic. Admiral
Rodney's figure approached to delicacy and efleminacy,
and he declared himself very sensible to fear, which
he siu-mounted only by considerations of honour and
pubhc duty. Clarendon says, the Duke of Bucking-
ham was so modest and gentle, that some courtiers
attempted to put affronts on him, until they found
that this modesty and effeminacy was only a mask for
the most terrible determination. And Sir Edward
Parry said, the other day, of Sir John Franklin, that,
" if he found Wellington Sound open, he explored it ;
for he was a man who never turned his back on a
danger, yet of that tenderness, that he would not
brush away a mosquito." Even for their highwaymen
the same virtue is claimed, and Robin Hood comes
described to us as mUissimiis x^rcedonum, the gentlest
thief. But they know w^here their war-dogs lie.
Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson,
and Wellington, are not to be trifled with, and the
brutal strength which lies at the bottom of society,
the animal ferocity of the quays and cockpits, the
56 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
bullies of the costermongers of Shoreditch, Seven
Dials, and Sj)italfields, they know how to wake up.
They have a vigorous health, and last well into
middle and old age. The old men are as red as roses,
and still handsome. A clear skin, a peach -bloom
complexion, and good teeth, are found all over the
island. They use a plentiful and nutritious diet.
The operative cannot subsist on water-cresses. Beef,
mutton, wheatbread, and malt-liquors, are universal
among the first-class labourers. Good feeding is a
chief point of national pride among the vulgar, and,
in their caricatures, they represent the Frenchman as
a poor, starved body. It is curious that Tacitus found
the Enghsh beer already in use among the Germans :
" they make from barley or wheat a drink corrupted
into some resemblance to wine." Lord Chief Justice
Fortescue in Henry VI. 's time, says " The inhabitants
of England drink no water, unless at certain times,
on a religious score, and by way of penance." The
extremes of poverty and ascetic penance, it would
seem, never reach cold water in England. Wood,
the antiquary, in describing the poverty and macera-
tion of Father Lacey, an English Jesuit, does not
deny him beer. He says, "his bed was under a
thatching, . and the way to it up a ladder ; his fare
was coarse ; his drink, of a penny a gawn, or gallon."
They have more constitutional energy than any
other people. They think, with Henri Quatre, that
manly exercises are the foundation of that elevation
of mind which gives one nature ascendant - over
another ; or, with the Ai^abs, that the days spent in
IV.] EACE. 57
the chase are not counted in the length of life. They
box, run, shoot, ride, row, and sail from pole to pole.
They eat, and drink, and live jolly in the open air,
putting a bar of solid sleep between day and day.
They walk and ride as fast as they can, their head
bent forward, as if urged on some pressing affair.
The French say that Englishmen in the street always
walk straight before them, like mad dogs. Men and
women walk with infatuation. As soon as he can
handle a gim, hunting is the fine art of every English-
man of condition. They are the most voracious
people of prey that ever existed. Every season turns
out the aristocracy into the country to shoot and
fish. The more vigorous run out of the island to
Europe, to America, to Asia, to Africa, and Australia,
to hunt with fury by gun, by trap, by harpoon, by
lasso, with dog, •with horse, mth elephant, or with
dromedary, all the game that is in nature. These
men have written the game-books of all countries, as
Hawker, Scrope, Murray, Herbert, Maxwell, Gum-
ming, and a host of travellers. The people at home
are addicted to boxing, running, leaping, and roAving
matches.
I suppose the dogs and horses must be thanked
for the fact that the men have muscles almost as
tough and supple as their own. If, in every efficient
man, there is first a fine animal, in the English race
it is of the best breed, a wealthy, juicy, broad-chested
creature, steeped in ale and good cheer, and a little
overloaded by his flesh. Men of animal nature rely,
like animals, on their instincts. The Englishman
58 ENGLISH TIIAITS. [chap.
associates well with dogs and horses. His attachment
to the horse arises from the courage and address
required to manage it. The horse finds out who is
afraid of it, and does not disguise its opinion. Their
young boiling clerks and lusty collegians like the
company of horses better than the company of pro-
fessors. I suppose the horses are better company
for them. The horse has more uses than BufFon
noted. If you go into the streets, every driver in
bus or dray is a bully, and, if I wanted a good troop
of soldiers, I should recruit among the stables. Add
a certain degree of refinement to the vivacity of
these riders, and you obtain the precise quality which
makes the men and women of polite society formi-
dable.
They come honestly by their horsemanship, "with
Hengist and Horsa for their Saxon founders. The
other branch of their race had been Tartar nomads.
The horse was all their wealth. The children were
fed on mares' milk. The pastures of Tartary were
still remembered by the tenacious practice of the
Norsemen to eat horseflesh at rehgious feasts. In
the Danish invasions the marauders seized upon
horses where they landed, and were at once converted
into a body of expert cavalry.
At one time this skill seems to have declined.
Two centuries ago, the English horse never performed
any eminent service beyond the seas ; and the reason
assigned was, that the genius of the English hath
always more inclined them to foot-service, as- pure
and proper manhood, without any mixture ; whilst,
IV.] EACE. 59
in a victory on horseback, the credit ought to be
divided betwixt the man and his horse. But in two
hundred years a change has taken place. Now,
they boast that they understand horses better than
any other people in the world, and that their horses
are become their second selves.
"William the Conqueror being," says Camden,
"better affected to beasts than to men, imposed heavy
fines and punishments on those that should meddle
with his game." The Saxon Chronicle says, "he
loved the tall deer as if he were their father." And
rich Englishmen have followed his example, accord-
ing to their ability, ever since, in encroaching on the
tillage and commons with their game-preserves. It is
a proverb in England that it is safer to shoot a man
than a hare. The severity of the game-laws certainly
indicates an extravagant sympathy of the nation with
horses and hunters. The gentlemen are always on
horseback, and have brought horses to an ideal per-
fection, — the EngHsh racer is a factitious breed. A
score or two of mounted gentlemen may frequently
be seen running like centaurs down a hill nearly as
steep as the roof of a house. Every inn-room is lined
with pictures of races ; telegraphs communicate,
every hour, tidings of the heats from Newmarket and
Ascot : and the House of Commons adjourns over
the "Derby Day."
60 ENGLISH TKAITS. , [chap.
CHAPTEE V.
ABILITY.
The Saxon and the Northman are both Scandinavians.
History does not allow us to fix the limits of the
application of these names with any accuracy; but
from the residence of a portion of these people in
France, and from some effect of that powerful soil on
their blood and manners, the Norman has come popu-
larly to represent in England the aristocratic, — and
the Saxon the democratic principle. And though, I
doubt not, the nobles are of both tribes, and the
workers of both, yet we are forced to use the names
a little mythically, one to represent the worker, and
the other the en j oyer.
The island was a prize for the best race. Each
of the dominant races tried its fortune in turn. The
Phoenician, the Celt, and the Goth, had already got
in. The Roman came, but in the very day when his
fortune culminated. He looked in the eyes of a new
people that was to supplant his own. He disembarked
his legions, erected his camps and towers, — presently
he heard bad news from Italy, and worse and worse,
every year ; at last, he made a handsome comphment
v.] ABILITY. 61
of roads and walls, and departed. But the Saxon
seriously settled in the land, builded, tilled, fished,
and traded, with German truth and adhesiveness.
The Dane came and divided with him. Last of all,
the Norman, or French-Dane, arrived, and formally
conquered, harried, and ruled the kingdom. A
century later, it came out that the Saxon had the most
bottom and longevity, had managed to make the victor
speak the language and accept the law and usage of
the victim ; forced the baron to dictate Saxon terms to
Norman kings ; and, step by step, got all the essential
securities of civil liberty invented and confirmed.
The genius of the race and the genius of the place
conspired to this efi'ect. The island is lucrative to
free labour, but not worth possession on other terms.
The race was so intellectual, that a feudal or military
tenure could not last longer than the war. The power
of the Saxon-Danes, so thoroughly beaten in the war,
that the name of English and villein were synonymous,
yet so vivacious as to extort charters from the kings,
stood on the strong personality of these people. Sense
and economy must rule in a world which is made of
sense and economy, and the banker, with his seven
])er cent, drives the earl out of his castle. A nobility
of soldiers cannot keep down a commonalty of shrewd
scientific persons. What signifies a pedigree of a
hundred links against a cotton-spinner with steam in
his mill; or against a company of broad-shouldered
Liverpool merchants, for whom Stephenson and Brunei
are contriving locomotives and a tubular bridge ?
These Saxons are the hands of mankind. They
62 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
have the taste for toil, a distaste for pleasure or re-
pose, and the telescopic appreciation of distant gain.
They are the wealth-makers, — and by dint of mental
faculty, which has its own conditions. The Saxon
works after liking, or, only for himself; and to set
him at work, and to begin to draw his monstrous
values out of barren Britain, all dishonour, fret, and
barrier must be removed, and then his energies begin
to play.
The Scandinavian fancied himself surrounded by
Trolls, — a kind of goblin men, with vast power of
work and skilful production, — divine stevedores,
carpenters, reapers, smiths, and masons, swift to re-
ward every kindness done them, with gifts of gold
and silver. In all English history this dream comes
to pass. Certain Trolls or working brains, under the
names of Alfred, Bede, Caxton, Bracton, Camden,
Drake, Selden, Dugdale, Newton, Gibbon, Brindley,
Watt, Wedgwood, dwell in the troll -mounts of
Britain, and turn the sweat of their face to power
and renown.
If the race is good, so is the place. jSTobody
landed on this spellbound island with impunity. The
enchantments of barren shingle and rough weather
transformed every adventurer into a labourer. Each
vagabond that arrived bent his neck to the yoke of
gain, or found the air too tense for him. The strong
survived, the weaker went to the ground. Even the
pleasure-hunters and sots of England are of a tougher
texture. A hard temperament had been formed by
Saxon and Saxon-Dane, and such of these French or
v.] ABILITY. 63
Normans as could reach it were naturalised in every
sense.
All the admirable expedients as means hit upon
in England, must be looked at as growths or irresistible
offshoots of the expanding mind of the race. A man
of that brain thinks and acts thus ; and his neighbour,
being afflicted with the same kind of brain, though he
is rich, and called a baron, or a duke, thinks the same
thing, and is ready to allow the justice of the thought
and act in his retainer or tenant, though sorely against
his baronial or ducal "^Wll.
The island was renowned in antiquity for its breed
of mastiffs, so fierce, that when their teeth were set
you must cut their heads off to part them. The man
was like his dog. The people have that nervous
bihous temperament, which is known by medical men
to resist every means employed to make its possessor
subser\aent to the will of others. The English game is
main force to main force, the planting of foot to foot,
fair play and open field, — a rough tug ^vithout trick
or dodging, till one or both come to pieces. King
Ethelwald spoke the language of his race when he
planted himself at Wimborne, and said, "he would
do one of two things, or there live, or there lie."
They hate craft and subtlety. They neither poison,
nor waylay, nor assassinate ; and, when they have
pounded each other to a poultice, they will shake
hands and be friends for the remainder of their lives.
You shall trace those Gothic touches at school, at
country fairs, at the hustings, and in parliament. No
artifice, no breach of truth and plain dealing, — not
64 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
SO much as secret ballot, is suffered in the island. In
parliament, the tactics of the opposition is to resist
every step of the government, by a pitiless attack :
and in a bargain, no prospect of advantage is so dear
to the merchant, as the thought of being tricked is
mortifying.
Sir Kenelm Digby, a courtier of Charles and
James, who won the sea-fight of Scanderoon, was a
model Englishman in his day. "His person was
handsome and gigantic, he had so graceful elocution
and noble address, that, had he been dropt out of the
clouds in any part of the world, he would have made
himself respected : he was skilled in six tongues, and
master of arts and arms." ^ Sir Kenelm wrote a
book, "Of Bodies and of Souls," in which he pro-
pounds, that "syllogisms do breed or rather are all
the variety of man's life. They are the steps by
which we walk in all our businesses. Man, as he
is man, doth nothing else but weave such chains.
Whatsoever he doth, swarving from this work, he
doth as deficient from the nature of man : and, if he
do aught beyond this, by breaking out into divers
sorts of exterior actions, he findeth, nevertheless, in
this linked sequel of simple discourses, the art, the
cause, the rule, the bounds, and the model of it." ^
There spoke the genius of the English people.
There is a necessity on them to be logical. They
would hardly greet the good that did not logically
fall, — as if it excluded their own merit, or shook their
understandings. They are jealous of minds that have
1 Antony Wood. ^ Man's Soule, p. 29.
v.] ABILITY. 65
much facility of association, from an instinctive fear
that the seeing many relations to their thought might
impair this serial continuity and lucrative concentra-
tion. They are impatient of genius, or of minds
addicted to contemplation, and cannot conceal their
contempt for sallies of thought, however lawful,
whose steps they cannot count by their wonted rule.
Neither do they reckon better a syllogism that ends
in sjllogism. For they have a supreme eye to facts,
and theirs is a logic that brings salt to soup, hammer
to nail, oar to boat, the logic of cooks, carpenters, and
chemists, following the sequence of nature, and one
on which words make no impression. Their mind is
not dazzled by its own means, but locked and bolted
to results. They love men, who, like Samuel John-
son, a doctor in the schools, would jump out of his
syllogism the instant his major proposition was in
danger, to save that at all hazards. Their practical
vision is spacious, and they can hold many threads
without entangling them. All the steps they orderly
take ; but with the high logic of never confounding
the minor and major proposition ; keeping their eye
on their aim, in all the complicity and delay incident
to the several series of means they employ. There
is room in their minds for this and that, — a science
of degrees. In the courts, the independence of the
judges and the loyalty of the suitors are equally
excellent. In Parliament, they have hit on that
capital invention of freedom, a constitutional opposi-
tion. And when courts and parliament are both
deaf, the plaintiff is not silenced. Calm, patient, his
VOL. IV. F
66 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
weapon of defence from year to year is the obstinate
reproduction of the grievance, with calculations and
estimates. But, meantime, he is drawing numbers
and money to his opinion, resolved that if all remedy
fails, right of revolution is at the bottom of his
charter-box. They are bound to see their measure
carried, and stick to it through ages of defeat.
Into this English logic, however, an infusion of
justice enters, not so apparent in other races, — a belief
in the existence of two sides, and the resolution to
see fair play. There is, on every question, an appeal
from the assertion of the parties to the proof of what
is asserted. They are impious in their scepticism of
a theory, but Idss the dust before a fact. Is it a
machine, is it a charter, is it a boxer in the ring, is it
a candidate on the hustings, — the universe of English-
men will suspend their judgment, until the trial can
be had. They are not to be led by a phrase, they
want a working plan, a working machine, a working
constitution, and will sit out the trial, and abide by
the issue, and reject all preconceived theories. In
politics they put blunt questions, which must be
answered; who is to pay the taxes? what will you
do for trade 1 what for corn 1 what for the spinner ?
This singular fairness and its results strike the
French -with surprise. Philip de Commines says,
"Now, in my oj^inion, among all the sovereignties I
know in the world, that in which the public good is
best attended to, and the least violence exercised on
the people, is that of England." Life is safe; and
personal rights ; and what is freedom without secu-
v.] ABILITY. 67
rity? whilst in France, "fraternity," "equalit}^," and
" indivisible unity," are names for assassination. Mon-
tesquieu said, " England is the freest country in the
world. If a man in England had as many enemies as
hairs on his head, no harm would happen to him."
Their self-respect, their faith in causation, and
their realistic logic or coupling of means to ends,
have given them the leadership of the modern world.
Montesquieu said, "No people have true common
sense but those who are born in England." This com-
mon sense is a perception of all the conditions of our
earthly existence, of laws that can be stated, and of
laws that cannot be stated, or that are learned only
by practice, in which allowance for friction is made.
They are impious in their scepticism of theory, and
in high departments they are cramped and sterile.
But the unconditional surrender to facts, and the
choice of means to reach their ends, are as admirable
as with ants and bees.
The bias of the nation is a passion for utility.
They love the lever, the screw, and pulley, the
Flanders draught -horse, the waterfall, mnd- mills,
tide-mills ; the sea and the wind to bear their freight
ships. More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which
glitters among their crown jewels, they prize that
dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles
turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose
axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their
toys are steam and galvanism. They are heavy at
the fine arts, but adroit at the coarse ; not good in
jewellery or mosaics, but the best ironmasters, colliers,
68 ENGLISH TKAITS. [chap.
wool-combers, and tanners, in Europe. They apply
themselves to agriculture, to draining, to resisting
encroachments of sea, wind, travelling sands, cold
and wet subsoil ; to fishery, to manufacture of indis-
pensable staples, — salt, plumbago, leather, wool, glass,
pottery, and brick, — to bees and silkworms ; — and by
their steady combinations they succeed. A manu-
facturer sits down to dinner in a suit of clothes which
was wool on a sheep's back at sunrise. You dine
with a gentleman on venison, pheasant, quail, pigeons,
poidtry, mushrooms, and pine-apples, all the growth
of his estate. They are neat husbands for ordering
all their tools pertaining to house and field. All are
well kept. There is no want and no waste. They
study use and fitness in their building, in the order
of their dwellings, and in their dress. The French-
man invented the ruffle, the Englishman added the
shirt. The Englishman wears a sensible coat buttoned
to the chin, of rough but solid and lasting textui^e.
If he is a lord, he dresses a little worse than a com-
moner. They have diffused the taste for plain sub-
stantial hats, shoes, and coats through Europe. They
think him the best dressed man whose dress is so fit
for his use that you cannot notice or remember to
describe it.
They secure the essentials in their diet, in their
arts and manufactures. Every article of cutlery
shows, in its shape, thought and long experience of
workmen. They put the expense in the right place,
as, in their sea -steamers, in the solidity of the
machinery and the strength of the boat. The admir-
v.] ABILITY. 69
able equipment of their arctic ships carries London to
the pole. They build roads, aqueducts, warm and ven-
tilate houses. And they have impressed their direct-
ness and practical habit on modern civilisation.
In trade, the Englishman believes that nobody
breaks who ought not to break; and that, if he do
not make trade everything, it will make him nothing;
and acts on this belief. The spirit of system, atten-
tion to details, and the subordination of details, or,
the not driving things too finely (which is charged on
the Germans), constitute that despatch of business,
which makes the mercantile power of England.
In war, the Englishman looks to his means. He
is of the opinion of Civilis, his German ancestor,
whom Tacitus reports as holding " that the gods are
on the side of the strongest;" — a sentence which
Bonaparte unconsciously translated, when he said,
" that he had noticed that Providence always favoured
the heaviest battalion." Their military science pro-
pounds that if the weight of the advancing column is
greater than that of the resisting, the latter is de-
stroyed. Therefore Wellington, when he came to
the army in Spain, had every man weighed, first with
accoutrements, and then mthout ; believing that the
force of an army depended on the weight and power
of the individual soldiers, in spite of cannon. Lord
Palmerston told the House of Commons that more
care is taken of the health and comfort of English
troops than of any other troops in the world; and
that, hence, the English can put more men into the
rank on the day of action, on the field of battle, than
70 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
any other army. Before the bombardment of the
Danish forts in the Baltic, Nelson spent day after
day, himself in the boats, on the exhausting service
of sounding the channel. Clerk of Eldin's celebrated
manoeuvre of breaking the line of sea-battle, and
Nelson's feat of doubling, or stationing his ships one
on the outer bow and another on the outer quarter
of each of the enemy's, were only translations into
naval tactics of Bonaparte's rule of concentration.
Lord Collingwood was accustomed to tell his men,
that, if they could fire three well-directed broadsides
in five minutes, no vessel could resist them; and,
from constant practice,- they came to do it in three
minutes and a half.
But conscious that no race of better men exists,
they rely most on the simplest means ; and do not
like ponderous and difficult tactics, but delight to bring
the affair hand to hand ; where the victory lies mth
the strength, courage, and endurance of the indi-
vidual combatants. They adopt every improvement
in rig, in motor, in weapons, but they fundamentally
believe that the best stratagem in naval war is to lay
your ship close alongside of the enemy's ship, and
bring all your guns to bear on him, until you or he
go to the bottom. This is the old fashion, which
never goes out of fashion, neither in nor out of England.
It is not usually a point of honour, nor a religious
sentiment, and never any whim, that they will shed
their blood for ; but usually property, and right
measured by property, that breeds revolution. 'They
have no Indian taste for a tomahawk-dance, no French
v.] ABILITY. 71
taste for a badge or a proclamation. The Englishman
is peaceably minding his business, and earning his
day's wages. But if you offer to lay hand on his
day's wages, on his cow, or his right in common, or
his shop, he will fight to the Judgment. Magna
Charta, jury trial, habeas corpus, star-chamber, ship-
money, Popery, Plymouth colony, American Revolu-
tion, are all questions involving a yeoman's right to
his dinner, and, except as touching that, would not
have lashed the British nation to rage and revolt.
Whilst they are thus instinct with a spirit of order,
and of calculation, it must be owned they are capable
of larger views ; but the indulgence is expensive to
them, costs great crises, or accumulations of mental
power. In common, the horse works best with
blinders. Nothing is more in the line of English
thought than our unvarnished Connecticut question,
**Pray, sir, how do you get your living when you are
at home "?" The questions of freedom, of taxation, of
privilege, are money questions. Heavy fellows,
steeped in beer and fleshpots, they are hard of hear-
ing and dim of sight. Their drowsy minds need to
be flagellated by war and trade and politics and per-
secution. They cannot well read a principle except
by the light of faggots and of burning towns.
Tacitus says of the Germans, "powerful only in
sudden efforts, they are impatient of toil and labour."
This highly-destined race, if it had not somewhere
added the chamber of patience to its brain, would not
have built London. I know not from which of the
tribes and temperaments that went to the composition
72 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
of the people this tenacity was supphed, but they
clinch every nail they drive. They have no ninning
for luck, and no immoderate speed. They spend
largely on their fabric, and await the slow return.
Their leather lies tanning seven years in the vat. At
Eogers's mills, in Sheffield, where I was shown the
process of making a razor and a penknife, I was told
there is no luck in making good steel ; that they make
no mistakes, every blade in the hundred and in the
thousand is good. And that is characteristic of all
their work, — no more is attempted than is done.
\\Tien Thor and his companions arrive at Utgard,
he is told that " nobody is permitted to remain here
unless he understand some art, and excel in it all other
men." The same question is still put to the posterity
of Thor. A nation of labourers, every man is trained
to some one art or detail, and aims at perfection in
that ; not content unless he has something in which
he thinks he surpasses all other men. He would
rather not do anything at all than not do it well. I
suppose no people have such thoroughness ; — from the
highest to the lowest, every man meaning to be
master of his art.
"To show capacity," a Frenchman described as the
end of a speech in debate : " No," said an Englishman,
" but to set your shoulder at the wheel, — to advance
the business." Sir Samuel Romilly refused to speak
in popular assemblies, confining himself to the House
of Commons, where a measure can be carried by a
speech. The business of the House of Commons
is conducted by a few persons, but these are hard-
y.] ABILITY. 73
worked. Sir Eobert Peel " knew the Blue Books by
heart." His colleagues and rivals carry Hansard in
their heads. The high civil and legal ojQfices are not
beds of ease, but posts which exact frightful amounts
of mental labour. Many of the great leaders, like
Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Eomilly, are soon worked
to death. They are excellent judges in England of a
good worker, and when they find one, like Clarendon,
Sir Philip Warwick, Sir William Coventry, Ashley,
Burke, Thmiow, Mansfield, Pitt, Eldon, Peel, or Russell,
there is nothing too good or too high for him.
They have a wonderful heat in the pursuit of a
public aim. Private persons exhibit, in scientific and
antiquarian researches, the same pertinacity as the
nation showed in the coalitions in which it yoked
Europe against the empire of Bonaparte, one after
the other defeated, and still renewed, until the sixth
hurled him from his seat.
Sir John Herschel, in completion of the work of
his father, who had made the catalogue of the stars
of the northern hemisphere, expatriated himself for
years at the Cape of Good Hope, finished his inven-
tory of the southern heaven, came home, and redacted
it in eight years more ; — a Avork whose value does
not begin until thirty years have elapsed, and thence-
forward a record to all ages of the highest import.
The Admiralty sent out the Arctic expeditions year
after year, in search of Sir John Franklin, until, at
last, they have threaded their way through polar pack
and Behring's Straits, and solved the geographical
problem. Lord Elgin, at Athens, saw the imminent
74 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
ruin of the Greek remains, set up his scaffoldings, in
spite of epigrams, and, after five years' lahour to
collect them, got his marbles on shipboard. The ship
struck a rock, and went to the bottom. He had them
all fished up by divers, at a vast expense, and brought
to London; not knowing that Haydon, Fuseli, and
Canova, and all good heads in all the world, were to
be his applauders. In the same spirit were the
excavation and research by Sir Charles Fellowes, for
the Xanthian monument ; and of Layard for his
Nineveh sculptures.
The nation sits in the immense city they have
builded, a London extended into every man's mind,
though he live in Van Diemen's Land or Capetown.
Faithful performance of what is undertaken to be
performed they honour in themselves, and exact in
others, as certificate of equality with themselves. The
modern world is theirs. They have made and make
it day by day. The commercial relations of the world
are so intimately drawn to London, that every dollar
on earth contributes to the strength of the English
government. And if all the wealth in the planet
should perish by war or deluge, they know them-
selves competent to replace it.
They have approved their Saxon blood by their
sea-going qualities ; their descent from Odin's smiths
by their hereditary skill in working in iron ; their
British birth by husbandry and immense wheat
harvests ; and justified their occupancy of the centre
of habitable land by their supreme ability and cos-
mopolitan spirit. They have tilled, builded, forged,
v.] ABILITY. 75
spun, and woven. They have made the island a
thoroughfare ; and London a shop, a law-court, a re-
cord-office, and scientific bureau, inviting to strangers ;
a sanctuary to refugees of every political and religious
opinion ; and such a city, that almost every active
man, in any nation, finds himself, at one time or
other, forced to visit it.
In every path of practical activity they have gone
even with the best. There is no secret of war in
which they have not shown mastery. The steam-
chamber of Watt, the locomotive of Stephenson, the
cotton -mule of Roberts, perform the labour of the
world. There is no department of literature, of
science, or of useful art, in which they have not pro-
duced a first-rate book. It is England whose opinion
is waited for on the merit of a new invention, an im-
proved science. And in the complications of the
trade and pohtics of their vast empire they have been
equal to every exigency, with coimsel and with con-
duct. Is it their luck, or is it in the chambers of
their brain, — it is their commercial advantage, that
whatever light appears in better method or happy
invention, breaks out in their race. They are a family
to which a destiny attaches, and the Banshee has
sworn that a male heir shall never be wanting. They
have a wealth of men to fill important posts, and the
vigilance of party criticism insures the selection of a
competent person.
A proof of the energy of the British people is the
highly artificial construction of the whole fabric. The
76 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
climate and geography, I said, were factitious, as if
the hands of man had arranged the conditions. The
same character pervades the whole kingdom. Bacon
said, "Eome was a state not subject to paradoxes;"
but England subsists by antagonisms and contradic-
tions. The foundations of its greatness are the roll-
ing waves ; and, from first to last, it is a museum of
anomalies. This foggy and rainy country furnishes
the world with astronomical observations. Its short
rivers do not afford water-power, but the land shakes
under the thunder of the mills. There is no gold
mine of any importance, but there is more gold in
England than in all other countries. It is too far
north for the culture of the vine, but the wines of all
countries are in its docks. The French Comte de
Lauraguais said, "no fruit ripens in England but a
baked apple"; but oranges and pine-apples are as
cheap in London as in the Mediterranean. The
Mark-Lane Express, or the Custom House Eeturns
bear out to the letter the vaunt of Pope,
" Let India boast her palms, nor envy we
The weeping amber, nor the &picy tree,
"While, by our oaks, those precious loads are borne,
And realms commanded which those trees adorn."
The native cattle are extinct, but the island is full of
artificial breeds. The agriculturist Bakewell created
sheep and cows and horses to order, and breeds in
which everything was omitted but what is economical.
The cow is sacrificed to her bag, the ox to his sirloin.
Stall-feeding makes sperm-mills of the cattle, and'con-
verts the stable to a chemical factory. The rivers,
v.] FACTITIOUS. 77
lakes and ponds, too much fished, or obstructed by
factories, are artificially filled with the eggs of salmon,
turbot, and herring.
Chat Moss and the fens of Lincolnshire and Cam-
bridgeshire are unhealthy and too barren to pay rent.
By cylindrical tiles, and gutta-percha tubes, five
millions of acres of bad land have been drained and
put on equality with the best, for rape -culture and
grass. The climate too, which was already believed
to have become milder and drier by the enormous
consumption of coal, is so far reached by this new
action, that fogs and storms are said to disappear.
In due course, all England vdW be drained, and rise a
second time out of the waters. The latest step was
to call in the aid of steam to agriculture. Steam is
almost an Englishman. I do not know but they will
send him to Parliament next, to make laws. He
w^eaves, forges, saws, pounds, fans, and now he must
pimip, grind, dig, and plough for the farmer. The
markets created by the manufacturing population have
erected agriculture into a great thriving and spending
industry. The value of the houses in Britain is equal
to the value of the soil. Artificial aids of all kinds
are cheaper than the natural resources. No man can
afi'ord to w^alk, when the parliamentary train carries
him for a penny a mile. Gas-burners are cheaper
than daylight in numberless floors in the cities. All
the houses in London buy their water. The English
trade does not exist for the exportation of native
products, but on its manufactures, or the making well
everything which is ill made elsewhere. They make
78 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
ponchos for the Mexican, bandannas for the Hindoo,
ginseng for the Chinese, beads for the Indian, laces
for the Flemings, telescopes for astronomers, cannons
for kings.
The Board of Trade caused the best models of
Greece and Italy to be placed within the reach of
every manufacturing population. They caused to be
translated from foreign languages and illustrated by
elaborate drawings, the most approved works of
Munich, Berlin, and Paris. They have ransacked
Italy to find new forms, to add a grace to the products
of their looms, their potteries, and their foundries.^
The nearer we look, the more artificial is their
social system. Their law is a network of fictions.
Their property, a scrip or certificate of right to
interest on money that no man ever saw. Their social
classes are made by statute. Their ratios of power
and representation are historical and legal. The last
Reform-biU took away political power from a mound,
a ruin, and a stone -wall, whilst Birmingham and
Manchester, whose mills paid for the wars of Europe,
had no representative. Purity in the elective Parlia-
ment is secured by the purchase of seats. ^ Foreign
power is kept by armed colonies ; power at home, by
a standing army of police. The pauper lives better
than the free labourer ; the thief better than the
pauper; and the transported felon better than the
1 See Memorial of H. Greenougli, p. 66. New York, 1853.
^ Sir S. Romilly, purest of Englisli patriots, decided that
the only independent mode of entering Parliament was to buy
a seat, and lie bought Horsham.
v.] FACTITIOUS. 79
one under imprisonment. The crimes are factitious,
as smuggling, poachiing, nonconformitj^, heresy and
treason. Better, they say in England, kill a man than
a hare. The sovereignty of the seas is maintained by
the impressment of seamen. "The impressment of
seamen," said Lord Eldon, " is the life of oiu* navy."
Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt,
on the principle, "if you will not lend me the money,
how can I pay you?" For the administration of justice,
Sir Samuel Eomilly's expedient for clearing the arrears
of business in Chancery, was, the Chancellor's stajdng
away entirely from his court. Their system of educa-
tion is factitious. The Universities galvanise dead
lano;ua2;es into a semblance of life. Their church is
artificial. The manners and customs of society are
artificial ; — made-up men with made-up manners ; —
and thus the whole is Birminghamised, and we have
a nation whose existence is a work of art ; — a cold,
barren, almost arctic isle, being made the most fruit-
ful, luxurious, and imperial land in the whole earth.
Man in England submits to be a product of political
economy. On a bleak moor a mill is built, a bank-
ing-house is opened, and men come in, as water in a
sluice-way, and towns and cities rise. Man is made
as a Birmingham button. The rapid doubling of the
population dates from Watt's steam-engine. A land-
lord, who o^vns a province, says, "The tenantry are
unprofitable; let me have sheep." He unroofs the
houses, and ships the population to America. The
nation is accustomed to the instantaneous creation of
wealth. It is the maxim of their economists, "that
80 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
the greater part in value of the wealth now existing
in England has been produced by human hands with-
in the last twelve months." Meantime, three or four
days' rain will reduce hundreds to starving in London.
One secret of their power is their mutual good
understanding. Not only good minds are born among
them, but all the people have good minds. Every
nation has yielded some good wit, if, as has chanced
to many tribes, only one. But the intellectual organ-
isation of the English admits a communicableness of
knowledge and ideas among them all. An electric
touch by any of their national ideas melts them into
one family, and brings the hoards of power which
their individuality is always hiving, into use and play
for all. Is it the smallness of the countr}^, or is it the
pride and affection of race, — they have solidarity, or
responsibleness, and trust in each other.
Their minds, like wool, admit of a dye which is
more lasting than the cloth. They embrace their
cause mth more tenacity than their Hfe. Though
not military, yet every common subject by the poll is
fit to make a soldier of. These private reserved mute
family-men can adopt a public end with all their heat,
and this strength of afi'ection makes the romance of
their heroes. The difference of rank does not divide
the national heart. The Danish poet Ohlenschlager
complains, that who writes in Danish writes to two
hundred readers. In Germany, there is one speech
for the learned and another for the masses, to- that
extent, that, it is said, no sentiment or phrase from
Y.] SOLID APJTY. 81
the works of any great German writer is ever heard
among the lower classes. But in England, the lan-
guage of the noble is the language of the poor. In
Parliament, in pulpits, in theatres, when the speakers
rise to thought and passion, the language becomes
idiomatic ; the people in the street best understand
the best words. And their language seems draTVTi
from the Bible, the common law, and the works of
Shakspeare, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper,
Burns, and Scott. The island has produced two or
three of the greatest men that ever existed, but they
were not soHtary in their own time. Men quickly
embodied what Newton found out, in Greenwich
observatories, and practical navigation. The boys
know all that Hutton knew of strata, or Dalton of
atoms, or Harvey of blood-vessels ; and these studies,
once dangerous, are in fashion. So what is invented
or known in agriculture, or in trade, or in war, or in
art, or in literature, and antiquities. A great ability,
not amassed on a few giants, but poured into the
general mind, so that each of them could at a pinch
stand in the shoes of the other ; and they are more
bound in character, than differenced in ability or in
rank. The labourer is a possible lord. The lord is
a possible basket -maker. Everj^- man carries the
English sj^stem in his brain, knows what is confided
to him, and does therein the best he can. The
chancellor carries England on his mace, the midship-
man at the point of his dirk, the smith on his hammer,
the cook in the bowl of his spoon ; the postilion cracks
his whip for England, and the sailor times his oars to
VOL. IV. G
82 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
"God save the King !" The very felons have their
pride in each other's Enghsh stanchness. In politics
and in war they hold together as by hooks of steel.
The charm in Nelson's history is the unselfish great-
ness ; the assurance of being supported to the utter-
most by those whom he supports to the uttermost.
Whilst they are some ages ahead of the rest of the
world in the art of living : whilst in some directions
they do not represent the modern spirit, but constitute
it,— this vanguard of civility and power they coldly
hold, marching in phalanx, lockstep, foot after foot,
file after file of heroes, ten thousand deep.
VI.] MANNEES. 83
CHAPTER YI.
SIANNERS.
I FIND the Englisliinan to be him of all men who
stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves
what they value in their horses, mettle and bottom.
On the day of my arrival at Liverpool, a gentleman,
in describing to me the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
happened to say, "Lord Clarendon has pluck like a
cock, and will fight till he dies ;" and, what I heard
first, I heard last, and the one thing the English value,
is pluck. The cabmen have it ; the merchants have
it; the bishops have it; the women have it; the
journals have it ; the Times newspaper, they say, is
the pluckiest thing in England, and Sydney Smith
had made it a proverb, that little Lord John Russell,
the minister, would take the command of the Channel
fleet to-morrow.
They require you to dare to be of your own opinion,
and they hate the practical cowards who cannot in
affairs answer directly yes or no. They dare to dis-
please, nay, they will let you break all the command-
ments, if you do it natively, and with spirit. You
must be somebody ; then you may do this or that, as
you will.
84 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
Machinery has been applied to all work, and
carried to such perfection, that little is left for the
men but to mind the engines and feed the furnaces.
But the machines require punctual service, and, as
they never tire, they prove too much for their tenders.
Mines, forges, mills, breweries, railroads, steampump,
steamplough, drill of regiments, drill of poHce, rule
of court, and shop -rule, have operated to give a
mechanical regularity to all the habit and action of
men. A terrible machine has possessed itself of the
ground, the air, the men and women, and hardly even
thought is free.
The mechanical might and organisation requires in
the people constitution and answering spirits : and
he who goes among them must have some weight of
metal. At last, you take your hint from the fury of
life you find, and say, one thing is plain, this is no
country for fainthearted people : don't creep about
diffidently ; make up j^our mind ; take your own
course, and you shall find respect and furtherance.
It requires, men say, a good constitution to travel
in Spain. I say as much of England, for other cause,
simply on account of the vigour and brawn of the
people. Nothing but the most serious business could
give one any counterweight to these Baresarks, though
they were only to order eggs and muffins for their
breakfast. The Englishman speaks with all his body.
His elocution is stomachic, — as the American's is
labial. The Englishman is very petulant and precise
about his accommodation at inns, and on the roads ;
a quiddle about his toast and his chop, and every
VI.] MANNEES. 85
species of convenience, and loud and pungent in his
expressions of impatience at any neglect. His vivacity
betrays itself, at all points, in his manners, in his
respiration, and the inarticulate noises he makes in
clearing the throat ; all significant of burly strength.
He has stamina ; he can take the initiative in emer-
gencies. He has that aplomb which results from a
good adjustment of the moral and physical nature,
and the obedience of all the powers to the will ; as if
the axes of his eyes were united to his backbone, and
only moved with the trunk.
This vigour appears in the incuriosity, and stony
neglect, each of every other. Each man walks, eats,
drinks, shaves, dresses, gesticulates, and, in every
manner, acts and suffers without reference to the
bj'Standers, in his own fashion, only careful not to
interfere with them, or annoy them ; not that he is
trained to neglect the eyes of his neighbours, — he is
really occupied mth his own affair, and does not
think of them. Every man in this polished country
consults only his convenience, as much as a solitary
pioneer in Wisconsin. I know not where any per-
sonal eccentricity is so freely allowed, and no man
gives himself any concern with it. An Englishman
walks in a pouring rain, swinging his closed umbrella
like a walking-stick ; wears a wig, or a shawl, or a
saddle, or stands on his head, and no remark is made.
And as he has been doing this for several generations,
it is now in the blood.
In short, every one of these islanders is an island
himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable. In a com-
86 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
pany of strangers you would think him deaf ; his
eyes never wander from his table and newspaper.
He is never betrayed into any curiosity or unbecom-
ing emotion. They have all been trained in one
severe school of manners, and never put off the har-
ness. He does not give his hand. He does not let
you meet his eye. It is almost an affront to look a
man in the face mthout being introduced. In mixed
or in select companies they do not introduce persons ;
so that a presentation is a circumstance as valid as a
contract. Introductions are sacraments. He with-
holds his name. At the hotel, he is hardly wilHng
to whisper it to the clerk at the book-office. If he
give you his private address on a card, it is like an
avowal of friendship ; and his bearing on being intro-
duced, is cold, even though he is seeking your
acquaintance, and is studjdng how he shall serve you.
It was an odd proof of this impressive energy, that,
in my lectures, I hesitated to read and threw out for
its impertinence many a disparaging phrase, which I
had been accustomed to spin, about poor, thin, unable
mortals; — so much had the fine physique and the
personal vigour of this robust race worked on my
imagination.
I happened to arrive in England at the moment
of a commercial crisis. But it was evident that, let
who will fail, England will not. These people have
sat here a thousand years, and here will continue to
sit. They will not break up, or arrive at any desper-
ate revolution, like their neighbours ; for they have
as much energy, as much continence of character as
VI.] MANNERS. 87
they ever had. The power and possession which
surround them are their own creation, and they exert
the same commanding industry at this moment.
They are positive, methodical, cleanly, and formal,
loving routine and conventional ways ; loving truth
and religion, to be sure, but inexorable on points of
form. All the world praises the comfort and private
appointments of an English inn, and of English house-
holds. You are sure of neatness and of personal
decorum. A Frenchman may possibly be clean ; an
Englishman is conscientiously clean. A certain order
and complete propriety is found in his dress and in
his belongings.
Born in a harsh and wet climate, which keeps him
indoors whenever he is at rest, and being of an affec-
tionate and loyal temper, he dearly loves his house.
If he is rich he buys a demesne, and builds a hall ; if
he is in middle condition, he spares no expense on his
house. "Without, it is all planted : within, it is
wainscoted, carved, curtained, hung with pictures,
and filled with good furniture. 'Tis a passion which
siu"\dves all others, to deck and improve it. Hither
he brings all that is rare and costly, and ^\dth the
national tendency to sit fast in the same spot for
many generations, it comes to be, in the course of
time, a museum of heirlooms, gifts, and trophies of
the adventures and exploits of the family. He is
very fond of silver plate, and, though he have no
gallery of portraits of his ancestors, he has of their
pimch-bowls and porringers. Incredible amounts of
plate are found in good houses, and the poorest have
88 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
some spoon or saucepan, gift of a godmother, saved
out of better times.
An EngKsh family consists of a few persons, who,
from youth to age, are found revolving within a few
feet of each other, as if tied by some invisible ligature,
tense as that cartilage which we have seen attaching
the two Siamese. England produces imder favourable
conditions of ease and culture the finest women in the
world. And as the men are afi'ectionate and true-
hearted, the women inspire and refine them. Nothing
can be more delicate without being fantastical, nothing
more firm and based in nature and sentiment, than
the courtship and mutual carriage of the sexes. The
song of 1596 says, "The wife of every Englishman is
counted blest." The sentiment of Imogen in Cymbe-
line is copied from English natui^e ; and not less the
Portia of Brutus, the Kate Percy, and the Desdemona.
The romance does not exceed the height of noble
passion in Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, or in Lady Russell,
or even as one discerns through the plain prose of
Pepys's Diary, the sacred habit of an Enghsh wife.
Sir Samuel Romilly could not bear the death of his
wife. Every class has its noble and tender examples.
Domesticity is the taproot which enables the nation
to branch wide and high. The motive and end of
their trade and empire is to guard the independence
and privacy of their homes. Nothing so much marks
their manners as the concentration on their household
ties. This domesticity is carried into court and
camp. WelHngton governed India and Spain and his
o^vn troops, and fought battles like a good family-
VL] MANNERS. 89
man, paid his debts, and, though general of an army
in Spain, could not stir abroad for fear of public
creditors. This taste for house and parish merits has
of course its doting and foolish side. Mr. Cobbett
attributes the huge popularity of Perceval, prime
minister in 1810, to the fact that he was wont to go to
church every Sunday with a large quarto gilt prayer-
book under one arm, his wife hanging on the other,
and followed by a long brood of children.
They keep their old customs, costumes, and pomps,
their wig and mace, sceptre and crown. The middle
ages still lurk in the streets of London. The Knights
of the Bath take oath to defend injured ladies ; the
gold -stick -in -waiting survives. They repeated the
ceremonies of the eleventh century in the coronation
of the present Queen. A hereditary tenure is natural
to them. Offices, farms, trades, and traditions descend
so. Their leases run for a hundred and a thousand
years. Terms of service and partnership are life-long,
or are inherited. " Holdship has been with me," said
Lord Eldon, " eight-and-twenty years, knows all my
business and books." Antiquity of usage is sanction
enough. Wordsworth says of the small freeholders
of Westmoreland, " Many of these humble sons of the
hills had a consciousness that the land which they
tilled had for more than five hundred years been pos-
sessed by men of the same name and blood." The
ship-carpenter in the public yards, my lord's gardener
and porter, have been there for more than a hundred
years, grandfather, father, and son.
The English power resides also in their dislike of
90 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
change. They have difficulty in bringing their reason
to act, and on all occasions use their memory first.
As soon as they have rid themselves of some grievance,
and settled the better practice, they make haste to fix
it as a finality, and never wish to hear of alteration
more.
Every Englishman is an embryonic chancellor :
His instinct is to search for a precedent. The favour-
ite phrase of their law is, "a custom whereof the
memory of man runneth not back to the contrary."
The barons say, " Nolumiis miitari;" and the cockneys
stifle the curiosity of the foreigner on the reason of
any practice, with "Lord, sir, it was always so."
They hate innovation. Bacon told them. Time was
the right reformer; Chatham, that "confidence was a
plant of slow growth;" Canning, to "advance mth
the times;" and "Wellington, that "habit was ten
times nature." All their statesmen learn the irresisti-
bility of the tide of custom, and have invented many
fine phrases to cover this slowness of perception, and
prehensility of tail.
A sea shell should be the crest of England, not only
because it represents a power built on the waves, but
also the hard finish of the men. The Englishman is
finished like a cowry or a murex. After the spire
and the spines are formed, or, with the formation, a
juice exudes, and a hard enamel varnishes every part.
The keeping of the proprieties is as indispensable as
clean linen. No merit quite countervails the want of
this, whilst this sometimes stands in lieu of all. ^' 'Tis
in bad taste," is the most formidable word an English-
VI.] MANNERS. 91
man can pronounce. But this japan costs them dear.
There is a prose in certain Englishmen, which exceeds
in wooden deadness all rivalry with other country-
men. There is a knell in the conceit and externality
of their voice, which seems to say. Leave all ho2)e
heJiind. In this Gibraltar of propriety, mediocrity gets
intrenched, and consolidated, and founded in adamant.
An Ensrlishman of fashion is like one of those sou-
venirs bound in gold vellum, enriched with, delicate
engravings on thick hot -pressed paper, fit for the
hands of ladies and princes, but with nothing in it
worth reading or remembering.
A severe decorum rules the court and the cottage.
^Yh.ell Thalberg, the pianist, was one evening per-
forming before the Queen at Windsor, in a private
party, the Queen accompanied him with her voice.
The circumstance took air, and all England shuddered
from sea to sea. The indecorum was never repeated.
Cold, repressive manners prevail. No enthusiasm is
permitted except at the opera. They avoid every-
thing marked. They require a tone of voice that
excites no attention in the room. Sir Philip Sydney
is one of the patron saints of England, of whom
Wotton said, "His wit was the measure of congruity."
Pretension and vapouring are once for all distaste-
ful. They keep to the other extreme of low tone in
dress and manners. They avoid pretension and go
right to the heart of the thing. They hate nonsense,
sentimentalism, and highflo^Ti expression ; they use
a studied plainness. Even Brummel their fop was
marked by the severest simplicity in dress. They
92 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
value themselves on the absence of everything theatri-
cal in the public business, and on conciseness and going
to the point in private affairs.
In an aristocratical country, like England, not the
Trial by Jury, but the dinner, is the capital institu-
tion. It is the mode of doing honour to a stranger, to
invite him to eat, — and has been for many hundred
years. "And they think," says the Venetian traveller
of 1500, "no greater honour can be conferred or
received, than to invite others to eat with them, or
to be invited themselves, and they would sooner give
five or six ducats to provide an entertainment for a
person, than a groat to assist him in any distress."^
It is reserved to the end of the day, the family-hour
being generally six, in London, and, if any company
is expected, one or two hours later. Every one
dresses for dinner, in his own house, or in another
man's. The guests are expected to arrive within half-
an-hour of the time fixed by card of invitation, and
nothing but death or mutilation is permitted to detain
them. The English dinner is precisely the model on
which our o^ti are constructed in the Atlantic cities.
The company sit one or two hours, before the ladies
leave the table. The gentlemen remain over their
wine an hour longer, and rejoin the ladies in the
drawing-room, and take coffee. The dress -dinner
generates a talent of table-talk which reaches great
perfection : the stories are so good, that one is sure
they must have been often told before, to have got
such happy turns. Hither come all manner of clever
1 "Relation of England. " Printed by the Camden Society.
VI.] MANNERS. 93
projects, bits of popular science, of practical inven-
tion, of miscellaneous humour ; political, literary, and
personal news; railroads, horses, diamonds, agricul-
ture, horticulture, pisciculture, and wine.
English stories, bon-mots, and the recorded table-
talk of their wits, are as good as the best of the
French. In America, we are apt scholars, but have
not yet attained the same perfection : for the range of
nations from which London draws, and the steep con-
trasts of condition create the picturesque in society, as
broken country makes picturesque landscape, whilst
our prevailing equality makes a prairie tameness : and
secondly, because the usage of a dress -dinner every
day at dark has a tendency to hive and produce to
advantage everything good. Much attrition has worn
every sentence into a bullet. Also one meets now
and then with polished men, who know everything,
have tried everything, can do everything, and are
quite superior to letters and science. What could
they not, if only they would ?
94: ENGLISH TRAITS, [chap.
CHAPTER YII.
TRUTH.
The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart
which contrasts with the Latin races. The German
name has a proverbial significance of sincerity and
honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The
faces of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illumi-
nated missals are charged with earnest belief. Add
to this hereditary rectitude, the punctuality and pre-
cise dealing which coramerce creates, and you have
the English truth and credit. The government
strictly performs its engagements. The subjects do
not understand trifling on its part. When any breach
of promise occurred, in the old days of prerogative, it
was resented by the people as an intolerable grievance.
And, in modern times, any slipperiness in the govern-
ment in political faith, or any repudiation or crooked-
ness in matters of finance, would bring the whole
nation to a committee of inquiry and refonn. Private
men keep their promises, never so trivial. Down
goes the fljang word on the tablets, and is indelible
as Domesday Book.
Their practical power rests on their national sin-
VII.] TRUTH. 95
cerit3\ Veracity derives from instinct, and marks
superiority in organisation. Nature has endowed
some animals with cunning, as a compensation for
strength withheld ; but it has provoked the malice of
all others, as if avengers of public wrong. In the
nobler kinds, where strength could be afforded, her
races are loyal to truth, as truth is the foundation of
the social state. Beasts that make no truce with
man, do not break faith with each other. 'Tis said,
that the wolf, who makes a cache of his prey, and
brings his fellows with him to the spot, if, on digging,
it is not found, is instantly and unresistingly torn in
pieces. English veracity seems to result on a sounder
animal structure, as if they could afford it. They
are blunt in saying what they think, sparing of
promises, and they require plaindealing of others.
We will not have to do with a man in a mask. Let
us know the truth. Draw a straight Hne, hit whom
and where it will. Alfred, whom the affection of the
nation makes the type of their race, is called by
a writer at the Norman Conquest the truth - sjJeaJcer ;
Alueredus veridicus. Geoffrey of Monmouth says of
King Aurelius, uncle of Arthur, that " above all things
he hated a lie." The Northman Guttorm said to
King Olaf, " it is royal work to fulfil royal words."
The mottoes of their families are monitory proverbs,
as Fare fac, — Say, do, — of the Fairfaxes ; Say and seal,
of the house of Fiennes ; Vero nil verius, of the De
Veres. To be king of their word is their pride.
When they unmask cant, they say, "the English of
this is," etc. ; and to give the lie is the extreme insult.
96 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
The phrase of the lowest of the people is "honour-
bright," and their vulgar praise, "his word is as good
as his bond." They hate shuffling and equivocation,
and the cause is damaged in the public opinion on
which any paltering can be fixed. Even Lord Chester-
field, with his French breeding, when he came to define
a gentleman, declared that truth made his distinction :
and nothing ever spoken by him would find so hearty
a sufi'rage from his nation. The Duke of Wellington,
who had the best right to say so, advises the French
General Kellermann, that he may rely on the parole
of an English officer. The English, of all classes, value
themselves on this trait, as distinguishing them from
the French, who, in the popular belief, are more polite
than true. An Englishman understates, avoids the
superlative, checks himself in compliments, alleging
that in the French language one cannot speak with-
out lying.
They love reality in wealth, power, hospitalitj^,
and do not easily learn to make a show, and take the
world as it goes. They are not fond of ornaments,
and if they wear them, they must be gems. They
read gladly in old Fuller, that a lady, in the reign of
Elizabeth, "would have as patiently digested a lie,
as the wearing of false stones or pendants of counter-
feit pearl." They have the earth-hunger, or prefer-
ence for property in land, which is said to mark the
Teutonic nations. They build of stone : public and
private buildings are massive and durable. In com-
paring their ships, houses, and public offices with the
American, it is commonly said that they spend a
VII.] TRUTH. 97
pound, where we spend a dollar. Plain rich clothes,
plain rich equipage, plain rich finish throughout their
house and belongings, mark the English truth.
They confide in each other, — EngHsh believes in
English. The French feel the superiority of this
probity. The Englishman is not springing a trap for
his admiration, but is honestly minding his business.
The Frenchman is vain. Madame de Stael says that
the English irritated Napoleon, mainly, because they
have found out how to unite success with honesty.
She was not aware how wide an application her foreign
readers would give to the remark. "Wellington dis-
covered the ruin of Bonaparte's aftairs by his own
probity. He augured ill of the empire, as soon as he
saw that it was mendacious, and lived by war. If
war do not bring in its sequel new trade, better agricul-
ture and manufactures, but only games, fireworks, and
spectacles, — no prosperity could support it ; much
less, a nation decimated for conscripts, and out of
pocket, like France. So he drudged for years on
his military works at Lisbon, and from this base at
last extended his gigantic lines to Waterloo, believing
in his countrymen and their syllogisms above all the
rhodomontade of Europe.
At a St. George's festival, in Montreal, where I
happened to be a guest, since my return home, I
observed that the chairman complimented his com-
patriots, by saying, "they confided that wherever
they met an Englishman, they found a man who
would speak the truth." And one cannot think this
festival fruitless, if, all over the world, on the 23d of
VOL. IV. H
98 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
April, wherever two or three English are found, they
meet to encourage each other in the nationality of
veracity.
In the power of sajdng rude truth, sometimes in
the lion's mouth, no men surpass them. On the
king's birthday, when each bishop was expected to
offer the king a purse of gold, Latimer gave Henry
VIII. a copy of the Vulgate, with a mark at the
passage, "Whoremongers and adulterers God will
judge;" and they so honour stoutness in each other
that the king passed it over. They are tenacious of
their belief, and cannot easily change their opinions
to suit the hour. They are like ships with too much
head on to come quickly about, nor will prosperity or
even adversity be allowed to shake their habitual
view of conduct. Whilst I was in London, M. Guizot
arrived there on his escape from Paris, in February
1848. Many private friends called on him. His
name was immediately proposed as an honorary
member of the Atheneeum. M. Guizot was black-
balled. Certainly, they knew the distinction of his
name. But the Englishman is not fickle. He had
really made up his mind, now for years, as he read
his newspaper, to hate and despise M. Guizot; and
the altered position of the man as an illustrious exile,
and a guest in the country, makes no diff'erence to
him, as it would instantly to an American.
They require the same adherence, thorough con-
viction, and reality in public men. It is the want of
character which makes the low reputation of the Irish
members. "See them," they said, "one hundred
vri.] TEUTH. 99
and twenty-seven, all voting like sheei3, never propos-
ing anything, and all but four voting the income tax," —
which was an ill-judged concession of the Government,
relieving Irish property from the burdens charged on
English.
They have a horror of adventurers in or out of
Parliament. The ruling passion of Englishmen, in
these days, is a terror of humbug. In the same
proportion, they value honesty, stoutness, and adher-
ence to your owTi. They like a man committed to
his objects. They hate the French, as frivolous ;
they hate the Irish, as aimless; they hate the Ger-
mans, as professors. In February 1848, they said.
Look, the French king and his party fell for want of
a shot ; they had not conscience to shoot, so entirely
was the pith and heart of monarchy eaten out.
They attack their own politicians every day, on
the same grounds, as adventurers. They love stout-
ness in standing for your right, in declining money
or promotion that costs any concession. The barrister
refuses the silk gown of Queen's Counsel if his junior
have it one day earlier. Lord Collingwood would
not accept his medal for victory on 14th February
1797, if he did not receive one for victory on 1st June
1794; and the long-withholden medal was accorded.
When Castlereagh dissuaded Lord Wellington from
going to the king's levee until the unpopular Cintra
business had been explained, he replied, "You furnish
me a reason for going. I will go to this, or I will
never go to a king's levee." The radical mob at
Oxford cried after the tory Lord Eldon, " There's old
100 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
Elclon; cheer him; he never ratted." They have
given the parhamentary nickname of Trimmers to the
timeservers, whom English character does not love.^
They are very liable in their politics to extraordi-
nary delusions, thus, to believe what stands recorded
in the gravest books, that the movement of 10th April
1848 was urged or assisted by foreigners; which, to
be sure, is paralleled by the democratic whimsy in this
country, which I have noticed to be shared by men
sane on other points, that the English are at the
bottom of the agitation of slavery in American poli-
tics : and then, again, to the French popular legends
on the subject of perfidious Albion. But suspicion will
make !ools of nations as of citizens.
A slow temperament makes them less rapid and
ready than other countrymen, and has given occasion
to the observation, that English wit comes after-
wards, — which the French denote as es}mt d'escaUer.
This dulness makes their attachment to home, and
their adherence in all foreign countries to home
habits. The Ensilishman who visits Mount Etna mil
carry his tea-kettle to the top. The old Italian author
of the "Relation of England" (in 1500), says, "I
^ It is an unlucky moment to remember these sparkles of
solitary virtue in the face of the honours lately paid in England
to the Emperor Louis iSTapoleon. I am sure that no English-
man whom I had the happiness to know, consented, when the
aristocracy and the commons of London cringed like a Neapo-
litan rabble before a successful thief. But — how to resist one
step, though odious, in a linked series of state necessities ? —
Governments must always learn too late, that the use of dis-
honest agents is as ruinous for nations as for single men.
VII.] TEUTIl. , 101
have it on the best information, that, "when the war
is actually raging most furiously, they will seek for
good eating, and aU their other comforts, without
thinking what harm might befall them." Then their
eyes seem to be set at the bottom of a tunnel, and
they affirm the one small fact they know, with the
best faith in the world that nothing else exists. And,
as their o^TR belief in guineas is perfect, they readily,
on all occasions, apply the pecimiary argument as
final. Thus, when the Eochester rappings began to
be heard of in England, a man deposited £100 in a
sealed box in the Dublin Bank, and then advertised
in the newspapers to all somnambulists, mesmerisers,
and others, that whoever could tell him the number
of his note, should have the money. He let it lie
there six months, the newspapers now and then, at
his instance, stimulating the attention of the adepts ;
but none could ever tell him ; and he said, "Xow let
me never be bothered more with this proven lie."
It is told of a good Sir John, that he heard a case
stated by counsel, and made up his mind ; then the
counsel for the other side taking their turn to speak,
he found himself so unsettled and perplexed, that he
exclaimed, " So help me God ! I will never listen to
e^ddence again." Any number of delightfid examples
of this EngHsh stolidity are the anecdotes of Europe.
I knew a very worthy man, — a magistrate, I believe
he was, in the town of Derby, — who went to the
opera, to see Malibran. In one scene, the heroine
was to rush across a ruined bridge. Mr. B. arose,
and mildly yet firmly called the attention of the
102 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
audience and the performers to the fact, that, in his
judgment, the bridge was unsafe ! This English
stolidity contrasts with French wit and tact. The
French, it is commonly said, have greatly more influ-
ence in Europe than the Enghsh. What influence
the English have is by brute force of wealth and
power; that of the French by affinity and talent.
The Italian is subtle, the Spaniard treacherous ;
tortures, it was said, could never wrest from an
Egyptian the confession of a secret. None of these
traits belong to the Englishman. His choler and
conceit force everything out. Defoe, who knew his
countrymen well, says of them,
*' In close intrigue, their faculty's but weak,
For generally whate'er they know, they speak,
And often their own counsels undermine
By mere infirmity without design ;
From whence, the learned say, it doth proceed,
That English treasons never can succeed ;
For they're so open-hearted, you may know
Their own most secret thoughts, and others' too, '
VIII.] CHARACTER. 103
CHAPTEE VIII.
CHARACTER.
The English race are reputed morose. I do not know
that they have sadder brows than their neighbours of
northern climates. They are sad by comparison with
the singing and dancing nations : not sadder, but slow
and staid, as finding their joys at home. The}^, too,
believe that w^here there is no enjoyment of Hfe,
there can be no vigour and art in speech or thought :
that your merry heart goes all the way, your sad one
tires in a mile. This trait of gloom has been fixed
on them by French travellers, who, from Froissart,
Voltaire, Le Sage, Mirabeau, dovni to the lively
journalists of the feuilletons, have spent their wit on
the solemnity of their neighbours. The French say,
gay conversation is unknown in their island. The
Englishman finds no relief from reflection, except in
reflection. When he wishes for amusement, he goes
to work. His hilarity is like an attack of fever.
Eeligion, the theatre, and the reading the books of
his country, all feed and increase his natural melan-
choly. The police does not interfere with public
diversions. It thinks itself bound in duty to respect
104 ENGLISH TRAITS. [OHAP.
the pleasures and rare gaiety of this inconsolable
nation ; and their well-known courage is entirely
attributable to their disgust of life.
I suppose their gravity of demeanour and their
few words have obtained this reputation. As com-
pared with the Americans, I think them cheerful and
contented. Young peoj)le, in tliis country, are much
more prone to melancholy. The English have a mild
aspect, and a ringing cheerful voice. They are large-
natured, and not so easily amused as the southerners,
and are among them as grown people among children,
requiring war, or trade, or engineering, or science,
instead of frivolous games. They are proud and
private, and, even if disposed to recreation, will avoid
an open garden. They sported sadly; Us sktmusaient
tristement, selon la coutume de leur ])ays, said Froissart ;
and, I suppose, never nation built their party-walls
so thick, or their garden-fences so high. Meat and
wine produce no effect on them : they are just as cold,
quiet, and composed, at the end, as at the beginning
of dinner.
The reputation of taciturnity they have enjoyed
for six or seven hundred years ; and a kind of pride
in bad public speaking is noted in the House of
Commons, as if they were willing to show that they
did not live by their tongues, or thought they spoke
well enough if they had the tone of gentlemen. In
mixed company they shut their mouths. A York-
shire millowner told me he had ridden more than
once all the way from London to Leeds, in the^rst-
class carriage, with the same persons, and no word
VIII.] CHAEACTER. 105
exchanged. The club-houses were established to
cultivate social habits, and it is rare that more than
two eat together, and oftenest one eats alone. Was
it then a stroke of humour in the serious Swedenl^org,
or was it only his pitiless logic, that made him shut
up the Enghsh souls in a heaven by themselves 1
They are contradictorily described as sour, splen-
etic, and stubborn, — and as mild, sweet, and sensible.
The truth is, they have gTeat range and variety of
character. Commerce sends abroad multitudes of
different classes. The choleric Welshman, the fervid
Scot, the bilious resident in the East or West Indies,
are wide of the perfect beha^dour of the educated and
dignified man of family. So is the burly farmer ; so
is the country 'squire, with his narrow and violent
life. In every inn is the Commercial-Eoom, in which
" travellers," or bagmen who carry patterns, and solicit
orders, for the manufacturers, are wont to be enter-
tained. It easily happens that this class should char-
acterise England to the foreigner, who meets them
on the road, and at every public house, whilst the
gentry avoid the taverns, or seclude themselves whilst
in them.
But these classes are the right English stock, and
may fairly show the national equalities, before yet art
and education have dealt with them. They are good
lovers, good haters, slow but obstinate admirers, and,
in all things, very much steeped in their temperament,
like men hardly awaked from deep sleep, which thej^
enjoy. Their habits and instincts cleave to nature.
They are of the earth, earthy ; and of the sea, as the
106 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
sea-kinds, attached to it for what it yields them, and
not from any sentiment. They are full of coarse
strength, rude exercise, butcher's meat, and sound
sleep j and suspect any poetic insinuation or any hint
for the conduct of life which reflects on this animal
existence, as if somebody were fumbling at the umbili-
cal cord and might stop their supplies. They doubt
a man's sound judgment if he does not eat with
appetite, and shake their heads if he is particularly
chaste. Take them as they come, you shall find in
the common people a surly indifference, sometimes
grufihess and ill temper; and, in minds of more
power, magazines of inexhaustible war, challenging
" The ruggedest hour that time and spite dare bring
To frown upon the enraged Northumberland. "
They are headstrong believers and defenders of their
opinion, and not less resolute in maintaining their
whim and perversity. Hezekiah Woodward Avrote a
book against the Lord's Prayer. And one can believe
that Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, having
predicted from the stars the hour of his death, slipped
the knot himself round his own neck not to falsify
his horosco^oe.
Their looks bespeak an imdncible stoutness : they
have extreme difficulty to run away, and T^dll die
game. Wellington said of the young coxcombs of
the Life -Guards delicately brought up, "but the
puppies fight well;" and Nelson said of his sailors,
"they really mind shot no more than peas." Of
absolute stoutness no nation has more or better
examples. They are good at storming redoubts, at
VIII.] CHAEACTER. 107
boarding frigates, at dying in the last ditch, or any
desperate service which has dayhght and honour in
it; but not, I think, at enduring the rack, or any
passive obedience, hke jumping off a castle -roof at
the word of a czar. Being both vascular and highly
organised, so as to be very sensible of pain ; and in-
tellectual, so as to see reason and glory in a matter.
Of that constitutional force, which yields the
supphes of the day, they have the more than enough,
the excess which creates courage on fortitude, genius
in poetry, invention in mechanics, enterprise in trade,
magnificence in wealth, splendour in ceremonies,
petulance and projects in youth. The young men
have a rude health which runs into peccant humours.
They drink brandy like water, cannot expend their
quantities of waste strength on riding, hunting, swim-
ming, and fencing ; and run into absurd frolics with
the gravity of the Eumenides. They stoutly carry
into every nook and corner of the earth their tiu-bulent
sense ; leaving no lie uncontradicted ; no pretension
unexamined. They chew hasheesh; cut themselves
with poisoned creases ; swing their hammock in the
boughs of the Bohon Upas ; taste every poison ; buy
every secret ; at Naples they put St. Januarius's blood
in an alembic ; they saw a hole into the head of the
"winking Virgin," to know why she winks; measure
with an English footrule every cell of the Inquisition,
every Turkish caaba, every Holy of hoHes ; translate
and send to Bentley the arcanum bribed and bulbed
away from shuddering Brahmins ; and measure their
own strength by the terror they cause. These tra-
108 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
vellers are of every class, the best and the worst; and it
may easily happen that those of rudest behaviour are
taken notice of and remembered. The Saxon melan-
choly in the vulgar rich and poor appears as gushes
of ill-humour which every check exasperates into
sarcasm and vituperation. There are multitudes of
rude young English who have the self-sufficiency and
bluntness of their nation, and who, with their disdain
of the rest of mankind, and with this indigestion and
choler, have made the English traveller a proverb for
uncomfortable and offensive manners. It was no bad
description of the Briton generically, what was said
two hundred years ago of one particular Oxford
scholar : " He was a very bold man, uttered anything
that came into his mind, not only among his com-
panions, but in public coffee-houses, and would often
speak his mind of particular persons then accidentally
present, without examining the company he was in ;
for which he was often reprimanded, and several
times threatened to be kicked and beaten."
The common Englishman is prone to forget a
cardinal article in the bill of social rights, that every
man has a right to his own ears. No man can claim
to usurp more than a few cubic feet of the audibilities
of a public room, or to put upon the company with.
the loud statement of his crotchets or personalities.
But it is in the deep traits of race that the fortunes
of nations are written, and however derived, whether
a happier tribe or mixture of tribes, the air, or what
circumstance, that mixed for them the golden mean
of temperament, — here exists the best stock in the
VIII.] CHARACTER. 109
world, broad-fronted, broad-bottomed, best for depth,
range, and equability, men of aj^lomb and reserves,
great range and many moods, strong instincts, yet apt
for culture ; war-class as well as clerks ; earls and
tradesmen ; vdse minority, as well as foolish majority ;
abysmal temperament, hiding wells of wrath, and
dooms on which no sunshine settles ; alternated with
a common sense and humanity which hold them fast
to every piece of cheerful duty ; making this tempera-
ment a sea to which all storms are superficial ; a race
to which their fortunes flow, as if they alone had the
elastic organisation at once fine and robust enough
for dominion ; as if the burly inexpressive, now mute
and contumacious, now fierce and sharp-tongued
dragon, which once made the island light with his
fiery breath, had bequeathed his ferocity to his con-
queror. They hide virtues under vices, or the semb-
lance of them. It is the misshapen hairy Scandinavian
troll again, who lifts the cart out of the mire, or
"threshes the corn that ten day-labourers could not
end," but it is done in the dark, and with muttered
maledictions. He is a churl with a soft place in his
heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but
who loves to help you at a pinch. He says no, and
serves you, and your thanks disgust him. Here was
lately a cross-grained miser, odd and ugly, resembling
in countenance the portrait of Punch with the laugh
left out ; rich by his own industry ; sulking in a lonely
house ; who never gave a dinner to any man, and
disdained all courtesies ; yet as true a worshipper of
beauty in form and colour as ever existed, and pro-
110 ENGLISH THAITS. [chap.
fiisely pouring over the cold mind of his countrymen
creations of grace and truth, removing the reproach
of steriHty from English art, catching from their
savage climate every fine hint, and importing into
their galleries every tint and trait of sunnier cities
and skies ; making an era in painting ; and, when he
saw that the splendour of one of his pictures in the
Exhibition dimmed his rival's that hung next it,
secretly took a brush and blackened his own.
They do not wear their heart in their sleeve for
daws to peck at. They have that phlegm or staidness,
which it is a compliment to disturb. " Great men," said
Aristotle, "are always of a nature originally melan-
choly." 'Tis the habit of a mind which attaches to
abstractions with a passion which gives vast results.
They dare to displease, they do not speak to expecta-
tion. They like the sayers of No, better than the sayers
of Yes. Each of them has an opinion which he feels
it becomes him to express all the more that it differs
from yours. They are meditating opposition. This
gravity is inseparable from minds of great resources.
There is an EngKsh hero superior to the French,
the German, the Italian, or the Greek. When he is
brought to the strife with fate, he sacrifices a richer
material possession, and on more purely metaphysical
grounds. He is there with his own consent, face to
face with fortune, which he defies. On deliberate
choice, and from grounds of character, he has elected
his part to live and die for, and dies with grandem\
This race has added new elements to humanity, and
has a deeper root in the world.
VIII.] CHARACTER. Ill
They have great range of scale, from ferocity to
exquisite refinement. With larger scale, they have
great retrieving power. After running each tendency
to an extreme, they try another tack with equal heat.
More intellectual than other races, when they live
with, other races, they do not take their language,
but bestow their own. They subsidise other nations,
and are not subsidised. They proselyte, and are not
proselyted. They assimilate other races to themselves,
and are not assimilated. The English did not calcu-
late the conquest of the Indies. It fell to their char-
acter. So they administer, in different parts of the
world, the codes of every empire and race ; in Canada,
old French law ; in the Mauritius, the Code Napoleon;
in the West Indies, the edicts of the Spanish Cortes ;
in the East Indies, the Laws of Menu ; in the Isle of
Man, of the Scandinavian Thing ; at the Cape of Good
Hope, of the old ISTetherlands ; and in the Ionian
Islands, the Pandects of Justinian.
They are very conscious of their advantageous
position in history. England is the lawgiver, the
patron, the instructor, the ally. Compare the tone
of the French and of the English press : the first
querulous, captious, sensitive about Enghsh opinion ;
the English press is never timorous about French
opinion, but arrogant and contemptuous.
They are testy and headstrong through an excess
of will and bias ; churlish as men sometimes please
to be who do not forget a debt, who ask no favours,
and who T\all do what they like with their own.
With education and intercourse these asperities wear
112 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
off, and leave the good will pure. If anatomy is
reformed according to national tendencies, I suppose
the spleen will hereafter be found in the Englishman,
not found in the American, and differencing the one
from the other. I anticipate another anatomical
discovery, that this organ will be found to be cortical
and caducous, that they are superficially morose, but
at last tender-hearted, herein differing from Eome
and the Latin nations. Nothing savage, nothing
mean, resides in the EngHsh heart. They are subject
to panics of creduhty and of rage, but the temper of
the nation, however disturbed, settles itself soon and
easily, as, in this temperate zone, the sky after what-
ever storms clears again, and serenity is its normal
condition.
A saving stupidity masks and protects their per-
ception as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our swifter
Americans, when they first deal with English, pro-
nounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as
people who wear well, or hide their strength. To
understand the power of performance that is in their
finest wits, in the patient Xewton, or in the versatile
transcendent poets, or in the Dugdales, Gibbons,
Hallams, Eldons, and Peels, one should see how
English day-labourers hold out. High and low, they
are of an unctuous texture. There is an adipocere in
their constitution, as if they had oil also for their
mental wheels, and could perform vast amounts of
work -without damaging themselves.
Even the scale of expense on which people live,
and to which scholars and professional men conform,
VIII.] CHAEACTER. 113
proves the tension of their muscle, when vast numbers
are found who can each lift this enormous load. I
might even add, their daily feasts argue a savage
vigour of body.
No nation was ever so rich in able men; "gentle-
men," as Charles I. said of Strafford, "whose abilities
might make a prince rather afraid than ashamed in
the greatest affairs of state;" men of such temper,
that, Hke Baron Yere, "had one seen him returning
from a victory, he would by his silence have suspected
that he had lost the day ; and, had he beheld him in
a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror
by the cheerfulness of his spirit."^
The following passage from the Heimshingla
might almost stand as a portrait of the modern
Englishman: — "Haldor was very stout and strong,
and remarkably handsome in appearances. King
Harold gave him this testimony, that he, among all
his men, cared least about doubtful circumstances,
whether they betokened danger or pleasure; for
whatever turned up, he was never in higher nor
in lower spirits, never slept less nor more on account
of them, nor ate nor di'ank but according to his cus-
tom. Haldor was not a man of many words, but
short in conversation, told his opinion bluntly, and
was obstinate and hard : and this could not please
the king, who had many clever people about him,
zealous in his service. Haldor remained a short time
with the king, and then came to Iceland, where he
1 Fuller. Worthies of England.
VOL. IV.
114 ENGLISH TRAITS, [chap.
took up his abode in Hiarclaholt, and dwelt in that
farm to a very advanced age."-^
The national temper, in the civil history, is not
flashy or whiffling. The slow, deep English mass
smoulders with fire, which at last sets all its borders
in flame. The wrath of London is not French "vvrath,
but has a long memory, and, in its hottest heat, a
register and rule.
Half their strength they put not forth. They are
capable of a sublime resolution, and if hereafter the
war of races, often predicted, and making itself a war
of opinions also (a question of despotism and liberty
coming from Eastern Europe), should menace the
English civilisation, these sea-kings may take once
again to their floating castles, and find a new home
and a second millennium of power in their colonies.
The stability of England is the security of the
modern world. If the English race were as mutable
as the French, what reliance ? But the English stand
for liberty. The conservative, money -loving, lord-
loving English, are yet liberty-loving ; and so freedom
is safe : for they have more personal force than any
other people. The nation always resist the immoral
action of their government. They think humanely
on the affairs of France, of Turkey, of Poland, of
Hungary, of Schleswig Holstein, though overborne by
the statecraft of the rulers at last.
Does the early history of each tribe show the per-
manent bias, which, though not less potent, is masked,
as the tribe spreads its activity into colonies,- com-
^ Heimskringla, Laing's translation, vol. iii. p. 37.
VIII.] CHARACTEE. 115
merce, codes, arts, letters? The early history shows
it, as the musician plays the air which he proceeds to
conceal in a tempest of variations. In Alfred, in the
Northmen, one may read the genius of the English
societjT-, namely, that private life is the place of honour.
Glory, a career, and ambition, words familiar to the
longitude of Paris, are seldom heard in English speech.
Nelson wrote from their hearts his homely telegraph,
"England expects every man to do his duty."
For actual service, for the dignity of a profession,
or to appease diseased or inflamed talent, the army
and navy may be entered (the worst boys doing well
in the navy) ; and the civil service, in departments
where serious official work is done ; and they hold in
esteem the barrister engaged in the severer studies
of the law. But the calm, sound, and most British
Briton shrinks from public life, as charlatanism, and
respects an economy founded on agriculture, coal-
mines, manufactures, or trade, which secures an inde-
pendence through the creation of real values.
They wish neither to command nor obey, but to be
kings in their own houses. They are intellectual and
deeply enjoy hterature; they like well to have the
world served up to them in books, maps, models, and
every mode of exact information, and, though not
creators in art, they value its refinement. They are
ready for leisure, can direct and fill their own day, nor
need so much as others the constraint of a necessity.
But the history of the nation discloses, at every turn,
this original predilection for private independence,
and, however this inclination may have been dis-
116 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
1
I
turbed by the bribes with which their vast colonial i
power has warped men out of orbit, the inchnation ]
endures, and forms and reforms the laws, letters,
manners, and occupations. They choose that welfare .
which is compatible with the commonwealth, knowing \
that such alone is stable; as wise merchants prefer i
investments in the three per cents. I
i
I
I
I
IX.] COCKAYNE. 117
CHAPTER IX.
COCKAYNE.
The Eno'lish are a nation of humorists. Individual
right is pushed to the uttermost bound compatible
with public order. Property is so perfect, that it
seems the craft of that race, and not to exist else-
where. The Idng cannot step on an acre which the
peasant refuses to sell. A testator endows a dog or
a rookery, and Europe cannot interfere with his
absurdity. Every individual has his particular way
of living, which he pushes to foUy, and the decided
sympathy of his compatriots is engaged to back up
Mr. Crump's whim by statutes, and chancellors, and
horse-Efuards. There is no freak so ridiculous but
some Englishman has attempted to immortahse by
money and law. British citizenship is as omnipotent
as Eoman was. Mr. Cocka}Tie is very sensible of this.
The pursy man means by freedom the right to do as
he pleases, and does wrong in order to feel his freedom,
and makes a conscience of persisting in it.
He is intensely patriotic, for his country is so
small. His confidence in the power and performance
of his nation makes him provokingly incurious about
118 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
other nations. He dislikes foreigners. Swedenborg,
who lived much in England, notes " the similitude of
minds among the English, in consequence of which
they contract familiarity with friends who are of that
nation, and seldom with others : and they regard
foreigners, as one looking through a telescope from
the top of a palace regards those who dwell or wander
about out of the city." A much older traveller, the
Venetian who wrote the " Eelation of England," ^ in
1500, says : — " The English are great lovers of them-
selves, and of every thing belonging to them. They
think that there are no other men than themselves,
and no other world but England ; and, whenever they
see a handsome foreigner, they say that he looks like
an Englishman, and it is a great pity he should not
be an Englishman; and whenever they partake of
any delicacy with a foreigner, they ask him whether
such a thing is made in his country." When he adds
epithets of praise, his climax is "soEnghsh;" and
when he wishes to pay you the highest compliment,
he says, I should not know you from an Englishman.
France is, by its natural contrast, a kind of black-
board on which English character draws its own traits
in chalk. This arrogance habitually exhibits itself
in allusions to the French. I suppose that all men
of English blood in America, Europe, or Asia, have a
secret feeling of joy that they are not French natives.
Mr. Coleridge is said to have given public thanks to
God, at the close of a lecture, that he had defended
him from being able to utter a single sentence in the
1 Printed by the Camden Society.
IX.] COCKAYNE. 119
French language. I have found that EngHshmen
have such a good opinion of England, that the ordi-
nary phrases, in all good society, of postponing or dis-
paraging one's own things in talking with a stranger,
are seriously mistaken by them for an insuppressible
homage to the merits of their nation ; and the New
Yorker or Pennsylvanian who modestly laments the
disadvantage of a new country, log-huts, and savages,
is surprised by the instant and unfeigned commisera-
tion of the whole company, who plainly account all
the world out of England a heap of rubbish.
The same insular limitation pinches his foreign
politics. He sticks to his traditions and usages, and,
so help him God ! he will force his island by-laws
doTVTi the throat of great countries, like India, China,
Canada, Australia, and not only so, but impose Wap-
ping on the Congress of Vienna, and trample down
all nationalities with his taxed boots. Lord Chatham
goes for liberty, and no taxation without representa-
tion ; — for that is British law ; but not a hobnail shall
they dare make in America, but buy their nails in
England, — for that also is British law ; and the fact
that British commerce was to be recreated by the
independence of America, took them all by surprise.
In short, I am afraid that English nature is so
rank and aggressive as to be a little incompatible
with every other. The world is not wide enough for
two.
But, beyond this nationality, it must be admitted
the island offers a daily worship to the old Norse god
Brage, celebrated among our Scandinavian forefathers
120 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
for his eloquence and majestic air. The English have
a steady courage, that fits them for great attempts
and endurance : they have also a petty courage,
through which every man delights in showing himself
for what he is, and in doing what he can ; so that, in
all companies, each of them has too good an opinion
of himself to imitate anybody. He hides no defect
of his form, features, dress, connection, or birthplace,
for he thinks every circumstance belonging to him
comes recommended to you. If one of them have a
bald, or a red, or a green head, or bow legs, or a scar,
or mark, or a paunch, or a squeaking or a raven voice,
he has persuaded himself that there is something
modish and becoming in it, and that it sits well on
him.
But nature makes nothing in vain, and this little
superfluity of self-regard in the English brain is one
of the secrets of their power and history. For it sets
every man on being and doing what he really is and
can. It takes away a dodging, skulking, secondary
air, and encourages a frank and manly bearing, so
that each man makes the most of himself, and loses
no opportunity for want of pushing. A man's per-
sonal defects will commonly have with the rest of the
world precisely that importance which they have to
himself. If he makes light of them, so "siall other
men. We all find in these a convenient meter of
character, since a little man would be ruined by the
vexation. I remember a shrewd politician, in one of
our western cities, told me, "that he had knowTi
several successful statesmen made by their foible."
IX.] COCKAYNE. 121
And another, an ex-governor of Illinois, said to me,
" If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner
and be modest ; but he is such an ignorant peacock,
that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extra-
ordinary discoveries."
There is also this benefit in brag, that the
speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal.
Humour him by all means, draw it all out, and hold
him to it. Their culture generally enables the tra-
velled English to avoid any ridiculous extremes of
this self-pleasing, and to give it an agreeable air.
Then the natural disposition is fostered by the respect
which they find entertained in the world for English
ability. It was said of Louis XIV. that his gait and
air were becoming enough in so great a monarch, yet
would have been ridiculous in another man ; so the
prestige of the English name warrants a certain con-
fident bearing, which a Frenchman or Belgian could
not carry. At all events, they feel themselves at
liberty to assume the most extraordinary tone on the
subject of English merits.
An English lady on the Rhine hearing a German
speaking of her party as foreigners, exclaimed, " No,
we are not foreigners : we are English ; it is you that
are foreigners." They tell you daily, in London,
the story of the Frenchman and Englishman who
quarrelled. Both were unwilling to fight, but their
companions put them up to it ; at last, it was agreed
that they should fight alone, in the dark, and with
pistols : the candles were put out, and the English-
man, to make sure not to hit anybody, fired up the
122 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
chimney, and brought down the Frenchman. They
have no curiosity about foreigners, and answer any
information you may volunteer with " Oh, oh !" until
the informant makes up his mind that they shall die
in their ignorance, for any help he will offer. There
are really no limits to this conceit, though brighter
men among them make painful efforts to be candid.
The habit of brag runs through all classes, from
the Times newspaper through politicians and poets,
through Wordsworth, Carlyle, Mill, and Sydney
Smith, doAvn to the boys of Eton. In the gravest
treatise on political economy, in a philosophical essay,
in books of science, one is surprised by the most
innocent exhibition of unflinching nationality. In a
tract on Corn, a most amiable and accompHshed
gentleman writes thus : — " Though Britain, according
to Bishop Berkeley's idea, were surrounded by a wall
of brass ten thousand cubits in height, still she would
as far excel the rest of the globe in riches, as she now
does, both in this secondary quality, and in the more
important ones of freedom, virtue, and science." ^
The English dislike the American structure of
society, whilst yet trade, mills, public education and
chartism are doing what they can to create in England
the same social condition. America is the paradise
of the economists ; is the favourable exception invari-
ably quoted to the rules of ruin ; but when he speaks
directly of the Americans, the islander forgets his
philosophy, and remembers his disparaging anecdotes.
But this childish patriotism costs something^ like
^ William Spence.
IX.] COCKAYNE. 123
all narro^vness. The English sway of their colonies
has no root of kindness. They govern by their arts
and ability ; they are more just than kind ; and,
wheneA'er an abatement of their power is felt, they
have not conciliated the affection on which to rely.
Coarse local distinctions, as those of nation, pro-
vince, or town, are useful in the absence of real ones ;
but we must not insist on these accidental lines.
Indi^ddual traits are always triumphing over national
ones. There is no fence in metaphysics discriminat-
ing Greek, or English, or Spanish science. .^sop
and Montaigne, Cervantes and Saadi, are men of the
world ; and to wave our own flag at the dinner-table
or in the University, is to carry the boisterous dulness
of a fire-club into a polite circle. Nature and destiny
are always on the watch for our follies. Nature trips
us up when we strut ; and there are curious examples
in history on this very point of national pride.
George of Cappadocia, born at Epiphania in Cilicia,
was a low parasite, who got a lucrative contract to
supply the army with bacon. A rogue and informer,
he got rich, and was forced to run from justice. He
saved his money, embraced Arianism, collected a
library, and got promoted by a faction to the episcopal
throne of Alexandria. When Julian came, A.D. 361,
George was dragged to prison ; the prison was burst
open by the mob, and George was lynched, as he
deserved. And this precious knave became, in good
time. Saint George of England, patron of chivalry,
emblem of victory and civility, and the pride of the
best blood of the modern world.
124 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
Strange, that the soHd truth-speaking Briton should
derive from an impostor. Strange, that the New
World should have no better luck, — that broad
America must wear the name of a thief. Amerigo
Vespucci, the pickle-dealer at Seville, who went out,
in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest
naval rank was boatswain's mate in an expedition that
never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant
Columbus, and baptize half the earth with his own dis-
honest name. Thus nobody can thi'ow stones. We
are equally badly off in our founders ; and the false
pickle-dealer is an offset to the false bacon-seller.
X.] WE,\LTH. 125
CHAPTEE X.
WEALTH.
There is no country in which so absolute a homage
is paid to wealtL In America, there is a touch of
shame when a man exhibits the evidences of large
property, as if, after all, it needed apology. But the
Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems
it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout
all English souls; — if you have merit, can you not
show it by your good clothes, and coach, and horses 1
How can a man be a gentleman without a pipe of
■\vine1 Hay don says, "there is a fierce resolution to
make every man live according to the means he
possesses." There is a mixture of religion in it.
They are under the Jewish law, and read with sonor-
ous emphasis that their days shall be long in the land,
they shall have sons and daughters, flocks and herds,
wane and oil. In exact proportion is the reproach
of poverty. They do not wish to be represented
except by opulent men. An Enghshman who has
lost his fortune, is said to have died of a broken heart.
The last term of insult is, "a beggar." Nelson said,
" the want of fortune is a crime which I can never
126 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
get over." Sydney Smith said, "poverty is infamous
in England." And one of their recent writers speaks,
in reference to a private and scholastic life, of " the
grave moral deterioration which follows an empty
exchequer." You shall find this sentiment, if not so
frankly put, yet deeply implied, in the novels and
romances of the present century, and not only in these,
but in biography, and in the votes of public assemblies,
in the tone of the preaching, and in the table-talk.
I was lately turning over Wood's AthencB Oxon-
ienses, and looking naturally for another standard in a
chronicle of the scholars of Oxford for two hundred
years. But I found the two disgraces in that, as in
most English books, are, first, disloyalty to Church
and State, and, second, to be born poor, or to come
to poverty. A natural fruit of England is the brutal
political economy. Malthus finds no cover laid at
nature's table for the labourer's son. In 1809, the
majority in Parliament expressed itself by the lan-
guage of Mr. Fuller in the House of Commons, "If
you do not like the country, damn you, you can leave
it." When Sir S. Romilly proposed his bill forbid-
ding parish ofiicers to bind children apprentices at a
greater distance than forty miles from their home.
Peel opposed, and Mr. Wortley said, " though, in the
higher ranks, to cultivate family affections was a good
thing, 'twas not so among the lower orders. Better
take them away from those who might deprave them.
And it was highly injurious to trade to stop binding
to manufacturers, as it must raise the price of labour
and of manufactured goods."
X.] WEALTH. 127
The respect for truth of facts in England is
equalled only by the respect for wealth. It is at once
the pride of art of the Saxon, as he is a wealth-maker,
and his passion for independence. The Englishman
believes that every man must take care of himself,
and has himself to thank, if he do not mend his con-
dition. To pay their debts is their national point of
honour. From the Exchequer and the East India
House to the huckster's shop, everything prospers,
because it is solvent. The British armies are solvent,
and pay for what they take. The British empire is
solvent; for, in spite of the huge national debt, the
valuation mounts. During the war from 1789 to
1815, whilst they complained that they were taxed
within an inch of their lives, and, by dint of enor-
mous taxes, were subsidising all the Continent against
France, the English were growing rich every year
faster than any people ever grew before. It is their
maxim that the weight of taxes must be calculated
not by what is taken but by what is left. Solvency
is in the ideas and mechanism of an Englishman.
The Crystal Palace is not considered honest until it
pays ; — no matter how much convenience, beauty, or
eclat, it must be self-supporting. They are contented
■with slower steamers, as long as they know that
swifter boats lose money. They proceed logically
by the double method of labour and thrift. Every
household exhibits an exact economy, and nothing of
that uncalculated headlong expenditure which families
use in America. If they cannot pay, they do not
buy ; for they have no presumption of better fortunes
128 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
next year, as our people have ; and they say without
shame, I cannot afford it. Gentlemen do not hesitate
to ride in the second-class cars, or in the second
cabin. An economist, or a man who can proportion
his means and his ambition, or bring the year round
mth expenditure which expresses his character, with-
out embarrassing one day of his future, is already a
master of life, and a freeman. Lord Burleigh writes
to his son, "that one ought never to devote more
than two-thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses
of hfe, since the extraordinary will be certain to
absorb the other third."
The ambition to create value evokes every kind of
ability, government becomes a manufacturing corpora-
tion, and every house a mill. The headlong bias to
utility will let no talent lie in a napkin, — if possible,
will teach spiders to weave silk stockings. An
Englishman, while he eats and drinks no more, or
not much more than another man, labours three times
as many hours in the course of a year, as any other
European; or, his life as a workman is three lives.
He works fast. Everything in England is at a quick
pace. They have reinforced their own productivity
by the creation of that marvellous machinery which
differences this age from any other age.
'Tis a curious chapter in modern history, the
growth of the machine-shop. Six hundred years ago,
Eoger Bacon explained the precession of the equi-
noxes, the consequent necessity of the reform of the
calendar ; measured the length of the year ; invented
gunpowder; and announced (as if looking from his
X.] WEALTH. 129
lofty cell, over five centuries, into ours), " that
machines can be constructed to drive ships more
rapidly than a whole galley of rowers could do ; nor
would they need anything but a pilot to steer them.
Carriages also might be constructed to move with
an incredible speed -without the aid of any animal.
Finally, it would not be imjDOssible to make machines,
which, b}" means of a suit of wings, should fly in the
air in the manner of birds." But the secret slept
with Bacon. The six hundred years have not yet
fulfilled his words. Two centuries ago, the sawing
of timber was done by hand ; the carriage wheels ran
on wooden axles; the land was tilled by wooden
ploughs. And it was to little purpose that they had
pit -coal, or that looms were improved, unless Watt
and Stephenson had taught them to work force-pumps
and power -looms by steam. The great strides were
all taken within the last hundred years. The life of
Sir Robert Peel, who died, the other day, the model
Englishman, very properly has, for a frontispiece, a
drawing of the spinning- jenny, which wove the web
of his fortimes. Hargreaves invented the spinning-
jenny, and died in a workhouse. Ark-wTight improved
the invention; and the machine dispensed with the
work of ninety-nine men : that is, one spinner could
do as much work as one hundred had done before.
The loom was improved fiu'ther. But the men would
sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the
masters, and, about 1829-30, much fear was felt lest
the trade would be drawn aAvay by these interrup-
tions, and the emigration of the spinners to Belgium
VOL. IV. K
130 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
and the United States. Iron and steel are very
obedient. Whether it were not possible to make a
spinner that would not rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl,
nor strike for wages, nor emigrate 1 At the solicita-
tion of the masters, after a mob and riot at Staley-
bridge, Mr. Roberts of Manchester undertook to
create this peaceful fellow, instead of the quarrel-
some fellow God had made. After a few trials, he
succeeded, and in 1830, procured a patent for his seK-
acting mule; a creation, the delight of millovfuers,
and "destined," they said, "to restore order among
the industrious classes " ; a machine requiring only a
child's hand to piece the broken yarns. As Ark-
^vright had destroyed domestic spinning, so Roberts
destroyed the factory spinner. The power of machin-
ery in Great Britain, in mills, has been computed to
be equal to 600,000,000 men, one man being able by
the aid of steam to do the work which required two
hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago.
The production has been commensurate. England
already had this laborious race, rich soil, water, wood,
coal, iron, and favourable climate. Eight hundred
years ago commerce had made it rich, and it was
recorded, " England is the richest of all the northern
nations." The Norman historians recite, that " in
1067, William carried with him into Normandy, from
England, more gold and silver than had ever before
been seen in Gaul." But when, to this labour and
trade and these native resources was added this
goblin of steam, mth his myriad arms, never -tired,
working night and day everlastingly, the amassing of
X.] WEALTH. 131
property has run out of all figures. It makes the
motor of the last ninety years. The steam-pipe has
added to her population and wealth the equivalent
of four or five Englands. Forty thousand ships are
entered in Lloyd's lists. The yield of wheat has gone
on from 2,000,000 quarters in the time of the Stuarts,
to 13,000,000 in 1854. A thousand million of pounds
sterling are said to compose the floating money of
commerce. In 1848, Lord John Eussell stated that
the people of this country had laid out £300,000,000
of capital in railways, in the last four years. But a
better measure than these sounding figures is the
estimate, that there is wealth enough in England to
support the entire population in idleness for one year.
The wise, versatile, all-gi^dng machinery makes
chisels, roads, locomotives, telegraphs. Whitworth
di\ddes a bar to a millionth of an inch. Steam tmnes
huge cannon into wreaths, as easily as it braids straw,
and vies with the volcanic forces which twisted the
strata. It can clothe shingle mountains with ship-
oaks, make sword-blades that will cut gun-barrels in
two. In Egypt, it can plant forests, and bring rain
after three thousand years. Already it is ruddering
the balloon, and the next war will be fought in the
air. But another machine, more potent in England
than steam, is the Bank. It votes an issue of bills,
population is stimulated, and cities rise; it refuses
loans, and emigration empties the country; trade
sinks; revolutions break out; kings are dethroned.
By these new agents our social system is moulded.
By dint of steam and of money, war and commerce
132 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
are changed, Nations have lost their old omnipo-
tence ; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are
getting obsolete, we go and live where we mil.
Steam has enabled men to choose what law they will
live under. Money makes place for them. The tele-
graph is a Hmp-band that will hold the Fenris-wolf
of war. For, now that a telegraph line runs through
France and Europe from London, every message it
transmits makes stronger by one thread the band
which war will have to cut.
The introduction of these elements gives new
resources to existing jDroprietors. A sporting duke
may fancy that the state depends on the House of
Lords, but the engineer sees that every stroke of
the steam-piston gives value to the duke's land, fills
it mth tenants; doubles, quadruples, centuples the
duke's capital, and creates new measures and new
necessities for the culture of his children. Of course
it draws the nobility into the competition as stock-
holders in the mine, the canal, the railway, in the
application of steam to agriculture, and sometimes
into trade. But it also introduces large classes into
the same competition ; the old energy of the Norse
race arms itself 'vvith these magnificent powers ; new
men prove an overmatch for the landowner, and the
mill buys out the castle. Scandinavian Thor, who
once forged his bolts in icy Hecla, and built galleys
by lonely fiords, in England has advanced with the
times, has shorn his beard, enters Parliament, sits
down at a desk in the India House, and lends Miollnir
to Birmino'ham for a steam-hammer.
X.] WEALTH. 133
The creation of wealth in Endand in the last
ninety years is a main fact in modern history. The
wealth of London determines prices all over the
globe. All things precious, or useful, or amusing, or
intoxicating, are sucked into this commerce and
floated to London. Some English private fortunes
reach, and some exceed, a million of dollars a year.
A hundred thousand palaces adorn the island. All
that can feed the senses and passions, all that can
succour the talent, or arm the hands of the intelligent
middle class, who never spare in what they buy for
their o^vn consummation ; all that can aid science,
gratify taste, or soothe comfort, is in open market.
Whatever is excellent and beautiful in civil, rural,
or ecclesiastic architecture ; in fountain, garden, or
grounds ; the English noble crosses sea and land to
see and to copy at home. The taste and science of
thirty peaceful generations ; the gardens which Evelyn
planted ; the temples and pleasure-houses which Inigo
Jones and Christopher Wren built; the wood that
Gibbons carved ; the taste of foreim and domestic
artists, Shenstone, Pope, Brown, Loudon, Paxton, are
in the vast auction, and the hereditary principle heaps
on the ovmer of to-day the benefit of ages of owners.
The present possessors are to the full as absolute as
any of their fathers, in choosing and procuring what
they like. This comfort and splendour, the breadth
of lake and mountain, tillage, pasture, and park,
sumptuous castle and modem villa, — all consist with
perfect order. They have no revolutions ; no horse-
guards dictating to the crown ; no Parisian 2}oissardes
134 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
and barricades ; no mob : but drowsy habitude, daily
dress-dinners, wine, and ale, and beer, and gin, and
sleep.
"With this power of creation, and this passion for
independence, property has reached an ideal perfec-
tion. It is felt and treated as the national life-blood.
The laws are framed to give property the securest
possible basis, and the provisions to lock and transmit
it have exercised the cunningest heads in a profession
which never admits a fool. The rights of property
nothing but felony and treason can override. The
house is a castle which the king cannot enter. The
Bank is a strong-box to which the king has no key.
Whatever surly sweetness possession can give, is tasted
in England to the dregs. Vested rights are awful
things, and absolute possession gives the smallest free-
holder identity of interest with the duke. High stone
fences and padlocked garden gates announce the
absolute will of the owner to be alone. Every whim
of exaggerated egotism is put into stone and iron, into
silver and gold, with costly deliberation and detail.
An Englishman hears that the Queen Dowager
Vv^shes to establish some claim to put her park paling
a rod forward into his grounds, so as to get a coach-
way, and save her a mile to the avenue. Instantly
he transfonns his paling into stone-masonry, solid as
the walls of Cuma, and all Europe cannot prevail on
him to sell or compound for an inch of the land.
They delight in a freak as the proof of their sovereign
freedom. Sir Edward Boynton, at Spic Park, at
Cadenham, on a precipice of incomparable prospect.
X.] WEALTH. 135
built a house like a long barn, which had not a window
on the prospect side. Strawberry Hill of Horace
Walpole, Fonthill Abbey of ]\Ir. Beckford, were
freaks ; and Newstead Abbey became one in the
hands of Lord B}T:'on.
But the proudest result of this creation has been
the great and refined forces it has put at the disposal
of the private citizen. In the social world an Eng-
hshman to-day has the best lot. He is a king in a
plain coat. He goes with the most powerful protec-
tion, keeps the best company, is armed by the best
education, is seconded by wealth ; and his English
name and accidents are like a flourish of trumpets
announcing him. This, with his quiet style of
manners, gives him the power of a sovereign, mthout
the inconveniences which belong to that rank. I
much prefer the condition of an English gentleman
of the better class to that of any potentate in Europe,
— whether for travel, or for opportunity of society,
or for access to means of science or study, or for mere
comfort and easy healthy relation to people at home.
Such as we have seen is the wealth of England, a
mighty mass, and made good in whatever details we
care to explore. The cause and spring of it is the
wealth of temperament in the people. The wonder
of Britain is this plenteous natiu-e. Her worthies are
ever surrounded by as good men as themselves ; each
is a captain a hundred strong, and that wealth of men
is represented again in the faculty of each individual,
— that he has waste strength, power to spare. The
English are so rich, and seem to have established a
136 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
tap-root in the bowels of the planet, because they
are constitutionally fertile and creative.
But a man must keep an eye on his servants, if he
would not have them rule him. Man is a shrewd
inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine
from his own structure, adapting some secret of his
own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some
required function in the work of the world. But it
is found that the machine unmans the user. What
he gains in making cloth he loses in general power.
There should be temperance in making cloth, as well
as in eating. A man should not be a silkworm ; nor
a nation a tent of caterpillars. The robust rural
Saxon des;enerates in the mills to the Leicester stock-
iiiger, to the imbecile Manchester spinner, — far on
the way to be spiders and needles. The incessant
repetition of the same hand-work dwarfs the man,
robs him of his strength, mt, and versatility, to make
a pin-polisher, a buckle-maker, or any other specialty ;
and presently, in a change of industry, whole towns
are sacrificed like ant-hills, when the fashion of shoe-
strings supersedes buckles, when cotton takes the
place of linen, or railways of turnpikes, or when
commons are inclosed by landlords. Then society is
admonished of the mischief of the division of labour,
and that the best political economy is care and culture
of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except
such as are proper individuals, capable of thought,
and of new choice and the application of their talent
to new labour. Then again come in new calamities.
En2;land is aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the
X.] WEA.LTII. 137
adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost every
fabric in her mills and shops ; finding that milk will
not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor
pepper bite the tongue, nor glue stick. In true
England all is false and forged. This too is the re-
action of machinery, but of the larger machinery of
commerce. 'Tis not, I suppose, want of probity, so
much as the tyranny of trade, which necessitates a
perpetual competition of underselling, and that again
a perpetual deterioration of the fabric.
The machinery has proved, like the balloon, un-
manageable, and flies away with the aeronaut. Steam,
from the first, hissed and screamed to warn him ; it
was dreadful with its explosion, and crushed the
engineer. The machinist has wrought and watched,
engineers and firemen without number have been
sacrificed in learning to tame and guide the monster.
But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the
dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors
and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Eobinson, and
their Parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted
false principles, and went to their graves in the belief
that they were enriching the country which they were
impoverishing. They congratulated each other on
ruinous ex]^)edients. It is rare to find a merchant
who knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why prices
rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of paper money.
In the culmination of national prosperity, in the an-
nexation of countries; building of ships, depots,
towns ; in the influx of tons of gold and silver ; amid
the chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found
138 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
that bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was
forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and his acre
of land ; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates
was touching the point of ruin. The poor-rate was
sucking in the solvent classes, and forcing an exodus
of farmers and mechanics. What befalls from the
violence of financial crises, befalls daily in the violence
of artificial legislation.
Such a wealth has England earned, ever new,
bounteous, and augmenting. But the question recurs,
Does she take the step beyond, namely, to the ^vise
use, in view of the supreme wealth of nations ^ We
estimate the msdom of nations by seeing what they
did with their surplus capital. And, in view of these
injuries, some compensation has been attempted in
England. A part of the money earned returns to the
brain to buy schools, libraries, bishops, astronomers,
chemists, and artists with ; and a part to repair the
wrongs of this intemperate weaving, by hospitals,
savings-banks. Mechanics' Institutes, public grounds,
and other charities and amenities. But the antidotes
are frightfully inadecjuate, and the evil requires a
deeper cure, which time and a simpler social organ-
isation must supply. At present, she does not rule
her wealth. She is simply a good England, but no
divinity, or wise and instructed soul. She too is in
the stream of fate, one victim more in a common
catastrophe.
But being in the fault, she has the misfortune of
greatness to be held as the chief offender. England
X.] WEALTH. 139
must be held responsible for the despotism of expense.
Her prosperity, the splendour which so much man-
hood and talent and perseverance has thrown upon
vulgar aims, is the very argument of materialism.
Her success strengthens the hands of base wealth.
Who can propose to youth poverty and wisdom when
mean gain has arrived at the conquest of letters and
arts ; when English success has grown out of the very
renunciation of principles, and the dedication to out-
sides ? A ci^nlity of trifles, of money and expense,
an erudition of sensation takes place, and the putting
as many impediments as we can between the man
and his objects. Hardly the bravest among them
have the manliness to resist it successfully. Hence,
it has come, that not the aims of a manly life, but
the means of meeting a certain ponderous expense, is
that which is to be considered by a youth in Eng-
land, emerging from his minority. A large family is
reckoned a misfortime. And it is a consolation in
the death of the young that a source of expense is
closed.
140 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
CHAPTEE XL
ARISTOCRACY.
The feudal character of the English state, now that
it is getting obsolete, glares a little, in contrast with
the democratic tendencies. The inequality of power
and property shocks republican nerves. Palaces,
halls, villas, walled parks all over England, rival the
splendour of royal seats. Many of the halls, like
Haddon, or Kedleston, are beautiful desolations. The
proprietor never saw them, or never lived in them.
Primogeniture built these sumptuous piles, and, I
suppose, it is the sentiment of every traveller, as it
was mine, 'Twas well to come ere these were gone.
Primogeniture is a cardinal rule of English property
and institutions. Laws, customs, manners, the very
persons and faces, affirm it.
The frame of society is aristocratic, the taste of
the people is loyal. The estates, names, and manners
of the nobles flatter the fancy of the people, and con-
ciliate the necessary support. In spite of broken
faith, stolen charters, and the devastation of society
by the profligacy of the court, we take sides as we read
for the loyal England and King Charles's " return to
XL] AEISTOCEACY. 141
his right " with his Cavaliers, — knowing what a heart-
less trifler he is, and what a crew of God-forsaken
robbers they are. The people of England knew as
much. But the fair idea of a settled government
connecting itself with heraldic names, with the wiitten
and oral history of Eiurope, and, at last, with the
Hebrew religion, and the oldest traditions of the
world, was too pleasing a vision to be shattered by a
few offensive realities, and the politics of shoemakers
and costermongers. The hopes of the commoners
take the same direction with the interest of the patri-
cians. Every man who becomes rich buys land, and
does what he can to fortify the nobility, into which
he hopes to rise. The Anglican clergy are identified
"\^dth the aristocracy. Time and law have made the
joining and moulding perfect in every part. The
Cathedrals, the UniA^ersities, the national music, the
popular romances, conspire to uphold the heraldiy,
which the current politics of the day are sapping.
The taste of the people is conservative. They are
proud of the castles, and of the language and sjTnbol
of chivalry. Even the word lord is the luckiest style
that is used in any language to designate a patrician.
The superior education and manners of the nobles
recommend them to the country.
The Norwegian pirate got what he could, and held
it for his eldest son. The Norman noble, who was
the Norwegian pirate baptized, did likewise. There
was this advantage of western over oriental nobiHty,
that this was recruited from below. English history
is aristocracy "wath the doors open, \slio has courage
142 ENGLISH TKAITS. [chap.
and faculty, let him come in. Of course the terms
of admission to this club are hard and high. The
selfishness of the nobles comes in aid of the interest
of the nation to require signal merit. Piracy and
war gave place to trade, politics, and letters ; the
war-lord to the law-lord ; the law-lord to the merchant
and the millowner ; but the privilege was kept,
whilst the means of obtaining it were changed.
The foundations of these families lie deep in Nor-
wegian exploits by sea, and Saxon sturdiness on land.
All nobility in its beginnings was somebody's natural
superiority. The things these English have done
were not done without peril of life, nor without
wisdom and conduct ; and the first hands, it may be
presumed, were often challenged to show their right
to their honours, or yield them to better men. " He
that mil be a head, let him be a bridge," said the
Welsh chief Benegridran, when he carried all his men
over the river on his back. " He shall have the book,"
said the mother of Alfred, "who can read it;" and
Alfred won it by that title : and I make no doubt
that feudal tenure was no sinecure, but baron, knight,
and tenant, often had their memories refreshed, in
regard to the service by which they held their lands.
The De Veres, Bohuns, Mowbrays, and Plantagenets
were not addicted to contemplation. The middle age
adorned itself with proofs of manhood and devotion.
Of Eichard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the Emperor
told Henry V. that no Christian king had such another
knight for wisdom, nurture, and manhood, and caused
him to be named " Father of curtesie." " Our success
XI.] ARISTOCRACY. 143
in France," says the historian, " lived and died with
him."i
The war-lord earned his honours, and no donation
of land was large, as long as it brought the duty of
protecting it, hour by hour, .against a terrible enemy.
In France and in England, the nobles were, do^vn to
a late day, born and bred to war : and the duel, which
in peace still held them to the risks of war, diminished
the envy that, in trading and studious nations, would
else have pried into their title. They were looked
on as men who played high for a great stake.
Great estates are not sinecures, if they are to be
kept great. A creative economy is the fuel of magnifi-
cence. In the same Hne of "Warwick, the successor
next but one to Beauchamp, was the stout earl of
Henry YI. and Edward IV. Few esteemed them-
selves in the mode whose heads were not adorned
■with the black rao'O'ed staff, his bad2;e. At his house
in London, six oxen were daily eaten at a breakfast ;
and every tavern was full of his meat : and who had
any acquaintance in his family should have as much
boiled and roast as he could carry on a long dagger.
The new age brings new qualities into request, the
wtues of pirates gave way to those of planters,
merchants, senators, and scholars. Comity, social
talent and fine manners, no doubt, have had their part
also. I have met somewhere ■with a historiette, which,
whether more or less true in its particulars, carries a
general truth. " How came the Duke, of Bedford by
his great landed estates "? His ancestor having tra-
^ Fuller's "Worthies, ii. p. 472.
144 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
veiled on the Continent, a lively, pleasant man, became
the companion of a foreign prince wrecked on the
Dorsetshire coast, where Mr. Russell lived. The
prince recommended him to Henry YIII, who, liking
his company, gave him a large share of the plundered
chui'ch lands."
The pretence is that the noble is of unbroken
descent from the Norman, and has never worked for
eight hundred years. But the fact is otherwise.
Where is Bohun ? Where is De Vere ? The lawyer,
the farmer, the silk mercer, lies jjerdu under the coronet,
and winks to the antiquary to say nothing ; especially
skilful lawyers, nobody's sons, who did some piece of
work at a nice moment for government, and were
rewarded with ermine.
The national tastes of the English do not lead them
to the life of the courtier, but to secure the comfort
and independence of their homes. The aristocracy are
marked by their predilection for country life. They
are called the county families. They have often no
residence in London, and only go thither a short time,
during the season, to see the opera ; but they concen-
trate the love and labour of many generations on the
building, planting, and decoration of their homesteads.
Some of them are too old and too proud to wear titles,
or, as Sheridan said of Coke, "disdain to hide their
head in a coronet ;" and some curious examples are
cited to show the stability of English families. Their
proverb is, that, fifty miles from London, a family
will last a hundred years ; at a hundred miles, two
hundred years ; and so on ; but I doubt that steam,
XL] ARISTOCRACY. 145
the enemy of time, as well as of space, will disturb
these ancient rules. Sir Henry Wotton says of the
first Duke of Buckingham, " He was born at Brookeby
in Leicestershire, where his ancestors had chiefly
continued about the space of four hundred years,
rather ^dthout obscurity than with any great lustre." ^
Wraxall says, that in 1781, Lord Surrey, afterwards
Duke of Norfolk, told him, that when the year 1783
should arrive, he meant to give a grand festival to all
the descendants of the body of Jockey of Norfolk, to
mark the day when the dukedom should have re-
mained three hundred years in their house, since its
creation by Eichard III. Pepys tells us, in writing
of an Earl Oxford, in 1666, that the honour had now
remained in that name and blood six hundred years.
This long descent of families and this cleaving
through ages to the same spot of ground captivates
the imagination. It has too a connection with the
names of the towns and districts of the country.
The names are excellent, — an atmosphere of
legendary melody spread over the land. Older than
all epics and histories, which clothe a nation, this
undershirt sits close to the body. What history too,
and what stores of primitive and savage observation it
infolds ! Cambridge is the bridge of the Cam ; Shef-
field the field of the river Sheaf ; Leicester, the castra
or camp of the Lear or Leir (now Soar) ; Eochdale,
of the Eoch; Exeter or Excester, the castra of the
Ex ; Exmouth, Dartmouth, Sidmoiith, Teignmouth,
the mouths of the Ex, Dart, Sid, and Teign rivers.
^ Rehquiae Wottonianee, p. 208.
VOL. TV. L
146 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
Waltham is strong town ; EadclifFe is red cliff ; and
so on : — a sincerity and use in naming very striking
to an American, whose country is whitewashed all
over by unmeaning names, the cast-off clothes of the
country from which its emigrants came ; or, named
at a pinch from a psalm-tune. But the English are
those "barbarians" of Jamblichus, who "are stable
in their manners, and firmly continue to employ the
same words, which also are dear to the gods."
'Tis an old sneer, that the Irish peerage drew their
names from playbooks. The English lords do not
call their lands after their own names, but call them-
selves after their lands ; as if the man represented the
country that bred him; and they rightly wear the token
of the glebe that gave them birth ; suggesting that the
tie is not cut, but that there in London, — the crags of
Argyle, the kail of Cornwall, the downs of Devon, the
iron of Wales, the clays of Stafford, are neither forget-
ting nor forgotten, but know the man who was born
by them, and who, like the long line of his fathers,
has carried that crag, that shore, dale, fen, or wood-
land, in his blood and manners. It has, too, the
advantage of suggestin'i; responsibleness. A suscep-
tible man could not wear a name which represented
in a strict sense a city or a county of England, -^dth-
out hearing in it a challenge to duty and honour.
The predilection of the patricians for residence in
the country, combined with the degree of liberty
possessed by the peasant, makes the safety of the
English hall. Mirabeau wrote prophetically from
England, in 1784, " If revolution break out in France
XL] ARISTOCRACY. 147
I tremble for the aristocracy : their chateaux will be
reduced to ashes, and their blood spilt in torrents.
The Enoflish tenant would defend his lord to the last
extremity." The English go to their estates for
grandeur. The French live at court, and exile them-
selves to their estates for economy. As they do not
mean to live with their tenants, they do not conciliate
them, but wiing from them the last sous. Evelyn
writes from Blois, in 1644, " The wolves are here in
such numbers that they often come and take children
out of the streets : yet will not the Duke, who is sove-
reign here, permit them to be destroyed. "
In evidence of the wealth amassed by ancient
families, the traveller is shown the palaces in Piccadilly,
Bmiington House, Devonshire House, Lansdowne
House in Berkeley Square, and, lower down in the city,
a few noble houses which still withstand in all their
amplitude the encroachment of streets. The Duke
of Bedford includes or included a mile square in the
heart of London, where the British Museum, once
Montague House, now stands, and the land occupied
by Woburn Square, Bedford Square, Russell Square.
The Marquis of Westminster built within a few years
the series of squares called Belgravia. Stafford House is
the noblest palace in London. iSTorthumberland House
holds its place by Charing Cross. Chesterfield House
remains in Audley Street. Sion House and Holland
House are in the suburbs. But most of the historical
houses are masked or lost in the modem uses to which
trade or charity has converted them. A multitude of
town palaces contain inestimable galleries of art.
148 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
In the country the size of j^rivate estates is more
impressive. From Barnard Castle I rode on the
highway twenty-three miles from High Force, a fall
of the Tees, towards Darlington, past Eaby Castle,
through the estate of the Duke of Cleveland. The
Marquis of Breadalbane rides out of his house a
hundred miles in a straight line to the sea, on his
own property. The Duke of Sutherland owns the
county of Sutherland, stretching across Scotland from
sea to sea. The Duke of Devonshire, besides his other
estates, OAvns 96,000 acres in the county of Derby.
The Duke of Eichmond has 40,000 acres at Good-
wood, and 300,000 at Gordon Castle. The Duke of
Norfolk's park in Sussex is fifteen miles in circuit.
An agriculturist bought lately the island of Lewes, in
Hebrides, containing 500,000 acres. The possessions
of the Earl of Lonsdale gave him eight seats in Par-
liament. This is the Heptarchy again : and before
the Eeform of 1832, one hundred and fifty -four persons
sent three hundred and seven members to Parliament.
The borough-mongers governed England.
These large domains are growing larger. The great
estates are absorbing the small freeholds. In 1786,
the soil of England was owned by 250,000 corporations
and proprietors; and, in 1822, by 32,000. These
broad estates find room in this narrow island. All
over England, scattered at short intervals among ship-
yards, mills, mines, and forges, are the paradises of the
nobles, where the livelong repose and refinement are
heightened by the contrast mtli the roar of inctustry
and necessity, out of which you have stepped aside.
XI.] AEISTOCEACY. U9
I was surprised to observe the very small attend-
ance usually in the House of Lords. Out of 573
peers, on ordinary days only twenty or thirty.
Where are theyl I asked. "At home on their
estates, devoured by ennui, or in the Alps, or up the
Ehine, in the Harz Mountains, or in Egypt, or in
India, on the Ghauts." But, with such interests at
stake, how can these men afford to neglect them"?
" Oh," replied my friend, " why should they work
for themselves, when every man in England works for
them, and will suffer before they come to harm?"
The hardest radical instantly uncovers, and changes
his tone to a lord. It was remarked, on the 10th
April 1848 (the day of the Chartist demonstration),
that the upper classes were for the first time actively
interesting themselves in their o^vn defence, and men
of rank were sworn special constables, with the rest.
"Besides, why need they sit out the debate? Has
not the Duke of Wellington, at this moment, their
proxies, — the proxies of fifty peers in his pocket, to
vote for them if there be an emergency 1 "
It is however true, that the existence of the House
of Peers as a branch of the government entitles them
to fill half the Cabinet ; and their weight of property
and station give them a virtual nomination of the
other half ; whilst they have their share in the sub-
ordinate offices, as a school of training. This mono-
poly of political power has given them their intellectual
and social eminence in Europe. A few law lords and
a few political lords take the brimt of public business.
150 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
In the army, the nobiHty fill a large part of the high
commissions, and give to these a tone of expense and
splendour, and also of exclusiveness. They have
borne their full share of duty and danger in this
service ; and there are few noble families which have
not paid in some of their members the debt of life or
limb, in the sacrifices of the Russian war. For the
rest, the nobility have the lead in matters of state,
and of expense ; in questions of taste, in social usages,
in convivial and domestic hospitalities. In general,
all that is required of them is to sit securely, to pre-
side at public meetings, to countenance charities,
and to give the example of that decorum so dear to
the British heart.
If one asks, in the critical spirit of the day, what
service this class have rendered? — uses appear, or
they would have perished long ago. Some of these
are easily enumerated, others more subtle make a
part of unconscious history. Their institution is one
step in the progress of society. For a race yields a
nobility in some form, however we name the lords,
as surely as it yields women.
The English nobles are high-spirited, active, edu-
cated men, born to wealth and power, who have run
through every country, and kept in every country
the best company, have seen every secret of art and
nature, and, when men of any ability or ambition,
have been consulted in the conduct of every imjDortant
action. You cannot wield great agencies without
lending yourself to them, and, when it happens' that
the spirit of the earl meets his rank and duties, we
XL] AEISTOCRACY. • 151
have the best examples of behaviom\ Power of any
kind readily appears in the manners ; and beneficent
power, h talent de Men faire, gives a majesty which
cannot be concealed or resisted.
These people seem to gain as much as they lose by
their position. They survey society, as from the top
of St. Paul's, and, if they never hear plain truth from
men, they see the best of everything, in every kind,
and they see things so grouped and amassed as to
infer easily the sum and genius, instead of tedious
particularities. Their good behaviour deserves all its
fame, and they have that simplicity, and that air of
repose, which are the finest ornament of greatness.
The upper classes have only birth, say the people
here, and not thoughts. Yes, but they have manners,
and 'tis wonderful how much talent runs into man-
ners : — nowhere and never so much as in England.
They have the sense of superiority, the absence oi
all the ambitious effort which disgusts in the aspiring
classes, a pure tone of thought and feeling, and the
power to command, among their other luxuries, the
presence of the most accomplished men in their festive
meetings.
Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion. They
wear the laws as ornaments, and walk by their faith
in their painted May-Fair, as if among the forms of
gods. The economist of 1855 who asks, of what use
are the lords ? may learn of Franklin to ask, of what
use is a baby 1 They have been a social church pro-
per to inspire sentiments mutually honouring the lover
and the loved. Politeness is the ritual of society, as
152 .ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
prayers are of the church ; a school of manners, and a
gentle blessing to the age in which it grew. 'Tis a
romance adorning English life with a larger horizon ;
a midway heaven, fulfilling to their sense their fairy
tales and poetry. This, just as far as the breeding
of the nobleman really made him brave, handsome,
accomplished, and great-hearted.
On general grounds, whatever tends to form man-
ners, or to finish men, has a great value. Every one
who has tasted the delight of friendship, will respect
every social guard which our manners can establish,
tending to secure from the intrusion of frivolous and
distasteful people. The jealousy of every class to
guard itself is a testimony to the reality they have
found in life. When a man once knows that he has
done justice to himself, let him dismiss all terrors of
aristocracy as superstitions, so far as he is concerned.
He who keeps the door of a mine, whether of cobalt,
or mercury, or nickel, or plumbago, securely knows
that the world cannot do without him. Everybody
who is real is open and ready for that which is also
real.
Besides, these are they who make England that
strongbox and museum it is ; who gather and protect
works of art, dragged from amidst bui^ning cities and
revolutionary countries, and brought hither out of all
the world. I look with respect at houses six, seven,
eight hundred, or, like Warwick Castle, nine hundred
years old. I pardoned high park-fences, when I saw,
that, besides does and pheasants, these have preserved
Arundel marbles, Townley galleries, Howard and
XL] AEISTOGRACY. 153
Spenserian libraries, Warwick and Portland vases,
Saxon manuscripts, monastic architectures, millennial
trees, and breeds of cattle elsewhere extinct. In these
manors, after the frenzy of war and destruction sub-
sides a little, the antiquary finds the frailest Roman
jar, or crumbling Egyptian mummy-case, without so
much as a new layer of dust, keeping the series of
history imbroken, and waiting for its interpreter, who
is sure to arrive. These lords are the treasurers and
librarians of mankind, engaged by their pride and
wealth to this function.
Yet there were other works for British dulces to
do. George Loudon, Quintinye, Eveljm, had taught
them to make gardens. Arthur Young, Bakewell,
and Mechi, have made them agricultural. Scotland
was a camp until the day of Culloden. The dukes of
Athole, Sutherland, Buccleuch, and the Marquis of
Breadalbane have introduced the rape -culture, the
sheep-farm, wheat, drainage, the plantation of forests,
the artificial replenishment of lakes and ponds with
fish, the renting of game-preserves. Against the cry
of the old tenantry, and the sympathetic cry of the
English press, they have rooted out and planted anew,
and now six millions of people live, and live better,
on the same land that fed thi'ee millions.
The English barons, in every period, have been
brave and great, after the estimate and opinion of
their times. The grand old halls scattered up and
do'wn in England are dumb vouchers to the state and
broad hospitality of their ancient lords. Shakspeare's
portraits of good Duke Humphrey, of Warwick, of
154 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
Northumberland, of Talbot, were dra^vn in strict con-
sonance ^Yitb. the traditions. A sketch of the Earl of
Shrewsbury, from the pen of Queen Elizabeth's arch-
bishop Parker ; ^ Lord Herbert of Cherbury's auto-
biography ; the letters and essays of Sir Philip Sidney ;
the anecdotes preserved by the antiquaries Fuller and
Collins; some glimpses at the interiors of noble
houses, which we owe to Pepys and Evelyn : the
details which Ben Jonson's masques (performed at
Kenilworth, Althorpe, Belvoir, and other noble
houses) record or suggest ; down to Aubrey's passages
of the life of Hobbes in the house of the Earl of
Devon, are favourable pictures of a romantic style of
manners. Penshurst still shines for us, and its
Christmas revels, "where logs not burn, but men."
At Wilton House, the " Arcadia " was written, amidst
conversations with Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, a
man of no vulgar mind, as his own poems declare him.
I must hold Ludlow Castle an honest house, for which
Milton's "Comus" was written, and the company
nobly bred which performed it with knowledge and
sympathy. In the roll of nobles are found poets,
philosophers, chemists, astronomers, also men of solid
virtues and of lofty sentiments ; often they have been
the friends and patrons of genius and learning, and
especially of the fine arts ; and at this moment, almost
every great house has its sumptuous picture-gallery.
Of course there is another side to this gorgeous
show. Every victory was the defeat of a party only
less worthy. Castles are proud things, but 'tis safest
1 Dibdin's Literary Pieiuiniscences, voL 1, xii.
XI.] ArJSTOCEACY. 155
to be outside of them. AYar is a foul game, and yet
war is not the worst part of aristocratic history. In
later times, when the baron, educated only for war,
with his brains paralysed by his stomach, foimd him-
self idle at home, he grew fat and wanton, and a sorry
brute. Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn, show the
kennels to which the king and court went in quest of
pleasure. Prostitutes, taken from the theatres, were
made duchesses, their bastards dukes and earls. " The
young men sat uppermost, the old serious lords were
out of favour." The discourse that the kins-'s com-
panions had with him was " poor and frothy." No
man who valued his head might do what these pot-
companions famiharly did with the king. In logical
sequence of these dignified revels, Pepys can tell the
beggarly shifts to which the king was reduced, who
could not find paper at his council table, and "no
handkerchers " in his wardrobe, " and but three bands
to his neck," and the linen-draper and the stationer
were out of pocket, and refusing to trust him, and the
baker will not bring bread any longer. Meantime,
the English Channel was swept, and London threatened
by the Dutch fleet, manned too by English sailors,
who, having been cheated of their pay for years by
the king, enlisted with the enemy.
The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of George
III. discloses a rottenness in the aristocracy which
threatened to decompose the state. The sycophancy
and sale of votes and honour, for place and title;
lewdness, gaming, smuggling, bribery, and cheating;
the sneer at the childish indiscretion of quarrelling
156 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
with ten thousand a year ; the want of ideas ; the
splendour of the titles, and the apathy of the nation,
are instructive, and make the reader pause and
explore the firm bounds which confined these vices to
a handful of rich men. In the reign of the Fourth
George things do not seem to have mended, and the
rotten debauchee let down from a window by an
inclined plane into his coach to take the air, was a
scandal to Europe, which the ill fame of his queen and
of his family did nothing to retrieve.
Under the present reign the perfect decorum of
the Court is thought to have put a check on the gross
vices of the aristocracy ; yet gaming, racing, drinking,
and mistresses, bring them do^vn, and the democrat
can still gather scandals if he will. Dismal anecdotes
abound, verifying the gossip of the^ast generation,
of dukes served by bailiffs, with all their plate in
pawn ; of great lords living by the showing of their
houses ; and of an old man wheeled in his chair from
room to room, whilst his chambers are exhibited to
the visitor for money ; of ruined dukes and earls
living in exile for debt. The historic names of the
Buckinghams, Beauf orts, Marlboroughs, and Hertf ords,
have gained no new lustre, and now and then darker
scandals break out, ominous as the new chapters
added under the Orleans dynasty to the " Causes
CdUhres" in France. Even peers, who are men of
worth and public spirit, are overtaken and embar-
rassed by their vast expense. The respectable Duke
of Devonshire, willing to be the Mecsenas and Lucullus
of his island, is reported to have said that he can-
XL]
ARISTOCRACY. 157
not live at Chatsworth but one month in the year.
Their many houses eat them up. They cannot sell
them, because they are entailed. They will not let
them, for pride's sake, but keep them empty, aired,
and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of four
or five thousand pounds a year. The spending is for
a great part in servants, in many houses exceeding a
hundred.
Most of them are only chargeable with idleness,
which, because it squanders such vast power of bene-
fit, has the mischief of crime. " They might be little
Providences on earth," said my friend, "and they are,
for the most part, jockeys and fops." Campbell says,
"acquaintance "svith the nobility I could never keep
up. It requires a life of idleness, dressing, and attend-
ance on their parties." I suppose, too, that a feeling
of self-respect is dri^dng cultivated men out of this
society, as if the noble were slow to receive the lessons
of the times, and had not learned to disguise his pride
of place. A man of wit, who is also one of the cele-
brities of wealth and fashion, confessed to his friend
that he could not enter their houses without being
made to feel that they were great lords, and he a low
plebeian. With the tribe of artistes, including the
musical tribe, the patrician morgue keeps no terms,
but excludes them. When Julia Grisi and ]\Iario sang
at the houses of the Duke of Wellington and other
grandees, a cord was stretched between the singer and
the company.
When every noble was a soldier they were care-
fully bred to great personal prowess. The education
158 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
of a soldier is a simpler affair than that of an earl in
the nineteenth centmy. And this was very seriously
pursued ; they were expert in every species of equita-
tion, to the most dangerous practices, and this down
to the accession of William of Orange. But graver
men appear to have trained their sons for civil affairs.
Elizabeth extended her thought to the future; and
Sir Philip Sidney in his letter to his brother, and
Milton and Evelyn, gave plain and hearty counsel.
Already too, the English noble and squire were pre-
paring for the career of the country gentleman, and
his peaceable expense. They went from city to city,
learning receipts to make perfumes, sweet powders,
pomanders, antidotes, gathering seeds, gems, coins, and
divers curiosities, preparing for a private life there-
after, in which they should take pleasure in these
recreations.
All advantages given to absolve the young patri-
cian from intellectual labour are of course mistaken.
"In the university, noblemen are exempted from the
public exercises for the degree, etc., by which they
attain a degree called honorary. At the same time,
the fees they have to pay for matriculation, and on
all other occasions, are much higher. "^ Fuller records
"the observation of foreigners, that Englishmen, by
making their children gentlemen before they are men,
cause they are so seldom wise men." This cockering
justifies Dr. Johnson's bitter apology for primogeni-
ture, "that it makes but one fool in a family."
The revolution in society has reached this' class.
^ Huber. History of Englisli Universities.
XI.] AEISTOCEACY. 159
The great powers of industrial art have no exclusion
of name or blood. The tools of our time — namely,
steam, ships, printing, money, and popular education —
belong to those who can handle them : and their effect
has been, that advantages once confined to men of
family are now open to the whole middle class. The
road that grandeur levels for his coach, toil can travel
in his cart.
This is more manifest every day, but I think it
is true throughout English history. English history,
wisely read, is the ^andication of the brain of that
people. Here, at last, were climate and condition
friendly to the working faculty. \Yho now will work
and dare, shall rule. This is the charter, or the
chartism, which fogs, and seas; and rains proclaimed,
— that intellect and personal force should make the
law; that industry and administrative talent should
administer; that work should wear the crown. I
know that not tliis, but something else, is pretended.
The fiction with which the noble and the bystander
equally please themselves is, that the former is of
unbroken descent from the Norman, and so has never
worked for eight hundred years. All the famihes are
new, but the name is old, and they have made a
covenant with their memories not to disturb it. But
the analysis of the peerage and gentry shows the rapid
decay and extinction of old families, the continual re-
cruiting of these from new blood. The doors, though
ostentatiously guarded, are really open, and hence the
power of the bribe. All the barriers to rank only
whet the thirst and enhance the prize. " Xow," said
160 ENGLISH TKxVITS. [chap.
Nelson, when clearing for battle, "a peerage, or "West-
minster Abbey!" "I have no illusion left," said
Sydney Smith, "but the Archbishop of Canterbury."
" The la^yyers," said Bui'ke, "are only birds of passage
in this House of Commons," and then added, with a
new figure, " they have their best bower anchor in the
House of Lords."
Another stride that has been taken, appears in the
perishing of heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility
are passing to the middle class, the badge is discredited,
and the titles of lordship are getting musty and cum-
bersome. I wonder that sensible men have not been
already impatient of them. They belong, with wigs,
powder, and scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may
be advantageously consigned, with paint and tattoo,
to the dignitaries of Australia and Polynesia.
A multitude of English, educated at the universities,
bred into their society with manners, ability, and the
gifts of fortune, are every day confronting the peers
on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, as
often, in the race of honoiu* and influence. That
cultivated class is large and ever enlarging. It is
computed that, with titles and without, there are
seventy thousand of these people coming and going in
London, who make up what is called high society.
They cannot shut their eyes to the fact that an untitled
nobihty possess all the power mthout the inconveni-
ences that belong to rank, and the rich Englishman
goes over the world at the present day, drawing more
than all the advantages which the strongest of his
kings could command.
XII.] UNIVERSITIES. 161
CHAPTER XII
UNIVERSITIES.
Of British imiversities, Cambridge has the most ilkis-
trious names on its list. At the present day, too, it
has the advantage of Oxford, counting in its alumni
a greater number of distinguished scholars. I regret
that I had but a single day wherein to see King's
College Chapel, the beautifid lawns and gardens of
the colleges, and a few of its gownsmen.
But I availed myself of some repeated invitations
to Oxford, where I had introductions to Dr. Daubeny,
Professor of Botany, and to the Eegius Professor of
Divinity, as well as to a valued friend, a Fellow of
Oriel, and went thither on the last day of ^larch
1848. I was the guest of my friend in Oriel, was
housed close upon that college, and I Hved on college
hospitalities.
My new friends showed me their cloisters, the
Bodleian Librarj^, the Randolph Gallery, Merton Hall,
and the rest. I saw several faithful, high-minded
young men, some of them in the mood of making
sacrifices for peace of mind, — a topic, of course, on
which I had no counsel to ofier. Their affectionate
and gregarious ways reminded me at once of the habits
VOL. IV. M
162 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
of our Cambridge men, thxough I imputed to these
English an advantage in their secure and polished
manners. The halls are rich with oaken wainscoting
and ceiling. The pictures of the founders hang from
the walls; the tables glitter with plate. A youth
came forward to the upper table, and pronounced the
ancient form of grace before meals, which, I suppose,
has been in use here for ages, Benedidus benedicat;
henedicitur, he nedi cafur.
It is a curious proof of the English use and wont,
or of their good nature, that these young men are
locked up every night at nine o'clock, and the porter
at each hall is required to give the name of any
belated student who is admitted after that hour.
Still more descriptive is the fact, that out of twelve
hundred young men, comprising the most spirited of
the aristocracy, a duel has never occurred.
Oxford is old, even in England, and conservative.
Its foundations date from Alfred, and even from
Arthur, if, as is alleged, the Pheryllt of the Druids
had a seminary here. In the reign of Edward I, it
is pretended, here were thirty thousand students;
and nineteen most noble foundations Avere then
established. Chaucer found it as firm as if it had
always stood; and it is, in British story, rich with.
great names, the school of the island, and the link of
England to the learned of Europe. Hither came
Erasmus, mth delight, in 1497 ; Albericus Gentilis, in
1580, was relieved and maintained by the university.
Albert Alaskie, a noble Polonian, Prince of^Sirad,
who visited England to admire the wisdom of Queen
XII.] UNIVEESITIES. 163
Elizabeth, was entertained ■v\dtli stage -plays in the
Refectory of Christchurch, in 1583. Isaac Casaubon,
coming from Henri Quatre of France, by invitation
of James I, was admitted to Christ's College, in July
1613. I saw the Ashmolean Museum, wliither Elias
Ashmole, in 1682, sent twelve cart-loads of rarities.
Here indeed was the Oljinpia of all Antony Wood's
and Aubrey's games and heroes, and every inch of
ground has its lustre. For Wood's Athence Oxonienses,
or calendar of the writers of Oxford for two hundred
years, is a lively record of EngKsh manners and merits,
and as much a national monument as Purchas's
Pilgrims or Hansard's Register. On every side,
Oxford is redolent of age and authority. Its gates
shut of themselves against modern innovation. It is
still governed by the statutes of Archbishop Laud.
The books in Merton Library are stiU chained to the
wall Here, on August 27, 1660, John Milton's Pro
Fopulo Anglicano Defensio, and Iconoclastes, were com-
mitted to the flames. I saw the school-court or quad-
rangle, where, in 1683, the Convocation caused the
Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes to be publicly burnt.
I do not know whether this learned body have yet
heard of the Declaration of American Independence,
or whether the Ptolemaic astronomy does not still
hold its ground against the novelties of Copernicus.
As many sons, almost so many benefactors. It is
usual for a nobleman, or indeed for almost every
wealthy student, on quitting college, to leave behind
him some article of plate ; and gifts of all values,
from a hall, or a fellowship, or a library, dovvn to a
164 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
picture or a spoon, are continually accruing, in the
course of a century. My friend Doctor J. gave me
the following anecdote ; In Sir Thomas Lawrence's
collection at London were the cartoons of Eaphael
and Michel Angelo. This inestimable prize was
offered to Oxford University for seven thousand
pounds. The offer was accepted, and the committee
charged with the affair had collected three thousand
pounds, when, among other friends, they called on
Lord Eldon. Instead of a hundred pounds, he sur-
prised them by putting down his name for three
thousand pounds. They told him they should now
very easily raise the remainder. "No," he said;
"your men have probably already contributed all
they can spare ; I can as well give the rest : " and
he withdrew his cheque for three thousand, and wrote
four thousand pounds. I saw the whole collection
in April 1848.
In the Bodleian Library, Dr. Bandinel showed me
the manuscript Plato, of the date of A. D. 896, brought
by Dr. Clarke from Egypt; a manuscript Virgil, of
the same century; the first Bible printed at Mentz
(I believe in 1450) ; and a duplicate of the same,
which had been deficient in about twenty leaves at
the end. But, one day, being in Venice, he bought a
room full of books and manuscripts, — every scrap and
fragment, — for four thousand louis d'ors, and had the
doors locked and sealed by the consul. On proceed-
ing, afterwards, to examine his purchase, he found the
twenty deficient pages of his Mentz Bible, in^perfect
order ; brought them to Oxford, with the rest of his
XII.] UNIVERSITIES. 165
purchase, and placed them in the volume ; but has too
much awe for the Providence that appears in biblio-
graphy also, to suffer the reunited parts to be re-bound.
The oldest building here is two hundred years younger
than the frail manuscript brought by Dr. Clarke from
Egypt. No candle or fire is ever lighted in the Bod-
leian. Its catalogue is the standard catalogue on the
desk of every library in Oxford. In each several
college they imderscore in red ink on this catalogue
the titles of books contained in the library of that
college, — the theory being that the Bodleian has all
books. This rich library spent during the last year
(1847) for the purchase of books £1668.
The logical English train a scholar as they train
an engineer. Oxford is a Greek factory, as Wilton
mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They
know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a
horse ; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit
out of both. The reading men are kept, by hard
walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drink-
ing, at the top of their condition, and two days before
the examination do no work, but lounge, ride, or run,
to be fresh on the college doomsday. Seven years'
residence is the theoretic period for a master's degree.
In point of fact it has long been three years' residence,
and four years more of standing. This " three years "
is about twenty-one months in all.^
" The whole expense," says Professor Sewel, " of
ordinary college tuition at Oxford is about sixteen
guineas a year." But this plausible statement may
1 Huber, ii. p. 304,
166 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
deceive a reader unacquainted with the fact that the
principal teaching relied on is private tuition. And
the expenses of private tuition are reckoned at from
£50 to £70 a year, or $1000 for the whole course of
three years and a half. At Cambridge $750 a year
is economical, and $1500 not extravagant.^
The number of students and of residents, the
dignity of the authorities, the value of the founda-
tions, the history and the architecture, the known
sympathy of entire Britain in what is done there,
justify a dedication to study in the undergraduate,
such as cannot easily be in America, where his college
is half suspected by the Freshman to be insignificant
in the scale beside trade and politics. Oxford is a
little aristocracy in itself, numerous and dignified
enough to rank with other estates in the realm ; and
where fame and secular promotion are to be had for
study, and in a direction which has the unanimous
respect of all cultivated nations.
This aristocracy, of course, repairs its own losses ;
fills places, as they fall vacant, from the body of
students. The number of fellowships at Oxford is
540, averaging £200 a year, with lodging and diet at
the college. If a young American, loving learning,
and hindered by poverty, were offered a home, a table,
the walks, and the library, in one of these academical
palaces, and a thousand dollars a year as long as he
chose to remain a bachelor, he would dance for joy.
Yet these young men thus happily placed, and paid
to read, are impatient of their few checks, and-many
^ Bristed. Five Years at an English University.
XII.] UNIVERSITIES. 167
of them preparing to resign their fellowships. They
shuddered at the prospect of dying a Fellow, and
they pointed out to me a paralytic old man, Avho was
assisted into the hall. As the number of undergradu-
ates at Oxford is only about 1200 or 1300, and many
of these are never competitors, the chance of a fellow-
ship is very great. The income of the nineteen
colleges is conjectured at £150,000 a year.
The effect of this drill is the radical knowledge of
Greek and Latin, and of mathematics, and the solidity
and taste of English criticism. Whatever luck there
may be in this or that award, an Eton captain can
write Latin longs and shorts, can turn the Coiu't-Guide
into hexameters, and it is certain that a Senior Classic
can quote correctly from the Coiyiis Foefarum, and is
critically learned in all the humanities. Greek eru-
dition exists on the Isis and Cam, whether the Maud
man or the Brazen ISI'ose man be properly ranked or
not ; the atmosphere is loaded with Greek learning ;
the whole river has reached a certain height, and kills
all that growth of weeds, which this Castalian water
kills. The English nature takes culture kindly. So
Milton thought. It refines the Norseman. Access to
the Greek mind lifts his standard of taste. He has
enough to think of, and, unless of an impulsive nature,
is indisposed from writing or speaking, by the fulness
of his mind and the new severity of his taste. The
great silent crowd of thoroughbred Grecians always
known to be around him, the English TVTiter cannot
ignore. They prune his orations, and point his pen.
Hence the style and tone of English journalism. The
168 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
men have learned accuracy and comprehension, logic,
and pace, or speed of working. They have . bottom,
endurance, wind. When born -with good constitutions,
they make those eupeptic studying-mills, the cast-iron
men, the dura ilia, whose powers of performance com-
pare with ours, as the steam-hammer with the music-
box; — Cokes, Mansfields, Seldens, and Bentleys, and
when it happens that a superior brain puts a rider on
this admirable horse, we obtain those masters of the
world who combine the highest energy in affairs with
a supreme culture.
It is contended by those who have been bred at
Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the
public sentiment within each of those schools is high-
toned and manly ; that, in their playgrounds, courage
is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feel-
ings and generous conduct are encouraged : that an
unwritten code of honour deals to the spoiled child
of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth, an even-
handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and
does all that can be done to make them gentlemen.
Again, at the universities, it is urged that all goes
to form what England values as the flower of its
national life, — a well-educated gentleman. The Ger-
man Huber, in describing to his countrymen the
attributes of an English gentleman, frankly admits
that " in Germany we have nothing of the kind. A
gentleman must possess a political character, an in-
dependent and public position, or, at least, the right
of assuming it. He must have average opulence, either
of his own or in his family. He should also have
XII.] UNIVERSITIES. 169
bodily activity and strength, imattainable by our
sedentary life in public offices. The race of English
gentlemen presents an appearance of manly vigour
and form, not elsewhere to be found among an equal
number of persons. No other nation produces the
stock. And, in England, it has deteriorated. The
university is a decided presumption in any man's
favour. And so eminent are the members that a glance
at the calendars will show that in all the world one
cannot be in better company than on the books of
one of the larger Oxford or Cambridge colleges."^
These seminaries are finishing schools for the upper
classes, and not for the poor. The useful is exploded.
The definition of a public school is " a school which
excludes all that could fit a man for standing behind
a coimter."^
No doubt the foundations have been perverted.
Oxford, which equals in wealth several of the smaller
European States, shuts up the lectureships which
were made " public for all men thereunto to have con-
course;" misspends the revenues bestowed for such
3^ouths "as should be most meet for towardness,
poverty, and painfulness;" there is gross favouritism;
many chairs and many fellowships are made beds of
ease ; and 'tis likely that the university will know how
to resist and make inoperative the terrors of parlia-
mentary inquiry ; no doubt their learning is grown
1 Hiiber : Histoiy of the English Universities. Newman's
Translation.
2 See Bristed. Five Years in an English University. New
York, 1852.
%
170 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
obsolete ; — but Oxford also has its merits, and I found
here also proof of the national fidelity and thorough-
ness. Such knowledge as they prize they possess and
impart. Whether in course or by indirection, whether
by a cramming tutor or by examiners with prizes and
foundation scholarships, education according to the
English notion of it is arrived at. I looked over the
Examination Papers of the year 1848, for the various
scholarships and fellowships, the Lusby, the Hertford,
the Dean-Ireland, and the University (copies of which
were kindly given me by a Greek professor), contain-
ing the tasks which many competitors had victoriously
performed, and I believed they would prove too
severe tests for the candidates for a Bachelor's desrree
o
in Yale or Harvard. And, in general, here was
proof of a more searching study in the appointed
directions, and the knowledge pretended to be con-
veyed was conveyed. Oxford sends out yearly twenty
or thirty very able men, and three or four hundred
well-educated men.
The diet and rough exercise secure a certain
amount of old Norse power. A fop -will fight, and,
in exigent circumstances, will play the manly part.
In seeing these youths, I believed I saw already an
advantage in vigour and colour and general habit,
over their contemporaries in the American colleges.
No doubt much of the power and brilliancy of the
reading -men is merely constitutional or hygienic.
With a hardier habit and resolute gymnastics, with
five miles more walking, or five ounces less eating, or
with a saddle and gallop of twenty miles a day, Avith
XII.] UNIVERSITIES. 171
skating and roaring -matches, the American would
arrive at as robust exegesis, and cheery and hilarious
tone. I should readily concede these advantages,
which it would be easy to acquire, if I did not find
also that they read better than we, and write better.
English wealth falling on their school and u.niver-
sity training makes a systematic reading of the
best authors, and to the end of a knowledge how
the things whereof they treat really stand; whilst
pamphleteer or journalist reading for an argument
for a party, or reading to write, or, at all events, for
some by-end imposed on them, must read meanly
and fragmentarily. Charles I, said that he under-
stood Enghsh law as well as a gentleman ought to
understand it.
Then they have access to books ; the rich libraries
collected at every one of many thousands of houses
give an advantage not to be attained by a youth in
this country, when one thinks how much more and
better may be learned by a scholar, who, immediately
on hearing of a book, can consult it, than by one
who is on the quest, for years, and reads inferior
books, because he cannot find the best.
Again, the great number of cultivated men keep
each other up to a high standard. The habit of
meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art
of omission and selection.
Universities are, of coui'se, hostile to geniuses,
which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit
the routine : as churches and monasteries persecute
youthful saints. Yet we all send oar sons to college,
172 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
and, though he be a genius, he must take his chance.
The university must be retrospective. The gale that
gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows
out of antiquity. Oxford is a library, and the
professors must be librarians. And I should as soon
think of quarrelling Avith the janitor for not magnify-
ing his office by hostile sallies into the street, like the
Governor of Kertch or Kinburn, as of quarrelling
with the professors for not admiring the young
neologists who pluck the beards of Euclid and
Aristotle, or for not attempting themselves to fill
their vacant shelves as original 'writers.
It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if we
will wait for it, "will have its own turn. Genius
exists there also, but will not answer a call of a
committee of the House of Commons. It is rare,
precarious, eccentric, and darkling. England is the
land of mixture and surprise, and when you have
settled it that the universities are moribund, out
comes a poetic influence from the heart of Oxford, to
mould the opinions of cities, to build their houses as
simply as birds their nests, to give veracity to art,
and charm mankind, as an appeal to moral order
always must. But besides this restorative genius,
the best poetry of England of this age, in the old
forms, comes from two graduates of Cambridge.
XIII.] KELIGION. 173
CHAPTER XIII.
EELIGION.
No people, at the present day, can be explained by
their national religion. They do not feel responsible
for it ; it lies far outside of them. Their loyalty to
truth, and their labour and expenditure, rest on real
foundations, and not on a national church. And
English life, it is evident, does not grow out of the
Athanasian creed, or the Articles, or the Eucharist.
It is with religion as %vith marriage. A youth marries
in haste ; afterwards, when his mind is opened to the
reason of the conduct of life, he is asked what he
thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right
relations of the sexes. "I should have much to say,"
he might reply, " if the question were open, but I have
a wife and children, and all cjuestion is closed for me."
In the barbarous days of a nation, some cultus is
formed or imported ; altars are built, tithes are paid,
priests ordained. The education and expenditure of
the country take that direction, and when wealth,
refinement, great men, and ties to the world, super-
vene, its prudent men say, why fight against Fate, or
lift these absurdities which are now moimtainous?
174 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
Better find some niche or crevice in this mountain of
stone which religious ages have quarried and carved,
wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt anything
ridiculously and dangerously above your strength,
like removino' it.
In seeing old castles and cathedrals, I sometimes
say, as to-day, in front of Dundee Church tower,
which is eight hundred years old, " This was built by
another and a better race than any that now look on
it." And, plainly, there has been great power of
sentiment at work in this island, of which these build-
ings are the proofs : as volcanic basalts show the work
of fire which has been extinguished for ages. England
felt the full heat of the Christianity which fermented
Europe, and drew, like the chemistry of fire, a firm
line between barbarism and culture. The power of
the religious sentiment put an end to human sacrifices,
checked appetite, inspired the crusades, inspired resist-
ance to tyrants, inspired self-respect, set bounds to
serfdom and slavery, founded liberty, created the re-
ligious architecture, — York, Newstead, Westminster,
Fountains Abbey, Eipon, Beverley, and Dundee, —
works to which the key is lost, with the sentiment
which created them ; inspired the English Bible, the
liturgy, the monkish histories, the chronicle of Richard
of Devizes. The priest translated the Vulgate, and
translated the sanctities of old hagiology into English
virtues on English ground. It was a certain affirmative
or aggressive state of the Caucasian races. Man awoke
refreshed by the sleep of ages. The violence of the
northern savages exasj^erated Christianity into power.
XIII.] EELIGION. 175
It lived by the love of the people. Bishop Wilfrid
manumitted two hundred and fifty serfs, whom he
foimd attached to the soil. The clergy obtained re-
spite from labour for the boor on the Sabbath, and on
church festivals. " The lord who compelled his boor
to labour between sunset on Saturday and sunset on
Sunday, forfeited him altogether." The priest came
out of the people, and sympathised with his class.
The church was the mediator, check, and democratic
principle, in Europe. Latimer, Wiclifi'e, Arundel,
Cobham, Antony Parsons, Sir Harry Yane, George
Fox, Penn, Bunyan, are the democrats, as well as the
saints of their times. The Cathohc church, thrown
on this toiHng, serious people, has made in fourteen
centuries a massive system, close fitted to the manners
and genius of the country, at once domestical and
stately. In the long time, it has blended with every-
thinsr in heaven above and the earth beneath. It
moves through a zodiac of feasts and fasts, names
every day of the year, every town and market, and
headland and monument, and has coupled itself with
the almanac, that no court can be held, no field
ploughed, no horse shod, mthout some leave from the
church. All maxims of prudence or shop or farm are
fixed and dated by the church. Hence its strength
in the amcultural districts. The distribution of land
into parishes enforces a church sanction to every civil
pri\dlege ; and the gradation of the clergy, — prelates
for the rich, and curates for the poor, — "with the fact
that a classical education has been secured to the
clerg}Tnan, makes them "the link which unites the
176 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
sequestered peasantry with the intellectual advance-
ment of the age." ^
The English church has many certificates to show,
of humble effective service in humanising the people,
in cheering and refining men, feeding, healing, and
educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors ;
the noblest books; a sublime architecture; a ritual
marked by the same secular merits, nothing cheap or
purchasable.
From tliis slow-grown church important reactions
proceed ; much for culture, much for giving a direc-
tion to the nation's affection and will to-day. The
carved and pictured chapel, — its entire surface ani-
mated Avith image and emblem, — made the parish-
church a sort of book and Bible to the people's eye.
Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a
service in the vernacular tongue, it was the tutor and
university of the people. In York Minster, on the
day of the enthronisation of the new archbishop, I
heard the service of evening prayer read and chanted
in the choir. It was strange to hear the pretty pas-
toral of the betrothal of Eebecca and Isaac, in the
morning of the world, read with circumstantiality in
York Minster, on the 13th January 1848, to the
decorous English audience, just fresh from the Times
newspaper and their wine, and listening with all the
devotion of national pride. That was binding old
and new to some purpose. The reverence for the
Scriptures is an element of civilisation, for thus has
the history of the world been preserved, and is pre-
^ Wordsworth.
XIII.] RELIGION. 177
served. Here in England every day a chapter of
Genesis and a leader in the Times.
Another part of the same service on this occasion
was not insignificant. Handel's coronation anthem,
God save the King, was played by Dr. Camidge on the
orsran, with sublime ejffect. The minster and the
music were made for each other. It was a hint of
the part the church plays as a political engine. From
his infancy, every Englishman is accustomed to hear
daily prayers for the Queen, for the royal family and
the Parliament, by name ; and this life-long consecra-
tion of these personages cannot be without influence
on his opinions.
The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesias-
tical system, and their first design is to form the
clergy. Thus the clergy for a thousand years have
been the scholars of the nation.
The national temperament deeply enjoys the un-
broken order and tradition of its church ; the liturgy,
ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the good
company, the connection with the throne, and with
history, which adorn it. And whilst it endears itself
thus to men of more taste than activity, the stability
of the English nation is passionately enlisted to its
support, from its inextricable connection with the cause
of pubhc order, with politics and with the fimds.
Good chiurches are not built by bad men ; at least,
there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in
the society. These minsters were neither built nor
filled by atheists. No church has had more learned,
VOL. IV. N
178 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
industrious, or devoted men; plenty of "clerks and
bishops, who, out of their go'^^ais, would turn their
backs on no man."^ Their architecture still glows
with faith in immortality. Heats and genial periods
arrive in history, or, shall we say, plenitudes of
Divine Presence, by which high tides are caused in
the human spirit, and great Adrtues and talents appear,
as in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the nation
was full of genius and piety.
But the age of the Wicliffes, Cobhams, Arundels,
Beckets ; of the Latimers, Mores, Cranmers ; of the
Taylors, Leightons, Herberts ; of the Sherlocks, and
Butlers, is gone. Silent revolutions in opinion have
made it impossible that men like these should return,
or find a place in their once sacred stalls. The spirit
that dwelt in this church has glided away to animate
other acti^dties ; and they who come to the old shrines
find apes and players rustling the old garments.
The religion of England is part of good breeding.
When you see on the Continent the well-dressed
Englishman come into his ambassador's chapel, and
put his face for silent prayer into his smooth-brushed
hat, one cannot help feeling how much national pride
praj^s with him, and the religion of a gentleman. So
far is he from attaching any meaning to the words,
that he believes himself to have done almost the
generous thing, and that it is very condescending in
him to pray to God. A great duke said, on the
occasion of a factory, in the House of Lords, that he
1 Fuller.
xiiT.] RELIGION. 179
thought the Almighty God had not been well used by
them, and that it would become their magnanimity,
after so great successes, to take order that a proper
acknowledgment be made. It is the church of the
gentry ; but it is not the church of the poor. The
operatives do not own it, and gentlemen lately testi-
fied in the House of Commons that in their lives they
never saw a poor man in a ragged coat inside a church.
The torpidity on the side of religion of the vigor-
ous English understanding shows how much wit and
folly can agree in one brain. Their religion is a
quotation ; their church is a doll ; and any examina-
tion is interdicted with screams of terror. In good
company, you expect them to laugh at the fanaticism
of the "s^lgar ; but they do not : they are the \Tilgar.
The English, in common perhaps with Christendom
in the nineteenth century, do not respect power, but
only performance ; value ideas only for an economic
result. "Wellington esteems a saint only as far as he
can be an army chaplain: — "]\Ir. Briscoll, by his
admirable conduct and good sense, got the better of
Methodism which had appeared among the soldiers,
and once among the officers." They value a philo-
sopher as they value an apothecary who brings bark
or a drench ; and inspiration is only some blowpipe,
or a finer mechanical aid.
I suspect that there is in an Englishman's brain a
valve that can be closed at pleasure, as an engineer
shuts off steam. The most sensible and well-informed
men possess the power of thinking just so far as the
bishop in religious matters, and as the chancellor of
180 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
the exchequer in politics. They talk mth courage
and logic, and show you magnificent results, but the
same men who have brought free trade or geology to
their present standing, look grave and lofty, and
shut down their valve, as soon as the conversation
approaches the English church. After that, you talk
with a box-turtle.
The action of the university, both in what is
taught, and in the spirit of the place, is directed
more on producing an English gentleman than a
saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop and
extrudes a philosopher. I do not know that there
is more cabalism in the Anglican than in other
churches, but the Anghcan clergy are identified with
the aristocracy. They say, here, that, if you talk
with a clergyman, you are sure to find him well-
bred, informed, and candid. He entertains youi^
thought or your project, with sympathy and praise.
But if a second clerg3rinan come in, the syrapathy
is at an end : two together are inaccessible to your
thought, and, whenever it comes to action, the
clergyman invariably sides "vvith his church.
The Anglican church is marked by the grace and
good sense of its forms, by the manly grace of its
clergy. The gospel it preaches is, " By taste are ye
saved." It keeps the old structures in repair, spends
a world of money in music and building; and in
buying Pugin, and architectural literature. It has a
general good name for amenity and mildness. It is
not in ordinary a persecuting church; it is- not
inquisitorial, not even inquisitive, is perfectly well-
XIII.] RELIGION. 181
bred, and can shut its eyes on all proper occasions.
If you let it alone, it will let you alone. But its
instinct is hostile to all change in politics, hterature,
or social arts. The church has not been the founder
of the London University, of the Mechanics' Institutes,
of the Free School, or whatever aims at diffusion of
Imowledge. The Platonists of Oxford are as bitter
against this heresy as Thomas Taylor.
The doctrine of the Old Testament is the religion
of England. The first leaf of the New Testament it
does not open. It beheves in a Providence which does
not treat with levity a pound sterling. They are
neither transcendentahsts nor Christians. They put
up no Socratic prayer, much less any saintly prayer
for the queen's mind ; ask neither for light nor right,
but say bluntly, "grant her in health and wealth
long to live." And one traces this Jewish prayer in
all English private history, from the prayers of King
Eichard, in Eichard of Denizes' Chronicle, to those
in the diaries of Sir Samuel Eomilly, and of Haydon
the painter. "Abroad with my wife," writes Pepys
piously, " the first time that ever I rode in my own
coach; which do make my heart rejoice and praise
God, and pray him to bless it to me, and continue
it." The bill for the naturalisation of the Jews (in
1753) was resisted by petitions from all parts of the
kingdom, and by petition from the City of London,
reprobating this biU, as "tending extremely to the
dishonour of the Christian religion, and extremely in-
jurious to the interests and commerce of the kingdom
in general, and of the City of London in particular. "
182 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
But they have not been able to congeal humanity
by act of ParHament. "The heavens jom^ney still
and sojourn not," and arts, wars, discoveries, and
opinion, go onward at their o^vn pace. The new
age has new desires, new enemies, new trades, new
charities, and reads the Scriptures with new eyes.
The chatter of French politics, the steam -whistle,
the hum of the mill, and the noise of embarking
emigrants, had quite put most of the old legends out
of mind ; so that when you came to read the liturgy
to a modern congregation, it was almost absurd in
its unfitness, and suggested a masquerade of old
costumes.
No chemist has prospered in the attempt to
crystallise a religion. It is endogenous, like the
skin, and other vital organs. A new statement
every day. The prophet and apostle knew this, and
the nonconformist confutes the conformists, by quoting
the texts they must allow. It is the condition of a
religion to require religion for its expositor. Prophet
and apostle can only be rightly understood by prophet
and apostle. The statesman knows that the rehgious
element -will not fail, any more than the supply of
fibrine and chyle ; but it is in its nature constructive,
and wiU organise such a church as it wants. The
wise legislator mil spend on temples, schools, libraries,
colleges, but will shun the enricliing of priests. If,
in any manner, he can leave the election and paying
of the priest to the people, he will do well. Like the
Quakers, he may resist the separation of a class of
priests, and create opportunity and expectation in the
XIII.] KELIGIOX. 183
society, to run to meet natural endowment, in this
kind. But, when wealth accrues to a chaplaincy,
a bishopiic, or rectorship, it requires moneyed men
for its stewards, who will give it another direction
than to the mystics of their day. Of course, money
\v\ll do after its kind, and will steadily work to
unspiritualise and imchurch the people to whom it
was bequeathed. The class certain to be excluded
from all preferment are the rehgious, — and driven to
other churches ; — which is natiu'e's vis medicatrix.
The curates are ill paid, and the prelates are over-
paid. This abuse draws into the church the children
of the nobihty, and other unfit persons, who have a
taste for expense. Thus a bishop is only a surpliced
merchant. Through his lawn I can see the bright
buttons of the shopman's coat glitter. A wealth like
that of Durham makes almost a premium on felony.
Brougham, in a speech in the House of Commons on
the Irish elective franchise, said, "How will the
reverend bishops of the other house be able to express
their due abhorrence of the crime of perjury, who
solemnly declare in the presence of God, that when
they are called upon to accept a h^dng, perhaps of
£4000 a year, at that very instant they are moved by
the Holy Ghost to accept the office and administra-
tion thereof, and for no other reason whatever?"
The modes of initiation are more damaging than
custom-house oaths. The Bishop is elected by the
Dean and Prebends of the cathedral. The Queen
sends these gentlemen a congi cVelire, or leave to elect,
but also sends them the name of the person whom
184 ENGLISH TKAITS. [chap.
they are to elect. They go into the cathedral, chant
and pray, and beseech the Holy Ghost to assist them
in their choice; and, after these invocations, invari-
ably find that the dictates of the Holy Ghost agree
with the recommendations of the Queen.
But you must pay for conformity. All goes well
as long as you run mth conformists. But you, who
are honest men in other particulars, know that there
is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to
this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods,
and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into
the class of counterfeits. Besides, this succumbing
has grave penalties. If you take in a lie, you must
take in all that belongs to it. England accepts this
ornamented national church, and it glazes the eyes,
bloats the flesh, gives the voice a stertorous clang, and
clouds the understanding of the receivers.
The English church, undermined by German
criticism, had nothing left but tradition, and was led
logically back to Eomanism. But that was an element
which only hot heads could breathe : in view of the
educated class, generallj'-, it was not a fact to front
the sun; and the alienation of such men from the
chuixh became complete.
Nature, to be sure, had her remedy. Eeligious
persons are driven out of the Established Church into
sects, which instantly rise to credit, and hold the
Establishment in check. Nature has sharper remedies
also. The English, abhorring change in all things,
abhorring it most in matters of religion, cling to the
last rag of form, and are dreadfully given to cant.
XIII. 1 EELIGIOX. 185
The English (and I msh it were confined to them,
but 'tis a taint in the Anglo-Saxon blood in both
hemispheres), the EngKsh and the Americans cant
beyond all other nations. The French relinquish all
that industry to them. What is so odious as the
poHte bows to God, in our books and newspapers'?
The popular press is flagitious in the exact measure
of its sanctimony, and the religion of the day is a
theatrical Sinai, where the thunders are supplied by
the property-man. The fanaticism and hypocrisy
create satire. Punch finds an inexhaustible material.
Dickens wiites novels on Exeter -Hall humanity.
Thackeray exposes the heartless high life. Nature
revenges herself more summarily by the heathenism
of the lower classes. Lord Shaftesbury calls the poor
thieves together, and reads sermons to them, and they
call it "gas." George Borrow summons the Gypsies
to hear his discourse on the Hebrews in Egypt, and
reads to them the Apostles' Creed in Rommany.
" When I had concluded," he says, " I looked around
me. The features of the assembly were twisted, and
the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful
squint : not an indi^ddual present but squinted ; the
genteel Pepa, the good-humoured Chicharona, the
Cosdami, all squinted : the Gypsy jockey squinted
worst of all."
The church at this moment is much to be pitied.
She has nothing left but possession. If a bishop
meets an intelligent gentleman, and reads fatal inter-
rogations in his eyes, he has no resource but to take
Avine with him. False position introduces cant,
186 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
perjury, simony, and ever a lower class of mind and
character, into the clergy ; and, when the hierarchy is
afraid of science and education, afraid of piety, afraid
of tradition, and afraid of theology, there is nothing
left but to quit a church which is no longer one.
But the religion of England, — is it the Established
Church ? no ; is it the sects ? no ; they are only per-
petuations of some private man's dissent, and are to
the Established Church as cabs are to a coach, cheaper
and more convenient, but really the same thing.
Where dwells the religion'? Tell me first where
dwells electricity, or motion, or thought, or gesture.
They do not dwell or stay at all. Electricity cannot
be made fast, mortared up and ended, like London
Monument, or the Tower, so that you shall know
where to find it, and keep it fixed, as the English do
with their things, for evermore ; it is passing, glancing,
gesticular ; it is a traveller, a newness, a surprise, a
secret, which perplexes them and puts them out.
Yet, if religion be the doing of all good, and for its
sake the sufifering of all evil, souffrir de tout le monde et
ne faire souffrir j^ersonne, that divine secret has existed
in England from the days of Alfred to those of
Romilly, of Clarkson, and of Florence Nightingale,
and in thousands who have no fame.
XIV.] LITERATUKE. 187
CHAPTEE XIV.
LITERATURE.
A STRONG common sense, which it is not easy to
unseat or disturb, marks the English mind for a
thousand years : a rude strength newly appHed to
thought, as of sailors and soldiers who had lately
learned to read. They have no fancy, and never are
surprised into a covert or witty word, such as pleased
the Athenians and Itahans, and was convertible into a
fable not long after ; but they delight in strong earthy
expression, not mistakable, coarsely true to the human
body, and, though spoken among princes, equally fit
and welcome to the mob. This homehness, veracity,
and plain style, appear in the earliest extant works,
and in the latest. It imports into songs and baUads
the smell of the earth, the breath of cattle, and, like
a Dutch painter, seeks a household charm, though by
pails and pans. They ask their constitutional utility
in verse. The kail and herrings are never out of
sight. The poet nimbly recovers himself from every
sally of the imagination. The English muse loves the
farm-yard, the lane, and market. She says, with De
Stael, " I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes, when-
188 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
ever they would force me into the clouds." For the
Enghshman has accurate perceptions ; takes hold of
things by the right end, and there is no slipperiness in
his grasp. He loves the axe, the spade, the oar, the
gun, the steam-pipe : he has built the engine he uses.
He is materiahst, economical, mercantile. He must
be treated with sincerity and reality, with mufiSns,
and not the promise of muffins ; and prefers his hot
chop, with perfect security and convenience in the
eating of it, to the chances of the amplest and
Frenchiest bill of fare engraved on embossed paper.
\Vhen he is intellectual, and a poet or a philosopher,
he carries the same hard truth and the same keen
machinery into the mental sphere. His mind must
stand on a fact. He mil not be baffled, or catch at
clouds, but the mind must have a symbol palpable
and resisting. What he relishes in Dante is the vice-
like tenacity with which he holds a mental image
before the eyes, as if it were a scutcheon painted on
a shield. Byron "liked something craggy to break
his mind upon." A taste for plain strong speech,
what is called a biblical style, ma.rks the English.
It is in Alfred, and the Saxon Chronicle, and in the
Sagas of the Northmen. Latimer was homely.
Hobbes was perfect in the "noble Aoilgar speech."
Donne, Bunyan, Milton, Taylor, Evelyn, Pepys,
Hooker, Cotton, and the translators, -wrote it. How
realistic or materialistic in treatment of his sub-
ject is Swift. He describes his fictitious persons
as if for the police. Defoe has no insecurity or
choice. Hudibras has the same hard mentality", — ■
1
XIV.] LITERATURE. 189
keeping the truth at once to the senses and to the
intellect.
It is not less seen in poetry. Chaucer's hard paint-
ing of his Canterbury pilgrims satisfies the senses.
Shakspeare, Spenser, and ]\Iilton, in their loftiest
ascents, have this national grip and exactitude of mind.
This mental materialism makes the value of Eno;lish
transcendental genius ; in these Tvriters, and in Her-
bert, Henry ]\Iore, Donne, and Sir Thomas Browne.
The Saxon materiahsm and narrowness, exalted into
the sphere of intellect, makes the very genius of
Shakspeare and ]\Iilton. '\\Tien it reaches the pure
element, it treads the clouds as securely as the ada-
mant. Even in its elevations materiahstic, its poetry
is common sense inspired; or iron raised to white
heat.
The marriage of the two quahties is in their speech.
It is a tacit rule of the language to make the frame
or skeleton of Saxon words, and, when elevation or
ornament is sought, to interweave Eoman ; but spar-
ingly ; nor is a sentence made of Eoman words alone,
without loss of strength. The children and labourers
use the Saxon unmixed. The Latin unmixed is
abandoned to the colleges and Parhament. Mixture
is a secret of the Enghsh island ; and, in their dialect,
the male principle is the Saxon ; the female, the Latin;
and they are combined in every discourse. A good
writer, if he has indulged in a Eoman roundness,
makes haste to chasten and nerve his period by English
monosyllables.
AAHien the Gothic nations came into Europe, they
190 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
found it lighted with the sun and moon of Hebrew
and of Greek genius. The tablets of their brain, long
kept in the dark, were finely sensible to the double
glory. To the images from this twin source (of
Christianity and art), the mind became fruitful as by
the incubation of the Holy Ghost. The English mind
flowered in every faculty. The common sense was
surprised and inspired. For two centuries, England
was philosophic, religious, poetic. The mental furni-
ture seemed of larger scale; the memory capacious
like the storehouse of the rains ; the ardour and en-
durance of study j the boldness and facility of their
mental construction; their fancy, and imagination,
and easy spanning of vast distances of thought ; the
enterprise or accosting of new subjects ; and, generally,
the easy exertion of power, astonish, like the legend-
ary feats of Guy of Warwick. The union of Saxon pre-
cision and oriental soaring, of which Shakspeare is the
perfect example, is shared in less degree by the writers
of two centuries. I find not only the great masters out
of all rivalry and reach, but the whole writing of the
time charged with a masculine force and freedom.
There is a hygienic simpleness, rough vigour, and
closeness to the matter in hand, even in the second
and third class of writers ; and, I think, in the common
style of the people, as one finds it in the citation of
wills, letters, and public documents, in proverbs, and
forms of speech. The more hearty and sturdy ex-
pression may indicate that the savageness of the
Norseman was not all gone. Their dynamic' brains
hurled off their words, as the revolving stone hurls
XIV.] LITERATURE. 191
off scraps of grit. I could cite from the seventeenth
century sentences and phrases of edge not to be
matched in the nineteenth. Their poets by simple
force of mind equalised themselves with the accumu-
lated science of ours. The country gentlemen had a
posset or drink they called October ; and the poets,
as if by this hint, knew how to distil the whole season
into their autumnal verses : and as nature, to pique
the more, sometimes works up deformities into beauty,
in some rare Aspasia or Cleopatra ; and as the Greek
art wrought many a vase or column, in which too long,
or too lithe, or nodes, or pits and flaws, are made a
beauty of ; so these were so quick and vital, that they
could charm and enrich by mean and vulgar objects.
A man must think that age well taught and
thoughtful, by which masques and poems, like those
of Ben Jonson, full of heroic sentiment in a manly
style, were received with favoiu*. The unique fact in
literary history, the unsurprised reception of Shak-
speare; — the reception proved by his making his
fortune ; and the apathy proved by the absence of all
contemporary panegyric, — seems to demonstrate an
elevation in the mind of the people. Judge of the
splendour of a nation by the insignificance of great
individuals in it. The manner in which they learned
Greek and Latin, before our modern facilities were
yet ready, without dictionaries, grammars, or indexes,
by lectures of a professor, followed by their own search-
ings, — required a more robust memory, and co-opera-
tion of all the faculties ; and their scholars — Camden,
Usher, Selden, Mede, Gataker, Hooker, Taylor, Bur-
192 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
ton, Bentley, Brian Walton — acquired the solidity and
method of engineers.
The influence of Plato tinges the British genius.
Their minds loved analogy; were cognisant of re-
semblances, and climbers on the staircase of unity.
'Tis a very old strife between those who elect to see
identity, and those who elect to see discrepancies ;
and it renews itself in Britain. The poets, of course,
are of one part ; the men of the world of the other.
But Britain had many disciples of Plato; — More,
Hooker, Bacon, Sidney, Lord Brooke, Herbert, Browne,
Donne, Spenser, Chapman, Milton, Crashaw, Norris,
Cudworth, Berkeley, Jeremy Taylor.
Lord Bacon has the English duality. His centuries
of observations on useful science, and his experiments,
I suppose, were worth nothing. One hint of Frankhn,
or AVatt, or Dalton, or Davy, or any one who had a
talent for experiment, was worth all his lifetime of
exquisite trifles. But he drinks of a diviner stream,
and marks the influx of idealism into England.
Where that goes, is poetry, health, and progress.
The rules of its genesis or its diffusion are not known.
That knowledge, if we had it, would supersede all
that we call science of the mind. It seems an affair
of race, or of meta-chemistry ; — the vital point being,
— how far the sense of unity, or instinct of seeking
resemblances, predominated. For, wherever the mind
takes a step, it is to put itself at one ^dth a larger
class, discerned beyond the lesser class with which it
has been conversant. Hence all poetry and all
affirmative action come.
XIV.] LITEEATUEE. 193
Bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the
analogists, of the idealists, or (as we popularly say,
naming from the best example) Platonists. Whoever
discredits analogy, and requires heaps of facts, before
any theories can be attempted, has no poetic power,
and nothing original or beautiful will be produced by
him. Locke is as sui-ely the influx of decomposition
and of prose, as Bacon and the Platonists of growth.
The platonic is the poetic tendency; the so-called
scientific is the negative and poisonous. 'Tis quite
certain that Spenser, Burns, Byron, and Wordsworth
will be Platonists; and that the dull men will be
Lockists. Then politics and commerce "vviU absorb
from the educated class men of talents without
genius, precisely because such have no resistance.
Bacon, capable of ideas, yet devoted to ends, re-
quired, in his map of the mind, first of all, universality,
or XJi'i'ma phxlosophia, the receptacle for aU such profit-
able observations and axioms as fall not within the
compass of any of the special parts of philosophy,
but are more common, and of a higher stage. He
held this element essential : it is never out of mind :
he never spares rebukes for such as neglect it ; be-
He^-ing that no perfect discovery can be made in a flat
or level, but you must ascend to a higher science.
" If any man thinketh philosophy and universality to
be idle studies, he doth not consider that aU profes-
sions are from thence serv^ed and supplied, and this
I take to be a great cause that has hindered the
progression of learning, because these fundamental
knowledges have been studied but in passa^ge." He
VOL. IV. o
194 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
explained himself by giving various quaint examples
of the summary or common laws, of which each science
has its own illustration. He complains that " he finds
this i^art of learning very deficient, the profounder
sort of wits drawing a bucket now and then for their
own use, but the spring-head umdsited. This was the
dry light which did scorch and offend most men's watery
natures." Plato had signified the same sense, when
he said, " All the great arts require a subtle and specu-
lative research into the law of nature, since loftiness
of thought and perfect mastery over every subject
seem to be derived from some ^ch source as this.
This Pericles had, in addition to a great natural
genius. For, meeting with Anaxagoras, who was a
person of this kind, he attached himself to him, and
nourished himself with sublime speculations on the
absolute intelligence : and imported thence into the
oratorical art whatever could be useful to it."
A few generalisations always circulate in the world,
whose authors we do not rightly know, which astonish,
and appear to be avenues to vast kingdoms of thought,
and these are in the world constants, like the Coperni-
can and Newtonian theories in physics. In England,
these may be traced usually to Shakspeare, Bacon,
Milton, or Hooker, even to Van Helmont and Behmen,
and do all have a kind of filial retrospect to Plato and
the Greeks. Of this kind is Lord Bacon's sentence,
that "nature is commanded by obepng her;" his
doctrine of poetry, which " accommodates the shows
of things to the desires of the mind," or the Zoroas-
trian definition of poetry, mystical, yet exact, "apparent
I
XIV.] LITEEATUKE. 195
pictures of miapparent natures;" Spenser's creed,
that "soiil is form, and doth the body make;" the
theory of Berkeley, that we have no certain assurance
of the existence of matter; Doctor Samuel Clarke's
argument for theism from the nature of space and
time; Harrington's political rule, that power must
rest on land, — a rule which requires to be liberally
interpreted ; the theory of Swedenborg, so cosmically
applied by him, that the man makes his heaven and
hell ; Hegel's study of ci^dl history, as the conflict of
ideas and the victory of the deeper thought; the
identity-philosoj)hy of ScheUing, couched in the state-
ment that " all difi'erence is quantitative." So the very
announcement of the theory of gravitation, of Kepler's
three harmonic laws, and even of Dalton's doctrine
of definite proportions, finds a sudden response in the
mind, which remains a superior evidence to empirical
demonstrations. I cite these generalisations, some of
which are more recent, merely to indicate a class.
Not these particulars, but the mental plane or the
atmosphere from which they emanate, was the home
and element of the wiiters and readers in what we
loosely call the Elizabethan age (say, in literary
history, the period from 1575 to 1625), yet a period
almost short enough to justify Ben Jonson's remark
on Lord Bacon : " about his time, and within his
view, were born all the wits that coidd honour a nation
or help study."
Such richness of genius had not existed more than
once before. These heights could not be maintained.
As we find stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils,
196 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
and have received traditions of their ancient fertihty
to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the
intellect of famed races became effete. So it fared
with EngHsh genius. These heights were followed
by a meanness, and a descent of the mind into lower
levels ; the loss of wings ; no high speculation. Locke,
to whom the meaning of ideas was unkno^^Ti, became
the type of philosophy, and his " Understanding " the
measure, in all nations, of the English intellect. His
countrymen forsook the lofty sides of Parnassus, on
which they had once walked with echoing steps, and
disused the studies once so beloved; the powers of
thought fell into neglect. The later EngHsh want
the faculty of Plato and Aristotle, of grouping men
in natural classes by an insight of general laws, so
deep, that the rule is deduced mth equal precision
from feAV subjects or from one, as from multitudes of
lives. Shakspeare is supreme in that, as in all the
great mental energies. The Germans generalise : the
English cannot interpret the German mind. German
science comprehends the English. The absence of the
faculty in England is shown by the timidity which
accumulates mountains of facts, as a bad general wants
myriads of men and miles of redoubts, to compensate
the inspirations of courage and conduct.
The English shrink from a generalisation. " They
do not look abroad into universality, or they draw
only a bucketful at the fountain of the First Philo-
sophy for their occasion, and do not go to the spring-
head." Bacon, who said this, is almost unique -among
his countrymen in that faculty, at least among the
XIV.] LITERATURE. 197
prose -writers. Milton, who was the stair or high
table-land to let down the Enghsh genius from the
summits of Shakspeare, used this privilege sometimes
in poetry, more rarely in prose. For a long interv^al
afterwards it is not found. Burke was addicted to
generalising, but his was a shorter Hne; as his thoughts
have less depth, they have less compass. Hume's
abstractions are not deej) or Anse. He owes his fame
to one keen observation, that no copula had been
detected between any cause and effect, either in
physics or in thought ; that the term cause and effect
was loosely or gratuitously applied to what we know
only as consecutive, not at all as causal. Doctor
Johnson's written abstractions have little value : the
tone of feeling in them makes their chief worth.
Mr. Hallam, a learned and elegant scholar, has
written the history of European literature for three
centuries, — a performance of great ambition, inasmuch
as a judgment was to be attempted on every book.
But his eye does not reach to the ideal standards : the
verdicts are all dated from London : all new thought
must be cast into the old moulds. The expansive
element which creates literature is steadily denied.
Plato is resisted, and his school. Hallam is uniformly
poHte, but with deficient sympathy ; writes with
resolute generosity, but is unconscious of the deep
worth vfhich lies in the mystics, and which often out-
values as a seed of power and a source of revolution
all the correct •writers and shining reputations of their
day. He passes in silence, or dismisses with a kind
of contempt, the profounder masters : a lover of ideas
198 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
is not only uncongenial, l3ut unintelligible. Hallani
inspires respect by his knowledge and fidelity, by his
manifest love of good books, and he lifts himself to
own better than almost any the greatness of Shak-
speare, and better than Johnson he appreciates Milton.
But in Hallam, or in the firmer intellectual nerve of
Mackintosh, one still finds the same type of English
genius. It is wise and rich, but it lives on its capital.
It is retrospective. How can it discern and hail the
new forms that are looming up on the horizon, — new
and gigantic thoughts which cannot dress themselves
out of any old wardrobe of the past ?
The essays, the fiction, and the poetry of the day
have the like municipal limits. Dickens, A^dth preter-
natural apprehension of the language of manners, and
the varieties of street life, with pathos and laughter,
with patriotic and still enlarging generositj^, "whites
London tracts. He is a painter of English details,
like Hogarth; local and temporary in his tints and
style, and local in his aims. Bulwer, an industrious
wi^iter, mth occasional ability, is distinguished for his
reverence of intellect as a temporality, and appeals
to the worldly ambition of the student. His romances
tend to fan these low flames. Their novelists despair
of the heart. Thackeray finds that God has made no
allowance for the poor thing in his universe ; — more's
the pity, he thinks ; — but 'tis not for us to be wiser :
we must renounce ideals, and accept London.
The brilliant Macaulay, who expresses the tone of
the English governing classes of the day, exj51icitly
teaches that good means good to eat, good to wear.
XIV.] LITER A.TURE. 199
material commodity ; that the glory of modern philo-
sophy is its direction on "fruit;" to yield economical
inventions ; and that its merit is to avoid ideas, and
avoid morals. He thinks it the distinctive merit of
the Baconian philosophy, in its triumph over the old
Platonic, its disentangling the intellect from theories
of the all-Fair and all-Good, and pinning it down to
the making a better sick chair and a better wine- whey
for an invalid; — this not ironically, but in good faith;
— that, " solid advantage," as he calls it, meaning
always sensual benefit, is the only good. The emi-
nent benefit of astronomy is the better navigation it
creates to enable the fruit-ships to bring home their
lemons and wine to the London grocer. It was a
curious result, in which the civility and religion of
England for a thousand years ends in denying
morals, and reducing the intellect to a sauce -pan.
The critic hides his scepticism under the English cant
of practical. To convince the reason, to touch the
conscience, is romantic pretension. The fine arts fall
to the ground. Beauty, except as luxurious commo-
dity, does not exist. It is very certain, I may say in
passing, that if Lord Bacon had been only the sensu-
alist his critic pretends, he would never have acquired
the fame which now entitles him to this patronage.
It is because he had imagination, the leisures of the
spirit, and basked in an element of contemplation out
of all modern English atmospheric gauges, that he
is impressive to the imaginations of men, and has
become a potentate not to be ignored. Sir David
Brewster sees the high place of Bacon, without find-
200 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
ins: Newton indebted to him, and thinks it a mistake.
Bacon occupies it by specific gravity or levity, not
by any feat he did, or by any tutoring more or less
of Newton, etc., but an effect of the same cause, which
showed itself more pronounced afterwards in Hooke,
Boyle, and Halley.
Coleridge, a catholic mind, with a hunger for ideas,
■\vith eyes looking before and after to the highest
bards and sages, and who ^yTote and spoke the only
high criticism in liis time, — is one of those who save
England from the reproach of no longer possessing
the capacity to appreciate w^hat rarest mt the island
has yielded. Yet the misfortune of his life, his vast
attempts but most inadequate perjormings, failing
to accomplish any one masterpiece, seems to mark
the closing of an era. Even in him, the traditional
Englishman was too strong for the philosopher, and
he fell into accommodatians : and, as Burke had striven
to idealise the English State, so Coleridge " narrowed
his mind " in the attempt to reconcile the Gothic rule
and dogma of the Anglican Church mth eternal
ideas. But for Coleridge, and a lurking taciturn
minority, uttering itself in occasional criticism, oftener
in private discourse, one would say that in Germany
and in America is the best mind in England rightly
respected. It is the surest sign of national decay,
when the Brahmins can no longer read or understand
the Brahminical philosophy.
In the decomposition and asphyxia that followed
all this materialism, Carlyle was driven, by his disgust
at the pettiness and the cant, into the preaching of
XIV.] LITERATURE. 201
Fate. In comparison with all this rottenness, any
check, any cleansing, though by fire, seemed desir-
able and beautiful. He saw little difference in the
gladiators, or the " causes " for which they combated ;
the one comfort was, that they were all going speedily
into the abyss together : And his imagination, finding
no nutriment in any creation, avenged itself by cele-
brating the majestic beauty of the laws of decay.
The necessities of mental structure force all minds
into a few categories, and where impatience of the
tricks of men makes Nemesis amiable, and builds
altars to the negative Deity, the inevitable recoil is
to heroism or the gallantry of the private heart, which
decks its immolation with glory, in the unequal com-
bat of will against fate.
"Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the annotator
of Fourier, and the champion of Hahnemann, has
brought to metaphysics and to physiology a native
vigour, with a catholic perception of relations, equal
to the highest attempts, and a rhetoric like the
armoury of the invincible knights of old. There is in
the action of his mind a long Atlantic roll not known
except in deepest waters, and only lacking what ought
to accompany such powers, a manifest centrality. If
his mind does not rest in immovable biases, perhaps
the orbit is larger, and the return is not yet : but a
master should inspire a confidence that he will adhere
to his comdctions, and give his present studies always
the same high place.
It would be easy to add exceptions to the limitary
tone of English thought, and much more easy to
202 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
adduce examples of excellence in particular veins :
and if, going out of the region of dogma, we pass into
that of general culture, there is no end to the graces
and amenities, \^dt, sensibility, and erudition, of the
learned class. But the artificial succour which marks
all English performance, appears in letters also : much
of their aesthetic production is antiquarian and manu-
factured, and literary reputations have been achieved
by forcible men, whose relation to literature was
purely accidental, but who were driven by tastes and
modes they found in vogue into their several careers.
So, at this moment, every ambitious young man
studies geology : so members of Parliament are made,
and churchmen.
The bias of Englishmen to practical skill has re-
acted on the national mind. They are incapable of
an inutility, and respect the five mechanic powers
even in their song. The voice of their modern muse
has a slight hint of the steam-whistle, and the poem
is created as an ornament and finish of their monarchy,
and by no means as the bird of a new morning which
forgets the past world in the full enjoyment of that
which is forming. They are with difficulty ideal ;
they are the most conditioned men, as if, having the
best conditions, they could not bring themselves to
forfeit them. Every one of them is a thousand years
old, and lives by his memory : and when you say this
they accept it as praise.
Nothing comes to the book -shops but politics,
travels, statistics, tabulation, and engineering^ and
even what is called philosophy and letters is median-
XIV.] LITERATURE. 203
ical in its structure, as if inspiration had ceased, as if
no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, no wisdom,
no analogy, existed any more. The tone of colleges,
and of scholars and of literar}^ society, has this mortal
air. I seem to walk on a marble floor, where nothing
will grow. They exert every variety of talent on a
lower ground, and may be said to live and act in a
sub-mind. They have lost all commanding views in
literature, philosophy, and science. A good English-
man shuts himself out of three fourths of his mind,
and confines himself to one fourth. He has learning,
good sense, power of labour, and logic : but a faith
in the laws of the mind like that of Archimedes ; a
behef like that of Euler and Kepler, that experience
must follow and not lead the laws of the mind; a
devotion to the theory of politics, like that of Hooker,
and Milton, and Harrington, the modern English
mind repudiates.
I fear the same fault lies in their science, since
they have known how to make it repulsive, and be-
reave nature of its charm ; — though perhaps the com-
plaint flies mder, and the vice attaches to many more
than to British physicists. The eye of the naturalist
must have a scope like nature itself, a susceptibility
to all impressions, alive to the heart as well as to the
logic of creation. But English science puts humanity
to the door. It wants the connection which is the
test of genius. The science is false by not being
poetic. It isolates the reptile or mollusc it assumes
to explain ; whilst reptile or mollusc only exists in
system, in relation. The poet only sees it as an in-
204 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
evitable step in the path of the Creator. But, in
England, one hermit finds this fact, and another finds
that, and lives and dies ignorant of its value. There
are great exceptions, of John Hunter, a man of ideas ;
perhaps of Robert Bro^vn, the Botanist; and of
Eichard Owen, who has imported into Britain the
German homologies, and enriched science with contri-
butions of his own, adding sometimes the divination
of the old masters to the unbroken power of labour
in the English mind. But for the most part, the
natural science in England is out of its loj^al alliance
with morals, and is as void of imagination and free
play of thought as conveyancing. It stands in strong
contrast with the genius of the Germans, those semi-
Greeks, who love analogy, and, by means of their
height of view, preserve their enthusiasm, and think
for Europe.
No hope, no subh'me augury, cheers the student,
no secure striding from experiment onward to a fore-
seen law, but only a casual dipping here and there,
like diggers in Cahfornia " prospecting for a placer "
that will pay. A horizon of brass of the diameter of
his umbrella shuts down around his senses. Squalid
contentment with conventions, satire at the names of
philosophy and religion, parochial and shop-till politics,
and idolatry of usage, betray the ebb of Ufe and spirit.
As they trample on nationalities to reproduce London
and Londoners in Europe and Asia, so they fear the
hostility of ideas, of poetry, of religion, — ghosts which
they cannot lay ; — and, ha\ang attempted to domesti-
cate and dress the Blessed Soul itself in English broad-
XIV.] LITERATUKE. 205
cloth and gaiters, they are tormented with fear that
herein hu^ks a force that will sweep their system away.
The artists say, " Nature puts them out ; " the scholars
have become un-ideal. They parry earnest speech
with banter and levity; they laugh you down, or
they change the subject. "The fact is," say they
over their wine, "all that about liberty, and so forth,
is gone by ; it won't do any longer." The practical
and comfortable oppress them with inexorable claims,
and the smallest fraction of power remains for heroism
and poetry. No poet dares murmur of beauty out of
the precinct of his rhymes. Xo priest dares hint at
a Providence which does not respect Enghsh utility.
The island is a roaring volcano of fate, of material
values, of tariffs, and laws of repression, glutted mar-
kets and low prices.
In the absence of the highest aims, of the pure
love of knowledge, and the surrender to nature, there
is the suppression of the imagination, the priapism of
the senses and the understanding ; we have the facti-
tious instead of the natural; tasteless expense, arts
of comfort, and the rewarding as an illustrious inventor
whosoever will contrive one impediment more to inter-
pose between the man and his objects.
Thus poetry is degraded and made ornamental.
Pope and his school wrote poetry fit to put round
frosted cake. AVhat did Walter Scott write without
stint 1 a rhymed traveller's guide to Scotland. And
the libraries of verses they print have this Birming-
ham character. How many volumes of well-bred
metre we must jingle through, before we can be filled,
206 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
taught, renewed ! We want the miraculous ; the
beauty whieh we can manufacture at no mill, can
give no account of ; the beauty of which Chaucer and
Chapman had the secret. The poetry of course is
low and prosaic; only now and then, as in Words-
worth, conscientious; or in Byron, passional; or in
Tennyson, factitious. But if I should count the poets
who have contributed to the bible of existing England
sentences of guidance and consolation which are still
glowing and effective, — how few ! Shall I find my
heavenly bread in the reigning poets? Where is
great design in modern English poetry ? The English
have lost sight of the fact that poetry exists to speak
the spiritual law, and that no wealth of description
or of fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the
limits of prose, until this condition is reached.
Therefore the grave old poets, like the Greek artists,
heeded their designs, and less considered the finish.
It was their office to lead to the divine sources, out
of which all this, and much more, readily springs;
and, if this religion is in the poetry, it raises us to
some purpose, and we can well afford some staidness,
or hardness, or want of popular tune in the verses.
The exceptional fact of the period is the genius of
Wordsworth. He had no master but nature and
solitude. "He wrote a poem," says Landor, "with-
out the aid of war." His verse is the voice of sanity
in a worldly and ambitious age. One regrets that
his temperament was not more liquid and musical.
He has written longer than he was inspired. " But
for the rest, he has no competitor.
XIV.] LITEKATUKE. 207
Tennj^son is endowed precisely in jDoints where
Wordsworth wanted. There is no finer ear, nor more
command of the keys of language. Colour, like the
daA\Ti, flows over the horizon from his pencil, in waves
so rich that we do not miss the central form. Through
all his refinements, too, he has reached the public, —
a certificate of good sense and general power, since
he who asjDires to be the English poet must be as
large as London, not in the same kind as London,
but in his own kind. But he wants a subject, and
climbs no mount of ^dsion to bring its secrets to the
people. He contents himself with describing the
Englishman as he is, and proposes no better. There
are all degrees in poetry, and we must be thankful
for every beautiful talent. But it is only a first suc-
cess, when the ear is gained. The best ofiice of the
best poets has been to show how low and uninspired
was their general style, and that only once or twice
they have struck the high chord.
That expansiveness which is the essence of the
poetic element, they have not. It was no Oxonian,
but Hafiz, who said, " Let us be crowned with roses,
let us drink wine, and break up the tiresome old roof
of heaven into new forms." A stanza of the song of
nature the Oxonian has no ear for, and he does not
value the salient and curative influence of intellectual
action, studious of truth, without a by-end.
By the law of contraries, I look for an irresistible
taste for Orientalism in Britain. For a self-conceited
modish life, made up of trifles, cHnging to a corporeal
civilisation, hating ideas, there is no remedy like the
208 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
Oriental largeness. That astonishes and disconcerts
English decorum. For once there is thunder it never
heard, light it never saw, and power wliich trifles
with, time and space. I am not surprised, then, to
find an Englishman hke Warren Hastings, who had
been struck with the grand style of thinking in the
Indian writings, deprecating the prejudices of his
countrymen, wliile offering them a translation of the
Bhagvat. " Might I, an unlettered man, ventui^e to
prescribe bounds to the latitude of criticism, I should
exclude, in estimating the merit of such a production,
all rules dra^vn from the ancient or modern literature
of Europe, all references to such sentiments or man-
ners as are become the standards of propriety for
opinion and action in our own modes, and, equally,
all appeals to our revealed tenets of religion and
moral duty." ^ He goes on to bespeak indulgence
to " ornaments of fancy unsuited to our taste, and
passages elevated to a tract of sublimity into which
our habits of judgment will find it difficult to pursue
them."
Meantime, I know that a retrieving power lies in
the English race, which seems to make any recoil
possible; in other words, there is at all times a
minority of profound minds existing in the nation,
capable of appreciating every soaring of intellect and
every hint of tendency. While the constructive
talent seems dwarfed and superficial, the criticism is
often in the noblest tone, and suggests the presence
of the invisible gods. I can well believe what 1 have
^ Preface to Wilkins's Translation of the Bliagvat Geeta.
XIV.] LITERATURE. 209
often heard, that there are two nations in England ;
but it is not the Poor and the Rich ; nor is it the
Normans and Saxons; nor the Celt and the Goth.
These are each always becoming the other; for
Robert Owen does not exaggerate the power of cir-
cumstance. But the two complexions, or two styles
of mind, — the perceptive class, and the practical
finality class, — are ever in counterpoise, interacting
mutually ; one, in hopeless minorities ; the other, in
huge masses; one studious, contemplative, experi-
menting ; the other, the ungrateful pupil, scornful of
the source, whilst availing itself of the knowledge for
gain; these two nations, of genius and of animal
force, though the first consist of only a dozen souls,
and the second of twenty millions, for ever by their
discord and their accord yield the power of the
EngHsh State.
VOL. rv.
210 ENGLISH TRAITS. [CHAP.
CHAPTER XV.
THE "TIMES."
The power of the newspaper is familiar in America,
and in accordance with our political system. In
England, it stands in antagonism with the feudal
institutions, and it is all the more beneficent succour
against the secretive tendencies of a monarchy. The
celebrated Lord Somers " knew of no good law pro-
posed and passed in his time, to which the public
papers had not directed his attention." There is no
corner and no night. A relentless inquisition drags
every secret to the day, turns the glare of this solar
microscope on every malfaisance, so as to make the
public a more terrible spy than any foreigner ; and
no weakness can be taken advantage of by an enemy,
since the whole people are already forewarned. Thus
England rids herself of those incrustations which have
been the ruin of old states. Of course, this inspec-
tion is feared. No antique pri^dlege, no comfortable
monopoly, but sees surely that its days are counted ;
the people are familiarised with the reason of reform,
and, one by one, take away every argument' of the
obstructives. " So your grace likes the comfort of
XV.] THE '' TIMES." 211
reading the ne^vspapers," said Lord Mansfield to the
Duke of Northumberland ; " mark my words ; j^ou
and I shall not live to see it, but this young gentle-
man (Lord Eldon) may, or it may be a little later ;
but a little sooner or later, these newspapers will
most assuredly write the dukes of Northumberland
out of their titles and possessions, and the country
out of its king." The tendency in England towards
social and political institutions hke those of America
is inevitable, and the ability of its journals is the
driving force.
England is full of manly, clever, well-bred men,
who possess the talent of writing ofi'-hand pungent
paragraphs, expressing with clearness and courage
their opinion on any person or performance. Valu-
able or not, it is a skill that is rarely found, out of
the English journals. The English do this, as they
write poetry, as they ride and box, by being educated
to it. Hundreds of clever Praeds, and Ereres, and
Froudes, and Hoods, and Hooks, and Maginns, and
Mills, and Macaulays, make poems or short essays
for a journal, as they make speeches in Parliament
and on the hustings, or as they shoot and ride. It
is a cjuite accidental and arbitrary direction of their
general ability. Eude health and spirits, an Oxford
education, and the habits of society, are impKed, but
not a ray of genius. It comes of the crowded state of
the professions, the violent interest which all men
take in politics, the facihty of experimenting in the
journals, and high pay.
The most conspicuous result of this talent is the
212 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
" Times " newspaper. No power in England is more
felt, more feared, or more obeyed. AATiat you read
in the morning in that journal, you shall hear in the
evening in all society. It has ears everywhere, and
its information is earliest, completest, and surest. It
has risen, year by year, and victory by victory, to its
present authority. I asked one of its old contri-
butors, whether it had once been abler than it is now.
"Never," he said ; "these are its palmiest days." It
has shown those qualities wliich are dear to English-
men, unflinching adherence to its objects, prodigal
intellectual ability, and a towering assurance, backed
by the perfect organisation in its printing-house, and
its world-wide network of correspondence and reports.
It has its own history and famous trophies. In 1820,
it adopted the cause of Queen Carohne and carried it
against the king. It adopted a poor-law system, and
almost alone lifted it throuorh. When Lord Brougham
was in power it decided against him, and pulled him
down. It declared war against Ireland, and conquered
it. It adopted the League against the Corn Laws,
and, when Cobden had begun to despair, it announced
his triumph. It denounced and discredited the
French Eepublic of 1848, and checked every sym-
pathy mth it in England, until it had enrolled
200,000 special constables to watch the Chartists, and
make them ridiculous on the 10th April. It first de-
nounced and then adopted the new French Empire,
and urged the French Alliance and its results. It has
entered into each municipal, literary, and "^ social
question, almost with a controlling voice. It has
XV.] THE "TIMES." 213
done bold and seasonable service in exposing frauds
which threatened the commercial community. Mean-
time, it attacks its rivals by perfecting its printing
machinery, and "will drive them out of circulation :
for the only limit to the circulation of the " Times "
is the impossibility of printing copies fast enough;
since a daily paper can only be new and seasonable
for a few hours. It will kill all but that paper which
is diametrically in opposition ; since many papers,
first and last, have lived by their attacks on the
leading journal.
The late Mr. Walter was printer of the "Times,"
and had gradually arranged the whole materiel of it in
perfect system. It is told, that when he demanded
a small share in the proprietary, and was refused,
he said, " As you please, gentlemen : and you may
take away the ' Times ' from this office when you
will ; I shall publish the ' New Times,' next Monday
morning." The proprietors, who had already com-
plained that his charges for printing were excessive,
found that they were in his power, and gave him
whatever he wished.
I went one day with a good friend to the " Times "
office, which was entered through a pretty garden
yard, in Printing-House Square. We walked with
some circumspection, as if we were entering a
powder-mill ; but the door was opened by a mild old
woman, and, by dint of some transmission of cards,
we were at last conducted into the parlour of
Mr. Morris, a very gentle person, with no hostile
appearances. The statistics are now quite out of
214 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
date, but I remember he told us that the daily
printing was then 35,000 copies; that on the 1st
March 1848, the greatest number ever printed, —
54,000 were issued; that, since February, the daily
circulation had increased by 8000 copies. The old
press they were then using printed five or six
thousand sheets per hour; the new machine, for
which they were then building an engine, woidd
print twelve thousand per hour. Our entertainer
confided us to a courteous assistant to show us the
establishment, in which, I think, they employed a
hundred and twenty men. I remember I saw the
reporters' room, in which they redact their hasty
stenographs ; but the editor's room, and who is in it,
I did not see, though I shared the curiosity of man-
kind respecting it.
The staff of the " Times " has always been made up
of able men. Old Walter, Sterling, Bacon, Barnes,
Alsiger, Horace Twiss, Jones Loyd, John Oxenford,
Mr. Mosely, Mr, Bailey, have contributed to its re-
nown in their special departments. But it has never
wanted the first pens for occasional assistance. Its
private information is inexplicable, and recalls the
stories of Fouch6's pohce, whose omniscience made it
believed that the Empress Josephine must be in his
pay. It has mercantile and political correspondents
in every foreign city; and its expresses outrim the
despatches of the government. One hears anecdotes
of the rise of its servants, as of the functionaries of
the India House. I was told of the dexterity of one
of its reporters, who, finding himself on one occasion
XV.] THE "TIMES." 215
where the magistrates had strictly forbidden reporters,
put his hands into his coat-pocket, and with pencil in
one hand, and tablet in the other, did his work.
The influence of this journal is a recognised power
in Europe, and of course none is more conscious of it
than its conductors. The tone of its articles has often
been the occasion of comment from the official organs
of the continental courts, and sometimes the ground
of diplomatic complaint. AAHiat would the " Times "
say? is a terror in Paris, in Berhn, in Vienna, in Copen-
hagen, and in Xepaul. Its consummate discretion
and success exhibit the English skill of combination.
The daily paper is the work of many hands, chiefly,
it is said, of young men recently from the University,
and perhaps reading law in chambers in London.
Hence the academic elegance, and classic allusion,
which adorn its columns. Hence, too, the heat and
gallantry of its onset. But the steadiness of the aim
suggests the belief that this fire is directed and fed
by older engineers ; as if persons of exact informa-
tion, and with settled views of policy, supplied the
writers with the basis of fact, and the object to be
attained, and availed themselves of their younger
energy and eloquence to plead the cause. Both the
council and the executive departments gain by this
division. Of two men of equal abihty, the one who
does not write, but keeps his eye on the course of
pubhc aff"airs, will have the higher judicial wisdom.
But the parts are kept in concert, all the articles
appear to proceed from a single vd\l. The " Times "
never disapproves of what itself has said, or cripples
216 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
itself by apology for the absence of the editor, or the
indiscretion of him who held the pen. It speaks out
bluff and bold, and sticks to what it says. It draws
from any number of learned and skilful contributors ;
but a more learned and skilful person supervises,
corrects, and co-ordinates. Of this closet, the secret
does not transpire. No writer is suffered to claim
the authorship of any paper ; everything good, from
whatever quarter, comes out editorially ; and thus, by
making the paper everything, and those who write
it nothing, the character and the awe of the journal
gain.
The English like it for its complete information.
A statement of fact in the " Times " is as rehable as
a citation from Hansard. Then, they like its inde-
pendence ; they do not know, when they take it up,
what their paper is going to say : but, above all, for
the nationality and confidence of its tone. It thinks
for them all; it is their understanding and day's
ideal daguerreotyped. When I see them reading its
columns, they seem to me becoming every moment
more British. It has the national courage, not rash
and petulant, but considerate and determined. No
dignity or wealth is a shield from its assault. It
attacks a duke as readily as a policeman, and with
the most provoking airs of condescension. It makes
rude work with the Board of Admiralty. The Bench
of Bishops is still less safe. One bishop fares badly
for his rapacity, and another for his bigotry, and a
third for his courtliness. It addresses occasionally
a hint to Majesty itself, and sometimes a hint which
XY.] THE "TIMES. 217
is taken. Tliere is an air of freedom even in their
advertising columns, which speaks well for England to
a foreigner. On the days when I arrived in London
in 1847, I read among the daily announcements one
offering a reward of fifty poimds to any person who
would put a nobleman, described by name and title,
late a member of Parliament, into any county jail
in England, he having been competed of obtaining
money under false pretences.
Was never such arrogancy as the tone of this
paper. Every shp of an Oxonian or Cantabrigian
who writes his first leader, assumes that we subdued
the earth before we sat down to write this particular
"Times." One would think the world was on its
Imees to the " Times " Ofiice for its daily breakfast.
But this arrogance is calculated. Who would care
for it, if it "surmised," or "dared to confess," or
"ventured to predict," etc.? Xo ; it is so, and so it
shall be.
The morality and patriotism of the "Times"
claim only to be representative, and by no means
ideal. It gives the argimient, not of the majority,
but of the commanding class. Its editors know better
than to defend Eussia, or Austria, or EngKsh vested
rights, on abstract grounds. But they give a voice
to the class who, at the moment, take the lead ; and
they have an instinct for finding where the power
now lies, which is eternally shifting its banks. Sym-
pathising with and speaking for tlie class that rules
the hour, yet being apprised of every ground-swell,
every Chartist resolution, every Church squabble.
218 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
every strike in the mills, they detect the first trem-
blings of change. They watch the hard and bitter
struggles of the authors of each liberal movement,
year by year, — watching them only to taunt and
obstruct them — until, at last, when they see that these
have estabhshed their fact, that power is on the point
of passing to them, — they strike in, with the voice of
a monarch, astonish those whom they succoui^ as much
as those whom they desert, and make victory sure.
Of course the aspirants see that the " Times " is one
of the goods of fortune, not to be won but by mnning
their cause.
" Punch " is equally an expression of English good
sense, as the "London Times." It is the comic
version of the same sense. Many of its caricatures
are equal to the best pamphlets, and will convey to
the eye in an instant the popular view which was
taken of each turn of public affairs. Its sketches
are usually made by masterly hands, and sometimes
Avith genius ; the delight of every class, because
uniformly guided by that taste which is tjTannical in
England. It is a new trait of the nineteenth century,
that the "wit and humour of England, as in " Punch,"
so in the humorists, Jerrold, Dickens, Thackeray,
Hood, have taken the direction of humanity and
freedom.
The "Times," like every important institution,
shows the way to a better. It is a living index of
the colossal British power. Its existence honours
the people who dare to print all they know, dare to
know all the facts, and do not wish to be flattered by
XV.] THE '• TIMES." 219
hiding the extent of the public disaster. There is
always safety in Yalom\ I wish I could add that
this journal aspired to deserve the power it melds,
by guidance of the public sentiment to the right. It
is usually pretended, in Parliament and elsewhere,
that the English press has a high tone, — which it has
not. It has an imperial tone, as of a powerful and
independent nation. But as with other empires, its
tone is prone to be official, and even officinal. The
" Times " shares all the Hmitations of the governing
classes, and wishes never to be in a minority. If
only it dared to cleave to the right, to show the right
to be the only expedient, and feed its batteries from
the central heart of humanity, it might not have so
many men of rank among its contributors, but genius
would be its cordial and invincible ally; it might
now and then bear the brunt of formidable combina-
tions, but no journal is ruined by wise courage. It
would be the natural leader of British reform; its
proud function, that of being the voice of Europe,
the defender of the exile and patriot against despots,
would be more effectually discharged ; it would have
the authority which is claimed for that dream of good
men not yet come to pass, an International Congress ;
and the least of its victories would be to give to
England a new millennium of beneficent power.
220 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
CHAPTEE XVI.
STONEHEXGE.
It had been agreed between my friend Mr. C. and
me, that before I left England we should make an
excursion together to Stonehenge, which neither of
us had seen ; and the project pleased my fancy with
the double attraction of the monument and the com-
panion. It seemed a bringing together of extreme
points, to \dsit the oldest religious monument in
Britain, in company with her latest thinker, and one
whose influence may be traced in every contemporary
book. I was glad to sum up a little my experiences,
and to exchange a few reasonable words on the
aspects of England, with a man on whose genius I set
a very high value, and who had as much penetration,
and as severe a theory of duty, as any person in it.
On Friday, 7th July, we took the South Western
Railway through Hampshire to Salisbury, where we
found a carriage to convey us to Amesbury. The
fine weather and my friend's local knowledge of
Hampshire, in which he is wont to spend a part of
every summer, made the way short. There was much
to say, too, of the travelling Americans, and their usual
XVI.] STOXEHEXGE. 221
objects in London. I thought it natural that they
should give some time to works of art collected here,
wliich they cannot find at home, and a little to scien-
tific clubs and museums, which, at this moment, make
London very attractive. But my philosopher was
not contented. Art and "high art" is a favourite
target for his wit. " Yes, Kunst is a great delusion,
and Goethe and Schiller wasted a great deal of good
time on it : " — and he thinks he discovers that old
Goethe found this out, and, in his later writings,
changed his tone. As soon as men begin to talk of
art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes
of it. He wishes to go through the British Museum
in silence, and thinks a sincere man will see some-
thing, and say nothing. In these days, he thought,
it would become an architect to consult only the grim
necessity, and say, " I can build you a cofiin for such
dead persons as you are, and for such dead purposes
as you have, but you shall have no ornament." For
the science he had, if possible, even less tolerance,
and compared the savans of Somerset House to the
boy who asked Confucius ' how many stars in the
sky?" Confucius replied "he minded things near
him;" then said the boy, "how many hairs are there
in your eyebrows ? " Confucius said " he didn't know
and didn't care."
Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained
that they dislike the coldness and exclusiveness of
the Enghshj and run away to France, and go with
their countrymen, and are amused, uistead of man-
fully staying in London, and confronting Englishmen,
222 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
and acquiring their culture, who really have much to
teach them.
I told 0. that I was easily dazzled, and was accus-
tomed to concede readily all that an Englishman
would ask ; I saw everywhere in the country proofs
of sense and spirit, and success of every sort ; I like
the people ; they are as good as they are handsome ;
they have everytliing, and can do everything; but
meantime, I surely know, that, as soon as I return to
Massachusetts, I shall lapse at once into the feehng,
which the geography of America inevitably inspires,
that we play the game with immense advantage ;
that there and not here is the seat and centre of the
British race ; and that no skill or activity can long
compete with the prodigious natural advantages of
that country, in the hands of the same race; and
that England, an old and exhausted island, must one
day be contented, like other parents, to be strong
only in her children. But this was a proposition
which no Englishman of whatever condition can
easily entertain.
We left the train at Salisbury, and took a carriage
to Amesbury, passing by Old Sarum, a bare, treeless
hill, once containing the to^vn which sent two mem-
bers to Parliament, — now, not a hut ; — and, arriving
at Amesbury, stopped at the George Inn. After
dinner we walked to Salisbury Plain. On the broad
downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible,
nothing but Stonehenge, which looked like a group
of browTi dwarfs in the wide expanse, — Stonehenge
and the barrows, — which rose like green bosses about
XVI.] STONEHEXGE. 223
the plain, and a few hay-ricks. On the top of a
mountain, the old temple would not be more impres-
sive. Far and wide a few shej^herds mth their flocks
sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the
road. It looked as if the wide margin given in this
crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded
by the veneration of the British race to the old egg
out of which all their ecclesiastical structures and
history had proceeded. Stonehenge is a circular
colonnade ^vith a diameter of a hundred feet, and
enclosing a second and a third colonnade within. We
walked round the stones, and clambered over them,
to wont ourselves with their strange aspect and
groupings, and found a nook sheltered from the wind
among them, where C. lighted his cigar. It was
pleasant to see that just this simplest of all simple
structures, — two upright stones and a lintel laid
across, — had long outstood all later churches, and all
history, and were like what is most permanent on the
face of the planet : these, and the baiTows, — mere
mounds (of which there are a hundred and sixty
within a circle of three miles about Stonehenge), like
the same mound on the plain of Troy, which still
makes good to the passing mariner on Hellespont
the vaunt of Homer and the fame of Achilles.
Within the enclosure grow buttercups, nettles, and,
all around wild thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, golden-
rod, thistle, and the carpeting grass. Over us larks
were soaring and singing, — as my friend said, " the
larks which were hatched last year, and the wind which
was hatched many thousand years ago." We counted
224 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
and measured by paces the biggest stones, and soon
knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the
inscrutable temple. There are ninety -four stones,
and there were once probably one hundred and sixty.
The temple is circular, and uncovered, and the situa-
tion fixed astronomically, — the grand entrances here
and at Abury being placed exactly north-east, "as
all the gates of the old cavern temples are." How
came the stones here 1 for these sarsens or Druidical
sandstones are not found in this neighbourhood. The
sacrificial stone, as it is called, is the only one in all
these blocks that can resist the action of fire, and, as
I read in the books, must have been brought one
hundred and fifty miles.
On almost every stone we found the marks of the
mineralogist's hammer and chisel. The nineteen
smaller stones of the inner circle are of granite. I,
who had just come from Professor Sedgmck's Cam-
bridge Museum of megatheria and mastodons, was
ready to maintain that some cleverer elephants or
mylodonta had borne off and laid these rocks one on
another. Only the good beasts must have known
how to cut a well-wrought tenon and mortise, and to
smooth the surface of some of the stones. The chief
mystery is, that any mystery should have been allowed
to settle on so remarkable a monument, in a country
on which all the muses have kept their eyes now for
eighteen hundred years. We are not yet too late to
learn much more than is known of this structure.
Some diligent Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone
by stone, at the whole history, by that exhaustive
XYi.] STONEHEXGE. 225
British sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its
choice of objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge or
Choir Gaur to the rabbits, whilst it opens pyramids
and uncovers Nineveh. Stonehenge, in virtue of the
simplicity of its plan, and its good preservation, is as
if new and recent ; and, a thousand years hence, men
will thank this age for the accurate history it will
yet ehminate. We walked in and out, and took
again and again a fresh look at the uncanny stones.
The old sphinx put our petty differences of nationality
out of sight. To these conscious stones we two pil-
grims were alike knoT^Ti and near. AVe coidd ecpially
well revere their old British meaning. My philoso-
pher was subdued and gentle. In this quiet house of
destiny, he happened to say, "I plant cypresses
wherever I go, and if I am in search of pain, I cannot
go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks, and their
rude order, which refuses to be disposed of, suggested
to him the flight of ages, and the succession of reli-
gions. Tlie old times of England impress C. much :
he reads little, he says, in these last years, but ^^Ada
Sanctorum,'^ the fifty-three volumes of which are in
the London Librarj^ He finds all English history
therein. He can see, as he reads, the old saint of
lona sitting there, and writing, a man to men. The
Acta Sanctorum show plainly that the men of those
times believed in God, and in the immortality of the
soul, as their abbeys and cathedrals testify : now,
even the Puritanism is all gone. London is pagan.
He fancied that greater men had lived in England
than any of her writers ; and, in fact, about the time
VOL. IV. Q
226 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
when those writers appeared, the last of these were
already gone.
We left the mound in the twilight, with the
design to return the next morning, and coming back
two miles to our inn, we were met by little showers,
and late as it was, men and women were out attempting
to protect their spread wind-rows. The grass grows
rank and dark in the showery England. At the inn
there was only milk for one cup of tea. When we
called for more, the girl brought us three drops. My
friend was annoyed, who stood for the credit of an
English inn, and still more, the next morning, by the
dog-cart, sole procurable vehicle, in which we were to
be sent to Wilton. I engaged the local antiquary,
Mr. Brown, to go with us to Stonehenge, on our way,
and show us what he knew of the "astronomical"
and " sacrificial " stones. I stood on the last, and he
pointed to the upright, or rather, inclined stone,
called the "astronomical," and bade me notice that
its top ranged with the sky-line. " Yes." Very well.
Now, at the summer solstice, the sun rises exactly
over the top of that stone, and, at the Druidical
temple at Abury, there is also an astronomical stone,
in the same relative positions.
In the silence of tradition, this one relation to
science becomes an important clue ; but we were
content to leave the problem, with, the rocks. Was
this the " Giants' Dance " which Merlin brou2;ht from
Killaraus, in Ireland, to be Uther Pendragon's monu-
ment to the British nobles whom Hen2:ist slausfhtered
here, as Geoffrey of Monmouth relates 1 or was it a
XVI.] STONEHEXGE. 227
Eoman work, as Inigo Jones explained to King
James ; or identical in design and style with the
East Indian temples of the sun, as Da\ies in the
Celtic Eesearches maintains? Of all the writers,
Stukeley is the best. The heroic antiquary, charmed
with the geometric perfections of his ruin, connects
it with the oldest monuments and religion of the
world, and, with the courage of his tribe, does not
stick to say, " the Deity who made the world by the
scheme of Stonehenge." He finds that the mrsus'^ on
Salisbury Plain stretches across the downs, like a line
of latitude upon the globe, and the meridian hne of
Stonehenge passes exactly through the middle of this
cursus. But here is the high point of the theory :
the Druids had the magnet ; laid their courses by it ;
their cardinal points in Stonehenge, Ambresbury, and
elsewhere, which vary a little from true east and
west, followed the rariations of the compass. The
Druids were Phoenicians. The name of the mamet
o
is lajns Heracleus, and Hercules was the god of the
Phoenicians. Hercules, in the legend, drew his bow
at the sun, and the sun-god gave him a golden cup,
with which he sailed over the ocean. ^Yhat was this
but a compass-box ? This cup or little boat, in which
the magnet was made to float on water, and so show
^ Connected with Stonehenge are an avenue and a cursits.
The avenue is a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 yards
in a straight line from the grand entrance, then dividing into
two branches, which lead, severally, to a row of barrows ; and
to the cicrsiis, — an artifically formed flat tract of ground. This
is half a mile north-east from Stonehenge, bounded by banks and
ditches, 3036 yards long by 110 broad.
228 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
the north, was probably its first form, before it was
suspended on a pin. But science was an arcanum,
and, as Britain was a Phoenician secret, so they kept
their compass a secret, and it was lost with the Tyrian
commerce. The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was
the compass,— a bit of loadstone, easily supposed to
be the only one in the world, and therefore natur-
ally awakening the cupidity and ambition of the
young heroes of a maritime nation to join in an
expedition to obtain possession of this wise stone.
Hence the fable that the ship Argo was loquacious
and oracular. There is also some curious coincidence
in the names. Apollodorus makes Magnes the son
of jfEoIus, who married Nais. On hints like these
Stukeley builds again the grand colonnade into his-
toric harmony, and computing backward by the knoTVTi
variations of the compass, bravely assigns the year
406 before Christ for the date of the temple.
For the difficulty of handling and carrying stones
of this size, the like is done in all cities, every day,
with no other aid than horse power. I chanced to
see a year ago men at work on the substructure of a
house in Bowdoin Square, in Boston, sT\^nging a
block of granite of the size of the largest of the
Stonehenge columns with an ordinary derrick. The
men were common masons, with paddies to help, nor
did they think they were doing anything remarkable.
I suppose there were as good men a thousand years
ago. And we wonder how Stonehenge was built and
forgotten. After spending half an hour on the' spot,
we set forth in our dog-cart over the downs for
XVI.] STONEHEXGE. 229
Wilton, C. not suppressing some threats and evil omens
on the proprietors, for keeping these broad plains a
wretched sheep-walk, when so many thousands of
English men were hungry and wanted labour. But
I heard afterwards that it is not an economy to culti-
vate this land, which only yields one crop on being-
broken up and is then spoiled.
We came to Wilton and to Wilton Hall, — the re-
nowned seat of the Earls of Pembroke, a house known
to Shakspeare and Massinger, the frequent home of
Sir Philip Sidney where he wrote the Arcadia ; where
he conversed mth Lord Brooke, a man of deep
thought, and a poet, who caused to be engraved on
his tombstone, " Here lies Eulke Greville Lord Brooke,
the friend of Sir Philip Sidney." It is now the pro-
perty of the Earl of Pembroke, and the residence of
his brother, Sidney Herbert, Esq., and is esteemed a
noble specimen of the English manor-hall. ]\Iy friend
had a letter from Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and
the house was shown. The state drawing-room is
a double cube, 30 feet high, by 30 feet wide, by 60
feet long : the adjoining room is a single cube, of 30
feet every way. Although these apartments and the
long library were full of good family portraits,
Vandykes and other; and though there were some
good pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full of antique
and modern statuary, — to which C, catalogue in hand,
did all too much justice, — yet the eye was still dra-v^Ti
to the windows, to a magnificent lawn, on which grew
the finest cedars in England. I had not seen more
charming grounds. We went out, and walked over
230 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
the estate. We crossed a bridge built by Inigo Jones
over a stream, of which the gardener did not know
the name {Qu. Alph?); watched the deer; climbed to
the lonely sculptured summer house, on a hill backed
by a wood ; came down into the Italian garden, and
into a French pavilion, garnished with French busts;
and so again to the house, where we found a table
laid for us with bread, meats, peaches, grapes, and
wine.
On leaving Wilton House we took the coach for
Salisbury. The Cathedral, which was finished 600
years ago, has even a spruce and modern air, and its
spire is the highest in England. I know not why,
but I had been more struck with one of no fame at
Coventry, which rises 300 feet from the ground, "v^dth
the lightness of a mullein-plant, and not at all impli-
cated with the church. Salisbury is now esteemed
the culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the
buttresses are fully unmasked, and honestly detailed
from the sides of the pile. The interior of the Cathe-
dral is obstructed by the organ in the middle, acting
like a screen. I know not why in real architecture
the hunger of the eye for length of line is so rarely
gratified. The rule of art is that a colonnade is more
beautiful the longer it is, and that ad infinitum. And
the nave of a church is seldom so long that it need
be divided by a screen.
We loitered in the church, outside the choir, whilst
service was said. Whilst we listened to the organ,
my friend remarked, the music is good, and ye1: not
quite religious, but somewhat as if a monk were pant-
XVI.] STONEHEKGE. 231
ing to some fine Queen of Heaven. C. was un^^alling,
and we did not ask to have the choir sho^^Ti us, but
returned to our inn, after seeing another old church of
the place. We passed in the train Clarendon Park,
but could see little but the edge of a wood, though C.
had wished to pay closer attention to the birthplace of
the Decrees of Clarendon. At Bishopstoke we stopped,
and found Mr. H., who received us in his carriage,
and took us to his house at Bishops Waltham.
On Sunday we had much discourse on a very rainy
day. My friends asked whether there were any
Americans'? — any T^-ith an American idea, — any
theory of the right future of that country? Thus
challenged, I bethought myself neither of caucuses
nor congress, neither of presidents nor of cabinet
ministers, nor of such as would make of America
another Europe. I thought only of the simplest and
purest minds ; I said, " Certainly yes : — but those
who hold it are fanatics of a dream which I should
hardly care to relate to your English ears, to which
it might be only ridiculous, — and yet it is the only
true." So I opened the dogma of no-government and
non-resistance, and anticipated the objections and the
fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, it
is true that I have never seen in any country a man
of sufficient valour to stand for this truth, and yet it
is plain to me that no less valour than this can com-
mand my respect. I can easily see the bankruptcy
of the \"ulgar musket-worship, — though great men be
musket-worshippers ; — and 'tis certain, as God liveth,
the gun that does not need another gun, the law of
232 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
love and justice alone, can effect a clean revolution.
I fancied that one or two of my anecdotes made some
impression on C, and I insisted that the manifest
absurdity of the view to English feasibility could make
no difference to a gentleman ; that as to our secure
tenure of our mutton-chop and spinage in London or
in Boston, the soul might quote Talleyrand, " Monsieur,
je n^en wis jms la ndcessitS." ^ As I had thus taken in
the conversation the saint's part, when dinner was
announced, 0. refused to go out before me, — "he
was altogether too wicked." I planted my back
against the wall, and our host mttily rescued us from
the dilemma, by saying, he was the wickedest, and
would walk out first, then 0. followed, and I went
last.
On the way to Winchester, whither our host
accompanied us in the afternoon, my friends asked
many cjuestions respecting American landscape, forests,
houses, — my house, for example. It is not easy to
answer these queries well. There I thought, in
America, lies nature sleeping, over-growing, almost
conscious, too much by half for man in the picture,
and so giving a certain tiisfesse, like the rank vegeta-
tion of swamps and forests seen at night, steeped in
dews and rains, which it loves ; and on it man seems
not able to make much impression. There, in that
great sloven continent, in high Alleghany pastures, in
the sea-wide, sky-skirted prairie, still sleeps and mur-
murs and hides the great mother, long since driven
away from the trim hedgerows and over -cultivated
^ " 3Iais, 3Ionseigneur,ilfautquefexiste."
XVI.] STONEHENGE. 233
gardens of England. And, in England, I am quite too
sensible of this. Every one is on his good behaviom\
and must be dressed for dinner at six. So I put off
my friends with very inadequate details, as best I
could.
Just before entering Winchester, we stopped at the
Chmxh of Saint Cross, and, after looking through the
quaint antiquity, we demanded a piece of bread and
a draught of beer, which the founder, Henry de Blois,
in 1136, commanded should be given to every one
who should ask it at the gate. We had both, from
the old couple who take care of the church. Some
twenty people, every daj^, they said, make the same
demand. This hospitality of seven hundred years'
standing did not hinder C. from pronouncing a male-
diction on the priest who receives £2000 a year that
were meant for the poor, and spends a jDittance on this
small beer and crumbs.
In the Cathedral, I was gratified, at least by the
ample dimensions. The length of line exceeds that
of any other English church ; being 556 feet by 250
in breadth of transept. I think I prefer this church
to all I have seen, except AVestminster and York.
Here was Canute buried, and here Alfred the Great
was crowned and buried, and here the Saxon kings :
and, later, in his o^vn church, William of Wykeham.
It is very old : part of the crypt into which we went
down and saw the Saxon and Norman arches of the
old church on which the present stands, was built
fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. Sharon Turner
says, " Alfred was buried at Winchester, in the Abbey
234 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
he had founded there, but his remains were removed
by Henry I. to the new Abbey in the meadows at
Hyde, on the northern quarter of the city, and laid
under the high altar. The building was destroyed at
the Eeformation, and what is left of Alfred's body
now lies covered by modern buildings, or buried in
the ruins of the old." ^ William of Wykeham's shrine
tomb Avas unlocked for us, and 0. took hold of the
recumbent statue's marble hands, and patted them
affectionately, for he rightly values the brave man
who built Windsor, and this Cathedral, and the School
here, and new College at Oxford. But it was grow-
ing late in the afternoon. Slowly we left the old
house, and parting "vvith our host, we took the train
for London.
1 History of the Anglo-Saxons, i. 599.
XYii.] PERSOXAL. 235
CHAPTER XYII.
PERSONAL.
In these comments on an old journey now revised
after seven busy years have much changed men and
things in England, I have abstained from reference to
persons, except in the last chapter, and in one or two
cases where the fame of the parties seemed to have
given the public a property in all that concerned
them. I must further allow myself a few notices, if
only as an acknowledgment of debts that cannot be
paid. My journeys were cheered by so much kind-
ness from new friends, that my impression of the
island is bright with agreeable memories both of
public societies and of households : and, what is no-
where better found than in England, a cultivated
person fitly surrounded by a happy home, "with
honour, love, obedience, troops of friends," is of all
institutions the best. At the landing in Liverpool I
found my Manchester correspondent awaiting me, a
gentleman whose kind reception was followed by a
train of friendly and eJffective attentions which never
rested whilst I remained in the country. A man of
sense and of letters, the editor of a powerful local
236 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
journal, he added to solid virtues an infinite sweet-
ness and honJiommie. There seemed a pool of honey
about his heart which lubricated all his speech and
action with fine jets of mead. An equal good fortune
attended many later accidents of my journey, until
the sincerity of English kindness ceased to surprise.
My visit fell in the fortunate days when Mr. Bancroft
was the American Minister in London, and at his
house, or through his good offices, I had easy access
to excellent persons and to privileged places. At the
house of Mr. Carlyle I met persons eminent in society
and in letters. The pri\dleges of the Athenaeum and
of the Reform Clubs were hospitably opened to me,
and I found much advantage in the circles of the
"Geologic," the "Antiquarian," and the "Eoyal
Societies." Every day in London gave me new oppor-
tunities of meeting men and women who give splen-
dour to society. I saw Rogers, Hallam, Macaulay,
JMilnes, Milman, Barry Cornwall, Dickens, Thackeray,
Tennyson, Leigh Hunt, DTsraeli, Helps, Wilkinson,
Bailey, Kenyon, and Forster : the younger poets,
Clough, Arnold, and Patmore ; and, among the men
of science, Robert Bro^Ti, Owen, Sedgwick, Faraday,
Bucklancl, Lyell, De la Beche, Hooker, Carpenter,
Babbage, and Edward Forbes. It was my privilege
also to converse with Miss Baillie, with Lady Morgan,
with Mrs. Jameson, and Mrs. Somerville. A finer
hospitality made many private houses not less kno^vn
and dear. It is not in distino-uished circles that
wisdom and elevated characters are usually found, or,
if found, not confined thereto ; and my recollections
XVII.] PERSONAL. 237
of the best hours go back to private conversations in
different parts of the kingdom, with persons little
kno^^Ti. Xor am I insensible to the courtesy which
frankly opened to me some noble mansions, if I do
not adorn my page with their names. Among the
privileges of London I recall with pleasure two or
three single days, one at Kew, where Sir William
Hooker showed me all the riches of the vast botanic
garden ; one at the Museum, where Sir Charles Fel-
lowes explained in detail the history of his Ionic
trophy-monument; and still another, on which Mr.
Owen accompanied my countr}Tnan Mr. H. and my-
self through the Hunterian Museum.
The like frank hospitahty, bent on real service, I
found among the great and the humble, wherever I
went : in Birmingham, in Oxford, in Leicester, in
Nottingham, in Sheffield, in Manchester, in Liverpool.
At Edinburgh, through the kindness of Dr. Samuel
Brown, I made the acquaintance of De Qiiincey, of
Lord Jeffrey, of AVilson, of Mrs. Crowe, of the Messrs.
Chambers, and of a man of high character and genius,
the short-Kved painter, David Scott.
At Ambleside, in March 1848, I was for a couple
of days the guest of Miss Martineau, then newly
returned from her Egy|3tian tour. On Sunday after-
noon I accompanied her to Eydal Mount. And, as I
have recorded a visit to Wordsworth many years be-
fore, I must not forget this second inter^dew. We
found Mr. Wordsworth asleep on the sofa. He was
at first silent and indisposed, as an old man suddenly
waked, before he had ended his nap ; but soon became
238 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
full of talk on the French news. He was nationally
bitter on the French : bitter on Scotchmen too. No
Scotchman, he said, can write English. He detailed
the two models, on one or the other of which all the
sentences of the historian Eobertson are framed. Nor
could Jeffrey nor the Edinburgh Keviewers write
English, nor can * "^ "^^ who is a pest to the English
tongue. Incidentally he added. Gibbon cannot write
English. The Edinburgh Review wrote what would
tell and what would sell. It had however chansred
the tone of its literary criticism from the time when
a certain letter was written to the editor by Coleridge.
Mrs. W. had the Editor's answer in her possession.
Tennyson he thinks a right poetic genius, though with
some affectation. He had thought an elder brother
of Tennyson at first the better poet, but must now
reckon Alfred the true one. ... In speaking of I
know not what style, he said "to be sure, it was the
manner, but then you know the matter always comes
out of the manner." . . . He thought Rio Janeiro the
best place in the world for a great capital city. . . .
We talked of English national character. I told him,
it was not creditable that no one in all the country
knew anything of Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, whilst
in every American library his translations are found.
I said, if Plato's Republic were published in England
as a new book to-day, do you think it would find any
readers "2 — he confessed it would not: "and yet," he
added after a pause, with that complacency which
never deserts a true-born Englishman, "and yet we
have embodied it all."
XVII.] PEESOXAL. 239
His opinions of French, English, Irish, and Scotch,
seemed rashly formulised from little anecdotes of
what had befallen himself and members of his family,
in a diligence or stage-coach. His face sometimes
lighted up, but his conversation was not marked by
special force or elevation. Yet perhaps it is a high
compliment to the cultivation of the EngHsh generally,
when we find such a man not distinguished. He had
a healthy look, with a weather-beaten face, his face
corrugated, especially the large nose.
Miss Martineau, who Hved near him, praised him
to me, not for his poetry, but for thrift and economy ;
for ha^dng afforded to his countr}^ neighbours an
example of a modest household, where comfort and
culture were secured without any display. She said
that in his early housekeeping at the cottage Avhere
he first lived, he was accustomed to offer his friends
bread and plainest fare : if they wanted anything more
they must pay him for their board. It was the rule
of the house. I repHed, that it e^-inced English pluck
more than any anecdote I knew. A gentleman in the
neighbourhood told the story of ^Yalter Scott's staying
once for a week ^Yith Wordsworth, and shpping out
every day, under pretence of a walk, to the Swan Inn,
for a cold cut and porter ; and one day passing vrith
Wordsworth the inn, he was betrayed by the land-
lord's asking him if he had come for his porter. Of
course, this trait would have another look in London,
and there you will hear from different literary men
that Wordsworth had no personal friend, that he was
not amiable, that he was parsimonious, etc. Landor,
s
240 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
always generous, says that he never praised anybody.
A gentleman in London showed me a watch that once
belonged to Milton, whose initials are engraved on its
face. He said he once showed this to Wordsworth,
who took it in one hand, then drew out his own
watch, and held it up with the other, before the
company, but no one making the expected remark,
he put back his o^vn in silence. I do not attach
much importance to the disparagement of Words-
worth among London scholars. Who reads him well
will know, that in following the strong bent of his
genius he was careless of the many, careless also of
the few, self-assured that he should " create the taste
by which he is to be enjoyed." He lived long enough
to witness the revolution he had "wi'ought, and "to
see what he foresaw." There are torpid places in his
mind, there is something hard and sterile in his poetry,
want of grace and variety, want of due catholicity and
cosmopolitan scope : he had conformities to English
politics and traditions ; he had egotistic puerilities in
the choice and treatment of his subjects ; but let us
say of him that, alone in his time, he treated the
human mind well, and with an absolute trust. His
adherence to his poetic creed rested on real inspira-
tions. The Ode on Immortality is the high-water-
mark which the intellect has reached in this age.
New means were employed, and new realms added to
the empire of the muse, by his courage.
1
XVIII.] KESULT. 241
CHAPTEE XVIIL
RESULT.
England is the best of actual nations. It is no
ideal framework, it is an old pile built in different
ages, with repairs, additions, and makeshifts ; but
you see the poor best you have got. London is the
epitome of our times, and the Eome of to-day. Broad-
fronted broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand in solid
phalanx four square to the points of compass ; they
constitute the modern world, they have earned their
vantage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse
possession. They are well marked and differing from
other leading races. England is tender-hearted.
Rome was not. England is not so public in its bias ;
private life is its place of honour. Truth in private
life, untruth in public, marks these home -loving
men. Their political conduct is not decided by
general views, but by internal intrigues and personal
and family interest. They cannot readily see beyond
England. The history of Rome and Greece, when
written by their scholars, degenerates into English
party pamphlets. They cannot see beyond England,
nor in England can they transcend the interests of
VOL. IV. R
242 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
the governing classes. " English principles " mean a
priniaiy regard to the interests of property. England,
Scotland, and Ireland, combine to check the colonies.
England and Scotland combine to check Irish manu-
factures and trade. England ralhes at home to check
Scotland. In England, the strong classes check the
weaker. In the home population of near thirty
millions, there are but one million voters. The
Church punishes dissent, punishes education. Do^vn
to a late day marriages performed by dissenters were
illegal. A bitter class-legislation gives power to those
who are rich enough to buy a law. The game-laws
are a proverb of oppression. Pauperism incrusts and
clogs the state, and in hard times becomes hideous.
In bad seasons the porridge was diluted. Multi-
tudes lived miserably by shell-fish and sea-ware. In
cities, the children are trained to beg until they shall
be old enough to rob. Men and women were con-
victed of poisoning scores of children for bimal fees.
In Irish districts men deteriorated in size and shape,
the nose sunk, the gums were exposed, with diminished
brain and brutal form. During the Australian emi-
gration, multitudes were rejected by the commis-
sioners as being too emaciated for usefid colonists.
During the Eussian war few of those that offered as
recruits were found up to the medical standard, though
it had been reduced.
The foreign policy of England, though ambitious
and lavish of money, has not often been generous or
just. It has a principal regard to the interest of
trade, checked however by the aristocratic bias of the
XVIII.] EESULT. 243
ambassador, which usually puts him in sympathy mth
the continental Courts. It sanctioned the partition
of Poland, it betrayed Genoa, Sicily, Parga, Greece,
Turkey, Eome, and Hungary.
Some public regards they have. They have
abolished slavery in the West Indies, and put an end
to human sacrifices in the East. At home they have
a certain statute hospitality. England keeps open
doors, as a trading country must, to all nations. It
is one of their fixed ideas, and wrathfully supported
by their laws in unbroken sequence for a thousand
years. In Blagna Charia it was ordained, that all
" merchants shall have safe and secure conduct to go
out and come into England, and to stay there, and to
pass as well by land as by water, to buy and sell by
the ancient allowed customs, without any evil toll,
except in time of war, or when they shall be of any
nation at war with us." It is a statute and obliged
hospitality, and peremptorily maintained. But this
shop-rule had one magnificent effect. It extends its
cold unalterable courtesy to political exiles of every
opinion, and is a fact which might give additional
light to that portion of the planet seen from the
farthest star. But this perfunctory hospitality puts
no sweetness into their unaccommodating manners,
no check on that puissant nationality which makes
their existence incompatible with all that is not
English.
What we must say about a nation is a superficial
dealing with symptoms. We cannot go deep enough
into the biography of the spirit who never throws
244 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
himself entire into one hero, but delegates his energy
in parts or spasms to vicious and defective individuals.
But the wealth of the source is seen in the plenitude
of English nature. What variety of power and talent ;
what facility and plenteousness of knighthood, lord-
ship, ladyship, royalty, loyalty ; what a proud chivalry
is indicated in " Collins's Peerage," through eight
hundred years ! What dignity resting on what reality
and stoutness ! What courage in war, what sinew in
labour, what cunning workmen, what inventors and
engineers, what seamen and pilots, what clerks and
scholars ! No one man and no few men can represent
them. It is a people of myriad personalities. Their
many-headedness is owing to the advantageous posi-
tion of the middle class, who are always the source of
letters and science. Hence the vast plenty of their
aesthetic production. As they are many-headed, so
they are many-nationed : their colonisation annexes
archipelagoes and continents, and their speech seems
destined to be the universal language of men. I have
noted the reserve of power in the English temperament.
In the island they never let out all the length of all
the reins, there is no Berserkir rage, no abandonment
or ecstasy of will or intellect, like that of the Arabs
in the time of Mahomet, or like that which intoxicated
France in 1789. But who would see the uncoiling of
that tremendous spring, the explosion of their weU-
husbanded forces, must follow the swarms which,
pouring now for two hundred years from the British
islands, have sailed, and rode, and traded, and planted,
through all climates, mainly following the belt of
xviiL] EESULT. 245
empire, the temperate zones, carrying the Saxon seed,
with its instinct for liberty and law, for arts and for
thought, — acquiring under some skies a more electric
energy than the native air allows,— to the conquest
of the globe. Their colonial policy, obeying the
necessities of a vast empire, has become liberal.
Canada and Australia have been contented with sub-
stantial independence. They are expiating the wTongs
of India, by benefits ; first, in works for the irrigation
of the peninsula, and roads and telegraphs ; and
secondly, in the instruction of the people, to qualify
them for self-government, when the British power
shall be finally called home.
Their mind is in a state of arrested development, —
a divine cripple like Yulcan ; a blind savant like Huber
and Sanderson. They do not occupy themselves on
matters of general and lasting import, but on a cor-
poreal civilisation, on goods that perish in the using.
But they read with good intent, and what they learn
they incarnate. The English mind turns every ab-
straction it can receive into a portable utensil, or a
working institution. Such is their tenacity, and such
their practical turn, that they hold all they gain.
Hence we say that only the English race can be
trusted wdth freedom, — freedom which is double-edged
and dangerous to any but the ■\vise and robust: The
English designate the kingdoms emulous of free insti-
tutions as the sentimental nations. Their culture is
not an outside varnish, but is thorough and secular in
families and the race. They are oppressive with their
temperament, and all the more that they are refined.
246 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
I. have sometimes seen them walk with my country-
men when I was forced to allow them every advantage,
and their companions seemed bags of bones.
There is cramp limitation in their habit of thought,
sleepy routine, and a tortoise's instinct to hold hard
to the ground with his claws, lest he should be throAvn
on his back. There is a drag of inertia which resists
reform in every shape ; — law-reform, army-reform, ex-
tension of suffrage, Jewish franchise, Catholic emanci-
pation, — the abolition of slavery, of impressment,
penal code, and entails. They praise this drag, under
the formula that it is the excellence of the British
constitution that no law can anticipate the public
opinion. These poor tortoises must hold hard, for
they feel no wings sprouting at their shoulders. Yet
somewhat di^ane warms at their heart, and waits a
happier hour. It hides in their sturdy will. " AVill,"
said the old philosophy, " is the measure of power,"
and personality is the token of this race. Quid vult
valde vult What they do they do with a -wall. You
cannot account for their success by their Christianity,
commerce, charter, common law. Parliament, or letters,
but by the contumacious sharp-tongued energy of
English naturel, with a poise impossible to disturb,
which makes all these its instruments. They are slow
and reticent, and are like a dull good horse which lets
every nag pass him, but with whip and spur mil run
down every racer in the field. They are right in their
feeling, though wrong in their speculation.
The feudal system sur\dves in the steep inequality
of property and privilege, in the limited franchise, in
XVIII.] RESULT. 247
the social barriers wliich confine patronage and pro-
motion to a caste, and still more in the submissive
ideas pervading these people. The fagging of the
schools is repeated in the social classes. An English-
man shows no mercy to those below him in the social
scale, as he looks for none from those above him : any
forbearance from his superiors surprises him, and they
suffer in his good opinion. But the feudal system
can be seen with less pain on large historical grounds.
It was pleaded in mitigation of the rotten borough
that it worked well, that substantial justice was done.
Fox, Burke, Pitt, Erskine, Wilberforce, Sheridan,
Romilly, or whatever national man, were by this
means sent to Parliament, when their return by large
constituencies would have been doubtful. So now
we say, that the right measures of England are the
men it bred ; that it has yielded more able men in five
hundred years than any other nation; and, though
we must not play Pro^-idence, and balance the chances
of producing ten great men against the comfort of
ten thousand mean men, yet retrospectively we may
strike the balance, and prefer one Alfred, one Shak-
speare, one Milton, one Sidney, one Ealeigh, one
Wellington, to a million foohsh democrats.
The American system is more democratic, more
humane ; yet the American people do not yield better
or more able men, or more inventions or books or
benefits than the English. Congress is not wiser or
better than Parliament. France has abolished its
suffocating old regime, but is not recently marked by
any more wisdom or virtue.
248 ENGLISH TRAITS. [chap.
The power of performance has not been exceeded,
— the creation of value. The English have given
importance to individuals, a principal end and fruit
of every society. Every man is allowed and encour-
aged to be what he is, and is guarded in the indul-
gence of his whim. "Magna Charta," said Eush worth,
"is such a fellow that he will have no sovereign."
By this general activity, and by this sacredness of
individuals, they have in seven hundred years evolved
the principles of freedom. It is the land of patriots,
martyrs, sages, and bards; and if the ocean out of
which it emerged should wash it away, it will be
remembered as an island famous for immortal laws,
for the announcements of original right which make
the stone tables of liberty.
XIX.] SPEECH AT MAXCHESTEE. 249
CHAPTER XIX.
SPEECH AT MANCHESTER.
A FEW days after my arriyal at Manchester, in
Xovember 1847, the Manchester Athenaeum gave its
annual Banquet in the Free Trade Hall. With other
guests, I was in^dted to be present, and to address the
company. In looking over recently a newspaper re-
port of my remarks, I incline to reprint it, as fitly
expressing the feeling with which I entered England,
and which agrees well enough with the more deliber-
ate results of better acquaintance recorded in the
foregoing pages. Sir Archibald Alison, the historian,
presided, and opened the meeting with a speech. He
was followed by Mr. Cobden, Lord Brackley, and
others, among whom was Mr. Cruikshank, one of the
contributors to "Pimch." Mr. Dickens's letter of
apology for his absence was read. Mr. Jerrold, who
had been annoimced, did not appear. On being in-
troduced to the meeting I said, —
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen — It is pleasant to
me to meet this great and brilliant company, and
doubly pleasant to see the faces of so many distin-
guished persons on this platform. But I have known
250 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
all these persons already. AVhen I was at home they
were as near to me as they are to you. The argu-
ments of the League and its leader are known to all
the friends of free trade. The gaieties and genius,
the political, the social, the parietal wit of "Punch,"
go duly every fortnight to every boy and girl in
Boston and New York. Sir, when I came to sea, I
found the " History of Europe " ^ on the ship's cabin
table, the property of the captain ; — a sort of pro-
gramme or play-bill to tell the seafaring New Eng-
lander what he shall find on his landing here. And
as for Dombey, sir, there is no land where paper exists
to print on, where it is not found ; no man who can
read, that does not read it, and, if he cannot, he finds
some charitable pair of eyes that can, and hears it.
But these things are not for me to say ; these
compliments, though true, would better come from
one who felt and understood these merits more. I
am not here to exchange ciAdlities with you, but rather
to speak of that which I am sure interests these gentle-
men more than their own praises ; of that which is
good in holidays and working-days ; the same in one
century and in another century. That which lures a
solitary American in the woods ^vith the wish to see
England, is the moral peculiarity of the Saxon race, —
its commanding sense of right and wrong, — the love
and devotion to that, — this is the imperial trait, which
arms them with the sceptre of the globe. It is this
which lies at the foundation of that aristocratic char-
acter, which certainly wanders into strange vagaries,
^ By Sir A. Alison.
XIX.] SPEECH AT MAXCHESTEE. 251
SO that its origin is often lost sight of, but which, if it
should lose this, would find itself paralysed ; and in
trade, and in the mechanic's shop, gives that honesty
in performance, that thoroughness and solidity of
work, which is a national characteristic. This con-
science is one element, and the other is that loyal
adhesion, that habit of friendship, that homage of man
to man, rimning through all classes, — the electing of
worthy persons to a certain fraternity, to acts of
kindness and warm and staunch support, from year
to year, from youth to age, — which is alike lovely and
honoural^le to those who render and those who receive
it ; — which stands in strong contrast with the super-
ficial attachments of other races, their excessive
courtesy and short-lived connection.
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but,
holiday though it be, I have not the smallest interest
in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not
pretended joys ; and I think it just, in this time of
gloom and commercial disaster, of affliction and beg-
gary in these districts, that, on these very accounts I
speak of, you should not fail to keep your literary anni-
versary. I seem to hear you say, that, for all that is
come and gone yet, we will not reduce by one chaplet
or one oak leaf the braveries of oiu? annual feast. For
I must tell you, I was given to understand in my
childhood, that the British island from which my
forefathers came, was no lotus-garden, no paradise of
serene sky, and roses and music and merriment all the
year round ; no, but a cold, foggy, mournful country,
where nothing grew well in the open air but robust
252 ENGLISH TEAITS. [chap.
men and virtuous women, and these of a wonderful
fibre and endurance ; that their best parts were slowly
revealed ; their virtues did not come out until they
quarrelled : they did not strike twelve the first time ;
good lovers, good haters, and you could know little
about them till you had seen them long, and little
good of them till you had seen them in action ; that
in prosperity they were moody and dumpish, but in
adversity they were grand. Is it not true, sir, that
the wise ancients did not praise the ship parting with
flying colours from the port, but only that brave sailer
which came back with torn sheets and battered sides,
stript of her banners, but having ridden out the storm ?
And so, gentlemen, I feel in regard to this aged Eng-
land, with the possessions, honours and trophies, and
also with the infirmities of a thousand years gathering
around her, irretrievably committed as she now is to
many old customs which cannot be suddenly changed ;
pressed upon by the transitions of trade, and new and
all incalculable modes, fabrics, arts, machines, and
competing populations, — I see her not dis23irited, not
weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark
days before ; — indeed, with a kind of instinct that she
sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm
of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and
a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age,
not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in
her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this,
I say. All hail ! mother of nations, mother of heroes,
with strength still equal to the time ; still wise to
entertain and swift to execute the policy which the
XIX.] SPEECH AT I\IAXCHESTER. 253
mind and heart of mankind requires in the present
hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and
truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who are
born in the soil. So be it ! so let it be ! If it be not
so, if the courage of England goes with the chances
of a commercial crisis, I will go back to the capes of
Massachusetts, and my own Indian stream, and say
to my countrymen, the old race are all gone, and the
elasticity and hope of mankind must henceforth re-
main on the Alleghany ranges, or nowhere.
EEPEESENTATIVE MEN
SEVEX LECTURES
I.
USES OF GEEAT MEN.
It is natural to believe in great men. If the com-
panions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes,
and their condition regal, it would not surprise us.
All mythology opens with demigods, and the circum-
stance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is
paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first
men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet.
Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The
world is upheld by the veracity of good men : they
make the earth wholesome. They who lived with
them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet
and tolerable only in our belief in such society ; and,
actually or ideally, we manage to live with superiors.
We call our children and our lands by their names.
Their names are wrought into the verbs of language,
their works and effigies are in our houses, and every
circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.
The search after the great is the dream of youth,
and the most serious occupation of manhood. We
travel into foreign parts to find his works, — if pos-
VOL. IV. s
258 KEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
sible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are put off
^Yith fortune instead. You say, the English are
practical; the Germans are hospitable; in Valencia,
the climate is delicious ; and in the hills of the
Sacramento, there is gold for the gathering. Yes,
but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich, and
hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too
much. But if there were any magnet that would
point to the countries and houses where are the
persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I
would sell all, and buy it, and put myself on the road
to-day.
The race goes T\ath us on their credit. The know-
ledge, that in the city is a man who invented the
railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens. But
enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgust-
ing, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, or of fleas
— the more, the worse.
Our religion is the love and cherishing hi these
patrons. The gods of fable are the shining moments
of great men. AYe run all our vessels into one mould.
Our colossal theologies of Judaism, Christism, Bud-
dhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural
action of the human mind. The student of history
is like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or
carpets. He fancies he has a new article. If he go
to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still
repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on
the interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. Our
theism is the purification of the human mind. " Man
can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He
r.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 259
believes that the great material elements had their
origin from his thought. And our philosophy finds
one essence collected or distributed.
If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of
service we derive from others, let us be warned of
the danger of modern studies, and begin low enough.
We must not contend against love, or deny the sub-
stantial existence of other people. I know not what
woidd happen to us. We have social strengths. Our
affection towards others creates a sort of vantage or
purchase which nothing will supply. I can do that
by another which I cannot do alone. I can say to
you what I cannot first say to myself. Other men
are lenses through which we read our own minds.
Each man seeks those of diff'erent quality from his
own, and such as are good of their kind ; that is, he
seeks other men, and the otherest. The stronger the
nature, the more it is reactive. Let us have the
quality pure. A little genius let us leave alone. A
main diff'erence betwixt men is, whether they attend
their own affair or not. Man is that noble endosrenous
O
plant which grows, like the palm, from within out-
ward. His o^vn affair, though impossible to others,
he can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy
to sugar to be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. We
take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap that
which of itself will fall into our hands. I count him
a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought,
into which other men rise with labour and difficulty;
he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true
260 KEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
light, and in large relations ; whilst they must make
painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many
sources of error. His service to us is of like sort.
It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her
image on our eyes ; yet how splendid is that benefit !
It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality
to other men. And every one can do his best thing
easiest. "Peii de moyens, heaucoiip d'effit" He is great
who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds
us of others.
But he must be related to us, and our life receive
from him some promise of explanation. I cannot tell
what I would know ; but I have observed there are
jiersons who, in their character and actions, answer
questions which I have not skill to put. One man
answers some question which none of his contempo-
raries put, and is isolated. The past and passing
religions and philosophies answer some other question.
Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless
to themselves and to their times, — the sport, perhaps,
of some instinct that rules in the air ; — they do not
speak to our want. But the great are near; we know
them at sight. They satisfy expectation, and fall into
place. What is good is • effective, generative ; makes
for itself room, food, and allies. A sound apple pro-
duces seed, — a hybrid does not. Is a man in his
place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating
armies with his purpose, which is thus executed. The
river makes its own shores, and each legitimate idea
makes its own channels and welcome, — harvests for
food, institutions for expression, weapons to fight with,
I.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 261
and disciples to explain it. The true artist has the
planet for his pedestal ; the adventurer, after years
of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes.
Our common discoui\se respects two kinds of use
or service from superior men. Direct giving is
agreeable to the early belief of men ; direct giving of
material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal
youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power and
prophecy. The boy believes there is a teacher who
can sell him wisdom. Churches believe in imputed
merit. But, in strictness, we are not much cognisant
of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and education
is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is
mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature
in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing,
and the effect remains. Eight ethics are central,
and go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to
the law of the universe. Ser\dng others is serving
us. I must absolve me to myself. "Mind thy
afifair," says the spirit : "coxcomb, would you meddle
with the skies, or with other people?" Indirect
service is left. Men have a pictorial or representa-
tive quality, and serve us in the intellect. Behmen
and Swedenborg saw that things were representative.
Men are also representative ; first, of things, and
secondly, of ideas.
As plants convert the minerals into food for
animals, so each man converts some raw material in
nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity,
magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the
makers of tools ; the inventor of decimal notation ;
262 KEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
the geometer; the engineer; the musician, — severally
make an easy way for all, through unknown and
impossible confusions. Each man is, by secret lik-
ins:, connected with some district of natui^e, whose
agent and interpreter he is, as Linnaeus, of plants;
Huber, of bees ; Fries, of lichens ; Van Mons, of pears ;
Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton,
of fluxions.
A man is a centre for nature, running out threads
of relation through every thing, fluid and solid,
material and elemental. The earth rolls ; every clod
and stone comes to the meridian : so every organ,
function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation
to the brain. It waits long, but its turn comes.
Each plant has its parasite, and each created thing
its lover and poet. Justice has already been done to
steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine,
to corn, and cotton ; but how few materials are yet
used by our arts ! The mass of creatures and of
qualities are still hid and expectant. It would seem
as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy
tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each must be
disenchanted, and walk forth to the day in human
shape. In the history of discovery, the ripe and
latent truth seems to have fashioned a brain for itself.
A magnet must be made man in some Gilbert, or
Swedenborg, or Oersted, before the general mind can
come to entertain its powers.
If we limit ourselves to the first advantages ; — a
sober grace adheres to the mineral and botanic
kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, comes up
I.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 263
as the charm of nature,— the glitter of the spar, the
sureness of affinity, the veracity of angles. Light
and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and food, sweet
and sour, soHd, liquid, and gas, circle us round in a
wi^eath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel,
beguile the day of life. The eye repeats every day
the first eulogy on things — " He saw that they were
good." We know where to find them; and these
performers are relished all the more after a httle
experience of the pretending races. We are entitled,
also, to higher advantages. Something is wanting to
science, imtil it has been humanised. The table of
logarithms is one thing, and its ^dtal play in botany,
music, optics, and architecture, another. There are
advancements to numbers, anatomy, architecture,
astronomy, little suspected at first, when, by union
with intellect and will, they ascend into the life, and
reappear in conversation, character, and politics.
But this comes later. We speak now only of our
acquaintance with them in their own sphere and the
way in which they seem to fascinate and draw to them
some genius who occupies himself with one thing all
his life long. The possibility of interpretation lies in
the identity of the observer with the observed. Each
material thing has its celestial side; has its transla-
tion, through humanity, into the spiritual and neces-
sary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible
as any other. And to these, their ends, all things
continually ascend. The gases gather to the solid
firmament : the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and
grows ; arrives at the Cjuadruped, and walks ; arrives
264 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
at the man, and thinks. But also the constituency
determines the vote of the representative. He is not
only representative, but participant. Like can only
be known by like. The reason why he knows about
them is, that he is of them ; he has just come out of
nature, or from being a part of that thing. Animated
chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc of
zinc. Their quality makes his career; and he can
variously publish their virtues, because they compose
him. Man, made of the dust of the world, does not
forset his orioin ; and all that is yet inanimate will
one day speak and reason. Unpublished nature will
have its whole secret told. Shall we say that quartz
mountains will pulverise into innumerable Werners,
Yon Buchs, and Beaumonts ; and the laboratory of
the atmosphere holds in solution I know not what
Berzeliuses and Davys ?
Thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on the
poles of the earth. This quasi omnipresence supplies
the imbecility of our condition. In one of those
celestial days, when heaven and earth meet and adorn
each other, it seems a poverty that we can only spend
it once : we wish for a thousand heads, a thousand
bodies, that we might celebrate its immense beauty
in many ways and places. Is this fancy 1 Well, in
good faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. How
easily we adopt their labours ! Every ship that comes
to America got its chart from Columbus, Every
novel is a debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who
shaves A\dth a foreplane borrows the genius 'of a
forgotten inventor. Life is girt all round with a
I.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 265
zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have
perished to add their point of light to our sky.
Engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theo-
logian, and every man, inasmuch as he has any
science, is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes
and longitudes of our condition. These road-makers
on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area
of life, and multiply our relations. We are as much
gainers by finding a new property in the old earth as
by acquiring a new planet.
We are too passive in the reception of these
material or semi-material aids. We must not be
sacks and stomachs. To ascend one step, — we are
better served through our sympathy. Acti^dty is
contagious. Looking where others look, and con-
versing with the same things, we catch the charm
which lured them. Napoleon said, "You must not
fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him
all your art of war." Talk much with any man of
vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of
looking at things in the same Hght, and, on each
occurrence, we anticipate his thought.
Men are helpful through the intellect and the
afi'ections. Other help, I find a false appearance.
If you affect to give me bread and fire, 1 perceive
that I pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves
me as it found me, neither better nor worse : but all
mental and moral force is a positive good. It goes
out from you, whether you will or not, and profits
me whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear
of personal vigour of any kind, great power of per-
266 REPEESENTATIFE MEN. [i.
formance, without fresh resolution. We are emulous
of all that man can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter
Ealeigh, "I know that he can toil terribly," is an
electric touch. So are Clarendon's portraits, — of
Hampden ; " who was of an industry and vigilance
not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious,
and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle
and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his
best parts," — of Falkland; "who was so severe an
adorer of truth, that he could as easily have given
himself leave to steal, as to dissemble." We cannot
read Plutarch, A\athout a tingling of the blood ; and
I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius : " A sage
is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the
manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become
intelligent, and the wavering determined."
This is the moral of biography ; yet it is hard for
departed men to touch the quick like our ov.ti com-
panions, whose names may not last as long. What
is he whom I never think of? whilst in every
solitude are those who succour our genius, and stimu-
late us in wonderful manners. There is a power in
love to divine another's destiny better than that other
can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his
task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime
attraction to whatever virtue is in us ? AYe will
never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. We
are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the
diggers on the railroad will not again shame us.
Under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure,
as I think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the
I.] USES OF GREAT MEK 267
day, from Coriolanus and Gracchus, down to Pitt,
Lafayette, Wellington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear
the shouts in the street ! The people cannot see him
enough. They delight in a man. Here is a head
and a trunk ! What a front ! what eyes ! Atlantean
shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal
inward force to guide the great machine ! This
pleasure of full expression to that which, in their
private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed,
runs, also, much higher, and is the secret of the
reader's joy in literary genius. Nothing is kept back.
There is fire enough to fuse the mountain of ore.
Shakspeare's principal merit may be conveyed, in say-
ing that he, of all men, best understands the English
language, and can say what he will. Yet these
imchoked channels and floodgates of expression are
only health or fortunate constitution. Shakspeare's
name suggests other and purely intellectual benefits.
Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with
their medals, swords, and armorial coats, like the
addressing to a human being thoughts out of a cer-
tain height, and presupposing his intelligence. This
honour, which is possible in personal intercourse
scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius perpetually pays :
contented, if now and then in a century the profi"er
is accepted. The indicators of the values of matter
are degraded to a sort of cooks and confectioners, on
the appearance of the indicators of ideas. Genius is
the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible
regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting
us T\i.th new fields of activity, cools our afi'ection for
268 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
the old. These are at once accepted as the reality,
of which the world we have conversed mth is the
show.
We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school
to see the power and beauty of the body; there is
the like pleasure, and a higher benefit, from witness-
ing intellectual feats of all kinds ; as, feats of memory,
of mathematical combination, great power of abstrac-
tion, the transmutings of the imagination, even versa-
tility, and concentration, as these acts expose the
invisible organs and members of the mind, which
respond, member for member, to the parts of the
body. For, we thus enter a new gymnasium, and
learn to choose men by their truest marks, taught,
with Plato, "to choose those who can, "without aid
from the eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth
and to being." Foremost among these activities are
the summersaults, spells, and resurrections, wrought
by the imagination. When this wakes, a man seems
to multiply ten times or a thousand times his force.
It opens the delicious sense of indeterminate size, and
inspires an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic
as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book,
or a word dropped in conversation, sets free our
fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with
galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the Pit. And
this benefit is real, because we are entitled to these
enlargements, and, once having passed the bounds,
shall never again be quite the miserable pedants we
were.
The high functions of the intellect are so allied
rj USES OF GREAT MEN. 269
that some imaginative power usually appears in all
eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the first
class, but especially in meditative men of an intuitive
habit of thought. This class serve us, so that they
have the perception of identity and the perception of
reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakspeare, Sweden-
borg, Goethe, never shut on either of these laws.
The perception of these laws is a kind of meter of the
mind. Little minds are little, through failure to see
them.
Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight
in reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald.
Especially when a mind of powerful method has
instructed men, we find the examples of oppression.
The dominion of Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy,
the credit of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke, — in rehgion,
the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the sects
vrhich have taken the name of each founder, are in
point. Alas ! every man is such a victim. The
imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence
of power. It is the delight of "vulgar talent to dazzle
and to bind the beholder. But true genius seeks to
defend us from itself. True genius will not im-
poverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. If
a wise man should appear in our village, he would
create, in those who conversed with him, a new con-
sciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unob-
served advantages ; he would establish a sense of
immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we
could not be cheated; as every one would discern the
checks and guarantees of condition. The rich would
270 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes
and their resources.
But nature brings all this about in due time.
Rotation is her remedy. The soul is impatient of
masters, and eager for change. Housekeepers say of
a domestic who has been valuable, "She had lived
with me long enough." We are tendencies, or rather,
symptoms, and none of us complete. We touch and
go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the
law of nature. When nature removes a great man,
people explore the horizon for a successor ; but none
comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with
him. In some other and quite different field, the
next man will appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin,
but now a great salesman ; then a road -contractor ;
then a student of fishes ; then a buffalo -hunting
explorer; or a semi -savage western general. Thus
we make a stand against our rougher masters; but
against the best there is a finer remedy. The power
which they communicate is not theirs. When we are
exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to
the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.
I must not forget that we have a special debt to
a single class. Life is a scale of degrees. Between
rank and rank of our great men are wide intervals.
Mankind have, in all ages, attached themselves to a
few persons, who, either by the quality of that idea
they embodied, or by the largeness of their reception,
were entitled to the position of leaders and lawgivers.
These teach us the qualities of primary nature, —
admit us to the constitution of things. We swim.
I.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 271
day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually
amused with houses and towns in the air, of which
the men about us are duj^es. But life is a sincerity.
In lucid intervals we say, " Let there be an entrance
opened for me into realities ; I have worn the fool's
cap too long." A\"e will know the meaning of our
economies and politics. Give us the cipher, and, if
persons and things are scores of a celestial music, let
us read off the strains. AYe have been cheated of
our reason; j^et there have been sane men, who
enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they
know, they know for us. With each new mind a
new secret of nature transpires ; nor can the Bible be
closed until the last great man is born. These men
correct the delirium of the animal spirits, make us
considerate, and engage us to new aims and powers.
The veneration of mankind selects these for the
highest place. Witness the multitude of statues,
pictures, and memorials, which recall their genius in
every city, callage, house, and ship : —
" Ever their phantoms arise before us,
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood ;
At bed and table they lord it o'er us,
With looks of beauty, and words of good. "
How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas,
the service rendered by those who introduce moral
truths into the general mind 1 — I am plagued, in all
my K^dng, with a perpetual tariff of prices. If I work
in my garden, and prime an apple-tree, I am well
enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in
the like occupation. But it comes to mind that a
272 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing
done. I go to Boston or New York, and run up and
down on my affairs : they are sped, but so is the day.
I am vexed by the recollection of this price I have
paid for a trifling advantage. I remember the j^gaw
d^ane, on which whoso sat should have his desire, but
a piece of the skin was gone for every wish. I go to
a convention of philanthropists. Do what I can, I
cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But if there
should appear in the company some gentle soul who
knows little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba,
but who announces a law that disposes these particu-
lars, and so certifies me of the equity which check-
mates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker,
and apprises me of my independence on any con-
ditions of country, or time, or human body, that man
liberates me ; I forget the clock. I pass out of the
sore relation to persons. I am healed of my hui'ts.
I am made immortal by apprehending my possession
of incorruptible goods. Here is great competition of
rich and poor. We live in a market, where is only
so much wheat, or wool, or land; and if I have so
much more, every other must have so much less.
I seem to have no good, without breach of good
manners. Nobody is glad in the gladness of another,
and our system is one of war, of an injurious superi-
ority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to
"vvish to be first. It is our system ; and a man comes
to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and
hatreds of his competitors. But in these new fields
there is room : here are no self-esteems, no exclusions.
I.] USES OF GEEAT MEN. 273
I admire great men of all classes, those who stand
for facts, and for thoughts ; I like rough and smooth,
"Scourges of God," and "Darlings of the human
race." I like the first Caesar; and Charles V. of
Spain ; and Charles XII. of Sweden ; Richard Plan-
tagenet; and Bonaparte, in France. I applaud a
sufficient man, an ofiicer ecj^ual to his office ; captains,
ministers, senators. I hke a master standing firm
on legs of iron, well born, rich, handsome, eloquent,
loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascina-
tion into tributaries and supporters of his power.
Sword and staff", or talents sword-like or staff-like,
carry on the work of the world. But I find him
greater when he can abolish himself, and all heroes,
by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of
persons ; this subtiliser, and irresistible upward force,
into our thought, destropng individualism ; the power
so great, that the potentate is nothing. Then he is a
monarch, who gives a constitution to his people; a
pontiff", who preaches the equality of souls, and re-
leases his servants from their barbarous homages ; an
emperor, who can spare his empire.
But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness,
two or three points of service. Nature never spares
the opium or nepenthe ; but, wherever she mars her
creature ^viih some deformity or defect, lays her pop-
pies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes
joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incap-
able of seeing it, though all the world point their
VOL. IV. T
274 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
finger at it every day. The worthless and offensive
members of society, whose existence is a social pest,
invariably think themselves the most ill-used people
alive, and never get over their astonishment at the
ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.
Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in
heroes and archangels, but in gossips and nurses. Is
it not a rare contrivance that lodged the due inertia
in every creature, the conserving, resisting energy,
the anger at being waked or changed'? Altogether
independent of the intellectual force in each, is the
pride of opinion, the security that we are right. Not
the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, but uses
what spark of perception and faculty is left, to chuckle
and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities
of all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of
absurdity. Not one has a misgiving of being wrong.
Was it not a bright thought that made things cohere
Avith this bitumen, fastest of cements? But, in the
midst of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure
goes by, which Thersites too can love and admire.
This is he that should marshal us the way we were
going. There is no end to his aid. Without Plato,
we should almost lose our faith in the possibility of a
reasonable book. We seem to want but one, but we
want one. We love to associate with heroic persons,
since our receptivity is unlimited; and, mth the
great, our thoughts and manners easily become great.
We are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy.
There needs but one wise man in a company, and all
are wise, so rapid is the contagion.
I.] USES OF GREAT MEX. 275
Great men are thus a colly riiim to clear our eyes
from egotism, and enable us to see other people and
their works. But there are vices and follies incident
to whole populations and ages. Men resemble their
contemporaries even more than their progenitors.
It is observed in old couples, or in persons who have
been housemates for a course of years, that they grow
ahke ; and, if they shoidd live long enough, we should
not be able to know them apart. Xature abhors these
complaisances, which threaten to melt the world into
a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin aggluti-
nations. The like assimilation goes on between men
of one tovra, of one sect, of one political party ; and
the ideas of the time are in the air, and infect all who
breathe it. Viewed from any high point, this city
of New York, yonder city of London, the western
civilisation, would seem a bundle of insanities. We
keep each other in countenance, and exasperate by
emulation the frenzy of the time. The shield against
the stingings of conscience, is the universal practice,
or our contemporaries. Again ; it is very easy to be
as wise and good as your companions. ^Ye learn of
our contemporaries what they know, without effort,
and almost through the pores of the skin. AYe catch
it by sympathy, or, as a wife arrives at the intellectual
and moral elevations of her husband. But we stop
where they stop. Yery hardly can we take another
step. The great, or such as hold of natiu-e, and
transcend fasliions, by their fidelity to universal ideas,
are saviours from these federal errors, and defend us
from our contemporaries. They are the exceptions
276 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
which we want, where all grows alike. A foreign
greatness is the antidote for cabalism.
Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves
from too much conversation with our mates, and
exult in the depth of nature in that direction in which
he leads us. What indemnification is one great man
for populations of pigmies ! Every mother wishes
one son a genius, though aP the rest should be medi-
ocre. But a new danger appears in the excess of
influence of the great man. His attractions warp us
from our place. We have become underlings and
intellectual suicides. Ah ! yonder in the horizon is
our help : — other great men, new qualities, counter-
weights and checks on each other. We cloy of the
honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes
a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted,
yet he said of the good Jesus, even, " I pray you, let
me never hear that man's name again." They cry up
the virtues of George Washington, — "Damn George
Washington ! " is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and
confutation. But it is human nature's indispensable
defence. The centripetence augments the centrifu-
gence. We balance one man with his opposite, and
the health of the state depends on the see-saw.
There is, however, a speedy limit to the use of
heroes. Every genius is defended from approach by
quantities of unavailableness. They are very attrac-
tive, and seem at a distance our own; but we are
hindered on all sides from approach. The more we
are drawn, the more we are repelled. There is some-
thing not solid in the good that is done for us. The
I.] USES or GEE AT MEX. 277
best discovery the discoverer makes for himself. It
has something imreal for his companion, until he too
has substantiated it. It seems as if the Deity dressed
each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues
and powers not communicable to other men, and,
sending it to perform one more turn through the
circle of beings, wrote ^^Not transferahle,'' and "Good far
this trip only,^' on these garments of the soul. There
is somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds.
The boundaries are in^dsible, but thev are never
crossed. There is such good mil to impart, and such
good will to receive, that each threatens to become the
other ; but the law of individuality collects its secret
strength : you are you, and I am I, and so we remain.
For Nature wishes everything to remain itself;
and, whilst every individual strives to grow and
exclude, and to exclude and grow, to the extremities
of the universe, and to impose the law of its being
on every other creature, Nature steadily aims to
protect each against every other. Each is self-
defended. Nothing is more marked than the power
by which individuals are guarded from indi^dduals,
in a world where every benefactor becomes so easily a
malefactor, only by continuation of his activity into
places where it is not due ; where children seem so
much at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where
almost all men are too social and interferinsr. AVe
rightly speak of the guardian angels of children.
How superior in their security from infusions of
evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought !
They shed their own abundant beauty on the objects
278 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN". [i.
they behold. Therefore, they are not at the mercy
of such poor educators as we adults. If we huff and
chide them, they soon come not to mind it, and get a
self-reliance ; and if we indulge them to folly, they
learn the limitation elsewhere.
We need not fear excessive influence. A more
generous trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick
at no humiliation. Grudge no office thou canst
render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of
their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who cares
for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler ? I^ever
mind the taunt of Boswellism : the devotion may
easily be greater than the wretched pride which is
guarding its o^ti skirts. Be another : not thyself,
but a Platonist ; not a soul, but a Christian ; not a
naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a poet, but a Shak-
sperian. In vain^ the wheels of tendency will not
stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or of love
itself, hold thee there. On, and for ever onward!
The microscope observ^es a monad or wheel -insect
among the infusories circulating in water. Presently,
a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit,
and it becomes two perfect animals. The ever-pro-
ceeding detachment appears not less in all thought,
and in society. Children think they cannot live
without their parents. But, long before they are
aware of it, the black dot has appeared, and the
detachment taken place. Any accident will now
reveal to them their independence.
But great men : — the word is injurious. Is there
J.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 279
caste ■? is there fate 1 AMiat becomes of the promise
to virtue 1 The thoughtful youth laments the super-
foetation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he
says, " is your hero ; but look at yonder poor Paddy,
whose country is his wheelbarrow ; look at his whole
nation of Paddies."' T\'liy are the masses, from the
da^ATi of history down, food for knives and powder ?
The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment,
opinion, love, self-devotion ; and they make war and
death sacred ; — but what for the wretches whom they
liire and kill ? The cheapness of man is every day's
tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be
low, as that we should be low; for we must have
society.
Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say society is
a Pestalozzian school : all are teachers and pupils in
turn. We are equally served by recei\^ng and by
imparting. Men who know the same things are not
long the best company for each other. But bring to
each an intelligent person of another experience, and
it is as if you let off water from a lake, by cutting a
lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and
great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint
out his thought to himself. We pass very fast, in
our personal moods, from dignity to dependence.
And if any appear never to assume the chair, but
always to stand and serve, it is because we do not
see the company in a sufiaciently long period for the
whole rotation of parts to come about. As to what
we call the masses, and common men ; — there are no
common men. All men are at last of a size ; and
280 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [i.
true art is only possible, on the conviction that
every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play,
and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have
won them ! But heaven reserves an equal scope for
every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced
his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld
his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.
The heroes of the hour are relatively great : of a
faster growth; or they are such, in whom, at the
moment of success, a quality is ripe which is then in
request. Other days will demand other qualities.
Some rays escape the common observer, and want a
finely adapted eye. Ask the great man if there be
none greater. His companions are ; and not the less
great, but the more, that society cannot see them.
Nature never sends a great man into the planet, mth-
out confiding the secret to another soul.
One gracious fact emerges from these studies^ —
that there is true ascension in our love. The reputa-
tions of the nineteenth century will one day be
quoted, to prove its barbarism. The genius of
humanity is the real subject whose biography is
written in our annals. We must infer much, and
supply many chasms in the record. The history of
the universe is symptomatic, and life is mnemonical.
No man, in all the procession of famous men, is reason
or illumination, or that essence we were lookino- for •
but is an exliibition, in some quarter, of new possi-
bilities. Could we one day complete the immense
figure which these flagrant points compose ! " The
study of many individuals leads us to an elemental
I.] USES OF GREAT MEN. 281
resrion '^^'llerein the individual is lost, or wherein all
touch by their summits. Thought and feeling, that
break out there, cannot be impounded by any fence
of personality. This is the key to the power of the
greatest men, — their spirit diffuses itself. A new
quality of mind travels by night and by day, in con-
centric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by
unknown methods : the union of all minds appears
intimate : what gets admission to one, cannot be kept
out of any other : the smallest acquisition of truth or
of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the
commonwealth of souls. If the disparities of talent
and position vanish, when the individuals are seen in
the duration which is necessary to complete the career
of each ; even more swiftly the seeming injustice dis-
appears, when we ascend to the central identity of all
the individuals, and know that they are made of the
substance which ordaineth and doeth.
The genius of humanit}" is the right point of view
of history. The qualities abide ; the men who exhibit
them have now more, now less, and pass away ; the
qualities remain on another brow. No experience is
more famihar. Once you saw phoenixes : they are
gone , the world is not therefore disenchanted. The
vessels on which you read sacred emblems turn out to
be common pottery ; but the sense of the pictures is
sacred, and you may still read them transferred to the
walls of the world. For a time our teachers serve us
personally, as meters or milestones of progress. Once
they were angels of knowledge, and their figures
touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw their
282 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [r.
means, culture, and limits; and they yielded their
place to other geniuses. Happy, if a few names
remain so high, that we have not been able to read
them nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed
them of a ray. But, at last, we shall cease to look in
men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with
their social and delegated quality. All that respects
the indi^ddual is temporary and prospective, like the
individual himself, who is ascending out of his limits
into a catholic existence. We have never come at
the true and best benefit of any genius, so long as we
believe him an original force. In the moment when
he ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us
more as an effect. Then he appears as an exponent
of a vaster mind and will. The opaque self becomes
transparent with the light of the First Cause.
Yet, within the limits of human education and
agency, we may say, great men exist that there may
be greater men. The destiny of organised nature is
amelioration, and who can tell its limits "? It is for
man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst he
lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that
climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and the
germs of love and benefit may be multiplied.
n.
PLATO; OE, THE PHILOSOPHER.
Among books, Plato only is entitled to Omar's fanatical
compliment to the Koran, when he said, " Burn the
libraries; for their value is in this book." These
sentences contain the culture of nations ; these are
the corner-stone of schools ; these are the fountain
head of literatures. A discipline it is in logic, arith-
metic, taste, symmetry, poetr}?-, language, rhetoric,
ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. There was
never such range of speculation. Out of Plato come
all things that are still written and debated among
men of thought. Great havoc makes he among our
originalities. We have reached the mountain from
which all these drift boulders were detached. The
Bible of the learned for twenty-two hundred years,
every brisk young man, who says in succession fine
things to each reluctant generation, — Boetliius, Eabe-
lais, Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Eousseau, Alfieri, Cole-
ridge, — is some reader of Plato, translating into the
vernacular, wittily, his good things. Even the men
of grander proportion suffer some deduction from the
284 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
misfortune (shall I say T) of coming after tliis exhaust-
ing generaliser. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton,
Behmen, Swedenborg, Goethe, are likewise his debtors,
and must say after him. For it is fair to credit the
broadest generaliser with all the particulars deducible
from his thesis.
Plato is philosophy, and philosophy Plato,— at
once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither
Saxon nor Eoman has availed to add any idea to his
categories. No wife, no children had he, and the
thinkers of all civilised nations are his posterity, and
are tinged with his mind. How many great men
Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be
his men, — Platonists ! the Alexandrians, a constellation
of genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas
More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord
Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham,
Thomas Taylor ; Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Miran-
dola. Calvinism is in his Phajdo : Christianity is in
it. Mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its
handbook of morals, the Akhlak-y-Jalaly, from him.
Mysticism finds in Plato all its texts. This citizen
of a town in Greece is no villager nor patriot. An
Englishman reads and says, "how English !" a German,
— "how Teutonic!" an Italian, — "how Roman and
how Greek ! " As they say that Helen of Argos had
that universal beauty that everybody felt related to
her, so Plato seems, to a reader in New England, an
American genius. His broad humanity transcends all
sectional lines.
This range of Plato instructs us what to think of
II.] PLATO ; OE, THE PHILOSOPHER. 285
the vexed question concerning his reputed works, —
what are genuine, what spurious. It is singular that
wherever we find a man higher, by a whole head, than
any of his contemporaries, it is sm^e to come into
doubt what are his real works. Thus, Homer, Plato,
Raffaelle, Shakspeare. For these men magnetise
their contemporaries, so that their companions can do
for them what they can never do for themselves ; and
the great man does thus live in several bodies, and
write, or paint, or act, by many hands : and, after
some time, it is not easy to say what is the authentic
work of the master, and what is only of his school.
Plato, too, like every great man, consumed his own
times. What is a great man, but one of great affinities,
who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all know-
ables, as his food 1 He can spare nothing ; he can
dispose of everything. What is not good for virtue
is good for knowledge. Hence his contemporaries tax
him with plagiarism. But the inventor only knows
how to borrow; and society is glad to forget the
innumerable labourers who ministered to this archi-
tect, and reserves all its gratitude for him. When
we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quota-
tions from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. Be
it so. Every book is a quotation ; and every house is
a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone
quarries ; and every man is a quotation from all his
ancestors. And this grasping inventor puts all nations
under contribution.
Plato absorbed the learning of his times, — Philo-
laus, Timaeus, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and what else ;
286 EEPKESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
then his master, Socrates ; and, finding himself still
capable of a larger synthesis, — beyond all example
then or since, — he travelled into Italy, to gain what
Pythagoras had for him ; then into Egypt, and per-
haps still farther east, to import the other element,
A\^hich Europe wanted, into the European mind. This
breadth entitles him to stand as the representative of
philosophy. He says, in the Eepublic, " Such a genius
as philosophers must of necessity have, is wont but
seldom, in all its parts, to meet in one man ; but its
different parts generally spring up in different persons."
Every man, who would do anything well, must come
to it from a higher ground. A philosopher must be
more than a philosopher. Plato is clothed with the
powers of a poet, stands upon the highest place of the
poet, and (though I doubt he wanted the decisive gift
of lyric expression) mainly is not a poet, because he
chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior purpose.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.
Their cousins can tell you nothing about them.
They lived in their writings, and so their house and
street life was trivial and commonplace. If you
would know their tastes and complexions, the most
admirinsf of their readers most resembles them.
Plato, especially, has no external biography. If he
had lover, ^yiie, or children, we hear nothing of
them. He ground them all into paint. As a good
chimney burns its smoke, so a philosopher converts
the value of all his fortunes into his intellectual
performances.
He was born 430 A.C., about the time of the death
II.] PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 287
of Pericles ; was of patrician connection in his times
and city ; and is said to have had an early inclination
for war ; but, in his twentieth year, meeting mth
Socrates, was easily dissuaded from this pursuit, and
remained for ten years his scholar, until the death of
Socrates. He then went to Megara; accepted the
invitations of Dion and of Dionysius, to the court of
Sicily; and went thither three times, though very
capriciously treated. He travelled into Italy; then
into Egypt, where he stayed a long time ; some say
three, — some say thirteen years. It is said he went
farther, into Babylonia: this is uncertain. Eetuming
to Athens, he gave lessons, in the Academy, to those
whom his fame drew thither ; and died, as we have
received it, in the act of writing, at eighty-one years.
But the biography of Plato is interior. We are
to account for the supreme elevation of this man in
the intellectual history of our race, — how it happens
that, in proportion to the culture of men, they become
his scholars ; that, as our Jewish Bible has implanted
itself in the table-talk and household life of every man
and woman in the European and American nations,
so the TVTitings of Plato have preoccupied every school
of learning, every lover of thought, every church,
every poet, — making it impossible to think on certain
levels, except through him. He stands between the
truth and every man's mind, and has almost impressed
language, and the primary forms of thought, with his
name and seal. I am struck, in reading him, w^th
the extreme modernness of his style and spirit. Here
is the germ of that Europe we know so well, in its
288 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
long history of arts and arms : here are all its traits,
already discernible in the mind of Plato, — and in none
before him. It has spread itself since into a hundred
histories, but has added no new element. This per^
petual modernness is the measure of merit, in every
work of art; since the author of it was not misled by
anything shortlived or local, but abode by real and
abiding traits. How Plato came thus to be Europe,
and philosophy, and almost literature, is the problem
for us to solve.
This could not have happened, without a sound,
sincere, and catholic man, able to honour, at the same
time, the ideal, or laws of the mind, and fate, or the
order of nature. The first period of a nation, as of
an individual, is the period of unconscious strength.
Children cry, scream, and stamp with fury, unable to
express their desires. As soon as they can speak and
tell their want, and the reason of it, they become
gentle. In adult life, whilst the perceptions are
obtuse, men and women talk vehemently and super-
latively, blunder and c^uarrel : their manners are full
of desperation ; their speech is full of oaths. As soon
as, with culture, things have cleared up a little, and
they see them no longer in lumps and masses, but accu-
rately distributed, they desist from that weak vehe-
mence, and explain their meaning in detail. If the
tongue had not been framed for articulation, man
would still be a beast in the forest. The same weak-
ness and want, on a higher plane, occurs daily in the
education of ardent young men and women.' "Ah!
you don't understand me: I have never met with any
II.] PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 289
one who comprehends me :" and they sigh and weep,
write verses, and walk alone, — fault of porter to
express their precise meaning. In a month or two,
through the favour of their good genius, they meet
some one so related as to assist their volcanic estate ;
and, good communication being once established, they
are thenceforward good citizens. It is ever thus.
The progress is to accuracy, to skill, to truth, from
blind force.
There is a moment, in the history of ever}^ nation,
when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the percep-
tive powers reach their ripeness, and have not yet
become microscopic; so that man, at that instant,
extends across the entire scale ; and, mth his feet
still planted on the immense forces of night, con-
verses, by his eyes and brain, mth solar and stellar
creation. That is the moment of adult health, the
culmination of power.
Such is the history of Europe, in all points ; and
such in philosophy. Its early records, almost perished,
are of the immigrations from Asia, bringing with them
the dreams of barbarians; a confusion of crude notions
of morals, and of natural philosophy, gradually sub-
siding, through the partial insight of single teachers.
Before Pericles came the Seven AYise Masters, and
we have the beginnings of geometry, metaphysics, and
ethics : then the partialists, — deducing the origin of
things from flux or water, or from aii', or from fire, or
from mind. All mix mth these causes mj^thologic
pictures. At last comes Plato, the distributor, who
needs no barbaric paint or tattoo, or whooping ; for
VOL. IV. u
290 REPEESENTATIYE MEN. [n.
he can define. He leaves with Asia the vast and
superlative ; he is the arrival of accuracy and intelli-
gence. " He shall be as a god to me, who can rightly
divide and define."
This defining is philosophy. Philosophy is the
account which the human mind gives to itself of the
constitution of the world. Two cardinal facts lie
for ever at the base ; the one, and the two. — 1. Unity,
or Identity ; and 2. Variety. AVe unite all things,
by perceiving the laAv which pervades them ; by per-
ceiving the superficial differences, and the profound
resemblances. But every mental act, — this very per-
ception of identity or oneness, recognises the difference
of things. Oneness and otherness. It is impossible
to speak, or to think, without embracing both.
The mind is urged to ask for one cause of many
effects ; then for the cause of that ; and again the
cause, diving still into the profound : self-assured that
it shall arrive at an absolute and sufficient one, — a one
that shall be all. "In the midst of the sun is the lioht,
in the midst of the light is truth, and in the midst
of truth is the imperishable being," say the Yedas.
All philosophy, of east and west, has the same centri-
petence. Urged by an opposite necessity, the mind
returns from the one, to that which is not one, but
other or many ; from cause to effect ; and affirms the
necessary existence of variety, the self-existence of
both, as each is involved in the other. These strictly-
blended elements it is the problem of thought to
separate, and to reconcile. Their existence i^ mutu-
ally contradictory and exclusive ; and each so fast
ir.] PLATO ; OE, THE PHILOSOPHEE. 291
slides into the other, that we can never say what is
one, and what it is not. The Proteus is as nimble in
the highest as in the lowest grounds, when we con-
template the one, the true, the good, — as in the sui^-
faces and extremities of matter.
In all nations, there are minds which incline to
dwell in the conception of the fundamental Unity.
The raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose
all being in one Being. This tendency finds its
highest expression in the religious ^ratings of the
East, and chiefly, in the Indian Scriptures, in the
Vedas, the Bhagavat Geeta, and the Vishnu Purana.
Those writings contain little else than this idea, and
they rise to pure and sublime strains in celebrating
it.
The Same, the Same : friend and foe are of one
stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow,
are of one stuff; and the stuff is such, and so much,
that the variations of form are unimportant. " You
are fit" (says the supreme Krishna to a sage) "to
apprehend that you are not distinct from me. That
which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with
its gods, and heroes, and mankind. Men contemplate
distinctions, because they are stupefied with ignor-
ance." " The words / and mine constitute ignorance.
AMiat is the great end of all, you shall now learn from
me. It is soul, — one in all bodies, pervading, uniform,
perfect, pre-eminent over natui'e, exempt from birth,
growth, and decay, omnipresent, made up of true
knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities,
with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present,
292 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [n.
and to come. The knowledge that this spirit, which
is essentially one, is in one's own, and in all other
bodies, is the msdom of one who knows the unity of
things. As one diffusive air, passing through the
perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes
of a scale, so the nature of the Great S|)irit is single,
though its forms be manifold, arising from the con-
sequences of acts. \Yhen the difference of the invest-
ing form, as that of God, or the rest, is destroyed,
there is no distinction." " The whole world is but a
manifestation of Vishnu, who is identical with all
things^ and is to be regarded hy the wise, as not
differing from, but as the same as themselves. I
neither am going nor coming ; nor is my dwelling in
any one place ; nor art thou, thou ; nor are others,
others; nor am I, I." As if he had said, "All is for
the soul, and the soul is Vishnu; and animals and
stars are transient paintings ; and light is whitewash ;
and durations are deceptive ; and form is imprison-
ment ; and heaven itself a decoy." That which the
soul seeks is resolution into being, above form, out of
Tartarus, and out of heaven, — liberation from nature.
If speculation tends thus to a terrific miity, in
which all things are absorbed, action tends directly
backwards to diversity. The first is the course or
gravitation of mind; the second is the power of
nature. Nature is the manifold. The unity absorbs,
and melts or reduces. Nature opens and creates.
These two principles reappear and interpenetrate all
things, all thought ; the one, the many. One fs being ;
the other, intellect : one is necessity ; the other,
ji.] PLATO j OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 293
freedom : one, rest ; the other, motion : one, power ;
the other, distribution : one, strength ; the other,
pleasure : one, consciousness ; the other, definition :
one, genius ; the other, talent : one, earnestness ; the
other, knowledge : one, possession ; the other, trade :
one, caste ; the other, culture : one, king ; the other,
democracy : and, if we dare carry these generalisations
a step higher, and name the last tendency of both,
we might say, that the end of the one is escape from
organisation, — pure science ; and the end of the other
is the highest instrumentality, or use of means, or
executive deity.
Each student adheres, by temperament and by
habit, to the first or to the second of these gods of
the mind. By religion, he tends to unity ; by intel-
lect, or by the senses, to the many. A too rapid
unification, and an excessive appliance to parts and
particulars, are the twin dangers of speculation.
To this partiality the history of nations corre-
sponded. The country of unity, of immovable institu-
tions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in abstrac-
tions, of men faithful in doctrine and in practice to
the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, immense fate, is
Asia ; and it realises this faith in the social institution
of caste. On the other side, the genius of Europe is
active and creative : it resists caste by culture ; its
philosophy was a discipline ; it is a land of arts,
inventions, trade, freedom. If the East loved infinity,
the \Yest delighted in boundaries.
European civility is the triumph of talent, the
extension of system, the sharpened understanding,
294: KEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
adaptive skill, delight in forms, delight in manifesta-
tion, in comprehensible results. Pericles, Athens,
Greece, had been working in this element with the
joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of the
detriment of an excess. They saw before them no
sinister political economy ; no ominous Malthus ; no
Paris or London ; no pitiless subdivision of classes, —
the doom of the pin-makers, the doom of the weavers,
of dressers, of stockingers, of carders, of spinners, of
colliers ; no Ireland ; no Indian caste, superinduced
by the efforts of Europe to throw it off. The under-
standing was in its health and prime. Art was in its
splendid novelty. They cut the Pentelican marble
as if it were snow, and their perfect w^orks in archi-
tecture and sculpture seemed things of course, not
more difficult than the completion of a new ship at
the Medford yards, or new mills at Lowell. These
things are in course, and may be taken for granted.
The Eoman legion, Byzantine legislation, English
trade, the saloons of Versailles, the cafes of Paris, the
steam-mill, steam-boat, steam-coach, may all be seen
in perspective ; the town meeting, the ballot-box, the
newspaper and cheap press.
Meantime, Plato, in Egypt and in eastern pilgrim-
ages, imbibed the idea of one Deity, in wdiich all
things are absorbed. The unity of Asia, and the
detail of Europe ; the infinitude of the Asiatic soul,
and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, sur-
face-seeking, opera-going Europe, — Plato came to
join, and by contact, to enhance the energy ot each.
The excellence of Europe and Asia is in his brain.
]i.] PLATO ; OK, THE PHILOSOPHEE. 295
Metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the
genius of Europe ; he substructs the religion of Asia,
as the base.
In short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of
the two elements. It is as easy to be great as to be
small. The reason why we do not at once believe in
admirable souls, is because they are not in our experi-
ence. In actual life, they are so rare as to be in-
credible ; but, primarily, there is not only no pre-
sumption against them, but the strongest presumption
in favour of their appearance. But whether voices
were heard in the sky, or not ; whether his mother
or his father dreamed that the infant man-child was
the son of Apollo ; whether a swarm of bees settled
on his lips, or not ; a man who could see two sides
of a thing was born. The wonderful synthesis so
familiar in nature ; the upper and the under side of
the medal of Jove ; the union of impossibilities, which
reappears in every object ; its real and its ideal power,
— was now, also, transferred entire to the conscious-
ness of a man.
The balanced soul came. If he loved abstract
truth, he saved himself by propounding the most
popular of all principles, the absolute good, which
rules rulers, and judges the judge. If he made
transcendental distinctions, he fortified himself by
drawinsT all his illustrations from sources disdained
by orators and polite conversers ; from mares and
puppies ; from pitchers and soup-ladles ; from cooks
and criers ; the shops of potters, horse -doctors,
butchers, and fishmongers. He cannot forgive in
296 REPKESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
himself a partiality, but is resolved that the two poles
of thought shall appear in his statement. His argu-
ment and his sentence are self-poised and spherical.
The two poles appear ; yes, and become two hands,
to grasp and appropriate their own.
Every great artist has been such by synthesis.
Our strength is transitional, alternating; or, shall I
say, a thread of two strands. The sea-shore, sea seen
from shore, shore seen from sea; the taste of two
metals in contact; and our enlarged powers at the
approach and at the departure of a friend ; the ex-
perience of poetic creativeness, which is not found
in staying at home, nor yet in travelling, but in
transitions from one to the other which must there-
fore be adroitly managed to present as much transi-
tional surface as possible ; this command of two ele-
ments must explain the power and the charm of
Plato. Art expresses the one or the same by the
different. Thought seeks to know unity in unity;
poetry to show it by variety ; that is, always by an
object or symbol. Plato keeps the two vases, one of
aether and one of pigment, at his side, and invariably
uses both. Things added to things, as statistics, civil
history, are inventories. Things used as language
are inexhaustibly attractive. Plato turns incessantly
the obverse and the reverse of the medal of love.
To take an example : — The physical philosophers
had sketched each his theory of the world ; the theory
of atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit ; theories mechanical
and chemical in their genius. Plato, a master of
mathematics, studious of all natural laws and causes.
II.] PLATO ; OE, THE PHILOSOPHEE. 297
feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the
Avorkl, but bare inventories and lists. To the study
of nature he therefore prefixes the dogma, — " Let us
declare the cause which led the Supreme Ordainer to
produce and compose the universe. He was good ;
and he who is good has no kind of envy. Exempt
from envy, he wished that all things should be as
much as possible like himself. Whosoever, taught
by wise men, shall admit tliis as the prime cause of
the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the
truth." "All things are for the sake of the good, and
it is the cause of everything beautiful." This dogma
animates and impersonates his philosophy.
The synthesis which makes the character of his
mind appears in all his talents. Where there is great
compass of wit we usually find excellences that com-
bine easily in the living man, but in description appear
incompatible. The mind of Plato is not to be ex-
hibited by a Chinese catalogue, but is to be appre-
hended by an original mind in the exercise of its
original power. In him the freest abandonment is
united with the precision of a geometer. His daring
imagination gives him the more solid grasp of facts ;
as the birds of highest flight have the strongest alar
bones. His patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance,
edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and par-
alvses, adorn the soimdest health and strensrth of
frame. According to the old sentence, " If Jove
should descend to the earth, he would speak in the
style of Plato."
With this palatial air, there is, for the direct aim
298 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
of several of his works, and running through the tenor
of them all, a certain earnestness, Avhich mounts, in
the Eepublic, and in the Phsedo, to piety. He has
been charsred with feiornins; sickness at the time of the
death of Socrates. But the anecdotes that have come
down from the times attest his manly interference
before the people in his master's behalf, since even
the savage cry of the assembly to Plato is preserved ;
and the indignation towards popular government, in
many of his pieces, expresses a personal exasperation.
He has a probity, a native reverence for justice and
honour, and a humanity which makes him tender for
the superstitions of the people. Add to this, he
believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight,
are from a wisdom of which man is not master ; that
the gods never philosophise ; but, by a celestial
mania, these miracles are accomplished. Horsed on
these winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits
worlds which flesh cannot enter ; he saw the souls
in pain ; he hears the doom of the judge ; he beholds
the penal metempsychosis ; the Fates, with the rock
and shears ; and hears the intoxicating hum of their
spindle.
But his circumspection never forsook him. One
would say, he had read the inscription on the gates of
Busyrane, — " Be bold ;" and on the second gate, — "Be
bold, be bold, and evermore be bold," and then again
had paused well at the third gate, — "Be not too bold."
His strength is like the momentum of a falling planet ;
and his discretion, the return of its due and perfect
curve, — so excellent is his Greek love of boundary,
IL] PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHEE. 299
and his skill in definition. In readins; lo2:arithms,
one is not more secure, than in following Plato in his
flights. Nothing can be colder than his head, when
the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the
sky. He has finished his thinking, before he brings
it to the reader ; and he abounds in the surprises of
a literary master. He has that opulence which fur-
nishes, at every turn, the precise weapon he needs.
As the rich man wears no more garments, drives no
more horses, sits in no more chambers, than the poor,
but has that one dress, or equipage, or instrument,
which is fit for the hour and the need ; so Plato, in
his plenty, is never restricted, but has the fit word.
There is, indeed, no weapon in all the armoury of wit
which he did not possess and use, — epic, analysis,
mania, intuition, music, satire, and irony, do^\Ti to
the customary and polite. His illustrations are poetry,
and his jests illustrations. Socrates' profession of
obstetric art is good philosophy ; and his finding that
word "cookery," and "adulatory art," for rhetoric, in
the Gorgias, does us a substantial service still. No
orator can measure in eSect with him who can give
good nicknames.
AVhat moderation, and understatement, and check-
ing his thunder in mid volley ! He has good-naturedly
famished the courtier and citizen with all that can
be said against the schools. "For philosophy is an
elegant thing, if any one modestly meddles with it :
but, if he is conversant with it more than is becom-
ing, it corrupts the man." He could v\'ell afford to be
generous, — he, who from the sunlike centrality and
300 EEPKESENTATIVE MEN. [n.
reach of his vision, had a faith Tnthout cloud. Such
as his perception, was his speech ; he plays with the
doubt, and makes the most of it : he 23aints and
quibbles; and by-and-l^y comes a sentence that moves
the sea and land. The admirable earnest comes not
only at intervals, in the perfect yes and no of the
dialogue, but in bursts of light. " I, therefore,
Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and con-
sider how I may exhibit my soul before the judge in
a healthy condition. Wherefore, disregarding the
honours that most men value, and looking to the
truth, I shall endeavour in reahty to live as virtuously
as I can ; and, when I die, to die so. And I invite
all other men, to the utmost of my power ; and you,
too, I in turn invite to this contest, which, I affirm,
surpasses all contests here."
He is a great average man ; one who, to the best
thinking, adds a proportion and equality in his facul-
ties, so that men see in him their own dreams and
glimpses made available, and made to pass for what
they are. A great common sense is his warrant and
qualification to be the world's interpreter. He has
reason, as all the philosophic and poetic class have :
but he has, also, what they have not, — this strong
solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the appear-
ances of the world, and build a bridge from the streets
of cities to the Atlantis. He omits never this gradua-
tion, but slopes his thought, however picturesque the
precipice on one side, to an access from the plain.
He never writes in ecstasy, or catches us up into
poetic raptures.
II.] PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 301
Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could
prostrate himself on the earth, and cover his eyes,
whilst he adored that which cannot be numbered, or
gauged, or kno^vn, or named : that of which every-
thins: can be affirmed and denied : that " which is
entit}^ and nonentity." He called it super-essential.
He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to demon-
strate that it was so, — that this being exceeded the
limits of intellect. No man ever more fully acknow-
ledged the Ineffable. Having paid his homage, as
for the human race, to the Illimitable, he then stood
erect, and for the human race affirmed, " And yet
things are knowable !" — that is, the Asia in his mind
was first heartily honoured, — the ocean of love and
power, before form, before will, before knowledge, the
Same, the Good, the One ; and now, refreshed and
empowered by this worship, the instinct of Europe,
namely, culture, returns ; and he cries. Yet things are
knowable ! They are knowable, because, being from
one, things correspond. There is a scale : and the
correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind,
of the part to the whole, is our guide. As there is a
science of stars, called astronomy ; a science of quan-
tities, called mathematics ; a science of qualities, called
chemistry ; so there is a science of sciences, — I call it
Dialectic, — which is the Intellect discriminating the
false and the true. It rests on the observation of
identity and diversity; for, to judge, is to unite to an
object the notion which belongs to it. The sciences,
even the best, — mathematics and astronomy, — are
like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even
302 EEPEESENTATIVE MEX. [n.
without being able to make any use of it. Dialectic
must teach the use of them. " This is of that rank
that no intellectual man will enter on any study for
its own sake, but only Avith a view to advance himself
in that one sole science which embraces all."
" The essence or peculiarity of man is to compre-
hend a whole ; or that which, in the diversity of
sensations, can be comprised under a rational unity."
" The soul which has never perceived the truth, can-
not pass into the human form." I announce to men
the Intellect. I announce the good of being inter-
penetrated by the mind that made nature : this bene-
fit, namely, that it can understand nature, which it
made and maketh. Nature is good, but intellect is
better ; as the law-giver is before the law-receiver. I
give you joy, sons of men ! that truth is altogether
wholesome ; that we have hope to search out what
might be the very self of everything. The misery of
man is to be baulked of the sight of essence, and to
be stuffed with conjectures : but the supreme good is
reality ; the supreme beauty is reality ; and all virtue
and all felicity depend on this science of the real : for
courage is nothing else than knowledge : the fairest
fortune that can befall man is to be guided by his
daemon to that which is truly his own. This also is
the essence of justice, — to attend every one his own :
nay, the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at,
except through direct contemplation of the divine
essence. Courage, then ! for, " the persuasion that we
must search that which we do not know vnW Tender
us, beyond comparison, better, braver, and more in-
II.] PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHER. 303
dustrious, than if we thought it impossible to discover
"what we do not know, and useless to search for it."
He secures a position not to be commanded, by his
passion for reality ; valuing philosophy only as it is
the pleasure of conversing with real being.
Thus, full of the genius of Europe, he said, Culture.
He saw the institutions of Sparta, and recognised
more genially, one would say, than any since, the
hope of education. He delighted in every accomplish-
ment, in every gracefid and useful and truthful per-
formance ; above all, in the splendours of genius and
intellectual achievement. "The whole of life,
Socrates, said Glauco, is, with the wise, the measure
of hearing such discourses as these." What a price
he sets on the feats of talent, on the powers of Pericles,
of Isocrates, of Parmenides ! What price, above
price, on the talents themselves ! He called the
several faculties, gods, in his beautiful personation.
What value he gives to the art of gymnastic in educa-
tion ; what to geometry ; what to music ; what to
astronomy, whose appeasing and medicinal power he
celebrates ! In the Timseus he indicates the highest
employment of the eyes. " By us it is asserted that
God invented and bestowed sight on us for this pur-
pose, — that on surveying the circles of intelligence in
the heavens, we might properly employ those of our
own minds, which, though disturbed when compared
with the others that are uniform, are still allied to
their circulations ; and that, having thus learned, and
being naturally possessed of a correct reasoning faculty,
we might, by imitating the uniform revolutions of
304 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [n.
divinity, set right our own wanderings and blunders. "
And in the Republic, — "By each of these disciplines,
a certain organ of the soul is both purified and re-
animated, which is blinded and buried by studies of
another kind ; an organ better worth saving than ten
thousand eyes, since truth is perceived by this alone."
He said, Culture ; but he first admitted its basis,
and gave immeasurably the first place to advantages
of nature. His patrician tastes laid stress on the
distinctions of birth. In the doctrine of the organic
character and disposition is the origin of caste.
" Such as were fit to govern, into their composition
the informing Deity mingled gold : into the military,
silver ; iron and brass for husbandmen and artificers."
The East confirms itself, in all ages, in this faith.
The Koran is explicit on this point of caste. " Men
have their metal, as of gold and silver. Those of you
who were the worthy ones in the state of ignorance,
will be the worthy ones in the state of faith, as soon as
you embrace it." Plato was not less firm. "Of the
five orders of things, only four can be taught to the
generality of men." In the Republic, he insists on
the temperaments of the youth, as first of the first.
A happier example of the stress laid on nature is
in the dialogue with the young Theages, who wishes to
receive lessons from Socrates. Socrates declares that,
if some have grown wise by associating with him, no
thanks are due to him ; but, simply, whilst they were
with him they grew wise, not because of him ; he pre-
tends not to know the way of it. "It is adverse to
many, nor can those be benefited by associating with
II.] PLATO ; OR, THE PHILOSOPHEK. 305
me, whom the Dsemon opposes ; so that it is not pos-
sible for me to live with these. "With many, however,
he does not prevent me from conversing, who yet are
not at all benefited by associating with me. Such,
Theages, is the association with me ; for, if it pleases
the God, you will make great and rapid proficiency :
you will not, if he does not please. Judge whether
it is not safer to be instructed by some one of those
who have power over the benefit which they impart
to men, than by me, who benefit or not, just as it may
happen." As if he had said, "I have no system. I
cannot be answerable for you. You will be what
you must. If there is love between us, inconceivably
delicious and profitable mil our intercourse be; if
not, your time is lost, and you will only annoy me.
I shall seem to you stupid, and the reputation I have,
false. Quite above us, beyond the will of you or mej
is this secret affinity or repulsion laid. All my good
is magnetic, and I educate, not by lessons, but by
going about my business."
He said. Culture ; he said, Nature : and he failed
not to add, "There is also the divine." There is no
thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert
itself into a power, and organises a huge instrumentality
of means. Plato, lover of limits, loved the illimitable,
saw the enlargement and nobility which come from
truth itself, and good itself, and attempted, as if on
the part of the human intellect, once for all, to do it
adequate homage, — homage fit for the immense soul
to receive, and yet homage becoming the intellect to
render. He said, then, " Our faculties run out into
VOL. IV. X
306 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
infinity, and return to us thence. We can define but
a little way; but here is a fact which will not be
skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is suicide.
All things are in a scale ; and, begin where we mil,
ascend and ascend. All things are symbolical ; and
what we call results are beginnings."
A key to the method and completeness of Plato is
his twice bisected line. After he has ilhistrated the
relation between the absolute good and true, and the
forms of the intelligible world, he says : — " Let there
be a line cut in two unequal parts. Cut again each
of these two parts, — one representing the "sdsible, the
other the intelligible world, — and these two new sec-
tions, representing the bright part and the dark part
of these worlds, you vdW have, for one of the sections
of the visible world, — images, that is, both shadows
and reflections ; for the other section, the objects of
these images, — that is, plants, animals, and the works
of art and nature. Then divide the intellioible world
in like manner; the one section will be of opinions
and hypotheses, and the other section, of truths."
To these four sections, the four operations of the soul
correspond, — conjecture, faith, understanding, reason.
As every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every
thought and thing restores us an image and creature
of the supreme Good. The universe is perforated
by a million channels for his activity. All things
mount and mount.
All his thought has this ascension ; in Ph?edrus,
teaching that *' beauty is the most lovely of all' things,
exciting hilarity, and shedding desire and confidence
II.] PLATO; OK, THE PHILOSOPHEE. 307
through the universe, wherever it enters ; and it
enters, in some degree, into all tilings : but that there
is another, which is as much more beautiful than
beauty, as beauty is than chaos; namely, wisdom,
which our wonderful organ of sight cannot reach unto,
but which, could it be seen, would ravish us with its
perfect reality." He has the same regard to it as the
source of excellence in works of art. "When an
artificer, in the fabrication of any work, looks to that
which always subsists according to the same; and,
employing a model of this kind, expresses its idea
and power in his work ; it must follow, that his pro-
duction should be beautiful. But when he beholds
that which is born and dies, it will be far from beau-
tiful."
Thus ever : the Banquet is a teaching in the same
spirit, familiar now to all the poetry, and to all the
sermons of the world, that the love of the sexes is
initial ; and symbolises, at a distance, the passion of
the soul for that immense lake of beauty it exists to
seek. This faith in the Divinity is never out of mind,
and constitutes the limitation of all his dogmas.
Body cannot teach wisdom; — God only. In the
same mind, he constantly affirms that virtue cannot
be taught ; that it is not a science, but an inspiration ;
that the greatest goods are produced to us through
mania, and are assigned to us by a divine gift.
This leads me to that central figure, which he had
established in his Academy, as the organ through
which every considered opinion shall be announced,
and whose biography he has likewise so laboured,
308 EEPRESENTATIVE MEK [ii.
that the historic facts are lost in the light of Plato's
mind. Socrates and Plato are the double star, which
the most powerful instruments ^^dll not entirely
separate. Socrates, again, in his traits and genius,
is the best example of that synthesis which constitutes
Plato's extraordinary power. Socrates, a man of
humble stem, but honest enough ; of the commonest
history; of a personal homeliness so remarkable, as
to be a cause of wit in others, — the rather that his
broad good nature and exquisite taste for a joke in-
vited the sally, which was sure to be paid. The
players personated him on the stage ; the potters
copied his ugly face on their stone jugs. He was a
cool fellow, adding to his humour a perfect temper,
and a knowledge of his man, be he who he might
whom he talked with, which laid the companion open
to certain defeat in any debate, — and in debate he
immoderately delighted. The young men are pro-
digiously fond of him, and invite him to their feasts,
whither he goes for conversation. He can drink,
too ; has the strongest head in Athens ; and, after
leaving the whole party under the table, goes away,
as if nothing had happened, to begin new dialogues
with somebody that is sober. In short, he was what
our country-people call an old one.
He affected a good many citizen-like tastes, was
monstrously fond of Athens, hated trees, never will-
ingly went beyond the walls, knew the old characters
valued the bores and philistines, thought everything
in Athens a Httle better than anything in any other
place. He was plain as a Quaker in habit and speech,
II.] PLATO ; OE, THE PHILOSOPHER. 309
affected low phrases, and illustrations from cocks and
quails, soup -pans and sycamore -spoons, grooms and
farriers, and unnameable offices, — especially if he
talked with any superfine person. He had a Franklin-
like wisdom. Thus, he showed one who was afraid to
go on foot to Olympia, that it was no more than
his daily walk within doors, if continuously extended,
would easily reach.
Plain old uncle as he was, with his great ears, —
an immense talker, — the rumour ran, that, on one or
two occasions, in the war with Boeotia, he had shown
a determination which had covered the retreat of a
troop ; and there was some story that, under cover of
folly, he had, in the city government, when one day
he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a coura2:e in
opposing singly the popular voice, which had well-
nigh ruined him. He is very poor ; but then he is
hardy as a soldier, and can live on a few olives ;
usually, in the strictest sense, on bread and water,
except when entertained by his friends. His neces-
sary expenses were exceedingly small, and no one
could live as he did. He wore no under garment ;
his upper garment was the same for summer and
winter ; and he went barefooted ; and it is said that,
to procure the pleasure, which he loves, of talking at
his ease all dav with the most eleo;ant and cultivated
young men, he will now and then return to his shop,
and carve statues, good or bad, for sale. However
that be, it is certain that he had grown to delight in
nothing else than this conversation ; and that, under
his hypocritical pretence of knowing nothing, he
310 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [n.
attacks and brings down all the fine speakers, all the
fine philosophers of Athens, whether natives, or
strangers from Asia Minor and the islands. Nobody
can refuse to talk with him, he is so honest, and
really curious to knoAV ; a man who was 's\allingi3^
confuted, if he did not speak the truth, and who T\all-
ingly confuted others asserting what was false ; and
not less pleased when confuted than when confuting ;
for he thought not any e^al happened to men, of such
a magnitude as false opinion respecting the just and
unjust. A pitiless disputant, who knows nothing,
but the bounds of whose conquering intelligence no
man had ever reached; whose temper was imper-
tui'bable ; whose dreadful logic was always leisurely
and sportive ; so careless and ignorant, as to disarm
the wariest, and draw them, in the pleasantest manner,
into horrible doubts and confusion. But he always
knew the way out ; knew it, yet would not tell it.
No escape ; he drives them to terrible choices by his
dilemmas, and tosses the Hippiases and Gorgiases,
with their grand reputations, as a boy tosses his balls.
The tyrannous realist ! — Meno has discoursed a
thousand times, at length, on virtue, before many
companies, and very well, as it appeared to him ; but
at this moment, he cannot even tell what it is, — this
cramp-fish of a Socrates has so bewitched him.
This hard-headed humourist, whose strange con-
ceits, drollery, and honhommie diverted the young
patricians, whilst the rumour of his sayings and
quibbles gets abroad every day, turns out, in the
sequel, to have a probity as imdncible as his logic, and
ir.] PLATO; OE, THE PHILOSOPHER. 311
to be either insane, or at least, under cover of this
play, enthusiastic in his religion. AVhen accused be-
fore the judges of subverting the popular creed, he
affirms the immortaHty of the soul, the future reward
and punishment ; and refusing to recant, in a caprice
of the popular government was condemned to die, and
sent to the prison. Socrates entered the prison, and
took away all ignominy from the place, which could
not be a prison whilst he was there. Crito bribed
the jailer ; but Socrates would not go out by treach-
ery. " Whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is to
be preferred before justice. These things I hear like
pipes and drums, whose sound makes me deaf to
everything you say." The fame of this prison, the
fame of the discourses there, and the drinking of the
hemlock, are one of the most precious passages in the
history of the world.
The rare coincidence in one ugly body, of the droll
and the martyr, the keen street and market debater
with the sweetest saint kno^vn to any history at
that time, had forcibly struck the mind of Plato, so
capacious of these contrasts ; and the figure of Socrates,
by a necessity, placed itself in the foreground of the
scene, as the fittest dispenser of the intellectual trea-
sures he had to communicate. It was a rare fortune,
that this ^sop of the mob, and this robed scholar,
should meet, to make each other immortal in their
mutual faculty. The strange synthesis, in the char-
acter of Socrates, capped the synthesis in the mind of
Plato. Moreover, by this means, he was able, in the
direct way, and without envy, to avail himself of the
312 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
wit and weight of Socrates, to which unquestionably
his own debt was great ; and these derived again their
principal advantage from the perfect art of Plato.
It remains to say, that the defect of Plato in power
is only that which results inevitably from his quality.
He is intellectual in his aim : and therefore, in ex-
pression, literary. Mounting into heaven, diving into
the pit, expounding the laws of the state, the passion
of love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the parting
soul, — he is literary, and never otherwise. It is almost
the sole deduction from the merit of Plato, that his
writings have not, — what is, no doubt, incident to this
regnancy of intellect in his work, — the ^dtal authority
which the screams of prophets and the sermons of
unlettered Arabs and Jews possess. There is an in-
terval ; and to cohesion, contact is necessary.
I know not what can be said in reply to this criti-
cism, but that we have come to a fact in the nature
of things : an oak is not an orange. The qualities
of sugar remain v/ith sugar, and those of salt mth
salt.
In the second place, he has not a system. The
dearest defenders and disciples are at fault. He at-
tempted a theory of the universe, and his theory is
not complete or self-eiadent. One man thinks he
means this ; and another, that : he has said one thing
in one place, and the reverse of it in another place.
He is charged with having failed to make the transi-
tion from ideas to matter. Here is the world, sound
as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left,
never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or
II.] PLATO; OR, THE PHILOSOPHEE. 313
botching, or second thought; but the theory of the
world is a thing of shreds and patches.
The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea. Plato
would mllingly have a Platonism, a known and accu-
rate expression of the world, and it should be accurate.
It shall be the world passed through the mind of Plato,
— nothing less. Every atom shall have the Platonic
tinge ; every atom, every relation or quality you knew
before, you shall know again, and find here, but now
ordered; not nature, but art. And you shall feel
that Alexander indeed overran, with men and horses,
some countries of the planet ;_but countries, and things
of which countries are made, elements, planet itself,
laws of planet and of men, have passed through this
man as bread into his body, and become no longer
bread, but body : so all this mammoth morsel has
become Plato. He has clapped copp^ight on the world.
This is the ambition of individualism. But the
mouthful proves too large. Boa constridor has good
will to eat it, but he is foiled. He falls abroad in the
attempt ; and biting, gets strangled : the bitten world
holds the biter fast by his own teeth. There he
perishes ; unconquered nature lives on, and forgets
him. So it fares with all : so must it fare with Plato.
In view of eternal nature, Plato turns out to be philo-
sophical exercitations. He argues on this side, and
on that. The acutest German, the lovingest disciple,
could never tell what Platonism was ; indeed, admir-
able texts can be quoted on both sides of every great
question from him.
These things we are forced to say, if we must con-
314 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
sider the effort of Plato, or of any philosopher, to
dispose of Nature, — which will not be disposed of.
No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest
success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma
remains. But there is an injustice in assuming this
ambition for Plato. Let us not seem to treat Avith
flippancy his venerable name. Men, in proportion
to their intellect, have admitted his transcendant
claims. The way to know him, is to compare him,
not with nature, but with other men. How many
ages have gone by, and he remains unapproached !
A chief structure of human wit, like Karnac, or
the mediaeval cathedrals, or the Etrurian remains,
it requires all the breadth of human faculty to
know it. I think it is trueliest seen, when seen with
the most respect. His sense deepens, his merits
multiply, with study. When we say, here is a fine
collection of fables ; or, when we praise the style ; or
the common sense ; or arithmetic ; we speak as boj^s,
and much of our impatient criticism of the dialectic,
I suspect, is no better. The criticism is like our im-
patience of miles, when we are in a hurry ; but it is
still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred
and sixty yards. The great-eyed Plato proportioned
the lights and shades after the genius of our life.
i
PLATO: NEW EEADINGS.
The publication, in Mr. Bohn's "Serial Library," of
the excellent translations of Plato, which we esteem one
of the chief benefits the cheap press has yielded, gives
us an occasion to take hastily a few more notes of the
elevation and bearings of this fixed star ; or, to add a
bulletin, like the journals, of Plato at the latest dates.
Modem science, by the extent of its generalisation,
has learned to indemnify the student of man for the
defects of indi\dduals, by tracing growth and ascent
in races ; and, by the simple expedient of lighting up
the vast background, generates a feeling of complacency
and hope. -The human being has the saurian and
the plant in his rear. His arts and sciences, the easy
issue of his brain, look glorious when prospectively
beheld from the distant brain of ox, crocodile, and fish.
It seems as if natui^e, in regarding the geologic night
behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had
turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu,
and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the
result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.
These were a clear amehoration of trilobite and
saurus, and a good basis for further proceeding.
316 * REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
With this artist, time and space are cheap, and she is
insensible to what you say of tedious preparation.
She waited tranquilly the flo^Wng periods of palaeon-
tology, for the hour to be struck when man should
arrive. Then periods must pass before the motion of
the earth can be suspected ; then before the map of
the instincts and the cultivable powers can be dra^vn.
But as of races, so the succession of individual men is
fatal and beautiful, and Plato has the fortune, in the
history of mankind, to mark an epoch.
Plato's fame does not stand on a sjdlogism, or on
any masterpieces of the Socratic reasoning, or on any
thesis, as, for example, the immortality of the soul.
He is more than an expert, or a schoolman, or a
geometer, or the prophet of a peculiar message. He
represents the privilege of the intellect, the power,
namely, of carrying up every fact to successive plat-
forms, and so disclosing, in every fact, a germ of
expansion. These expansions are in the essence of
thought. The naturalist would never help us to them
by any discoveries of the extent of the universe, but
is as poor when cataloguing the resolved nebula of
Orion, as Avhen measuring the angles of an acre. But
the Eepublic of Plato, by these expansions, may be
said to require, and so to anticipate, the astronomy of
Laplace. The expansions are organic. The mind
does not create what it perceives, any more than the
eye creates the rose. In ascribing to Plato the merit
of announcing them, we only say, here was a more
complete man, who could apply to natiu-e the whole
scale of the senses, the understanding, and the reason.
i
II.] PLATO : NEW EEADIXGS. 317
These expansions, or extensions, consist in continuing
the spiritual sight where the horizon falls on oiu-
natural vision, and, by this second sight, discovering
the long lines of law which shoot in every direction.
Everywhere he stands on a path which has no end,
but rims continuously round the universe. Therefore,
every word becomes an exponent of Nature. What-
ever he looks upon discloses a second sense, and
ulterior senses. His perception of the generation of
contraries, of death out of life, and life out of death, —
that law by which, in nature, decomposition is recom-
position, and putrefaction and cholera are only signals
of a new creation; his discernment of the little in
the large, and the large in the small; studying the
state in the citizen, and the citizen in the state ;
and leavins; it doubtful whether he exhibited the
Republic as an allegory on the education of the private
soul; his beautiful definitions of ideas, of time, of
form, of figure, of the line, sometimes hypothetically
given, as his defining of virtue, courage, justice,
temperance ; his love of the apologue, and his apo-
logues themselves ; the cave of Trophonius ; the ring
of Gyges ; the charioteer and two horses ; the golden,
silver, brass, and iron temperaments ; Theuth and
Thamus ; and the visions of Hades and the Fates, —
fables which have imprinted themselves in the human
memory like the signs of the zodiac ; his soliform eye
and his bonif orm soul ; his doctrine of assimilation ;
his doctrine of reminiscence ; his clear "\dsion of the
laws of return, or reaction, which secure instant
justice throughout the universe, instanced every-
318 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [n.
where, but specially in the doctrine, " Avhat comes from
God to us, returns from us to God," and in Socrates'
belief that the laws below are sisters of the laws above.
More striking examples are his moral conclusions.
Plato affirms the coincidence of science and virtue ;
for vice can never know itself and virtue ; but virtue
knows both itself and vice. The eye attested that
justice was best, as long as it was profitable ; Plato
affirms that it is profitable throughout ; that the pro-
fit is intrinsic, though the just conceal his justice from
gods and men; that it is better to suffer injustice
than to do it ; that the sinner ought to covet punish-
ment ; that the lie was more hurtful than homicide ;
and that ignorance, or the involuntarj?" lie, was more
calamitous than involuntary homicide ; that the soul
is unwillingly deprived of true opinions ; and that no
man sins willingly ; that the order or proceeding of
natm^e was from the mind to the body ; and, though
a sound body cannot restore an unsound mind, yet a
good soul can, by its virtue, render the body the best
possible. The intelligent have a right over the
ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. The
right punishment of one out of tune, is to make him
play in tune ; the fine which the good, refusing to
govern, ought to pay, is to be governed by a worse
man; that his guards shall not handle gold and
silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and
silver in their souls, which will make men "willing to
give them everything which they need.
This second sight explains the stress laid on
geometry. He saw that the globe of earth was not
11.] PLATO : NEW READINGS. 319
more la^^^ul and precise than was the supersensible ;
that a celestial geometry was in place there, as a
logic of lines and angles here below ; that the world
was throughout mathematical ; the proportions are
constant of oxygen, azote, and lime ; there is just so
much water, and slate, and magnesia ; not less are
the proportions constant of the moral elements.
This eldest Goethe, hating varnish and falsehood,
delighted in revealing the real at the base of the
accidental ; in discovering connection, continuity, and
representation, everywhere ; hating insulation ; and
appears like the god of wealth among the cabins of
vagabonds, opening power and capability in every-
thing he touches. Ethical science was new and vacant,
when Plato could write thus : — " Of all whose argu-
ments are left to the men of the present time, no one
has ever yet condemned injustice, or praised justice,
other^vise than as respects the rej^ute, honoui^s, and
emoluments arising therefrom; while, as resjoects
either of them in itself, and subsisting by its own
power in the soul of the possessor, and concealed both
from gods and men, no one has yet sufficiently in-
vestigated, either in poetry or prose writings, — how,
namely, that the one is the gi'eatest of all the evils that
the soul has within it, and justice the greatest good."
His definition of ideas, as what is simple, perma-
nent, uniform, and self -existent, for ever discriminating
them from the notions of the understanding, marks
an era in the world. He was born to behold the
self-evolving power of spirit, endless generator of new
ends : a po^\'er which is the key at once to the cen-
320 KEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
trality and the evanescence of things. Plato is so
centred, that he can well spare all his dogmas. Thus
the fact of knowledge and ideas reveals to him the fact
of eternity ; and the doctrine of reminiscence he oflers
as the most probable particular explication. Call
that fanciful, — it matters not : the connection between
our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and
the explication must be not less magnificent.
He has indicated every eminent point in specula-
tion. He wrote on the scale of the mind itself, so
that all things have symmetry in his tablet. He put
in all the past, without weariness, and descended into
detail mth a courage like that he witnessed in nature.
One would say that his forerunners had mapped out
each a farm, or a district, or an island, in intellectual
geography, but that Plato first drew the sphere. He
domesticates the soul in naturae : man is the micro-
cosm. All the circles of the visible heaven represent
as many circles in the rational soul. There is no
lawless particle, and there is nothing casual in the
action of the human mind. The names of things,
too, are fatal, following the nature of things. All the
gods of the Pantheon are, by their names, significant
of a profound sense. The gods are the ideas. Pan
is speech, or manifestation ; Saturn, the contempla-
tive ; Jove, the regal soul ; and Mars, passion. Venus
is proportion ; Calliope, the soul of the world ; Aglaia,
intellectual illustration.
These thoughts, in sparkles of light, had appeared
often to pious and to poetic souls ; but this well-
^
il] PLATO : NEW ilEADIXGS. 321
bred, all-knowing Greek geometer comes with com-
mand, gathers them all up into rank and gradation,
the Euclid of holiness, and marries the two parts of
nature. Before all men, he saw the intellectual values
of the moral sentiment. He describes his ot\ti ideal,
when he paints in Timseus a god leading things from
disorder into order. He kindled a fire so truly in
the centre, that we see the sphere illuminated, and
can distinguish poles, equator, and lines of latitude,
every arc and node : a theory so averaged, so modu-
lated, that you would say the ^^nds of ages had swept
through this rhythmic structure, and not that it was
the brief extempore blotting of one short-lived scribe.
Hence it has happened that a very well-marked class
of souls, namely, those who delight in giving a spiritual,
that is, an ethico-intellectual expression to every truth,
by exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet legitimate
to it, are said to Platonise. Thus, Michel Angelo is
a Platonist, in his sonnets. Shakspeare is a Platonist,
when he "UTites " Nature is made better by no mean,
but nature makes that mean," or,
" He, that can endure
To follow witli allegiance a fallen lord,
Does conquer him that did his master conquer,
And earns a place in the story,"
Hamlet is a pure Platonist, and 'tis the magnitude
only of Shakspeare's proper genius that hinders him
from beins; classed as the most eminent of this school.
Swedenborg, throughout his prose poem of " Conjugal
Love," is a Platonist.
His subtlety commended him to men of thought.
VOL. IV. Y
322 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [ii.
The secret of his popular success is the moral aim, which
endeared him to mankind. " Intellect," he said, " is
king of heaven and of earth ; " but, in Plato, intellect
is always moral. His writings have also the sempi-
ternal youth of poetry. For their arguments, most
of them, might have been couched in sonnets : and
poetry has never soared higher than in the Timaeus
and the Phsedrus. As the poet, too, he is only con-
templative. He did not, like Pythagoras, break
himself with an institution. All his painting in the
Eepublic must be esteemed mythical, with intent to
bring out, sometimes in violent colours, his thought.
You cannot institute, without peril of charlatanism.
It was a high scheme, his absolute privilege for
the best (which, to make emphatic, he expressed by
community of women), as the premium which he
would set on grandeur. There shall be exempts of two
kinds : first, those who by demerit have put them-
selves below protection, — outlaws ; and secondly, those
who by eminence of nature and desert are out of the
reach of your rewards : let such be free of the city,
and above the law. We confide them to themselves ;
let them do with us as they wiU. Let none presume
to measure the irregularities of Michel Angelo and
Socrates by village scales.
In his eighth book of the Eepublic, he throws a
little mathematical dust in our eyes. I am sorry to
see him, after such noble superiorities, permitting the
lie to governors. Plato plays Providence a little mth
the baser sort, as people allow themselves with their
dogs and cats.
III.
SWEDENBOEG; OE, THE MYSTIC.
A]MONG eminent persons, those who are most dear to
men are not of the class which the economist calls
producers ; they have nothing in their hands ; they
have not cultivated corn, nor made bread ; they have
not led out a colony, nor invented a loom. A higher
class, in the estimation and love of this city-building,
market -going race of mankind, are the poets, who,
from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and
imagination with ideas and pictures which raise men
out of the world of corn and money, and console them
for the shortcomings of the day, and the meannesses
of labour and traffic. Then, also, the philosopher has
his value, who flatters the intellect of this labourer,
by engaging him with subtleties which instruct him
in new faculties. Others may build cities ; he is to
understand them, and keep them in awe. But there
is a class who lead us into another region, — the world
of morals, or of will. What is sini^uJar about this
region of thought is its claim. Wherever the senti-
ment of right comes in, it takes precedence of every-
324 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [in.
thing else. For other things, I make poetry of them ;
but the moral sentiment makes poetry of me.
I have sometimes thought that he would render the
greatest service to modern criticism, who shall draw
the line of relation that subsists between Shakspeare
and Swedenborg. The human mind stands ever in
perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity,
impatient equally of each mthout the other. The
reconciler has not yet appeared. If we tire of the
saints, Shakspeare is our city of refuge. Yet the
instincts presently teach, that the problem of essence
must take precedence of all others, — the questions of
Whence ? What 1 and Whither ? and the solution of
these must l^e in a life, and not in a book. A drama
or poem is a proximate or oblique reply ; but Moses,
Menu, Jesus, work directly on this problem. The
atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grandeiu*
which reduces all material magnificence to toys, yet
opens to every 'vvretch that has reason the doors of
the universe. Almost with a fierce haste it lays its
empire on the man. In the language of the Koran,
" God said, the heaven and the earth, and all that is
between them, think ye that we created them in jest
and that ye shall not return to usf It is the king-
dom of the Avill, and by inspiring the will, which is
the seat of personality, seems to convert the universe
into a person ; —
*' The realms of being to no other how,
Not only all are thine, hut all are Thou."
All men are commanded by the saint. The Koran
makes a distinct class of those who are by nature good, .
III.] SWEDENBOEG; OK, THE MYSTIC. 325
and whose goodness has an influence on others, and
pronounces this class to be the aim of creation : the
other classes are admitted to the feast of being, only
as following in the train of this. And the Persian
poet exclaims to a soul of this kind, —
" Go boldly forth, and feast on being's banquet ;
Tlioii art the called, — the rest admitted with thee."
The privilege of this caste is an access to the secrets
and structure of natui^e, by some higher method than
by experience. In common parlance, what one man
is said to learn by experience, a man of extraordinary
sagacity is said, without experience, to divine. The
Arabians say, that Abul Khain, the mystic, and Abu
Ali Seena, the philosopher, conferred together ; and
on parting the philosopher said, "All that he sees, I
know;" and the mystic said, "All that he knows, I
see." If one should ask the reason of this intuition,
the solution would lead us into that property which
Plato denoted as Eeminiscence, and which is implied
by the Brahmins in the tenet of Transmigration. The
soul having been often born, or, as the Hindoos say,
" travelling the path of existence through thousands
of births," having beheld the things which are here,
those which are in heaven, and those which are be-
neath, there is nothing of which she has not gained
the knowledge : no wonder that she is able to recollect,
in regard to any one thing, what formerly she knew.
" For, all things in nature being linked and related,
and the soul having heretofore known all, nothing
hinders but that any man who has recalled to mind,
or, according to the common phrase, has learned one
326 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
thincc only, should of himself recover all his ancient
knowledge, and find out again all the rest, if he have
but coiu-age, and faint not in the midst of his re-
searches. For inquiry and learning is reminiscence
all." How much more, if he that inquires be a holy
and godlike soul ! For, by being assimilated to the
original soul, by whom, and after w^hom, all things
subsist, the soul of man does then easily flow into all
things, and all things flow into it : they mix ; and he
is present and sympathetic with their structure and
law.
This path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror.
The ancients called it ecstasy or absence, — a getting
out of their bodies to think. All religious history
contains traces of the trance of saints, — a beatitude,
but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even
sad ; " the flight," Plotinus called it, " of the alone to
the alone ;" Muecrt?, the closing of the eyes, — whence
our word Mystic. The trances of Socrates, Plotinus,
Porphyry, Behmen, Bunyan, Fox, Pascal, Guion,
Swedenborg, will readily come to mind. But what
as readily comes to mind is the accompaniment of
disease. This beatitude comes in terror, and mth
shocks to the mind of the receiver. " It o'erinforms
the tenement of clay," and drives the man mad ; or
gives a certain violent bias, which taints his judgment.
In the chief examples of religious illumination, some-
what morbid has mingled, in spite of the unquestion-
able increase of mental power. Must the highest
good drag after it a quality which neutralises and
discredits it 1 —
III.] swedenborg; or, the mystic. 327
*' Indeed, it takes
From our achievements, when performed at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute."
Shall we say that the economical mother disburses
so much earth and so much fire, by weight and metre,
to make a man, and will not add a pennyweight,
though a nation is perishing for a leader 1 Therefore,
the men of God purchased their science by folly
or pain. If you will have pure carbon, carbuncle,
or diamond, to make the brain transparent, the
trunk and organs shall be so much the grosser :
instead of porcelain they are potter's earth, clay, or
mud.
In modern times, no such remarkable example of
this introverted mind has occurred, as in Emanuel
Swedenborg, born in Stockholm in 1688. This man,
who appeared to his contemporaries a visionary, and
elixir of moonbeams, no doubt led the most real life
of any man then in the world : and now, when the
royal and ducal Frederics, Cristierns, and Brunsmcks,
of that day, have slid into oblivion, he begins to
spread himself into the minds of thousands. As
happens in great men, he seemed, by the variety and
amount of his powers, to be a composition of several
persons, — like the giant fruits which are matured in
gardens by the imiou of foiu* or five single blossoms.
His frame is on a larger scale, and possesses the
advantasfes of size. As it is easier to see the reflec-
tion of the great sphere in large globes, though
defaced by some crack or blemish, than in drops of
water, so men of large calibre, though with some
328 KEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iiL
eccentricity or madness, like Pascal or Newton, help
us more than balanced mediocre minds.
His youth and training could not fail to be extra-
ordinary. Such a boy could not whistle or dance, but
goes grubbing into mines and mountains, prying into
chemistry and optics, physiology, mathematics, and
astronomy, to find images fit for the measure of his
versatile and capacious brain. He was a scholar
from a child, and was educated at Upsala. At the
age of twenty-eight he was made Assessor of the
Board of Mines by Charles XII. In 1716 he left
home for four years, and visited the universities of
England, Holland, France, and Germany. He per-
formed a notable feat of engineering in 1718, at the
siege of Fredericshall, by hauling two galleys, five
boats, and a sloop, some fourteen English miles over-
land, for the royal service. In 1721 he journeyed
over Europe, to examine mines and smelting works.
He published, in 1716, his Daedalus Hyperboreus,
and, from this time, for the next thirty years, was
employed in the composition and publication of his
scientific works. With the like force he threw him-
self into theology. In 174-3, when he was fifty-four
years old, what is called his illumination began. All
his metallurgy, and transportation of ships overland,
was absorbed into this ecstasy. He ceased to publish
any more scientific books, withdrew from his practi-
cal labours, and devoted himself to the writing and
publication of his voluminous theological works,
which were printed at his own expense, or at that of
the Duke of Brunswick, or other prince, at Dresden,
III.] SWEDEXBOEG ; OK, THE MYSTIC. 329
Leipsic, London, or Amsterdam. Later he resigned
his office of Assessor : the salary attached to this
office continued to be paid to him during his hfe.
His duties had brought him into intimate acquaintance
with King Charles XII., by whom he was much con-
sulted and honoured. The like favour was continued
to him by his successor. At the Diet of 1751, Count
Hopken says, the most solid memorials on finance
were from his pen. In Sweden he appears to have
attracted a marked regard. His rare science and
practical skill and the added fame of second sight,
and extraordinary religious knowledge and gifts,
drew to him queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters, and
people about the ports through which he was wont to
pass in his many voyages. The clergy interfered a
little with the importation and publication of his
religious works; but he seems to have kept the
friendship of men in power. He was never married.
He had great modesty and gentleness of bearing.
His habits were simple ; he lived on bread, milk, and
vegetables; he lived in a house situated in a large
garden : he went several times to England, where he
does not seem to have attracted any attention whatever
from the learned or the eminent ; and died at London,
March 29, 1772, of apoplexy, in his eighty-fifth year.
He is described, when in London, as a man of a quiet,
clerical habit, not averse to tea and coffee, and kind to
children. He wore a sword when in full velvet dress,
and whenever he walked out carried a gold-headed
cane. There is a common portrait of him in antique
coat and wisr, but the face has a wandering or vacant air.
330 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
The genius which was to penetrate the science of
the age with a far more subtle science ; to pass the
bounds of space and time ; venture into the dim
spirit-realm, and attempt to establish a new religion
in the world, — began its lessons in quarries and
forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards
and dissecting-rooms. No one man is perhaps able
to judge of the merits of his works on so many-
subjects. One is glad to learn that his books on
mines and metals are held in the highest esteem by
those who understand these matters. It seems that
he anticipated much science of the nineteenth century ;
anticipated, in astronomy, the discovery of the seventh
planet, — but, unhappily, not also of the eighth; an-
ticipated the views of modern astronomy in regard
to the generation of earths by the sun ; in magnetism,
some important experiments and conclusions of later
students ; in chemistry, the atomic theory ; in ana-
tomy, the discoveries of Schlichting, Monro, and
Wilson ; and first demonstrated the office of the
lungs. His excellent English editor magnanimously
lays no stress on his discoveries, since he was too
great to care to be original ; and we are to judge,
by what he can spare, of what remains.
A colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times,
uncomprehended by them, and requires a long focal
distance to be seen ; suggests, as Aristotle, Bacon,
Selden, Humboldt, that a certain vastness of learn-
ing, or quasi omnipresence of the human soul in
nature, is possible. His superb specidation, as 'from a
tower, over nature and arts, A^dthout ever losing sight
III.] SWEDENBOEG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 331
of the texture and sequence of things, almost realises
his o^\Ti i^icture, in the " Principia," of the original
integrity of man. Over and above the merit of his
particular discoveries, is the capital merit of his self-
equality. A drop of vv^ater has the properties of
the sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. There is beauty
of a concert, as well as of a flute ; strength of a host,
as well as of a hero ; and in Swedenborg, those who
are best acquainted with modern books will most
admire the merit of mass. One of the missouriums
and mastodons of literature, he is not to be measured
by whole colleges of ordinary scholars. His stalwart
presence would flutter the gowns of an university.
Our books are false by being fragmentary : their
sentences are hon mots, and not parts of natural dis-
course ; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure
in nature ; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to their
petulance, or aversion from the order of nature, —
being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not in
harmony ^^dth nature, and purposel}^ framed to excite
surprise, as jugglers do by concealing their means.
But Swedenborg is systematic, and respective of the
world in every sentence : all the means are orderly
given ; his faculties work "vvith astronomic punctuality,
and this admirable "writing is pure from all pertness
or egotism.
Swedenborg was born into an atmosphere of great
ideas. 'Tis hard to say what was his own : yet his
life was dignified by noisiest pictures of the universe.
The robust Aristotelian method, with its breadth and
adequateness, shaming our sterile and linear logic
332 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [ill.
by its genial radiation, conversant with series and
degree, •\Anth effects and ends, skilful to discriminate
power from form, essence from accident, and opening,
by its terminology and definition, high roads into
nature, had trained a race of athletic philosophers.
Harvey had shown the circulation of the blood :
Gilbert had showni that the earth was a magnet:
Descartes, taught by Gilbert's magnet, with its vortex,
spiral, and polarity, had filled Europe with the lead-
ing thou2[ht of vortical motion as the secret of nature.
Newton, in the year in which Swedenborg was
born, published the " Principia," and established the
universal gravity. Malpighi, following the high
doctrines of Hippocrates, Leucippus, and Lucretius,
had given emphasis to the dogma that nature works in
leasts, — " tota in minimis existit natura." Unrivalled
dissectors, Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek, Winslow,
Eustachius, Heister, Yesalius, Boerhaave, had left
nothing for scalpel or microscope to reveal in human
or comparative anatomy : Linnseus, his contemporary,
was affirming, in his beautiful science, that " Nature
is always Hke herself:" and, lastly, the nobihty of
method, the largest application of principles, had
been exhibited by Leibnitz and Christian AYolff, in
cosmology ; whilst Locke and Grotius had drawn the
moral argument. What was left for a genius of the
largest caHbre, but to go over their ground, and
verify and unite 1 It is easy to see, in these minds,
the origin of Swedenborg's studies, and the sugges-
tion of his problems. He had a capacity to entertain
and vivify these volumes of thought. Yet the prox-
III.] SWEDEXBOEG; OE, THE MYSTIC. 333
imity of these geniuses, one or other of whom had
introduced all his leading ideas, makes Swedenborg
another example of the difficulty, even in a- highly
fertile genius, of proving originality, the first birth
and annunciation of one of the laws of nature.
He named his favourite views the doctrine of
Forms, the doctrine of Series and Degrees, the doc-
trine of Influx, the Doctrine of Correspondence. His
statement of these doctrines deserves to be studied in
his books. Not every man can read them, but they
will reward him who can. His theologic works are
valuable to illustrate these. His writings would be
a sufficient library to a lonely and athletic student ;
and the " Economy of the Animal Kingdom " is one of
those books which, by the sustained dignity of think-
ino;, is an honour to the human race. He had studied
spars and metals to some purpose. His varied and
solid knowledge makes his style lustrous with points
and shooting spicula of thought, and resembling one
of those winter mornings when the air sparkles with
crystals. The grandeur of the topics makes the
grandeur of the style. He was apt for cosmology,
because of that native perception of identity which
made mere size of no account to him. In the atom
of magnetic iron he saw the quaUty which would
generate the spiral motion of sun and planet.
The thoughts in which he lived were, the universal-
ity of each law in nature ; the Platonic doctrine of the
scale or degrees; the version or conversion of each
into other, and so the correspondence of all the parts ;
the fine secret that little explains large, and large,
334 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [m.
little ; the centrality of man in nature, and the connec-
tion that subsists throughout all things : he saw that
the human body was strictly universal, or an instru-
ment through which the soul feeds and is fed by the
whole of matter : so that he held, in exact antagonism
to the sceptics, that " the wiser a man is, the more will
he be a worshipper of the Deity. " In short, he was a
believer in the Identity-philosophy, which he held not
idly, as the dreamers of Berlin or Boston, but which
he experimented with and stablished through years
of labour, with the heart and strength of the rudest
Viking that his rough Sweden ever sent to battle.
This theory dates from the oldest philosophers,
and derives perha.ps its best illustration from the
newest. It is this : that nature iterates her means
perpetually on successive planes. In the old aphorism,
nature is always self-similar. In the plant, the eye or
germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another
leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle,
stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed. The whole
art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without
end, the more or less of heat, light, moisture, and
food, determining the form it shall assume. In the
animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of verte-
brae, and helps herself still by a new spine, with a
limited power of modifying its form, — spine on spine,
to the end of the world. A poetic anatomist, in our
own day, teaches that a snake, being a horizontal line,
and man, being an erect line, constitute a right angle ;
and, between the lines of this mystical quadrant, all
animated beings find their place : and he assumes the
III.] SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 335
hair-"worm, the span-worm, or the snake, as the t}^e
or prediction of the spine. Manifestly, at the end
of the spine, nature puts out smaller spines, as arms ;
at the end of the arms, new spines, as hands ; at the
other end she repeats the process, as legs and feet.
At the top of the column she puts out another spine,
which doubles or loops itself over, as a span-worm,
into a ball, and forms the skull, ^vith extremities again :
the hands being now the upper jaw, the feet the lower
jaw, the fingers and toes being represented this time
by upper and lower teeth. This new spine is destined
to high uses. It is a new man on the shoulders of
the last. It can almost shed its trunk, and manage
to live alone, according to the Platonic idea in the
Timseus. Within it, on a higher plane, all that was
done in the trunk repeats itself. Xature recites her
lesson once more in a higher mood. The mind is a
finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding,
digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a
new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all
the process of ahmentation repeated, in the acquiring,
comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience.
Here again is the mystery of generation repeated. In
the brain are male and female faculties : here is
marriage, here is fruit. And there is no limit to this
ascending scale, but series on series. Everything,
at the end of one use, is taken up into the next, each
series punctually repeating every organ and process
of the last. We are adapted to infinity. We are hard
to please, and love nothing which ends : and in nature
is no end ; but everything, at the end of one use, is
336 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things
chmbs into daemonic and celestial natures. Creative
force, like a musical composer, goes on umveariedly
repeating a simple air or theme, now high, now low,
in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated,
till it fills earth and heaven with the chant.
Gravitation, as explained by Newton, is good, but
grander when we find chemistry only an extension of
the law of masses into particles, and that the atomic
theory shows the action of chemistry to be mechanical
also. Metaphysics shows us a sort of gra\dtation,
operative also in the mental phenomena; and the
terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every
piece of whim and humour to be reducible also to exact
numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or
in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grand-
mother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty
thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries
his grandmother. What we call gravitation, and fancy
ultimate, is one fork of a mightier stream, for which
we have yet no name. Astronomy is excellent ; but
it must come up into life to have its full value, and
not remain there in globes and spaces. The globule
of blood gyrates around its own axis in the human
veins, as the planet in the sky ; and the circles of
intellect relate to those of the heavens. Each law of
nature has the like universality ; eating, sleep or
hybernation, rotation, generation, metamor^^hosis,
vortical motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets.
These grand rhymes or returns in nature, — the dear,
best-kno-wn face startling us at every turn, under a
III.] SWEDENBOEG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 337
mask so unexpected that we think it the face of a
stranger, and, carrying up the semblance into di^^ine
forms, — delighted the prophetic eye of S^yedenborg ;
and he must be reckoned a leader in that revolution,
which, by giving to science an idea, has given to an
aimless accumulation of experiments, guidance and
form, and a beating heart.
I own, with some regret, that his printed works
amount to about fifty stout octavos, his scientific
works being about half of the whole number; and
it appears that a mass of manuscript still unedited
remains in the royal library at Stockholm. The
scientific works have just now been translated into
English, in an excellent edition.
Swedenborg printed these scientific books in the
ten years from 1734 to 1744, and they remained
from that time neglected : and now, after their
century is complete, he has at last found a pupil
in Mr. Wilkinson, in London, a philosophic critic,
with a coequal vigour of understanding and imagi-
nation comparable only to Lord Bacon's, who has
produced his master s buried books to the day, and
transferred them, with every advantage, from their
forgotten Latin into English, to go round the world
in our commercial and conquering tongue. This
startling reappearance of Swedenborg, after a hundred
years, in his pupil, is not the least remarkable fact
in his history. Aided, it is said, by the munificence
of ]\Ir. Clissold, and also by his literary skill, this
piece of poetic justice is done. The admirable pre-
liminary discourses with which Mr. Wilkinson has
VOL. IV. z
338 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
enriched these volumes, throw all the contemporary
philosophy of England into shade, and leave me
nothing to say on their proper grounds.
The " Animal Kingdom " is a book of wonderful
merits. It was written with the highest end, — to
put science and the soul, long estranged from each
other, at one again. It was an anatomist's account
of the human bod}^, in the highest style of poetry.
Nothins: can exceed the bold and brilliant treatment
of a subject usually so dry and repulsive. He saw
nature "wreathing through an everlasting spiral,
with wheels that never dry, on axes that never creak,"
and sometimes sought "to uncover those secret re-
cesses where nature is sitting at the fires in the
depths of her laboratory;" whilst the picture comes
recommended by the hard fidelity with which it is
based on practical anatomy. It is remarkable that
this sublime genius decides, peremptorily, for the
analytic against the synthetic method ; and, in a
book whose genius is a daring poetic synthesis, claims
to confine himself to a rigid experience.
He knows, if he only, the flowing of nature, and
how wise was that old answer of Amasis to him who
bade him drink up the sea, — " Yes, willingly, if you
will stop the rivers that flow in." Few knew as
much about nature and her subtle manners, or ex-
pressed more subtl}* her goings. He thought as
large a demand is made on our faith by nature as by
miracles. "He noted that in her proceeding from
first principles through her several subordinations,
there was no state through which she did not pass.
in.] ST\T:DEKB0EG ; OR, THE ^lYSTIC. 339
as if her path lay through all things." "For as often
as she betakes herself upward from visible phenomena,
or, in other words, withdraws herself inward, she
instantly, a^ it were, disappears, while no one knows
what has become of her, or whither she is gone : so
that it is necessary to take science as a guide in pur-
suing her steps."
The pursuing the inquiry under the light of an
end or final cause gives wonderful animation, a
sort of personality to the whole wiuting. This
book announces his favourite dogmas. The ancient
doctrine of Hippocrates, that the brain is a gland;
and of Leucippus, that the atom may be known by
the mass ; or, in Plato, the macrocosm by the micro-
cosm ; and, in the verses of Lucretius, —
Ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis
Ossibns sic et de pauxillis atque minutis
Visceribus viscus gigrii, sauguenque creari
Sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibus guttis;
Ex aurique putat micis consistere posse
Auvum, et de terris terram concrescere parvis ;
Ignibus ex igneis, liumorem humcribus esse.
Lib. I. 835.
*' The principle of all things entrails made
Of smallest entrails ; bone, ol' smallest bone ;
Blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one ;
Gold, of small grains ; earth, of small sands compacted ;
Small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted : "
and which Malpighi had summed in his maxim, that
"nature exists entire in leasts," — is a favourite
thought of Swedenborg. "It is a constant law of
the organic body, that large, com-pound, or visible
forms exist and subsist from smaller, simpler, and
340 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN". [iii.
ultimately from invisible forms, which act similarly
to the larger ones, but more perfectly and more uni-
versally; and the least forms so perfectly and uni-
versally, as to involve an idea representative of their
entire universe." The unities of each organ are so
many little organs, homogeneous with their com-
pound : the unities of the tongue are little tongues ;
those of the stomach, little stomachs ; those of the
heart are little hearts. This fruitful idea furnishes a
key to every secret. What was too small for the
eye to detect was read by the aggregates ; what was
too large, by the units. There is no end to his
application of the thought. " Hunger is an aggregate
of very many little hungers, or losses of blood by
the little veins all over the body." It is a key to
his theology also. " Man is a kind of very minute
heaven, corresponding to the world of spirits and to
heaven. Every particular idea of man, and every
affection, yea, every smallest part of his affection, is
an image and efhgy of him. A spirit may be known
from only a single thought. God is the grand man."
The hardihood and thoroughness of his study of
nature required a theory of forms also. " Forms
ascend in order from the lowest to the highest. The
lowest form is angular, or the terrestrial and corporeal.
The second and next higher form is the circular, which
is also called the perpetual-angular, because the circum-
ference of a circle is a perpetual angle. The form
above this is the spiral, parent and measure of circular
forms : its diameters are not rectilinear, but variously
circular, and have a spherical surface for centre ;
III.] SWEDEXBORG ; OE, THE MYSTIC. 341
therefore it is called the perpetual-circular. The form
above this is the vortical, or perpetual-spiral : next,
the perpetual-vortical, or celestial : last, the perpetual-
celestial, or spiritual."
Was it strange that a genius so bold should take
the last step also, — conceive that he might attain
the science of all sciences, to unlock the meaning
of the world? In the first volume on the "Animal
Kingdom," he broaches the subject in a remarkable
note.
"In our doctrine of Eepresentations and Cor-
respondences, we shall treat of both these symbolical
and typical resemblances, and of the astonishing
things which occur, I will not say, in the living body
only, but throughout nature, and which correspond so
entirely to supreme and spiritual things, that one
would swear that the physical world was purely sym-
bolical of the spiritual world ; insomuch, that if we
choose to express any natural truth -in physical and
definite vocal terms, and to convert these terms only
into the corresponding and spiritual terms, we shall
by this means elicit a spiritual truth, or theological
dogma, in place of the physical truth or precept;
although no mortal would have predicted that any-
thing of the land could possibly arise by bare literal
transposition ; inasmuch as the one precept, considered
separately from the other, appears to have absolutely
no relation to it. I intend, hereafter, to communicate
a number of examples of such correspondences, to-
gether with a vocabulary containing the terms of
spiritual things, as well as of the physical things for
342 REPEESEXTATIYE MEN. [iii.
which they are to be substituted. This symbolism
pervades the living body."
The fact, thus explicitly stated, is implied in all
poetry, in allegory, in fable, in the use of emblems,
and in the structure of language. Plato knew of it,
as is evident from his twice bisected line in the sixth
book of the Eepublic. Lord Bacon had found that
truth and nature differed only as seal and print ; and
he instanced some physical propositions, with their
translation into a moral or political sense. Behmen,
and all mystics, imply this law, in their dark riddle-
writing. The poets, in as far as they are poets, use
it ; but it is known to them only, as the magnet was
known for ages, as a toy. Swedenborg first put the
fact into a detached and scientific statement, because
it was habitually present to him, and never not seen.
It was involved, as we explained already, in the
doctrine of identity and iteration, because the mental
series exactly tallies with the material series. It
required an insight that could rank things in order
and series ; or, rather, it required such Tightness of
position, that the poles of the eye should coincide
with the axis of the world. The earth had fed its
mankind through five or six millenniums, and they had
sciences, religions, philosophies ; and yet had failed
to see the correspondence of meaning between every
part and every other part. And, down to this hour,
literature has no book in which the symbolism of
things is scientifically opened. One would say, that,
as soon as men had the first hint that every sensible
object, — animal, rock, river, air, — nay, space and time,
in.] SWEDENBOEG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 343
subsists not for itself, nor finally to a material end,
but as a picture-language to tell another story of beings
and duties, other science would be put by, and a
science of such grand presage would absorb all facul-
ties : that each man would ask of all objects, what
they mean : Why does the horizon hold me fast, with
my joy and grief, in this centre 1 Why hear I the
same sense from countless differing voices, and read
one never cj[uite expressed fact in endless picture-
language ? Yet, whether it be that these things will
not be intellectually learned, or that many centuries
must elaborate and compose so rare and opulent a
soul, — there is no comet, rock- stratum, fossil, fish,
quadruped, spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does
not interest more scholars and classifiers than the
meaning and upshot of the frame of things.
But Swedenborg was not content mth the culinary
use of the world. In his fifty -fourth year, these
thoughts held him fast, and his profound mind ad-
mitted the perilous opinion, too frequent in religious
histor}^, that he was an abnormal person, to whom
was granted the privilege of conversing with angels
and spirits ; and this ecstasy connected itself with
just this office of explaining the moral import of the
sensible world. To a right perception, at once broad
and minute, of the order of nature, he added the
comprehension of the moral laws in their widest social
aspects ; but whatever he saw, through some excessive
determination to form, in his constitution, he saw not
abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, con-
structed it in events. When he attempted to an-
344 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
nounce the law most sanely, he was forced to couch
it in parable.
Modern psychology offers no similar example of a
deranged balance. The principal powers continued
to maintain a healthy action ; and, to a reader who
can make due allowance in the report for the reporter's
peculiarities, the results are still instructive, and a
more striking testimony tc the sublime laws he an-
nounced, than any that balanced dulness could afford.
He attempts to give some account of the modus of the
new state, affirming that " his presence in the spiritual
world is attended with a certain separation, but only
as to the intellectual part of his mind, not as to the
will part;" and he affirms that "he sees, with the
internal sight, the things that are in another life,
more clearly than he sees the things which are here
in the world."
Having adopted the belief that certain books of
the Old and New Testaments were exact allegories,
or written in the angelic and ecstatic mode, he em-
ployed his remaining years in extricating from the
literal the universal sense. He had borrowed from
Plato the fine fable of "a most ancient people, men
better than we, and dwelling nigher to the gods;"
and Swedenborg added, that they used the earth
symbolicall}^, that these, when they saw terrestrial
objects, did not think at all about them, but only
about those which they signified. The correspondence
between thoughts and things henceforward occupied
him. " The very organic form resembles the end in-
scribed on it." A man is in general, and in particulr.r,
III.] SWEDEXBOEG ; OE, THE MYSTIC. 345
an organised justice or injustice, selfishness or grati-
tude. And the cause of this harmony he assigned in
the Arcana : " The reason Avhy all and single things,
in the heavens and on earth, are representative, is
because they exist from an influx of the Lord, through
heaven." This design of exhibiting such correspond-
ences, which, if adequately executed, would be the
poem of the world, in which all liistory and science
would play an essential part, was narrowed and de-
feated by the exclusively theologic direction which his
inquiries took His perception of natui^e is not human
and universal, but is mystical and Hebraic. He
fastens each natural object to a theologic notion ; — a
horse signifies carnal understanding; a tree, percep-
tion ; the moon, faith ; a cat means this ; an ostrich,
that; an artichoke, this other; and poorly tethers
every symbol to a several ecclesiastic sense. The
slippery Proteus is not so easily caught. In nature,
each individual s}Tnbol plays innumerable parts, as
each particle of matter circulates in turn through
every system. The central identity enables any one
symbol to express successively all the quahties and
shades of real beino;. In the transmission of the
heavenly waters every hose fits every hydrant.
Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry
thatwould chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every-
thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the
top of our condition to understand anything rightly.
His theological bias thus fatally narrowed his in-
terpretation of nature, and the dictionary of symbols
is yet to be written. But the interpreter, M'hom
346 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [m.
mankind must still expect, will find no predecessor
who has approached so near to the true problem.
Swedenborg styles himself, in the title-page of his
books, "Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ;" and by
force of intellect, and in effect, he is the last Father
in the Church, and is not likely to have a successor.
No wonder that his depth of ethical wisdom should
give him influence as a teacher. To the withered
traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he let in
nature again, and the worsliipper, escaping from the
vestry of verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself
a party to the whole of his religion. His religion
thinks for him, and is of universal application. He
turns it on every side ; it fits every part of life, in-
terprets and dignifies every circumstance. Instead
of a religion which visited him diplomatically three
or four times — when he was bom, when he married,
when he fell sick, and when he died, and for the rest
never interfered with him, — here was a teaching
which accompanied him all day, accompanied him
even into sleep and dreams; into his thinking, and
showed him through what a long ancestry his thoughts
descend ; into society, and showed by what affinities
he was girt to his equals and his counterparts ; into
natural objects, and showed their origin and meaning,
what are friendly, and what are hurtful ; and opened
the future world, by indicating the continuity of the
same laws. His disciples allege that their intellect
is invigorated by the study of his books.
There is no such problem for criticism as his theo-
logical writings, their merits are so commanding ; yet
III.] SWEDEXBORG; OE, THE MYSTIC. 347
such grave deductions must be made. Their immense-
and sandy diftuseness is Hke the prairie, or the desert,
and their incongruities are hke the last dehration.
He is superfluously explanatory, and his feeling of the
ignorance of men strangely exaggerated. Men take
truths of this nature very fast. Yet he abounds in
assertions, he is a rich discoverer, and of things which
most import us to know. His thought dwells in
essential resemblances, like the resemblance of a house
to the man w^ho built it. He saw things in their law,
in likeness of function, not of structure. There is an
invariable method and order in his delivery of his
truth, the habitual proceeding of the mind from in-
most to outmost. What earnestness and weightiness,
— his eye never roving, without one swell of vanity,
or one look to self, in any common form of literary
pride ! a theoretic or speculative man, but whom no
practical man in the universe could affect to scorn,
Plato is a gownsman : his garment, though of purple,
and almost sky-woven, is an academic robe, and hinders
action with its voluminous folds. But this mystic is
awful to Caesar. Lycurgus himself would bow.
The moral insight of Swedenborg, the correction
of popular errors, the announcement of ethical laws,
take him out of comparison with any other modern
writer, and entitle him to a place, vacant for some
ages, among the lawgivers of mankind. That slow
but commanding influence which he has accjuired,
like that of other religious geniuses, must be excessive
also, and have its tides, before it subsides into a per-
manent amount. Of course, what is real and uni-
348 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [m.
versal cannot be confined to the circle of those who
sympathise strictly with his genius, but mil pass forth
into the common stock of wise and just thinking.
The world has a sure chemistry, by which it extracts
what is excellent in its children, and lets fall the
infirmities and limitations of the grandest mind.
That metempsychosis which is familiar in the old
mythology of the Greeks^ collected in Ovid, and in
the Indian Transmigration, and is there objective, or
really takes place in bodies by alien will, — in Sweden-
borg's mind has a more philosophic character. It is
subjective, or depends entirely upon the thought of
the person. All things in the universe arrange them-
selves to each person anew, according to his ruling
love. Man is such as his affection and thouerht are.
Man is man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of
knowing and understanding. As he is, so he sees.
The marriages of the world are broken up. Interiors
associate all in the spiritual world. Whatever the
angels looked upon was to them celestial. Each Satan
appears to himself a man ; to those as bad as he, a
comely man ; to the purified, a heap of carrion.
Nothing can resist states : everything gravitates :
like will to like : what we call poetic justice takes
effect on the spot. We have come into a world which
is a living poem. Everything is as I am. Bird and
beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and effluvia
of the minds and wills of men there present. Every
one makes his own house and state. The ghosts are
tormented with the fear of death, and cannot remember
that they have died. They who are in evil and false-
III.] SWEDEXBOEG; OE, THE MYSTIC. 349
hood are afraid of all others. Such as have deprived
themselves of charitv, wander and flee : the societies
which they approach discover their quality, and drive
them awa}^ The covetous seem to themselves to be
abiding in cells where their money is deposited, and
these to be infested with mice. They who place
merit in good works seem to themselves to cut wood.
"I asked such if they were not wearied. They
replied, that they have not yet done work enough to
merit heaven."
He delivers golden sayings, which express with
singular beauty the ethical laws ; as when he uttered
that famed sentence, that, "in heaven the angels are
advancing continually to the spring-time of their
youth, so that the oldest angel appears the j^oungest : "
" The more angels, the more room : " " The perfection
of man is the love of use : " " Man, in his perfect form,
is heaven:" "What is from Him, is Him:" "Ends
always ascend as nature descends : " And the truly
poetic accoimt of the writing in the inmost heaven,
which, as it consists of inflexions according to the
form of heaven, can be read without instruction. He
almost justifies his claim to preternatural vision by
strange insights of the structure of the human body
and mind. "It is never permitted to any one, in
heaven, to stand behind another and look at the back
of his head : for then the influx which is from the
Lord is disturbed." The angels, from the sound of
the voice, know a man's love ; from the articulation
of the soimd, his wisdom ; and from the sense of the
words, his science.
350 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
In the " Conjugal Love" he has unfolded the science
of marriage. Of this book, one would say that, with
the hisfhest elements, it has failed of success. It came
near to be the Hj^mn of Love, which Plato attempted
in the "Banquet;" the love which, Daute says,
Casella sang among the angels in Paradii^e; and
which, as rightly celebrated, in its genesis, fruition,
and effect, might well entrance the souls, as it would
lay open the genesis of all institutions, customs, and
manners. The book had been grand, if the Hebraism
had been omitted, and the law stated without Gothi-
cism, as ethics, and with that scope for ascension of
state which the nature of things requires. It is a
fine Platonic development of the science of marriage ;
teaching that sex is universal, and not local ; virihty
in the male qualifying every organ, act, and thought ;
and the feminine in woman. Therefore, in the real
or spiritual world, the nuptial union is not momentary,
but incessant and total ; and chastity not a local, but
a universal \drtue ; unchastity being discovered as
much in the trading, or planting, or speaking, or
philosophising, as in generation; and that, though
the virgins he saw in heaven were beautiful, the wives
were incomparably more beautiful, and went on in-
creasing in beauty evermore.
Yet Swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his theory
to a temporary form. He exaggerates the circum-
stance of marriage ; and, though he finds false mar-
riases on earth, fancies a wiser choice in heaven.
But of progressive souls, all loves and friendships are
momentary. Do you love me ? means, Do you see the
III.] SWEDEXBORG; OE, THE MYSTIC. 351
same truth? If you do, we are happy Tvith the
same happiness : but presently one of us passes into
the perception of new truth ; we are divorced, and no
tension in nature can hold us to each other. I know
how delicious is this cup of love, — I existing for you,
you existing for me ; but it is a child's clinging to his
toy ; an attempt to eternise the fireside and nuptial
chamber ; to keep the picture-alphabet through which
our first lessons are prettily conveyed. The Eden of
God is bare and grand ; like the out-door landscape,
remembered from the evening fireside, it seems cold
and desolate, whilst you cower over the coals ; but,
once abroad again, we pity those who can forego the
magnificence of nature for candlelight and cards.
Perhaps the true subject of the " Conjugal Love " is
Conversation^ whose laws are profoundly eliminated.
It is false, if literally applied to maiTiage. For God
is the bride or bridegroom of the soid. Heaven is
not the pairing of two, but the communion of all
souls. We meet, and dwell an instant under the
temple of one thought, and part as though we parted
not, to join another thought in other fellowships of
joy. So far from there being anything divine in the
,low and proprietary sense of Do you love me ? it is only
when you leave and lose me, by casting yourself on
a sentiment which is higher than both of us, that I
draw near, and find myself at your side ; and I am
repelled if you fix your eye on me, and demand love.
In fact, in the spiritual world we change sexes every
moment. You love the worth in me; then I am
your husband : but it is not me, but the worth, that
352 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [in.
fixes the love ; and that worth is a drop of the ocean
of worth that is beyond me. Meantime, I adore the
greater worth in another, and so become his wife.
He aspires to a higher worth in another spirit, and
is wife or receiver of that influence.
Whether a self -inquisitorial habit, that he grew
into, from jealousy of the sins to which men of
thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentangling
and demonstrating that particular form of moral
disease, an acumen which no conscience can resist.
I refer to his feeling of the profanation of thinking to
what is good "from scientifics." "To reason about
faith, is to doubt and deny." He was painfully alive
to the difference between knowing and doing, and
this sensibility is incessantly expressed. Philosophers
are, therefore, vipers, cockatrices, asps, hemorrhoids,
presters, and flying serpents ; literary men are con-
jurors and charlatans.
But this topic suggests a sad afterthought, that
here we find the seat of his owtq pain. Possibly
Swedenborg paid the penalty of introverted faculties.
Success, or a fortunate genius, seems to depend on a
happy adjustment of heart and brain ; on a due pro-,
portion, hard to hit, of moral and mental power,
which, perhaps, obeys the law of those chemical
ratios which make a proportion in volumes necessary
to combination, as when gases will combine in certain
fixed rates, but not at any rate. It is hard to carry
a full cup : and this man, profusely endowed in heart
and mind, earl}^ fell into dangerous discord with him-
Ill,] SWEDENBORG; OE, THE MYSTIC. 353
self. In his Animal Kingdom, he surprised us, by
declaring that he loved analysis, and not synthesis ;
and now, after his fiftieth year, he falls into jealousy
of his intellect ; and^ though aware that truth is not
solitary, nor is goodness solitar}^, but both must ever
mix and marry, he makes war on his mind, takes the
part of the conscience against it, and, on all occasions,
traduces and blasphemes it. The violence is instantly
avenged. Beauty is disgraced, love is unlovely,
when truth, the half part of heaven, is denied, as
much as when a bitterness in men of talent leads to
satire, and destroys the judgment. He is wise, but
wise in his own despite. There is an air of infinite
grief, and the sound of wailing, all over and through
this lurid universe. A vampyre sits in the seat of the
prophet, and turns with gloomy appetite to the
images of pain. Indeed, a bird does not more readily
weave its nest, or a mole bore into the ground, than this
seer of the souls substructs a new hell and pit, each
more abominable than the last, round every new crew
of ofi'enders. He was let down through a column
that seemed of brass, but it was formed of angehc
spirits, that he might descend safely amongst the
unhappy, and -ftdtness the vastation of souls; and heard
there, for a long continuance, their lamentations ; he
saw their tormentors, who increase and strain pangs-
to infinity ; he saw the hell of the jugglers, the hell
of the assassins, the hell of the lascivious ; the hell of
robbers, who kill and boil men ; the infernal tun of
the deceitful ; the excrementitious hells ; the hell of
the revengeful, whose faces resembled a round, broad
VOL. IV. 2 a
354 KEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iii.
cake, and their arms rotate like a wheel. Except
Eabelais and Dean Swift, nobody ever had such science
of filth and corruption.
These books should be used with caution. It is
dangerous to sculj^ture these evanescing images of
thought. True in transition, they become false if
fixed. It requires, for his just apprehension, almost
a genius equal to his owa. But when his visions
become the stereotyped language of multitudes of
persons, of all degrees of age and capacity, they are
perverted. The wise people of the Greek race were
accustomed to lead the most intelligent and virtuous
young men, as part of their education, through the
Eleusinian mysteries, wherein, with much pomp and
graduation, the highest truths known to ancient
wisdom were taught. An ardent and contemplative
young man, at eighteen or twenty years, might read
once these books of Swedenborg, these mysteries of
love and conscience, and then throw them aside for
ever. Genius is ever haunted by similar dreams,
when the hells and the heavens are opened to it.
But these pictures are to be held as mystical, that is,
as a quite arbitrary and accidental picture of the
truth, — not as the truth. Any other symbol would
be as good : then this is safely seen.
Swedenborg's system of the world wants central
spontaneity ; it is djaiamic, not vital, and lacks power
to generate life. There is no individual in it. The
universe is a gigantic crystal, all whose atoms and
laminae lie in uninterrupted order, and with unbroken
III.] SWEDENBOEG ; OE, THE ^lYSTIC. 355
unity, but cold and still. What seems an individual
and a will, is none. There is an immense chain of
intermediation, extending from centre to extremes,
which bereaves every agency of all freedom and
character. The universe, in his poem, suffers under
a magnetic sleep, and only reflects the mind of the
magnetiser. Every thought comes into each mind by
influence from a society of spirits that surround it,
and into these from a higher society, and so on. All
his types mean the same few things. All his figures
speak one speech. All his interlocutors Sweden-
borgise. Be they who they may, to this complexion
must they come at last. This Charon ferries them
all over in his boat; kings, counsellors, cavaliers,
doctors. Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, King
George II., Mahomet, or whosoever, and all gather
one grimness of hue and style. Only when Cicero
comes by, our gentle seer sticks a little at saying he
talked with Cicero, and with a touch of human
relenting, remarks, "one whom it was given me to
believe was Cicero ;" and when the soi disant Roman
opens his mouth, Eome and eloquence have ebbed
away, — it is plain theologic Swedenborg, like the rest.
His heavens and hells are dull; fault of want of
individualism. The thousand-fold relation of men is
not there. The interest that attaches in nature to
each man, because he is right by his wrong, and
wrong by his right, because he defies aU dogmatising
and classification, so many allowances, and contin-
gencies, and futurities, are to be taken into account,
strong by his vices, often paralysed by his virtues, —
356 KEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [in.
sinks into entire sympathy with his society. Tiiis
want reacts to the centre of the system. Though the
agency of " the Lord " is in every line referred to by
name, it never becomes aUve. There is no lustre in
that eye which gazes from the centre, and which
should vivify the immense de23endency of beings.
The vice of Swedenborg's mind is its theologic
determination. Nothing with him has the liberality
of universal wisdom, but we are always in a church.
That Hebrew muse, which taught the lore of right
and "wrong to men, had the same excess of influence
for him it has had for the nations. The mode, as
well as the essence, was sacred. Palestine is ever
the more valuable as a chapter in universal histor}'',
and ever the less an available element in education.
The genius of Swedenborg, largest of all modern
souls in this department of thought, wasted itself in
the endeavour to reanimate and conserve what had
already arrived at its natural term, and, in the great
secular Providence, was retiring from its prominence
before western modes of thought and expression.
Swedenborg and Behmen both failed by attaching
themselves to the Christian symbol, instead of to the
moral sentiment, which carries innumerable Chris-
tianities, humanities, divinities, in its bosom.
The excess of influence shows itself in the incon-
gruous importation of a foreign rhetoric. "What have
I to do," asks the impatient reader, " with jasper and
sardonyx, beryl and chalcedony ; what with arks and
passovers, ephahs and ephods ; what with lepers and
emerods; what with heave -offerings and unleavened
in.] SWEDEXBOEG; OE, THE MYSTIC. 357
bread ; chariots of fire, dragons crowned and homed,
behemoth and unicorn? Good for orientals, these
are nothing to me. The more learning you bring to
explain them, the more glaring the impertinence.
The more coherent and elaborate the system, the less
I like it. I say, with the Spartan, '^Miy do you
speak so much to the jDui^pose, of that which is
nothing to the purpose"?' My learning is such as
God gave me in my birth and habit, in the delight
and study of my eyes, and not of another man's. Of
all absurdities, this of some foreigner, proposing to
take away my rhetoric, and substitute his own, and
amuse me with pelican and stork, instead of thrush
and robin; palm trees and shittim-wood, instead of
sassafras and hickory, — seems the most needless."
Locke said, "God, when he makes the prophet,
does not unmake the man." Swedenborg's history
points the remark. The parish disputes, in the
Swedish church, between the friends and foes of
Luther and Melancthon, concerning "faith alone,"
and " works alone," intrude themselves into his specu-
lations upon the economy of the universe, and of the
celestial societies. The Lutheran bishop's son, for
whom the heavens are opened, so that he sees with
eyes, and in the richest symbolic forms, the awful
truth of things, and utters again, in his books, as
under a heavenly mandate, the indisputable secrets
of moral nature, — with all these grandeurs resting
upon him, remains the Lutheran bishop's son; his
judgments are those of a Swedish polemic, and his
vast enlargements purchased by adamantine limita-
358 REPRESENTATIVE IVIEN. [ill.
tions. He carries his controversial memory with him,
in his visits to the souls. He is like Michel Angelo,
who, in his frescoes, put the cardinal who had offended
him to roast ujider a mountain of devils; or, like
Dante, who avenged, in vindictive melodies, all his
private VTongs; or, perhaps still more like Montaigne's
parish priest, who, if a hail-storm passes over the
village, thinks the day cf doom is come, and the
cannibals already have got the pip. Swedenborg
confounds us not less with the pains of Melancthon,
and Luther, and Wolfius, and his ovti books, which
he advertises among the angels.
Under the same theologic cramp, many of his
dogmas are bound. His cardinal position in morals
is, that e^ils should be shunned as sins. But he does
not know what evil is, or what good is, who thinks
any ground remains to be occupied, after saying
that evil is to be shunned as evil. I doubt not he was
led by the desire to insert the element of personality
of Deity. But nothing is added. One man, you
say, dreads erysipelas, — show him that this dread is
evil: or, one dreads hell, — show him that dread is
evil. He who loves goodness, harbours angels,
I reveres reverence, and lives with God. The less we
have to do mth our sins the better. No man can
I afford to waste his moments in compunctions. " That
is active duty," say the Hindoos, "which is not for
our bondage; that is knowledge, which is for our
liberation : all other duty is good only unto weariness."
Another dogma, gro'wang out of this pernicious
theologic limitation, is this Inferno. Swedenborg
III.] s^\t:denborg ; oe, the mystic. 359
has de\"ils. Evil, according to old j^liilosophers, is
good in the making. That pure malignity can exist, ^
is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to
be entertained by a rational agent ; it is atheism ; it
is the last profanation. Euripides rightly said, —
' ' Goodness and being in the gods are one ;
He wlio imputes ill to them makes them none."
To what a painful perversion had Gothic theology
arrived, that Svredenborg admitted no conversion for
evil spirits ! But the divine effort is never relaxed ;
the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass
and flowers ; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or
on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true.
Burns, with the wild humour of his apostrophe to
" poor old Nickie Ben,"
*' wad ye tak a thought, and mend !"
has the advantage of the vindictive theologian.
Everything is superficial, and perishes, but love and
truth only. The largest is always the truest senti-
ment, and we feel the more generous spirit of the
Indian Vishnu, — "I am the same to all mankind.
There is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred.
They who serve me with adoration, — I am in them,
and they in me. If one whose ways are altogether
evil, serve me alone, he is as respectable as the just
man; he is altogether weU employed; he soon becometh
of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal happiness."
For the anomalous pretension of Revelations of
the other world, — only his probity and genius can
entitle it to any serious regard. His revelations
destroy their credit by running into detail. If a
360 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [m.
man say that the Holy Ghost has informed him that
the Last Judgment (or the last of the judgments)
took place in 1757; or, that the Dutch, in the other
world, live in a heaven by themselves, and the
English in a heaven by themselves; I reply, that
the Spirit which is holy, is reserved, taciturn, and
deals in laws. The rumours of ghosts and hobgoblins
gossip and tell fortunes. The teachings of the high
Spirit are abstemious, and, in regard to particulars,
negative. Socrates's Genius did not advise him to
act or to find, but if he j^urposed to do somewhat not
advantageous, it dissuaded him. "What God is," he
said, "I know not; what he is not, I know." The
Hindoos have denominated the Supreme Being, the
"Internal Check." The illuminated Quakers ex-
plained their Light, not as somewhat which leads to
any action, but it appears as an obstruction to any-
thing unfit. But the right examples are private
experiences, which are absolutely at one on this
point. Strictly speaking, Swedenborg's revelation is
a confounding of planes, — a capital offence in so
learned a categorist. This is to carry the law of
surface into the plane of substance, to carry indivi-
dualism and its fopperies into the realm of essences
and generals, which is dislocation and chaos.
The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No
imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early
syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of
mortals. We should have listened on our knees
to any favourite, who, by stricter obedience, had
brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial
III.] SWEDEXBOEG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 361
currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery
and circumstance of the newly parted soul. But it
is certain that it must tally with what is best in
nature. It must not be inferior in tone to the
already known works of the artist who sculptures
the globes of the firmament, and writes the moral
law. It must be fresher than rainbows, stabler than
mountains, agreeing with flowers, with tides, and the
rising and setting of autumnal stars. Melodious
poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the
penetrating key-note of nature and spirit is soimded,
— the earth -beat, sea-beat, heart -beat, which makes
the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of
blood, and the sap of trees.
In this mood, we hear the rumour that the seer
has arrived, and his tale is told. But there is no
beauty, no heaven : for angels, goblins. The sad
muse loves night and death, and the pit. His
Inferno is mesmeric. His spiritual world bears the
same relation to the generosities and joys of truth,
of which human souls have already made us cog-
nisant, as a man's bad dreams bear to his ideal
life. It is indeed very like, in its endless power of
lurid pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming, which
nightly turns many an honest gentleman, benevolent,
but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulking like a dog
about the outer yards and kennels of creation. "When
he mounts into the heaven I do not hear its language.
A man should not tell me that he has walked among
the angels ; his proof is, that his eloquence makes me
one. Shall the archangels be less majestic and sweet
362 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [m.
than the figures that have actually walked the earth 1
These angels that Swedenborg paints give us no very
high idea of their discipline and culture : they are
all country parsons : their heaven is a fete champeti'e,
an evangelical picnic, or French distribution of prizes
to virtuous peasants. Strange, scholastic, didactic,
passionless, bloodless man, who denotes classes of
souls as a botanist disposes of a carex, and \'isits
doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende !
He has no sympathy. He goes up and dovm. the
world of men, a modern Ehadamanthus in gold-
headed cane and peruke, and with nonchalance, and
the air of a referee, distributes souls. The warm,
many-weathered, passionate-j3eopled world is to him
a grammar of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic free-
mason's procession. How difi'erent is Jacob Behmen !
he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe-struck,
with the gentlest humanity, to the Teacher whose
lessons he conveys ; and when he asserts that " in
some sort, love is greater than God," his heart beats
so high that the thumping against his leathern coat
is audible across the centuries. 'Tis a great differ-
ence. Behmen is healthily and beautifully wise,
notwithstanding the mystical narrowness and incom-
municableness. Swedenborg is disagreeably wise, and
with all his accumulated gifts, paralyses and repels.
It is the best sign of a great nature that it opens
a foreground, and, like the breath of morning land-
scapes, invites us onward. Swedenborg is retrospec-
tive, nor can we divest him of his mattock and
shroud. Some minds are for ever restrained from
Ill,] SWEDENBORG ; OR, THE MYSTIC. 363
descending into nature ; others are for ever prevented
from ascending out of it. With a force of many
men, he could never break the umbilical cord which
held him to nature, and he did not rise to the plat-
form of pure genius.
It is remarkable that this man, who, by his percep-
tion of symbols, saw the poetic construction of things,
and the primary relation of mind to matter, remained
entirely devoid of the whole apparatus of poetic ex-
pression, which that perception creates. He knew the
grammar and rudiments of the Mother-Tongue, — how
could he not read off one strain into music 1 Was he
like Saadi, who, in his vision, designed to fill his lap
with the celestial flowers, as presents for his friends ;
but the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him that
the skirt dropped from his hands ^ or, is reporting a
breach of the manners of that heavenly society 1 or,
was it that he saw the -sdsion intellectually, and hence
that chiding of the intellectual that pervades his
books 1 Be it as it may, his books have no melody,
no emotion, no humour, no relief to the dead prosaic
level. In his profuse and accurate imagery is no
pleasure, for there is no beauty. We wander forlorn
in a lack-lustre landscape. No bird ever sang in all
these gardens of the dead. The entire want of poetry
in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and,
like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of
warning. I think, sometimes, he will not be read
longer. His great name will turn a sentence. His
books have become a monument. His laurel so largely
mixed with cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with
364 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [m.
the temple incense, that boys and maids will shun the
spot.
Yet, in this immolation of genius and fame at the
shrine of conscience, is a merit sublime beyond praise.
He lived to purpose : he gave a verdict. He elected
goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling in
all this labyrinth of nature. Many opinions conflict
as to the true centre. In the shipwreck, some cling
to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, some to
spars, some to mast ; the pilot chooses with science,
— I plant myself here ; all will sink before this ; "he
comes to land who sails with me." Do not rely on
heavenly favour, or on compassion to folly, or on
prudence, on common sense, the old usage and main
chance of men : nothing can keep you, — not fate, nor
health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep you,
but rectitude only, rectitude for ever and ever ! — and
with a tenacity that never swerved in all his studies,
inventions, dreams, he adheres to this brave choice.
I think of him as of some transmigrating votary of
Indian legend, who says, " Though I be dog, or jackal,
or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature, under
what integument or ferocity, I cleave to right, as the
sure ladder that leads up to man and to God."
Swedenborg has rendered a double service to man-
kind, which is now only beginning to be known. By
the science of experiment and use he made his first
steps : he observed and published the laws of nature ;
and, ascending by just degrees, from events to their
summits and causes, he was fired with piety at the
harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to his joy
III.] SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC. 365
and worship. This was his first service. If the glory
was too bright for his eyes to bear, if he staggered
under the trance of delight, the more excellent is the
spectacle he saw, the realities of being which beam
and blaze through him, and which no infirmities of
the prophet are suffered to obscure ; and he renders
a second passive service to men, not less than the
first, — perhaps, in the great circle of being, and in the
retributions of spiritual nature, not less glorious or
less beautiful to himself.
V
i
i
IV.
MONTAIGNE; OK, THE SCEPTIC.
Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and,
on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on
the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the
other : given the upper, to find the under side.
Nothing so thin, but has these two faces ; and, when
the observer has seen the obverse, he turns it over to
see the reverse. Life is a pitching of this penny, —
heads or tails. AYe never tire of this game, because
there is still a slight shudder of astonishment at the
exhibition of the other face, at the contrast of the
two faces. A man is flushed with success, and
bethinks himself what this good luck signifies. He
drives his bargain in the street ; but it occurs, that
he also is bought and sold. He sees the beauty of a
human face, and searches the cause of that beauty,
which must be more beautiful. He builds his fortunes,
maintains the laws, cherishes his children; but he
asks himself, why^ and whereto *? This head and
this tail are called, in the language of philosophy.
368 EEPKESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
Infinite and Finite ; Eelative and Absolute ; Apparent
and Real ; and many fine names beside.
Each man is bom with a predisposition to one or
the other of these sides of nature ; and it will easily
happen that men will be found devoted to one or the
other. One class has the perception of difi"erence, and
is conversant with facts and surfaces; cities and
persons ; and the bringing certain things to pass ; —
the men of talent and action. Another class have
the perception of identity, and are men of faith and
philosophy, men of genius.
Each of these riders drives too fast. Plotinus
believes only in philosophers; Fenelon, in saints;
Pindar and Byron, in poets. Read the haughty
language in which Plato and the Platonists speak of
all men who are not devoted to their own shining
abstractions : other men are rats and mice. The
literary class is usually proud and exclusive. The
correspondence of Pope and Swift describes mankind
around them as monsters; and that of Goethe and
Schiller, in our own time, is scarcely more kind.
It is easy to see how this arrogance comes. The
genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any
object. Is his eye creative'? Does he not rest in
angles and colours, but beholds the design, — he will
presently undervalue the actual object. In powerful
moments, his thought has dissolved the works of art
and nature into their causes, so that the works appear
heavy and faulty. He has a conception of beauty
which the sculptor cannot embody. Picture, statue,
temple, railroad, steam-engine, existed first in an
IV.] MONTAIGNE ; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 369
artist's mind, without flaw, mistake, or friction, which
impair the executed models. So did the church, the
state, college, court, social circle, and all the institu-
tions. It is not strange that these men, remembering
what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should affirm
disdainfully the superiority of ideas. Having at some
time seen that the happy soul will carry all the arts
in power, they say. Why cumber ourselves with super-
fluous realisations 1 and, like dreaming beggars, they
assume to speak and act as if these values were already
substantiated.
On the other part, the men of toil and trade and
luxury, — the animal world, including the animal in
the philosopher and poet also, — and the practical
world, including the painful drudgeries which are
never excused to philosopher or poet any more than
to the rest, — weigh heavily on the other side. The
trade in our streets believes in no metaphysical causes,
thinks nothing of the force which necessitated traders
and a trading planet to exist : no, but sticks to cotton,
sugar, wool, and salt. The ward meetings, on election
days, are not softened by any misgiving of the value
of these ballotings. Hot life is streaming in a single
direction. To the men of this world, to the animal
strength and spirits, to the men of practical power,
whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out
of his reason. They alone have reason.
Things always bring their own philosoj^hy with
them, that is, prudence. No man acquires property
without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
In England, the richest country that ever existed,
VOL. IV. 2 B
370 KEPKESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
property stands for more, compared with personal
ability, than in any other. After dinner, a man be-
lieves less, denies more : verities have lost some charm.
After dinner, arithmetic is the only science : ideas
are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young men, re-
pudiated by the solid portion of society : and a man
comes to be valued by his athletic and animal qualities.
Spence relates that Mr. Pope was ^dth Sir Godfrey
Kneller one day, when his nephew, a Guinea trader,
came in. "Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, "you have
the honour of seeing the two greatest men in the
world." " I don't know how great men you may be,"
said the Guinea man, "but I don't like your looks.
I have often bought a man much better than both of
jon, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." Thus,
the men of the senses revenge themselves on the pro-
fessors, and repay scorn for scorn. The first had
leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say more than
is true ; the others make themselves merry with the
philosopher, and weigh man by the pound. They
believe that mustard bites the tongue, that pepper is
hot, friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to be
avoided, and suspenders hold up pantaloons ; that
there is much sentiment in a chest of tea ; and a man
will be eloquent if you give him good wine. Are
you tender and scrupulous, — you must eat more
mince-pie. They hold that Luther had milk in him
when he said,
" Wer nicht liebt "Wein, Weib, und Gesang,
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang ; "
and when he advised a young scholar, j)erplexed with
IV.] MONTAIGNE; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 371
foreordination and free-will, to get well drunk. " The
nerves," says Cabanis, "they are the man." My
neighbour, a jolly farmer, in the tavern bar-room,
thinks that the use of money is sure and speedy
spending. "For his part," he says, "he puts his
do^vn his neck, and gets the good of it."
The inconvenience of this way of thinking is that
it runs into indifFerentism, and then into disgust. Life
is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep
cool : it will be all one a hundred years hence. Life's
well enough ; but we shall be glad to get out of' it,
and they will all be glad to have us. Why should
we fret and drudge 1 Our meat will taste to-morrow
as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had
enough of it. "Ah," said my languid gentleman at
Oxford, "there's nothing new or true, — and no matter."
With a little more bitterness, the cynic moans : our
life is like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay
being carried before him : he sees nothing but the
bundle of haj^ " There is so much trouble in coming
into the world," said Lord Bolingbroke, " and so much
more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis
hardly worth while to be here at all." I knew a
philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed
briefly to sum up his experience of human nature in
saying, "Mankind is a damned rascal:" and the
natural corollary is pretty sure to follow, — " The
world lives by humbug, and so will I."
The abstractionist and the materalist thus mutually
exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing
the worst of materalism, there arises a third party to
372 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
occu])j the middle ground between these two, the
sceptic, namely. He finds both wrong by being in
extremes. He labours to plant his feet, to be the
beam of the balance. He will not go beyond his card.
He sees the one-sidedness of these men of the street ;
he will not be a Gibeonite ; he stands for the intel-
lectual faculties, a cool head, and whatever serves to
keep it cool : no unadvised industry, no unrewarded
self-devotion, no loss of the brains in toil. Am I an
ox, or a dray"? — You are both in extremes, he says.
You that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead,
deceive yourselves grossly. You believe yourselves
rooted and grounded on adamant ; and yet, if we un-
cover the last facts of our knowledge, you are spin-
ning like bubbles in a river, you know not whither
or whence, and you are bottomed and capped and
wrapped in delusions.
Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and wrapped
in a gown. The studious class are their own victims :
they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads
are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of
interruption, — pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism.
If you come near them, and see what conceits they
entertain, — they are abstractionists, and spend their
days and nights in dreaming some dream ; in expect-
ing the homage of society to some precious scheme
built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its
presentment, of justness in its application, and of all
energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitahse
it.
But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. I
IV.] MONTAIGNE ; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 373
know that human strength is not in extremes, but
in avoiding extremes, I, at least, will shun the
weakness of philosophising beyond my depth. What
is the use of pretending to powers we have not? What
is the use of pretending to assurances we have not,
resj^ecting the other life 1 Why exaggerate the power
of virtue ? Why be an angel before your time? These
strings, wound up too high, will snap. If there is a
wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not say
just that 1 If there are conflicting evidences, why
not state them 1 If there is not ground for a candid
thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay, — why not
suspend the judgment "? I weary of these dogmatisers.
I tire of these hacks of routine, who deny the dogmas.
I neither affirm nor deny. I stand here to try the
case. I am here to consider, aKeirreiv, to consider
how it is. I will try to keep the balance true. Of
what use to take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories
of society, religion, and nature, when I know that
practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable by
me and by my mates 1 Why so talkative in public
when each of my neighbours can pin me to my seat
by arguments I cannot refute 1 Why pretend that
life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle
and elusive the Proteus is ? Why think to shut up
all things in your narrow coop, when we know there
are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thousand
things, and unlike? Why fancy that you have all
the truth in your keeping 1 There is much to say on
all sides.
Who shall forbid a wise scepticism, seeing that
374 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
there is no practical question on which anything
more that an approximate solution can be had '? Is
not marriage an open question, when it is alleged,
from the beginning of the world, that such as are in
the institution wish to get out, and such as are out
wish to get in ? And the reply of Socrates, to him
who asked whether he should choose a wife, still
remains reasonable, "that, whether he should choose
one or not, he would repent it." Is not the state a
question'? All society is di\dded in opinion on the
subject of the state. Nobody loves it ; great numbers
dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to allegi-
ance : and the only defence set up is the fear of
doing worse in disorganising. Is it otherwise ■with
the church '? Or, to put any of the questions which
touch mankind nearest, — shall the young man aim at
a leading part in law, in politics, in trade? It will
not be pretended that a success in either of these kinds
is quite coincident with what is best and inmost in his
mind. Shall he, then, cutting the stays that hold him
fast to the social state, put out to sea with no guidance
but his genius ? There is much to say on both sides.
Remember the open question between the present
order of "competition," and the friends of "attractive
and associated labour." The generous minds embrace
the proposition of labour shared by all ; it is the only
honesty; nothing else is safe. It is from the poor
man's hut alone that strength and \drtue come : and
yet, on the other side, it is alleged that labour impairs
the form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the
labourers cry unanimously, " We have no thoughts."
IV.] MONTAIGNE; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 375
Culture, how indispensal3le ! I cannot forgive you
the want of accomplishments ; and yet, culture will
instantly destroy that chiefest beauty of spontaneous-
ness. Excellent is culture for a savage ; but once let
him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to
think of Plutarch's heroes. In short, since true forti-
tude of understanding consists "in not letting what
we know be embarrassed by what we do not know,"
we ou2;ht to secure those advanta2:es which we can
command, and not risk them by clutching after the
airy and unattainable. Come, no chimeras : Let us
go abroad ; let us mix in affairs ; let us learn, and
get, and have, and climb. " Men are a sort of moving
plants, and, like trees, receive a great part of their
nourishment from the air. If they keep too much at
home, they pine." Let us have a robust, manly life ;
let us know what we know, for certain ; what we
have, let it be solid, and seasonable, and our own, A
world in the hand is worth two in the bush. Let us
have to do with real men and women, and not with
skipping ghosts.
This, then, is the right ground of the sceptic, —
this of consideration, of self -containing ; not at all of
unbelief ; not at aU of universal denying, nor of uni-
versal doubting, — doubting even that he doubts ; least
of all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at all that is
stable and good. These are no more his moods than
are those of religion and philosophy. He is the con-
siderer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting stock,
husbanding his means, believing that a man has too
many enemies, than that he can afford to be his own ;
376 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
that we cannot give ourselves too many advantages,
in this unequal conflict, with powers so vast and un-
weariable ranged on one side, and this little, conceited,
vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up and
down into every danger, on the other. It is a position
taken up for better defence, as of more safety, and
one that can be maintained ; and it is one. of more
opportunity and range : as, when we build a house,
the rule is, to set it not too high nor too low, under
the wind, but out of the dirt.
The philosophy we want is one of fluxions and
mobility. The Spartan and Stoic schemes are too
stark and stiff for our occasion. A theory of Saint
John, and of non-resistance, seems, on the other hand,
too thin and aerial. We want some coat woven of
elastic steel, stout as the first and limber as the
second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit.
An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips
and splinters in this storm of many elements. No,
it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live
at all ; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded
on the sea. The soul of man must be the type of our
scheme, just as the body of man is the type after
which a dwelling-house is built. Adaptiveness is the
peculiarity of human nature. We are golden averages,
volitant stabilities, compensated or periodic errors,
houses founded on the sea. The wise sceptic wishes
to have a near view of the best game, and the chief
players ; what is best in the planet ; art and nature,
places and events, but mainly men. Everything that
is excellent in mankind, — a form of grace, an arm of
IV.] MONTAIGNE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 377
iron, lips of persuasion, a brain of resources, every one
skilful to play and win, — he will see and judge.
The terms of admission to this spectacle are, that
he have a certain solid and intelligible way of living of
his own ; some method of answering the inevitable
needs of human life ; proof that he has played with
skill and success ; that he has evinced the temper,
stoutness, and the range of qualities which, among his
contemporaries and countrymen, entitle him to fellow-
ship and trust. For the secrets of life are not shown
except to sympathy and likeness. ]\Ien do not confide
themselves to boys, or coxcombs, or pedants, but to
their peers. Some ^vise limitation, as the modern
phrase is ; some condition between the extremes, and
having itself a positive quality ; some stark and suffi-
cient man, who is not salt or sugar, but sufficiently
related to the world to do justice to Paris or London,
and, at the same time, a vigorous and original thinker,
whom cities cannot overawe, but who uses them, — is
the fit person to occupy this ground of speculation.
These qualities meet in the character of Montaigne.
And yet, since the personal regard which I entertain
for Montaigne may be unduly great, I will, under the
shield of this prince of egotists, offer, as an apology
for electing him as the representative of scepticism, a
word or two to explain how my love began and grew
for this admirable gossip.
A single odd volume of Cotton's translation of the
Essays remained to me from my father's library, when
a boy. It lay long neglected, until, after many years,
when I was newly escaped from college, I read the
378 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
book, and procured the remaining volumes. I re-
member the delight and wonder in which I lived with
it. It seemed to me as if I had myself written the
book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to
my thought and experience. It happened, when in
Paris, in 1833, that, in the cemetery of Pere le Chaise,
I came to a tomb of Auguste Collignon, who died in
1830, aged sixty-eight years, and who, said the monu-
ment, "lived to do right, and had formed himself to
virtue on the Essays of Montaigne." Some years
later I became acquainted with an accomplished
English poet, John Sterling ; and, in prosecuting my
correspondence, I found that, from a love of Mon-
taigne, he had made a pilgrimage to his chateau, still
standing near Castellan, in Perigord, and, after two
hundred and fifty years, had copied from the walls of
his library the inscriptions which Montaigne had
written there. That Journal of Mr. Sterling's, published
in the " Westminster Eeview,"Mr. Hazlitt has reprinted
in the Prolegomena to his edition of the Essays. I
heard with pleasure that one of the newly-discovered
autographs of William Shakspeare was in a copy of
Florio's translation of Montaigne. It is the only book
which w^e certainly know to have been in the poet's
library. And oddly enough, the duplicate copy of
Florio, which the British Museum purchased, with a
view of protecting the Shakspeare autograph (as I
was informed in the Museum), turned out to have
the autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf. Leigh
Hunt relates of Lord Byron that Montaigne was the
only great writer of past times whom he read with
IV.] MONTAIGNE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 379
avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, not needful
to be mentioned here, concurred to make this old
Gascon still new and immortal for me.
In 1571, on the death of his father, Montaigne,
then thirty-eight years old, retired from the practice
of law, at Bordeaux, and settled himself on his estate.
Though he had been a man of pleasure, and some-
times a courtier, his studious habits now grew on
him, and he loA'ed the compass, staidness, and inde-
pendence, of the country gentleman's life. He took
up his economy in good earnest, and made his farms
yield the most. Downright and plain -dealing, and
abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed
in the country for his sense and probity. In the civil
wars of the League, which converted every house into
a fort, Montaigne kept his gates open, and his house
without defence. All parties freely came and went,
his courage and honour being universally esteemed.
The neighbouring lords and gentry brought jewels
and papers to him for safe-keeping. Gibbon reckons,
in these bigoted times, but two men of liberality in
France, — Henry IV. and Montaigne.
Montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all
writers. His French freedom runs into grossness ; but
he has anticipated all censure by the bounty of his
own confessions. In his times books were written to
one sex only, and almost all were written in Latin; so
that, in a humorist, a certain nakedness of statement
was permitted, which our manners, of a literature
addressed equally to both sexes, do not allow. But,
though a biblical plainness, coupled with a most un-
380 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
canonical levity, may shut his pages to many sensitive
readers, yet the offence is superficial. He parades it :
he makes the most of it : nobody can think or say
worse of him than he does. He pretends to most of
the vices ; and, if there be any virtue in him, he says
it got in by stealth. There is no man, in his opinion,
who has not deserved hanging five or six times ; and
he pretends no exception in his own behalf. "Five
or six as ridiculous stories," too, he says, "can be told
of me, as of any man living." But, with all this really
superfluous frankness, the opinion of an invincible
probity grows into every reader's mind.
" When I the most strictly and religiously confess
myself, I find that the best virtue I have has in it
some tincture of vice ; and I am afraid that Plato, in
his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and perfect a
lover of virtue of that stamp as any other whatever),
if he had listened, and laid his ear close to himself,
would have heard some jarring sound of human
mixture ; but faint and remote, and only to be per-
ceived by himself."
Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at colour
or pretence of any kind. He has been in courts so
long as to have conceived a furious disgust at appear-
ances ; he will indulge himself with a little cursing
and swearing ; he will talk with sailors and gipsies,
use flash and street ballads : he has stayed in-doors
till he is deadly sick ; he will to the open air, though
it rain bullets. He has seen too much of gentlemen
of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals ; and
is so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks the
rv.] MONTAIGNE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 381
more barbarous man is, the better he is. He likes
his saddle. You may read theology, and grammar,
and metaphysics elsewhere. Whatever you get here,
shall smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or
smart, or stinging. He makes no hesitation to enter-
tain you with the records of his disease ; and his
journey to Italy is quite fidl of that matter. He took
and kept this position of equilibrium. Over his name
he drew an emblematic pair of scales, and wrote Que
sgais je ? under it. As I look at his e^gy opposite
the title-page, I seem to hear him say, "You may
play old Poz, if you will ; you may rail and exagger-
ate, — I stand here for truth, and will not, for all the
states, and churches, and revenues, and personal re-
putations of Europe, overstate the dry fact as I see
it ; I will rather mumble and prose about what I
certainly know, — my house and barns ; my father, my
wife, and my tenants ; my old lean bald pate ; my
knives and forks ; what meats I eat, and what drinks
I prefer ; and a hundred straws just as ridiculous, —
than I will write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine
romance. I like gray days, and autumn and winter
weather. I am gray and autumnal myself, and think
an undress, and old shoes that do not pinch my feet,
and old friends who do not constrain me, and plain
topics where I do not need to strain myself and pump
my brains, the most suitable. Our condition as men
is risky and ticklish enough. One cannot be sure of
himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be
whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.
Why should I vapour and play the philosopher,
382 REPEESENTATIVE MEN". [iv.
instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing
balloon? So, at least, I live within compass, keep
myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at
last, with decency. If there be anything farcical in
such a life, the blame is not mine : let it lie at fate's
and nature's door."
The Essays, therefore, are an entertaining soliloquy
on every random topic that comes into his head;
treating everything without ceremony, yet with
masculine sense. There have been men with deeper
insight ; but, one would say, never a man with such
abundance of thoughts : he is never dull, never in-
sincere, and has the genius to make the reader care
for all that he cares for.
The sincerity and marrow of the man reach to
his sentences. I know not anywhere the book that
seems less written. It is the language of conversa-
tion transferred to a book. Cut these words, and
they would bleed ; they are vascular and alive. One
has the same pleasure in it that we have in listening
to the necessary speech of men about their work,
when any unusual circumstance gives momentary
importance to the dialogue. For blacksmiths and
teamsters do not trip in their speech ; it is a shower
of bullets. It is Cambridge men who correct them-
selves, and begin again at every half sentence, and,
moreover, will pun, and refine too much, and swerve
from the matter to the expression. Montaigne talks
with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, and
himself, and uses the positive degree ; never shrieks,
or protests, or prays : no weakness, no convulsion, no
IV.] MONTAIGXE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 383
superlative : does not ^visli to jump out of his skin,
or play any antics, or annihilate space or time ; but
is stout and solid ; tastes every moment of the day ;
likes pain, because it makes him feel himself, and
realise things ; as we pinch ourselves to know that
we are awake. He keeps the plain ; he rarely mounts
or sinks; likes to feel solid ground, and the stones
underneath. His writing has no enthusiasms, no
asjDiration ; contented, self-respecting, and keeping
the middle of the road. There is but one exception,
— in his love for Socrates. In speaking of him, for
once his cheek flushes, and his style rises to passion.
Montaigne died of a quinsy, at the age of sixty, in
1592. When he came to die, he caused the mass to
be celebrated in his chamber. At the age of thirty-
three, he had been married. "But," he says, "might
I have had my own will, I would not have married
Wisdom herself, if she would have had me : but 'tis
to much purpose to evade it, the common custom and
use of life will have it so. Most of my actions are
guided by example, not choice." In the hour of death,
he gave the same weight to custom. Que s^ais je ?
What do I know ?
This book of Montaigne the world has endorsed,
by translating it into all tongues, and printing
seventy-five editions of it in Europe : and that, too, a
circulation somewhat chosen, namely, among courtiers,
soldiers, princes, men of the world, and men of wit
and generosity.
Shall we say that Montaigne has spoken wisely,
384 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
and given the right and permanent expression of the
human mind, on the conduct of life 1
We are natural believers. Truth, or the connec-
tion between cause and effect, alone interests us. We
are persuaded that a thread runs through all things :
all worlds are strung on it, as beads : and men, and
events, and life, come to us, only because of that
thread : they pass and repass, only that we may
know the direction and continuity of that line. A
book or statement which goes to show that there is
no line, but random and chaos, a calamity out of
nothing, a prosperity and no account of it, a hero
born from a fool, a fool from a hero, — dispirits us.
Seen or unseen, we believe the tie exists. Talent
makes counterfeit ties ; genius finds the real ones.
We hearken to the man of science, because we anti-
cipate the sequence in natural phenomena which he
uncovers. We love whatever afiirms, connects, pre-
serves ; and dislike what scatters or pulls down. One
man appears whose nature is to all men's eyes con-
serving and constructive; his presence supposes a
well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large institu-
tions, and empire. If these did not exist, they would
begin to exist through his endeavours. Therefore,
he cheers and comforts men, who feel all this in him
very readily. The nonconformist and the rebel say
all manner of unanswerable things against the existing
republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house
or state of their own. Therefore, though the to^Ti,
and state, and way of living, which our counsellor
IV.] MOXTAIGXE; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 385
contemplated, might be a very modest or musty
prosperity, yet men rightly go for him, and reject the
reformer, so long as he comes only ■\Aith axe and
crowbar.
But though we are natural conservers and caus-
ationists, and reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, the
sceptical class, which Montaigne represents, have
reason, and every man, at some time, belongs to it.
Every superior mind will pass through this domain
of equilibration, — I should rather say, vdll know how
to avail himseK of the checks and balances in nature,
as a natural weapon against the exaggeration and
formalism of bigots and blockheads.
Scepticism is the attitude assumed by the student
in relation to the particulars which society adores,
but which he sees to be reverend only in their tend-
ency and spirit. The ground occupied by the sceptic
is the vestibule of the temple. Society does not like
to have any breath of question blown on the existing
order. But the interrogation of custom at all points
is an inevitable stage in the growth of every superior
mind, and is the evidence of its perception of the
flowing power which remains itself in all changes.
The superior mind will find itself equally at odds
with the evils of society, and with the projects that
are offered to relieve them. The wise sceptic is a
bad citizen ; no conservative ; he sees the selfishness
of property, and the drowsiness of institutions. But
neither is he fit to work with any democratic party
that ever was constituted ; for parties wish every one
committed, and he penetrates the popular patriotism.
VOL. IV. 2 c
386 EEPKESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
His politics are those of the " Soul's Errand " of Sir
Walter Raleigh; or of Krishna, in the Bhagavat,
" There is none who is worthy of my love or hatred ; "
whilst he sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce,
and custom. He is a reformer : yet he is no better
member of the philanthropic association. It turns
out that he is not the champion of the operative, the
pauper, the prisoner, the slave. It stands in his
mind that our life in this world is not of quite so
easy interpretation as churches and school-books
say. He does not msh to take ground against these
benevolences, to play the part of devil's attorney,
and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the
sun for him. But he says, There are doubts.
I mean to use the occasion, and celebrate the
calendar-day of our Saint Michel de Montaigne, by
counting and describing these doubts or negations.
I -vvish to ferret them out of their holes, and sun them
a little. We must do with them as the police do
with old rogues, who are shown up to the public at
the marshal's office. They w411 never be so formid-
able, when once they have been identified and regis-
tered. But I mean honestly by them, — that justice
shall be done to their terrors. I shall not take
Sunday objections, made up on purpose to be put
doA\Ti. I shall take the worst I can find, whether I
can dispose of them, or they of me.
I do not press the scepticism of the materialist.
I know the quadruped opinion will not prevail. 'Tis
of no importance what bats and oxen think.' The
first dangerous symptom I report is the levity of
IV.] MONTAIGNE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 387
intellect ; as if it were fatal to earnestness to know
much. Knowledge is the knowing that we can not
know. The dull pray ; the geniuses are light mockers.
How respectable is earnestness on every platform !
but intellect kills it. Nay, San Carlo, my subtle and
admirable friend, one of the most penetrating of men,
finds that all direct ascension, even of lofty piety,
leads to this ghastly insight, and sends back the
votary orphaned. My astonishing San Carlo thought
the lawgivers and saints infected. They found the
ark empty; saw, and would not tell; and tried to
choke off their approaching followers, by saying,
"Action, action, my dear fellows, is for you ! " Bad
as was to me this detection by San Carlo, this frost in
July, this blow from a bride, there was still a wors^
namely, the cloy or satiety of the saints. In the
mount of vision, ere they have yet risen from their
knees, they say, " We discover that this our homage
and beatitude is partial and deformed : we must fly
for relief to the suspected and reviled Intellect, to the
Understanding, the Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics
of talent."
This is hobgoblin the first; and, though it has
been the subject of much elegy, in our nineteenth
century, from Byron, Goethe, and other poets of less
fame, not to mention many distinguished private
observers, — I confess it is not very affecting to my
imasination : for it seems to concern the shattering
of baby-houses and crockery-shops. What flutters
the church of Eome, or of England, or of Geneva, or
of Boston, may yet be very far from touching any
388 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
principle of faith. I think that the intellect and
moral sentiment are unanimous; and that, though
philosophy extirpates bugbears, yet it supplies the
natural checks of vice, and polarity to the soul. I
think that the wiser a man is, the more stupendous
he finds the natural and moral economy, and lifts
himself to a more absolute reliance.
There is the power of moods, each setting at
naught all but its own tissue of facts and beliefs.
There is the power of complexions, obviously modi-
fying the dispositions and sentiments. The beliefs
and unbeliefs appear to be structural; and, as soon
as each man attains the poise and vivacity which
allow the whole machinery to play, he will not need
extreme examples, but "vvill rapidly alternate all
opinions in his own life. Our life is March weather,
savage and serene in one hour. We go forth austere,
dedicated, believing in the iron links of Destiny, and
will not turn on our heel to save our life ; but a
book, or a bust, or only the sound of a name, shoots
a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly believe
in will : my finger-ring shall be the seal of Solomon :
fate is for imbeciles : all is possible to the resolved
mind. Presently, a new experience gives a new turn
to our thoughts : common sense resumes its tyranny :
we say, "Well, the army, after all, is the gate to fame,
manners, and poetry : and, look you, — on the whole,
selfishness plants best, prunes best, makes the best
commerce, and the best citizen." Are the opinions
of a man on right and wrong, on fate and causation,
at the mercy of a broken sleep or an indigestion 1 Is
IV.] MOXTAIGXE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 389
his belief in God and Duty no deeper than a stomach
evidence/? And what guaranty for the permanence
of his opinions 1 I like not the French celerity, — a
new church and state once a week. This is the
second negation ; and I shall let it pass for what it
wiU. As far as it asserts rotation of states of mind,
I suppose it suggests its own remedy, namely, in the
record of larger periods. What is the mean of many
states; of all the states? Does the general voice of
ages affirm any principle, or is no community of senti-
ment discoverable in distant times and places 1 And
when it shows the power of self-interest, I accept that
as part of the divine law, and must reconcile it with
aspiration the best I can.
The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of
mankind, in all ages, — that the laws of the world do
not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us.
Fate, in the shape of Kinde or nature, grows over us
like grass. We paint Time with a scythe ; Love and
Fortune, blind ; and Destiny, deaf. We have too
little power of resistance against this ferocity which
champs us up. What front can we make against these
unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces'? What can I
do against the influence of Eace, in my history? What
can I do against hereditary and constitutional habits,
against scrofula, lymph, impotence? against climate,
against barbarism, in my country? I can reason down
or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly : feed
he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.
But the main resistance which the affirmative
390 EEPEESEXTATIVE MEN. [iv.
impnlse finds, and one including all others, is in the
doctrine of the Illusionists. There is a painful rumour
in circulation, that we have been practised upon in all
the principal performances of life, and free agency is
the emptiest name. We have been sopj^ed and drugged
with the air, with food, with woman, with children,
with sciences, with events, which leave us exactly
where they found us. The mathematics, 'tis com-
plained, leave the mind where they find it : so do all
sciences ; and so do all events and actions. I find a
man who has passed through all the sciences, the churl
he was ; and through all the offices, learned, civil, and
social, can detect the child. We are not the less
necessitated to dedicate life to them. In fact, we may
come to accept it as the fixed rule and theory of our
state of education, that God is a substance, and his
method is illusion. The eastern sages owned the
goddess Yoganidra, the great illusory energy of Vishnu,
by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole Avorld is
beguiled.
Or, shall I state it thus ? — The astonishment of life
is the absence of any appearance of reconciliation
between the theory and practice of life. Eeason, the
prized reality, the Law, is apprehended, now and
then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the
hubbub of cares and works which have no direct
bearing on it ; — is then lost, for months or years, and
again found, for an interval, to be lost again. If we
compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half
a dozen reasonable hours. But what are these cares
and works the better 1 A method in the world we do
IV.] MOXTAIGXE; OR, THE SCEPTIC. 391
not see, but this parallelism of great and little, which
never react on each other, nor discover the smallest
tendency to converge. Experiences, fortunes, govern-
ings, readings, writings, are nothing to the purpose;
as when a man comes into the room, it does not appear
whether he has been fed on yams or buffalo, — he has
contrived to get so much bone and fibre as he wants,
out of rice or out of snow. So vast is the dispropor-
tion between the sky of law and the pismire of per-
formance under it, that, whether he is a man of worth
or a sot, is not so great a matter as we say. Shall I
add, as one juggle of this enchantment, the stunning
non-intercourse law which makes co-operation impos-
sible *? The young spirit pants to enter society. But
all the ways of culture and greatness lead to solitary
imprisonment. He has been often balked. He did not
expect a sjTiipathy with his thought from the village,
but he went with it to the chosen and intelligent, and
found no entertainment for it, but mere misappre-
hension, distaste, and scoffing. Men are strangely
mistimed and misapplied ; and the excellence of each
is an inflamed indi^ddualism which separates him
more.
There are these, and more than these diseases of
thought, which our ordinary teachers do not attempt
to remove. Now shall we, because a good nature in-
clines us to virtue's side, say, There are no doubts, —
and lie for the right 1 Is life to be led in a brave or
in a cowardly manner 1 and is not the satisfaction of
the doubts essential to all manliness ^ Is the name of
virtue to be a barrier to that which is virtue 1 Can
392 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
you not believe that a man of earnest and burly habit
may find small good in tea, essays, and catechism, and
want a rougher instruction, want men, labour, trade,
farming, war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt, and
terror, to make things plain to him ; and has he not
a right to insist on being convinced in his own way ?
When he is convinced, he will be worth the pains.
Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the
soul; unbelief in denying them. Some minds are
incapable of scepticism. The doubts they profess to
entertain are rather a civility or accommodation to the
common discourse of their company. They may well
give themselves leave to speculate, for they are secui^e
of a return. Once admitted to the heaven of thouo-ht,
they see no relapse into night, but infinite invitation
on the other side. Heaven is within heaven, and sky
over sky, and they are encompassed with divinities.
Others there are, to whom the heaven is brass, and it
shuts down to the surface of the earth. It is a ques-
tion of temperament, or of more or less immersion in
nature. The last class must needs have a reflex or
parasite faith ; not a sight of realities, but an instinc-
tive reliance on the seers and believers of realities.
The manners and thoughts of believers astonish them,
and convince them that these have seen somethins:
which is hid from themselves. But their sensual
habit would fix the believer to his last position, whilst
he as inevitably advances ; and presently the unbe-
liever, for love of behef, burns the believer.
Great believers are always reckoned infidels, im-
practicable, fantastic, atheistic, and really men of no
IV.] MONTAIGNE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 393
account. The spiritualist finds himself driven to
express his faith by a series of scepticisms. Charitable
souls come with their projects, and ask his co-operation.
How can he hesitate 1 It is the rule of mere comity
and courtesy to agree where you can, and to turn your
sentence with something auspicious, and not freezing
and sinister. But he is forced to say, " 0, these things
will be as they must be : what can you do 1 These
particular griefs and crimes are the foliage and fruit
of such trees as w^e see growing. It is vain to com-
plain of the leaf or the berry : cut it off; it will bear
another just as bad. You must begin your cure lower
down." The generosities of the day prove an intract-
able element for him. The people's questions are not
his ; their methods are not his ; and, against all the
dictates of good nature, he is driven to say he has no
pleasure in them.
Even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, of the
divine Providence, and of the immortality of the soul,
his neighbours cannot put the statement so that he
shall affirm it. But he denies out of more faith, and
not less. He denies out of honesty. He had rather
stand charged Avith the imbecility of scepticism, than
with untruth. I believe, he says, in the moral design
of the universe ; it exists hospitably for the weal of
sculs ; but your dogmas seem to me caricatures : why
should I make-believe them? Will any say, this is
cold and infidel? The wise and magnanimous wdll
not say so. They will exult in his far-sighted good-
will, that can abandon to the adversary all the ground
of tradition and common belief, ^vithout losing a jot
394 EEPEESENTATIVE MEX. [iv.
of strength. It sees to the end of all transgression.
George Fox saw "that there was an ocean of darkness
and death ; but withal, an infinite ocean of light and
love which flowed over that of darkness."
The final solution in which scepticism is lost, is in
the moral sentiment, which never forfeits its supre-
macy. All moods may be safely tried, and their weight
allowed to all objections : the moral sentiment as
easily outweighs them all, as any one. This is the
drop which balances the sea. I play with the miscel-
lany of facts, and take those superficial views which
we call scepticism ; but I know that they will pre-
sently appear to me in that order which makes scepti-
cism impossible. A man of thought must feel the
thought that is parent of the universe : that the
masses of nature do undulate and flow.
This faith avails to the whole emergency of life
and objects. The world is saturated with deity and
with law. He is content with just and unjust, with
sots and fools, with the triumph of folly and fraud.
He can behold with serenity the yawning gulf be-
tween the ambition of man and his power of perform-
ance, between the demand and supply of power,
which makes the tragedy of all souls.
Charles Fourier announced that "the attractions
of man are proportioned to his destinies;" in other
words, that every desire predicts its own satisfac-
tion. Yet, all experience exhibits the reverse of this ;
the incompetency of power is the universal grief of
young and ardent minds. They accuse the divine
Providence of a certain parsimony. It has shown the
IV.] MOXTAIGXE ; OE, THE SCEPTIC. 395
heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with
a desire for the whole; a desire raging, infinite; a
hunger, as of space to be filled with planets ; a cry of
famine, as of devils for souls. Then for the satisfac-
tion, — to each man is administered a single drop, a
bead of dew of vital power, per day, — a cup as large
as space, and one drop of the water of life in it.
Each man woke in the morning with an appetite
that could eat the solar system like a cake ; a spirit
for action and passion without bounds ; he could lay
his hand on the morning star ; he could try conclu-
sions \\dth gravitation or chemistry ; but, on the first
motion to prove his strength, — hands, feet, senses, gave
way, and would not serve him. He was an emperor
deserted by his states, and left to whistle by himself,
or thrust into a mob of emperors, all whisthng : and
still the sirens sang, "The attractions are propor-
tioned to the destinies." In every house, in the
heart of each maiden and of each boy, in the soul of
the soaring saint, this chasm is found, — between
the largest promise of ideal power and the shabby
experience.
The expansive nature of truth comes to our suc-
cour, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man helps him-
self by larger generalisations. The lesson of life is
practically to generalise; to beheve what the years
and the centuries say against the hours ; to resist the
usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their
catholic sense. Things seem to say one thing, and
say the reverse. The appearance is immoral; the
result is moral Things seem to tend downward, to
396 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [iv.
justify despondency, to promote rogues, to defeat the
just ; and, by knaves, as by martyrs, the just cause is
carried forward. Although knaves win in every
political struggle, although society seems to be de-
livered over from the hands of one set of criminals
into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as
the government is changed, and the march of civilisa-
tion is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are some-
how answered. We see, now, events forced on,
which seem to retard or retrograde the civility of
ages. But the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and
storms and waves cannot drown him. He snaps his
finger at laws : and so, throughout history, heaven
seems to affect low and poor means. Through the
years and the centuries, through evil agents, through
toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency
irresistibly streams.
Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the
mutable and fleeting ; let him learn to bear the dis-
appearance of things he was wont to reverence, with-
out losing his reverence; let him learn that he is
here, not to work, but to be worked upon ; and that,
though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace
opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal
Cause.
" If my bark sink, 'tis to another sea."
'1
V.
SHAKSPEARE; OE, THE POET.
Great men are more distinguished by range and ex-
tent than by originality. If we require the origin-
ality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their
web from their o^^^l bowels ; in finding clay, and
making bricks, and building the house ; no great men
are original. Nor does valuable originality consist in
unlikeness to other men. The hero is in the press of
knights, and the thick of events ; and, seeing what
men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the need-
ful length of sight and of arm, to come at the desired
point. The greatest genius is the most indebted man.
A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes upper-
most, and, because he says everything, saying, at last,
something good ; but a heart in unison with, his time
and country. There is nothing whimsical and fan-
tastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest,
freighted with the weightiest convictions and pointed
with the most determined aim which any man or class
knows of in his times.
The Genius of our life is jealous of individuals, and
398 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
will not have any individual great, except through the
general. There is no choice to genius. A great man
does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, " I
am full of life, I will go to sea, and find an Antarctic
continent : to-day I will square the circle : I will
ransack botany, and find a new food for man : I
have a new architecture in my mind : I foresee a new
mechanic power:" no, but he finds himself in the
river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by
the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He
stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and
their hands all point in the direction in which he
should go. The church has reared him amidst rites
and pomps, and he carries out the advice which her
music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by her
chants and processions. He finds a war raging : it
educates him, by trumpet, in barracks, and he betters
the instruction. He finds two counties groping to
bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of produc-
tion to the place of consumption, and he hits on a
railroad. Every master has found his materials col-
lected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his
people, and in his love of the materials he wrought
in. What an economy of power ! and what a com-
pensation for the shortness of life ! All is done to his
hand. The world has brought him thus far on his
way. The human race has gone out before him, sunk
the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers.
Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked
for him, and he enters into their labours. Choose
any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of
v.] SHAKSPEARE ; OR, THE POET. 399
the national feeling and history, and he would have
all to do for himseK : his powers would be expended
in the first preparations. Great genial power, one
would almost say, consists in not being original at
all ; in being altogether receptive ; in letting the
world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to
pass unobstructed through the mind.
Shakspeare's youth fell in a time when the English
people were importunate for dramatic entertainments.
The court took offence easily at political allusions,
and attempted to suppress them. The Puritans, a
growing and energetic party, and the religious among
the Anglican church, would suppress them. But
the people wanted them. Inn -yards, houses without
roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures at country fairs,
were the ready theatres of strolling players. The
people had tasted this new joy ; and, as we could not
hope to suppress newspapers now, — no, not by the
strongest party, — neither then could king, prelate, or
puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ, which
was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, punch,
and library, at the same time. Probably king, prelate,
and puritan, all found their own account in it. It
had become, by all causes, a national interest, — by no
means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would
have thought of treating it in an English history, —
but not a whit less considerable, because it was cheap,
and of no account, like a baker's shop. The best
proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which
suddenly broke into this field ; Kyd, Marlow,
Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Hey-
400 KEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
wood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont
and Fletcher.
The secure possession, by the stage, of the public
mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works
for it. He loses no time in idle experiments. Here
is audience and expectation prepared. In the case of
Shakspeare there is much more. At the time when
he left Stratford, and went up to London, a great
body of stage-plays, of all dates and writers, existed
in manuscript, and were in turn produced on the
boards. Here is the Tale of Troy, which the audience
will bear hearing some part of, every week ; the Death
of Julius Csesar, and other stories out of Plutarch,
which they never tire of ; a shelf full of English his-
tory, from the chronicles of Brut and Arthur, down
to the royal Henries, which men hear eagerly ; and a
string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and
Spanish voyages, which all the London prentices
know. All the mass has been treated, with more or
less skill, by every playwiught, and the prompter has
the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no
longer possible to say who wrote them first. They
have been the property of the Theatre so long, and
so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them,
inserting a speech, or a whole scene, or adding a song,
that no man can any longer claim copyright in this
work of numbers. Happily, no man wishes to. They
are not yet desired in that way. AVe have few readers,
many spectators and hearers. They had best lie where
they are.
Shakspeare, in comm^on with his comrades, esteemed
v.] SHAKSPEARE; OR, THE POET. 401
the mass of old plays waste stock, in which any experi-
ment could be freely tried. Had the p'estige which
hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could
have been done. The rude warm blood of the living
England circulated in the play, as in street -ballads,
and gave body which he wanted to his airy and
majestic fancy. The poet needs a ground in popular
tradition on which he may work, and which, again,
may restrain his art within the due temperance. It
holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his
edifice ; and, in furnishing so much work done to his
hand, leaves him at leisui^e, and in full strength for
the audacities of his imagination. In short, the poet
owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the temple.
Sculpture in Egypt, and in Greece, grew up in sub-
ordination to architecture. It was the ornament of
the temple- wall : at first, a rude relief carved on pedi-
ments, then the relief became bolder, and a head or
arm was projected from the wall, the groups being
still arranged with reference to the building, which
serves also as a frame to hold the figures ; and when,
at last, the greatest freedom of style and treatment
was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still
enforced a certain calmness and continence in the
statue. As soon as the statue was begun for itself,
and with no reference to the temple or palace, the
art began to decline : freak, extravagance, and exhibi-
tion, took the place of the old temperance. This
balance-wheel, which the sculptor found in architec-
ture, the perilous irritability of poetic talent found
in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the
VOL. IV. 2 D
402 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
people were already wonted, and which had a certain
excellence which no single genius, however extraordi-
nary, could hope to create.
In point of fact, it appears that Shakspeare did
owe debts in all directions, and was able to use what-
ever he found ; and the amount of indebtedness may
be inferred from Malone's laborious computations in
regard to the First, Second^ and Third parts of Henry
VI, in which, "out of 6043 lines, 1771 were written
by some author preceding Shakespeare; 2373 by him,
on the foundation laid by his predecessors ; and 1899
were entirely his own." And the proceeding investi-
gation hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute
invention. Malone's sentence is an important piece
of external history. In Henry VIII., I think I see
plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which
his own finer stratum was laid. The first play was
written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious
ear. I can mark his lines, and know well their
cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following
scene Avith Cromwell, where, — instead of the metre
of Shakspeare, whose secret is, that the thought
constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will
best bring out the rhythm, — here the lines are con-
structed on a given tmie, and the verse has even a
trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains,
through all its length, unmistakable traits of Shak-
speare's hand, and some passages, as the account of
the coronation, are like autographs. \ATiat is odd, the
compliment to Queen Elizabeth is in the bad rhythm.
Shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better
v.] SHAKSPEAEE ; OE, THE POET. 403
fable than any invention can. If he lost any credit
of design, he augmented his resources ; and, at that
day, our petulant demand for originality was not so
much pressed. There was no literature for the million.
The universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown.
A great poet, who appears in illiterate times, absorbs
into his sphere all the light which is anywhere radiat-
ing. Every intellectual jewel, every flower of senti-
ment, it is his fine ofiice to bring to his people ; and
he comes to value his memory equally with his in-
vention. He is therefore little solicitous whence his
thoughts have been derived ; whether through trans-
lation, whether through tradition, whether by travel
in distant countries, whether by inspiration; from
whatever source, they are equally welcome to his
uncritical audience. Nay, he borrows very near home.
Other men say wise things as well as he ; only they
say a good many fooKsh things, and do not know
when they have spoken wisely. He knows the sparkle
of the true stone, and puts it in high place, wherever
he finds it. Such is the happy position of Homer,
perhaps ; of Chaucer, of Saadi. They felt that all wit
was their wit. And they are librarians and historio-
graphers, as well as poets. Each romancer was heir
and dispenser of all the hundred tales of the world, —
" Presenting Thebes' and Pelops' line
And the tale of Troy divine."
The influence of Chaucer is conspicuous in all our
early Hterature ; and, more recently, not only Pope and
Dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the whole
society of English writers, a large unacknowledged debt
404 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
is easily traced. One is charmed with the opulence
which feeds so many pensioners. But Chaucer is a
huge borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew continually,
through Lydgate and Caxton, from Guido cli Colonna,
whose Latin romance of the Trojan war was in turn
a compilation from Dares Phrj-gius, Ovid, and Statins.
Then Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Provencal poets,
are his benefactors : the Komaunt of the Rose is only
judicious translation from William of Lorris and John
of Meim : Troilus and Creseide, from Lollius of
Urbino : The Cock and the Fox, from the Lais of
Marie : The House of Fame, from the French or
Italian : and poor Gower he uses as if he were only a
brick-kiln or stone-quarry, out of which to build his
house. He steals by this apology, — that what he
takes has no worth where he finds it, and the greatest
where he leaves it. It has come to be practically a
sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once
shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled
thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at
dispretion. Thought is the property of him who can
entertain it ; and of him who can adequately place it.
A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed
thoughts ; but, as soon as we have learned what to
do with them, they become our own.
Thus, all originality is relative. Every thinker is
retrospective. The learned member of the legislature,
at Westminster, or at Washington, speaks and votes
for thousands. Show us the constituency, and the
now invisible channels by which the senator is made
aware of their wishes, the crowd of practical and
v.] shakspeare; oe, the poet. 405
knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation,
are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and esti-
mates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and
resistance of something of their impressiveness. As
Sir Eobert Peel and Mr. AYebster vote, so Locke and
Rousseau think for thousands ; and so there were
fountains all around Homer, Menu, Saadi, or jMilton,
from which they drew; friends, lovers, books,
traditions, proverbs, — all perished, — which if seen,
would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak
"vvith authority 1 Did he feel himself overmatched by
any companion ? The appeal is to the consciousness
of the vmter. Is there at last in his breast a Delphi
whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing,
whether it be verily so, yea or nay"? and to have
answer, and to rely on that 1 All the debts which
such a man could contract to other mt would never
disturb his consciousness of originality : for the
ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a
whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which
he has conversed.
It is easy to see that what is best written or done
by genius, in the world, was no man's work, but came
by wide social labour, when a thousand wrought like
one, sharing the same impulse. Our English Bible is
a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of
the English language. But it was not made by one
man, or at one time; but centuries and churches
brought it to perfection. There never was a time
when there was not some translation existing. The
Liturgy, admired for its energy and pathos, is an
406 KEPKESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
anthology of the piety of ages and nations, a trans-
lation of the prayers and forms of the Catholic
church, — these collected, too, in long periods, from
the prayers and meditations of ever}^ saint and sacred
writer all over the world. Grotius makes the like
remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer, that the
single clauses of which it is composed were already in
use, in the time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms.
He picked out the grains of gold. The nervous
language of the Common Law, the impressive forms
of our courts, and the precision and substantial truth
of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all
the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived
in the countries where these laws govern. The
translation of Plutarch gets its excellence by being
translation on translation. There never was a time
when there was none. All the truly idiomatic and
national phrases are kept, and all others successively
picked out, and thrown away. Something like the
same process had gone on, long before, Avith the
originals of these books. The world takes liberties
with world -books. Vedas, ^sop's Fables, Pilpay,
Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Eobin Hood, Scottish
Minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. In the
composition of such works, the time thinks, the
market thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant,
the farmer, the fop, all think for us. Every book
supplies its time with one good word ; every muni-
cipal law, every trade, every folly of the day, and the
generic catholic genius who is not afraid or ashamed
to owe his originality to the originality of all, stands
v.] SHAKSPEARE ; OE, THE POET. 407
with the next age as the recorder and eml3odiment of
his own.
We have to thank the researches of antiquaries,
and the Shakspeare Society, for ascertaining the
steps of the English drama, from the Mysteries cele-
brated in churches and by churchmen, and the final
detachment from the church, and the completion of
secular plays from Ferrex and Porrex, and Gammer
Gurton's Xeedle, down to the possession of the stage
by the very pieces which Shakspeare altered, re-
modelled, and finally made his own. Elated with
success, and piqued by the growing interest of the
problem, they have left no book-stall unsearched, no
chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow
accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen
was the hope to discover whether the boy Shakspeare
poached or not, whether he held horses at the theatre
door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his
will only his second-best bed to Ann Hathaway, his
wife.
There is somewhat touching in the madness with
which the passing age mischooses the object on
which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned ; the
care with which it registers every trifle touching
Queen Elizabeth, and King James, and the Essexes,
Leicesters, Burleighs, and Buckinghams ; and lets
pass without a single valuable note the founder of
another d\Tiasty, which alone will cause the Tudor
dynasty to be remembered, — the man who carries the
Saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him,
and on whose thoughts the foremost people of the
408 EEPRESENTATIYE MEN. [v.
world are now for some ages to be nourished, and
minds to receive this and not another bias. A popular
player, — nobody suspected he was the poet of the
human race ; and the secret was kept as faithfully
from poets and intellectual men, as from courtiei^ and
frivolous people. Bacon, Avho took the inventory of
the human understanding for his times, never men-
tioned his name. Ben Jonson, though we have
strained his few words of regard and panegyric, had
no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations
he was attempting. He no doubt thought the praise
he has conceded to him generous, and esteemed him-
self, out of all question, the better poet of the two.
If it need wit to know -wit, according to the pro-
verb, Shakspeare's time should be capable of recog-
nising it. Sir Henry Wotton was born four years
after Shakspeare, and died twenty-three j^ears after
him ; and I find, among his correspondents and
acquaintances, the following persons : Theodore Beza,
Isaac Casaubon, Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex,
Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir
Henry Yane, Isaac Walton, Dr. Donne, Abraham
Cowlej^, Bellarmine, Charles Cotton, John Pym,
John Hales, Kepler, Vieta, Albericus Gentilis, Paul
Sarpi, Arminius ; with all of whom exists some token
of his having communicated, without enumerating
many others, whom doubtless he saw, — Shakspeare,
Spenser, Jonson, Beaumont, Massinger, two Herberts,
Marlow, Chapman, and the rest. Since the constella-
tion of great men who appeared in Greece in the time
of Pericles, there was never any such society; — yet
v.] SHAKSPEARE ; OE, THE POET. 409
their genius failed them to find out the best head in
the universe. Our poet's mask was impenetrable.
You cannot see the mountain near. It took a century
to make it suspected ; and not until two centuries
had passed, after his death, did any criticism which
we think adequate begin to appear. It was not pos-
sible to write the history of Shakspeare till now ; for
he is the father of German literature : it was on the
introduction of Shakspeare into German, by Lessing,
and the translation of his works by Wieland and
Schlegel, that the rapid burst of German literature
was most intimately connected. It was not until the
nineteenth centuiy, whose speculative genius is a sort
of living Hamlet, that the tragedy of Hamlet could
find such wondering readers. Now, literature, philo-
sophy, and thought, are Shakspearised. His mind
is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not
see. Our ears are educated to music by his rhythm.
Coleridge and Goethe are the only critics who have
expressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity :
but there is in all cultivated minds a silent apprecia-
tion of his superlative power and beauty, which, like
Christianity, qualifies the period.
The Shakspeare Society have inquired in all
directions, advertised the missing facts, ofiered money
for any information that will lead to proof ; and with
what result? Beside some important illustration of
the history of the English stage, to which I have
adverted, they have gleaned a few facts touching the
property, and dealings in regard to property, of the
poet. It appears that, from year to year, he owned a
410 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
larger share in the Blackfriars' Theatre : its wardrobe
and other appurtenances were his : that he bought
an estate in his native village, with his earnings, as
writer and shareholder; that he lived in the best
house in Stratford ; was intrusted by his neighbours
with their commissions in London, as of borrowing
money, and the like ; that he was a veritable farmer.
About the time when he was writing Macbeth, he
sues Philip Eogers, in the borough court of Stratford,
for thirty-five shillings, ten pence, for corn delivered
to him at different times : and, in all respects, appears
as a good husband, with no reputation for eccentricity
or excess. He was a good-natured sort of man,
an actor and shareholder in the theatre, not in any
striking manner distinguished from other actors and
managers. I admit the importance of this informa-
tion. It was well worth the pains that have been
taken to procure it.
But whatever scraps of information concerning his
condition these researches may have rescued, they can
shed no light upon that infinite invention which is
the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. We
are very clumsy writers of history. We tell the
chronicle of parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling,
school-mates, earning of money, marriage, publication
of books, celebrity, death; and when we have come
to an end of this gossip, no ray of relation appears
between it and the goddess-born ; and it seems as if,
had we dipped at random into the Modern Plutarch,
and read any other life there, it would have fitted the
poems as well. It is the essence of poetry to spring.
v.] SHAKSPEARE; OE, THE POET. 411
like the rainbow daughter of AYonder, from the in-
visible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history.
Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier, have wasted
their oil. The famed theatres, Covent Garden, Drury
Lane, the Park, and Tremont, have vainly assisted.
Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready,
dedicate their lives to this genius ; him they crown,
elucidate, obey, and express. The genius knows them
not. The recitation begins ; one golden word leaps
out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and
sweetly torments us with invitations to its own in-
accessible homes. I remember I went once to see
the Hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the
English stage ; and all I then heard, and all I now
remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the
tragedian had no part ; simply, Hamlet's question to
the ghost, —
' ' What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel
Revist'st thus the glimpses of the moon ?"
That imagination which dilates the closet he writes in
to the world's dimension, crowds it with agents in
rank and order, as quickly reduces the big reality to
be the glimpses of the moon. These tricks of his
magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room.
Can any biography shed light on the localities into
which the Midsummer jSlisjht's Dream admits me?
Did Shakspeare confide to any notary or parish
recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in Stratford, the
genesis of that delicate creation? The forest of
Arden, the nimble air of Scone Castle, the moonlight
412 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
of Portia's villa, "the antres vast and desarts idle"
of Othello's captivity, — where is the third cousin, or
grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or
private letter, that has kept one word of those tran-
scendent secrets'? In fine, in this drama, as in
all great works of art, — in the Cyclopean architec-
ture of Egypt and India ; in the Phidian sculpture ;
the Gothic minsters; the Italian painting; the Ballads
of Spain and Scotland, — the Genius draws up the
ladder after him, when the creative age goes up to
heaven, and gives way to a new, which sees the
works, and asks in vain for a history.
Shakspeare is the only biographer of Shakspeare ;
and even he can tell nothing, except to the Shak-
speare in us ; that is, to our most apprehensive and
sympathetic hour. He cannot step from off his
tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations.
Read the antique documents extricated, analysed, and
compared, by the assiduous Dyce and Collier; and
now read one of those skiey sentences, — aerolites, —
which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which,
not your experience, but the man within the breast,
has accepted as words of fate ; and tell me if they
match ; if the former account in any manner for the
latter ; or, wdiich gives the most historical insight
into the man.
Hence, though our external history is so meagre,
yet, with Shakspeare for biographer, instead of
Aubrey and Rowe, we have really the information
which is material, that which describes character and
fortune, that which, if we were a1:)out to meet the
v.] SHAKSPEARE ; OE, THE POET. 413
man and deal with him, would most import us to
know. We have his recorded convictions on those
questions which knock for answer at every heart, —
on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on
the prizes of life, and the ways whereby we come at
them ; on the characters of men, and the influences,
occult and open, w^hich affect their fortunes ; and on
those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy
our science, and which yet interweave their malice
and their gift in our brightest hours. A\Tioever read
the volume of the Sonnets, without finding that
the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no
masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of
love ; the confusion of sentiments in the most sus-
ceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual
of men"? What trait of his private mind has he
hidden in his dramas 1 One can discern, in his ample
pictures of the gentleman and the king, what forms
and humanities pleased him ; his delight in troops of
friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. Let
Timon, let Warwick, let Antonio the merchant, answer
for his great heart. So far from Shakspeare's being
the least known, he is the one person, in all modern
history, known to us. What point of morals, of
manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of
taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled?
What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of 1
What office, or function, or district of man's work, has
he not remembered 1 A\Tiat king has he not taught
state, as Talma taught Napoleon ? What maiden has
not found him finer than her delicacy 1 What lover
414 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [t.
has he not outloved ? What sage has he not outseen 1
What gentleman has he not instructed in the rude-
ness of his behaviour 1
Some able and appreciating critics think no criti-
cism on Shakspeare valuable, that does not rest purely
on the dramatic merit ; that he is falsely judged as
poet and philosopher. I think as highly as these
critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it second-
ary. He was a full man, who liked to talk ; a brain
exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent,
found the drama next at hand. Had he been less, we
should have had to consider how well he filled his
place, how good a dramatist he was, — and he is the
best in the world. But it turns out, that what he has
to say is of that weight, as to withdraw some attention
from the vehicle ; and he is like some saint whose
history is to be rendered into all languages, into verse
and prose, into songs and pictures, and cut up into
proverbs ; so that the occasion which gave the saint's
meaning the form of a conversation, or of a prayer,
or of a code of laws, is immaterial, compared with the
universality of its application. So it fares with the
wise Shakspeare and his book of life. He -wrote the
airs for all our modern music : he wrote the text of
modern life ; the text of manners : he drew the man
of England and Europe ; the father of the man in
America : he drew the man, and described the day,
and what is done in it : he read the hearts of men
and women, their probity, and their second thought,
and wiles ; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions
by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries :
v.] SHAKSPEAEE; OE, THE POET. 415
he could divide the mother's part from the father's
part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demar-
cations of freedom and of fate : he knew the laws of
repression which make the police of nature : and all
the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his
mind as truly but as softly as the landscape lies on
the eye. And the importance of this Avisdom of life
sinks the form, as of Drama or Epic, out of notice.
'Tis like making a question concerning the paper on
which a king's message is written.
Shakspeare is as much out of the category of emi-
nent authors, as he is out of the crowd. He is incon-
ceivably wise ; the others, conceivably. A^'ood reader
can, in a sort, nestle into Plato's brain, and think from
thence ; but not into Shakspeare's. We are still out
of doors. For executive faculty, for creation, Shak-
speare is unique. No man can imagine it better. He
was the farthest reach of subtlety compatible with an
individual self, — the subtilest of authors, and only
just within the possibility of authorship. With this
wisdom of life, is the equal endowment of imaginative
and of lyric power. He clothed the creatures of his
legend with form and sentiments, as if they were
people who had lived under his roof ; and few real
men have left such distinct characters as these fictions.
And they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit.
Yet his talents never seduced him into an ostenta-
tion, nor did he harp on one string. An omnipresent
humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. Give a man
of talents a story to tell, and his partiality will pre-
sently appear. He has certain observations, opinions,
416 EEPEESENTATIVE ME>f. [v.
topics, whicli have some accidental prominence, and
which he disposes all to exhibit. He crams this part,
and starves that other part, consulting not the fitness
of the thing, but his fitness and strength. But Shak-
speare has no peculiarity, no importunate topic ; but
all is duly given ; no veins, no curiosities : no cow-
painter, no bird-fancier, no mannerist is he : he has
no discoverable egotism : the great he tells greatly ;
the small, subordinately. He is wise without emphasis
or assertion; he is strong, as nature is strong, who
lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and
by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and
likes as well to do the one as the other. This makes
that equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative,
and love-songs ; a merit so incessant, that each reader
is incredulous of the perception of other readers.
This power of expression, or of transferring the
inmost truth of things into music and verse, makes
him the type of the poet, and has added a new prob-
lem to metaphysics. This is that which throws him
into natural history, as a main production of the
globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations.
Things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or
blur : he could paint the fine with precision, the great
with compass : the tragic and the comic indiffer-
ently, and mthout any distortion or favour. He
carried his powerful execution into minute details, to
a hair point ; finishes an eyelash or a dimple as firmly
as he draws a mountain ; and yet these, like nature's,
will bear the scrutiny of the solar microscope.
In short, he is the chief example to prove that
v.] SHAKSPEARE; OK, THE POET. 417
more or less of production, more or fewer pictures, is
a thing indiflferent. He had the power to make one
picture. Daguerre learned how to let one flower etch
its image on his plate of iodine ; and then proceeds at
leisure to etch a million. There are always objects ;
but there was never representation. Here is perfect
representation, at last; and now let the world of
figures sit for their portraits. No recipe can be given
for the making of a Shakspeare ; but the possibility
of the translation of things into song is demonstrated.
His lyric power lies in the genius of the piece.
The sonnets, though their excellence is lost in the
splendour of the dramas, are as inimitable as they :
and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit of the
piece; like the tone of voice of some incomparable
person, so is this a speech of poetic beings, and any
clause as unproducible now as a whole poem.
Though the speeches in the plays, and single lines,
have a beauty which tempts the ear to pause on them
for their euphuism, yet the sentence is so loaded with
meaning, and so linked with its foregoers and follow-
ers, that the logician is satisfied. His means are as
admirable as his ends : every subordinate invention,
by which he helps himself to connect some irreconcil-
able opposites, is a poem too. He is not reduced
to dismount and Avalk, because his horses are running
off with him in some distant direction : he always
rides.
The finest poetry was first experience ; but the
thought has suffered a transformation since it was
an experience. Cultivated men often attain a good
VOL. IV. 2 E
418 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
degree of skill in wiiting verses ; but it is easy to read,
through their poems, their personal history ; any one
acquainted with parties can name every figure : this
is Andrew, and that is Eachel. The sense thus re-
mains prosaic. It is a caterpillar with wings, and not
yet a butterfly. In the poet's mind, the fact has gone
quite over into the new element of thought, and has
lost all that is exuvial. This generosity abides with
Shakspeare. We say, from the truth and closeness of
his pictures, that he knows the lesson by heart. Yet
here is not a trace of egotism.
One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet.
I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can
be a poet, — for beauty is his aim. He loves virtue,
not for its obligation, but for its grace : he delights
in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light
that sparkles from them. Beauty, the spirit of joy
and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. Epicurus
relates that poetry hath such charms that a lover
might forsake his mistress to partake of them. And
the true bards have been noted for their firm and
cheerful temper. Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer
is glad and erect ; and Saadi says, " It was rumoured
abroad that I was penitent; but what had I to do
with repentance 1 " jSlot less sovereign and cheerful,
— much more sovereign and cheerful, is the tone of
Shakspeare. His name suggests joy and emancipa-
tion to the heart of men. If he should appear in any
company of human souls, who would not march in
his troop 1 He touches nothing that does not borrow
health and longe-vity from his festal style.
v.] SHAKSPEAEE; OE, THE POET. 419
And now, how stands the account of man with
this bard and benefactor, when in solitude, shutting
our ears to the reverberations of his fame, we seek to
strike the balance 1 Solitude has austere lessons ; it
can teach us to spare both heroes and poets ; and it
weighs Shakspeare also, and finds him to share the
haKness and imperfection of humanity.
Shakspeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the
splendour of meaning that plays over the visible
world; knew that a tree had another use than for
apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of
the earth, than for tillage and roads : that these things
bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being
emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their
natural history a certain mute commentary on human
life. Shakspeare employed them as colours to com-
pose his picture. He rested in their beauty; and
never took the stej) which seemed inevitable to such
genius, namely, to explore the virtue which resides
in these symbols, and imparts this power, — what is
that which they themselves say ? He converted the
elements, which waited on his command, into enter-
tainments. He was master of the revels to mankind.
Is it not as if one should have, through majestic
powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or
the planets and their moons, and should draw them
from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks
on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns "very
superior pyrotechny this evening ! " Are the agents
of natui^e, and the power to understand them, worth
420 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [v.
no more than a street serenade, or the breath of a
cigar *? One remembers again the trumpet-text in the
Koran, — " The heavens and the earth, and all that is
between them, think ye we have created them in jest?"
As long as the question is of talent and mental power,
the world of men has not his equal to show. But
when the question is to life, and its materials, and its
auxiliaries, how does it profit me? What does it
signify 1 It is but a Twelfth Night, or Midsummer-
Night's Dream, or a Winter Evening's Tale : what
signifies another picture more or less ? The Egyptian
verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to mind,
that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot
marry this fact to his verse. Other admirable men
have led lives in some sort of keeping with their
thought; but this man, in wide contrast. Had he
been less, had he reached only the common measure
of great authors, of Bacon, Milton, Tasso, Cervantes,
we might leave the fact in the twilight of human fate :
but, that this man of men, he who gave to the science
of mind a new and larger subject than had ever
existed, and planted the standard of humanity some
furlongs forward into Chaos, — that he should not be
wise for himself, — it must even go into the world's
history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane
life, using his genius for the public amusement.
Well, other men, priest and prophet, Israelite,
German, and Swede, beheld the same objects : they
also saw through them that which was contained.
And to what purpose? The beauty straightway
vanished ; they read commandments, all- excluding
v.] shakspeare; ok, the poet. 421
mountainous duty ; an obligation, a sadness, as of
piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly,
joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered
round with doleful histories of Adam's fall and curse,
behind us ; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal
fires before us ; and the heart of the seer and the
heart of the listener sank in them.
It must be conceded that these are half-views of
half -men. The world still wants its poet -priest, a
reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the
player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg
the mourner ; but who shall see, speak, and act, "with
ecjual inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the
sunshine ; right is more beautiful than private affec-
tion ; and love is compatible with universal wisdom.
1
1
VL
NAPOLEON; OE, THE MAN OF
THE WOELD.
AlMONG the eminent persons of the nineteenth century,
Bonaparte is far the best known, and the most power-
ful ; and owes his predominance to the fideHty with
which he expresses the tone of thought and belief,
the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men.
It is Swedenborg's theory, that every organ is made
up of homogeneous particles ; or, as it is sometimes
expressed, every whole is made of similars ; that is,
the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs ; the
liver, of infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little
kidneys, etc. Following this analogy, if any man is
found to carry with him the power and affections of
vast numbers, if Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is
Europe, it is because the people whom he sways are
little Napoleons.
In our society, there is a standing antagonism
between the conservative and the democratic classes ;
between those who have made their fortunes, and the
young and the poor who have fortunes to make;
424 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
between the interests of dead labour, — that is, the
labour of hands long ago still in the grave, which
labour is now entombed in money stocks or in land and
buildings owned by idle capitalists, — and the interests
of living labour, which seeks to possess itself of land,
and buildings, and money stocks. The first class is
timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation, and con-
tinually losing numbers b}^ death. The second class
is selfish also, encroaching, bold, self -relying, always
outnumbering the other, and recruiting its numbers
every hour by births. It desires to keep open every
avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply
avenues ; — the class of business men in America, in
England, in France, and throughout Europe ; the
class of industry and skill. Napoleon is its represent-
ative. The instinct of active, brave, able men,
throughout the middle class everywhere, has pointed
out Napoleon as the incarnate Democrat. He had
their virtues and their vices ; above all, he had their
spirit or aim. That tendency is material, pointing at
a sensual success, and employing the richest and
most various means to that end; conversant with
mechanical powers, highly intellectual, widely and
accurately learned and skilful, but subordinating all
intellectual and spiritual forces into means to a
material success. To be the rich man, is the end.
"God has granted," says the Koran, "to every
people a prophet in its own tongue." Paris, and
London, and New York, the spirit of commerce, of
money, and material power, were also to have their
prophet, and Bonaparte was qualified and sent.
VI.] NAPOLEOX; OE, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 425
Ever}' one of the million readers of anecdotes, or
memoirs, or lives of Xapoleon, delights in the page,
because he studies in it his own history. Napoleon
is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of his
fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. He is
no saint, — to use his own word, "no capuchin," and he
is no hero, in the high sense. The man in the street
finds in him the qualities and powers of other men
in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a
citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at
such a commanding position, that he could indulge all
those tastes which the common man possesses, but is
obliged to conceal and deny : good society, good books,
fast travelKng, dress, dinners, servants without number,
personal weight, the execution of his ideas, the stand-
ing in the attitude of a benefactor to all persons about
him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues,
music, palaces, and conventional honours, — precisely
what is agreeable to the heart of every man in the
nineteenth century, — this powerful man possessed.
It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth of adapt-
ation to the mind of the masses around him becomes
not merely representative, but actually a monopoliser
and usurper of other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiar-
ised every good thought, every good word, that was
spoken in France. Dumont relates that he sat in the
gallery of the Convention, and heard Mirabeau make
a speech. It struck Dumont that he could fit it with
a peroration, which he wrote in pencil immediately,
and showed it to Lord Elgin, who sat by him. Lord
Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the evening, showed
426 KEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vr.
it to MiralDeau. Mirabeau read it, pronounced it ad-
mirable, and declared he would incorporate it into his
harangue, to-morrow, to the Assembly. " It is impos-
sible," said Dumont, " as, unfortunately, I have shown
it to Lord Elgin." " If you have shown it to Lord
Elgin, and to fifty persons beside, I shaU still speak it
to-morrow;" and he did speak it with much efi'ect,
at the next day's session. For Mirabeau, with his
overpowering personality, felt that these things which
his presence inspired were as much his own as if he
had said them, and that his adoption of them gave
them their weight. Much more absolute and central-
ising was the successor to Mirabeau's popularity, and
to much more than his predominance in France. In-
deed, a man of Napoleon's stamp almost ceases to
have a private speech and oj)inion. He is so largely
receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be a
bureau for all the intelligence, wit, and power, of the
age and country. He gains the battle ; he makes the
code ; he makes the system of weights and measures ;
he levels the Alps ; he builds the road. All distin-
guished engineers, savans, statists, report to him : so,
like^Wse, do all good heads in every kind : he adopts
the best measures, sets his stamp on them, and not
these alone, but on every happy and memorable ex-
pression. Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and
every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the
sense of France.
Bonaparte was the idol of common men, because
he had in transcendent degree the qualities and powers
of common men. There is a certain satisfaction in
VI.] NAPOLEON; OE, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 427
coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we
get rid of cant and hj^ocrisy. Bonaparte wrought,
in common with that great class he represented, for
power and wealth, — but Bonaparte, specially, without
any scruple as to the means. All the sentiments
which embarrass men's pursuit of these objects he
set aside. The sentiments were for women and
children. Fontanes, in 1804, expressed Napoleon's
own sense, when, in behalf of the Senate, he addressed
him, — "Sire, the desire of perfection is the worst
disease that ever afflicted the human mind." The
advocates of Hberty, and of progress, are "ideologists;"
— a word of contempt often in his mouth ; — " Xecker
is an ideologist :" "Lafayette is an ideologist."
An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that,
" if you would succeed, you must not be too good.
It is an advantage, within certain limits, to have re-
nounced the dominion of the sentiments of piety,
gratitude, and generosity ; since, what was an impass-
able bar to us, and stiU is to others, becomes a con-
venient weapon for our purposes; just as the river
which was a formidable barrier, winter transforms
into the smoothest of roads.
Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and
affections, and would help himself with his hands and
his head. "With him is no miracle, and no magic. He
is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in
roads, in buildings, in money, and in troops, and a
very consistent and wise master-workman. He is
never weak and literary, but acts with the solidity and
the precision of natural agents. He has not lost his
428 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
native sense and sympathy with things. Men give
way before such a man, as before natural events. To
be sure, there are men enough who are immersed in
things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics
generally ; and we know how real and solid such men
appear in the presence of scholars and grammarians :
but these men ordinarily lack the power of arrange-
ment, and are like hands without a head. But Bona-
parte superadded to this mineral and animal force,
insight and generalisation, so that men saw in him
combined the natural and the intellectual power, as
if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher.
Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him.
He came unto his own, and they received him. This
ciphering operative knows what he is working with,
and what is the product. He knew the properties
of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and
diplomatists, and required that each should do after
its kind.
The art of war was the game in which he exerted
his arithmetic. It consisted, according to him, in
having always more forces than the enemy, on the
point where the enemy is attacked, or where he
attacks : and his whole talent is strained by endless
manoeuvre and evolution, to march always on the
enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in detail.
It is obvious that a very small force, skilfully and
rapidly manoeuvi^ing, so as always to bring two men
against one at the point of engagement, will be an
over match for a much larger body of men.
The times, his constitution, and his early circum-
VI.] NAPOLEON; OE, THE MAN OF THE AVOELD. 429
stances, combined to develop this pattern democrat.
He had the virtues of his class, and the conditions
for their activity. That common sense, which no
sooner respects any end, than it finds the means to
effect it ; the delight in the use of means ; in the
choice, simplification, and combining of means ; the
directness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence
with which all was seen, and the energy with which
all was done, make him the natural organ and head
of what I may almost call, from its extent, the modern
party.
Nature must have far the greatest share in every
success, and so in his. Such a man was wanted, and
such a man was born ; a man of stone and iron,
capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen
hours, of going many days together without rest or
food, except by snatches, and with the speed and
spring of a tiger in action ; a man not embarrassed
by any scruples ; compact, instant, selfish, prudent,
and of a perception which did not sufi'er itself to be
baulked or misled by any pretences of others, or any
superstition, or any heat or haste of his own. " jVIy
hand of iron," he said, " was not at the extremity of
my arm, it was immediately connected with my head."
He respected the power of nature and fortune, and
ascribed to it his superiority, instead of valuing him-
self, like inferior men, on his opinionativeness, and
waging war with nature. His favourite rhetoric lay
in allusion to his star ; and he pleased himself, as
well as the people, when he styled himself the "Child
of Destiny." "Thej'' charge me," he said, "with
430 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
the commission of great crimes : men of my stamp do
not commit crimes. Nothing has been more simple
than my elevation : 'tis in vain to ascribe it to intrigue
or crime : it was owing to the peculiarity of the times,
and to my reputation of having fought well against
the enemies of my country. I have always marched
with the opinion of gi-eat masses, and with events.
Of what use, then, would crimes be to mef Again
he said, speaking of his son, " My son cannot replace
me ; I could not replace myseK. I am the creature
of circumstances."
He had a directness of action never before com-
bined with so much comprehension. He is a reaHst,
terrific to all talkers, and confused truth -obscuring
persons. He sees where the matter hinges, throws
himself on the precise point of resistance, and slights
all other considerations. He is strong in the right
manner, namely, by insight. He never blundered
into victory, but won his battles in his head, before
he won them on the field. His principal means are
in himself. He asks counsel of no other. In 1796,
he writes to the Directory; "I have conducted the
campaign -^vithout consulting any one. I should have
done no good, if I had been under the necessity of
conforming to the notions of another person. I have
gained some advantages over superior forces, and
when totally destitute of everything, because, in the
persuasion that your confidence was reposed in me,
my actions were as prompt as my thoughts."
History is full, down to this day, of the imbe'cihty
of kings and governors. They are a class of persons
VI.] NAPOLEON ; OE, THE MAN OF THE WOELD. 431
mucli to be pitied, for they know not what they
should do. The weavers strike for bread; and the
king and his ministers, not knowing what to do, meet
them witb. bayonets. But Napoleon understood his
business. Here was a man who, in each moment and
emergency, knew what to do next. It is an immense
comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of
kings, but of citizens. Few men have any next; they
live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever
at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait
for an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the
first man of the world if his ends had been purely
pubHc. As he is, he inspires confidence and vigour
by the extraordinary unity of his action. He is firm,
sure, self-denying, self -postponing, sacrificing every-
thing to his aim, — money, troops, generals, and his
own safety also, to his aim ; not misled, hke common
adventurers, by the splendour of his own means.
"Incidents ought not to govern policy," he said, "but
policy, incidents." "To be hurried away by every
event, is to have no political system at all." His
victories were only so many doors, and he never for
a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle
and uproar of the present circumstance. He knew
what to do, and he flew to his mark. He would
shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible
anecdotes may, no doubt, be collected from his history,
of the price at which he bought his successes ; but he
must not therefore be set down as cruel ; but only as
one who knew no impediment to his will ; not blood-
thirsty, not cruel, — but woe to what thiug or person
432 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
stood in his way ! Not bloodthirsty, but not sparing
of blood, — and pitiless. He saw only the object : the
obstacle must give way. " Sire, General Clarke can-
not combine with General Junot for the dreadful
fire of the Austrian battery." — "Let him carry the
battery." — "Sire, every regiment that approaches the
heavy artillery is sacrificed : Sire, what orders V —
"Forward, forward !" Seruzier, a colonel of artillery,
gives, in his Military Memoirs, the following sketch
of a scene after the battle of Austerlitz. — "At the
moment in which the Russian army was making its
retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the
lake, the Emperor Napoleon came riding at full speed
toward the artillery. 'You are losing time,' he cried;
' fire upon those masses ; they must be engulfed : fire
upon the ice ! ' The order remained unexecuted for
ten minutes. In vain several officers and mvself were
placed on the slope of a hill to produce the eff'ect :
their balls and mine rolled upon the ice, without
breaking it up. Seeing that, I tried a simple method
of elevating light howitzers. The almost perpendi-
cular fall of the heavy projectiles produced the desired
eff'ect. My method was immediately followed by the
adjoining batteries, and in less than no time we buried"
some^ "thousands of Russians and Austrians under
the waters of the lake."
In the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle
seemed to vanish. "There shall be no Alps," he
said; and he built his perfect roads, climbing by
^ As I quote at second hand, and cannot procure Seruzier, I
dare not adopt the high JBgure I find.
vi.] NAPOLEOX ; OE, THE MAX OF THE WOKLD. 433
graded galleries their steepest precipices, until Italy
was as open to Paris as any town in France. He
laid his bones to, and wrought for his crown. Having
decided what was to be done, he did that with might
and main. He put out all his strength. He risked
everything, and spared nothing, neither ammunition,
nor money, nor troops, nor generals, nor himself.
AYe like to see everything do its office after its
kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattlesnake ;
and, if fighting be the best mode of adjusting national
differences (as large majorities of men seem to agree),
certainly Bonaparte was right in making it thorough.
" The grand principle of war," he said, " was, that an
army ought always to be ready, by day and by night,
and at all hours, to make all the resistance it is capable
of making." He never economised his ammunition,
but, on a hostile position, rained a torrent of iron, —
shells, balls, grape-shot, — to annihilate all defence.
On any point of resistance he concentrated squadron
on scjuadron in overwhelming numbers, until it was
swept out of existence. To a regiment of horse-
chasseurs at Lobenstein, two days before the battle
of Jena, Napoleon said, " My lads, you must not fear
death ; when soldiers brave death, they drive him into
the enemy's ranks." In the fury of assault he no
more spared himself. He went to the edge of his
possibility. It is plain that in Italy he did what he
could, and all that he could. He came, several times,
within an inch of ruin ; and his own person was all
but lost. He was flung into the marsh at Areola. The
Austrians were between him and his troops, in the
VOL. IV. . 2 F
434 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
mel^e, and he was brought off with desperate efforts.
At Lonato, and at other places, he was on the point
of being taken prisoner. He fought sixty battles.
He had never enough. Each victory was a new
weapon. " My power would fall, were I not to sup-
port it by new achievements. Conquest has made me
what I am, and concjuest must maintain me." He
felt, with every wise man, that as much life is needed
for conservation, as for creation. We are always in
peril, always in a bad plight, just on the edge of
destruction, and only to be saved by invention and
courasre.
This vigour was guarded and tempered by the
coldest prudence and punctuality. A thunderbolt in
the attack, he was found invulnerable in his intrench-
ments. His very attack was never the inspiration of
courage, but the result of calculation. His idea of
the best defence consists in being still the attacking
party. "My ambition," he says, "was great, but was
of a cold nature." In one of his conversations with
Las Casas, he remarked, "As to moral courage, I have
rarely met with the two-o'clock-in-the-morning kind :
I mean unprepared courage, that which is necessary
on an unexpected occasion ; and which, in spite of
the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of
judgment and decision : " and he did not hesitate to
declare that he was himself eminently endowed mth this
" two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, and that he had
met with few persons equal to himself in this respect."
Everything depended on the nicety of his 'com-
binations, and the stars were not more punctual than
VI.] NAPOLEOX; OR, THE MAN OF THE WOELD. 435
his arithmetic. His personal attention descended to
the smallest particulars. " At Montebello, I ordered
Kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse, and
with these he separated the six thousand Hungarian
grenadiers, before the very eyes of the Austrian
cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and re-
quired a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of
action ; and I have observed that it is alwaj^s these
quarters of an hour that decide the fate of a battle."
" Before he fought a battle, Bonaparte thought little
about what he should do in case of success, but a
great deal about what he should do in case of a
reverse of fortune." The same prudence and good
sense mark all his behaviour. His instructions to
his secretary at the Tuilleries are worth remembering.
"During the night enter my chamber as seldom as
possible. Do not awake me when you have any good
news to communicate ; with that there is no hurry.
But when you bring bad news, rouse me instantly,
for then there is not a moment to be lost." It was a
whimsical economy of the same kind which dictated
his practice, when general in Italy, in regard to his
burdensome correspondence. He directed Bourrienne
to leave all letters unopened for three weeks, and
then observed with satisfaction how large a part of
the correspondence had thus disposed of itself, and
no longer required an answer. His achievement of
business was immense, and enlarges the known powers
of man. There have been many working kings, from
Ulysses to WiUiam of Orange, but none who accom-
plished a tithe of this man's performance.
436 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
To these gifts of nature Napoleon added the
advantage of having been born to a private and
humble fortune. In his later days he had the weak-
ness of wishing to add to his cro^vns and badges the
prescription of aristocrac}^ : but he knew his debt to
his austere education, and made no secret of his con-
tempt for the born kings, and for "the hereditary
asses," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons. He said
that, "in their exile they had learned nothing, and
forgot nothing." Bonaparte had passed through all
the degrees of military service, but also was citizen
before he was emperor, and so has the key to citizen-
ship. His remarks and estimates discover the infor-
mation and justness of measurement of the middle
class. Those who had to deal with him found that
he was not to be imposed upon, but could cipher as
well as another man. This appears in all parts of his
Memoirs, dictated at St. Helena. When the expenses
of the empress, of his household, of his palaces, had
accumulated great debts. Napoleon examined the bills
of the creditors himself, detected overcharges and
errors, and reduced the claims by considerable sums.
His grand weapon, namely, the millions whom he
directed, he owed to the representative character
which clothed him. He interests us as he stands for
France and for Europe ; and he exists as captain and
king, only as far as the Eevolution, or the interest of
the industrious masses, found an organ and a leader
in him. In the social interests, he knew the meaning
and value of labour, and threw himself naturally on
that side. I like an incident mentioned by one of his
VI.] NAPOLEON; OE, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 437
biographers at St. Helena. " When walking with
Mrs. Balcombe, some servants, carrying heavy boxes,
passed by on the road, and Mrs. Balcombe desired them,
in rather an angry tone, to keep back. Napoleon in-
terfered, saying, 'Eespect the burden, Madam.'" In
the time of the empire, he directed attention to the
improvement and embellishment of the markets of
the capital. "The market-place," he said, "is the
Louvre of the common people." The principal works
that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He
filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom
and companionship grew up between him and them,
which the forms of his court never permitted between
the ofiicers and himself. They performed, under his
eye, that which no others could do. The best docu-
ment of his relation to his troops is the order of the
day on the morning of the battle of Austerlitz, in
which Napoleon promises the troops that he will keep
his person out of reach of fire. This declaration,
which is the reverse of that ordinarily made by
generals and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufii-
ciently explains the devotion of the army to their
leader.
But though there is in particulars this identity
between Napoleon and the mass of the people, his
real strength lay in their conviction that he was their
representative in his genius and aims, not only when
he courted, but when he controlled and even when he
decimated them by his conscriptions. He knew, as
well as any Jacobin in France, how to philosophise
on liberty and equality ; and when allusion was made
438 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
to the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled
by the killing of the Due d'Enghien, he suggested,
" Neither is my blood ditch-water." The people felt
that no longer the throne was occupied, and the land
sucked of its nourishment, by a small class of legiti-
mates, secluded from all community with the children
of the soil, and holding the ideas and superstitions
of a long-forgotten state of society. Instead of that
vampyre, a man of themselves held, in the Tuilleries,
knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, of course,
to them and their children all places of power and
trust. The day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever narrow-
ing the means and opportunities of young men, was
ended, and a day of expansion and demand was come.
A market for all the powers and productions of man
was opened ; brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes of
youth and talent. The old, iron-bound, feudal France
was changed into a young Ohio or New York ; and
those who smarted under the immediate rigours of
the new monarch, pardoned them, as the necessary
severities of the military system which had driven
out the oppressor. And even when the majority of
the people had begun to ask, whether they had really
gained anything under the exhausting levies of men
and money of the new master, the whole talent of
the country, in every rank and kindred, took his part,
and defended him as its natural patron. In 1814,
when advised to rely on the higher classes, Napoleon
said to those around him, " Gentlemen, in the situa-
tion in which I stand, my only nobility is the rabble
of the Faubourgs."
VI.] KAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE WOELD. 439
Napoleon met this natural expectation. The
necessity of his position required a hospitality to
every sort of talent, and its appointment to trusts ;
and his feeling went along with this policy. Like
every superior person, he undoubtedly felt a desire for
men and compeers, and a wish to measure his power
with other masters, and an impatience of fools and
underlings. In Italy, he sought for men, and found
none. "Good God!" he said, "how rare men are!
There are eighteen millions in Italy, and I have with
difficult V found two, — Dandolo and Melzi." In later
years, with larger experience, his respect for mankind
was not increased. In a moment of bitterness, he
said to one of his oldest friends, "Men deserve the
contempt with which they inspire me. I have only
to 23ut some gold lace on the coat of my virtuous re-
publicans, and they imimediately become just what I
wish them." This impatience at levity was, however,
an oblique tribute of respect to those able persons
who commanded his regard, not only when he foimd
them friends and coadjutors, but also when they re-
sisted his will. He could not confound Fox and Pitt,
Carnot, Lafayette, and Bernadotte, with the danglers
of his court ; and, in spite of the detraction which his
systematic egotism dictated toward the great captains
who conquered with and for him, ample acknowledg-
ments are made by him to Lannes, Duroc, Kleber,
Dessaix, Massena, Murat, Ney, and Augereau. If he
felt himself their patron, and the founder of their
fortunes, as when he said, " I made my generals out
of mud," he could not hide his satisfaction in receiving
440 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vl
from tliem a seconding and support commensurate
with, the grandeur of his enterprise. In the Eussian
campaign, he was so much impressed by the courage
and resources of Marshal Ney, that he said, " I have
two hundred millions in my cofiPers, and I would give
them all for Ney." The characters which he has
drawn of several of his marshals, are discriminating,
and, though they did not content the insatiable vanity
of French officers, are no doubt substantially just.
And, in fact, every species of merit was sought and
advanced under his government. " I know," he said,
" the depth and draught of water of every one of my
generals." Natural power was sure to be well received
at his court. Seventeen men, in his time, were raised
from common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal,
duke, or general; and the crosses of his Legion of
Honour were given to personal valour, and not to
family connection. " When soldiers have been bap-
tized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one
rank in my eyes."
When a natural king becomes a titular king,
everybody is pleased and satisfied. The Revolution
entitled the strong populace of the Faubourg St.
Antoine, and every horse-boy and powder-monkey in
the army, to look on Napoleon as flesh of his flesh,
and the creature of his party : but there is something
in the success of grand talent which enlists an uni-
versal sympathy. For, in the prevalence of sense
and spirit over stupidity and malversation, all reason-
able men have an interest ; and, as intellectual beings,
we feel the air purified by the electric shock, when
VI.] NAPOLEOX ; OE, THE MAN OF THE WOELD. 441
material force is overthro-uii by intellectual energies.
As soon as we are removed out of the reach of local
and accidental partialities, man feels that Napoleon
fights for him ; these are honest victories ; this strong
steam-engine does our -work. "Whatever appeals to
the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits
of human ability, wonderfully encourages and Hberates
us. This capacious head revolving and disposing
sovereignly trains of ajffairs, and animating such
multitudes of agents ; this eye which looked through
Europe ; this prompt invention ; this inexhaustible
resource; — what events! what romantic pictures!
what strange situations ! — when sppng the Alps, by
a sunset in the Sicilian sea : dra^ving up his army for
battle, in sight of the Pyramids, and saying to his
troops, " From the tops of those pyramids forty cen-
turies look do"\vn on you;" fording the Red Sea;
wading in the gulf of the Isthmus of Suez. On the
shore of Plotemais, gigantic projects agitated him.
" Had Acre fallen, I should have changed the face of
the world." His army, on the night of the battle of
Austerlitz, which was the anniversary of his inaugura-
tion as Emperor, presented him with a bouquet of forty
standards taken in the fight. Perhaps it is a little
puerile, the pleasure he took in making these contrasts
glaring, as when he pleased himself mth making kings
wait in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, and at
Erfurt.
We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision,
and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate our-
selves on this strong and ready actor, who took occa-
442 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN". [vi.
sion by the beard, and showed us how much may be
accomphshed by the mere force of such virtues as all
men possess in less degrees ; namely, by punctuality,
by personal attention, by courage, and thoroughness.
"The Austrians," he said, " do not know the value of
time." I should cite him, in his earlier years, as a
model of prudence. His power does not consist in
any wild or extravagant force ; in any enthusiasm,
like Mahomet's ; or singular power of persuasion ; but
in the exercise of common sense on each emergency,
instead of abiding by rules and customs. The lesson
he teaches is that which vigour always teaches, — that
there is always room for it. To what heaps of
cowardly doubts is not that man's life an answer.
When he appeared, it was the belief of all military
men that there could be nothing new in war ; as it is
the belief of men to-day, that nothing new can be
undertaken in politics, or in church, or in letters, or
in trade, or in farming, or in our social manners and
customs ; and as it is, at all times, the belief of society
that the world is used up. But Bonaparte knew
better than society; and, moreover, knew that he
knew better. I think all men know better than they
do ; know that the institutions we so volubly com-
mend are go-carts and baubles ; but they dare not
trust their presentiments. Bonaparte relied on his
own sense, and did not care a bean for other people's.
The world treated his novelties just as it treats every-
body's novelties, — made infinite objection ; mustered
all the impediments : but he snapped his finger at
their objections. " What creates great difficulty," he
VI.] NAPOLEON ; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 443
remarks, "in the profession of the land-commander,
is the necessity of feeding so many men and animals.
If he allows himself to be guided by the commissaries,
he will never stir, and all his expeditions ^vill fail."
An example of his common sense is what he says of
the passage of the Alps in winter, which all writers,
one repeating after the other, had described as im-
practicable. " The winter," says Napoleon, " is not
the most unfavourable season for the passage of lofty
mountains. The snow is then firm, the weather
settled, and there is nothing to fear from avalanches,
the real and only danger to be apprehended in the
Alps. On those high mountains, there are often very
fine days in December, of a dry cold, with extreme
calmness in the air." Kead his account, too, of the
way in which battles are gained. " In all battles, a
moment occurs, when the bravest troops, after having
made the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run. That
terror proceeds from a want of confidence in their own
courage ; and it only requires a slight opportunity, a
pretence, to restore confidence to them. The art is to
give rise to the opportunity, and to invent the pre-
tence. At Areola, I won the battle with twenty-five
horsemen. I seized that moment of lassitude, gave
every man a trumpet, and gained the day with this
handful. You see that two armies are two bodies
which meet, and endeavour to frighten each other : a
moment of panic occurs, and that moment must be
turned to advantage. When a man has been present
in many actions he distinguishes that moment without
difiiculty ; it is as easy as casting up an addition."
444 EEPEESENTATR^E MEN. [vi.
This deputy of the nineteenth century added to
his gifts a capacity for speculation on general topics.
He delighted in running through the range of practi-
cal, of literary, and of abstract questions. His opinion
is always original, and to the purj^ose. On the voyage
to Egypt, he liked, after dinner, to fix on three or
four persons to support a proposition, and as many to
oppose it. He gave a subject, and the discussions
tui^ned on questions of religion, the different kinds
of government, and the art of war. One day, he
asked, whether the planets were inhabited. On
another, what was the age of the world. Then he
proposed to consider the probability of the destruction
of the globe, either by water or by fire ; at another
time, the truth or fallacy of presentiments, and the
interpretation of dreams. He was very fond of talk-
ing of religion. In 1806, he conversed with Fournier,
bishop of Montpellier, on matters of theology. There
were two points on which they could not agree, viz.
that of hell, and that of salvation out of the pale of
the church. The Emperor told Josephine that he
disputed like a devil on these two points, on which
the bishop was inexorable. To the philosophers he
readil}^ yielded all that was proved against religion as
the work of men and time ; but he would not hear of
materialism. One fine night, on deck, amid a clatter
of materialism, Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and
said, " You may talk as long as you please, gentlemen,
but who made all that V He delighted in the con-
versation of men of science, particularly of Monge
and Berthollet ; but the men of letters he slighted ;
VI.] NAPOLEOX ; OR, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 445
" they were manufacturers of phrases." Of medicine,
too, he was fond of talking, and with those of its
practitioners whom he most esteemed, — with Corvisart
at Paris, and with Antonomarchi at St. Helena. " Be-
lieve me," he said to the last, "we had better leave off
all these remedies : life is a fortress which neither you
nor I know anything about. Why throw obstacles in
the way of its defence "? Its own means are superior
to all the apparatus of your laboratories. Corvisart
candidly agreed with me, that all your filthy mixtures
are good for nothing. Medicine is a collection of
uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken
collectively, are more "fatal than useful to mankind.
Water, air, and cleanliness, are the chief articles in
my pharmacopeia."
His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon and
General Gourgaud, at St.. Helena, have great value,
after all the deduction that, it seems, is to be made
from them, on account of his known disingenuousness.
He has the good-nature of strength and conscious
superiority. I admire his simple, clear narrative of
his battles ; — good as Csesar's ; his good-natured and
sufficiently respectful account of Marshal Wurmser
and his other antagonists, and his own equality as a
writer to his varying subject. The most agreeable
portion is the Campaign in Egypt.
He had hours of thought and ^Adsdom. In inter-
vals of leisure, either in the camp or the palace,
Napoleon appears as a man of genius, directing on
abstract questions the native appetite for truth, and
the impatience of words, he was wont to show in
446 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
war. He could enjoy every play of invention, a
romance, a bon mot, as well as a stratagem in a cam-
paign. He delighted to fascinate Josephine and her
ladies, in a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of
a fiction, to which his voice and dramatic power lent
every addition.
I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle
class of modern society ; of the throng who fill the
markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories, ships,
of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He was the
agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal
improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of
means, the opener of doors and markets, the subverter
of monopoly and abuse. Of course the rich and
aristocratic did not like him. England, the centre of
capital, and Rome and Austria, centres of tradition
and genealogy, opposed him. The consternation of
the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the
foolish old men and old women of the Eoman con-
clave, — who in their despair took hold of anything,
and would cling to red-hot iron, — the vain attempts
of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor
of Austria to bribe him ; and the instinct of the young,
ardent, and active men, everywhere, which pointed
him out as the giant of the middle class, make his
history bright and commanding. He had the virtues
of the masses of his constituents : he had also their
vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture has its
reverse. But that is the fatal quality which we dis-
cover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is treacherous,
and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the
VI.] NAPOLEON ; OIL, THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 447
sentiments, and it is inevitable that we should find
the same fact in the history of this champion, who
proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without
any stipulation or scruple concerning the means.
Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous
sentiments. The highest- placed individual in the
most cultivated age and population of the world, —
he has not the merit of common truth and honesty.
He is unjust to his generals ; egotistic, and monopo-
lising; meanly stealing the credit of their great actions
from Kellermann, from Bernadotte ; intriguing to in-
volve his faithful Junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in
order to drive him to a distance from Paris, because
the familiarity of his manners ofi'ends the new pride
of his throne. He is a boundless liar. The ofiScial
paper, his "Moniteurs," and all his bulletins, are
proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed ;
and worse, — he sat, in his premature old age, in his
lonely island, coldly falsifjdng facts, and dates, and
characters, and giving to history a theatrical eclat.
Like all Frenchmen he has a passion for stage effect.
Every action that breathes of generosity is poisoned
by this calculation. His star, his love of glory, his
doctrine of the immortality of the soul, are all French.
" I must dazzle and astonish. If I were to give the
liberty of the press, my power could not last three
days." To make a great noise is his favourite design.
" A great reputation is a great noise : the more there
is made, the farther off it is heard. Laws, institutions,
monuments, nations, all fall ; but the noise continues,
and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immor-
448 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
tality is simply fame. His theory of influence is not
flattering. " There are two levers for moving men, —
interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend
upon it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody.
I do not even love my brothers : perhaps Joseph, a
little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and
Duroc, I love him too ; but why 1 — because his charac-
ter pleases me : he is stern and resolute, and, I believe,
the fellow never shed a tear. For my part, I know
very well that I have no true friends. As long as I con-
tinue to be what I am, I may have as many pretended
friends as I please. Leave sensibility to women : but
men should be firm in heart and purpose, or they
should have nothing to do with war and government."
He was thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal,
slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest
dictated. He had no generosity ; but mere vulgar
hatred : he was intensely selfish : he was perfidious :
he cheated at cards : he was a prodigious gossip ;
and opened letters ; and delighted in his infamous
police ; and rubbed his hands with joy when he had
intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning
the men and women about him, boasting that "he
knew everything;" and interfered with the cutting
the dresses of the women; and listened after the
hurrahs and the compliments of the street, incognito.
His manners were coarse. He treated women with
low familiarity. He had the habit of pulling their
ears, and pinching their cheeks, when he was in good
humour, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of men,
and of striking and horse-play mth them, to his last
VI.] NAPOLEON ; OE, THE MAX OF THE WOKLD. 449
days. It does not appear that he listened at key-
holes, or, at least, that he "was caught at it. In short,
when you have penetrated through all the circles of
power and splendour, you were not dealing with a
gentleman, at last ; but with an impostor and a rogue ;
and he fully deserves the epithet of Jujnter Scajjin, or
a sort of Scamp Jupiter.
In describing the two parties into which modern
society divides itself, — the democrat and the conser-
vative, — I said, Bonaparte represents the Democrat,
or the party of men of business, against the stationary
or conservative party. I omitted then to say, what is
material to the statement, namely, that these two
parties differ only as young and old. The democrat
is a young conservative : the conservative is an old
democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and
gone to seed, — because both parties stand on the one
ground of the supreme value of property, which one
endeavours to get, and the other to keep. Bonaparte
may be said to represent the whole history of this
party, its youth and its age ; yes, and with poetic
justice, its fate, in his own. The counter-revolution,
the counter-party, still waits for its organ and repre-
sentative, in a lover and a man of truly public and
universal aims.
Here was an experiment, under the most favour-
able conditions, of the powers of intellect without
conscience. Never was such a leader so endowed,
and so weaponed ; never leader found such aids and
followers. And what was the result of this vast
VOL. IV. 2 G
450 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vi.
talent and power, of these immense armies, burned
cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of
men, of this demoralised Europe? It came to no
result. All passed away, like the smoke of his
artillery, and left no trace. He left France smaller,
poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole
contest for freedom was to be begun again. The
attempt was, in principle, suicidal. France served
him with life, and limb, and estate, as long as it
could identify its interests with him ; but when men
saw that after victory was another war; after the
destruction of armies, new conscriptions ; and they
who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to
the reward, — they could not spend what they had
earned, nor repose on their do^vn-beds, nor strut in
their chateaux, — they deserted him. Men found
that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other
men. It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a
succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of it,
producing spasms which contract the muscles of the
hand, so that the man cannot open his fingers ; and
the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks,
until he paralyses and kills his victim. So, this
exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and ab-
sorbed the power and existence of those who served
him ; and the universal cry of France, and of Europe,
in 1814, was, " enough of him ;" ^' assez de Bonaparte.''
It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in
him lay to live and thrive without moral principle.
It was the nature of things, the eternal law of man
and of the world, which baulked and ruined him ;
VI.] NAPOLEON ; OE, THE MAN OF THE WOELD. 451
and the result, in a million experiments, will be
the same. Every experiment, by multitudes or by
individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will
fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the
pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civilisation is
essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusive-
ness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches
will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our
laughter ; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only
that good profits, which we can taste with all doors
open, and which serves all men.
'i
i
^
?
VII.
GOETHE; OPu THE WEITEE.
I FIND a provision, in the constitution of the world,
for the writer or secretary, who is to report the
doings of the miraculous spirit of Kfe that every-
where throbs and works. His office is a reception of
the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the
eminent and characteristic experiences.
Nature will be reported. All things are engaged
in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes
attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its
scratches on the mountain ; the river, its channel in
the soil ; the animal, its bones in the stratum ; the
fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coaL The
falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the
stone. Not a foot steps into the snow, or along the
ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting,
a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes
itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own
manners and face. The air is full of sounds ; the
sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and
signatures ; and every object covered over with hints,
which speak to the intelligent.
454 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
In nature, this self-registration is incessant, and
the narrative is the print of the seal. It neither
exceeds nor comes short of the fact. But nature
strives upward ; and, in man, the report is something
more than print of the seal. It is a new and finer
form of the original. The record is alive, as that
which it recorded is alive. In man, the memory is a
kind of looking-glass, which, having received the
images of surrounding objects, is touched with life,
and disposes them in a new order. The facts which
transpired do not lie in it inert ; but some subside,
and others shine ; so that soon we have a new picture,
composed of the eminent experiences. The man
co-operates. He loves to communicate; and that
which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart
until it is delivered. But, besides the universal joy
of conversation, some men are born with exalted
powers for this second creation. Men are born to
write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and
peach-stone : his vocation is to be a planter of plants.
Xot less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever
he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model,
and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense
that they say, that some things are indescribable. He
believes that all that can be thought can be written,
first or last ; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or
attempt it. Nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear,
but comes therefore commended to his j^en, — and he
will write. In his eyes, a man is the faculty of re-
porting, and the universe is the possibility of being
reported. In conversation, in calamity, he finds new
VII.] GOETHE ; OR, THE WHITER. 455
materials ; as our German poet said, " some god gave
me the power to paint what I suffer." He draws his
rents from rage and pain. By acting rashly, he
buys the power of talking wisely. Vexations, and a
tempest of passion, only fill his sail ; as the good
Luther writes, " When I am angry, I can pray well,
and preach well : " and, if we knew the genesis of
fine strokes of eloquence, they might recall the com-
plaisance of Sultan Amurath, who struck off some
Persian heads, that his physician, Yesalius, might see
the spasms in the muscles of the neck. His failures
are the preparation of his victories. A new thought,
or a crisis of passion, apprises him that all that he
has yet learned and written is exoteric, — is not the
fact, but some rumour of the fact. What thenl
Does he throw away the pen ? No ; he begins again
to describe in the new light which has shined on
him, — if by some means he may yet save some true
word. Nature conspires. Whatever can be thought
can be spoken, and still rises for utterance, though to
rude and stammering organs. If they cannot com-
pass it, it waits and works, until, at last, it moulds
them to its perfect will, and is articulated.
This striving after imitative expression, which one
meets everywhere, is significant of the aim of nature,
but is mere stenography. There are higher degrees,
and nature has more splendid endowments for those
whom she elects to a superior office ; for the class of
scholars or writers, who see connection where the
multitude see fragments, and who are impelled to
exhibit the facts in order, and so to supply the axis
456 REPEESEXTATIVE MEX. [vii.
on Tvhich the frame of things turns. Nature has
dearly at heart the formation of the speculative man,
or scholar. It is an end never lost sight of, and is
prepared in the original casting of things. He is no
permissive or accidental appearance, but an organic
agent, one of the estates of the realm, provided and
prepared, from of old and from everlasting, in the
knitting and contexture of things. Presentiments,
impulses, cheer him. There is a certain heat in the
breast, which attends the perception of a primary
truth, which is the shining of the spiritual sun down
into the shaft of the mine. Every thought which
dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergence
announces its own rank, — whether it is some whimsy,
or whether it is a power.
If he have his incitements, there is, on the other
side, invitation and need enough of his gift. Society
has, at all times, the same want, namely, of one sane
man with adequate powers of expression to hold up
each object of monomania in its right relations. The
ambitious and mercenary bring their last new mumbo-
jumbo, whether tariff, Texas, railroad, Eomanism,
mesmerism, or California; and, by detaching the
object from its relations, easily succeed in making it
seen in a glare ; and a multitude go mad about it, and
they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite
multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity
by an equal frenzy on another crotchet. But let one
man have the comprehensive eye that can replace
this isolated prodigy in its right neighbourhood and
bearings, — the illusion vanishes, and the returnin»
VII.] GOETHE : OR, THE WEITER. 457
reason of the community thanks the reason of the
monitor.
The scholar is the man of the ages, but he must
also wish with other men to stand well with his con-
temporaries. But there is a certain ridicule, among
superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy,
which is of no import, unless the scholar heed it. In
this country, the emphasis of conversation, and of
public opinion, commends the practical man ; and the
solid portion of the community is named with signifi-
cant respect in every circle. Our people are of Bona-
parte's opinion concerning ideologists. Ideas are
subversive of social order and comfort, and at last
make a fool of the possessor. It is believed the
ordering a cargo of goods from New York to Smyrna ;
or, the running up and dov^ii to procure a company
of subscribers to set asroino; five or ten thousand
spindles; or, the negotiations of a caucus, and the
practising on the prejudices and facility of country-
people, to secure their votes in November, — is practi-
cal and commendable.
If I were to compare action of a much higher strain
with a life of contemplation, I should not venture to
pronounce with much confidence in faA'our of the
form.er. Mankind have such a deep stake in inward
illumination, that there is much to be said by the
hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and
prayer. A certain partiality, a headiness, and loss of
balance, is the tax which all action must pay. Act,
if you like, — but you do it at your peril. Men's
actions are too strong for them. Show me a man
458 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
who has acted, and who has not been the victim and
slave of his action. What they have done commits
and enforces them to do the same again. The first
act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacra-
ment. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in
some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave
to the form, and lose the aspiration. The Quaker has
established Quakerism, the Shaker has established his
monastery and his dance ; and, although each prates
of spirit, there is no spkit, but repetition, which is
anti-spiritual. But where are his new things of to-day 1
In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears ; but
in those lower activities, which have no higher aim
than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly,
in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions
that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty,
and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is
nothing else but drawback and negation. The Hindoos
write in their sacred books, " Children only, and not
the learned, speak of the speculative and the practical
faculties as two. They are but one, for both, obtain
the self-same end, and the place which is gained by
the followers of the one is gained by the followers
of the other. That man seeth, who seeth that the
speculative and the practical doctrines are one."
For great action must draw on the spiritual nature.
The measure of action is the sentiment from which
it proceeds. The greatest action may easily be one
of the most private circumstance.
This disparagement will not come from the leaders,
but from inferior persons. The robust gentlemen
VII.] GOETHE ; OE, THE WRITER. 459
who stand at the head of the practical class, share the
ideas of the time, and have too much sympathy with
the speculative class. It is not from men excellent in
any kind, that disparagement of any other is to be
looked for. AVith such, Talleyrand's question is ever
the main one : not, is he rich 'i is he committed ? is
he well-meaning 1 has he this or that faculty 1 is he
of the movement 'I is he of the establishment 1 — but,
Is he anyhody? does he stand for something 1 He
must be good of his kind. That is all that Talleyrand,
all that State Street, all that the common sense of
mankind asks. Be real and admirable, not as we
know, but as you know. Able men do not care in
what kind a man is able, so only that he is able. A
master likes a master, and does not stipulate whether
it be orator, artist, craftsman, or king.
Society has really no graver interest than the well-
being of the literary class. And it is not to be denied
that men are cordial in their recognition and welcome
of intellectual accomplishments. Still the writer does
not stand with us on any commanding ground. I
think this to be his own fault. A pound passes for a
pound. There have been times when he was a sacred
person : he wrote bibles ; the first hymns ; the codes ;
the epics ; tragic songs ; Sibylline verses ; Chaldean
oracles; Laconian sentences, inscribed on temple walls.
Every word was true, and woke the nations to new
life. He wrote without levity, and without choice.
Every word was carved before his eyes, into the earth
and the sky ; and the sun and stars were only letters
of the same purport, and of no more necessity But
460 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
how can he be honoured, when he does not honour
himself ; when he loses himself in the crowd ; when
he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, duck-
ing to the giddy opinion of a reckless public ; when
he must sustain with shameless advocacy some bad
government, or must bark, all the year round, in
opposition ; or write conventional criticism, or pro-
fligate novels ; or, at any rate, ^^Tite without thought,
and without recurrence, by day and by night, to the
sources of inspiration ?
Some reply to these questions may be furnished
by looking over the list of men of literary genius in
our age. Among these, no more instructive name
occurs than that of Goethe, to represent the powers
and duties of the scholar or wiiter.
I described Bonaparte as a representative of the
popular external hfe and aims of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Its other half, its poet, is Goethe, a man quite
domesticated in the century, breathing its air, enjoy-
ing its fruits, impossible at any earlier time, and
taking away, by his colossal parts, the reproach of
weakness, which, but for him, would lie on the intel-
lectual works of the period. He appears at a time
when a general culture has spread itself, and has
smoothed down all sharp individual traits ; when, in
the absence of heroic characters, a social comfort and
co-operation have come in. There is no poet, but
scores of poetic writers ; no Columbus, but hundreds
of post-captains, with transit-telescope, barometer, and
concentrated soup and pemmican ; no Demosthenes,
no Chatham, but any number of clever parliament-
VII.] GOETHE; OR, THE WEITEE. 461
ary and forensic debaters ; no prophet or saint, but
colleges of divinity ; no learned man, but learned
societies, a cheap press, reading-rooms, and book-clubs,
without number. There was never such a miscellany
of facts. The world extends itself like American
trade. We conceive Greek or Eoman life, — life in
the middle ages, — to be a simple and comprehensible
affair; but modern life to respect a multitude of things,
which is distractins;.
Goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity;
hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope
with this rolling miscellany of facts and sciences, and,
by his own versatility, to dispose of them with ease ;
a manly mind, unembarrassed by the variety of coats
of convention with which life had got encrusted, easily
able by his subtlety to pierce these, and to draw his
strength from nature, with which he lived in full
communion. What is strange, too, he lived in a small
town, in a petty state, in a defeated state, and in a
time when Germany played no such leading part in the
world's affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons with
any metropolitan pride, such as might have cheered a
French, or English, or once, a Eoman or Attic genius.
Yet there is no trace of provincial limitation in his
muse. He is not a debtor to his position, but was
born with a free and controlling genius.
The Helena, or the second part of Faust, is a philo-
sophy of literature set in poetry ; the work of one
who found himself the master of histories, mythologies,
philosophies, sciences, and national literatures, in the
encyclopaedical manner in which modern erudition,
462 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
with its international intercourse of the whole earth's
population, researches into Indian, Etruscan, and all
Cyclopsean arts, geology, chemistry, astronomy ; and
every one of these kingdoms assuming a certain aerial
and poetic character, by reason of the multitude. One
looks at a king with reverence ; but if one should
chance to be at a congress of kings, the eye would
take liberties with the peculiarities of each. These
are not wild miraculous songs, but elaborate forms,
to which the poet has confided the results of eighty
years of observation. This reflective and critical
wisdom makes the poem more truly the flower of this
time. It dates itself. Still he is a poet, — poet of a
prouder laurel than any contemporary, and, under
this plague of microscopes (for he seems to see out
of every pore of his skin), strikes the harp with a
hero's strength and grace.
The wonder of the book is its superior intelligence.
In the menstruum of this man's wit, the past and the
present ages, and their religions, politics, and modes
of thinking, are dissolved into archetypes and ideas.
What new mythologies sail through his head ! The
Greeks said that Alexander went as far as Chaos ;
Goethe went, only the other day, as far ; and one step
farther he hazarded, and brought himself safe back.
There is a heart-cheering freedom in his specula-
tion. The immense horizon which journeys with us
lends its majesty to trifles, and to matters of conveni-
ence and necessity, as to solemn and festal perform-
ances. He was the soul of his century. If that
was learned, and had become, by population, compact
VII.] GOETHE ; OE, THE WEITEE. 463
organisation, and drill of parts, one great Exploring
Expedition, accumulating a glut of facts and fruits
too fast for any hitherto-existing savans to classify,
this man's mind had ample chambers for the distribu-
tion of all. He had a power to unite the detached
atoms again by their ot\ti law. He has clothed our
modern existence with poetry. Amid littleness and
detail, he detected the Genius of life, the old cunning
Proteus, nestling close beside us, and showed that the
dulness and prose we ascribe to the age was only
another of his masks : —
" His very flight is presence in disguise : "
that he had put off a gay imiform for a fatigue dress,
and was not a whit less vivacious or rich in Liverpool
or the Hague, than once in Eome or Antioch. He
sought him in public squares and main streets, in
boulevards and hotels ; and, in the solidest kingdom
of routine and the senses, he showed the Im^king
daemonic power ; that, in actions of routine, a thread
of mythology and fable spins itself: and this, by
tracing the pedigree of every usage and practice, every
institution, utensil, and means, home to its origin in
the structure of man. He had an extreme impatience
of conjecture and of rhetoric. " I have guesses enough
of my own ; if a man write a book, let him set down
only what he knows." He writes in the plainest and
lowest tone, omitting a great deal more than he
writes, and putting ever a thing for a word. He has
explained the distinction between the antique and
the modern spirit and art. He has defined art, its
scope and laws. He has said the best things about
464 EEPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
nature that ever were said. He treats nature as the
old philosophers, as the seven wise masters did, —
and, with whatever loss of French tabulation and
dissection, poetry and humanity remain to us ; and
they have some doctoral skill. Eyes are better, on
the whole, than telescopes or microscopes. He has
contributed a key to many parts of nature, through
the rare turn for unity and simplicity in his mind.
Thus Goethe suggested the leading idea of modern
botany, that a leaf, or the eye of a leaf, is the unit of
botany, and that every part of the plant is only a
transformed leaf, to meet a new condition; and, b}^
varying the conditions, a leaf may be converted into
any other organ, and any other organ into a leaf.
In like manner, in osteology, he assumed that one
vertebra of the spine might be considered the unit
of the skeleton : the head was only the uppermost
vertebra transformed. " The plant goes from knot to
knot, closing, at last, with the flower and the seed.
So the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from knot to
knot, and closes with the head. Man and the higher
animals are built up through the vertebrae, the powers
being concentrated in the head." In optics, again,
he rejected the artificial theory of seven colours, and
considered that every colour was the mixture of Light
and darkness in new proportions. It is really of very
little consequence what topic he writes upon. He
sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation
towards truth. He wiU realise what you say. He
hates to be trifled with, and to be made to say over
again some old wife's fable, that has had possession
VII.] GOETHE : OE, THE WHITER. 465
of men's faith these thousand years. He may as well
see if it is true as another. He sifts it. I am here,
he would say, to be the measure and judge of these
things. Why should I take them on trust? And,
therefore, what he says of religion, of passion, of
marriage, of manners, of property, of paper money, of
periods of belief, of omens, of luck, or whatever else,
refuses to be forgotten.
Take the most remarkable example that could
occur of this tendency to verify every term in popu-
lar use. The Devil had played an important part in
mythology in all times. Goethe would have no word
that does not cover a thing. The same measure will
still serve : "I have never heard of any crime which
I might not have committed." So he flies at the
throat of this imp. He shall be real ; he shall be
modern ; he shall be European ; he shall dress like a
gentleman, and accept the manners, and walk in the
streets, and be well initiated in the life of Vienna
and of Heidelberg in 1820, — or he shall not exist.
Accordingly, he stripped him of mythologic gear, of
horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, brimstone, and blue-
fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures,
looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of
coldness, selfishness, and unbelief that, in crowds, or
in solitude, darkens over the human thought, — and
found that the portrait gained reality and terror by
everything he added, and by everything he took
away. He found that the essence of this hobgoblin,
which had hovered in shadow about the habitations
of men, ever since there were men, was pure intellect
VOL. IV. ' 2 n
4.6Q REPRESENT ATI VE MEN. [vii.
applied, — as always there is a tendency, — to the
service of the senses : and he flung into literature, in
his Mephistopheles, the first organic figure that has
been added for some ages, and which will remain as
Ions: as the Prometheus.
I have no design to enter into any analysis of his
numerous works. They consist of translations, criti-
cism, dramas, lyric, and every other description of
poems, literary journals, and portraits of distinguished
men. Yet I cannot omit to specify the Wilhelm
Meister.
Wilhelm Meister is a novel in every sense, the
first of its kind, called by its admirers the only
delineation of modern society, — as if other novels,
those of Scott for example, dealt with costume and
condition, this with the spirit of life. It is a book
over which some veil is still drawn. It is read by
very intelligent persons with wonder and delight.
It is preferred by some such to Hamlet, as a w^ork of
genius. I suppose no book of this century can com-
pare w4th it in its delicious sweetness, so new, so
provoking to the mind, gratifying it with so many
and so solid thoughts, just insights into life, and
manners, and characters ; so many good hints for the
conduct of life, so many unexpected glimpses into a
higher sphere, and never a trace of rhetoric or dul-
ness. A very provoking book to the curiosity of
young men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one.
Lovers of light reading, those who look in it for the
entertainment they find in a romance, are disappointed.
On the other hand, those who begin it with the higher
VII.] GOETHE ; OK, THE WEITER. 467
hope to read in it a worthy history of genius, and the
just award of the laurel to its toils and denials, have
also reason to complain. We had an English romance
here, not long ago, professing to embody the hope of
a new age, and to unfold the political hope of the
party called " Young England," in which the only
reward of virtue is a seat in parliament and a peer-
age. Goethe's romance has a conclusion as lame and
immoral. George Sand, in Consuelo and its con-
tinuation, has sketched a truer and more dignified
picture. In the progress of the story the characters
of the hero and heroine expand at a rate that shivers
the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic convention :
they quit the society and habits of their rank ; they
lose their wealth ; they become the servants of great
ideas, and of the most generous social ends ; until, at
last, the hero, who is the centre and fountain of an
association for the rendering of the noblest benefits
to the human race, no longer answers to his own titled
name : it sounds foreign and remote in his ear. " I
am only man," he says ; " I breathe and work for
man," and this in poverty and extreme sacrifices.
Goethe's hero, on the contrary, has so many weak-
nesses and imjDurities, and keeps such bad company,
that the sober English public, when the book was
translated, were disgusted. And yet it is so crammed
with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and with
knowledge of laws ; the persons so truly and subtly
drawn, and with such few strokes, and not a word
too much, the book remains ever so new and un-
exhausted, that we must even let it go its way, and
468 REPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
be willing to get what good from it we can, assured
that it has only begun its office, and has millions of
readers yet to serve.
The argument is the passage of a democrat to the
aristocracy, using both words in their best sense.
And this passage is not made in any mean or creeping
way, but through the hall door. Nature and character
assist, and the rank is made real by sense and probity
in the nobles. No generous youth can escape this
charm of reality in the book, so that it is highly
stimulating to intellect and courage.
The ardent and holy Novalis characterised the
book as " thoroughly modern and prosaic ; the ro-
mantic is completely levelled in it ; so is the poetry
of nature ; the wonderful. The book treats only of
the ordinary affairs of men : it is a poeticised civic
and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly
treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming : " — and
yet, what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned
to this book, and it remained his favourite reading to
the end of his life.
What distinguishes Goethe for French and English
readers, is a property which he shares with his nation,
— a habitual reference to interior truth. In England
and in America there is a respect for talent ; and, if
it is exerted in support of any ascertained or intel-
ligible interest or party, or in regular opposition to
any, the public is satisfied. In France there is even
a greater delight in intellectual brilliancy for its ovni
sake. And in all these countries men of talent write
from talent. It is enough if the understanding is
VII.] GOETHE ; OK, THE WEITER. 469
occupied, the taste propitiated, — so many columns, so
many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way.
The German intellect wants the French sprightliness,
the fine practical imderstandiug of the English and
the American adventure ; but it has a certain probity,
which never rests in a superficial performance, but
asks steadily, To icJiat end ? A German public asks for
a controlling sincerity. Here is activity of thought ;
but what is it for? ^^^lat does the man mean?
AMience, whence all these thoughts ? "*
Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must
be a man behind the book ; a personality which, by
birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there
set forth, and which exists to see and state things so,
and not otherwise ; holding things because they are
things. If he cannot rightly express himself to-day,
the same things subsist, and will open themselves
to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind, — the
burden of truth to be declared, — more or less under-
stood ; and it constitutes his business and calling in
the world to see those facts through, and to make
them kno^\Ti. A^Tiat signifies that he trips and stam-
mers; that his voice is harsh or hissing; that his
method or his tropes are inadequate ? That message
^dll find method and imagery, articulation and melody.
Though he were dumb, it would speak. If not, — if
there be no such God's word in the man,- — what care
we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant he is ?
It makes a great difference to the force of any
sentence whether there be a man behind it or no.
In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper,
470 REPRESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
I discern no form ; only some irresponsible shadow ;
oftener some monied corporation, or some dangler,
who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph,
to pass for somebody. But, through every clause
and part of speech of a right book, I meet the eyes
of the most determined of men : his force and terror
inundate every word : the commas and dashes are
alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble, —
can go far and live long.
In England and America one may be an adept in
the writings of a Greek or Latin poet, without any
poetic taste or fire. That a man has spent years on
Plato and Proclus does not afford a presumption
that he holds heroic opinions, or undervalues the
fashions of his town. But the German nation have
the most ridiculous good faith on these subjects : the
student, out of the lecture-room, still broods on the
lessons ; and the professor cannot divest himself of
the fancy that the truths of philosophy have some
application to Berlin and Munich. This earnestness
enables them to outsee men of much more talent.
Hence, almost all the valuable distinctions, which are
current in higher conversation, have been derived to
us from Germany. But, w^hilst men distinguished
for wit and learning, in England and France, adopt
their study and their side "with a certain levity,
and are not understood to be very deeply engaged,
from grounds of character, to the topic or the part
they espouse, — Goethe, the head and body of the
German nation, does not speak from talent, but the
truth shines through : he is very wise, though his
VII.] GOETHE ; OE, THE WFJTER. 471
talent often veils his wisdom. However excellent
his sentence is, he has somewhat better in view. It
awakens my curiosity. He has the formidable inde-
pendence which converse with truth gives : hear you,
or forbear, his fact abides ; and your interest in the
writer is not confined to his story, and he dismissed
from memory when he has performed his task
creditably, as a baker when he has left his loaf ; but
his work is the least part of him. The old Eternal
Genius who built the world has confided himself
more to this man than to any other. I dare not say
that Goethe ascended to the highest groimds from
which genius has spoken. He has not worshipped
the highest unit}^ ; he is incapable of a self-surrender
to the moral sentiment. There are nobler strains in
poetry than any he has sounded. There are writers
poorer in talent, whose tone is purer, and more
touches the heart. Goethe can never be dear to
men. His is not even the devotion to pure truth ;
but to truth for the sake of culture. He has no aims
less large than the conquest of universal nature, of
universal truth, to be his portion : a man not to be
bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed ; of a stoical self-
command and self-denial, and having one test for all
men, — JFliat can you teach me? All possessions are
valued by him for that only ; rank, privileges, health,
time, being itself.
He is the type of cultiu-e, the amateur of all arts,
and sciences, and events ; artistic, but not artist ;
spiritual, but not spiritualist. There is nothing he
had not right to know : there is no weapon in the
472 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
armoury of universal genius he did not take into his
hand, but with peremptory heed that he should not
be for a moment prejudiced by his instruments. He
lays a ray of light under every fact, and between
himself and his dearest property. From him nothing
was hid, nothing withholden. The lurking daemons
sat to him, and the saint who saw the daemons ; and
the metaphysical elements took form. " Piety itself
is no aim, but only a means, whereby, through purest
inward peace, v/e may attain to highest culture."
And his penetration of every secret of the fine arts
will make Goethe still more statuesque. His affections
help him, like women employed by Cicero to worm
out the secret of conspirators. Enmities he has
none. Enemy of him you may be, — if so you shall
teach him aught which your good -will cannot, —
were it only what experience will accrue from your
ruin. Enemy and Avelcome, but enemy on high terms.
He cannot hate anybody ; his time is worth too
much. Temperamental antagonisms may be suffered,
but like feuds of emperors, who fight dignifiedly
across kin2;doms.
His autobiographj^, under the title of " Poetry and
Truth out of my Life," is the expression of the idea,
— now familiar to the world through the German
mind, but a novelty to England, Old and New, when
that book appeared, — that a man exists for culture ;
not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be
accomplished in him. The reaction of things on the
man is the only noteworthy result. An intellectual
man can see himself as a third person ; therefore his
VII.] GOETHE ; OE, THE WRITER. 473
faults and delusions interest him equally -vvith his
successes. Though he wishes to prosper in affairs,
he wishes more to know the history and destiny of
man; whilst the clouds of egotists drifting ahout
him are only interested in a low success.
This idea reigns in the Dichtung unci TFahrheit, and
directs the selection of the incidents ; and nowise the
external importance of events, the rank of the person-
ages, or the bulk of incomes. Of course, the book
affords slender materials for what would be reckoned
with us a "Life of Goethe;" — few dates; no corre-
spondence; no details of offices or employments; nolight
on his marriage; and a period of ten years, that should
be the most active in his life, after his settlement at
Weimar, is sunk in silence. Meantime, certain love-
affairs, that came to nothing, as people say, have the
strangest importance : he crowds us with details : —
certain whimsical opinions, cosmogonies, and religions
of his own invention, and especially his relations to
remarkable minds, and to critical epochs of thought :
— these he magnifies. His "Daily and Yearly Journal,"
his "Itahan Travels," his "Campaign in France," and
the historical part of his "Theory of Colours," have the
same interest. In the last, he rapidly notices Kepler,
Roger Bacon, GaUleo, Newton, Voltaire, etc. ; and
the charm of this portion of the book consists in the
simplest statement of the relation betwixt these
grandees of European scientific history and himself ;
the mere drawing of the lines from Goethe to Kepler,
from Goethe to Bacon, from Goethe to Newton. The
drawing of the line is for the time and person, a
474 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
solution of the formidable problem, and gives plea-
sure when Iphigenia and Faust do not, without anj^
cost of invention comparable to that of Iphigenia and
Faust.
This lawgiver of art is not an artist. Was it that
he knew too much, that his sight was microscopic,
and interfered with the just perspective, the seeing
of the whole '? He is fragmentary ; a writer of occa-
sional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of sentences.
When he sits do^\Ti to write a drama or a tale he
collects and sorts his observations from a hundred
sides, and combines them into the body as fitly as he
can. A great deal refuses to incorporate : this he adds
loosely, as letters of the parties, leaves from their
journals, or the like. A great deal still is left that
will not find any place. This the bookbinder alone
can give any cohesion to : and hence, notwithstanding
the looseness of many of his works, we have volumes
of detached paragraphs, aphorisms, xenien, etc.
I suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew out of
the calculations of self-culture. It was the infirmity
of an admirable scholar, who loved the world out of
gratitude ; who knew where libraries, galleries, archi-
tecture, laboratories, savans, and leisure, were to be
had, and who did not quite trust the compensations
of poverty and nakedness. Socrates loved Athens ;
Montaigne, Paris ; and Madame de Stael said she
was only vulnerable on that side (namely, of Paris).
It has its favourable aspect. All the geniuses are
usually so ill-assorted and sickly, that one is ever
"wishing them somewhere else. We seldom see any-
VII.] GOETHE ; OR, THE WRITER. 475
body who is not uneasy or afraid to live. There is a
slight blush of shame on the cheek of good men and
aspiring men, and a spice of caricature. But this
man was entirely at home and happy in his century
and the world. None was so fit to live, or more
heartily enjoyed the game. In this aim of culture,
which is the genius of his works, is their power. The
idea of absolute, eternal truth, without reference to
my own enlargement by it, is higher. The surrender
to the torrent of poetic inspiration is higher; but,
compared with any motives on which books are
written in England and America, this is very truth,
and has the power to inspire which belongs to truth.
Thus has he brought back to a book some of its
ancient might and dignity.
Goethe, coming into an over -civilised time and
country, when original talent was oppressed under
the load of books and mechanical auxiliaries, and the
distracting variety of claims, taught men how to dis-
pose of this mountainous miscellany, and make it
subservient. I join Napoleon with him, as being
both representatives of the impatience and reaction of
nature against the morgue of conventions, — two stern
realists, who, with their scholars, have severally set
the axe at the root of the tree of cant and seeming,
for this time, and for all time. This cheerful labourer,
with no external popularity or provocation, drawing
his motive and his plan from his own breast, tasked
himself with stints for a giant, and, without relaxation
or rest, except by alternating his pursuits, worked on
for eighty years with the steadiness of his first zeal.
476 EEPEESENTATIVE MEN. [vii.
It is the last lesson of modern science, that the
highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by-
few elements, but by the highest complexity, Man
is the most composite of all creatures : the wheel-
insect, wlvox glohator, is at the other extreme. We
shall learn to draw rents and revenues from the
immense patrimony of the old and the recent ages.
Goethe teaches courage and the equivalence of all
times ; that the disadvantages of any epoch exist
only to the faint-hearted. Genius hovers with his
sunshine and music close by the darkest and deafest
eras. No mortgage, no attainder, will hold on men
or hours. The world is young : the former great
men call to us affectionately. We too must write
Bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly
world. The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to
exist for us ; to realise all that we know ; in the high
refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in
books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a
pm^pose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to
honour every truth by use.
END OF VOL. IV.
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. ^
