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it'

SESAME AND LILIES.

SgSAMB AND Lilies

^lirtE IDecturcB

JOHN RUSKIN

THE W. J. GAGE COMPANY, limited

TORONTO,

195fi

Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, in the oflflce
of the Minister of Aj?riculture, by The W. J . Gagk Company
(Limited), in the year one thousand eij^ht hundred and
ninety-seven.

CONTENTS.

I. Of Kings' Treasuries, .

II. Of Queens' Gardens, . .

III. Of the Mystery of Life,

PAGE

37
117
171

Note. — The admirable and thoroughly character-
istic Preface to the present volume was written by-
Mr. E-usKiN on the occasion of beginning the publica-
tion of a new and revised edition of his works, in 1871.
The Preface is given here entire, with the exception
of two short passages relating to other volumes of the
series ; and these omissions are denoted by asterisks
or points.

. r-',«i,..iiWtt«WMMM[

PREFACE.

ster-
i by
lica-
871.
fcion
the
isks

I. DEING now fifty-one years old, and little
-L-' likely to change my mind hereafter on
any important subject of thought (unless through
weakness of age), I wish to publish a connected
series of su^h parts of my works as now seem to
me right, and likely to be of permanent use. In
doing so I shall omit much, but not attem.pt to
mend what I think worth reprinting. A young
man necessarily writes otherwise than an old one,
and it would be worse than wasted time to try to
recast the juvenile language ; nor is it to be
thought that I am ashamed even of what I cancel,
for a great part of my earlier work was rapidly
written for temporary purposes, and is now un-
necessary, though true, even to truism. What I
wrote about religion was, on the contrary, pains-
taking, and, I think, forcible as compared with
most religious writing, especially in its frankness
and fearlessness; but it was wholly mistaken, for I
had been educated in the doctrines of a narrow

(7)

PREFACE.

sect, and had read history as obhquely as sectarians
necessarily must.

Mingled among these either unnecessary or
erroneous statements, I find, indeed, some that
might be still of value, but these, in my earlier
books, disfigured by afi'ected language, partly
through the desire to be thought a fine writer, and
partly, as in the second volume of ^' Modern
Painters," in the notion of returning as far as I
could to what I thought the better style of old
English literature, especially to that of my then
favorite in prose, Richard Jlooker.

III. The first book of which a new edition is
required chances to be ** Sesame and Lilies." . . .
I am glad that it should be the first of the com-
plete series, for many reasons, though in now look-
ing over these lectures, I am painfully struck by
the waste of good work in them. They cost me
much thought and much strong emotion ; but it
was foolish to suppose that I could rouse my
audiences in a little while to any sympathy with
the temper into which I had brought myself by
years of thinking over subjects full of pain, while,
if I missed my purpose at the time, it was little to
be hoped I could attain it afterward, since
phrases written for oral delivery become ineffect-

PREFACE.

•lans

*ve when quietly i-.Md. Yet I should only tci' :*
away what good is in them if I tried to translate
them into the language of books; nor, indeed,
could I at all have done sc at the time of their
delivery, my thoughts then habitually and impa-
tiently putting themselves into forms fit only for
emphatic speech. And thus I am startled, in my
review of them, to fmd that though there is much
(forgive me the impertinence) which seems to me
accurately and energetically said, there is scarcely
anything put in a form to be generally convincing,
or even easily intelligible; and I can well imagine
a reader laying down the book without being at all
moved by it, still less guided to any definite
course of action.

I tliink, however, if I now say briefly and
clearly what I meant my hearers to understand,
and what I wanted and still would fain have them
to do, there may afterward be found some better
service in the passionately written text.

IV. The first lecture says, or tries to say, that
life being very short, and the quiet hours of it
few, we ought to waste none of them in reading
valueless books ; and that valuable books should,
in a civilized country, be within the reach of
every one, printed in excellent form, for a just
price, but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of

PREFACE.

smallness of type, physically injurious form, at a
vile price. For we none of us need many books,
and those which we need ought to be clearly
printed on the best paper, and strongly bound.
And though we are indeed now a wretched and
poverty-struck nation, and hardly able to keep
soul and body together, still, as no person in
decent circumstances would put on his table con-
fessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being
ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill-
printed or loosely and wretchedly stitched books ;
for though few can be ricli, yet every man who
honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide,
for himself and his family, good shoes, good
gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage
horses, and stout leather binding for his bookSo
And I would urge upon every young man, as the
beginning of his due and wise provision for his
household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the
severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and
steadily — however slowly — increasing series of
books for use through life, — making his little
library, of all the furniture in his room, the most
-.ludied and decorative piece, every volume having
its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche,
and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the
children of the house being how to turn the pages

PIIEFAOB.

of their own literary possessions lightly and de-
liberately, with no chance of tearing or dogs*
ears.

V. That is my notion of the founding of Kings*
Treasuries ; and the first lecture is intended to
show somewhat the use and preciousness of their
treasures, but the two following ones have wider
scope, being written in the hope of awakening the
youth of England, so far as my poor words might
have any power with them, to take some thought
of the purposes of the life into which they are en-
tering, and the nature of the world they have to
conquer.

VI. These two lectures are fragmentary and
ill-arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much com-
pressible. The entire gist and conclusion of them,
however, is in the last six paragraphs, 135 to the
end, of the third lecture, which I would beg the
reader to look over, not once or twice, rather than
any other part of the book, for they contain the
best expression I have yet been able to put in
words of what, so far as is within my power, I
mean henceforward both to do myself, and to
plead with all over whom I have any influence to
do also, according to their means,— ^the letters be-
gun on the first day of this year,^ to the workmen

1 " Fors Clavigera," begun in 1:871.

PREFACE.

of England, having the object of originating, if
possible, this movement among them, in true alli-
ance with whatever trustworthy element of help
they can find in the higher classes. After these
paragraphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery
light of recent events, the fable given at § 117, and
then §§ 1 29-131, and observe my statement re-
specting the famine of Orissa is not rhetorical, but
certified by official documents as within the truth.
Five hundred thousand persons, at leasts died by
starvation in our British dominions, wholly in con-
sequence of carelessness and want of forethought.
Keep that well in your memory, and note it as the
best possible illustration of modern political econ-
omy in true practice, and of the relations it has
accomplished between Supply and Demand. Then
begin the second lecture, and all will read clear
enough, I think, to the end ; only, since that second
lecture was written, questions have arisen respect-
ing the education and claims of women which
have greatly troubled simple rninds and excited
restless ones. I am sometii les asked my thoughts
on this matter, and I suppose tha' some girl read-
ers of the second lecture may at the end of it de-
sire to be told summarily what I would have them
do and desire in the present state of things. This,
thenj is what I would say to any girl who had con-

PEEFACE.

•

fidence enough in me to believe what I told her, or
do what I ask her.

VII. First, be quite sure of one thing, that,
however much you may know, and whatever ad-
vantages you may possess, and however good you
may be, you have not been singled out by the God
who made you from all the other girls in the world,
to be especially informed respecting His own na-
ture and character. You have not been born in a
luminous point upon the surface of the globe,
where a perfect theology might be expounded to
you from your youth up, and where everything
you were taught would be true, and everything
that was enforced upon you, right. Of all the in-
solent, all the foolish persuasions that by any
chance could enter and hold your empty little
heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, — that you
have been so much the darling of the Heavens
and favorite of the Fates as to be born in the very
nick of time, and in the punctual place, when
and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from
the errors of the nations ; and that your papa had
been providentially disposed to buy a house in the
convenient neighborhood of the steeple under
which that immaculate and final verity would be
beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child ;
it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact, —

■jk.

PREFACE.

unpleasant you may think it ; pleasant, it seems to
me, — that you, with all your pretty dresses and
dainty looks and kindly thoughts and saintly aspi-
rations, are not one whit more thought of or loved
by the great Maker and Master than any poor lit-
tle red, black, or blue savage running wild in the
pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the
earth ; and that of the two, you probably know-
less about God than she does, the only difference
being that she thinks litlle of Him that is right,
and you, much that is wrong.

That, then, is the first thing to make sure of, —
that you are not yet perfectly well informed on the
most" abstruse of all possible subjects, and that, if
you care to behave with modesty or propriety, you
had better be silent about it.

VIII. Tiie second thing which you may make
sure of is, that however good you may be, you
have faults; that however dull you may be
you can find out what some of them are ; and
that however slight they may be, you had bet-
ter make some — not too painful, but patient — ef-
fort to get quit of them. And so far as you have
confidence in me at all, trust me for this, that how
many soever you may find or fancy your faults to
be, there are only two that are of real consequence,
.^—Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be

IS,

PREFACE.

make
you
be
and
bet-
— ef-
have
how
ts to
:nce,
y be

proud. Well, we can get much good out of pride,
if only it be not religious. Perhaps you may be
vain, — it is highly probable, and very pleasant for
the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you
are a little envious, — that is really very shocking ;
but then — so is everybody else. Perhaps, also,
you are a little malicious, which I am truly con-
cerned to hear, but should probably only the more,
if I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But
whatever else you may be, you must not be use-
less, and you must not be cruel. If there is any
one point which, in six thousand years of thinking
about right and wrong, wise and good men have
agreed upon, or successively by experience
discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel
people more than any other ; that His first order
is, 'MVork while you have light;" and His
second, *' Be merciful while you have mercy."

*' Work while you have light," especially while
you have the light of morning. There are few
things more wonderful to me than that old people
never tell young ones how precious their youth is.
They sometimes sentimentally regret their ov/n
earlier days, sometimes prudently forget them,
often foolish.ly rebuke the young, often more fool-
ishly indulge, often most foolisldy thwart and re-
strain, but scarcely ever warn or watch them.

PKErACE.

Remember, then, that I at least have warned you
that the happiness of your life, and its power, and
its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on
the way you pass your days now. They are not
to be sad days, — far from that, the first duty of
young people is to be delighted and delightful ;
but they are to be in the deepest sense solemn
days. There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly
thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not only
in that beautiful sense, but in all their character
and method, they are to be solemn days. Take
your Latin dictionary, and look out '' sollennis,'*
and fix the sense of the word well in your mind,
and remember that every day of your early life is
ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom
and practice of your soul, — ordaining either sacred
customs of dear and lovely recurrence, or trench-
ing deeper and deeper the furrows for seed of sor-
row. Now, therefore, see that no day passes in
which you do not make yourself a somewhat bet-
ter creature ; and in order to do that, find out,
first, what you are now. Do not think vaguely
about it ; take pen and paper, and write down as
accurate a description of yourself as you can, with
the date to it. If you dare not do so, find out
wliy you dare not, and try to get strength of heart
enough to look yourself fairly in the face, in mind

•

PBEFACE.

■:^

as well lis body. I do not doubt but that the iiiiiul
is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and
for that very reason it needs more looking at ; so
always have tvvo mirrors on your toilet-table, and
see that with proper care you dress body and
mind before them daily. After the dressing is
once over for the day, think no more about it. As
your hair will blow about your ears, so your
temper and thoughts will get ruffled with the day's
work, and may need sometimes twice dressing;
but I don't want you to carry about a mental
pocket- comb, only to be smooth braided always in
the morning.

IX. Wrice down, then, frankly, what you are,
or at least what you think yourself, not dwelling
upon those inevitable faults which I have just told
you are of little consequence, and which the ac-
tion of a right life will shake or smooth away; but
that you may determine to the best of your intel-
ligence what you are good for, and can be made
into. You will find that the mere resolve not to be
useless, and the honest desire to help other people,
will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve
yourself. Thus, from the beginning, consider all
your accomplishments as means of assistance to
others; read attentively, in this volume, para-
graphs 74, 75, 19, and 79, and you will under-

PREFACE.

Stand what I mean, with respect to languages aLO
music. In music especially you will soon find
what personal benefit there is in being serviceable ;
it is probable that, however limited your powers,
you have voice and ear enough to sustain a note ol
moderate compass in a concerted piece, — that,
then, is the first thing to make sure you can do.
Get your voice disciplined and clear, and thiiik
only of accuracy, never of effect or expression. If
you have any soul worth expressing, it will show
itself in your singing; but most likely there are
very few feelings in you at present needing any
particular expression, and the one thing you have
to do is to ma-ke a clear-voiced little instrument of
yourself, which other people can entirely depend
upon for the note wanted. So, in dra\ving, as
soon as you can set down the right shape of any-
thing, and thereby explain its character to another
person, or make the look of it clear and interesting
to a child, you will begin to enjoy the art vivid'y
for its own sake, and all your habits of mind and
powers of memory will gain precision ; but if you
only try to make showy drawing for praise, or
pretty ones for amusement, your drawing will have
little of real interest for you, and no educational
power whatever.

Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve

•■^"^

t^REPACE.

to do every day some that is useful in the vulgar
sense. Learn first thoroughly the economy of the
kitchen, — the good and bad qualities of every
common article of food, and the simplest and best
modes of their preparation ; when you have time,
go and help in the cooking of poorer families, and
show them how to make as much of everything as
possible, and how to make little, nice, — coaxing
and tempting them into tidy and pretty ways, and
pleading for well-folded table-cloths, however
coarse, and for a flower or two out of the garden
to strew on them. If you manage to get a clean
table-cloth, bright plates on it, and a good dish in
the middle, of your own cooking, you may ask
leave to say a short grace ; and let your religious
ministries be confined to that much for the
present.

X. Again, let a certain part of your day (as
little as you choose, but not to be broken in upon)
be set apart for making strong and pretty dresses
for the poor. Learp the sound qualities of all
nseful stufifsj and make everything of the best you
can get, whatever its price. I have many reasons
for desiring you to do this, — too many to be told
just now; trust me, and be sure you get every-
thing as good as can be. And if in the villanous
state of modern trade, you cannot get it good at

PREFACE.

any price, buy its raw material, and set some of
the poor women about you to spin and weave, till
you have got stuff that can be trusted ; and then,
every day make some little piece of useful cloth-
ing, sewn with your own fnigers as strongly as it
can be stitched, and embroider it or otherwise
beautify it moderately with fine needlework, such
as a girl may be proud of having done. And
accumulate these things by you until you hear of
some honest persons in need of clothing, which
may often too sorrowfully be ; and even though
you should be deceived, and give them to the dis-
honest, and hear of their being at once ta!:en to
the pawnbroker's, never mind that, for the pawn-
broker must sell them to some one who has need
of them.. That is no business of yours; what
concerns you is only that when you see a half-
naked child, you should have good and fresh
clothes to give it, if its parents will let it be taught
to wear them. If they will not, consider how
they came to be of such a mind, which it will be
wholesome for you beyond most subjects of inquiry
to ascertain. And after you have gone on doing
this a little while, you will begin to understand the
meaning of at least one chapter of your Bible, —
Proverbs xxxi., — without need of any labored
comment, sermon, or meditation.

PREFACE.

XI. In these, then (and of course in all minor
ways besides, that you can discover in your own
househcld), you must be to the best of your
strength usefully employed during the greater part
of the day, so that you may be able at the end of
it to say as proudly as any peasant that you have
not eaten the bread of idleness. Then, secondly,
I said, you are not to be cruel. Perhaps you think
there is no chance of your being so, and indeed I
hope it is not likely that you should be deliberately
unkind to any creature ; but unless you are de-
liberately kind to every creature, you will often be
cruel to many. Cruel, partly through want of
imagination (a far rarer and weaker faculty in
women than men), and yet more, at the present
day, through the subtle encouragement of your
selfishness by the religious doctrine that all which
we now suppose to be evil will be brought to a
good end, — doctrine practically issuing, not in
less earnest efforts that the immediate unpleasant-
ness may be averted from ourselves, but in our
remaining satisfied in the contemplation of its
ultimate objects when it is inflicted on others.

It is not likely that the more accurate methods
of recent mental education will now long permit
young people to grow up in the persuasion that in
any danger or distress they may expect to be them-

PREFACE.

selves saved by the providence of God, while
those around them are lost by His improvidence ;
but they may be yet long restrained from rightly
kind action, and long accustomed to endure both
their own pain occasionally, and the pain of
others always, with an unwise patience, by mis-
conception of the eternal and incurable nature of
real evil. Observe, therefore, carefully in ihis
matter: there are degrees of pain, as degrees of
faultfulness, which are altogether conquerable, and
which seem to be merely forms of wholesome trial
or discipline. Your fingers tingle when you go
out on a frosty morning, and are all the warmer
afterward, your limbs weary with wholesome
work, and lie down in the pleasanter rest ; you are
tried for a little while by having to wait for some
promised good, and it is all the sweeter when it
comes. But you cannot carry the trial past a
certain point. Let the cold fasten on your hand
in an extreme degree, and your fingers will
moulder from their sockets. Fatigue yourself but
once to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life
you shall not recover the former vigor of your
frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain
bitter point, and the heart loses its life forever.

Now, the very definition of evil is in this
irremediableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which

o
o

PREFACE.

end in death ; and assuredly, as (ar as we know,
or can conceive, there are many conditions both
of pain and sin which cannot but so end. Of
course we are ignorant and blind creatures, and
we cannot know what seeds of good may be in
present suffering, or present crime; but with what
we cannot know, we are not concerned. It is con-
ceivable that murderers and liars may in some dis-
tant world be exalted into a higher humanity than
they could have reached without homicide or false-
hood ; but the contingency is not one by which
our actions shonld be guided. There is indeed a
better hope that the beggar who lies at our gates
in misery may within gates of pearl be com-
forted ; but the Master, whose words are our only
authority for thinking so, never Himself inflicted
disease as a blessing, nor sent away the hungry
unfed, or the wounded unhealed.

XII. Believe me, then, the only right principle
of action here, is to consider good and evil as de-
fined by our natural sense of both, and to strive to
promote the one, and to conquer the other, with
as hearty endeavor as if there was indeed no other
world than this. Above all, get quit of the absurd
idea that Heaven will interfere to correct great
errors, while allowing its laws to take their course
in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish

PREFACE.

of food carelessly, you do not expect Providence
to make it palatable ; neither if through years of
folly you misguide your own life, need you expect
Divine interference to bring round everything at
J ist for the best. I tell you positively the world
is not so constituted ; the co'isequences of great
mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, and
the happiness of your whole life, and of all the
lives over which you have power, depends as liter-
ally on your own common-sense and discretion as
the excellence and order of the feast of a day.

XIII. Think carefully and bravely over these
things, and you will find them true ; having found
them so, think also carefully over your own posi-
tion in life. I assume that you belong to the mid-
dle or upper clasi-es, and that you would slirink
from descending into a lower sphere. You may
fancy you would not, — nay, if you are very good,
strong-hearted, and romantic, perhaps you really
would not ; but it is not wrong that you sliould.
You have, then, I suppose, good food, pretty
rooms to live in, pretty dresses to wear, power of
obtaining every rational and wholesome pleasure ;
you are, moreover, probably gentle and grateful,
and in the habit of every day thanking God for
these things. But why do you thank Him ? Is it
because, in these matters, as well as in your relig-

PREFACE.

ious knowledge, you think He has niade a favorite
of you? Is the essential meaning of your thanks-
giving, **Lord, I thank thee that I am not as
other girls are, not in that I fast twice in the week
while they feast, but in that I feast seven times a
week, while they fast " ? And are you quite sure
this is a pleasing form of thanksgiving to your
Heavenly Father ? Suppose you saw one of your
own true earthly sisters, Lucy or Emily, cast out
of your mortal father's house, starving, helpless,
heart-broken ; and that every morning when you
went into your father's room, you said to him,
** How good you are, father, to give me what you
don't give Lucy!" are you sure that whatevei
anger your parent mj'ght have just cause for against
your sister, he would be pleased by that thanks-
giving, or flattered by that praise? Nay, are you
even sure that you are so much the favorite ? Sup-
pose thai all this while he loves poor Lucy just as
well as you, and is only trying you through her
pain, and perhaps not angry with her in anywise,
but deeply angry with you, and all the more for
your thanksgivings? Would it not be well that
you should think, and earnestly too, over this
standing of yours; and all the more if you wish
to believe that text wliich clergyman so much dis-
like preaching on, *' How hardly shall the^^ that

! f

PREFACE.

have riches enter into the Kingdom of God " ?
You do not believe it now, or you would be less
complacent in your state. And you cannot believe
it at all until you know that the Kingdom of God
means, 'Miot meat and drink, but justice, peace,
and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor until you know
also that such jv.y is not by any means necessarily
in going to churcli, or in singing hymns, but may
be joy in a dance, or joy in a jest, or joy in any-
thing you have deserved to possess, or that you are
willing to give; but joy in nothing that separates
you, as by any strange favor, from your fellow-
creatures, that exalts you through their degrada-
tion, exempts you from their toil, or indulges you
, in time of their distress.

XIV. Think, then, and some day, I believe,
you will feel also, no morbid passion of pity such
as would turn you into a black Sister of Chanty,
but the steady fire of perpetual kindness, which
will make you a bright one. I speak in no dis-
paragement of them. I know well how good the
Sisters of Charity are, and much we owe to them ;
but all these professional pieties (except so far as
distinction or association may be necessary for
effectiveness of work) are in tlieir spirit wrong,
a;:d in practice merely plaster the sores of disease
that ought never have been permitted to exist, —

thii
bla
\V(
let

.1^-1

'^'m

PREFACE.

■■sa.'

encouraging at the same time the herd of less ex-
cellent women in frivolity, by leading them to
think that they must either be good up to the
black standard, or cannot be good for anything.
Wear a costume, by all means, if you like ; but
let it be a cheerful and becoming one, and be in
your heart a Sister of Charity always, without
either veiled or voluble declaration of it.

XV. As I pause, before ending my preface, —
thinking of one or two more points that are diffi-
cult to write of, — I find a letter in *' The Times/*
from a French lady, which says all I want so beau-
tifully that I will print it just as it stands : —

Sir, — It is often said that one example is worth many
sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out
one which seems to me so striking just now that, however
painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it ?

It is the share, the sad and large share, that French so-
ciety and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress,
of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has
to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery,
and humiliation. If our incnai:[eres can be cited as an ex-
ample to English housewives, so, alas ! can other classes of
our society be set up as an example — not to be followed.

Bitter must be the feelings of many a Frenchwoman
whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end,
and whose bills of bygone splendor lie with a heavy
weight on her conscience, if not on her purse !

With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere

PKEFACE.

have the examples given by the highest ladies in the
land been followed but too successfully. Every year did
dress become more extravagant, entertainments more costly,
expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and
lower became the tone of society, its good-breeding, its
delicacy. More and more were monJe and demi-monde
associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in
scandalous gos ,ip, on race-courses, in premieres representa-
tionsy in imitation of each other's costumes, mobilierSy and
slang.

Living beyond one's means became habitual — almost
necessary — for every one to keep up with, if not to go be-
yond, every one else.

What the result of all this has been we now see in the
wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed
brighest and highest.

Deeply and fearfully imi3ressed by what my own country
has incurred and is bufferiug, I cannot help feeling sorrow-
ful when I see in England signs of our besetting sins ap-
pearing also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles,
knowing " Anonymas " by name, and reading doubtfully
moral novels, are in themselves small offences, although
not many years ago they would have appeared very hein-
ous ones ; yet they are quick and tempting conveyances on
a very dangerous high-road.

I would that all Englishwomen knew how they are
looked up to from abroad,— what a high opinion, what
honor and reverence we foreigners have for their principles,
their truthfulness, the fresh and pure innocence of their
daughters, the healthy youthfulness of .their lovely chil-
dren.

PREFACE.

i ■

May I illustrate this by a short example which happened
very near me ? During the days of the cmeules of 1848,
all the houses in Paris were being searched for fire-arms by
the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the
master of the house repeatedly assured the furious and in-
credulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent
hands on him, when his wife, an English lady, hearing the
loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them
that no arms were concealed. " Vous etes anglaise, nous
vous croyons ; les anglaises disent toujours la vcrite," was
the immediate answer; and the rioters quietly left.

Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjustified criticism if,
loving and admiring your country, as these lines will prove,
certain new features strike me as painful discrepancies in
English life?

Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can
make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love noth-
ing better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking
her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can
afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and per-
fectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty
\^sic ; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it
were] as care, trouble, and refinement can make them.

It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so
fatal, and that I would our example could warn you from,
as a small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to
us in our days of trouble.

May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a
new-year's wish from

French Lady.
December 29.

I f

'i:

PREFACTi.

That, then, is the substance of what I would
fail say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl
friends; at all events with certainty in my own
mind that I was thus far a safe guide to them.

XVI. For otlier and older readers it is needful
I should write a few words more, respecting what
opportunity I have had to judge, or right I have to
speak, of such things ; for indeed too much of
what I have said about women has been said in
faith only. A wise and lovely English lady told
me, when ''Sesame and Lilies " first appeared,
that she was sure tlie Sesame would be useful, but
that in the Lilies I had been wntincf of what I
knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too
true, and also that it is more partial than my writ-
ings are usually ; for as Ellesmere spoke his speech

on the intervention, not indeed otherwise than

he felt, but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen,
s ) I wrote the Lilies to please one girl, and were it
not for what I remember of her, and of few be-
sides, should now perhaps recast some of the sen-
tences in the Lilies in a very different tone, — for
as years have gone by, it has chanced to me, un-
towardly in some respects, fortunately in others
(because it enables me to read history more clearly),
to see the utmost evil that is in women, while I
have had but to believe the utmost good. The

■PREFACE.

■»rt

best women are indeed necessarily the most diffi-
cult to know ; they are recognized chiefly in the
happiness of their husbands and the nobleness of
their cliildren. They are only to be divined, not
discerned, by the stranger, and sometimes seem
almost helpless except in their homes; yet without
the help of one of them,^ to whom tliis book is
dedicated, the day would probably have come be-
fore now, when I should have written and thought
no more.

XVII. On the other hand, the fashion of the
time renders whatever is forward, coarse, or sense-
less in feminine nature, too palpable to all men.
The weak picturesqu'ness of my earlier writings
brought me acquainted with much of their empti-
est enthusiasm ; and the chances of later life gave
me opportunities of watching women in states of
degradation and vindictiveness which opened to
me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and Syrian
tragedy. I have seen tliem betray their household
charities to lust, their pledged love to devotion ; I
have seen mothers dutiful to their children as
Medea; and children dutiful to their parents as
the daughter of Herod ias ; but my trust is still
unmoved in the preciousness of the natures that
are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words of

1 ih

(/'{Xtj.

PREFAOK.

the Lilies unchanged ; beheving, yet, chat no man
ever lived a right life who had not been chastened
by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage,
and guided by her discretion.

XVIII. What I might myself have been, so
helped, I rarely indulge in the idleness of think-
ing; but what I am, since I take on n" the func-
tion of a teacher, it is well that the re ider should
know, as far as I can tell him :

Not an unjust person; not an unkind one; not
a false one ; a lover of order, labor, and peace.
That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right
to say all I care to say on ethical subjects ; more,
I could only tell definitely through details of auto-
biography such as none but prosperous and (in the
simple sense of the word) faultless lives could jus-
tify,— and mine has been neither. Yet if any one
skilled in reading the torn manuscripts of the hu-
man soul cares for more intimate knowledge of me,
he may have it by knowing with what persons in
past history I ha\ie most sympathy.

I will name three : —

In all that is strongest and deepest in me, — that
fits me for my work, and gives light or shadow to
my being, — I have sympathy with Guido Guini-
celli.

thi

th(
Svv

th(

an^

US(

PREFACE.

In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of
things and of people, with Marmontel.

In my enforced and accidental temper, and
thoughts of things and of people, with Dean
Swift.

Any one who can understand the natures of
those three men, can understand mine ; and hav-
ing said so much, I am content to leave both life
and work to be remembered or forgotten, as their
uses may deserve.

Denmark Hill,

Jan. I, 1871.

f I

! i \

(S)f IKiugs' ©KttsutkB.

\\\

lil

I ■

1 ■ J

SESAME AND LIJLIES.

LECTURE 1.

OF kings' treasuries.

You shall each huve a cake of sesame, — and ten pound.

LuciAN : T/if Fisherman.

I. \\ Y first duty this evening is to askyuui par-
^ ' *■ don for the ambiguity of title under
which the subject of lecture has been announced ;
for indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known
as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to con-
tain wealth, but of quite another order of royalty
and another material of riches than those usually
acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your
attention for a little while on trust, and (as some-
times one contrives, in taking a friend to see a fa-
vorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted
most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I

(37)

SESAME AND LILIES.

might, until we unexpectedly reached the best
point of view by winding paths. But — and as also
I have heard it said, by men practiced in public
address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as
by the endeavor to follow a speaker who gives
them no clew to his purpose — I will take the slight
mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want
to speak to you about the treasures hidden in
books ; and about the way we find them, and the
way we lose them. A grave subject, you will say,
and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall make
no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try
only to bring before you a few simple thoughts
about reading, which press themselves upon me
every day more deeply, as I watch the course of
the public mind with respect to our daily enlarg-
ing means of education, and the answeringly wider
spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of litera-
ture.

2. It happens that I have practically some con-
nection with schools for different classes of youth ;
and I receive many letters from parents respecting
the education of their children. In the mass of
these letters I am always struck by the precedence
which the idea of a '' position in life " takes above
all other thoughts in the parents'— more especially
in the mothers'— minds. ^^The education befit-

.1' u

OF kings' TREASUKIES.

ting such and such a station in life^'^^ — this is the
phrase, this the object, ahvays. They never seek,
as far as I can make out, an education good in it-
self; even the conception of abstract Tightness in
training rarely seems reached by the writers. But
an education '' which shall keep a good coat on my
son's back ; which shall enable him to ring with
confidence the visitors' bell at double-belled doors ;
which shall result ultimately in the establishment
of a double-belled door to his own house, — in a
word, which shall lead to advancement in life, —
this we pray for on bent knees ; and this is all we
pray for." It never seems to occur to the parents
that there may be an education which in itself is
advancement in Life ; that any other than that
may perhaps be advancement in Death ; and that
this essential education might be more easily got,
or given, than they fancy, if they set about in the
right way, while it is for no price and by no favor
to be got, if they set about it in the wrong.

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and
effective in the mind of this busiest of countries, I
suppose the first — at least that which is confessed
with the greatest frankiiess, and put forward as the
fittest stimulus to youthful exertion — is this of
** Advancement in life." May I ask you to con-

' i.

i I

SESAME AND LILIES.

sider with me what this idea practically includes,
and what it should include ?

Practically, then, at present, ** advancement in
life" means, becoming conspicuous in life, — ob-
taining a position which shall be acknowledged by
others to be respectable or honorable. We do not
understand by this advancement, in general, the
mere making of money, but the being known to
have made it; not the accomplishment of any
great aim, but the being seen to have accomplished
it. In a word, we mean the gratification of our
thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirm-
ity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of
weak ones, and on the whole, the strongest impul-
sive influence of average humanity. The greatest
efforts of the race have always been traceable to
the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the
love of pleasure.

4. I am not about to attack or defend this im-
pulse. I want you only to feel how it lies at the
root of effort, especially of ^11 modern effort. It is
the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the
stimulus of toil and balm of repose. So closely
does it touch the very springs of life that the
wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and
truly) as in its measure 7nortal; we call it '^mor-
tification," using the same expression which we

'f?'*a»i

■■-1

OF kings' tkeasuries.

should apply to a gangrenous and incurable bodily
hurt. And although a few of us may be physicians
enough to recognize the various effect of this pas-
sion upon health and energy, I believe most hon-
est men know, and would at once acknowledge,
its leading power with them as a motive. The
seaman does not commonly desire to be made cap-
tain only because he knows he can manage the
ship better than any other sailor on board; he
wants to be made captain that he may be called
captain. The clergyman does not usually want to
be made a bishop only because he believes that no
other hand can, as firmly as his, direct the diocese
through its difficulties ; he wants to be made
bishop primarily that he may be called **My
Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to
enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom because
he believes that no one else can as well serve the
State upon its throne, but briefly, because he
wishes to be addressed as *' Your Majesty" by as
many lips as may be brought to such utterance.

5. This, then, being the main idea of ** ad-
vancement in life," the force of it applies for all
of us, according to our station, particularly to that
secondary result of such advancement which we
call ** getting into good society." We want to
get into good society, not that we may have it, but

SESAME A1;D ULIES.

;f •

that we may be seen in it ; and our notion of its
goodness depends primarily on its conspicuousness.
Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to
put what I fear you may think an impertinent
question? I never can go on with an address un-
less I feel or know that my audience are either
with me or against me. I do not much care
which, in beginning; but I must know where they
are. And I would fain find out at this instant
whether you think I am putting the motives of
popular action too low. I am resolved to-night to
state them low enough to be admitted as probable;
for whenever, in my writings on Political Econ-
omy, I assume that a little honesty, or generosity,
— or what used to be called *^ virtue," — may be
calculated upon as a human motive of action, peo-
ple always answer me, saying, '* You must not cal-
culate on that ; that is not in human nature. You
must not assume anything to be common to men
but acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling
ever has influence on them, except accidentally,
and in matters out of the way of business." I be-
gin, accordingly, to-night low in the scale of mo-
tives; but I must know if you think me right in
doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who admit
the love of praise to be usually the strongest motive
in men's minds in seeking advancement, and the

OF KINGS* TREASURIES.

honest desire of doing any kind of duty to be an
entirely secondary one, to hold up their hands.
{Ahotit a dozen hands held upy — the audience ^
partly^ not being sure the lecturer is serious, and
partly y shy of expressing opinio?i.) I am quite
serious, — I really do want to know what you think;
however, I can judge by putting the reverse ques-
tion. Will those who think that duty is generally
the first, and love of praise the second, motive,
hold up their hands ? ( One hand reported to have
been held tip, behind the lecturer. ) Very good ; I
see you are with me, and that you think I have
not begun too near the ground. Now, without
teasing you by putting farther question, I venture
to assume that you will admit duty as at least a
secondary or tertiary motive. You think that the
desire of doing something useful, or obtaining
some real good, is indeed an existent collateral
idea, though a secondary one, in most men's de-
sire of advancement. You will grant that moder-
ately honest men desire place and office, at least
in some measure, for the sake of beneficent power,
and would wish to associate rather with sensible
and well-informed persons than with fools and ig-
norant persons, whether they are seen in the com-
pany of the sensible ones or not. And finally,
without being troubled by repetition of any com-

SESAME AND LILIES.

mon truisms about: the preciousness of friends and
the influence of companions, you will admit,
doubtless, that according to the sincerity of our
desire that our friends may be true, and our com-
panions wise, and in proportion lo the earnestness
and discretion with which we choose both, will be
the general chances of our happiness and useful-
ness.

6. But granting that we had both the will and
the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us
have the power ; or at least, how limited for most
is the sphere of choice ! Nearly all our associa-
tions are determined by char.ce or necessity, and
restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot
know whom we would, and those whom we know
we cannot have at our side when we most need
them. All the higher circles of human intelli-
gence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and
partially open. We rxiay by good fortune obtain
a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of
his voice, or put a question to a man of science,
and be answered good-humoredly. We may in-
trude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet minister,
answered probably with words worse than silence,
being deceptive, or snatch, once or twice in our
lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the
path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of

OF KINGS TKEASUUIES.

a queen. And yet these momentary chances we
covet, and spend our years and passions and
powers in pursuit of little more than these; while,
meantime, there is a society continually open to us
of people who will talk to us as long as we like,
whatever our rank or occupation, — talk to us in
the best words they can choose, and of the things
nearest their hearts. And this society, because it
is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept
waiting round us all day long (kings and states-
men lingering patiently, not to grant audience,
but to gain it), in those plainly furnished and
narrow anterooms, our book-case shelves, — we
make no account of that company, perhaps never
listen to a word they would say, all day long.

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within
yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard
this company of the noble, who are praying us to
listen to them, and the passion with which we pur-
sue the company probably of the ignoble, who
despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are
grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of
the living men ; and it is themselves, and not
their sayings, with which we desire to become
familiar. Buc it is not so. Suppose you never
were to see their faces ; suppose you could be put
behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet or the

;:, 1

SESAME AND LILIES.

prince's chamber, would you not be glad to listen
to their words, though you were forbidden to
advance beyond the screen? And when the
screen is only a little less, folded in two instead of
four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of
the two boards that bind a book, and listen all
day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied,
determined, chosen addresses of the w^isest of
men, — this station of audience and honorablj
privy council you despise !

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because
the living people talk of things that are passing,
and are of immediate interest to you, that you
desire to hear them. Nay, that cannot be so ; for
the living people will themselves tell you about
passing matters much better in their writings than
in their careless talk. But I admit that this
motive does influence you, so far as you prefer
those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and
enduring writings, — books, properly so-called.
For all books are divisible into two classes, — the
books of the hour, and the books of all time.
Mark this distinction ; it is not one of quality
only. It is not merely the bad book that does not
last, and the good one that does ; it is a distinc-
tion of species. There are good books for the
hour, and good ones for all time ; bad books for

OP kings' treasuries.

the hour, and bad ones for all time. I must
define the two kinds before I go farther

9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not
speak of the bad ones, — is simply the useful or
pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot
otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very
useful often, telling you what you need to know;
very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present
talk v/ould be. These bright accounts of travels;
good-humored anr^ itty discussions of question ;
lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of
novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents con-
cerned in the events of passing history, — all these
books of the hour, multiplying among us as educa-
tion becomes more general, are a peculiar posses-
sion of the present age. We ought to be entirely
thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of our-
selves if we make no good use of them. But we
make the worst possible use if we allow them to
usurp the place of true books ; for, strictly speak-
ing, they are not books at all, but merely letters cr
newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter
may be delightful or necessary to-day, — whether
worth keeping or not, is to be considc^red. The
newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast-
time, but assuredly it is not reading for r.ll day ;
so, though bound up in a volume, the long letter

\ I

SESAME AND LILIES.

It '

which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns
and roads and weather last year at such a place,
or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you
the real circumstances of such and such events,
however valuable for occasional reference, may
not be in the real sense of the word a ** book " at
all, nor in the real sense to be ''read." A book
is essentially not a talked thing, but a written
thing, and written not with a view of mere com-
munication, but of permanence. The book of
talk is printed only because its author cannot
speak to thousands of people at once ; if he could
he would, — the volume is mere multiplication of
his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in
India ; if you could, you would. You write
instead -5 that is mere conveyance of voice. But a
book is written, not to multiply the voice merely,
not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The
Fithor has something to say which he perceives to
be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far
as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as he
knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to
say it clearly and melodiously, if he may;
clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he
finds this to be the thing or group of things
manifest to him, — this the piece of true knowl-
edge or sight which his share of sunshine and

OF Kings' trkasuries.

earth has permiUccl him to seize. He would fain
set it down forever, engrave it on rock if he could,
saying, ^'This is the best of me; for the rest, I
ate and drank and slept, loved and hated like
another. My life was as the vapor, and is not ;
but this I saw and knew, — this, if anytliing of
mine, is worth your memory." That is his
** writing; " it is in his small human way, and
with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him,
his inscription or scripture. That is a ** book."

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so
written ?

But, again, I as.: you, do you at all believe in
honesty or at all in kindness, or do you think
there is never any honesty or benevolence in
wise people ? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy
as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise
man's work is honestly and benevolently done,
that bit is his book, or his piece of art.^ It is
mixed always with evil fragments, — ill-done, re-
dundant, affected work. But if you read rightly,
you will easily discover the true bits, and those
are the book.

11. Now, books of this kind have been written
in all ages by their greatest men, — by great read-

1 Note this sentence carefully, and compare the " Queen
of the Air," § lo6.

■I

i.i

I ;

SESAME AND LILIES.

li* 'I

!!)^

ers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These
are all ut your choice; and Life is short. You
have heard as much before ; yet have you meas-
ured and mapped out this short life and its possi-
bilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you
cannot read that ; that w hat you lose to-day you
cannot gain to-morrow ? Will you go and gossip
with your housemaid or your stable-boy, when you
may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter your-
selves that it is with any worthy consciousness of
your own claims to respect that you jostle with the
hungry and common crowd for entree here, and
audience there, when all the while this eternal
court is open to you, with its society, wide as the
world, multitudinous as its days, — the chosen and
the mighty of every place and time? Into that
you may enter always ; in that you may take fel-
lowship and rank accordingly to your wish ; from
that, once entered into it, you can never be an
outcast but by your own fault ; by your aristocracy
of companionship there, your own inherent aristoc-
racy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with
wMiich you strive to take high place in the society
of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sin-
cerity that are in them, by the place you desire to
take in this company of the dead.

12. *'The place you desire, " and the place

OF kings' treasukies.

you fit yourself for^ I must also say, because, ob-
serve, this court of the past differs from all living
aristocracy in this, — it is open to labor and to
merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe,
no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guard-
ian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no
vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the
portieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain,
there is but brief question : ** Do you deserve to
enter ) Pass. Do you ask to be the companion
of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall
be. Do you long for the conversation of the
wise? T.earn to understand it, and you shall hear
it. But on other terms? — No. If you wiU not
rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living
lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher
explain his thought to you with considerate pain ;
but here we neither feign nor interpret. You must
rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be
gladdened by them, and share our feelings if you
would recognize our presence."

13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I
admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love
these people, if you are to be among them. No
ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambi-
tion. You must love them, and show your love in
these two following ways : —

SKSAME AND LILIKS.

li
i

IH^

{(f) iMisf, l)y a true desire to Ijc taught ])y them,
and to enter into their thuiiglUs. To enter into
theirs, observe, not to find your own expressed by
tlieni. if the person who wrote the book is not
wiser than yon, you need not read it; if he be,
he will think differently from you in many re-
S[)e(:ts.

Very ready we are to say of a book, *' How
good this is, — that's exactly what I think ! " But
the right feeling is, " How strange that is ! I
never thought of that before, and yet I see it is
true ; or if 1 do not now, I hope I shall some day."
l)Ut whether tlius submissively or not, at least be
sure that you go to the author to get at /lis mean-
ing, not to fnul yours. Judge it afterward if you
think yourself quali''.ed to do so ; but ascertain it
first. And l)e sure also, if the author is worth
anything, that you will not get at his meaning all
at once,- -nay, that at his whole meaning you will
not lor a long time arri\e in any w'ise. Not that
he does not say what he means, and in strong
words too ; but he cannot say it all, and what is
more strange, 7i'/// not, but in a hidden way and
in parables, in order that he may be sure you
want it. I cannot (juite see the reason of this,
nor analyze tl^it cruel reticence in the breasts of
wise men which makes them always hide their

Lai'

OF KINGS TREASURIES.

deeper thought. They do not give it }ou by way
of help, but of reward, and will make themselves
sure that you deserve it before they allow you to
reach it. But it is the same with the physical
type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and
me, no reason why the electric forces of the earth
should not carry whatever there is of gold within
it at once to the mountain-tops; so the kings and
people might know that all the gold they could
get was there, and without any trouble of digging,
or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away,
and coin as much as they needed. But Nature
does not manage it so. She puts it in little fis-
sures in the earth, nobody knows where. You may
dig long and find none ; you must dig painfully to
find any.

14. And it is just the same with men's best wis-
dom. When you com.e to a good book, you must
ask yourself, ** Am I inclined to work as an Aus-
tralian miner would ? Are my pickaxes and
shovels in good order, and am I in good trim, my-
self, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my
breath good, and my temper ? " And keeping the
figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness,
for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metnl you are
in search of being the author's mind or meaning,
his words are as the rock which you have to crush

! i

i.il

1 1

SESAME AND LILIES.

^i ;

and smelt in order to get at it. And your pick-
axes are your own care, wit, and learning ; your
smelting furnace is your own tliDughtful soul. Do
not hope to get at any good author's meaning with-
out those tools and that fire ; often you will need
sharpest, finest chiselling and patientest fusing be-
fore you can gather one grain of the metal.

15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earn-
estly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this)
you must get into the habit of looking intensely at
words, and assuring yourself of their meaning,
syllable by syllable — nay, letter by letter. For
though it is only by reason of the opposition of
letters in the function of signs to sounds iu the
function of signs, that the study of books is called
*' literature," and that a man versed in it is called,
by the consent of nations, a man of letters instead
of a man of books or of words, you may yet con-
nect with that accidental nomenclature this real
fact,— that you might read all the books in the
British Museum (if you could live long enough)
and remain an utterly ^^ illiterate," uneducated
person ; but that if you read ten pages of a good
book, letter by letter,— that is to say, with real
accuracy,— you are forevermore in some measure
an educated person. The entire difference between
education and non-education (as regards the

OP kings' tee as eies.

merely intellectual part of it) consists in this ac-
curacy. A well-educated gentleman may not
know many languages, may not be able to speak
any but his own, may have read very few books.
But whatever language he knows, he knows pre-
cisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pro-
nounces rightly. Above all, he is learned in the
peerage of words, knows the words of true descent
and ancient blood, at a glance, from the words of
modern canaille, remembers all their ancestry,
their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the
extent to which they were admitted, and offices
they held, among the national noblesse of words at
any time and in any country. But an uneducated
person may know, by memory, many languages,
and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word
of any, — not a word even of his own. An ordin-
arily clever and sensible seaman will be able to
make his way ashore at most ports, yet he has only
to speak a sentence of any language to be known
for an illiterate person ; so also the accent, or turn
of expression of a single sentence, will at once
mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so
conclusively admitted, by educated persons, that a
false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in
the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign

!«i

14r

SESAME AND LILIES.

illWI

to a man a certain degree of inferior standing for-

ever.

i6. And this is right; but it is a pity that the
accuracy insisted on is not greater, and required to
a serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin
quantity should excite a smile in the House of
Commons ; but it is wrong that a false English
meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the
accent of words be watched, and closely; let
their meaning be watched more closely still, and
fewer will do the work. A few words, well chosen
and distinguished, will do work that a thousand
cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, in
the function of another. Yes ; and words, if
they are not watched, will do deadly work some-
times. There are masked words droning and
skulking about us in Europe just now (there never
were so many, owing to the spread of a shallow,
blotching, blundering, infectious "information,"
or rather deformation, everywhere, and to the
teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools in-
stead of human meanings) — there are masked
words abroad, I say, which nobody understands,
but which everybody uses, and most people will
also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying
they mean this or that or the other of things dear
to them; for such words wear chameleon cloaks,

OF KINGS TEEASURIES.

ground-lion " cloaks, of the color of the ground
of any man's fancy ; on that ground they lie in
wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There
never were creatures of prey so mischievous,
never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so
deadly, as these masked words ; they are the un-
just stewards of all men's ideas. Whatever fancy
or favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives
to his favorite masked word to take care of for
him. The word at last comes to have an infinite
power over him, — you cannot get at him but by
its ministry.

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as
the English, there is a fatal power of equivocation
put into men's hands, almost whether they will or
no, in being able to u^e Greek or Latin words for
an idea when they want it to be awful, and Saxon
or otherwise common words when they want it to
be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect,
for instance, would be produced on the minds of
people who are in the habit of taking the form of
the *' Word " they live by for the power of which
that Word tells them, if we always either retained,
or refused, the Greek form **biblos," or ** bib-
lion," as the right expression for '^ book," instead
of employing it only in the one instance in which
we wish to give dignity to the idea, and translat-

: "'

SESAME AND LILIES.

ing it into English everywhere else. How whole-
some it would be for many simple persons if in
such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we re-
tained the Greek expression instead of translating
it, and they had to read : '^ Many of them also
which used curious arts brought their Bibles to-
gether, and burned them before all men ; and
they counted the price of them, and found it fifty
thousand pieces of silver " ! Or if, on the other
hand, we translated where we retain it, and always
spoke of *' the Holy Book," instead of '^ Holy
Bible," it might come into more heads than it does
at present that the Word of God, by which the
heavens were of old, and by which they are now
kept in store,^ cannot be made a present of to any-
body in morocco binding, nor sown on any way-
side by help either of steam plough or steam press,
but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and
by us with contumely refused, and sown in us
daily, and by us, as instantly as may be, choked.

18. So, again, consider what effect has been pro-
duced on the English vulgar mind by the use of
the sonorous Latin form ^^damno," in translating
the Greek karakphu), when people charitably wish
to make it forcible; and the substitution of the
temperate *' condemn" for it, when they choose

1 2 Peter iii. 5-7.

OF kings' treasuuies.

to keep it gentle; and what notable sermons have
been preached by illiterate clergymen on **He
that believeth not shall be damned,'* though they
would shrink with horror from translating Heb.
xi. 7, '* The saving of his house, by which he
damned the world," or John viii. lo-ii, *< Wo-
man, hath no man damned ihee? She said, No
man. Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I
damn thee; go, and sin no more." And divisions
in the mind of Europe, which have cost seas
of blood, and in the defence of which the noblest
souls of men have been cast away in frantic deso-
lation, countless as forest-leaves, — though, in the
heart of them, founded on deeper causes, — have
nevertheless been rendered practically possible
mainly by the European adoption of the Greek
word for a public meeting, ** ecclesia," to give
peculiar respectability to such meetings, when held
for religious purposes and other collateral equivoca-
tions, such as the vulgar English one of using the
word ^'priest" as a contraction for *' presbyter."
19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly,
this is the habit you must form. Nearly every
word in your language has been first a word of
some other language, — of Saxon, German, French,
Latin, or Greek (not to speak of Eastern and
primitive dialects). And many words have been

'\i

• u

f^ili

ii!

SESAiMK AJSJ) JilLIES.

all these ; that is to say, have been Greek first,
Latin next, French or German next, and English
last, — undergoing a certain change of sense and
use on the lips of each nation, but retaining a deep
vital meaning, which all good scholars feel in em-
ploying them, even at this day. If you do not
know the Greek alphabet, learn it. Young or old,
girl or boy, whoever you may be, if you think of
reading seriously (which, of course, implies that
you have some leisure at command), learn your
Greek alphabet; then get good dictionaries of all
these languages, and whenever you are in doubt
about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max
Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and
after that, never let a word escape you that looks
suspicious. It is severe work ; but you will find
it, even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly
amusing. And the general gain to your character
in power and precision will be quite incalculable.

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to
know, Greek or Latin or French. It takes a whole
life to learn any language perfectly. But you can
easily ascertain the meanings through which the
English word has passed, and those which in a
good writer's work it must stiii bear.

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will,
with your permission, read a few lines of a true

OP KI>;US TUEASUBIES.

book with you carefully, and see what will come
out of them. I will take a book perfectly known
to you all. No English v/ords are more familiar to
us, yet few perhaps have been read with less sin-
cerity. I will take these few following lines of
*' Lycidas " : —

** Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the (lalilean lake.
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain) :
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake :
« How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake
Creep and intrude and climb into the fold !
Of other care they little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast.
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ;
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have iearned aught else, the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs !
What recks it them ? What need they ? They arc sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched stravv^. -
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they drnw,
Rot inwardly, and /oul contagion spread,
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' "

I'' i

|l <!

SESAME AiVn LILIES.

Let us think over this passage, and examine its
words.

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning
to Saint Peter not only his full episcopal function,
but the very types of it which Protestants usually
refuse most passionately? His ''mitred" locks!
Milton was no bishop lover ; how comes Saint
Peter to be ''mitred " ? "Two massy keys he
bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys
rhimed by the bishops of Rome, and is it ac-
knowledged here by Milton only in a poetical
license, for the sake of its picturesqueness, that he
may get the gleam ol the golden keys to help his
effect ?

Do not think it. Great men do not play stage
tricks with the doctrines of life and death; only
little men do that. Milton means what he savs,
ard means it with his might, too, — is going to put
the whole strength of his spirit presently into the
saying of it. For though not a lover of false
bishops, he wa? a lover of true ones ; and the
Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and
head of true episcopal power. For Milton reads
that text, " I will give unto thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven" quite honestly. Puritan
though he be, he would not blot it out of the book
because there have been bad bishops, — nay, in

OF KINGS TREASURIES.

order to understand ///>//, we must understand that
verse first; it will not do to eye it askance, cr
whisper it under our breath, as if it were a weapon
of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, universal asser-
tion, deeply to be kept in mind by all sects. But
perhaps we shall be better able to reason on it if
we go on a little farther, and come back to it ; for
clearly this marked insistence on the power of the
true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily
what is to be charged against the false claimants
of episcopate, or generally, against false claimants
of power and rank in the body of the clergy, they
who **for their bellies' sake creep and intrude and
climb into the fold."

21. Never think Milton uses those three words
to fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. He
needs all the three, — specially those three, and no
more than those, — ^* creep" and '* intrude" and
*^ climb; " no other words would or could serve
the turn, and no more could be added. For they
exhaustively comprehend the three classes, corre-
spondent to the three characters, of men who dis-
honestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those
who *' creep" into the fold, who do not care for
office, nor name, but for secret influence, and do
all things occultly and cunningly, consenting to
any servility of office or conduct, so only that

SESAME AND LILIKS.

they may iiitiuiLitcly discern, and unawares direct,
the minds of men. 'I'hen those who *' intrude "
(thrust, that is; themselves into the fold, who by
natural insolence of heart and stout eloquence of
ton;,nie and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion
obtain hearini^^ and authority with the common
crowd. Lastly, tliose who *' climb," who, by
lab;)r and learninLC both stout and sound, but self-
ishly exerted in the cause of their own ambition,
f;ain high dignities a:ul authorities, and become
''lords over the heritage," though not *' ensamp-
les to the flock."
2 2. Now go on : —

"Of other rare they little reckoning make
Than how to .scrainl)le at the shearers' feast.
Jilitiil mouths — "

T pause again, for this is a strange expression, —
a broken metaphor, one might think, careless and
unscholarly.

Not so; its very audacity and pithiness are in-
tended to make us look close at the phrase and
remember it. Those two in ^nosyllables express
the precisely accurate contraries of right character
in the two great ofiiees of the Church, — those of
l)ish()p and pastor.

A " bishop" means '• a person who sees."

OP kings' treasuries.

A ** pastor " means ** a person who feeds."

The most unbishoply character a man can have
is therefore to be blind.

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to
want to be fed, — to be a mouth.

Take the two reverses together, and you have
** bhnd mouths." We may advisably follow out
this idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the
Church have arisen from bishops desiring pozver
more than light. They want authority, not out-
look ; whereas their real office is not to rule,
though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke.
It is the king's office to rule ; the bishop's office
is to oversee the flock, to number it, sheep by
sheep, to be ready always to give full account of
it. Now, it is clear he cannot give account >:^r the
souls, if he has not so much as numbered the
bodies, of his flock. The first thing, therefore,
that a bishop has to do is at least to put him-
self in a position in which, at any moment, he
can obtain the history from childhood of every
living soul in his diocese, and of its present state.
Down in that back street, Bill and Nancy knocking
each other's teeth out, — does the bishop know all
about It? Has he his eye upon them? Has he
had his eye upon them ? Can he circumstantially
explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beat-

I r

SESAME AND LILIES.

L 1

lit I

ing Nancy about the head ? If he cannot, he is
no bishop, though he had a mitre as high, as Salis-
bury steeple. He is no bishop, — he has sought to
be at the helm instead of the masthead ; he has no
sight of things. '' Nay," you say, '' it is not his
duty to look after Bill in the back street." What !
the fat sheep that have full fleeces, — you think it is
only those he should look after, while (go back to
your Milton) ^' the hungry sheep look up, and are
not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with privy
paw" (bishops knowing nothing about it) *Mai]y
devours apace, and nothing said " ?

** But that's not our idea of a bishop." ^ Per-
haps not ; but it was Saint Paul's, and it was Mil-
ton's. They may be right, or we may be ; but we
must not think we are reading either one or the
other by putting our meaning into their words.

23. I go on.

•* But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw."

This is to meet the vulgar answer that *^ if the
poor are not looked after in their bodies, they are
in tlieir souls ; they have spiritual food."

And Milton says, " They have no such thing as
spiritual food ; they are only swollen with wind."
At first you may think that is a coarse type, and
1 Compare tlie ijtli Letter in " Time and Tide."

OF kings' treasuries.

1 1

an obscure one. Bat again, ii is a quite literally
accurate one. Take up your Latin and Greek
dictionaries and find out the meaning of '* Spirit."
It is only a contraction of the Latin word
** breath," and an indistinct translation of the
Greek word for *^wind." The same word is used
in writing, ** The wind bloweth where it listeth,"
and in writing, '* So is every one that is born of
the Spirit; " born of the breathy that is, for it
means the breath of God in soul and body. We
have the true sense of it in our words ** inspir-
ation" and ** expire." Now, there are two kinds
of breath with which the flock may be filled, —
God's breath and man's. The breath of God is
health and life and peace to them, as the air of
heaven is to the ♦Jlocks on the hills ; but man's
breath — the word which he calls spiritual — is
disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the
fen. They rot inwardly with it ; they are puffed
up by it, as a dead body by the vapors of its own
decomposition. This is literally true of all false
religious teaching ; the first and last and fatalest
sign of it is that ** puffing up." Your converted
children, who teach their parents ; your converted
convicts, who teach honest men ; your converted
dunces, who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction
half their lives, suddenly awaking to the fact of

I III!

SESAMP] AND LILIES.

there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His
pecuh'ar people and messengers; your sectarians
of every species, small and great, Catholic or
Protestant, of High Church or Low, in so far as
as they think themselves exclusively in the right
and others wrong; and pre-eminently, in every
sect, those who hold that men can be saved by
thinking rightly instead of doing rightly, by work
instead of act, and wish instead of work, — these
are the true fog children; clouds, these, without
water ; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor and skin,
without blood or llesh, blown bagpipes for the
fiends to pipe with, corrupt and corrupting,
" Swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw."
24. Lastly, let lis return to the lines respecting
the power of the keys, for now we can understand
them. Note the difference between Milton and
Dante, in their interpretation of this power; for
once the latter is weaker in thought. He supposes
both the keys to be of the gate of heaven ; one is
of g(^ld, the other of silver. They are given by
Saint Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is not easy
to determine tlie meaning either of the substances
of the three steps of the gate, or of the keys. But
Milton makes one, of gold, the key of heaven, the
other, of iron, the key of the prison in which the
wicked teachers are to be bound who ** have taken

OF KINGS TREASURIES.

away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in
themselves."

We have seen that the duties of bishop and
pastor are to see and feed, and of all who do so it
is said, *^ He that watereth, shall be watered also
himself." But the reverse is truth also. He that
waterelh not, shall be withered himself; ar.d he
that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of sight,
— shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that
prison opens here as well as hereafter ; he who is
to be bound in heaven must first be bound on
earth. That command to the strong angels, of
which the rock-apostle is the image, ** Take him,
and bind him hand and foot, and cast him out,"
issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for every
help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for
every falsehood enforced ; so that he is more
strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther out-
cast .as he more and more misleads, till at last the
bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as
*' the golden opes, the iron shuts amain."

25. We have got something out of the lines, I
think, and much more is yet to be found in them ;
but we have done enough by way of example of
the kind of word-by-word examination of your
author which is rightly called ** reading," —
watching every accent and expression, and put-

SESAME AND LILIES.

; 1

h '

ting ourselves always in the author's place, annihi-
lating our own personality, and seeking to enter
into his, so as to be able assureaiy to say, **Thus
Milton thought," not ** Thus / thought, in mis-
reading Milton." And by this process you will
gradually come to attach less weight to your own
^'Thus I thought" at other times. You will be-
gin to perceive that what you thought was a matter
of no serious importance ; that your thoughts on
any subjects are not perhaps the clearest and wisest
that could be arrived at thereupon ; in fact, that
unless you are a very singular person, you cannot
be said to have any *' thoughts " at all ; that you
have no materials for them in any serious mat-
ters,^— no right to *' think," but only to try to
learn more of the facts. Nay, most probably all
your life (unless, as I said, you are a singular per-
son) you will have no legitimate right to an
'* opinion " on any business, except that instantly
under your hand. What must of necessity be
done you can always find out, beyond question,
how to do. Have you a house to keep in order, a
commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch to
cleanse? There need be no two opinions about

1 Modern *' education " for the most part signifies giving
])eo]:)lc the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable
subject of importance to them,

OF kings' treasuries.

the proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not
much more than an *^ opinion" on the way to
manage such matters. And also, outside of your
own business, there are one or two subjects on
which you are bound to have but one opinion, —
that roguery and lying are objectionable, and are
instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever
discovered ; that covetousness and love of quar-
relling are dangeious dispositions even in children,
and deadly dispositions in men and nations ; that
in the end, the God of heaven and earth loves ac-
tive, modest, and kind people, and hates idle,
proud, greedy, and cruel ones. On these general
facts you are bound to have but one, and that a
very strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting
religions, governments, ciences, arts, you will
fuid that on the whole you can know nothing,
judge nothing ; that the best you can do, even
though you may be a well-educated person, is
to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day,
and to understand a little more of the thoughts
of others, which so soon as you try to do honestly,
you will discover that the thoughts even of the
wisest are very little more than pertinent questions.
To put the difficulty into a dear shape, and ex-
hibit to you the grounds for ///decision, that is all
they can generally do for you ; and well for them

.'■I'l

M !

1^ '

li i

SESAME AND LILIES.

and for us if indeed they are able ** to mix the
music with our thoughts, and sadden us with
heavenly doubts." This writer from whom I have
been reading to you is not among the f'rst or
wisest. He sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and
therefore it is easy to find out his full meaning;
but with the greater men you cannot fathom their
meaning ; they do not even wholly measure it
themselves, it is so wide. Suppose I had asked
you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's opinion
instead of Milton's on this matter of church
authority, — or of Dante's ? Have any of you at
this instant the least idea what either thought
about it? Have you ever balanced the scene with
the bishops in Richard III. against the character of
Cranmer; tlie description of Saint Francis and
Saint Dominic against that of him who made
Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, — '' disteso, tanto
vilmente, nell' eterno esilio ; " or of him whom
Dante stood beside, '' come '1 frate che confessa lo
perfido assassin"?! Shakespeare and Alighieri
knew men better than most of us, I presume. They
were both in the midst of the main struggle be
tween the temporal and spiritual powers. They
had an opinion, we may guess. But where is it ?
Bring it into court ! Put Shakespeare's or Dante's
I Inf. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50.

OP KINGS TREASURIES.

creed into articles, and send it up for trial by the
ecclesiastical courts !

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for
many and many a day to come at the real purposes
and teaching of these great men ; but a very little
honest study of them will enable you to perceive
that what you took for your own ** judgment "
was mere chance prejudice and drifted, helpless,
entangled weed of castaway thought, — nay, you
will see that most men's minds are indeed little
better than rough heath wilderness, neglected and
stubborn, partly barren, partly overgrown with
pestilent brakes and venomous, wind-sown herbage
of evil surmise ; that the first thing you have to
do for them and yourself is eagerly and scornfully
to set fire to this, burn all the jungle into whole-
some ash-heaps, and then plough and sow. All
the true literary work before you, for life, must
begin with obedience to that order, ^* Break up
your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. '^^

27. (b) 1 Having then faithfully listened to
the great teachers, that you may enter into their
thoughts, you have yet this higher advance to
make, — you have to enter into their hearts. As
you go to them first for clear sight, so you must
stay with them that you may share at last their just

1 Compare § 13 above.

li It

SESAME AND LILIES.

! i

and mighty passion. Passion, or *' sensation." I
am not afraid of the word, still less of the thing.
You have heard many outcries against sensation
lately, but, I can lell you, it is not less sensation
we want, but more. The ennobling difference be-
tween one i: .n ..d another — between one animal
and another- •?■. (.recisely in this, that one feels
more than anouier. "^f we were sponges, perhaps
sensation might not be easily got for us; if we
were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be
cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensa-
.tion might not be good for us. But being human
creatures, it is good for us; nay, we are only
human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honor
is precisely in proportion to our passion.

28. You know I said of that great and pure
society of the dead that it would allow *^no vain
or vulgar person to enter there." AVhat do you
think I meant by a ** vulgar " person ? Whatdoyou
yourselves mean by ** vulgarity " ? You will find
it a fruitful subject of thought ; but, briefly, the
essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation.
Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained
and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ;
but in true, inbred vulgarity there is a dreadful
callousness which in extremity becomes capable
of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without

OP KINGS TREASURIES.

fear, without pleasure, without horror, and with-
out pity. It is in the blunt hand and the de;'(i
heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened coik
science, that men become vulgar ; they are for-
ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are in-
capable of sympathy, of quick understanding, of
all that, in deep insistence on the common but
most accurate term, may be called the **tact" or
•* touch-faculty *' of body ano s il ; that tact
which the Mimosa has in t;r;v.^«, v/hich the pure
woman has above all creatures, • fineness and full-
ness of sensation, beyond t -"s^n, the guide and
sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but deter-
mine what is true ; it is the God-given passion of
humanity which alone can recognize what God has
made good.

29. We come, then, to that great concourse
of the dead, not merely to know from them what
is true, but chiefly to feel with them what is just.
Now, to feel with them, we must be like them ;
and none of us can become that without pains.
As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested
knowledge, not the first thought that comes, so the
true passion is disciplined and tested passion, not
the first passion that comes. The first that come
are the vain, the false, the treacherous ; if you
yield to them, they will lead you wildly and far,

SESAME AND LILIES.

;

in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, till you have
no true purpose and no true passion left. Not
that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself
wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined. Its no
bility is in its force and justice ; it is wrong when
it is weak, and felt for paltry cause. There is a
mean wonder, as of a child who sees a juggler
tossing golden balls, and this is base, if you will.
But do you think that the v/onder is ignoble, or
the sensation less, with which every human soul
is called to watch the golden balls of heaven tossed
through the night by the hand that made them ?
There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a
forbidden door, or a servant prying into her mas-
ter's business, and a noble curiosity, questioning,
in the front of danger, the source of the great
river beyond the Sand, the place of the great con-
tinent beyond the sea ; a nobler curiosity still,
which questions of the source of the River of Life,
and of the space of the Continent of Heaven, —
things which '^ the angels desire to look into."
vSo the anxiety is ignoble with which you linger
over the course and catastrophe of an idle tale;
but do you tlr" \ the anxiety is less or greater with
which you watch, or o/zg/if to watcii, the dealings
of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized
nation ? Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfishness,

OF kings' treasuries.

minuteness of your sensation that you have to de-
plore in England at this da^, — sensation which
spends itself in bouquets and speeches, in revel-
lings and junketings, in sham fights and gay pup-
pet-shows, while you can look on and see noble
nations murdered, man by man, without an elTcrt
or a tear.

30. I said 'Mninuteness " and ^* selfishness" of
sensation ; but it would have been enough to have
said ^* injustice" or ^* unrighteousness " of sensa-
tion. For as in nothing is a gentleman better to
be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing
is a gentle nation (such nations have been) better
to be discerned from a mob than in this, — that
their feelings are constant and just, results of due
contemplation, and of equal thought. You can
talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be, —
usually are, — on the whole, generous and right,
but it has no foundation for them, no hold of
them. You may tease or tickle it into any at
your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for tlie most
part, catchiwg an opinion like a cold, and there is
nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild
about, when the fit is on, nothing so great but it
will forget in an liour when the fit is past. But a
gentleman's, or a gentle nation's, passions are just,
measured, and continuous. A great nation, for

. I

SESAME AND LILIES.

[ii

instance, does not spend its entire national wits
for a couple of months in weighing evidence of a
single ruffian's having done a single murder, and
for a couple of years see its own children murder
each other by their thousands or tens of thousands
a day, considering only what the effect is likely to
be on the price of cotton, and caring nowise to
determine which side of battle is in the wrong.
Neither does a great nation send its poor little
boys to jail for stealing six walnuts ; and allow its
bankrupts to steal their hundreds of thousands
with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor men's
savings, to close their doors ** under circumstances
over which they have no control,'* with a **by
your leave;" and large landed estates to be
bought by men who have made their money by
going with armed steamers up and down the China
Seas, selling opium at the cannon's mouth, and
altering, for the benefit of the foreign nation, the
common highwayman's demand of ''your money
or your life," into that of ''your money and your
life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives
of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by
fog fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill
plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra per
week to its landlords,^ and then debate, with driv-
* See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type,

OP KINGS TEEASUBIES.

eiling tears and diabolical sympathies, whether it
ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish,
the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation
having made up its mind that hanging is quite the
wholesomest process for its homicides in general,
can yet with mercy distinguisli between the de-
grees of guilt in homicides, and does not yelp like
a pack of frc^it-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-
track of an unhappy crazed boy, or gray-haired
clodpate Olhello, ** perplexed i* the exticme," at
the very moment that it is sending a minister of
the crown to make polite speeclies to a man who
is bayoneting young girls in their fathers' sight,
and killing noble youths in cold blood faster than
a country butcher kills lambs in spring. And,
lastly, a great nation does not mock Heaven and
its Powers by pretending belief in a revelation
which asserts the love of money to be the root of
all evil, and declaring at the same time that it is
actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief
national deeds and measures, by no other love.

31. My friends, I do not know why any of us
should talk about reading. We want some sharper
discipline than that of reading; but, at all events,
be assured, we cannot read. No reading is pos-

because the course of matters since it wr«s written bar iiade
it perhaps better worth attention.

!»

El I
i
I

I ,

SESAME AND LILIES.

sible for a people with its mind in this state. No
sentence of any great writer is intelligible to them.
It is simply and sternly impossible for the English
public at this moment to understand any thought-
ful writing, — so incapable of thought has it be-
come in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our
disease is as yet little worse than this incapacity
Oi thought; it is not corruption of the inner
nature : we ring true still, when anything strikes
home to us; and though the idea that everything
should '*pay" has infected our every purpose so
deej)ly that even when we would play the good
Samaritan, we never take out our two-pence and
give tliem to the hcst without saying, **When I
come again thou shalt give me fourpence," there
is a capacity of i"iol)le passion left in our hearts'
core. We show it in oiir work, in our war, even
in those unjust domestic affections which make us
furious at a small private wrong, while we are po-
lite to a boundless public one. We are still indus-
trious to the last hour of the day, though we add
the gambler's fury to the laborer's patience; we
are still brave to the death, though incapable of
discerning true cause for battle, and are still true
in affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the
sea-monsters are, and the rock -eagles. And there
is hope for a nation while this can be still said of

OP kings' treasuries.

it. As long as it holds its life \ii its hand, ready
to give it for its honor (though a foolish honor),
for its love (though a selfish love), and for its busi-
ness (though a base business), there is hope for it.
But hope only; for this instinctive, reckless virtue
cannot last. No nation can last which has made
a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It
must discipline its passions and direct them, or
they will discipline //, one day, with scorpion-
whips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a
money-making mob; it cannot with impunity, — it
cannot with existence, — go on despising literature,
despising science, despising art, despising nature,
despising compassion, and concentrating its soul
on pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild
words ? Have patience with me but a little longer.
I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause.

32. (a) I say first we have despised literature.
What do we, as a nation, care about books ? How
much do you think we spend altogether on our
libraries, public or private, as compared with what
we spend on our horses ? If a man spends lavislily
on his library, you call him mad, — a bibliomaniac.
But you never call any one a horse maniac, though
men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and
you do not hear of people ruining themselves by
their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do

|i: -■

SESAME AND LILIES.

you think the contents of the book-shelves of the
United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch,
as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars?
What position would its expenditure on literature
take, as compared with its expenditure on luxuri-
ous eating? We talk of food for the mind as of
food for the body. Now, a good book contains
such food inexhaustibly : it is a provision for life,
and for the best part of us ; yet how long most
people would look at the best book before they
would give the price of a large turbot for it ! —
thougli tlicre have been men who have pinched
their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a
book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I
think, in the end, than most men's dinners are.
We are few of us put to such trial, and more is the
pity; for indeed, a precious thing is all the more
precious to us if it has been wjn by work or
economy. And if public libraries were half as
costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth
part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and
women might sometimes suspect there was good in
reading, as well ns in munching and sparkling;
whereas the very cheapness of literature is making
even wise ])eople forget that if a book is worth
reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth
anything which is not worth much ; nor is it serv-

OF KINGS TREASURIES.

iceable until it has been read and re-read, and
loved and loved again, and marked, so that you
can refer to the passages you want in it, as a sol-
dier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory,
or a house-wife bring the spice she needs from her
store. Bread of flour is good, but there is bread,
sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in agoodbook ;
and the family must be poor indeed, which, once
in their lives, cannot for such multipliable barley-
loaves pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a
rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough
to thumb each other's books out of circulating
libraries.

33. (/^) I say we have despised science.
** What ! " you exclaim, *^are we not foremost in
all discovery,^ and is not the whole world giddy
by reason, or unreason, of our inventions?"
Yes, but do you suppose that is national work ?
That work is all done /// spite of the nation, by
private peoi)le's zeal and money. We arc glnd
enough, indeed, to make our profit of science.
We snap up anything in the way of a scientific
bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough ; but if

' Since this was wiiUcn, the answer lias become defin-
itely— No, we have surrendered the field of Arctic discovery
to the Continental nations, as being ourselves tu(j poor to
pay for ships.

SESAME AND LILIES.

the scientific man comes for a bone or a crust to
usy that is another story. What have we publicly
done for science ? We are obliged to know what
o'clock it is, for the safety of our ships, and there-
fore we pay for an observatory ; and we allow our-
selves, in the person of our Parliament, to be
annually tormented into doing something, in a
slovenly way, for the British Museum, sullenly
apprehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed
birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody will
pay for their own telescope, and resolve another
nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it
were our own. If one in ten thousand of oui
hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth
was indeed made to be something else than a por-
tion for foxes, and burrows in it himself and ttJls
us where the gold is and where the couls, ue
understand that there is some uie in that, and
very properly knight liim ; but is die accident of
his having found out how to employ himself use-
fully any credit to tis ? (The negation of such
discovery among his brother squires may perhaps
be some ^/Vcredit to us, if we would consider of
it.) But if you doubt these generalities, here is
one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of
our love of science. Two years ago there was a
colkctica of the foFsils of Solenhofen to be sold

OF kings' treasuries.

III

in Bavaria, — the best in existence, containing
many specimens unique for perfectness, and one,
unique as an example of a species (a whole king-
dom of unknown living creatures being announced
by that fossil). This collection, of which the
mere market worth, among private buyers, would
probably have been some thousand or twelve
hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation
for seven hundred ; but we would not give seven
hundred, and the whole series; would have been in
the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor
Owen^ had not, with loss of his own time, and
patient tormenting of the British pul)lic in person
of its representatives, got leave to glv^ four
hundred pounds at once, and himself become
answerable for the other three, which th--^ said
public will doubtless pay him e^entual)y, but
sulkily, and caring nothing about the m, tter ail
the while, only always ready to cackle h any
credit comes of it. Consider, jeg of you, arifii-
metically, what this fact means. Your annual ex-
penditure for public purpose:, (a third of it for

1 I state this fact without Pro^ ssor Owen's permission,
which of course he could not with propriety have granted, had
I asked it ; but I consider it so important that the public
should be aware of the fact, that I do what seems to me
tight, though rude.

SESAME AND LILIES.

military apparatus) is at least fifty millions. Now
seven hundred pounds is to fifty million pounds,
roughly, as sevenpence is to two thousand pounds.
Suppose, then, a gentleman of unknown income,
but whose wealth was to be conjectured from the
fact that he spent two thousand a year on his park
walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of
science ; and that one of his serva'nts comes
eagerly to tell him that an unique collectio"! of
fossils, giving clew to a new era of creation, is to
be had for the sum of scver.pence sterling; and
that the gentleman who is fond of science, and
spends two thousand a year on his park, answers,
after keeping his servant waiting several months,
*' Well, I'll jivc you fourpence for them, if you
will be answerable for the extra threepence your-
self till next vcar ! "

34. (c) 1 say you have despised art ! '* What ! '*
you again answer, '* have we not an exhibitions,
miles long; and do not we pay thousands of
pounds for single pictures ; and have we not art
scho')ls and institutions, more than ever nation
had before?" Yes, truly, but all that is for the
sake of the sliop. You would fain sell canvas as
well as coals, and crockery as well as iron ; you
would take every other nation's bread out of its

OF kings' TliEASURIES.

mouth if you could. ^ Not being able to do that,
your ideal of life is to stand in the thoroughfares
of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, screaming
to every passer-by, '* What d' ye lack?" You
know nothing of your own faculties or circum-
stances. You fancy that among your damp, flat,
fat fields of clay you can have as quick art fancy
as the Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the
Italian under his volcanic cliffs ; that art may be
learned as book-keeping is, and when learned,
will give you more books to keep. You care for
pictures absolutely no more than you do for the
bills pasted on your dead walls. There is always
room on the wall for the bills to be read, — never
for the pictures to be seen. You do not know what
pictures you have (by repute) in the country, nor
whether they are false or true, nor whether they
are taken care of or not; in foreign countries, you
calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the
world rotting in abandoned wreck (in Venice you
saw the Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the
palaces containing them), and if )^ou heard that
all the fine pictures in Europe were made into

1 That was our real idea of " Free Trade," — " All the
trade to myself." You find now that by " competition "
other people can nianajre to sell something as well as you—
and now we call for " Protection " again. Wretches 1

SESAME AND LILIES.

i! >

sand bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, it
would not trouble you so much as the chance of a
brace or two of game less in your own bags, in a
day's shooting. That is your national love of art.
35. {d) You have despised Nature; that is to
say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural
scenery. The French revolutionists made stables
of Mie cathedrals of France ; you have made race-
courses of the cathedrals of the earth. Your one
conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad car-
riages round their aisles, and eat off their altars.*
You have put a railroad-bridge over the falls of
Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of
Lucerne by Tell's chapel ; you have destroyed the
Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva ; there is not
a quiet valley in England that you have not filled
with bellowing fire ; there is no particle left of
English ijnd which you have not trampled coal
ashes into,^ — nor any foreign city in which the

1 1 meant that the beautiful places of the world, —
Switzerland, Italy, South Germany, and soon, — are, indeed,
the truest cathedrals — places to be reverent in, and to w r-
ship in ; and that we only care to drive through them ; and
to eat and drink at their most sacred places.

21 ^vas sinj^ularly struck, some years ago, by finding all
the river shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its
earth from the mere drift of soot-laden air from places
many miles away.

OF kings' TllEAStJiUES.

spread of your presence is not marked among its
fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops.
The Alps themselves, which your own poets used
to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped
poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to
climb and slide down again, with *^ shrieks of de-
light." When you are past shrieking, having no
human articulate voice to say you are glad with,
you fill the quietude of their valleys with gun-
powder blasts, and rush home red with cutaneous
eruption of conceits, and voluble with convulsive
hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the
two sorrowfullest spectacles 1 have ever seen in
humanity, taking the deep inner significance of
them, are the English mobs in the valley of
Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty
howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich, ex-
pressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the
vine by assembling in knots in the ** towers of the
vineyards,'* and slowly loading and firing horse-
pistols from morning till evening. It is pitiful to
have dimconceptions of duty ; more pitiful, it seems
to me, to have conceptions like these of mirth.

36. Lastly, you despise compassion. There is
no need of words of mine for proof of this. I
will merely print one of the newspaper paragraphs

SliSAMK AND LILIES.

E! '

which I am in the habit of cutting out and
throwing into my store-drawer; here is one from a
** Daily I'elegraph " of an early date this year
(1867) ; (date which, though by me carelessly left
unmarked, is easily discoverable; for on the back
of the slip there is the announcement that ** yes-
terday the seventh of the special services of this
year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon in St.
Paul's"); it relates only one of such facts as
happen now daily ; this by chance having taken
a form in which it came before the coroner. I
will print the paragraph in red. Be sure, the facts
themselves are written in that color, in a book
which we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have
to read our page of, some day.^

• 1 1

ta'

An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards,
deputy coroner, at the White Horse tavern, Christ
Church, Spitalfields, respecting the death of
Michael Collins, aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a
miserable-looking woman, said that she lived with
the deceased and his son in a room at 2, Cobb's
Court, Christ Church. Deceased was a *^ trans-
lator " of boots. Witness went out and bought
old boots; deceased and his son made them into
good ones, and then witne*^s sold them for what

she could get at the shops, which was very little

^ In the English edition the following matter to g 37 was
printed in red ink.

OF kings' teeasuries.

indeed. Deceased and his son used to work night
and day to try and get a little bread and tea, and
pay for the room (2s. a week), so as to keep the
home together. On Friday- night week, deceased
got up from his bench and began to shiver. He
threw down the boots, saying, ** Somebody else
must finish them when 1 am gone, for I can do no
more." There was no fire, and he said, ** I would
be r wCter if I was warm." Witness therefore took
two pairs of ** translated " boots^ to sell at the
shop ; but she could only get i^d. for the two pairs,
for the people at the shop said, ** We must have
our profit." Witness got i4lbs. of coal, and a
little tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole
night to make the *^ translations," to get money,
but deceased died on Saturday morning. The
family never had enough to eat. — Coroner : ** It
seems to me deplorable that you did not go into
the workhouse." Witness: "We wanted the
comforts of our little home." A juror asked what
the comforts were, for he only saw a little straw in
the corner of the room, the windows of which
were broken. The witness began to cry, and said

> One of the things which we must very resolutely en-
force, for the good of all classes, in our future arrangements,
must be that they wear no " translated " article of dress.
See the preface.

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SESAME AND LILIES.

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that they had a quilt and other little things. The
deceased said he never would go into the work-
house. In summer, when the season was good,
they sometimes made as much as los. profit in the
week. They then always saved toward the next
week, which was generally a bad one. In winter
they made not half so much. For three years they
had been getting from bad to worse. — Cornelius
Collins said that he had assisted his father since
1847. They used to work so far into the night
that both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness now
had a film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased
applied to the parish for aid. The relieving offi-
cer gave him a 41b. loaf, and told him if he came
again he should get the '* stones."^ That dis-

» This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is
curiously coincident in verbal form with a certain passage
which some of us may remember. It may perhaps be
well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out
of my store-drawer, from the " Morning Post," of about a
parallel date, Friday, March 10, 1865: "The sa/ofis of

Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative

grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes,
marquises, and counts — in fact, with the same ma/e com-
pany as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metter-
nich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers
and members of Parliament were present, and appeared
to enjoy the animated and dazzling improper scene. On

OF KINGS TREASYIRIES.

gusted deceased, and he would have nothing to do
with them since. They got worse and worse until
last Friday week, when they had not even a half-
penny to buy a candle. Deceased then lay down
on the straw, and said he could not live till morn-
ing.— A juror: **You are dying of starvation
yourself, and you ought to go into the house until
the summer." — Witness: **If we went in, we
should die. When we came out in the summer, we
should be like people dropped from the sky. No

the second floor the supper tables were loaded with every
delicacy of the season. That your readers may form some
idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy
the merri of the supper, which v/as served to all the _f;uests
(about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johan-
aisbcrg, Laffitte, Tokay, and champagne of the finest vint-
ages were served most lavishly throughout the morning.
After supper dancing was resumed with increased anima-
tion, and the ball terminated with a chaine diabolique
and a cancan cPenfer at seven in the morning. (Morning
service — * Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the open-
ing eyelids of the Morn.') Here is the menu : — ' Con-
somme de volaille 5, la Bagration : 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies.
Bouchees k la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce Ravigote.
Filets de boeuf en Bcllevue, timbales milanaises, chaudfroid
de gibier. Dindes truffoes. Pates de foies gras, buissons
d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits,
gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glaces.
Ananas. Dessert.'"

SESAME AND LILIES.

one would know us, and we v/ould not have even
a room. I couid work now if I had food, for my
sight would get better." Dr. G. P. Walker said
deceased died from syncope, from exhaustion from
want of food. The deceased had had no bed*
clothes. For four months he ]\3id had nothing but
bread to eat. There was not a particle of fat in
the body. There was no disease, but if there had
been medical attendance, he might have survived
the syncope, or fainting. The coroner having re-
marked upon the painful nature of the case, the
jury returned the following verdict, '* That de-
ceased died from exhaustion from want of food and
the common necessaries of life ; also through
want of medical aid."

37. '* Why would witness not go into the work-
house?" you ask. Well, the poor seem to have
a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich
have not ; for of course every one who takes a
pension from Government goes into the workhouse
on a grand scale ; ^ only the workhouses for the
rich do not involve the idea of work, and should
be called play-houses. But the poor like to die

1 Please observe this statement, and think of it, and
consider how it happens that a poor old woman will be
ashamed to take a shilling a week from the country, but no
one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year.

OF KINGS TREASURIES.

independently, it appears ; perhaps if we made
the play-houses for them pretty and pleasant
enough, or gave them their pensions at home, and
allowed them a little introductory speculation with
the public money, their minds might be reconciled
to the conditions. Meantime, here are the facts :
we make our relief either so insulting to them,
or so painful, that they rather die than take it at
our hands ; or, for third alternative, we leave
them so untaught and foolish that they starve like
brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what
to do, or what to ask. I say, you despise compas-
sion; if you did not, such a newspaper paragraph
would be as impossible in a Christian country as a
deliberate assassination permitted in its public
streets.^ ** Christian " did I say? Alas, if we

1 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the " Pall
Mall Gazette " established ; for the power of the press in
the hands of highly-educated men, in independent position,
and of hones*- purpose, may, indeed, become all that it has
been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will there-
fore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my
respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article
in its third number, page 5, which was wrong in every v/ord
of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest man
can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the
outset, and is following it, regardless of consequences. It
contained at the end this notable passage : —

SESAME AND LILIES.

Pi'"

13 1 111

111

were but wholesomely ^///-Christian, it would be
impossible \ it is our imaginary Christianity that

"The bread of afiliction, and the water of affliction — aye,
and the bedstead and blankets of affliction, are the very ut-
most that the law ought to give to outcasts merely as out-
casts:' I merely put beside this expression of the gentle-
manly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message
which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a
trumpet " in declaring to the gentlemen of his day ; " Ye
fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is
not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the
hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out
[margin, " affliicted "] to thy house?" The falsehood on
which the writer had mentally founded himself, as pre-
viously stated by him, was this : " To confound the func-
tions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the
dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and perni-
cious error." This sentence is so accurately and exqui-
sitely wrong, that its substance must be thus revised in our
minds before we can deal with any existing problem of na-
tional distress. " To understand that the dispensers of the
poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should dis-
tribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as
much greater and franker than that possible to individual
charity as the collective national wisdom and power may be
supposed greater than those of any single person, is the
foundation of all law respecting pauperism." (Since this
was written the " Pall Mall Gazette " has become a mere
party-paper like the rest; but it writes well, and does more
good than mischief on the whole.)

OF kings' treasuries.

helps us to commit these crimes, for we revel and
luxuriate in our faith, for the lewd sensation of it ;
dressing // up, like everything else, in fiction.
The dramatic Christianity of the organ and aisle,
of dawn-service and twilight-revival, — the Chris-
tianity which we do not fear to mix the mockery
of, pictorially, with our play about the devil, in
our Satanellas, Roberts, Fausts ; chanting hymns
through tracer ied windows for background effect,
and artistically modulating the ''Dio " through
variation on variation of mimicked prayer, while
we distribute tracts next day, for the benefit of
uncultivated swearers, upon what we suppose to be
the signification of the Third Commandment.
This gas-lighted and gas-inspired Christianity we
are triumphant in, and drawback the hem of our
robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute
it. But to do a piece of common Christian
righteousness in plain English word or deed, to
make Christian law any rule of life and found one
national act or hope thereon, — we know too well
what our faith comes to for that ! You might
sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than
true action or passion out of your modern English
religion. You had better get rid of the smoke
and the organ pipes, both. Leave them and
the Gothic windows and the painted glass to
7 .

i;iM

SESAME AND LILIES.

the property man ; give up your carburetted hy-
drogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look
after Lazarus at the doorstep. For there is a true
church wherever one hand meets another helpfully,
and that is the only holy or Mother Church which
ever was, or ever shall be.

38. All these pleasures then, and all these vir-
tues, I repeat, you nationally despise. You have,
indeed, men among you who do not ; by whose
work, by whose strength, by whose life, by whose
death, you live, and never thank them. Your
wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all be
alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or
forget. The policeman, who is walking up and
down the back lane all night to watch the guilt
you have created there, and may have his brains
beaten out, and be maimed for life, at any mo-
ment, and never be thanked ; the sailor wrestling
with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring over
his book or his phial ; the common worker, with-
out praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling his
task as your horses drag your carts, hopeless, and
spurned of all : these are the men by whom Eng-
land lives; but they are not the nation ; they are
only the body and nervous force of it, acting still
from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, while
the mind is gone. Our national wish and purpose

OF kings' treasuries.

are only to be amused ; our national religion is
the performance of church ceremonies, and preach-
ing of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the
mob quietly at work, while we amuse o'lrselves;
and the necessity for this amusement is fastening
on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and
wandering eyes — senseless, dissolute, merciless.
How literally that word Jis-ciise, the negation and
possibility of ease, expresses the entire moral state
of our English industry and its amusements.

39. When men are rightly occupied, their
amusement grows out of their work, as the color-
petals out of a fruitful flower; wdien they are
faithfully helpful and Cv^mpassionate, all their
emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and
vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the
body. But now, having no true business, we pour
our whole masculine energy into the false business
of money-making; and having no true emotion,
we must have false emotions dressed up for us to
play with, not innocently, as children with dolls,
but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jewswitli
their pictures on cavern walls, which men had to
dig to detect. The justice we do not execute, we
mimic in the novel and on the stage ; for the
beauty we destroy in Nature, we substitute tlie
metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human

, j. rl

100

SESAxME AND LILIES.

nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow
of some kind) for the noble grief we sliould have
borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we
should have wept with them, we gloat over the
pathos of the police court, and gather the night-
dew of the grave.

40. It is difficult to estimate the true signifi-
cance of these things; the facts are frightful
enough. The measure of national fault involved
in them is, perhaps, not as great as it would at
first seem. We permit or cause thousands of
deaths daily, but we mean no harm; we set fire to
houses and ravage peasants' fields, yet we should
be scry to find we had injured anybody. We are
still kind at heart ; still capable of virtue, but only
as children are. Chalmers, at the end of his long
life, having had much power with the public, be-
ing plagued in some serious matter by a reference
to ^^ public opinion," uttered the impatient excla-
mation, *'The public is just a great baby!"
And the reason that 1 have a^llowed all these graver
subjects of thought to mix themselves up with an
inquiry into methods of reading is, that the more
I see of our national faults or miseries, the more
they resolve themselves into conditions of childish
illiterateness and want of education in the most
ordinary habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not

OF KINGS TREASURIES.

101

vice, not selfishness, not dulness of brain, which
we have to lament ; but an unreachable school-
boy's recklessness, only differing from the true
schoolboy's in its incapacity of being helped, be-
cause it acknowledges no master.

41. There is a curious type of us given in one
of the lovely, neglected works of the last of our
great painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale
church)^ard, and of its brook and valley and hills
and folded morning sky beyond. And unmind-
ful alike of these, and of the dead who have left
these for other valleys and for other skies, a group
of schoolboys have piled their little books upon a
grave, to strike them off with stones. So, also, we
play with the words of the dead that would teach
us, and strike them far from us with our bitter,
reckless will; little thinking that those leaves
which the wind scatters had been piled, not only
upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an en-
chanted vault — nay, the gate of a great city of
sleeping kings, who would awake for us, and walk
with us, if we knew but how to call them by their
names. How often, even if we lift the marble en-
trance gate, do we but wander among those old
kings in their repose, and finger the robes they lie
in, and stir the crowns on their foreheads ; and
still they are silent to us, and seem but a dusty

102

SESAME AND LILIES.

imagery, because we know not the incantation of
tlic heart that would wake them, — which, if they
once heard, they wouhl start up to meet us in their
power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and
consider us; and as the fallen kings of Hades
meet the newly fallen, saying, '^ Art thou also be-
come weak as we, — art thou also become one of
us? " so would these kings, vvith their undimmed,
unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, ^'Art thou
also become pure and mighty of heart as we, — art
thou also become one of us ? "

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — magnan-
imous— to be tills, is, indeed, to be great in life;
to become this increasingly, is, indeed, to ^^ ad-
vance in life," — in life itself, not in the trappings
of it. My friends, do you remember that old
Scythian custom, when the head of a house died?
How he was dressed in his fmest dress, and set in
his chariot, and carried about to his friends'
houses ; and each of them placed him at his
table's head, and all feasted in his presence? Sup-
pose it were offered to you in pl-^^ i words, as it is
offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain
this Scythian honor gradually, while you yet
thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were
this : You shall die slowly ; your blood shall daily
grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at

OF kings' Tr" usuries.

103

last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your

life shall fade from you, and sink through the

earth into the ice of Caira; but day by day your

body shall be dressed more gayly, and set in

higher chariots, and have more orders on its

breast — crowns on its head, if you will. Men

shall bow before it, stare and shout round it,

crowd after it up and down the streets; build

palaces for it ; feast with it at their tables' heads

all the night long. Your soul shall stay enough

within it to know what they do, and feel the

weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and

he furrow of the crown-edge on the skull ; — no

more. Would you take the offer verbally made by

the death-angel ? Would the meanest among us

take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we

grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure ; many of

us grasp at it in its fulness of horror. Every man

accepts it who desires to advance in life without

knowing what life is ; who means only that he is

to get more horses and more footmen and more

fortune and more public honor, and — not more

personal soul. He only is advancing in life whose

heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose

brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living^

peace. And the men who have this life in them

* TO (Je (ppovfifia TOO 7:veu/iaT0<^ ^wrj xai elpr^vq.

104

SESAME AND LILIES.

are the true lords or kings of the earth — tliey, and
they only. All other kingships, so far as they are
true, are only the practical issue and expression of
theirs ; if less than this, they are either dramatic
royalties, — costly shows, set off, indeed, with real
jewels instead of tinsel, but still only the toys of
nations, — or else they are no royalties at all, but
tyrannies, or the mere active and practical issue of
national folly ; for which reason I have said of
them elsewhere, ** Visible governments are the
toys of some nations, the diseases of others, the
harness of some, the burdens of more."

43. But I have no words for the wonder with
which I hear kinghood still spoken of, even among
thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a per-
sonal property, and might be bought and sold, or
otherwise acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their
king was to feed, and whose fleece he was to
gather ; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base
kings, '* people-eating," were the constant and pro-
per title of all monarchs ; and enlargement of a
king's dominion meant the same thing as the in-
crease of a private man's estate ! Kings who think
so, however powerful, can no more be the true kings
of the nation than gadflies are the kings of a horse ;
they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not
guide it. They and their courts and their armies

•I I

OF kings' tkeasuries.

105

are, if one could see clearly, only a large species
of marsh mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and
melodious, bandmastered trumpeting in the summer
air; the twilight being, perhaps, sometimes fairer,
but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists
of midge companies. The truckings, meanwhile,
rule quietly, if at all, and hate ruling ; too many
u!" them makQ iV gran rifiiito ; and if they do not,
the mob, as soon as they are likely to beconiC use-
ful to it, is pretty sure to make its gran rifiuto of
them,

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one
some day, if ever day comes when he will esti-
mate his dominion by the force of it, — not the
geographical boundaries. It matters very little
whether Trent cuts you a cantel out here, or Rliine
rounds you a castle less there ; but it does matter
to you, king of men, whether you can verily say
to this man ''Go," and he goeth, and to another,
** Come," and he cometh. Whether you can turn
your people as you can Trent ; and where it is t^iat
you bid them come, and where go. It matters
to you, king of men, whether your people hate
you, and die by you, or love you, and live by you.
You may measure your dominion by multitudes,
better than by miles; and count degrees of love-lat~

106

SESAME AND LILIES.

tr:

itude, not from, but to, a vvoiiderfuUy warm and
infinite equator.

45. Measure! — nay, you cannot ir;easure.
Who shall measure the difference between the power
of those v/ho '' do and teach," and who are greatest
in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven, and the
power of those who undo and consume, whose pow-
er, at the fullest, is only the power of the moth and
the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth-kings
lay up treasures for the moth ; and the Rust-kings,
who are to their people's strength as rust to armor,
lay up treasures for the rust; and the Robber-kings,
treasures for the robber; but how few kings have
ever laid up treasures that needed no guarding —
treasures of which the more thieves there were the
better ! Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm and
sword, only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only
to be scattered; — there have been three kinds of
kings who have gathered these. Suppose there
ever should arise a fourth order of kings who had
read in some obscure writing of long ago that
there was a fouich kind of treasure which the
jewel and gold could not equal, neither should
it be valued with pure gold. A web made fair in
the weaving by Athena's shuttle ; an armor forged
in divine fire by Vulcanian force ; a gold to be
mined in the very sun's red heart, where he sets over

OF kings' tkeasuries.

107

the Delphian cliffs, — deep-pictured tissue, impen-
etrable armor, po able gold, the three great
Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, ^till call-
ing to us, and waiting at the post of cur doors, to
lead us with their winged power, and guide us with
their unerring eyes, by the path which no fowl
knoweth, and which the vulture's eye has not
seen ! Suppose lyings should ever arise who heard
and believed this word, and at last gathered and
brought forth treasures of Wisdom for their peo-
ple.

46. Think what an amazing business ///^/ would
be ! How inconceivable in the state of our pres-
ent national wisdom ! That w^e should bring up
our peasa]its to a book exercise instead of a bayonet
exercise ! — organize, drill, maintain with pay and
good generalsliip, armies of thinkers, instead of ar-
mies of stabbers ! — find national amusement in
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds; give
prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a
leaden splash on a target. What an absurd idea
it seems, put fairly in w^ords, that the wealth of
the capitalists of civilized nations should ever come
to support literature instead of war !

47. Have yet patience with me while I read you
a single sentence out of the only book, properly to
be called a book, that I have yet written myself,

I'M

108

SESAME AND LILIES.

the one that will stand (if anything stand) surest
and longest of all work of mine : —

'< It is one very awful form of tlic operation of wealth
in Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which
supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much
money to support them ; for most of the men who wage such,
wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and
souls have both to be bought, and the best tools of war for them
besides, which makes such war costly to tlie maximum; not
to speak of the cost of base fear and angry suspicion between
nations wdiich have not grace nor honesty enough in all
their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; as,
at present, France and England, purchasing of each other
ten millions sterling worth of consternation, annually(a re-
markably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves,
sown, reaped, and granaried by the ' science' of the modern
political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth).
And all unjust M'ar being supportable, if not by pillage of
the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are
repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear
to have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the
primary root of the war ; but its real root is the covetousness
of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frank-
ness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time,
his own separate loss and punishment to each person."

48. France and England literally, observe, buy
panic of each other; they pay, each of them, for
ten thousand-thousand pounds' worth of terror, a
year. Now suppose, instead of buying these ten

OF kings'

TKEASURIES.

109

millions' worth of panic annually, they made up
their minds to be at peace with each other, and
buy ten millions' worth of knowledge annually ;
and that each nation spent its ten thousand -thou-
sand pounds a year in founding royal libraries,
royal art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens,
and places of rest. Might it not be better some-
what for both P^rench and English.

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass.
Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before roy-
al or national libraries will be founded in every con-
siderable city, with a royal series of books in
them ; the same series in every one of them, chosen
books, the best in every kind, prepared for that
national series in the most perfect way possible;
their text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad
of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes,
light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and
thorough as examples of binders' work ; and that
these great libraries will be accessible to all clean
and orderly persons at all times of the day and
evening; strict law being enforced for this cleanli-
ness and quietness.

50. I could shape for you other plans, for art
galleries, and for natural history galleries, and for
many precious — many, it seems to me, needful —
things; but this book plan is the easiest and need-

'i\

I :

110

SESAMK. AISD LiLlKS.

'I:

iii

iil;

fulest, and would prove a considerable tonic to
what we call our British Constitution, which has
fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst and
evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have
got its corn laws repealed for it; try if you cannot
get corn laws established for it, dealing in a better
bread, — bread made of that old enchanted Arabian
grain, the sesame which opens doors — doors, not of
robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries.

Note to § 30.

Respecting the increase of rent by the deaths of
the poor, for evidence of which see the preface to
the Medical Officer's report to the Privy Council,
just published, tliere are suggestions in its preface
which will make some stir among us, I fancy, re-
specting which let me note these points follow-
ing:—

There are two theories on the subject of land
now abroad, and in contention; both false.

The first is, that by Heavenly law there have
always existed, and must continue to exist, a cer-
tain number of hereditarily sacred persons to whom
the earth, air, and w^ater of the world belong, as
personal property; of which earth, air, and water,

OF kings' treasuries.

Ill

these persons may, at their pleasure, permit or for-
bid the rest of the human race to eat, to breathe,
or to drink. This theory is not for many years
longer tenable. The adverse theory is, that a divi-
sion of the land of the world among the mob of
the world would immediately elevate the said mob
into sacred personages; that houses would then
build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and that
everybody would be able to live without doing
any work for his living. This theory would also be
found highly untenable in practice.

It will, however, require some rough experiments
and rougher catastrophes, before the generality of
persons will be convinced that no law concerning
anything-~least of all concerning land, for either
holding or dividing it, or renting it high, or renting
low — would be of the smallest ultimate use to the
people, so long as the general contest for life, and
for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal
competition. That contest, in an unprincipled na-
tion, will take one deadly form or another, v.lTat-
ever laws you make against it. For instance, it
would be an entirely wholesome law for England 5
if it could be carried, that maximum limits should
be assigned to incomes according to classes; ar.d
that every nobleman's income should be paid to
him- as a fixed salary or pension by the nation, and

III

112

SESAMK AND LILIES.

III

not stjiieezed by him in variable sums, at discretion,
out of the tenants of his land. But if you could
get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which
would be further necessary, you could fix the value
of the assigned incomes by making a given weight
of pure bread for a given sum, a twelvemonth
would not pass before another currency would
have been tacitly established, and the power of ac-
cumulated wealth would have re-asserted itself in
some other article, or some other imaginary sign.
There is only one cure for public distress, and that
is public education, directed to make men thought-
ful, merciful, and just. There are, indeed, many
laws conceivable which would gradually better and
strengthen the national temper; but, for the most
part, they are such as the national temper must be
much bettered before it would bear. A nation in
its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child
by backboards, but when it is old it cannot that
way strengthen its crooked spine.

And besides, the problem of land, at its worst,
is a by one; distribute the earth as you will, the
principal question remains inexorable, — Who is to
dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do the
hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what
pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work,
and for what pay? Who is to do no work, and

OF kings' treasuries.

113

for what pay? And there are curious moral and
religious questions connected with these. How
far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul out of
a great many persons, in order to put the abstract-
ed physical quantities together and make one very
beautiful or ideal soul? If we had to deal with
mere blood instead of spirit (and the thing might
literally be done, as it has been done with infants
before now), so that it were possible by taking a
certain quantity of blood from the arms of a given
number of the mob and putting it all into one per-
son, to make a more azure-blooded gentleman of
him, the thing would of course be managed ; but.
secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it
is brain and soul that we abstract, not visible blood,
it can be done quite openly, and we live, we gen-
tlemen, delicatest prey, after the manner of wea-
sels; that is to say, we keep a certain number of
clowns digging and ditching, and generally stupe-
fied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have
all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet
there is a great deal to be said for this. A highly-
bred and trained English, French, Austrian, or
Italian gentleman (much more a lady) is a great
production, — a better production than most stat-
ues, being beautifully colored as well as shaped,
and plus all the brains j a glorious thing to look at, a

i •

114

SESAME AND LILIES.

wonderful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have
it, any more than a pyramid or a church, but by
sacrifice of much contributed life. And it is, per-
haps, better to build a beautiful human creature
than a beautiful dome or steeple, and more delight-
ful to look up reverently to a creature far above us,
than to a wall; only the beautiful human creature
will have some duties to do in return,- -duties of
living belfry and rampart — of which presently.

fr -

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Of cEluccna' (JJarbena

!■•

li., i .

• •

LECTURE II.

1 1

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

Be tliou ^'TaJ, oh thirsting desert; let the desert be made
cheerful, and Ijloom as a lily; and the barren places of Jor-
dan shall run wild with wood. — Isaiah xxxv. i. (Septua-
gint.)

51. rr will, perhaps, be well, as this .Lecture is
^ the sequel of one previously given, that I
should shortly state to you my general intention in
both. The questions specially proposed to you in
the first, namely. How and What to Read, rose out
of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to
make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely,
IV/iy to Read. I want you to feel, with me, that
whatever advantage we possess in the present day
in the diffusion of education and of literature, can
only be rightly used by any of us when we have
apprehended clearly what education is to lead to,
and literature to teach. I wish you to see that
both well-directed moral trainii

ing

losen

(117)

118

SESAME AND LILIES.

I i

reading lead to the possession of a power over the
ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according to the
measure of it, in the truest sense kingly ; confer-
ring indeed the purest kingship that can exist
among men. Too many other kingships (however
distinguished by visible insignia or material power)
being either spectral, or tyrannous; spectral —
that is to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty,
hollow as death, and which only the '' likeness of
a kingly crown have on; " or else tyrannous — that
is to say, substituting their own will for the law of
justice and love by which all true kings rule.

52. There is, then, I repeat (and as I want to
leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall
end with it), only one pure kind of kingship, — an
inevitable and eternal kind, crowned or not, — the
kingship, namely, which consists in a stronger
moral state and a truer thoughtful state than that
of others, enabling you, therefore, to guide or to
raise them. Observe that word ''state; " we have
got into a loose way of using it. It means liter-
ally the standing and stability of a thing; and you
have the full force of it in the derived v/ord
*'statue" — '''the immovable thing." A king's
majesty or " state," then, and the right of his
kingdom to be called a State, depends on the move-
l'='c:c;ness of both, — without tremor, without quiver

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

119

of balance, established and enthroned upon a
foundation of eternal law which nothing can alter
nor overthrow.

53. Believing that all literature and all educa-
tion are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this
calm, beneficent, and therefore kingly, power, —
first, over ourselves, and, through ourselves, over
all around us, — I am now going to ask you to con-
sider with me further, what special portion or kind
of this roy?il authority, arising out of noble educa-
tiouj may rightly be possessed by women; and
how far they also are called to a true queenly pow-
er,— not in theii households merely, but over all
within their sphere. And in what sense, if they
rightly understood and exercised this royal or gra-
cious influence, the order and beauty induced by
such benignant power would justify us in speaking
of the territories over which each of them reigned
as ** Queens' Gardens."

54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by
a far deeper question, which — strange though this
may seem — remains among many of us yet quite
undecided, in spite of its infinite importance.

We cannot determine what the queenly power
of women should be until we are agreed what their
ordinary power should be. AVe cannot consider
how education may fit them forany widely-extend-

ii-

120

SESAME AND LILIES.

!>' 'i I
1 ' '

lis 1 l!'

iPig duty until we are agreed what is their true con-
stant duty. And there never was a time when
wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagina-
tion permitted, respecting this question — quite vi-
tal to all social happiness. The relations of the
womanly to the manly nature, their different ca-
pacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never to
have been yet estimated with entire consent. We
hear of the ^^ mission" and of the *^ rights" of
Woman, as if these could ever be separate from
the mission and the rights of Man, — as if she and
her lord were creatures of independent kind, and
of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong.
And not less wrong — perhaps even more foolishly
wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope
to prove) — is the idea that woman is only the
shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing
him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and
supported altogether in her weakness, by the pre-
eminence of his fortitude.

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors re-
specting her who was made to be the helpmate of
man. As if he could be helped effectively by a
shadow, or worthily by a slave !

55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at
some clear and harmonious idea (it must be har-
monious if it is true) of what womanly mind and

OF queens' gardens.

121

virtue are in power and office, with respect to
man's; and how their relations, rightly accepted,
aid and increase the vigor and honor and author-
ity of both.

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the
last lecture; namely, that the first use of educa-
tion was to enable us to consult with the wisest
and the greatest men on all points of earnest diffi-
culty. That to use books rightly, was to go to
them for help ; to appeal to them when our own
knowledge and power of thought failed; to be led
by tliem into wider sight, purer conception, than
our own, and receive from them the united sen-
tence of the judges and councils of all time,
against our solitary and unstable opinion.

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the
greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages,
are agreed in any wise on this point; let us hear
the testimony they have left respecting what they
held to be the true dignity of woman, and her
mode of help to man.

56. And first let us take Shakespeare.

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no
heroes ; he has only heroines. There is not one en-
tirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the
slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the
purposes of the stage; and the still slighter Valen-

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122

SESAME AND LILIES.

li-i;

lli^ : 4

¥1

tine in '^The Two Gentlemen of Verona." In
his labored and perfect plays you have no hero.
Othello would have been one if his simplicity had
not been so great as to leave him the prey of every
base practice round him ; but he is the only exam-
ple even approximating to the heroic type. Corio-
lanus, Caesar, Antony, stand in flawed strength,
and fall by their vanities ; Hamlet is indolent, and
drowsily speculative; Romeo, an impatient boy;
the Merchant of Venice, languidly submissive to
adverse fortune; Kent, in ^'King Lear," is en-
tirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished
to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks
into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less
noble, is yet the despairing toy of Chance, followed,
comforted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is
hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it,
steadfast in gra^e hope and errorless purpose;
Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen;
Queen Catherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind,
Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia,
are all faultless; conceived in the highest heroic
type of humanity,

57. Then observe, secondly,

The catastrophe of every play is caused always
by the folly or fault of a man ; the redemption, if
there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a

OF queens' gahdens.

123

woman, and failing that, there is none. The ca-
tastrophe of King Lear is owing to his want of
judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunder-
standing of his children ; the virtue of his one true
daughter would have saved him from all the inju-
ries of the others, unless he had cast her away
from him; as it is, she all but saves him.

Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; nor the
one weakness of his mighty love; nor the inferior-
ity of his perceptive intellect to that even of the
second woman character in ^he play, the Emilia
who dies in wild testimony against his error : —

« O murderous coxcomb ! what should such a fool
Do with so good a wife ? " .

In ^' Romeo and Juliet," the wise and brave
stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue
by the reckless impatience of her husband. In
^'Win^-er's Tale," and in ^' Cymbeline," the hap-
piness and existence of two princely households,
lost through long years, and imperilled to the
death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands,
are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and
wisdom of the wives. In ' ' Measure for Measure,"
the foul injustice of the judge and the foul cow-
ardice of the brother are opposed to the victorious
truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In

124

SESAIME AND LILIES.

**Coriolanus," the mother's counsel, acted upon
in time, would have saved her son from all evil;
his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin. Her
prayer, at last granted, saves him — not, indeed,
from death, but from the curse of living as the
destroyer of his country.

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against
the fickleness of a lover who is a mere 'ncked
child? — of Helena, against the petulance and in-
sult of a careless youth? — of the patience of He-
ro, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly devot-
ed wisdom of the ^'unlessoned girl," who appears
among the helplessness, the blindness, and the
vindictive passions of men, as a gentle angel,
bringing courage and safety by her presence, and
defeating the worst malignities of crime by what
women are fancied most to fail in, — precision and
accuracy of thought?

58. Observe, further, among all the principal
figures in Shakespeare's plays there is only one
weak woman — Ophelia ; and it is ]:)ecause she fails
H^amlet at tlie critical moment, and is not, and
cannot in her nature be a guide to him when he
needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe fol-
lows. Finally, though there are three wicked women
among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan,
and Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful ex'

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

125

ceptions to the ordinary laws of life ; fatal in their
intluence also, in proportion to the power for good
which they have abandoned.

Sucli, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony
to the position and character of women in human
life. He represents them as infallibly faithful and
wise counsellors, — incorruptibly just and pure ex-
amples,— strong always to sanctify, even when
they cannot save.

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge
of the nature of man, — still less in his understand-
ing of the causes and courses of fate, — but only as
the writer who has given us the broadest view of
the conditions and modes of ordinary thought in
modern society, I ask you next to receive the wit-
ness of Walter Scott.

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings
as of no value • and though the earl} romantic
poetry is very beautiful, its testimony is of no
weight, other than that of a boy's ideal. But his
true works, studied from Scottish life, bear a true
witness ; and in the whole range of these, there
are but three men who reach the heroic type^ —

1 I ought, in order to make this assertion fully under-
stood, to have noticed the various weaknesses which lower
the ideal of other great characters of men in the Waverly
novels, — the selfishness and narrowness of thought in Red^

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126

SESAME AND LILIES.

Daudie Diiimont, Rob Roy, and Claverhousc ; of
these, one is a border farmer ; another a free-
booter; the third a soldier in a bad cause. And
these touch the ideal of heroism only in their
courage and faith, together with a strong, but un-
cultiv^ated or mistakenly applied intellectual power ;
while his younger men a^-' die gentlemanly play-
things of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or acci-
dent) of that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials
they involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined or
consistent character, earnest in a purpose wisely
conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil,
definitely challenged and resolutely subdued, there
is no trace in his conceptions of young men.
Whereas, in his imaginations of women, — in the
characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora IMacIvor,
Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, Diana Ver-
non, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice
Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — wnth endless varieties of
grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, we find

gauntlet, the weal: religious enthusiasm in Edward Glen-
dinning, and the hke ; and I ought to have noticed that
there are several quite perfect characters sketched some-
times in the loackgrounds ; three — let us accept joyously
this courtesy to England and her soldiers — are English
officers : Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel
Mannering.

all

ite infallible

of dignity

sense

tice ; a fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice
to even the appearance of duty, much more to its
real claims ; and finally, a patient wisdom of
deeply-restrained affection, which does infniitely
more than protect its objects from a momentary
error; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts the
characters of the unworthy lovers, until at the
close of the tale, we are just able, and no more, to
take patience in hearing of their unmerited suc-
cess.

So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shake-
speare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches,
and guides the youth ; it is never, by any chance,
the youth who watches over or educates his mis-
tress.

60. Next take, though more briefly, graver tes-
timony,— that of the great Italians and Greeks.
You know well the plan of Dante's great poem —
that it is a love-poem to his dead lady ; a song of
praise for her watch over his soul. Stooping only
to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from de-
struction— saves him from hell. He is going eter-
nally astray in despair ; she comes down from
heaven to his help, and throughout the ascents of
Paradise is his teacher, interpreting for him the
most difficult truths. Divine and human, and lead-

128

SESAME AND LILIES.

ing him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to
star.

I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I
began I could not cease ; besides, you might think
this a wild imagination of one poet's heart. So I
will rather read to you a few verses of the deliber-
ate writing cf a knight of Pisa to his living lady,
wholly characteristic of the feeling of all the
noblest men of the thirteenth or early fourteenth
century, preserved among many other such records
of knightly honor and love, which Dante Rossetti
has gathered for lis from among the early Italian
poets.

" For lo ! thy law is passed
That this my love should manifestly be

To serve and honor thee :
And so I do ; and my delight is full.
Accepted for the servant of thy rule.

" Without almost, I am all rapturous,
Since thus my will was set:
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence;
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse
A pain or a regret.
But on thee dwells my every thought and sense;
Considering that from thee all virtues spread
As from a fountain head, —

OP QUEKNS' GARDENS.

129

That in t/iy j^ift is ^uisdovCs best avails

And honor ivithout fail ;
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate,
FuHilling the perfection of thy state.

" Lady, since I conceived
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart,

J\[y life has been apart
In shinini^ brightness and the place of truth ;

Which till that time, good sooth,
Groped among shadows in a darkened place,

Where many hours and days
It hardly ever had remembered good.

But now my servitude
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest.

A man from a wild beast
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived."

6i. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight
would have had a lower estiniate of women than
this Christian lover. His spiritual subjection to
them was indeed not so absolute ; but as regards
their own personal character, it w is only because
you could not have followed me so easily, that I
did not take the Greek women instead of Shake-
speare's; and instance, for chief ideal types of
human beauty and faith, the simple mother's and
wife's heart of Andromache; the divine yet re-
jected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness
and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa ; the
9

130

SESAME AND LILIES.

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• ; '■ i

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ill.

housewifely calm of that of IViiclope, with its
watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless^
hopelessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter,
in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia,
lamb-like and silent ; and finally, the expectation
of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the
Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alces-
tis, who, to save her husband, had passed calmly
through the bitterness of death.

62. Now I could multiply witness upon witness
of this kind upon you if I had time. I would
take Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a
Legend of Good Women, but no Legend of Good
Men. I would take Spenser, and show you how
all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and
sometimes vanquished ; but the soul of Una is
never darkened, and the spear of Britomart is
never broken. Nay, I could go back into the
mythical teaci ! ig of the most ancient times, and
show you how the great people, — by one of whose
princesses it was appointed that the lawgiver of all
the earth should be educated, rather than by his
own kindred, — how that great Egyptian people,
wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wis-
dom the form of a woman, and into her hand, for
a symbol, the weaver's shuttle ; and how the
name and the form of that spirit, adopted,

believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that
Athena of the ohvediehn and cloudy bliield, to
faith in whom }ou owe, down to tiiis date, what-
ever you hold most precious in art, in literature
in types of national virtue.

63. lUit 1 will not wander into this distant and
mythical element; I will only ask you to give its
legitimate value to the testimony of these great
poets and men of the world, — consistent as you
see it is, on this head. I will ask you whether it
can be supposed that these men, in the main work
of their lives, are amusing themselves with a ficti-
tious and idle view of the relations between man
and woman ; nay, worse than fictitious or idle —
for a thing may be imaginary, yet desirable, if it
were possible; but this, their ideal of woman, is,
according to our common idqa of the marriage re-
lation, wdiolly undesirable. The woman, we say,
is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The
man is always to be the wiser; 1 is to be the
thinker, the ruler, the superior in k.owledge and
discretion, as in power.

64. Is it not somewhat important to make up
our minds on this matter ? Are all these great
men mistaken or are we ? Are Shakespeare and
i^^^schylus, Dante and Horner, merely dressing
dolls for us ; or worse than dolls, unnatura),

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SESAME AND LILIES.

r .

■

visions, tlie realization of which, were it possible,
would bring anarchy into all households and ruin
into all affections? Nay, if you can suppose this,
take lastly the evidence of facts given by the luiman
heart itself. In all Christian ages wdiich have
been remarkable for their purity of progress,
there has been absolute yielding of obedient devo-
tion, by the lover to his mistress. I say obedient^
— not merely enthusiastic and worshipping in im-
agination, but entirely subject, receiving from the
beloved woman, however young, not only the en-
couragement, the praise, and the reward of all toil,
but so far as any choice is open, or any question
difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. That
chivalry, — to the abuse and dislionor of which are
attributable primarily whatever is cruel in v/ar, un-
just in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic
relations, and to the original purity and power of
\vhich we owe the defence alike of faith, of law,
and of love, — that chivalry, I say, in its very first
conception of honorable life, assinrics the subjec-
tion of the young knight to the command — should
it even be the command in caprice — of his lady.
It assumes this because its masters knew that the
Hrst and necessary impulse of every truly taught
and knightly heart is this of blind service to its
lady ; that where that true faith and captivity are

not, all wayward and wicked passion must be ;
and that in this rapturous obedience to the single
love of his youth, is the sanctification of all man's
strength, and the continuance of all his purposes.
And this, not because such obedience would be
safe or honorable, were it ever rendered to the un-
worthy, but because it ought to be impossible for
every noble youth — it is impossible for every one
rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle
coun^:el he cannot trust, or whose prayerful com-
mand he can hesitate to obey.

65. I do not insist by any further argument on
this, for I think it sliou.ld commend itself at once
to your knowledge of what has been, and to your
feeling of what should be. You cannot think that
the buckling on of the knight's armor by his lady's
hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It
is the type of an eternal truth : that the soul's
armor is never well set to the heart unless a
woman's hand has braced it ; ami it is only wlien
slie braces it loosely that tlie lionor of manhood fails.
Know you not those lovely lines — I would they
were learned by all youthful ladies of England, —

"All, wasteful woman! — she v\ho may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose hut ]\av,
How has she cheapened Paradis'- !

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134

SESAME AND LILIES.

How given for nought her priceless gift,

How spoiled the bread and spilled the wine,

Which spent with due respective thrift,

Had made brutes men, and men divine ! ''i

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations
of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we
too often doubt is the fitness of the continuance of
such a relation throughout the whole of human
life. We think it right in the lover and mistress,
not in the husband and wife. That is to say, ^Y2
think that a reverent and tender duty is due to
one wdiose affection we still doubt, and whose
character we as yet do but partially and dis-
tantly discern ; and that this reverence and
duty are to be withdrawn when the affection has
become wholly and limitlessly our ow^n, and the
character has been so sifted and tried that we fear
not to entrust it with the happiness of our lives.
Do you not see how ignoble this is, as well as how
unreasonable? Do you not feel that marriage,
when it is marriage at all, is only the seal which
marks the vowed transition of temporary into un-
tiring service, and of fitful into eternal love?

1 Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or
too carefully; as far as I know, he is the only living poet
who always strengthens and purifies; the others sometimes
darken, and nearly always depress and discourage, the im-
agination they deeply seize.

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

135

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this
guiding function of the woman reconcilable with
a true wifely subjection ? Simply in that it is a
guiding^ not a determining, function. Let me try
to show you briefly how these powers seem to be
rightly distinguishable.

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in
speaking of the * ^superiority" of one sex to the
other, as if they could be compared in similar
things. Each has what the other has not; each
completes the other, and is completed 1 / the other.
They are in nothing alike, and the happiness and
perfection of both depends on each asking and
receiving from the other what the other only can"
give.

68. Now their separate characters are briefly
these. The man's power is active, progressive, de
fensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator,
the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for
speculation and invention ; his energy for adven-
ture, for war, and for conquest, whenever war is
just, whenever conquest necessary. But the wo-
man's power is for rule, not for battle ; and her
intellect is not for invention or creation, but for
sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She
sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their
places. Her great function is praise \ she enters

136

SESAME AND LILIES.

hi".

into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the crown
of contest. By her office and place, she is pro-
tected from all danger and temptation. The man,
in his rough work in the open world, must en-
counter all peril and trial, — to him therefore must
be the failure, the offence, the inevitable error; of-
ten he must be wounded or subdued ; often mis-
led ; and always hardened. But he guards the
woman from ail this; within his house as ruled
by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter
no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or
offence. This is the true nature of home — it is
the place of peace ; the shelter, not only from all
injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.
In so far as it is not this, it is not home ; so far as
the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it,
and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved,
or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by
either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it
ceases to be home ; it is then only a part of that
outer world which you have roofed over and lighted
fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal
temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by
household gods, before whose face^^ none may
come but those whom they can receive with love, —
so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only
of a nobler shade and light, shade as of the rock

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

121

in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the
stormy sea, — so far it vindicates the name and ful-
fils the praise of home.

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is
always round her. The stars only may be over
her head, the glow-worm in the night-cold grass
may be the only fire at her foot, but home is yet
wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches
far round her, better than ceiled with cedar or
painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far,
for those who else were homeless.

69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not
admit it to be? — the woman's true place and pow-
er. But do not you see that to fulfil this, she must
. — as far as one can use sucli terms of a human
creature— be incapable of error? So far as she
rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must
be enduringly, incorruptibly good, instinctively,
infallibly wise, — wise not for self-development,
but for self-renunciation ; wise, not tliat she may
set herself above her husband, but that she may
never fail from his side ; wise, not with the narrow-
ness of insolent and loveless pride, but with tlie
passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, be-
cause infinitely applicable, modesty of service —
the true changefulness of woman. In that great
sense, ^*La donna e mobile," not *'qual pium' al

138

SKSAME AND LILIES.

[il

^ i

III'

•Ml

Mil

vento; no, nor yet '' Van a
light quivering aspen made ;

I as the shade by the
but variable as the
light y manifold in fair and serene division that it may
take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it.

70. I have been trying, thus far, to show you
what should be the place, and what the power, of
woman. Now, secondly, we ask. What kind of
education is to fit her for these ?

And if you indeed think this a true conception
of her office and dignity, it will not be difficult to
trace the course of education which would fit her
for tlie one and raise her to the other.

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful
persons now doubt this — is to secure for her such
physical training and exercise as may confirm her
health and perfect her beauty ; the highest refinement
of that beauty being unattainable without splendor
of activity and of delicate strength. To perfect
her beauty, I say, and increase its power; it can-
not be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light too
far; only remember that all physical freedom is
vain to produce beauty without a corresponding
freedom of heart. There are two passages of that
poet, who is distinguished, it seems to me, from
all others, — not by power, but by exquisite right-
ness, — which point you to the source, and describe
to you in a few syllables, the completion of wo-

OF QUEENS GAKDENS.

139

manly beauty. 1 will read the introductory stan-
zas, but the last is the one I wish you specially to
notice: —

"Three years she grew in san and shower,
Then Nature said, ♦ A lovelier flower

On earth was never sown.
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make

A lady of my own.

"* Myself will to my darling be

Both law and impulse ; and with me

The girl, in rock and })lain.
In earth and lieaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power.

To kindle or restrain.

" < The floating clouds their state shall lend
To her, for her the willow bend ;

Nor shall she fail to see
Even in the motions oi the storm,
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form

Dy silent sympathy.

*** And vital feeli}v:^s of delii^ht

Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virf^.n bosom swelL
Such thoughts to Tucy I will give,
While she and I together live,

'"1

Here in this ha

ppy

dell.

1 Observe, it is Nature who is speaking throughout, and
who says, ** While she and I together live."

140

SESAME AND LILIES.

((

Vital feeling of delight," observe. There
are deadly feelings of delight ; but the natural
ones are vital, necessary to very life.

And they must be feelings of delight, if tliey
are to be vital. Do not think you can make a girl
lovely, if you do not make her happy. There is
not one restraint you put on a good girl's nature,
there is not one check you give to her instincts of
affection or of effort, which will not be indelibly
written on her features, with a hardness which is
all the more painful because it takes away the
brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the
charm from the brow of virtue.

71. This for the means; now note the end.
Take from the same poet, in two lines, a perfect
description of womanly beauty, —

"A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet."

The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance
can only consist in that majestic peace which is
founded in the memory of happy and useful years,
full of sweet records ; and from the joining of this
with that yet more majestic childishness, which is
still full of change and promise, — opening always
— modest at once, and briglit, with the hope of
better things to be won, and to be bestowed.

OF QUEEInS' gardens.

141

There is no old age " 'ere there is still that
promise.

72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her
physical frame, and then, as the strength shegaiiis
will permit you, to fill and temper her mind with
all knowledge and thouglits which tend to confirm
its natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural
tact of love.

AV ach knowledge should he given her as may
enable her to understand, and even to aid, the
work of men ; and yet it should be given, not as
knowledge, — not as if it were, or could be,
for her an oljject to know, but only to
feel, and to judge. It is of no moment,
as a matter of pride cr perfectness in herself,
whether she knows many languages or one ; but it
is of tlie utmost, that she should be able to sliow
kindness to a stranger, and to understand the
sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no mo-
ment to her own worth vor dignity that she should
be acquainted with this science cr that; but it is
of the hic:hest that she should be trained in habits
of accurate thougl^t; tliai she should understand
the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness
of natural laws ; and follow at least some one path
of scientific attainment as far as to the threshold
of that bitter valley of humiliation, into which

142

SESAMH AND LILIES.

! r

only the wisest and bravest of men can descend,
owning themseUes forever children, gathering
pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little con-
sequence how many positions of cities she knows,
or how many dates of events, or names of cele-
brated persons — it is not the object of education to
turn the woman into a dictionary; but it is deeply
necessary that she should be taught to enter with
her whole personality into the history she reads;
to picture the passages of it vitally in her own
bright imagination ; to apprehend, with her fine
instinrts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic
relations, which the historian too often only
eclipses by his reasoning, and disconnects by his
arrangement : it is for her to trace the hidden
equities of Divine reward, and catch sight,
through the darkness, of the fateful threads of
woven fire that connect error with retribution.
But chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend the
limits of her sympathy with respect to that history
which is being forever determined as the moments
pass in which she draws her peaceful breath, and
to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but
rightly mourned by her, would recur no more
hereafter. She is to exercise herself in imagining
what would be the effects upon her mind and con-
duct, if she were daily brought into the presence

.-a'

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

143

of sullcriiig wliicli is not llic IcbS real bccaubc shut
from her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to
understand the nothingness of the proportion
which that little world in which she lives and
loves, bears to the world in which God lives and
loves; and solemnly she is to be tauglit to strive
that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble in
proportion to the number they embrace, nor her
prayer more languid than it is for the momentary
relief from pain of her husband or her cliild, when
it is uttered for the multitudes of those who liave
none to love them, and is *^ for all who are deso-
la'e and oppressed."

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concur-
rence; perliaps you will not be with me in what I
believe is most needful for me to say. There is
one dangerous science for women, — one which
they must indeed beware how they profanely
touch, — that of theology. Strange, and miserably
strange, that while they are modest enough to
doubt their powers, and pause at the threshold of
sciences where every step is demonstrable and sure,
they will plunge headlong, and without one
thought of incompetency, into that science in
which the greatest men have trembled, and the
wisest erred. Strange, that they will complacently
and pridefuUy bind up whatever vice or folly there

144

SESAME AND LILIES.

is in ihcm, wliatcvcr arrogLincc, pclulaiicc, or blind
incomprehensivcness, into one bitter bundle of
consecrated myrrh. Strange in creatures born to
be Love visible, that where they can know least,
they will condemn first, and think to recommend
themselves to their Master, by crawling up the
steps of His judgment-throne, to divide it with
Him. Strangest of all, that they should think
they were led by the Spirit of the Comforter into
habits of mind which have become in them the
unmixed elements of home discomfort ; and that
they (lure to turn the household gods of Christi-
anity into ngly idols of their own, — spiritual dolls
for them to dress according to their caprice, and
from which their luisbands must turn away in
grieved contempt, lest they should be shrieked at
for breaking them.

74. I believe, then, with this exception, that a
girl's education sliould be nearly, in its course and
material of study, the same as a boy's ; but quite
differently directed. A woman in any rank of
life, ought to know whatever her husband is likely
to know, but to know it in a different way. His
command of it should be foundational and pro-
gressive ; hers, general and accomplished for daily
and helpful use. Not but that it would often be
wiser in men to learn things in a womanly sort of

OP QUEENS GAllDENS.

146

way, for present use, unci to seek for the discipline
and training of their mental powers in such
branches of study as will be afterward fitted fur
social service. But speaking broadly, a man
ought to know any language or science he learns,
thoroughly; while a woman ought to know the
same language or science only so far as may en-
able her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures,
and in those of his best friends.

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far
as she reaches. There is a wide difference between
elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge —
between a firm beginning, and an infirm attempt
at compassing. A woman may always help her
husband by what she knows, however little ; by
what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only
tease him.

And indeed if there were to be any difference
between a girl's education and a boy's, I should
say that of the two the girl should be earlier led,
as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious
subjects, and that her range of literature should be,
not more, but less frivolous, — calculated to add
the qualities of patience and seriousness to her
natural poignancy of thought and quickness of
wit, and also to keep her in a lofty an., pure ele-
ment of thought. I enter not now into any ques-

146

SESAME AND LILIES.

tion of choice of books ; only let us be sure that
her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall
out of the package of the circulating library, wet
with the last and lightest spray of the fountain of
folly.

76. Or even of the fountain of wit ; for with
respect to the sore temptation of novel reading, it
is not the badness of a novel that we should dread
so much as its overwrought interest. The weakest
romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of
religious exciting literature, and the worst romance
is not so corrupting as false history, false philoso-
phy, or false political essays. But the best
romance becomes dangerous, if by its excitement
it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting,
and increases the morbid thirst for useless ac-
quaintance with scenes in which we shall nev^er be
called upon to act.

77. I speak, therefore, of good novels only, and
our modern literature is particularly rich in types
of such. Well read, indeed, these books have
serious use, being nothing less than treatises on
moral anatomy and chemistry ; studies of human
nature in the elements of it. But I attach little
weight to this function ; they are hardly ever read
with earnestness enough to permit them to fulfil it.
The utmost they usually do is to enlarge somewhat

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

147

the charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness of
a malicious one ; for each will gather from the
novel food for her own disposition. Those who
are naturally proud and envious will learn from
Thackeray to despise humanity ; those who are
naturally gentle, to pity it ; those who are natur-
ally shallow, to laugli at it. So, also, there might
be a serviceable power in novels to bring before vs
in vividness a human truth which we liad before
dimly conceived ; but the temptation to pictuiesque-
ness of statement is so great that often the best-
writers of fiction cannot resist it; and our views
are rendered so violent and one-sided that their
vitality is rather a harm than a good.

78. Without, however, venturing here on any
attempt at decision how much novel reading should
be allowed, let me at least clearly assert this, that
whether ncvels or poetry or history be read, they
should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil,
but for their possession of good. The chance and
scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or
hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any
harm to a noble girl ; but the emptiness of an
>ses her. and his amiable

auth(

■PP

folly

grades her. And if she can have access to a good
library of old and classical books, there need be
no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine

It .'

148

SESAME AND LILIES.

and novel out of your girl's way ; turn her loose
into the old library every day, and let her alone.
She will find what is good for her ; you cannot ; ■
for tliere is just this difference between the making
of a girl's character and a boy's : you may chisel
a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer
him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would
a piece of bronze ; but you cannot hammer a girl
into anything. She grows as a flower does, — she
will wither without sun ; she will decay in her
sheath as a narcissus will if you do not give her
air enough ; she may fall and defile her head in
dust if you leave her without help at some moments
of her life, but you cannot fetter her; she must
take her own fair form and way if she take any,
and in mind as in body, must have always —

" Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty."

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a
fawn in the field. It knows the bad weeds twenty
times better than you, and the good ones too, and
will eat some bitter and prickly ones good for it
which you had not the slightest thought would
have been so.

79. Then in art^ keep the finest models before
her, and let her practise ; in all accomplishments.

,„,VO>''-^

OF queens' gardens.

149

be accurate and thorough, so as to enable her to
understand more than she accomplishes. I say
the finest models — that is to say, the truest,
simplest, usefullest. Note those epithets ; they
will range through all the arts. Try them in
muiic, where you might think them the least ap.
plicable. I say the truest, that in which the notes
most closely and faithfully express the meaning of
the words, or the character of intended emotion ;
again, the simplest, that in which the meaning and
melody are attained with the fewest and most sig-
nificant notes possible ; and finally, the usefullest,
that music which makes the best words most beau-
tiful, which enchants them in our memories each
with its own glory of sound, and which applies
them closest to the heart at the moment we need
them.

80. And not only in the material and in the
course, but yet more earnestly in the spirit of it,
let a girl's education be as serious as a boy's.
You bring up your girls as if they were meant for
sideboard ornaments, and then complain of their
frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you
give their brothers ; appeal tc the same grand
instincts of virtue in them ; teach them, also, that
courage and truth are the pillars of their being.
Do you think that they would not answer that

150

SESAME AND LILIES.

I \'-.-

ir?^

appeal, brave and true as they are even now, when
you know that there is hardly a girls' school in this
Christian kingdom where the children's courage
or sincerity would be thought of half so much im-
portance as their way of coming in at a door ; and
when the whole system of society, as respects the
mode of establishing them in life, is one rotten
plague of cowardice and imposture — cowardice, in
not daring to let them live or love except as their
neighbors choose; and imposture, in bringing, for
the purposes of our own pride, the full glow of the
world's worst vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very
period when the whole happiness of her future
existence depends upon her remaining undazzled ?
8i. And give them, lastly, not only noble teach-
ings, but noble teachers. You consider somewhat,
before you send your boy to school, what kind of
a man the master is. Whatsoever kind of a man
be is you at least give him full authority over your
son, and show some respect to him yourself; if he
comes to dine with you, you do not put him at a
side table ; you know, also, that at college your
child's immediate tutor will be under the direc-
tion of some still higher tutor, for whom you have
absolute reverence. You do not treat the Dean of
Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as your
inferiors.

OF QUEENS GARDENS,

151

I'P

But what teachers do you give your girls, and
what reverence do you show to the teachers you
have chosen ? Is a girl likely to think her own con-
duct or her own intellect of much importance
when you trust the entire formation of her char-
acter, moral and intellectual, to a person whom you
let your servants treat with less respect than they
do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your child
were a less charge than jams and groceries), and
whom you yourself think you confer an honor upon
by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in
the evening?

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help and
thus of art. There is one more help which she
cannot do without, — one which alone has some-
times done more than all other influences besides,
— the help of wild and fair Nature. Hear this of
the education of Joan of Arc: —

" The ed^ication of this poor girl was mean according to the
present standard; was ineffably grand according to a purer
philosophic standard ; and only not good for our age because
for us it would be unattainable. ...

" Next after her spiritual advantages she owed most to
the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy
was on the brink of a boundless forest ; and it was haunted
to that degree by fairies that the parish priest (rure) was
obliged to read mass there once a year in order to keep them
in decent bounds. , . ,

162

SESAME AND LILIES.

" But the forests of Domrc-iny — those were the glories of
the land ; for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient
secrets that towered into tragic strength. Abbeys there
were, and abbey windows — * Hke Moorish temples of the
Hindoos' — that exercised even princely power both in
Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet
bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or
vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and
scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to
disturb the deep solitude of the region ; yet many enough to
spread a network or awning of Christian sanctity over what
else might have seemed a heathen wilderness." i

it, ,

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England
woods eighteen miles deep to the centre ; but you
can, perhaps, keep a fairy or two for your children
yet if you wish to keep them. But do you wish
it? Suppose you had each, at the back of your
houses, a garden large enough for your children to
play in, with just as much lawn as would give them
room to run, — no more, — and that you could not
change your abode ; but that, if you chose, you
could double your income or quadruple it by dig-
ging a coal shaft in the middle of the lawn, and
turning the flowerbeds into heaps of coke. Would
you do it ? I hope not. I can tell you you would

1 "Joan of Arc : in reference to M. Michelet's * History of
France' " (De Quincey's Works, vol. iii., p. 217).

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

153

be wrong if you did, though it gave you income
sixty-fold instead of four-fold.

83. Yet this is what you are doing with all
England. The whole county is but a little garden,
not more than enough for your children to run on
the lawns of if you would let them all run there.
And this little garden you will turn into furnace
ground, and fill nqth heaps of cinders if you can ;
and those children of yours, not you, will suffer for it.
For the fairies will not be all banished ; there are
fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their
first gift seems to be ^' sharp arrows of the
rnighty;" but their last gifts are ''coals of
juniper."

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part
of my subject that I feel more — press this upon
you ; for we made so little use of the power of Na-
ture while we had it that we shall hardly feel what
we have lost. Just on the other side of the Mer-
sey you have your Snowdon and your Menai
Straits and that mighty granite rock beyond the
moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heathery crest,
and foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of
as sacred, — a divine promontory, looking west-
ward ; the Holyhead, or Headland, still not with-
out awe when its red light glares first through storm.
These are the hills, and these the bays and blue

154

SESAMT3 AND LILIES.

1 ': .■

(ii^

inlets which, among the Greeks, would have been
always loved, always fateful in influence on the
national mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus,
but where are its Muses ? That Holyhead moun-
tain is your island of ^gina; but where is its
Temple to Minerva?

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva
had achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus
up to the year 1848? Here is a little account of
a Welsh school, from page 261 of the Report on
Wales, published by the Committee of Council on
Education. This is a school close to a town con-
taining 5,000 persons : —

" I then called up a larger class, most of whom had re-
cently ccume to the school. Three girls repeatedly declared
they had never heard of Christ, and two that they had
never heard of God. Two out of six thought Christ was
on earth now [they might have had a worse thought per-
haps], three knew nothing about the Crucifixion. Four out
of seven did not know the names of the months nor the
number of days in a year. They had no notion of addition ;
beyond two and two or three and three their minds were
perfect blanks."

O ye women of England ! from the Princess of
that Wales to the simplest of you, do not think
your own children can be brought into their true
fold of rest while these are scattered on the hills as

1 1 \

OF OUEENS' GARDENS.

155

sheep having no shepherd. And do not think
your daughters can be trained to the truth of their
own human beauty while the plea-sant places wliich
God made at once for their school-room and their
play-ground lie desolate and defiled. You cannot
baptize them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of
yours unless you baptize them also in the sweet
waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth for-
ever from the rocks of your native land, — waters
which a Pagan would have worshipped in their pu-
rity, and you worship only with pollution. You
cannot lead your children . j.ithfully to those nar-
row axe-hewn church-altars of yours while the
dark azure altars in heaven — the mountains that
sustain your island throne, mountains on which a
Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven rest
in every wreathed cloud — remain for you without
inscription; altars built, not to, but by, an Un-
known God.

86. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of
the teaching, of woman, and thus of her house-
hold office, and queenliness. We come now to
our last, our widest question, — What is her queenly
office with respect to the wState?

Generally, we are under an impression that a
man's duties are public, and a woman's private.
But this is not altogether so. A man has a per-

uui\

156

SESAME i^.ND LILIES.

sonal work or duty, relating to liis own home, and
a public work or duty, which is the expansion of
the other, relating to the State. So a woman has
a personal work or duty, relating to her own home,
and a public work and duty, which is also the ex-
pansion of that.

Now, the man's work for his own home is, as
has been said, to secure its maintenance, progress,
and defence; the woman's to secure its order,
comfort, and loveliness.

Expand both these functions. The man's duty,
as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in
the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence
of the '.ate. The woman's duty, as a member of
the commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in
the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of
the State.

What the man is at his own gate, defending it,
if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not
in a less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to
be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if
need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incum-
bent work there.

And, in like manner, what the woman is to be
within her gates, as the centre of order, the balm
of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that she is
also to be without her gates, where order is more

•it;

OF QUEENS GAIiDENS.

167

difficult, distress mure iinirineiit, loveliness more

rare.

And

tb(

.na as within the human heart there is always
set an instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct
which you cannot ([uench, but only warp and cor-
rupt if you withdraw it from its true purpose ; as
there is the intense instinct of love, which rightly
disciplined maintains all tlie sanctities of life, and
misdirected undermines them, and //lus^ do either
the one or the other, so there is in the human
heart an inextinguishable instirrt, — the love of
power, which rightly directed maintains all the
majesty of law and life, and misdirected wrecks
them.

87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the
heart of man, and of the heart of woman, God set
it there, and God keeps it there. Vainly, as
falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of power !
For Heaven's sake, and for Man's sake, desire it
all you can. But 7C'/iii^ power? That is all the
question. Power to destroy, — the lion's limb, and
the dragon's breath ? Not so. Power to heal, to
redeem, to guide, and to guard ; power of the
sceptre and shield ; the power of the royal hand
that heals in touching, that binds the fiend, and
looses the captive ; the throne that is founded on
the rock of justice, and descended from only by

! ■

UUi

158

SESAMi: AND i. I LIES.

Steps of mercy. Will you not covet such power as
this, and seek such throne as this, and be no mure
housewives, but queens?

88. It is now long since the women of England
arrogated, universally, a title which once belonged
to nobility only ; and having once been in the
habit of accepting the simple title of^'gentle-
woman," as correspondent to that of *^ gentle-
man," insisted on the privilege of assuming the
title of ^' lady,"^ which properly corresponds only
to the title of ^' lord."

I do not blame them for this, but only for their
narrow motive in this. I would have them desire
and claim the title of ^Mady" provided they
claim not merely the title, but the office and duty
signified by it. ** Lady " means ^* bread -giver "
or ^^ loaf -giver," and *' lord " means ** maintainer
of laws; " and both titles have reference, not to

I I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for
our English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and
girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and
ladyhood by true title; attainable only by certain probation
and triai both of character and accomplishment ; and to be
forfeited on conviction by their peers of any dishonorable
act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all
noble results, possible in a nation which loved honor.
That it would not be possible among us is not to the dis*
credit of the scheme.

OF QUKICNS GAUDENS.

159

the law which is maintained in the house, nor to
the bread which is given to the household, but to
law maintained for the multitude, and to bread
broken among the multitude. So that a Lord has
legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the
maintainer of the justice of the l^ord of Lords;
and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far
as she communicates that help to the poor repre-
sentatives of her Master, which women once, min-
istering to Him of their substance, were permitted
\o extend to that Master Himself; and when she
is known, as He Himself once was, in brcnking of
bread.

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion,
this power of the dominus^ cr House-Lord, and of
the domina, or House-Lady, is great and vener-
able, not in the number of those through whom it
has lineally descended, but in the number of those
whom it grasps within its sway ; it is always re-
garded with reverent worship wherever its dyr^asty
is founded on its duty, and its ambition correlative
with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with
the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of
vassals? Be it so ; you cannot be too noble, and
your train cannot be too great ; but see to it that
your train is of vassals whom you serve and feed,
not merely of slaves who serve and itt^ yo2i j and

i"!

160

SESAME AND LILIES.

11'

thut the multitude which obeys you is of those
whom you have comforted, not oppressed, — whom
you have redeemed, and led into captivity.

90. And this, which is true of the lower or
household dominion, is equally true of the queenly
dominion ; that highest dignity is open to you if
you will also accept that highest duty. J^ex et
regina — roi et reine — ^ * r/j^// /-doers ; " they differ
but from the Lady and Lord in that tlieir power is
supreme over the mind as over the person ; that
they not only feed and clothe, but direct and
teach. And whether consciously or not you must
be iu many a heart enthroned. There is no put-
ting by that crown ; queens you must always be,
— queens to your lovers ; queens to your husbands
and your sens; queens of higher mystery to the
world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever
bow, before the myrtle crown and the stainless
sceptre of womanhood. But, alas ! you are too
often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty
in the least things, while you abdicate it in the
greatest ; and leaving misrule c'^.nd violence to
work their vvill among men, in defiance of the
power which, holding straight in gift from the
Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betiay,
and the good forget.

91. '* Prince of Peace.** Note that name.

OF queens' gardens.

161

When kings rule in that name, and nobles, and
the judges of the earth, they also in their narrow
place and mortal measure receive the power of it.
There are no other rulers than they; other rule
than theirs is but mi'snxlQ ; they who govern verily
** Dei Gratia" are all princes, yes, or princesses,
of peace. There is not a war in the world, no,
nor an injustice, but you v/omen are answerable
for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that
you have not hindered. Men by their nature are
prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for
none. It is for you to choose their cause for them,
and to forbid them when there is no cause. There
is no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth,
but the guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear
the sight of it, but you should not be able to bear
it. Men may tread it down without sympathy, in
their own struggle; but men are feeble in sympa-
thy and contracted in hope: it is you only who
can feel the depths of pain, and conceive the way
of its healing. Instead of trying to do this, you
turn away from it; you shut yourselves within
your park walls and garden gates ; and you are
content to know that there is beyond them a whole
world in wilderness — a world of secrets which you
dare not penetrate, and of suffering which you
dare not conceive.
U

Tinrl

:\<'

162

SESAME AND LILIES.

92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most
amazing among the phenomena of humanity. I
am surprised at no depths to which, when once
warped from its honor, thai humanity can be de-
graded. I do not wonder at the miser's death,
with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I
do not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the
shroud wrapped about his feet. I do not wonder
at the single-handed murder of a single victim,
done by the assassin in the darkness of the rail-
way or reed-shadow of the marsh. I do not even
wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multi-
tudes, done boastfully in the daylight by the frenzy
of nations, and the immeasurable, unimagin-
able guilt, heaped up from hell to heaven, of their
priests and kings. But this is wonderful to me —
oh, how wonderful ! — to see the tender and deli-
cate woman among you, with her child at her
breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it
and over its father, purer than the air of heaven
and stronger than the seas of earth, — nay, a mag-
nitude of blessing which her husband would not
part with for all that earth itself, though it were made
of one entire and perfect chrysolite, — to see her
abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with
her next-door neighbor ! This is wonderful — oh,
wonderful ! — to see her, with every innocent feel-

OF QUEENS GARDENS.

163

ing fresh within her, go out in the morning into
her garden to play with the fringes of its guarded

flowei

th(

jrs, and hft their heads when tney are droop-
ing, with her happy smile upon her face and no
cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall
around her place of peace ; and yet she knows in
her heart, if she would only look for its knowl-
edge, that outside of that little rose covered wall,
the wild gniss, to the horizon, is torn up by the
agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their
life-blood.

93. Have you ever considered what a deep un-
der-meaning there lies, or at least may be read, if
we choose, in our custom of strewing flowers be-
fore those whom we think most happy? Do you
suppose it is merely to deceive them into the hope
that happiness is always to fall tlius in showers at
their feet ; that whenever they pass they will tread
on herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground
will be made smooth for them by depth of roses ?
So surely as they believe that, they will have, in-
stead, to walk on bitter herbs and thorns ; and the
only softness to their feet will be of snow. I>ut it
is not thus intended they sliould believe ; there is
a better meaning in tliat old custom. The ])ath of
a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but
they rise behind her steps, not before them. ^' Her

i' ■' f

164

SESAME AND LILIES.

iift

feet have touched the meadows, and left the dais-
ies rosy."

94. You think that only a lover's fancy; false
and vain ! H-^vv if it could be true? You think
this also, perhaps, only a poet's fancy —

" Even the light harebell raised its head
Elastic from her airy tread."

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only
does not destroy where she passes. She should re-
vive; the harebells should bloom, not stoop, as
she passes. You think I am rushing into wild hy-
perbole? Pardon me, not a whit ; I mean what I
say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. You
have heard it said (and I believe there is more
than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for
a fanciful one) that flowers only flourish rightly in
the garden of some one who loves them. I know
you would like that to be true ; you would think
it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers
into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them ;
nay, more, if your look had the power, not only
to cheer, but to guard ; if you could bid the black
blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare ;
if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the
drought, and say to the south wind, in frost,

'\ ■ ■

OF QUEENS* GARDENS.

165

**Come, thou south, and breathe npon my garden,
that the spices of it may flow out.*' This you
would think a great thing. And do you think it
not a greater thing that all this (and how much
more than this !) you can do for fairer flowers than
these; flowers that could bless you for having
blessed them, and will love you for having loved
them ; flowers that have thoughts like yours and
lives like yours, and which, once saved, you save
forever ? Is this only a little power ? Far among
the moorlands and the rocks, far in the darkness of
the terrible streets, these feeble florets are lying,
with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems bro-
ken. Will you never go down to them nor set
them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor
fence them, in their tren\t)ling, from the fierce
wind? '^hall morning follow morning for you,
but not Ijr them; and the dawn rise to watch, far
away, those frantic dances of death, ^ but no dawn
rise to breathe upon these living banks of wild
violet and woodbine and rose; nor call to you
through year casement, — call (not giving you the
name of the English poet's lady, but the name of
Dante's great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy
Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers with flowers), say-
ing,—

1 See note, p. 92.

lit

*tt

166

SESAME AND LILIES.

" Ccme into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat night has flown,
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the roses blown " ?

hi'

Will you not go down among them, — among
those sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung
from the earth with the deep color of heaven upon
it, is starting up in strength of goodly spire; and
whose purity, washed from the dust, is opening,
bud by bud, into the flower of promise? And still
they turn to you, and for you "The Larkspur
listens — I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers — I
wait."

95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when
I read you that fu'st stanza, and think thai: 1 had for-
gotten them? Hear tl?em now: —

" Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat night has flown.
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate, alone."

AVho is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this
sweeter garden alone, waiting for you? Did you ever
hear, not of a Maud, but a Madeleine, who went
down to her garden in the dawn and found One wait-
ing at the gate whom she supposed to be the gar-
dener? Have you not sought Him often; sought

OF QtTEENS* GABDENS.

167

Him in vain all through the night; suught Him in
vain at the gate of that old garden where the fiery
sword is set? He is never there; but at the gate
of this garden He is waiting always — waiting to
take your hand — ready to go down to see the fruits
of the valley, to see whether the vine has flourished
and the pomegranate budded. There you shall see
with Him the little tendrils of the vines that His
hand is guiding; there you shall see the pomegran-
ate springing where His hand cast the sanguine seed ;
more : you shall see the troops of the angel keepers
that, with their wings, wave away the hungry birds
from the pathsides where He has sown, and call to
each other between the vineyard rows, **Take us
the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vin .■, for
our vines have tender grapes." Oh, you queens,
you queens! among the hills and happy greenwood
of this land of yours, shall the foxes have holes,
and the birds of the air have nests; and in your
cities shall the stones cry out against you, that
they are the only pillows where the Son of Man
can lay His head ?

■:\\

I : i! *

iif

•. . »^

LECTURE III,

5[l)e Ulnstcry of £ife a\\ii its ^rta.

Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of

Science, Dublin, 1868.

96. T 1 7HEN I accepted the privilege of address-
^ ^ ing you to-day, I was not aware of a
restilction with respect to the topics of discussion
which may be brought before this Society,^ — a
restriction which, though entirely wise and right
under the circumstances contemplated in its intro-
duction, would necessarily have disabled me,
thinking as I think, from preparing any lecture
for you on the subject of art in a form which
might be permanently useful. Pardon me, there-
fore, in so far as I must transgress such limitation ;
for indeed my infringment will be of the letter —
not of the spirit — of your commands. In what-
ever I may say touching the religion which has
been the foundation of art, or the policy which has

1 That no reference should be made to religious ques-
tions.

(171)

1'^

172

SESAME AND LILIES.

contributed to its power, if I offend one I shall offend
all ; for I shall take no note of any separations in
creeds,or antagonisms in parties ; neither do I fear
that ultimately I shall offend any by proving, or at
least stating as capable of positive proof, the con-
nection of all that is best in the crafts and arts of
man, with the simplicity of his faith and the sin-
cerity of his patriotism.

97. But I speak to you under another disadvan-
tage, by which I am checked in frankness of utter-
ance, not here only, but everywhere ; namely, t'.iat
I am never fully aware how far my audiences are
disposed to give me credit for real knowledge of my
subject, or how far they grant me attention only be-
cause I have been sometimes thought an ingenious
or pleasant essayist upon it. For I have had what,
in many respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to
set my words sometimes prettily together ; not with-
out a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of
doing so, until I was heavily punished for this pride,
by finding that many people thought of the words
only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Hap-
pily, therefore, the power of using such pleasant
language — if indeed it ever were mine — is pass-
ing away from me ; and whatever I am now able to
say at all, I find myself forced to say with great
plainness. For my thoughts have changed also, as

OF TIIK MYSTERY JF LIFE.

173

my words have; and whereas in earlier life what
little influence 1 obtained was due perhaps chiefly
to the enthusiasm with which I was able to dwell
on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of their
colors in the sky ; so all the influence I now desire
to retain must be due to the earnestness with which
I am endeavoring to trace the form and beauty of
another kind of cloud than those, — the bright
cloud of which it is written, —

** What is your life? It is even as a vapor that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth
away."

98. I suppose few people reach the middle or
latter period of their age, without having, at sume
moment of change or disappointment, felt the
truth of those bitter words, and been startled by
the fading of the sunshine from the cloud of their
life, into the sudden agony of the knowledge that
the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the
endurance of it as transient as the dew. But it
is not always that, even at such times of melan-
choly surprise, we can enter into any true percep-
tion that this human life shares, in the nature of it,
not only the evanescence, but the mystery of the
cloud ; that its avenues are wreathed in darkness,
and its forms and courses no less fantastic tlian
spectral and obscure 3 so that not only in the

1 1

174

SESAME AND LILIES.

vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the sliadow
which we cannot pierce, it is true of this cloudy
life of ours, that ** man walketh in a vain shadow,
and disquieteth liimself in vain."

99. And least of all, whatever may have been
the eagerness of our passions or the height of our
pride, are we able to understand in its depth the
third and must solemn character in which our life
is like those clouds of heaven : that to it belongs
not only their transience, not only their mystery,
but also their power; that in the cloud of the
human soul there is a fire stronger than the light-
ning and a grace more precious than the rain ;
and that though of the good and evil it shall one
day be said alike, that the place that knew them
knows them no more, there is a'^ infinite separa-
tion between those whose brief presence had there
been a blessing, like the mist of Eden that went
up from tlie earth to water tlie garden, and those
whose place knew them only as a drifting and
changeful shade, of whom the Heavenly sentence
is, that they are *' wells without water; clouds
that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist
of darkness is reserved forever."

100. To those among us, howaver, who have
lived long enough to form some just estimate of
the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in

OF THE MYSTEUY OF LIFE.

175

accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in
the laws, the arts, and the creeds of men, it seems
to me, that now yt least, if never at any former
time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life,
and of its powers and responsibilities, should pre-
sent themselves with absolute sadness and stern-
ness.

And although I know that this feeling is much
deepened in my own mind by disappointment,
which by chance, has attended the greater number
of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason
distrust tlie feeling itself, though I am on my guard
against an exaggerated degree of it ; nay, I rather
believe that in periods of new effort and violent
change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine;
and that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so
beloved by Titian, we may see tlie colorsof tliii\r;rj
with deeper truth than in tl:e most dazzling sun-
shine. And because these truths about tlie works
of men, wliich I want to bring to-day l)Oa re you,
are most of them sad ones, tliough at the same
time helpful ; and because also I ])elieve tliat your
kind Irish hearts will answer mcire gladly to the
truthful expression of a personal feeling, than to
the exposition of an abstract principle, I will ]ut-
mit myself so much unreserved speaking of my
own causes of regret, as may enable you to make

V r

V.'. ■

170

tjESAMK AND LILIES.

:ordi

just allowance for what, :
thies, you will call either the bitterness or the in-
sight of a mind which has surrendered its best
hopes, and been foiled in its favorite aims.

loi. I spent the ten strongest years of my life
(from twenty to thirty) in endeavoring to show the
excellence of the work of the man whom 1 believed,
and rightly believed, to be the greatest painter of
the schools of England since Reynolds. I had
then perfect faith in the power of every great truth
or beauty to prevail ultimately, and take its right
place in usefulness and honor; and I strove to
bring the painter's work into this due place, while
the painter was yet ali*e. But he knew, better
than I, the uselessness of talking about wliat peo-
ple could not see for themselves. He always
discouraged me scornfully, even when he thanked
me; and he died before even the superficial effect
of my work was visible. I went on, however,
thinking I could at least be of use to the public, if
not to him, in proving his power. My books got
talked about a little. The prices of modern pic-
tures, generally, rose ; and I was beginning to
take some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory,
when, fortunately or unfortunately, an opportunity
of perfect trial undeceived me at once and forever.
The trustees of the National Gallery commissioned

OF THE MYSTEEY OF LIFE.

177

me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and per-
mitted me to prepare three hundred examples of
his studies from Nature, for exhibition at Kensing-
ton. At Kensington they were, and are, placed
for exhibition ; but they are not exhibited, for the
room in which they hang is always empty.

J. 02. Well, this showed me at once that those
ten years of my life had been, in their chief pur-
pose, lost. For that, I did not so much care ; I
had at least learned my own business thoroughly,
and should be able, as I fondly supposed, after
such a lesson, now to use my knowledge with bet-
ter effect. But what I did care for was the — to
me frightful — discovery, that the most splendid
genius :n the arts might be permitted by Provi.
dence to labor and perish uselessly ; that in the
very fineness of it there might be something ren-
dering it invisible to ordinary eyes, but that with
this strange excellence faults might be mingled
which would be as deadly as its virtues were vain ;
that the glory of it was perishable as well as in-
visible, and the gift and grace of it might be to us
as snow in summer, and as rain in harvest.

103. That was tlie first mystery of life to me.
But while my best energy was given to the study
of painting, I had put collateral effort, more pru-
dent if less enthusiastic, into that of architecture;
12

178

SESAME AND LILIES.

f 1.1 ,

and in this 1 could not complain of meeting with
no sympathy. Among several personal reasons
which caused me to desire that I might give this
my closing lecture on the subject of art here in
Ireland, one of the chief was, that in reading it,
I should stand near the beautiful building — the
engineers* school of your college — which was the
first realization I had the joy to see, of the princi-
ples I had, until then, been endeavoring to teach ;
but which alas, is now to me no more than the
richly canopied monument ot one of the most
earnest souls that ever gave itself to the arts, and
one of my truest and most loving friends, Benja-
min Woodward. Nor was it litre in Ireland only
that I received the help of Irish sympathy and
genius. When to another friend (Sir Thomas
Deane), with Mr. Woodward, was entrusted the
building of the museum at Oxford, the best details
of the work vore executed by sculptors who had
beeii born ainj vrained here ; and the first window
of the fli(;ade of the building — in which was in-
augurated the study of natural science in England,
in true fellowship with literature — was carved from
my design, by an Irish sculptor.

104. You may perhaps think that no man ought
to speak of disappointment, to whom, even in one
branch of labor, so much success was granted.

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

179

light

one
ited.

Had Mr. Woodward now been beside me, I had
not so spoken ; but his gentle and passionate spirit
was cut off from the fulfihnent of its purposes, and
the work we did together is now become vain. It
may not be so in future ; but the architecture we
endeavored to introduce is inconsistent ahke with
the reckless luxury, the deforming mechanism, and
the squalid misery of modern cities. Among the
formative fashions of the day, aided, especially in
England, by ecclesiastical sentiment, it indeed
obtained notoriety; and sometimes behind an en-
gine furnace or a railroad bank, you may detect
the pathetic discord of its momentary grace, and
with toil decipher its floral carvings choked with
soot. I felt answerable to the schools I loved,
only for their injury. I perceivcnl -hat this new
portion of my strength had ilso been spejil in
vain ; and from amidst streets if iron and palaces
of crystal, shrunk back at 1 -.t to the carving of
the mountain and color of the slower.

105. And stil' could tell of ^'.ilure, and fail-
ure repeated i s vcars went on; but I have tres-
passed enough c ii your i)atience to show you, in
part, the cau' of my discouragement. Now let
me more delioerately tell you its results. You
know there is a tendency in the minds of many
men, when they are heavily disappointed in the

1 ■ ,'

180

SESAME AND LILIES.

main purposes of their life, to feel, and (perhaps
in warning, perhaps in mockery) to declare that
life itself is a vanity. Because it has disappointed
them, they think its nature is of disappointment
always, or, at best, of pleasure that can be grasped
by imagination only ; that the cloud of it has no
strength nor fire within, but is a painted cloud
only, to be delighted in, yet despised. You know
how beautifully Pope has expressed this particular
phase of thought : —

** Meanwliile opinion gilds, with varying rays,
These jxiinted clouds that bcautit'y our days;
Each want of happiness by hope sui)plicd,
And each vacuity of sense, by pride.

"Hope liuilds as fast as Knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup still lau^,hs the bubble joy.
One pleasure past, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is given in vain."

But the effect of failure npon my own mind has
been just the reverse of this. The more that my
life disappointed me, the more solemn and won-
derful it became to me. It seemed, contrarily tc
Pope's saying, that the vanity of it was indeed
given in vain; but that there was something be-
hind the veil of it which was not vanity. It be-
came to me, not a painted cloud, but a terrible

OF TFIE MYSTEKY OF LIFE.

181

and impenetrable one; not a mirage, whith van-
ished as I drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to
which I was forbidden to draw near. For I saw
that both my own failure, and such success in
petty things as in its poor triumph seemcvi to me
worse than failure, came from the want of suffi-
ciently earnest effort to understand the whole law
and meaning of existence, and to bring it to noble
and due end; as, on the other lumd, I saw more
and more clearly that all enduring success in the
arts, or in any other occupation, had come from
the ruling of lower purposes, — not by a conviction
of their nothingness, but by a solemn faitli in the
advancing power of human nature, (>r in the prom-
ise, however dimly apprehended, that the mortal
part of it would one day he swallowed up in im-
mortality; and that, indeed, the arts themselves
never had reached any vital strength or honor but
in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and in
the service either of great and just religion, or of
some unselfish patriotism and law of such national
life as must be the foundation of religion.

lo6. Nothing that I have ever said is more true
or necessary, nothing has been more misunder-
stood or misapplied, than my strong assertion that
the arts can never be right themselves unless their
motive is right. It is misunderstood this way :

182

SESAME AND LILIES.

weak painters who have never learned their busi-
ness, and cannot lay a true line, continually come
to me, crying out, — *^ Look zt this picture of
mine ; it musf be good, I had such a lovely mo-
tive. I have put my whole heart into it, and
taken years to think over its treatment.* Well,
the only answel* for these people is — if one had the
cruelty to make it — ** Sir, you cannot think over
anyihiug in any number of years, — you haven't
the head to do it ; and though you had fine mo-
tives, strong enough to make you burn yourself in
a slow fire if only first you could paint a picture,
you can't paint one, nor half an inch of one; you
haven't the hand to do it."

But far more decisively, we have to say to men
who t/o know their business, or may know it if
they choose, — ^* Sir, you have this gift, and a
mighty one ; see that you serve your nation faith-
fully with it. It is a greater trust than ships and
armies ; you might cast t/iem away, if you were
their captain, with less treason to your people than
in casting your own glorious power away, and
serving the devil with it instead of men. Ships
and armies you may replace if they are lost ; but
a great intellect, once abused, is a curse to the
earth forever."

107. This, then, I meant by saying that the

OF THE MYSTERY OP LIFE.

183

the

arts must have noble motive. This also I said re-
specting them, that they never had prospered, nor
could prosper, but when they had such true pur-
pose, and were devoted to the proclamation of
Divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that lliey
had always failed in this proclamation — that poetry
and sculpture and painting, though only great
when they strove to teach us something about the
gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy
about the gods, but had always betrayed their
trust in the crisis of it, and with their powers at
the full reach, became ministers to pride and to
hist. And I felt also, with increasing amazement,
the unconquerable apathy in ourselves, the hear-
ers, no less than in these, the teachers; and that
while the wisdom and rightness of every act and
art of life could only be consistent with a right
understanding of the ends of life, we were all
plunged as in a languid dream, — our heart fat and
our eyes lieavy and our ears closed, lest the inspi-
ration of hand or voice should reach us ; lest we
should see with our eyes and understand with our
hearts, and be healed.

io8. This intense apathy in all of us is the first
great mystery of life ; it stands in the way of
every perception, every virtue. There is no mak-
ing ourselves feel enough astonishment at it. That

111

184

SESAME AND LILIES.

the occupations or pastimes of life should have no
motive, is understandable ; but that life itself
should have no motive, — that we neitiier care to
find out what it may lead to, nor to guard against
its being forever taken away from us, — here is a
mystery indeed. For just suppose I were able to
call at this moment to any one in this audience by
name, and to tell him positively that I knew a
large estate had been lately left to liim on some
curious conditions ; but that, though 1 knew it was
large, I did not know how large, nor even where
it was — whether in the East Indies or the West,
or in England, or at the Antipodes. I only knew
it was a vast estate, and there was a chance of his
losing it altogether if he did not soon find out on
what terms it had been left to him. Suppose I
were able to say this positively to any single man
in this audience, and he knew that 1 did not speak
without warrant, do you think that he would rest
content with that vague knowledge, if it were any-
wise possible to obtain more? Would he not give
every energy to find some trace of the facts, and
never rest till he had ascertained where this place
was, and what it was like? And suppose he were
a young man, and all he could discover by his best
endeavor was that the estate was never to be his at
all, unless he persevered during certain years of

OF THE MYSTERT OF LIFE.

185

probation, in an orderly and industrious life ; but
that, according to the Tightness of his conduct, tlie
portion of the estate assigned to him would be
greater or less, so that it literally depended on his
behavior from day to day whether he got ten
thousand a year, or thirty thousand a year, or
nothing whatever. Would • you not think it
strange if the youth never troubled himself to sat-
isfy the conditions in any way, nor even to know
what was required of him, but lived exactly as he
chose, and never incjuired whether his chances of
the estate were increasing or passing away ? Well,
you know that this is actually and literally so with
the greater number of the educated persons now
Jiving in Christian countries. Nearly every man
and woman in any company such as this, out-
wardly professes to believe, — and a lar^^e number
unquestionnbly think they believe, — much more
than this; not only that a quite unlimited estate
is in prospect for them if they please the Holde.
of it, but that the infinite contrary of such a pos-
session— an estate of perpetual misery — is in store
for them if they displease this great Land-Holder,
this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there is not
one in a thousand of these human souls that cares
to think, for ten minutes of the day, where this
estate is, or how beautiful it is, or what kind of

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life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life they
must lead to obtain it.

109. You fancy that you care to know this; so
little do you care that, probably, at this moment
many of you are displeased with me for talking of
the matter ! You came to hear about the art of
this world, not about the life of the next, and you
are provoked with me for talking of what you can
hear any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid.
I will tell you something, before you go, about
pictures and carvings and pottery and what else
you would like better to hear of than the other
world. Nay, perhaps you say, '* We want you to
talk of pictures and pottery because we are sure
that you know something of them, and you
know nothing of the other world." Well, I
don't. That is quite true. But the very
strangeness and mystery of which I urge you
to take notice is in this, — that I do not — nor
you either. Can you answer a single bold
question unflinchingly about that other world ?
Are you sure there is a heaven ? Sure there is a
hell? Sure that men are dropping before your
faces through the pavements of these streets into
eternal fire, or sure that they are not ? Sure that
at your own death you are going to be delivered
from all sorrow, to be endowed with all virtue, to

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

187

be gifted with all felicity, and raised into perpet-
ual companionship with a King, compared to
whom the kings of the earth are as grasshoppers, and
the nations as the dust of His feet? Are you
sure of this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much
as care to make it sure? and, if not, how can any-
thing that we do be right, how can anything we
think be wise; what honor can there be in the
artiB that amuse us, or what profit in the possessions
that please ?

Is not this a mystery of life?

no. But further, you may perhaps think it a
beneficent ordinance for the generality of men,
that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety,
dwell on such questions of the future ; because the
business of the day could not be done if this kind
of thought were taken by all of us for the morrow.
Be it so; but at least we might anticipate that the
greatest and wisest of us, who were evidently the
appointed teachers of the rest, would set them-
selves apart to seek out whatever could be surely
known of the future destinies of their race, and to
teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous manner,
but in the plainest and most severely earnest

words.

Now, the highest representatives of men who
have thus endeavored during the Christian era to

188

SESAME AND LILIES.

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search out these deep things and relate them, are
Dante and Milton. There are none who, for
earnestness of thought, for mastery of word, can
be classed with these. I am not at present, mind
you, speaking of persons set apart in any priestly
or pastoral office, to deliver creeds to us, or doc-
trines; but of men who try to discover and set
forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the
facts of the other world. Divines may perhaps
teach us how to arrive there ; but only these two
poets have in any powerful manner striven to dis-
cover, or in any definite words professed to tell,
what we shall see and become there ; or hov/ those
upper and nether worlds are, and have been, ip-
habited.

III. And what have they told us? Milton's
account of the most important event in his whole
system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is
evidently unbelievable to himself; and the more
so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great
part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account
of the decisive war of the younger gods with the
Titans. The rest of this poem is a picturesque
drama, in which every artifice of invention is vis-
ibly and consciously employed ; not a single fact
being for an instant conceived as tenable by any
living faith. Dante's conception is far more in-

OF THE MYSTERY OP LIFE.

189

can

IP-

tense, and by himself, for the time, not to be es-
caped from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision
only, and that one of the wildest that ever en-
tranced a soul, — a dream in which every grotesque
type or fantasy of heathen tradition is renewed
and adorned; and the destinies of the Christian
Church, under their most sacred symbols, become
literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to
be understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine
maiden.

112. I tell you truly that as I strive more with
this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and
awake to tlie meaning and power of life, it seems
daily more amazing to me that men such as these
should dare to play with the most precious truths
(or the most deadly untruths) by which the whole
human race, listening to them, could be informed
or deceived. All the world their audiences for-
ever, with pleased ear and passionate heart ; and
yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls, and ev-
ermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hun-
gry for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly
modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature
adorn the councils of hell ; touch a troubadour's
guitar to the courses of thesims ; and fill the open-
ings of eternity, before wliich prophets have veiled
their faces, and which anojels desire to look into.

. IP

190

SESAME AND LILIES.

'11

■a!

with idle puppets of their scholastic imagination,
and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost
mortal love.

Is not this a mystery of life?

113. But more. We have to remember that
these two great teachers were both of them warped
hi their temper, and thwarted in their search for
truth. They were men of intellectual war, unable,
through darkness of controversy or stress of per-
sonal grief, to discern where their own ambition
modified their utterances of the moral law, or their
own agony mingled with their anger at its viola-
tion. But greater men than these have been (in-
nocent-hearted) too great for contest, — men, like
Homer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognized per-
sonality that it disappears in future ages and be-
comes ghostly, like the traditi^^n of a lost heathen
god ; men, therefore, to whose unoffended, uncon-
demninig sight the whole of human nature reveals
itself in a pathetic weakness with which they will
not strive, or in mournful and transitory strength
which they dare not praise. And all Pagan and
Christian civilization thus becomes subject to them.
It does not matter how little or how much any of
us have read, either of Homer or Shakespeare;
everything round us, in substance or in thought,
has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

191

were educated under Homer. All Roimn gentlemen,
by Greek literature. All Italian and French and
English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by
its principles. Of the scope of Shakespeare I will
say only, that the intellectual measure of every
man since born in the domains of creative thought
may be assigned to him according to the degree in
which he has been taught by Shakespeare. Well,
what do these two men, centres of moral intelli-
gence, deliver to us of conviction respecting what
it most behooves that intelligence to grasp? What
is their hope, their crown of rejoicing? what man-
ner of exhortation have they for us, or of rebuke?
what lies next their own hearts, and dictates their
undying words? Have they any peace to promise
to our unrest, any redemption to our misery?

114. Take Homer first, and think if there is
any sadder image of human fate than the great
Homeric story. The main features in the cliarac-
ter of Achilles are its intense desire of justice,
and its tenderness of affection. And in that bit-
ter song of the Iliad, this man, though aided con-
tinually by the wisest of the gods, and burning
with the desire of justice in his heart, becomes
yet, through ill-governed passion, tlie most unjust
of men; and full of the deepest tenderness in his
heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed passion,

192

SESAME AND LILIES.

the most cruel of men. Intense alike in love and
in friendship, he loses first his mistress and then
his friend; for the sake of the one he surrenders to
death the armies of his own land ; for the sake of the
other he surrenders all. Will a man lay down his life
for his friend ? Yea, even for his deai/ friend this
Achilles, though goddess-born and goddess-taught,
gives up his kingdom, his country, and his life;
casts alike the innocent and guilty, with himself,
into one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by the
hand of the basest of his adversaries. Is not this
a mystery of life?

115. But what, then, is the message to us of our
own poet and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hun-
dred years of Christian faith have been numbered
over the graves of men? Are his words more
cheerful than the heathen's; is his hope more
near, his trust more sure, his reading of fate more
happy ? Ah, no ! He differs from the heathen
poet chiefly in this, — that he recognizes, for deliv-
erance, no gods nigh at hand ; and that by petty
chance, by momentary folly, by broken message,
by fool's tyranny or traitor's snare, the strongest
and most righteous are brought to their ruin, and
perish without word of hope. He, indeed, as
part of his rendering of character, ascribes the
power and modesty of habitual devotion to the

OF THE MYSTERY OP LIFE.

193

geiUJe and the just. The death-bed of Katharine
is bright with vision of angels; and the great sol-
dier-king, standing by his few dead, acknowledges
the presence of the hand that can save alike by
many or by ftw. But observe that from those who
with deepest spirit meditate, and with deepest pas-
sion mourn, there are no such words as these; nor
in their hearts are any such consolations. Instead
of the perpetual sense of the helpful presence of
the Deity, which through all heathen tradition is
the source of heroic strength, in be ttle, in exile,
and in the valley of the shadov/ of death, we find
only in the great Christian poet the consciousness
of a moral law, through which *Uhe ^ ds are just,
and of our pleasant vices make instruments to
scourge us;" and of the resolved arbitration of
the destinies, that conclude into precision of doom
what we feebly and blindly began ; and force us,
when our indiscretion serves us and our deepest
plots do pall, to the confession that " there's a di-
vinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how
we will."

Is not this a mystery of life?

ii6. Be it so, then. About this human life
that is to be, or that is, the wise religious men
tell us nothing that we can trust; and the wise
contemplative men, nothing that can give us peace.

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194

SESAMK AND LILIES.

But there is yet a third class to whom we may turn,
the wise practical men. We have sat at the Icet
of poets who sang of heaven, and they have told
us their dreams. We have listened to the poets
who sang of earth, and they have chanted to us
dirges, and words of despair. Jjiit there is one
class of men or more, — men not capable of vision,
nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose, prac-
tised in business, learned in all that can be (by
handling) know^i ; men whose hearts and hopes are
wholly in this present world, from whom, therefore,
we may surely learn at least how at present conven-
iently to live in it. What will //ley say to us, or
show us by example, — these kings, these councillors,
these statesmen and builders of kingdoms; these
capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth
and the dust of it in a balance? They know the
world surely; and what is the mystery of life to us,
is none to them. They can surely show us how to
live while we live, and to gather out of the present
world what is best.

117. I think I can besttell you their answer by tell-
ing you a dream I had once. For though I am no
poet I have dreams sometimes : I dreamed I was
at a child's May-day party, in which every means
of entertainment had been provided for them by a
wise and kind host. It was in a stately house,

turn,
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poets
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house,

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

11^5

with beautiful gardens attached to it, and the chil-
dren had been set free in the rooms and gardens,
with no care whatever but how to pass their after-
noon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know
much about what was to happen next day ; and
some of them I thought were a little frightened be-
cause there was a chance of their being sent to a
new school where there were examinations; but
they kepc the thoughts of that out of their heads as
well as they could, and resolved to enjoy them-
selves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful gar-
den, r'nd in the garden were all kinds of flowers;
sweet grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for
play; and pleasant streams and woods; and rocky
places for climbing. And the children were happy
for a little while; but presently they separated
themselves into parties, and then each party de-
clared it would have a piece of the garden for its
own, and that none of the others should have any-
thing to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled
violently which pieces they would have. And at
last the boys took up the thing, as boys should do,
''practically," and fought in the flower-beds till
there was hardly a flower left standing; then they
trampled down each other's bits of the garden out
of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no
more, and so they all lay down at last breathless in

196

SESAME AND LILIES.

the ruin, and waited for the time when they were
to be taken home in the evening.^

ii8. Meanwhile, the children in the house had
been making themselves happy also in their man-
ner. For them there had been provided every
kind of in-doors pleasure : there was music for
them to dance to ; and the library was open, with
all manner of amusing books; and there was a
museum full of the most curious shells and animals
and birds ; and there wos a workshop, with lathes
and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys ; and
there were pretty fantastic dresses for the girls to
dress in ; and there were microscopes and kaleido-
scopes and whatever toys a child could fancy ; and
a table in the dining-room loaded with everything
nice to eat.

But in the midst of all this, it struck two or
three of the more *' practical" children that they
would like some of the brass-headed nails that
studded the chairs, and so they set to work to pull
them out. Presently the others, who were read-

; shells, took a i

nig

icy

like ; and in a little while all the children, nearly,

J I have sometimes been asked what this means. I in-
tended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending
for kingdoms ; and what follows, to set forth their wisdom
in peace, contending for wealth.

OF THE MYSTEUY OF LIFE.

197

were spraining their fingers in pulling out .vrass-
headed nails. With all that they could pull out
they were not satisfied ; and then everybody
wanted some of somebody else's. And at last the
really practical and sensible ones declared that
nothing was of any real consec^uence that after-
noon except to get plenty of brass-headed nails;
and that the bocks and the cakes and the micro-
scopes were of no use at all in themselves, but
only if they could be exchanged for nail-heads.
And at last they began to fi^^ht for nail-heads, as
the others fought for the bits of garden. Only
here and the-e a despised one shrunk away into a
corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a book
in the midst of the noise ; but all the practical
ones thought of nothing else but counting nail-
heads all the afternoon, even though they knew
they would not be allowed to carry so much as one
brass knob away with them. But no ! it was,
** Who has most nails? I have a hundred and you
have fifty; " or, ^* I have a thousand and you have
two. I must have as many as you before I leave
the house or I cannot possibly go home in peace."
At last they made so much noise that I awoke, and
thought to myself, *^ What a false dream that is of
children'' The child is the father of the man,

.-JJ

ii:

198

SESAME AND LILIES.

i :>

and wiser. Children never do such foolish things.
Only men do.

119. But there is yet one last class of persons to
be interrogated. The wise religious men we have
asked in vain ; the wise contemplative men, in
vain ; the wise worldly men, in vain. But there
is another group yet. In the midst of this vanity
of empty religion, of tragic contemplation, of
wrathful and wretched ambition and dispute for
dust, there is yet one great group of persons by
whom all these disputers live, — the persons who
have determined, or have had it by a beneficent
Providence determined for them, that they will do
something useful ; that whatever may be prepared
for them hereafter, or happen to them here, they
will at least deserve the food that God gives them
by winning it honorably ; and that, however fallen
from the purity or far from the peace of Eden, they
will carry out the duty of human dominion though
they have lost its felicity ; and dress and keep the
wilderness though they no more can dress or keep
the garden.

These hewers of wood and drawers of water,
these bent under burdens or torn of scourges, these
that dig and weave, that plant and build ; work-
ers in wood, and in marble, and in iron, by whom
all food; clothing, habitation^ furniture, and means

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

199

of delight are produced, for themselves and for all
men besides, — men whose deeds are good though
their words may be few ; men whose lives are serv-
iceable, be they never so short, and worthy of
honor, be they never so humble ; from these surely
at least we may receive some clear message of
teaching, and pierce for an instant into the mys-
tery of life and of its arts.

120. Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a
lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather — for that is
the deeper truth of the matter — I rejoice to say,
this message of theirs can only be received by join-
ing them, not by thinking about them.

You sent for me to talk to you of art ; and I
have obeyed you in coming. But the main thing
I have to tell you is, that art must not be talked
about. The fact that there is talk about it at all
signifies that it is ill-done, or cannot be done. No
true painter ever speaks, or ever has spoken, much
of his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even
Reynolds is no exception ; for he wrote of all that
he could not himself do, and was utterly silent
respecting all that he himself did.

The moment a man can really do his work he
becomes speechless about it. All words become
idle to him, all theories.

121. Does a bird need to theorize about build-

rv I,

V : ■

200

SESAME AND LILIES.

ing its nest, or boast of it when built? All good
work is essentially done that way, without hesita-
tion, without difficulty, without boasting; and in
the doers of the best, there is an inner and invol-
untary power which approximates literally to the
instinct of an animal. Nay, I am certain that in
the most perfect human artists, reason does nof
supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as
much more divine than that of the lower animals
as the human body is more beautiful than theirs;
that a great singer sings not with less instinct than
the nightingale, but with more, only more various,
applicable, and governable ; that a great architect
does not build with less instinct than the beaver
or the bee, but with more ; with an innate cunning
of proportion that embraces all beauty, and a di-
vine ingenuity of skill that improvises all construc-
tion. But be that as it may, — be the instinct less
or more than that of inferior animals, like or un-
like theirs, — still the human art is dependent on
that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of
science, and of imagination disciplined by thought
which the true possessor of it knows to be incom-
municable, and the true critic of it inexplicable,
except through long process of laborious years.
That journey of life's conquest, in which hills over
hills and Alps on. Alps arose and sank, — do you

OF TEIE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

201

think you can make another trace it painlessly, by
talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up an
Alp by talking. You can guide as up it, step by
step, no otherwise ; even so, best silently. You
girls who have been among the hills know how the
bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is ^' put
your foot here," and " mind how you balance
yourself there;" but the good guide walks on
quietly without a word, only with his eyes on you
when need is, and his arm like an iron bar if need
be.

12 2. In that slow way, also, art can be taught, if
you have faith in your guide and will let his arm
be to you as an iron bar when need is. But in
what teacher of art have you siicli faitli? Cer-
lainly not in me ; for, as I told you at first, I know
well enough it isonly because you think lean talk,
not because you think I know my business, that you
let me speak to you at all. If I were to tell you
anything that seemed to you strange, you would
not believe it; and yet it would only be in telling
you strange things that 1 could be of use to you. I
could be of great use to you — infinite use — with
brief saying, if you would believe it ; but you
would not, just because the thing that would be
of real use would displease you. You are all wild,
for instance, with admiration of Gustave Dore.

202

SESAME AND LILIES.

i
(

ill.

Well, suppose I were to tell you, in the strongest
terms I could use, that Gustave Dore's art was
bad, — bad, not in weakness, not in failure, but bad
with dreadful power — the power of the Furies
and the Harpies mingled — enraging and pollut-
ing ; that so long as you looked at it, no percep-
tion of pure or beautiful art was possible for you.
Suppose I were to tell you that ! What would be
the use? Would you look at Gustave Dore less?
Rather more, I fancy. On the other hand, I
could soon put you into good humor with me if I
chose. I know well enough what you like, and
how to praise it to your better liking. I could
talk to you about moonlight and twilight and
spring flowers and autumn leaves and the madon-
nas of Raphael — how motherly ! and the sibyls
of Michel Angelo — how majestic ! and the saints
of Angelico — how pious! and the cherubs
of Correggio — how delicious ! Old as I am, I
could play you a tune on the harp yet, that you
would dance to. But neither you nor I should be
a bit the better or wiser ; or if we were, our
increased wisdom could be of no prnctical effect.
For indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness,
differ from the sciences also in this : that their
power is founded not merely on facts which can
be communicated, but on dispositions which re-

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

203

quire to be created. Art is neither to be achieved
by effort of thinking nor explained by accuracy of
speaking. It is the instinctive and necessary result
of powers which can only be developed through
the mind of successive generations, and which
finally burst into life under social conditions as
slow of growth as the faculties they regulate.
Whole eras of mighty history are summed, and the
passions of dead myraids are concentrated, in the
existence of a noble art ; and if that noble art
were among us, we should feel it and rejoice,
not caring in the least to hear lectures on it.
And since it is not among us, be assured we
have to go back to the root of it, or at least, to the
place where the stock of it is yet alive and the
branches began to die.

23. And now may I have your pardon for
pointing out, partly with reference to matters
which are at this time of greater moment than the
arts, that if we undertook such recession to the vi-
tal germ of national arts that have decayed, we
should fmd a more singular arrest of their power
in Ireland than in any other European country.
For in the eighth century Ireland possessed a
school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture,
which in many of its qualities (apparently in all
essential qualities of decorative invention) was

■i
i

F '

204

!l.

; 1'
nil)

'i *■

SESAME AND LILIES.

quite without rival, seeming as if it might have
ad/anced to the highest triumphs in architecture
and in painting. But there was one fatal flaw in
its nature by which it was stayed, — and stayed
with a conspicuousness of pause to which there is
no parallel, — so that long ago, in tracing the prog-
ress of European schools from infancy to strength,
I chose for the students of Kensington, in a lec-
ture since published, two characteristic examples of
early art of equal skill ; but in the one case, skill
which was progressive; in the other, skill which
was at pause. In the one case, it was work
receptive of correction — hungry for correction;
and in the other, work which inherently rejected
correction. 1 chose for them a corrigible Eve and
an incorrigible angel; and I grieve to say that the
incorrigible angel was also an Irish angel ! ^

124. And the fatal difference lay wholly in this.
In both pieces of art there was an equal falling
short of the needs of fact ; but the Lombardic
Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the Irish an-
gel thought himself all right. The eager Lombar-
dic sculptor, though firmly insisting on his child-
ish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken touches
of the features and the imperfect struggle for
softer lines in the form, a perception of beauty
1 See " The Two Paths," p. 27.

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

205

and law that he could not render; there was the
strain of effort, under conscious imperfection in
every line. But the Irish missal-painter had
drawn his angel with no sense of failure, in happy
complacency, and put red dots into the palms of
each hand and rounded the eyes into perfect cir-
cles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out alto-
gether, with perfect satisfaction to himself.

125. May I without offence ask you to consider
whether this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art
may not be indicative of points of character which
even yet, in some measure, arrest your national
power? I have seen much of Irish character, and
have watched it closely, for I have also much
loved it. And I think the form of failure to
, which it is most liable is this: that being gener-
ous-hearted, and wholly intending always to do
right, it does not attend to the external laws of
right, but thinks it must necessarily do right be-
cause it means to do so, and therefore does wrong
without finding it out; and then, when the conse-
quences of its wrong come upon it or upon others
connected with it, it cannot conceive that the
wrong is in anywise of its causing or of its doing,
but flies into wrath and a strange agony of desire
for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which

■ .1

, I'

206

SESAME AND LILIES.

leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that it
is not capable of doing with a good conscience.

126. But mind, I do not mean to say that in
past or present relations between Ireland and Eng-
land, you have been wrong, and we right. Far
from that, I believe that in all great questions of
principle, and in all details of administration of
law, you have been usually right and we wrong ;
sometimes in misunderstanding you, sometimes in
resolute iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all dis-
putes between States, though the strongest is nearly
always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is often so
in a minor degree ; and I think we sometimes ad-
mit the possibility of our being in error, and you
never do.

127. And now, returning to the broader ques-
tion of what these arts and labors of life have to
teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their les-
sons: that the more beautiful the art the more it
is essentially the work of people who fee/ them-
selves wrong; who are striving for the fulfilment
of a law and the grasp of a loveliness which they
have not yet attained, which they feel even farther
and farther from attaining the more they strive for
it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work
of people who know also that they are right. The
very sense of inevitable error from their purpose

OF THK MYSTERY OF LIFE.

207

marks the perfectness of that purpose, and the
continued sense of faiUire arises from the contin-
ued opening of the eyes more clearly to all the sa-
credest laws of truth.

128. This is one lesson. The second is a very
plain and greatly precious one ; namely, that
whenever the arts and labors of life are fulfilled in
this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing
whatever we have to 60 honorably and perfectly,
they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems
possible to the nature of man. In all other paths
by which that happiness is pursued there is disap-
pointment or destruction ; for ambition and for
passion there is no rest, no fruition ; the fairest
pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater
than their past light, and the loftiest and purest
love too often does but inflame the cloud of life
with endless fire of pain. But ascending from
lowest to highest, through every scale of human
industry, that industry, worthily followed, gives
peace. Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge,
or in the mine ; ask the patient, delicate-fingered
artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker
in bronze, and in marble, and with the colors of
light; and none of these who are true workmen
will ever tell you that they have found the law of
Heaven an unkind one, that in the sweat of their

208

SESAMK AND LILIES.

'■ ;»

face they should eat bread till they return to the
ground ; nor that they ever found it an unrewarded
obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to
the command, '^ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with thy might."

129. These are the two great and constant les-
sons which our laborers teach us of the mystery of
life. But there is another and a sadder one which
they cannot teach us, which we must read on their
tombstones.

^' Do it with thy might.*' There have been
myriads upon myriads of human creatures who
have obeyed this law ; vdio have put every breath
and nerve of their being into its toil; who have
devoted every hour, and exhausted every faculty ;
who have bequeathed their unaccomplished
thoughts at death ; who, being dead, have yet
spoken by majesty of memory and strength of ex-
ample. And at last what has all this *' might"
of humanity accomplished in six thousand years of
labor and sorrow? What has it done? Take the
three chief occupations and arts of men one by
owe and count their achievements. Begin with the
first, the lord of them all, agriculture. Six thou-
sand years have passed since we were set to till the
ground from which we were taken. How much
of it is tilled ? How much of that which is, wisely

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

209

or well? In the very centre and chief garden r)t
Europe, where the two forms of parent Christianity
have had their fortresses, where the noble
Catholics of the Forest Cantons and the noble
Protestants of the Vaudois valleys have maintained
for dateless ages their faiths and liberties, there
the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in devas-
tation ; and the marslies, which a few hundred
men could redeem with a year's labor, still blast
their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism.
That is so in the centre of Europe ! while on the
near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hes-
perides, an Arab woman, but a few sunsets since,
ate her child for famine. And with all the treas-
ures of the East at our feet we, in our own domin-
ion, could not find a few grains of rice for a peo-
ple that asked of us no more ; but stood by and
saw five hundred thousand of them perish of hun-
ger.

130. Then after agriculture, the art of kings,
take the next head of human arts, weaving, the art
of queens, honored of all noble heathen women in
the person of their virgin goddess, honored of all
Hebrew women by the word of their wisest king,
** She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her
hands hold the distaff ; she stretcheth out her hand

She is not afraid of the snow for her

to the poor.
U

210

SESAME AND LILIES.

household, for all her househoUl are clothed with
scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry ;
her clothing is silk and purple. She maketh hne
linen and sclleth it, and delivereth girdles to the
merchant." What have we done in all these thou-
sands of years with this bright art of Greek maid
and Christian matron? Six thousand years of
weaving and have we learned to weave ? Might
not every naked wall have been purple with tapes-
try, and every feeble breast fenced with sweet
colors from the cold ? ^Vhat have we done? Our
fmgers are too few, it seems, to twist together some
poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams
to work for us and choke the air with fire to turn
our spinning-wheels; and are 7ae yet clothed?
Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul
with the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags ? Is
not the beauty of your sweet children left in
wretchedness of disgrace, while with better honor
Nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest,
and the suckling of the wolf in her den ? And
does not every winter's snow robe what you have
not robed, and shroud what you have not
shrouded ; and every winter's wnnd bear up to
heaven its wasted souls, to witness against you
hereafter by tlie voice of their Christ, '^I was
naked, and ye clothed me not" ?

OF THE MVSTEUY OF LIFE.

211

with
itiy ;
I fine
) the
thou-
maid

I'S of
^ight
;apes-
sweet
Our
some
reams
turn
\thcd ?
foul
Is
eft in
honor
nest,
And
have
not
up to
t you
I was

131. Lastly, take the art of building, the strong-
est, proudest, most orderly, must enduring of the
ants of man, that of which the produce is in the
surest manner accumulative, and need not perish
or be replaced ; but if once well done will stand
more strongly than the unbalanced rocks, more
prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art
which is associated with all civic pride and sacred
principle, with which men record their power,
satisfy their enthusiasm, make sure their defence,
define and make dear their habitation. And in
six thousand years of building what have we done?
Of the greater part of all that skill and strength,
no vestige is left but fallen stones that encumber
the field and impede the streams. But from this
waste of disorder and of time and of rage, what is
left to us? Constructive and progressive creatures
that we are, with ruling brains and forming hands,
capable of fellowship and thirsting for fame, can
we not contend in comfort with the insects of the
forest, or in achievement with the worm of the
sea? The white surf rages in vain against the
ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent
life, but only ridges of formless ruin mark the
places where once dwelt our noblest multitudes.
The ant and the moth have cells for each of their
young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps in

212

SESAME AND LILIES.

homes that consume them like graves ; and night
by night from the corners of our streets rises up
the cry of the homeless, ^ * I was a stranger, and
ye took me not in."

132. Must it be always thus? Is our life for-
ever to be without profit, without possession?
Shall the strength of its generations be as barren
as death, or cast away their labor as the wild fig-
tree casts her untimely figs? Is it all a dream
then, the desire of the eyes and the pride of life ?
or, if it be, might we not live in nobler dream than
this ? The poets and prophets, the wise men and
the scribes, though they have told us nothing
about a life to come, have told us much about the
life that is now. They have had, they also, their
dreams; and we have laughed at them. They
have dreamed of mercy and of justice ; they have
dreamed of peace and good-will; they have
dreamed of labor undisappointed, and of rest un-
disturbed ; they have dreamed of fulness in har-
vest and overflowing in store ; they have dreamed
of wisdom in council, and of providence in law ;
of gladness of parents, and €trength of children,
and glory of gray hairs. And at these visions of
theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle
and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What
have we accomplished with our realities ? Is this

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

213

aw;
ren,
5 of
idle
IVhat
this

what has come of our worldly wisdom, tried
against their folly? this our mightiest possible,
against their impotent ideal? or have we only
wandered among the spectra of a baser felicity,
and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead of
visions of the Almighty; and walked after the
imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of after the
counsels of Eternity, until our lives — not in the
likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke
of hell — have become * ' as a vapor, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away ' ' ?

133. Does it vanish, then ? Are you sure of
that, — sure that the nothingness of the grave will
be a rest from this troubled nothingness ; and that
the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in vain,
cannot change into the smoke of the torment that
ascends foi'*^ver ? Will any answer that they are
sure of it, and that there is no fear nor hope nor
desire nor labor, whither they go? Be it so ; will
you not, then, makj as sure of the life that now is,
as you are of the death that is to come ? Your
hearts are wholly in this world ; will you not give
them to it wisely, as well as perfectly ? And see,
first of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts,
too, to give. Because you have no heaven to look
for, is that any reason that you shouM remain ig-
norant of this wonderful and infinite earthy which

214

SESAME AND LILIES.

I< '

Eli

is firmly and instantly given you in possession ?
Although your days are numbered, and the follow-
ing darkness sure, is it necessary that you should
share the degradation of the brute, because you
are condemned to its mortality ; or live the life
of the moth and of the worm, because you are to
companion them in the dust ? Not so ; we may
have but a few thousands of days to spend, per-
haps hundreds only, perhaps tens; nay, the long-
est of our time and best, looked back on, will be
but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye ; still
we are men, not insects; we are living spirits, not
passing clouds. *^ He maketh the winds His mes-
sengers; the momentary fire. His minister; " and
shall we do less than these ? Let us do the work
of men while we bear the form of them ; and as
we snatch our narrow portion of time out of eter-
nity, snatch also our narrov/ inheritance of passion
out of immortality, — even though our lives be as a
vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then
vanisheth awav.

134. But there are some of you who believe not
this ; who think this cloud of life has no such
close, that it is to float, revealed and illumined,
upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He
cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.
Some day, you believe, within these five or ten or

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

215

twenty years, for every one of us the judgment
will be set, and tlie books opened. If that be
true, far more than that must be true. Is there
but one day of judgment ? Why, for us every day
is a day of judgment,— every day is a dies tree,
and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of
its west. Think you that judgment waits till the
doors of the grave are opened ? It waits at the
doors of your houses, it waits at the corners of
your streets. We are in the midst of judgment;
the insects that we crush are our judges, the mo-
ments we fret away are our judges, the ele-
ments that feed us judge as they minister, and the
pleasures that deceive us judge as they indulge.
Let us, for our lives, do the work of men while we
bear the form of them, if indeed those lives are
7iot as a vapor, and do 7wt vanish away.

135. ''The work of men," — and what is that?
Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the
condition of being wholly ready to do it. But
many of us are for the most part thinking, not of
what v/e arc to do, but of what we are to get ; and
the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and
it is a mortal one, — we want to keep back part of
the price. And we continually talk of taking up
our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the
weight of it, — as if it was only a thing to be car-

216

SESAME AND LILIEe*,

: I

l> i

ried, instead of to be crucified upon. ''They
that are His have crucified the flesh with the affec-
tions and lusts." Does that mean, think you,
that in time of national distress, of religious trial,
of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity,
none of us will cease jesting, none cease idHng,
none put themselves to any wholesome work, none
take so much as a tag of lace off their footman's
coats, to save the world ? Or does it rather mean,
that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and
kindreds, — yes, and life, if need be? Life! —
some of us are ready enough to throw that away,
joyless as we have made it. But *^ sfafion in life,"
— how many of us are ready to quit fhat? Is it
not always the great objection where there is ques-
tion of finding something useful to do, ** We can-
not leave our stations in life " ?

Those of us who really cannot, — that is to say,
who can only maintain themselves by continuing
in some business or salaried office, — have already
something to do; and all that tbey have to see to
is, that they do it honestly and with all their
might. But with most people who use that apol-
ogy, ** remaining in the station of life to which
Providence has called them " means keeping all
the carriages and all the footmen and large houses
they can possibly pay for ; and once for all, I say

OF THE MYSTERY OP LIFE.

that if ever Providence di\/ put them into stations
of that sort, which is not at all a matter of certainty,
Providence is just now very distinctly calling them
out again. Levi's station in life was the receipt
of custom; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee;
and Paul's, the ante-chambers of the High Priest;
which ^'station in life" each had to leave, with
brief notice.

And whatever our station in life may be at this
crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our duty
ought, first, to live on as little as we can; and sec-
ondly, to do all the wholesome work for il we can,
and to spend all we can spare in doing all the sure
good we can.

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in
dressing people, then in lodging people, and
lastly, in rightly pleasing people with arts or sci-
ences, or any other subject of thought.

136. I say first in feeding; and once for all, do
not let yourselves be deceived by any of the com-
mon talk of ^indiscriminate charity." The order
to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the
industrious hungry, nor the amiable and well-in-
tentioned hungry, — but simply to feed the hungry.
It is quite true, infallibly true, that if any man
will not work, neither should he eat; think of that,
and every time you sit down to your dmner, ladies

218

SESAMK AND LILIES.

'.111

|i-

ili.s*.

and gentlemen, say solemnly before you ask a
blessing, ''How much work have I done to-day
for my dinner? " But the proper way to enforce
that order on those below you, as well as on your-
selves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to
starve together ; but very distinctly to discern and
seize your vagabond, and shut your vagabond up
out of honest people's way, and very sternly then
see that until he has worked he does not eat. But
•the first thing is to be sure you have the food to
give ; and therefore to enforce the organization of
vast activities in agriculture and in commerce, for
the production of the wholesomest food, and
proper storing and distribution of it, so that no
famine shall any more be possible among civilized
beings. There is plenty of work in this business
alone, and at once, for any number of people who
like to engage in it.

137. Secondly, dressing people, — that is to say,
urging every one within reach of your influence to
be always neat and clean, and giving them means
of being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse,
you must give up the effort with respect to them,
only taking care that no children within your
sphere of influence shall any more be brought up
with such habits; and that every person who is
willing to dress with propriety shall have encour

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

219

agement to do so. And the first absolutely neces-
sary step toward this is the gradual adoption of a
consistent dress for different ranks of persons, so
that their rank shall be known by their dress, and
the restriction of the changes of fashion within
certain limits. All which appears for the present
. quite impossible; but it is only so far as even diffi-
cult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity,
and desire to appear what we are not. And it is
not, nor ever shall be creed of mine, that these
mean and shallow vices are unconquerable by
Christian women.

138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, — which
you- may think should have been put first, but I
put it third, because we must feed and clothe peo-
ple where we find them, and lodge them afterward.
And providing lodgment for them means a great
deal of vigorous legislation, and cutting down of
vested interests that stand in the way -, and after
that, or before that, so far as we can get it, through
sanitary and remedial action in the houses that we
have, and then the building of more, strongly,
beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept
in proportion to their streams, and walled round,
so that there may be no festering and wretched
suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street within,
and the open country without, with a belt of

220

SESAME AND LILIES.

beautiful garden and orchard round the w cells, so
that from any part of the city perfectly fresh air
and grass and sight of far horizon might be reach-
able in a few minutes' walk. This the final aim;
but in immediate action every minor and possible
good to be instantly done, when and as we can;
roofs mended that have holes in them, ^'"nces
patched that have gaps in them, walls bu tressed
that totter, and floors propped that shake; clean-
liness and order enforced with our own hands and
eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all
the fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have
washed a flight of stone stairs all down with bucket
and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't
washed their stairs since they first went up them;
and I never made a better sketch than that after-
noon.

139. These, then, are the three first needs of
civilized life ; and the law for every Christian man
and woman is, that they shall be in direct service
toward one of these three needs as far as is con-
sistent with their own special occupation, and if
they have no special business, then wholly in one
of these services. And out of such exertion in
plain duty, all other good will come; for in this
direct contention with material evil, you will find
out the real nature of all evil ; you will discern by

OF THE MYSTEilY OF LIFE.

221

the various kinds of resistance what is really the
fault and main antagonism to good; also you will
find the most unexpected helps and profound les-
sons given, and truths will come thus down to us
which the speculation of all our lives would never
have raised us up to. You will find nearly every
educational problem solved as soon as you truly
want to do something ; everybody will become of
use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is
best for them to know in that use. Competitive ex-
amination will then, and not till then, be whole-
some, because it will be daily and calm and in
practice; and on these familiar arts and minute but
certain and serviceable knowledges, will be surely
edified and sustained the greater arts and splendid
theoretical sciences.

140. But much more than this. On such holy
and simple practice will be founded, indeed, at last,
an infallible religion. The greatest of all the mys-
teries of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption
of even the sincerest religion which is not daily
founded on rational, effective, humble, and helpful
action. Helpful action, observe! for there is just one
law, which obeyed, keeps all religions pure ; forgot-
ten, makes them all false. Whenever in any re-
ligious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds
to dwell upon the points in which we differ from

222

SESAME AND LILIES.

li I

III

Other people, we are wrong, and in the devil's
power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's
thanksgiving, — ** Lord, I thank thee that I am not
as other men are." At every moment of cur lives
we should be trying to find out, not in what we
differ with other people, but in what we agree
with them ; and the moment we find we can agree
as to any tiling that should be done, kind or good
(and who but fools couldn't?), then do it; push
at it together, — you can't quarrel in a side-by-side
push ; but the moment that even the best men
stop pushing and begin talking, they mistake their
pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. I will not
speak of the crimes which in past times have been
committed in the name of Christ, nor of the fol-
lies vhich are at this hour held to be consistent
with obedience to Him; but I 7£//7/ speak of the
morbid corruption and waste of vital power in re-
ligious sentiment, by which the p' re strength of
that which should be the guiding soul of every na-
tion, the splendor of its youthfui manhood and
spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or
cast away. You may see continually girls who
have never been taught to do a single useful thing
thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook,
who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medi-
cine, whose whole life has been passed either in

OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

223

play or in pride; you will find girls like these,
when they arc earnest-liearted, cast all their innate
passion of religious spirit, which was meant by
God to support them through the irksomeness of
daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over
the meaning of the great Book, of which no syl-
lable was ever yet to be understood but through a
deed ; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of
their womanhood made vain, and the glory of
their pure consciences wari)cd intu fruitless agony
concerning questions which the laws of common
serviceable life would have cither solved lor them
in an instant, or ke[)r out of their way. Give
such a girl any true work that will make her active
in the dawn and wenry at night, with the con-
sciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed
been the better fur her day, and the powerless
sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into
a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.

So with our youths. We once taught them to
make Latin verses, and called them educated ; now
we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a ball
with a bat, and call them educated. Can they
plough, can they sow, can they plant at tiie right
time, or build with a steady hand? Is it the effort
of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy
in thought, lovely in word and deed? Indeed it

224

S^.SAMI-: AM) MLIKS.

is with some, nay, with many, and the strengtli of
England is in them, and the hope; but we have
to turn their courage from the toil of war to the toil
of mercy, and their intellect from dispute of words
to discernment of things and their knighthood
from the errantry of adventure to the state and fi-
delity of a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall
abide for them and for us an incorruptible felicity
and an infallible region; shall abide for us P'aith,
no more to be assailed by temptation, no more to
be defended by wrath and by fear ; shall abide
with us Hope, no more to be quenched by the
years that overwhelm, or made ashamed by the
shadows that betray ; shall abide for us and with
us, the greatest of these, — the abiding will, the
abiding name, of our Father. For the greatest of
these is Charity.

THE END,

1 of
ave
toil
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fi-
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;ity
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to
icle
the
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ith
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of

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Full text of "Sesame and lilies [microform] : three lectures"

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