[ iii]

PROSPECTUS. ↩

The character and purpose of this Work are indicated by its title, and by the articles of the present number. The Editor wishes to assemble, upon the high æsthetic ground (away from the regions of strife, in any bad sense), writers of different schools,—that the antagonistic views of Philosophy, of Individual and of Social Culture, which prevail among the various divisions of the Church, and of the Scientific and Literary world, may be brought together, and a white radiance of love and wisdom be evolved from the union of the many-colored rays, that shall cultivate an harmonious intellectual and moral life in our country. Individuals of all parties have already expressed, by letters and in conversation, their interest in this plan; and the Editor hopes another number may present a practical exemplification of the fact, that all believe that on the æsthetic ground all may meet.

Whether Reviewing shall form a large part of the matter of this Publication is a question to be answered by future numbers. The object is good matter; and no form is prescribed to the author who is alive. One of the Editor's correspondents says upon this head:—"There is one species of periodical which I should like to see established; and that is, a Censor of periodicals, a Review of Reviews, where judgments, unjust or inadequate, expressed in other journals, should be reconsidered and overruled; where articles, written in a bad spirit, should meet with just reprobation. As it is, reviewers, and editors of journals, are a class of men who are never called to account. I would have a court constituted [iv] especially for that order. I would have such writers as ———, and such articles as ———, brought to the bar, tried, and judged according to their deserts."

No one is better qualified for this duty than the author of the suggestion; and the Editor will rejoice to have him or others put the plan into execution in future numbers, and hereby gives invitation to them to do it.

The plan of publication for this Work is like that of the "British and Foreign Review," which has been the model of its form, size, and type; namely, that a number should appear whenever a sufficient quantity of valuable matter shall have accumulated to fill 256 pages. This will in no case happen more than three times a year; perhaps not oftener than once a year.

The terms of patronage proposed are peculiar to itself. No person is asked to subscribe for more than one number in advance; but whoever is so far pleased with the current number as to desire another is requested to send an order to that effect to the Editor, who is also Publisher, No. 13, West-street, Boston. When a sufficient number of orders are given to pay for the publication, including compensation to the authors, a new number will be printed; the Editor being content to receive such profit as may accrue from the sale of other numbers not subscribed for beforehand. The Publisher's subscribers will have the numbers at $1, payable on delivery. The price at the bookstores will be $1.25.

Boston, May, 1849.

[ 1]

ÆSTHETIC PAPERS.

THE WORD "ÆSTHETIC."↩

Of all the scientific terms in common use, perhaps no one conveys to the mind a more vague and indeterminable sense than this, at the same time that the user is always conscious of a meaning and appropriateness; so that he is in the position of one who endeavors to convey his sense of the real presence of an idea, which still he cannot himself fully grasp and account for.

We have adopted this vague, this comprehensive, but undefined word, in our titlepage; thereby rendering ourselves responsible for some account, however incomplete, of that which it stands for to us.

We should render little assistance by referring the reader to Dictionary or Encyclopedia. He might there find, that the word æsthetics implies a "philosophy of poetry and the fine arts:" but he that has used the word but twice perceives,that it is more than this; that, like carbon or oxygen, it is an element that encounters his inquiry in the most unexpected forms; that what he took for simple substances, as air or water, are chemical combinations, into which his new element largely enters, and which cannot exist without it.

The "æsthetic element," then, is in our view neither a theory of the beautiful, nor a philosophy of art, but a component and indivisible part in all human creations which are not mere works of necessity; in other words, which are based on idea, as distinguished from appetite.

[2]

Sundry pairs of words, dualistic philosophical terms, have been long growing into use, and exercising, by the ideas they represent, an influence on the world of thought; such as subjective and objective, personal and impersonal, the Me and the Not-me; all having a reference to the central fact of the constant relation of the individual to the universal, and of their equally constant separation. The one always "works and lives in the other;" and, according to the preponderance of the one or the other element, the most various results appear in individuals and in nations.

Historians have remarked, and our own eyes see and have seen, the "profound impersonality" which is the characteristic of the German genius, as distinguished from the vivid personality of the French. L'état, c'est moi! was a concentrated formula of that personal character which is equally apparent in the centralizing murders of the Merovingian dynasty, and in those analogous assassinations whereby, thirteen centuries after, each petty deputy strove to make his personality the central life of France.

It results from these diverse characteristics, that the Frenchman has always shone in action, where the strong personal feeling, the consciousness of the self, leads to the most brilliant results, the heroic of action. The German, on the contrary, is infinitely greatest in thought, easily placing his less exacting personality on one side, so that it should shed no disturbing colors upon his calm objective view.

Into the world of art also, as into that of politics and life, these self-opposing and neutralizing elements enter. Each man, according to his personal or unpersonal mode of being, according to the predominance of the subjective or the objective in his nature, takes the one or the other position. The French school of criticism, the personal, is based upon taste. It inquires, Does this work satisfy and please my taste, that is the taste of cultivated persons; the taste of the best judges or authorities? A shifting standard, offering no absolute criterion; which places the highest aim of art in pleasing; asking triumphantly, What, then, becomes of art, if its object be not to please? According to the German formula, this is to subordinate the object to the observer. [3 The contrary position, the unpersonal, which sinks and subordinates the observer to the object,—which, by putting my personality aside, enables me to see the object in a pure uncolored light,—is the æsthetic.

Germany is the discoverer of the æsthetic, because the German mind, more than any other, embodies the unpersonal principle that underlies the æsthetic view. It became conscious of its own possession, as soon as its criticism began to apply itself to the region of literature and the arts. But it is singular, that, armed with this talisman to explore and expound the mysteries of art, there is a peculiar deficiency in the modern German attempts in the arts that address themselves to the eye. It reminds us of a man, trying, in a painstaking manner, to imitate the sports and feats that he failed to learn in his youth: so that the untaught, unscientific skill of a vigorous child shoots at a bound far beyond him.

How, then, do we account for the wonders that German art achieved in architecture in old time, and lately in music? Simply by the recollection, that these arts were German growths, antecedent to any conscious æsthetic criticism. Moreover, the arts may be classified, as partaking, in a greater or less degree, of the individual or the universal. Music and architecture, by their nature, are of a more universal expression than painting and sculpture, and belong more naturally to the German.

The progress of art, considered with relation to these two principles, is as follows:—All art, in its origin, is national and religious. The feeling expressed is of lar greater importance than the vehicle in which it is conveyed. The practical portion of early art is conventional: the spiritual is profoundly significant, confined in its range, narrow but exalted. An expression of the infinite by means of the beautiful, inadequate indeed as expression, but deeply interesting, as is all inadequate expression, to those who can read the intention through the uncertain and vague embodiment.

The second step in art is when the practical, resting on this deep spiritual basis, advances by means of individual [4] powers, by the personal skill, set free from the national conventionality, yet still confined within certain bounds, the limit and frame, as it were, of true art:—a second expression of the infinite by the beautiful, in which the beauty and satisfactoriness of the expression balances the less deep significance of the idea.

In the first stage, the æsthetic element prevailed unconsciously; for neither taste nor the æsthetic principle has any conscious place in creative, but only in critical ages. The progress of criticism is the reverse of that of art. In the creative age, appreciation is simple, intuitive, passionate, of which the delight of the people in national songs, the passionate enthusiasm with which the Florentines welcomed Cimabue's Madonna, are examples. When criticism springs up, it is first in the form of taste. The individual subjects the productions of art to his own personality. He says, "This is good, for it pleases me." Of course, however perfect this taste may be, it is still limited by the individuality: it is based on the degree of pleasure and satisfaction conveyed by a work to a cultivated person. It comes to be really believed, that the end and object of art is to please. Art becomes a luxury; its pleasures can be bought and sold; its appreciation becomes more and more external.

Such was the condition of criticism, when the profound self-subordinating genius of Germany perceived, in the deep significance of ancient works, the presence of an element which the individual mind, with its standard of beauty, and its idea of gratification to the senses, was utterly unable to account for. The Germans went to school to their own ancient paintings, those singularly national works in which a childlike, simple, often unartistic exterior is made to convey the consciousness of the highest spiritual ideal.

The word æsthetic is difficult of definition, because it is the watchword of a whole revolution in criticism. Like Whig and Tory, it is the standard of a party; it marks the progress of an idea. It is as a watchword we use it, to designate, in our department, that phase in human progress which subordinates the individual to the general, that he may re-appear on a higher plane of individuality.

[ 5]

Art. I.—CRITICISM. ↩

"Thucydides was the inventor of an art which before him had been almost unknown, the art of historic criticism, without being conscious of the infinite value of his invention. For he did not apply it to all branches of knowledge, but only to his subject, because it was a natural consequence of that subject. The historic Muse had made him acquainted with it: no one before or after him has drawn the line more clearly between history and tradition. And what is this but to draw the distinction between the historic culture of the East and West, and—if we recognize how much depended on this historic culture—between the whole scientific culture of the East and West? For, to repeat a remark which has been already cursorily made, the great difference between the two consists in this: in the West, the free spirit of criticism was developed; in the East, never."

The above well-known passage of Heeren will serve as a suitable introduction to the few remarks we have to make on the same subject;—a subject which, in this short extract, is made to take so imposing a form.

A Review is, or is supposed to be, an embodiment of this important element; exercising itself always with reference to the leading interests of the age, holding a middle place between the buzz of the newspapers and the mature judgment of the historian, less subject to the influences of passion or party than the former, and held to less strict account for severe attention to justice than the latter. Our current literary ideas and forms are of English growth. The violence of party spirit, the universal interest in politics, have in England made the great Reviews into political organs. By this means, political passions have been made a touchstone of literary merit, and a spirit of unfairness has prevailed, of which, though the good sense of the English has lately led them to better things, the effects will long be visible in English literature.

Our American defect lies in the opposite extreme. Grave men gravely vaunt American productions in a way that, to [6] an uninterested observer, must seem sadly absurd. We mention these national vices now, only to show the desirableness of principles of criticism; and, though a Review is not the place for a philosophical inquiry, we shall do no harm by endeavoring to make clear to ourselves and others some notion of what this Science of Criticism may be.

We have seen it stated above, that the Greeks were the inventors of criticism. The author goes on to say of Thucydides, in reference to this subject, that "neither his own age nor the following could reach him." If we continue the inquiry down, we shall see that it was not for many ages that this Greek invention came to exert an active influence on human affairs. Considering the literatures of Europe singly in order, we discover easily some one prevailing national characteristic in each, as for instance, in the Greek—invention. Nearly every form in which human thought and activity have since flowed were invented by the Greeks. The Roman characteristic, if we subtract the elegant culture they derived, almost translated, from the Greeks, was patriotism,—the grandeur, the power, the dignity of Rome. Their errand was to make the world Roman. This spirit is visible in every page of the greater Romans. There was satire in Rome, as there had been in Greece; but satire is not criticism.

In the Italians, under circumstances analogous to the Greek in certain respects, we see again inventors both in art and literature. The discovery of the ancient literatures, with their inimitable monuments, acted perhaps unfavorably on the originality of Italian genius, and accounts for the brevity of that list of great authors, whose small number is as remarkable as their wonderful excellence. It is the remark of a sagacious critic, that the burning of the Alexandrian Library was perhaps no such misfortune for the world, since it would have been hard for a modern literature to have sprung up in the face of such an overwhelming mass of ancient books.

In the French we have a literature of social life. The great French problem is Society. It is first in the Germans that we discover a pure tendency towards criticism, so that [7] we may give this as the universally prevailing characteristic of their literature.

To trace the action of the critical element upon literature in long periods, let us compare some Greek work with a modern. In the "Prometheus" of Æschylus, we see gods, demigods, and personages exalted above humanity, as actors. These personages were the subject of an active religious belief in the audience; so that, whilst they viewed the author as a man, they saw something divine, consecrated, and inspired in his work. They recognized the Divine Spirit in humanity; but, in becoming divine, it ceased to be human, and was clothed to their minds in forms of superhuman grace, beauty, and strength. The actors in the Greek heroic and tragic works were rarely, if ever, mere men. In the early ages of Greece, and even till after the age of Pericles, whilst such unequalled splendor and magnificence of art were lavished on temples and sacred places, we learn that no private man presumed to appropriate such splendors to his own use and convenience.

If we take now a drama of Shakspeare, "Hamlet," for instance, we find all changed. In Greece and Rome, the gods gradually ceased to be divine. No longer inspiring belief, they had existed in literature as ornament, until, worn out even for this use, they were laid aside altogether. But literature must have an upper element in which to work. A higher religion succeeded the poetical theology of the Greeks. This new religion also revealed a poetic side. which was availed of for the production of great works of art and literature among the Italians and other nations. In the North, it took a more severe, and at the same time more spiritual character, which, whilst rendering it unavailable for the purposes of art and literature, made it too sacred for such profanation, as it was esteemed.

Whilst the divine element was thus removed to a sphere beyond the reach of literature, and skepticism had banished to the vulgar the belief in intermediate powers, a higher element was developed in man himself. The ancient hero was a demigod: the modern is a man.

Accordingly, we find in Hamlet an exalted personage [8] indeed, a king's son; but the great interest lies in the character, apart from all mythical interest, all superhuman or unearthly attributes.

The critical character predominates not only in the form, but in the matter, of this, and in part of all Shakspeare's plays, and all his works. The surpassing interest of Hamlet over the other plays lies in the mind of the hero, to whom the whole world, all his relations in life, and his own soul, do but furnish food for a criticism, morbid in its excess; so that, as he himself says, the current of all enterprise is turned awry, and loses the name of action.

The inventive spirit of the Greeks was nowhere more exhibited than in the distinct forms they gave to every department of literature and art. A. great modern critic has shown, that the arts become debased, when they are suffered to run into each other: as, for instance, when poetry usurps the province of painting, or the latter of sculpture, &c. [1] In the Greeks, the observance of this law appears almost as a natural instinct, not only in respect to the different arts, but even in the different provinces of the same art. It seems as if the same principle which caused every noun or verb to be so rich in forms of expression, prevailed, in making their literature full of varied forms of artistic utterance. Every writing among them had a form, by which it plainly belonged to some one understood class. Among the moderns, on the contrary, every writing tends to the formless. We may trace the tendency to form, growing gradually weaker and more artificial through the Roman literature, and becoming antiquated in the imitative portion of the French. The effort towards a new establishment of literary form on a critical basis, in Germany, is one of the most remarkable literary phenomena of our age.

The literary forms had their origin in the religious and festive observances of a people of primitive manners and high intellectual tendencies, among whom, owing to the absence of books, and the mechanical and other obstacles in the way of communication by writing, the publication or utterance of [9] every literary work must seek public occasions of one sort or another. Among such a people, forms acquire a conventional value, depending first on religious respect and awe, and afterwards on habit, and the perception of a propriety and beauty in such natural promptings of the national genius, as no after-thought or higher culture is ever able to improve upon. They have in this respect a strict analogy with architectural forms, which in like manner have their origin in early and prescriptive religious models, gradually reduced to proportion and beauty, without ever leaving the sacred pristine shape. Certain of the arts are the nearly pure emanation and property of national genius; whilst others, in various degrees, become the property of individuals. Among the former we may reckon, first, Language, which, as far as we can judge, was more perfect in times beyond the record of literature than in later days, so that what languages we possess have been called the pieced fragments of antiquity; second, Literary forms, which also carry back their highest perfection nearly to the age of their invention; and, thirdly, Architecture. The other arts, religious and national in their origin, are more the province of individual genius, and less strictly subject to eras and races.

Whilst literature and the arts speak by the mouths and hands of gifted individuals, they are based upon the national genius; and to this they have finally to render account. Cultivated minds may perceive the beauty and perfection of a Greek temple; but they cannot persuade a Christian people of its fitness and appropriateness for their worship. Literary men may believe the epic, or the pure dramatic, to be the most perfect of literary forms; yet, since the people have learned to read to themselves what was formerly read or declaimed to them, these forms have been declared unmanageable. Cowper said he could not imagine a man writing, without the intention of publishing, and the idea of a reading public before him; and, in like manner, we can readily conceive how the idea of a circle of devoted hearers, fired with enthusiasm as they listened to the deeds of their ancestors, should be needful to inspire the bard, and buoy [10] him up as he floated through oceans of hexameters. How we miss this happy consciousness of the impossibility of satiating a living audience, in Virgil, and all later epic poets! The rigid dramatic laws of the Greeks might easily become a magic inspiration to the poet, who was sure of a rapt audience during the performance of a drama, of which each of the three acts was a whole tragedy in itself.

It is the greater or less certainty of an audience, and the nature of that audience, which rule the forms of literature, and develope or suppress the powers of the poet. It is true, a great work is written for all time, and the artist will always feel that time is necessary to his true appreciation; but still it is the nature of his immediate audience that gives the form and shape to his efforts. In the first or Inventive epoch, a devout and popular audience will demand form as the medium through which thought has always been presented to them. In the second or Imitative, the audience is cultivated, and form is to them the luxury and ornament of literature. In the Critical, the form becomes subservient to the matter; the audience is neither to be enchanted by the beauty, nor charmed by the luxury, of literature; it is neither devout nor cultivated; it demands to be interested and informed. Literature is no longer the business of a festival, or the ornament of elegant culture: it is the thing of every day, and to be criticised by every-day rules. It is perceived that form is not necessary to the transmission of thought by books, and all those modes of writing are adopted where its fetters may be avoided; and whereas, in its origin, form was the means taken by the author to come into contact with his audience, it is now viewed as an obstacle between the writer and his readers. It is like the ceremonious full dress, whereby our ancestors thought to honor themselves and their guests, and to forward the purposes of social intercourse; but which their descendants have criticised out of existence, because it has become in our day a bar, instead of a gate, between man and man.

We have only to consider the almost imperceptible portion of written and printed works, that now make pretension to any stricter form than the facile novel or the flexible essay. [11] In poetry what multitudes of "pieces" crowd the corners of our newspapers and magazines, and even find their way to a more permanent form, to which it is impossible to give any more generic name than "pieces of poetry;" pieces, indeed, whereof no whole could be constructed! If they happen to be of fourteen lines, they are "sonnets." There are "songs" that could never be sung. There are "lines," and "fragments," "dramatic scenes," "epical fragments;" every device that can be suggested to avoid a matured, preconsidered form.

Yet it may be safely said, that almost every great poetical genius has contemplated, were it only as a day-dream, the undertaking of some great and formal work; and the respect with which such ideas and undertakings are always regarded, when based upon adequate powers, are a proof of a real existence and value in forms, even at this late day. How many epics have been dreamed of by poets, and despaired of! How many have tested their powers by a dramatic effort that could not stand the test! What added splendor and importance have invested even the too pedantic form of the classical French school!

We have spoken of the German as the critical literature. We have also, in the literary history of this nation, the remarkable fact, of a most careful and successful attention to literary forms, existing contemporaneously with the purest development of critical science. The admirers of Goethe would even perhaps go so far as to say, that in him we find a union of the most successful cultivation of literary form in later times, with the greatest critical judgment and skill the world has ever seen applied to literary matters. However this may be, a short consideration of what he accomplished must necessarily have a bearing on our subject.

Taking his works collectively, we are first called upon to remark a plain line of division between those that have a clear, easily understood, and pre-arranged plan or form, and others that are not only destitute to common eyes of any such outward form, but have an incoherence and formlessness, which the admirers of the poet have for the most part [12] been able to account for only on the hypothesis of an internal form and arrangement, not visible to the outward eye; and this explanation seems plausible enough in an author who professed to regard an inner meaning as a necessary adjunct to a work of art. Still, granting this view of the subject, such internal arrangement is a different thing from the literary form, of which we have been speaking; for, although all form may be said to have a body and a soul, an inward significance as well as an outward appearance, yet this outward appearance is its essential quality. As Goethe is, of all the moderns, the most complete master of form, we must look upon his defiance of it in the one case as being equally premeditated with his strict attention to it in others. It is easy to see, however high value be placed upon form, that those works of the opposite character were the ones that had the strongest hold upon him. "Iphigenia" and "Tasso" were finished and dismissed; but "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister" seem to have been of perpetual recurrence to his mind. Of each he produced a second part in his old age; and, at a time when we might have looked for greater regularity and symmetry, the reader finds himself perplexed by a more inexplicable incoherence.

We have said above, that we may look upon the German literature as the most complete embodiment the world has seen of the critical element. The inquiry at once suggests itself, whether this side of literature is to follow the example of the preceding phases, and, having received a full development, cease to appear as the predominant idea; giving place in its turn to some new domination, if indeed the German may be considered as giving such full completion to the idea. Leaving this question for the present, shall we be far wrong if we assume that the greatest literary genius Germany has produced owes the peculiar form his development took, to his coincidence with this great national characteristic? If criticism be a real and living thing, and not a dead letter, its essence consists in this,—to see what has taken place in the world under a new point of view; to find a point from which facts arrange themselves in a new and unexpected manner, so that circumstances, before isolated, are seen as a part of [13] a new whole; and from this principle it results, that there is such a thing as creative criticism.

The mind of Goethe was based on this principle. All the facts of his own experience, all knowledge of the characters of others, all the literature of the past, all the history and results of art, all facts of religion and history, were perpetually undergoing this process, in his mind. At each successively new point of view, he placed as a milestone a work, a " Dorothea," a "Tasso," a " Natürliche Tochter," a "Götz von Berlichengen." But not in this light are to be viewed the "Faust" and "Wilhelm," which were rather the companions of his journey, other forms of the man's self.

In Goethe we can always perceive at work two separate forms of the principle,—constructive criticism, and destructive. That which the demonic nature of Mephistophiles perpetually pulls apart and disjoins, the human nature of Faust assimilates, and reconstructs into a whole. In the first part, where the object to be constructed is Life, the demonic power is supposed to prevail. In the second part, where the object is Art or creative thought, if the success is never complete, there is a succession of beautiful results; and Mephistophiles himself becomes the engine by which these are brought about. If we mistake not, the same idea may be traced in the "Meister," though the demonic element of the "Faust" becomes unimpassioned observation in the latter.

Whilst we acknowledge these works as the results of the critical spirit, it may well be asked how the same principles apply in any measure to the other works which we have spoken of as the masterpieces of form, and therefore as divided, toto cœlo, from these.

The Germanic nations, including the English, are remarkable for a tendency that has no less bearing on political and religious than on literary action; viz. that, while the critical spirit is always busy in pulling to pieces, the ulterior purpose of reconstruction is never absent for a moment. This may be illustrated by examples from every department of action or achievement. The Reformation of Luther was a national criticism of Catholicism, resulting in the immediate [14] establishment of a new religion. Compare this with the way in which the destructive element in France, when once aroused against Catholicism, criticised it out of fashion, without dreaming of creating any thing new to supply its place. The French Revolution was a destructive criticism of royal government. When this flame ceased for want of fuel, France could find no alternative but military power. [2] Compare this with the results of the English Revolution and our own. All ancient nations, relaxing from the simple virtues of heroic ancestors, declined and disappeared, pushed from their stools by new and fresher races. Modern nations would have followed their example, but for the influence of the reconstructive principle in the Germanic race; the same principle which is in literature scientific criticism, is in religion reformation, is in politics reform.

This reconstructive criticism, based upon the profoundest scholarship and strong natural genius, has produced in Germany those works which are esteemed the flower of their literature, in which the mind of the nation is fused into moulds, not of pedantic or even of elegant formality, but of living, significant form. Has the same taken place in England? Certainly not in later times; and, since we have included the English among the Germanic nations with reference to the presence of the critical spirit, it will be interesting to inquire, why not?

From position and circumstance, as from natural character, England has enjoyed a freer and more active political existence than any other modern nation. The basis of this liberty was criticism. England alone has enjoyed freedom of the press; and naturally this criticism has been applied to the absorbing interests of politics, and the representatives of political opinions,—persons. A rigid aristocracy assailable in this way only, and freely to be attacked thus, this liberty has in England always been licentious, simply because it was the only liberty; in other words, the only ground where birth and place had no vantage. Personalities always tend to brutalize and degrade; and it is undeniable, that a brutal [15] and savage spirit, not unaccompanied by consummate ability, has prevailed in the English political press; a spirit which would be tolerated nowhere else in the relations of life. As a necessary consequence, such writing has usually been anonymous;—Junius, in all his characteristics, was not an exception, but a type;—and because anonymous, irresponsible. We have in England the singular spectacle of a whole class of writers, many of them possessed of powers that would under other circumstances have insured them fame, content to pass their lives in obscurity, unknown to the world, which daily feeds on the produce of their indefatigable pens. It is useless to speak of exceptions: the tendency of the system is inevitable. This freedom, this license of the press, has been indispensable to England; but its advantages are dearly bought. If the German error be in criticising political action with the same scientific conscientiousness that is applied to literary or abstract questions, so that with them, as with Hamlet, action loses the name of action; the English fault is no less, of applying to literature the same dashing critique that is unscrupulously used with respect to character and opinion. The favorite is he who can stand being knocked, without being knocked down; or, if he be down, can rise again. They show Byron as a proof of the value of the system, as if, had there been no "Edinburgh," there would have been no Byron. But, though Byron could defend himself, who cannot see that he was sensitive, and that the truculent English criticism, of which the "Edinburgh Review" was but one form, soured the whole milk of his genius; urged him to tours de force, to show that he was not to be sneered at; and incited him to every folly in literature and life, lest the world should discover that he had a genial and poetical nature?

The extravagant praise of mediocre celebrities is a necessary, and nearly as injurious, part of the system. The author is placed in a false position: he writes for all men; but he finds he must choose a party, or, giving up the hope of a nation s attention, write for a coterie.

Again, it is doubtful if the licentiousness of the press in England has not been injurious to freedom of thought, [16] paradoxical as it may seem. The English are free of speech; but their idea of freedom of thought has been too often comprised in praising and blaming what they choose, and as loudly as they choose. Now, are freedom of thought and freedom of speech identical? or do they necessarily go together? What is freedom of thought? Of course, no outward force can prevent my thinking what I will: it is not even a matter of will. I think what I must,—what I can not help. I may indeed pin my faith to another man's sleeve, and thus from indolence give up my thought, and become the slave of his; or I may be the slave of my own prejudices and passions; I may bow to the "idols of the forum," and "idols of the den." The man of free thought is he whose mind is open to judge every opinion, every work, every man on his own merits.

Is a licentious press even favorable to such a state of mind? It is simply the machine whereby the rough and hasty instinct of a people is brought efficiently to bear upon the conduct of their rulers; it is the charter of a people's liberties, not because its judgments are correct, but because, like the geese of the Capitol, it awakens men to discover whether good or evil is being done, lest judgment go against them by default. It is noisy, violent, unfair, having a blind tendency, rather than a steady view, towards right. It asks, "Right or wrong? guilty or not guilty?" It applies the same summary process to books, as we daily see, with most remarkable results. For, according to this system, a book that makes any impression at all comes to be regarded as a public enemy or a public idol, according to the politics or the prejudices of the public accuser. There is no medium. It is evident that either of these positions is injurious to an author, but not equally so. He that writes in the assurance of popular applause has at any rate ample room and space to develope his genius. The crowded audience, the eager, expectant eyes, all comfort and inspire the singer. That this is not in vain, the enormous literary successes of the popular writers in France and England, of Scott and Dickens, of Sue and Dumas, loudly attest. But as we sow, we must reap. We do not apply our gold and praise in vain. [17] We have the best specimens, but if not of the worst class, surely not of the best.

In Germany, speech has been less and thought more free than in England. The popular element has never had an immediately available voice in public matters. Whilst criticism in England has been busy with daily politics; in Germany a doubtful, if not forbidden ground; it has been applied in the latter country to thought, to literature, philosophy, and art. In Germany the best and most cultivated minds have been the critics: in England these have rather been the criticized. The results are before us: of what value, they are perhaps too near to us, as yet, for us to form a definite opinion.

We do not recognize as an original element the conscious, reconstructive, self-restoring principle of criticism in the other European nations. France is indeed hypercritical; but French criticism is skeptical: it destroys the old faith, and leaves no basis upon which to build a new. The German, while he criticises, is never skeptical, but substitutes a living belief for that which had become dead and inert. The French Revolution could find no reconstructive element on which to pause, and rebuild a political fabric. No truth was left but such as could be found in exact science or brute strength. The former was tried by Sieyès and others, and failed, as such attempts always must. The latter prevailed. In Napoleon, they found a strong man; in a European war, necessity of action. Wholesome exercise restored health; but France has since been the sport of fortune, rather than the exemplification of principles. Of its literature, what shall we say? That it goes on, dissecting away the ground whereon the social basis rests, a skepticism of all purity and honor? Its literary men seem to us analogous to the politicians of the Revolution,—men of wonderful talent, of fearless mind, weighing every old institution, and, as it is found wanting, casting it aside; but suggesting in their room nothing practicable, finding in the end nothing real but passion and power. Do we not hear of a great French discovery whereby all society is to be remodelled (within six years, the inventor says) upon the principle of [18] harmonizing the passions, instead of restraining them? The very Sieyès of this moral revolution.

It is no new theory of Fourier, and of the modern French school, that a greater force is to be derived from the harmonic action of the passions than from their restraint, and that a future society is to depend upon this law. The idea is true and eternal: it is the foundation of all poetry, the dream of youth; it is argued in the first page of man's history, and the lapse of every few centuries sees the argument rehearsed. The human race has passionately clung to the belief. We are so in love with it, that we are always willing to sacrifice ourselves that another may enjoy it. We ask only that some one may enjoy; and that one is our idol. The principle of loyalty is based on it. What millions are willing slaves, that the passions of an Alexander or a Napoleon may meet no check in their superb development! We feel ourselves impersonated in them. There is no true lover that would not die, that the object of his love might be happy. Which is the more sublime object of the two? Are not these vulgar great men, after all? Is man ever sublime but when he renounces?

It is in this point that the French stand in opposition to the critical, no less than the religious, spirit of modern times. The mad belief of the Revolution was, that every man might have this theoretic freedom; the mad career of Napoleon was based on their will, that one man should have it. That which they failed to realize in the political, they now seek in the social world, and by the same process; viz. a destructive criticism of the old, and a theory of a new social state based not on experience or criticism, but upon "exact science" and arithmetic.

The end of our own Revolution was involved in the be ginning. The principle of self-government, derived through our Puritan ancestors, was full grown in us. It was a criticism in which the fate of the world was involved; and yet how little was destroyed! It was the construction of a new world on grounds derived from criticism of the old. Only so much struggle was necessary as served to unite us in the effort. The French Revolution was gradual, was blind, not [19] knowing whither it went: the American was complete in the person of every man who signed the Declaration.

Such is the nature of all true criticism that lies beyond the region of exact science. The old is reviewed, not from a blind fault-finding, or vague dissatisfaction, but from a complete new whole, existing in embryo.

As we recognize two distinct appearances of truth, viz. truths of exact science, and truths of faith; in like manner we must distinguish a different form of criticism for each. A faith is the sum of the convictions of a man, or a nation, in regard to spiritual things: its form is based on the teachings of the past; and its criticism rests on inward, individual experience. When it criticism facts, it is from an internal point of view, and because they disagree with inward experience: no fact becomes monstrous whilst it is the sign of an inward conviction. Now, not religion alone, but the whole life of man, social and political, rests upon faith; in other words, upon a form of truth commensurate to man's progress,—a relative, not an absolute truth.Exact science, on the other hand, rests on a correct observation of phenomena: its safety lies in admitting nothing which is not capable of demonstration or proof. It is based upon doubt. In the predominance of one or other of these principles, lies the greatest difference between the civilization and the literature of the ancient and modern world. Among the ancients, the domain of exact science was invaded by faith: in more modern times, the region of faith was usurped by exact science. In our day, there are signs of an oscillation in the reverse direction. A critique of the development of this new tendency in the greatest minds of our era would include a Goethe and a Swedenborg in the same category.

In individual character, also, we may observe the presence of the critical element to produce the most remarkable contrast between the ancient man and the modern. The ideal ancient hero is a magnificent child, great, simply from the possession of great gifts; an Achilles, unconscious of any struggle, save with circumstance and the world. The modern idea always includes inward struggle and conquest. We mark the signs of this changed ideal everywhere. The [20] artistic spirit of the Greeks was bright, cheerful, joyous, indicating facility and grace: the modern tends more to gloomy grandeur, a circumscribed, unconscious grace and perfection, in contrast with a limitless and vague sublimity.

This latter characteristic existed in a degree also among the Jews, and from the same cause to which the moderns owe it,—a more sublime and terrible religious belief, that carried the mind beyond all visible space and power. The Christian revelation has modified this effect, not by rendering the idea of the Supreme more familiar, but by presenting a divine perfection as a model to every man.

The Greek did not criticise himself, because he had no higher standard than the action of creatures like himself. The Christian criticises himself from a standard of ineffable perfection, so that the idea of struggle and difficulty, even of the greatest struggle the powers are capable of, is inseparable from that of the true Christian.

This element being thus in general existence throughout the world, even those who are unmoved by the demands of religion partake of the idea of an indefinitely exalted standard towards whatever excellence they incline; and, as human exertions are limited, instead of resting with that we can easily accomplish, a longing for the indefinite springs up in every ardent breast, and finds a response, as every genuine feeling does, in nature, and demands it of art.

How is it that, while we receive a deeper answer from nature, art has become incapable of adequately responding to it? Instead of producing greater works than of old, we fail of reaching the ancient excellence. Is it that outward nature has become too great to our apprehension, that man has been invested with attributes too internal to be represented by outward form; that thus these outward arts decay; and, if this hypothesis be correct, that we must find in poetry and music what the other arts can no longer represent?

However these things may be, we cannot leave this part of our subject, without recurring once more to "Hamlet," in illustration of what we have been saying. In the Greek works, individual character is subordinate to the general [21] action of the piece; when it becomes prominent, its characteristic, like that of their statues, is a charming propriety and harmony; in other words, beauty. In "Hamlet" the action of the piece is subordinate to the character of the hero; and this character is more interesting than beautiful or harmonious. The reason of this change, which affects the whole of art, may be traced to the struggle we have spoken of as the characteristic of modern character, and which, by its very nature, possesses more interest than beauty. As a sequel to what we said of Goethe, it may be remarked, that, even in works of carefully observed form like the "Tasso," the presence of struggle and the predominant interest of individual character mark a broad line of distinction between their effect, and that of the more simple elements of the ancients.

The English were the first great nation in which the principle of a practical criticism was admitted as the political basis. There was a nearer approach to this in the polity of Greece and Rome than in any other modern state; and perhaps the only reason why this principle in those nations did not develope the modern fact of national regeneration may be found in the existence of slavery among them. So long as a person can exist in a state without rights, so long the true and only foundation of political criticism is wanting. Unless the principle is admitted that every man is free, no good reason can be given why any man shall be free. The reason why the detrimental influence of slavery was so long inert in the ancient nations, was that the condition of slavery had never been criticised. No error becomes immediately demoralizing, until it is the subject of criticism. A hundred years ago, a man might get daily drunk, and still retain his self-respect. Now drunkenness is ruin. So, in the ancient states, slavery might exist, and its fatal effects appear only after the lapse of centuries, and then be ascribed to other causes. Our Southern States are an obvious example. Freedom of the press does not exist, criticism does not exist, political or literary. Surely that is a strong faith which believes this state of things can be lasting. We have seen freedom of thought exist in Germany, with a censorship [22] of the press; but freedom of thought can surely not exist where the whole energies of the mind are exerted in defence of a falsehood. Suppose the energies of the Greek mind to have been turned by circumstances to the defence of their system of servitude, what would the world have known of their after-history?

The philosophy of this state of things is this:—As long as an institution is not criticised, we view it as a fixed fact. It has therefore no prominent place in our thoughts among other questions. When criticism of it begins, every man is called on to make up his mind in relation to it. Supposing, then, the institution to be either false in itself, or worn out and become false, we are reduced to the necessity of either renouncing it, or of living a lie for the sake of our prejudices or our interests; a state, of which a man is always more or less clearly conscious, and which soon proves demoralizing and fatal.

In England the critical principle has lived and flourished among institutions otherwise aristocratic and stringent; or rather we may say, that the English race split, and that the younger half came to work out on a more spacious field that establishment of a free and universal political criticism which, from many causes of outward position, as well as feudal strength, was felt to be alike ineligible and infeasible at home. If England had become a republic after the time of Cromwell, it is doubtful if the strength would not have been dissipated in internal faction, which, concentrated under monarchical rule, has been able to balance the despotic powers of Europe. It is even probable that our own political existence depended on the same cause. If there had been toleration in the mother-country, it would not have been so fiercely fought for here.

In this country, we for the first time see, theoretically at least, a pure critical basis; a constitution, not the growth of time, or the slow and encumbered fruit of the genius of a nation in combination with circumstance and difficulty, but a free critique from the highest point of view of the past history of the world. The theory of all our action, from the school district to the presidency, is, that the act of to-day [23] criticises the act; of yesterday; the party of conservation, that of progress.

The ideal state of any period would represent the ideal man upon a large scale, exposed to the same temptations, subject to the same weaknesses, subsisting by the same strength. The ancient state, or man unconscious, uncriticised, subsisting by native strength and superiority, is just or unjust, generous or selfish, as natural disposition or his own wild will may prompt. This spirit was the ancient idea of heroism: of such heroic states and heroic men, history gives us many examples. The modern state, like the modern man, has his being, not merely in strength, but also in principles. Of every step he is conscious, always hearing the voice of external or internal criticism. His will and natural impulse have ceased to be a law to himself or others, except so far as they, in fact or belief, square with principles. Baseness is, to be wanting by the test of one's own standard. This standard, in a rude age, is martial virtue: until that is corrupted, the nation may be destroyed, but cannot be demoralized. It is no longer so with us. We are like the man who has professed religion, who has separated himself from the world from principle: he cannot sin, without losing his self-respect.

If all our political safety lies in the certain criticism to which every public action is amenable, to the same principle are to be traced many of the political vices, of which we ought to be on our guard. The source of power criticises itself, reverses its own decisions, yet will not respect the statesman who changes with it. Whoever courts the people to-day is sure to be distrusted by it to-morrow; yet when can we expect politicians to cease to court the people? In quiet times, he who will not go out for office, no matter what may be his powers, is left at home. Thus the aspirant is placed in the dilemma of remaining inglorious, or subjecting himself to a criticism that may, as we have so often seen, prove fatal to his independence. And yet it is out of these men, whom we have ruined by not trusting enough, that we make our first magistrates, whom we entrust with all. Our great statesmen—public servants we call them—have their [24] self-respect destroyed by being watched too closely by their masters. The true statesman, interpreting the wisest will, the best instinct of a people, uses the force delegated to him to constrain the nation in that direction. Our position is often the reverse of this. Our servants have understood and executed our sinister will, and the tardy criticism of our better judgment comes halting after. That it does come inevitably is our safety, and perhaps an adequate recompense for these evils, inseparable from our condition.

In literature also, the good of free criticism is not unmixed with evil. Our first misfortune is, that there is a reference to a standard from without, viz. from England. As the spirit that dictates this is, from many causes, unfair and depreciating, a natural consequence has been to cause all our own criticism to take the opposite ground, to over praise that which we felt to be undervalued, or invidiously regarded.

In the second place, although all original literature comes from and refers to the heart of the people, it cannot, except in a rude age, address itself to that people, except through a class capable of receiving it. If great works do not find such a class in their own age, they wait till time and their own influence create it. No one will pretend, that Shakspeare or Milton spoke to their age in the same sense they do to us. But Shakspeare and Milton lived in times that could be unconscious of their greatness. It could not be so now. Ours is a conscious age, and every man is made the most of. We believe a conscious greatness inseparable from a critical literature; and such, therefore, we look for in this country;—a literature and art based on thorough criticism, and thorough knowledge of what already exists in the world; in a word, on a higher culture.

[ 25]

Art. II.—MUSIC. ↩

One class of persons seeks the soul of Music, and dwells in it; another, the laws which reign in its creations; and a third, the form in which it is embodied, the actual beauty as it charms the sense. To one it is a feeling, a sentiment, a passion; to another it is a science; to another, a sensible creation and enjoyment. The heart, the intellect, and the senses; the soul, the body, and the everlasting laws; the active prompting motive, the passive substance into which it pours its will, and the impersonal regulating reason mediating between will and action;—what more enters into our existence as a whole, or into any single experience or act of ours? At any moment, there is somewhat prompting us within; some thought, accompanying that prompting, to guide it to its end; and some passive instrument or object, endowed with motion or with form, in obedience to that prompting and that thought. We will, from inmost passion; we see, by light not our own; we go, as the world opens to receive us. Thus in life there are three forces:—Motives, which are first, and spring from within; secondly, guiding principles and laws, independent of us, yet involved in us and in every thing; thirdly, actions or expressions, which are the body or thing moved. And these are the three elements of music, as well as of our lives, presiding over all its grand and primary divisions.

In the history also of music, since music could be called an art, which is only in comparatively modern times, each of these three component elements of music has exercised ascendancy in turn. The scientific phase, that is, the learned style, came first in the order of development, with the Bachs; the music of expression, of sentiment, the grand deep poetry and soul of the art, came next, with Haydn and Mozart, Handel and Beethoven; the music of effect, the music of the senses, the age of Rossinis and instrumental virtuosos, has succeeded. Historic periods and scientific doctrine correspond part to part in a series of three terms.

To the three spheres of sentiment, of science, and of [26] practice, conform three classes of character, in whom each respectively predominates. We feel the spirit of the first; we admire the intellect of the second; we deal only with the actions of the third. We turn to the first for inspiration and for influence; to the second for reasons and methods; to the third for execution, whether in the way of amusement or of use. The highest type of the first class is the saint; of the second, the philosopher; and of the third, the statesman. Their collective organizations, from of old, have been the Church, the University, and the State. A corresponding division holds in every department of life, in every art, in every subject of inquiry. Its keen blade passed through each arid all, when Thought began. It is the primary analysis of the universe, which the mysteries of the church have carried even into the inmost nature of the Deity.

These analogies, accidentally started, lead directly into the inmost essence of the science and the art of music. The number Three is the number of science; and there is a certain poetry of science, which consists in tracing the presence of the same great laws, and detecting the same type in all things; so that one sphere becomes an expression and reflection, as it were, of every other; so that the passions and emotions of our soul read themselves acknowledged, and enjoy their own harmonies anew, in every kingdom of nature and the arts. So much it is necessary to glance at in the science of music, that divine source of enthusiasm, that transcendent medium of expression, that homelike yet mysterious element of passion, of the love that yearns for the human, or that climbs in secret aspiration, flame-like, to the infinite Heart of hearts, centre of light and warmth, in whom all spirits seek their unity.

But science is not the essence of music. It is not the warm, glowing thing itself. It is only the measure of its heart-beats, the law that distributes the ramification of the innumerable ducts and channels through which that heart propels its lifeblood. It is the principle of order in the system, the divider of the one into the many, which resent resemblance in each other, and wander off in every way from uniformity, only that they may be the more completely one; or, in other [27] words, that unity may become universality. Since, however, unity precedes variety, since it is only the whole which can explain the parts, we will not follow the spiral path of the restless analyzer and divider, Science, before we have characterized the whole, which in this case it divides.

Music is both body and soul, like the man who delights in it. Its body is beauty in the sphere of sound,—audible beauty. But in this very word beauty is implied a soul, a moral end, a meaning of some sort, a something which makes it of interest to the inner life of man, which relates it to our invisible and real self. This beauty, like all other, results from the marriage of a spiritual fact with material form, from the rendering external, and an object of sense, what lives in essence only in the soul. Here the material part, which is measured sound, is the embodiment and sensible representative, as well as the re-acting cause, of that which we call impulse, sentiment, feeling, the spring of all our action and expression. In a word, it is the language of the heart; not an arbitrary and conventional representative, as a spoken or written word is; but a natural, invariable, pure type and correspondence. Speech, so far as it is distinct from music, sustains the same relation to the head. Speech is the language of ideas, the communicator of thought, the Mercury of the intellectual Olympus enthroned in each of us. But behind all thought, there is something deeper, and much nearer life. Thought is passive, involuntary, cold, varying with what it falls upon like light, a more or less clear-sighted guide to us, but not a prompting energy, arid surely not our very essence; not the source either of any single act, or of that whole complex course and habit of action which we call our character. Thought has no impulse in itself, any more than the lungs have. "Out of the heart are the issues of life." Its loves, its sentiments, its passions, its prompting impulses, its irresistible attractions, its warm desires and aspirations, these are the masters of the intellect, if not its law; these people the blank consciousness with thoughts innumerable; these, though involuntary in one sense, are yet the principle of will in us, and are the spring of all activity, and of all thought too, since they, in fact, [28] strike out the light they see to act by. The special and phases of this active principle we call emotions; and music, which I hold to be its natural language, has tor its very root and first principle, and is actually born from, motion.

Sound is generated by motion; rhythm is measured motion; and this is what distinguishes music from every other art of expression. Painting, sculpture, architecture, are all quiescent: they address us in still contemplation. But music is all motion, and it is nothing else.

And so in its effects. It does not rest, that we may contemplate it; but it hurries us away with it. Our very first intimation of its presence is, that we are moved by it. Its thrilling finger presses down some secret spring within us, and instantly the soul is on its feet with an emotion. Painting and sculpture rather give the idea of an emotion, than directly move us; and, if speech can raise or quell a passion, it is because there is kneaded into all speech a certain leaven of the divine fire called music. The same words and sentences convey new impressions with every honest change of tone and modulation in the speaker's voice; and, when he rises to any thing like eloquence, there is a certain buoyant rhythmical substratum of pure tone on which his words ride, as the ship rides on the ocean, borrowing its chief eloquence from that. Take out the consonants which break up his speech, and the vowels flow on musically. How often will the murmur of a devout prayer overcome a remote hearer with more of a religious feeling, than any apprehension of the distinct words could, if he stood nearer!

Music is a universal language, subtly penetrating all the walls of time and space. It is no more local than the mathematics, which are its impersonal reason, just as sound is its body, and feeling or passion is its soul. The passions of the human heart are radically alike, and answer to the same tones everywhere and always, except as they may be undeveloped; and music has a power to develope them, like an experience of life. It can convey a foretaste of moods and states of feeling yet in reserve for the soul, of loves which yet have never met an object that could call them out. [29] A musical composition is the best expression of its author's inmost life. No persons in all history are so intimately known to those that live; away from them or after them, as are Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Bellini, and others, to those who enter into the spirit of their musical works. For they have each bequeathed the very wine of his peculiar life in this form, that it sparkles still the same as often as it is opened to the air. The sounds may effervesce in each performance; but they may be woke to life again at any time. So it is with the passions and emotions which first dictated the melodious creations.

Hence it is that great composers have no biography, except their music. Theirs is a life of deep, interior sentiment, of ever-active passion and affection, of far-reaching aspiration, rather than of ideps or events; theirs is the wisdom of love; their belief is faith, the felt creed of the heart; and they dwell in the peculiar element of that, in the wondrous tone-world, communicating all the strongest, swiftest, and most delicate pulsations of their feeling to the ready vibrations of wood or metal or string, which propagate themselves through the equally ready vibrations of the air, and of every other medium, till they reach the chambers of the ear, and set in motion chords more sensitive, that vibrate on the nervous boundary between matter and the soul; and there, what was vibration becomes sound, and the hearer has caught the spirit of the composer. Yes: the whole soul of a Beethoven thrills through your soul, when you have actually heard one of his great symphonies. There is no other communion of so intimate a nature possible, as that which operates through music. Intimate, and yet most mystical; intimacy not profaned by outward contact of familiarity, but a meeting and communing of the ideal, one with another, which never grows familiar. Why is it but because in sentiment the tendency always is to unity, while thought for ever differentiates and splits? Feeling communicates by sympathy, or fellow-feeling, the earth round; and music is its common language, which admits no dialects, and means the same in Europe and America. Light corresponds to thought; and light is changed and colored by every [30] medium through which it shoots, by every surface which reflects it. Sound, or, which is the same thing, measured motion or vibration, corresponds to feeling, and its vibrations are passed on through every medium unchanged, except, as they grow fainter. Light is volatile; but sound is constant: so it is when you compare thought with feeling, which last comes more from the centre where all souls are one. Music is religious and prophetic. She is the real Sibyl, chanting evermore of unity. Over wild, waste oceans of discord floats her silvery voice, the harbinger of love and hope. Every genuine strain of music is a serene prayer, or bold, inspired demand, to be united with all, at the Heart of all things. Her appeal to the world is more loving than the world can yet appreciate. Kings and statesmen, and men of affairs, and men of theories, would stand aside from their own over-rated occupations to listen to her voice, if they knew how nearly it concerned them, how much more it goes to the bottom of the matter, and how clearly she forefeels humanity's great destiny. The soul that is truly receptive of music learns angelic wisdom, and grows more childlike with experience. The sort of experience which music gives does not plough cunning furrows in the brow of the fresh soul, nor darken its expressive face by knitting there the tangled lines of Satan. Here, the most deeply initiated are in spirit the most youthful; and Hope delights to wait on them.

The native impulses of the soul, or what are variously called the passions, affections, propensities, desires, are, all of them, when considered in their essence and original unwarped tendency, so many divinely implanted loves. Union, harmony of some sort, is their very life. To meet, to unite, to blend, by methods intricate as swift, is their whole business and effort through eternity. As is their attraction, such must be their destiny; not to collision, not to excess followed by exhaustion; not to discord, chaos, and confusion; but to binding ties of fitness and conjunction through all spheres, from the simplest to the most universal accords. Through these (how else?) are the hearts of the human race to be knit, into one mutually conscious, undivided whole, one living temple not too narrow, nor loo fragmentary for the reception [31] of the Spirit of Good. Is not this foretold in music, the natural language of these passions, whieh cannot express corruption nor any evil feeling, without ceasing to be music; which has no tone for any bad passion, and translates into harmony and beauty whatever it expresses? The blending of all these passions harmoniously into one becomes the central love, the deepest and most undivided life of man. This is the love of God, as it also, from the first, is the inbreathing of God, who is love; to whom the soul seeks its way, by however blind an instinct, through all these partial harmonies, learning by degrees to understand the universal nature of its desire and aim. The sentiment of unity, the strongest and deepest sentiment of which man is capable, the great affection into which all his affections flow—to find, not lose themselves; which looks to the source when little wants conflict, and straightway they are reconciled in emulous ardor for the glory of the whole; which lifts a man above the thought of self, by making him in every sense fully himself, by reuniting his prismatic, party-colored passions into one which is as clear and universal as the light; the sentiment which seeks only universal harmony and order, so that all things, whether of the inner or of the outer world, may be perfectly transparent to the love in which they have their being, and that the sole condition of all peace and happiness, the consciousness of one in all and all in one, may never more be wanting;—that is what the common sense of mankind means by the religious sentiment,—that is the pure essence of religion. Music is its natural language, the chief rite of its worship, the rite which cannot lose its sacredness; for music cannot cease to be harmony, cannot cease to symbolize the sacred relationship of each to all, cannot contract a taint, any more than the sunbeam which shines into all corners. Music can not narrow or cloak the message which it bears; it cannot he; it cannot raise questions in the mind, or excite any other than a pure enthusiasm. It is God's alphabet, and not man's; unalterable and unpervertable; suited for the har mony of the human passions and affections; and sent us, in this their long winter of disharmony and strife, to be a perpetual type and monitor, rather say an actual foretaste, of that [32] harmony which must yet come. How could there be religion without music? That sentiment would create it again, would evoke its elements out of the completes! jargon of discords, if the scale and the accords, and all the use of instruments, were forgotten. Let that feeling deepen in our nation, and absorb its individual ambitions, and we shall have our music greater than the world has known. There was an age of faith, though the doctrinal statements and the forms thereof were narrow. Art, however, freed the spirit which the priest imprisoned. Music, above all, woke to celestial power and beauty in the bosom of a believing though an ignorant age. The Catholic church did not neglect this great secret of expression and of influence; and the beautiful free servant served it in a larger spirit than itself had dreamed of. Where it could not teach the Bible, where its own formal interpretations thereof were perhaps little better than stones for bread, it could breathe the spirit of the Bible and of all love and sanctity into the most ignorant and thoughtless worshipper, through its sublime Masses, at once so joyous and so solemn, so soul-subduing and so soul-exalting, so full of tenderness, so full of rapture uncontrollable, so confident and so devout. In these, the hearer did, for the time being, actually live celestial states. The mystery of the cross and the ascension, the glorious doctrine of the kingdom of heaven, were not reasoned out to his understanding, but passed through his very soul, like an experience, in these all-permeating clouds of sound; and so the religion became in him an emotion, which could not so easily become a thought, which bad better not become such thought as the opinionated teachers of the visible church would give him. The words of the Credo never yet went down with all minds; but their general tenor is universal, and music is altogether so. Music extracts and embodies only the spirit of the doctrine, that inmost life of it which all feel, and miraculously revivifies and transfigures the cold statements of the understanding with the warm faith of feeling. In music there. is no controversy; in music there are no opinions: its springs are deeper than the foundations of any of these partition wails, and its breath floats undivided over all their heads. No danger to the Catholic whose head [33] is clouded by dull superstitions, while his heart is nourished and united with the life of all lives by this refreshing dew!

The growing disposition, here and there, among select musical circles, to cultivate acquaintance with this form of music, is a good sign. What has been called sacred music in this country has been the least sacred in every thing but the name, and the forced reverence paid it. With the superstitions of the past, the soul of nature also was suppressed; and the free spirit of music found small sphere amid our loud protestings. A joyless religion of the intellect merely, which could almost find fault with the sun's shining, closed every pore of the self-mortified and frozen soul against the subtle, insinuating warmth of this most eloquent apostle of God. The sublime sincerity of that wintry energy of self-denial having for the most part passed away, and the hearts of the descendants of the Pilgrims having become opened to all worldly influences, why should they not be also visited by the heavenly corrective of holy and enchanting music, which is sure to call forth and to nourish germs of loftier affection? Can the bitter spirit of sectarianism, can the formal preachings of a worldly church which strives to keep religion so distinct from life, can the utilitarian ethics of this great day of trade, give the soul such nourishment and such conviction of the higher life as the great religious music of Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven? The pomp and pageantry of the Mass we have not. But the spiritual essence lives in the music itself; and a mere quartette of voices, a social friendly group, bound alike by moral and by musical sympathies, may drink this inspiration, may pour it out on others. The songs and operas of the day, which take the multitude, become insipid in comparison with such music.

Greatest of all masters in this peculiar line was Mozart,—the boy Mozart we might say,—who wrote the major part of his eighteen Masses ere he had reached his twenty-second year; and yet they seem, the best of them, to have been wrung from the profoundest experiences of the long-tried heart of a man, as well as to pour forth the raptures of a bright seraph-soul, which has not yet buried any portion of its heavenly inheritance in the earth.

[34]

In music of this kind, there is somewhat that is peculiar to the individuality of the composer; but there is more that is universal, true to the inmost meaning of all hearts. Every sentiment, if it is deep enough, becomes religion; for every sentiment seeks and tends to unity, to harmony, to recognition of the one in all. And every sentiment in music is expressed in its purity, and carried up as it were to the blending point of all the emotions in one, which is the radical desire and feeling of the soul, its passion to be one with God.

If Mozart is perhaps tHe deepest in this order of composition, he by no means stands alone. The church afforded to genius that sphere, for its highest and holiest ambition, which it found not elsewhere. The Masses of Hadyn are more numerous, and more of them elaborate, great efforts, than those of Mozart, many of whose Masses were composed at so early an age?; and his genius steadily drew him towards that sphere of music, in which he was destined to reign supreme,—the opera. But, though to Hadyn we must grant the very perfection of artistic skill and grace, a warm and childlike piety, and a spirit of the purest joy; and though at times he has surpassing tenderness; still there is an indescribable atmosphere, an air of inspiration, a gushing forth as of the very warmest, inmost life-blood, in Mozart's religious music, which affects us, even when it is simpler than Hadyn's, with more power. Religion takes in Hadyn more the form of gratitude and joy. The mournfulness of a Miserere or a Crucifixus of his is a passive mood, often but the successful contemplation or painter s study of such a mood, where the subject calls for it, rather than a permanent and inherent quality in the whole music of his own being. His ground tone seems to be a certain domestic grateful sense of life, in which the clearest order and the sweetest kindliness and thankfulness for ever reign. In Mozart the ground tone is love, the very ecstacy and celestial blias of the re-union of two souls long separated, at once romantic and Platonic, sensuous, and yet exalting the senses to a most spiritual ministry. In him we have what is nearest to the naked soul of music,—its most ethereal, transparent, thrilling body. One would scarce suppose, that the soul of Mozart ever [35] inhabited any other body than those melodies and harmonies in which it dwells for us. Something of a personal love, however, is felt in his most religious strains: it is the worship of the Holy Virgin; the music of that phase of the religious sentiment, which Swedenborg might call conjugal love.

To Beethoven s three or four great Masses, it comes most natural to add the term solemn; for, with him, all is a great effort. It is the very sentiment of the man,—aspiration, boundless yearning to embrace the Infinite. With him the very discontent of the soul becomes religion, and opens sublime visions, which are like a flying horizon of ever near, yet unattainable order and beauty. In the inexhaustibleness of the heart's cravings, he finds revelations; and out of those depths, with gloomy grandeur, with fire now smothered and now breaking out, and always with a rapt impetuosity, the worship of his nature springs, escaping like a flame to heaven.

Then, too, besides this captivating music of the Catholic church, we should think of the plain church, the voices of the united multitude, in simple, solemn, sublime strains, presenting themselves as one before the Lord. Even our modern psalm, as monotonous and artificial as it often is, satisfying scarcely more than the grammatical conditions of a musical proposition, has oftentimes an unsurpassable grandeur. Where thousands sing the same slow melody, the mighty waves of sound wake in the air their own accompaniment, and the effect is that of harmony. On this broad popular basis, Handel built. He is the Protestant, the people's man, in music. In him the great sentiment of a common humanity found expression. The individual vanishes: it is the mighty music of humanity; his theme, the one first theme, and properly the burthen of all music, humanity's looking-for and welcome of its Messiah. What a prediction and foreshadowing of the future harmony and unity of the whole race is that great Oratorio! What are those choruses, those hallelujahs and amens, but the solemn ecstasy, the calm, because universal and all-sympathizing, everywhere sustained excitement, which all souls shall feel; [36] when all shall feel their unity with all humanity, and with all to God.

And it is not alone in the music of the church of any form, whether mass or plainer choral, that this sentiment is strongest. Perhaps no music ever stirred profounder depths in the hearer's religious consciousness, than some great orchestral symphonies, say those of Beethoven. Even a waltz of his, it has been said, is more religious than a prayer of Rossini's. His symphonies are like great conflagrations of some grand-piles of architecture, in which the material substance seems consumed, while the spirit soars in the graceful but impatient crackling shapes of the devouring element, and is swiftly lost in upper air.

[ 36]

Art. III.—WAR. [3] ↩

It has been a favorite study of modern philosophy, to indicate the steps of human progress, to watch the rising of a thought in one man's mind, the communication of it to a few, to a small minority, its expansion and general reception until it publishes itself to the world by destroying the existing laws and institutions, and the generation of new. Looked at in this general and historical way, many things wear a very different face from that they show near by, and one at a time,—and, particularly, war. War, which, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead of their bowels,—when seen in the remote past, in the infancy of society, appears a part of the connection of events, and, in its place, necessary.

As far as history has preserved to us the slow unfoldings of any savage tribe, it is not easy to see how war could be avoided by such wild, passionate, needy, ungoverned, [37] strong-bodied creatures. For in the infancy of society, when a thin population and improvidence make the supply of food and of shelter insufficient and very precarious, and when hunger, thirst, ague, and frozen limbs universally take precedence of the wants of the mind and the heart, the necessities of the strong will certainly be satisfied at the cost of the weak, at whatever peril of future revenge. It is plain, too, that, in the first dawnings of the religious sentiment, that blends itself with their passions, and is oil to the fire. Not only every tribe has war-gods, religious festivals in victory, but religious wars.

The student of history acquiesces the more readily in this copious bloodshed of the early annals, bloodshed in God's name too, when he learns that it is a temporary and preparatory state, and does actively forward the culture of man.War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man. On its own scale, on the virtues it loves, it endures no counterfeit, but shakes the whole society, until every atom falls into the place its specific gravity assigns it. It presently finds the value of good sense and of foresight, and Ulysses takes rank next to Achilles. The leaders, picked men of a courage and vigor tried and augmented in fifty battles, are emulous to distinguish themselves above each other by new merits, as clemency, hospitality, splendor of living. The people imitate the chiefs. The strong tribe, in which war has become an art, attack and conquer their neighbours, and teach them their arts and virtues. New territory, augmented numbers, and extended interests call out new virtues and abilities, and the tribe makes Iqng strides. And, finally, when much progress has been made, all its secrets of wisdom and art are disseminated by its invasions. Plutarch, in his essay ;< On the Fortune of Alexander," considers the invasion and conquest of the East by Alexander as one of the most bright and pleasing pages in history; and it must be owned, he gives sound reason for his opinion. It had the effect of uniting into one great interest the divided commonwealths of Greece, and infusing a new and more enlarged public spirit into the [38] councils of their statesmen. It carried the arts and language and philosophy of the Greeks into the sluggish and barbarous nations of Persia, Assyria, and India. It introduced the arts of husbandry among tribes of hunters and shepherds. It weaned the Scythians and Persians from some cruel and licentious practices, to a more civil way of life. It introduced the sacredness of marriage among them. It built seventy cities, and sowed the Greek customs and humane laws over Asia, and united hostile nations under one code. It brought different families of the human race together, to blows at first, but afterwards to truce, to trade, and to intermarriage. It would be very easy to show analogous benefits that have resulted from military movements of later ages.

Considerations of this kind lead us to a true view of the nature and office of war. We see, it is the subject of all history; that it has been the principal employment of the most conspicuous men; that it is at this moment the delight of half the world, of almost all young and ignorant persons; that it is exhibited to us continually in the dumb show of brute nature, where war between tribes, and between individuals of the same tribe, perpetually rages. The microscope reveals miniature butchery in atomies and infinitely small biters, that swim and fight in an illuminated drop of water; and the little globe is but a too faithful miniature of the large.

What does all this war, beginning from the lowest races and reaching up to man, signify? Is it not manifest that it covers a great and beneficent principle, which nature had deeply at heart? What is that principle? It is self-help. Nature implants with life the instinct of self-help, perpetual struggle to he, to resist opposition, to attain to freedom, to attain to a mastery, and the security of a permanent, self-defended being; and to each creature these objects are made so dear, that it risks its life continually in the struggle for these ends.

But whilst this principle, necessarily, is inwrought into the fabric of every creature, yet it is but one instinct; and though a primary one, or we may say the very first, yet the appearance of the other instincts immediately modifies and controls this; turns its energies into harmless, useful, and high courses, showing thereby what was its ultimate design; and, finally, [39] takes out its fangs. The instinct of self-help is very early unfolded in the coarse and merely brute form of war, only in the childhood and imbecility of the other instincts, and remains in that form, only until their development. It is the ignorant and childish part of mankind that is the fighting part. Idle and vacant minds want excitement, as all boys kill cats. Bull-baiting, cockpits, and the boxer's ring, are the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been developed. In some parts of this country, where the intellectual and moral faculties have as yet scarcely any culture, the absorbing topic of all conversation is whipping; who fought, and which whipped? Of man, boy, or beast, the only trait that much interests the speakers is the pugnacity. And why? Because the speaker has as yet no other image of manly activity and virtue, none of endurance, none of perseverance, none of charity, none of the attainment of truth. Put him into a circle of cultivated men, where the conversation broaches the great questions that besiege the human reason, and he would be dumb and unhappy, as an Indian in church.

To men of a sedate and mature spirit, in whom is any knowledge or mental activity, the detail of battle becomes insupportably tedious and revolting. It is like the talk of one of those monomaniacs, whom we sometimes meet in society, who converse on horses; and Fontenelle expressed a volume of meaning, when he said, "I hate war, for it spoils conversation."

Nothing is plainer than that the sympathy with war is a juvenile and temporary state. Not only the moral sentiment, but trade, learning, and whatever makes intercourse, conspire to put it down. Trade, as all men know, is the antagonist of war. Wherever there is no property, the people will put on the knapsack for bread; but trade is instantly endangered and destroyed. And, moreover, trade brings men to look each other in the face, and gives the parties the knowledge that these enemies over sea or over the mountain are such men as we; who laugh and grieve, who love and fear, as we do. And learning and art, and especially religion, weave ties that make war look like fratricide, as it is. And as all [40] history is the picture of war, as we have said, so it is no less true that it is the record of the mitigation and decline of war. Early in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Italian cities had grown so populous and strong, that they forced the rural nobility to dismantle their castles, which were dens of cruelty, and come and reside in the towns. The Popes, to their eternal honor, declared religious jubilees, during which all hostilities were suspended throughout Christendom, and man had a breathing space. The increase of civility has abolished the use of poison and of torture, once supposed as necessary as navies now. And, finally, the art of war—what with gunpowder and tactics—has made, as all men know, battles less frequent and less murderous.

By all these means, war has been steadily on the decline; and we read with astonishment of the beastly fighting of the old times. Only in Elizabeth's time, out of the European waters, piracy was all but universal. The proverb was,—"No peace beyond the line;" and the seamen shipped on the buccaneer s bargain, "No prey, no pay." In 1588, the celebrated Cavendish, who was thought in his times a good Christian man, wrote thus to Lord Hunsdon, on his return from a voyage round the world:—"Sept. 1588. It hath pleased Almighty God to suffer me to circumpass the whole globe of the world, entering in at the Strait of Magellan, and returning by the Cape of Buena Esperança; in which voyage, I have either discovered or brought certain intelligence of all the rich places of the world, which were ever discovered by any Christian. I navigated along the coast of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. I burnt and sunk nineteen sail of ships, small and great All the villages and towns that ever I landed, at, I burned and spoiled. And had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken great quantity of treasure. The matter of most profit to me was a great ship of the king's, which I took at California," &c. and the good Cavendish piously begins this statement,—"It hath pleased Almighty God."

Indeed, our American annals have preserved the vestiges of barbarous warfare down to more recent times. I read in Williams's History of Maine, that "Assacombuit, the [41] Sagamore of the Anagunticook tribe, was remarkable for his turpitude and ferocity above all other known Indians; that, in 1705, Vaudreuil sent him to France, where he was introduced to the king. When he appeared at court, he lifted up his hand, and said, 'This hand has slain a hundred and fifty of your majesty s enemies Avithin the territories of New England.' This so pleased the king, that he knighted him, and ordered a pension of eight livres a day to be paid him during life." This valuable person, on his return to America, took to killing his own neighbors and kindred with such appetite, that his tribe combined against him, and would have killed him, had he not fled his country for ever.

The scandal which we feel in such facts certainly shows, that we have got on a little. All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation: the doctrine of the right of war still remains.

For ages (for ideas work in ages, and animate vast societies of men) the human race has gone on under the tyranny shall I so call it? of this first brutish form of their effort to be men; that is, for ages they have shared so much of the nature of the lower animals, the tiger and the shark, and the savages of the water-drop. They have nearly exhausted all the good and all the evil of this form: they have held as fast to this degradation, as their worst enemy could desire; but all things have an end, and so has this. The eternal germination of the better has unfolded new powers, new instincts, which were really concealed under this rough and base rind. The sublime question has startled one and another happy soul in different quarters of the globe. Can not love be, as well as hate? Would not love answer the same end, or even a better? Cannot peace be, as well as war?

This thought is no man s invention, neither St. Pierre's nor Rousseau's, but the rising of the general tide in the human soul, and rising highest, and first made visible, in the most simple and pure souls, who have therefore announced it to us beforehand; but presently we all see it. It has now become so distinct as to be a social thought: societies can be formed on it. It is expounded, illustrated, defined, with [42] different degrees of clearness; and its actualization, or the measures it should inspire, predicted according to the light of each seer.

The idea itself is the epoch; the fact that it has become so distinct to any small number of persons as to become a subject of prayer and hope, of concert and discussion,—that is the commanding fact. This having come, much more will follow. Revolutions go not backward. The star once risen, though only one man in the hemisphere has yet seen its upper limb in the horizon, will mount and mount, until it becomes visible to other men, to multitudes, and climbs the zenith of all eyes. And so, it is not a great matter how long men refuse to believe the advent of peace: war is on its last legs; and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence of civilization over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms. The question for us is only, How soon?

That the project of peace should appear visionary to great numbers of sensible men; should appear laughable, even, to numbers; should appear to the grave and good-natured to be embarrassed with extreme practical difficulties, is very natural. "This is a poor, tedious society of yours," they say: "we do not see what good can come of it. Peace! why, we are all at peace now. But if a foreign nation should wantonly insult or plunder our commerce, or, worse yet, should land on our shores to rob and kill, you would not have us sit, and be robbed and killed? You mistake the times; you over estimate the virtue of men. You forget, that the quiet which now sleeps in cities and in farms, which lets the wagon go unguarded and the farm-house unbolted, rests on the perfect understanding of all men; that the musket, the halter, and the jail stand behind there, perfectly ready to punish any disturber of it. All admit, that this would be the best policy, if the world Avere all a church, if all men were the best men, if all would agree to accept this rule. But it is absurd for one nation to attempt it alone."

In the first place, we answer, that we make never much account of objections which merely respect the actual state of the world at this moment, but which admit the general expediency and permanent excellence of the project. What [43] is the best must be the true; and what is true—that is, what is at bottom fit and agreeable to the constitution of man—must at last prevail over all obstruction and all opposition. There is no good now enjoyed by society, that was not once as problematical and visionary as this. It is the tendency of the true interest of man to become his desire and steadfast aim.

But, farther, it is a lesson, which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. We have all grown up in the sight of frigates and navy yards, of armed forts and islands, of arsenals and militia. The reference to any foreign register will inform us of the number of thousand or million men that are now under arms in the vast colonial system of the British empire, of Russia, Austria, and France; and one is scared to find at what a cost the peace of the globe is kept. This vast apparatus of artillery, of fleets, of stone bastions and trenches and embankments; this incessant patrolling of sentinels; this waving of national flags; this reveillée and evening gun; this martial music, and endless playing of marches, and singing of military and naval songs, seem to us to constitute an imposing actual, which will not yield, in centuries, to the feeble, deprecatory voices of a handful of friends of peace.

[44]

You shall hear, some day, of a wild fancy, which some man has in his brain, of the mischief of secret oaths. Come again, one or two years afterwards, and you shall see it has built great houses of solid wood and brick and mortar. You shall see an hundred presses printing a million sheets; you shall see men and horses and wheels made to walk, run, and roll for it: this great body of matter thus executing that one man s wild thought. This happens daily, yearly about us, with half thoughts, often with flimsy lies, pieces of policy and speculation. With good nursing, they will last three or four years, before they will come to nothing. But when a truth appears,—as, for instance, a perception in the wit of one Columbus, that there is land in the Western Sea; though he alone of all men has that thought, and they all jeer,—it will build ships; it will build fleets; it will carry over half Spain and half England; it will plant a colony, a state, nations, and half a globe full of men.

We surround ourselves always, according to our freedom and ability, with true images of ourselves in things, whether it be ships or books, or cannons or churches. The standing army, the arsenal, the camp, and the gibbet do not appertain to man. They only serve as an index to show where man is now; what a bad, ungoverned temper he has; what an ugly neighbor he is; how his affections halt; how low his hope lies. He who loves the bristle of bayonets, only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which builded magazines and powder-houses.

It follows, of course, that the least change in the man will change his circumstances; the least enlargement of his ideas, the least mitigation of his feelings, in respect to other men; if, for example, he could be inspired with a tender kindness to the souls of men, and should come to feel that every man was another self, with whom he might come to join, as left hand works with right. Every degree of the ascendancy of this feeling would cause the most striking changes of external things: the tents would be struck; the men-of-war would rot ashore; the arms rust; the cannon would become street-posts; the pikes, a fisher s harpoon; the marching regiment [45] would be a caravan of emigrants, peaceful pioneers at the fountains of the Wabash and the Missouri. And so it must and will be: bayonet and sword must first retreat a little from their present ostentatious prominence; then quite hide themselves, as the sheriff s halter does now, inviting the attendance only of relations and friends; and then, lastly, will be transferred to the museums of the curious, as poisoning and torturing tools are at this day.

War..and_peace thus resolve themselves into a mercury of the state of cultivation. At a certain stage of his progress, the man fights, if he be of a sound body and mind. At a certain higher stage, he makes no offensive demonstration, but is alert to repel injury, and of an unconquerable heart. At a still higher stage, he comes into the region of holiness; passion has passed away from him; his warlike nature is all converted into an active medicinal principle; he sacrifices himself, and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of denial and charity; but, being attacked, he bears it, and turns the other cheek, as one engaged, throughout his being, no longer to the service of an individual, but to the common soul of all men.

Since the peace question has been before the public mind, those who affirm its right and expediency have naturally been met with objections more or less weighty. There are cases frequently put by the curious,—moral problems, like those problems in arithmetic, which in long winter evenings the rustics try the hardness of their heads in ciphering out. And chiefly it is said,—Either accept this principle for better, for worse, carry it out to the end, and meet its absurd consequences; or else, if you pretend to set an arbitrary limit, a "Thus far, no farther," then give up the principle, and take that limit which the common sense of all mankind has set, and which distinguishes offensive war as criminal, defensive war as just. Otherwise, if you go for no war, then be consistent, and give up self-defence in the highway, in your own house. Will you push it thus far? Will you stick to your principle of non-resistance, when your strong-box is broken open, when your wife and babes are insulted and slaughtered in your sight? If you say yes, you only invite the robber and [46] assassin; and a few bloody-minded desperadoes would soon butcher the good.

In reply to this charge of absurdity on the extreme peace doctrine, as shown in the supposed consequences, I wish to say, that such deductions consider only one half of the fact. They look only at the passive side of the friend of peace, only at his passivity; they quite omit to consider his activity. But no man, it may be presumed, ever embraced the cause of peace and philanthropy, for the sole end and satisfaction of being plundered and slain. A man does not come the length of the spirit of martyrdom, without some active purpose, some equal motive, some flaming love. If you have a nation of men who have risen to that height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great, and able men. Let me know more of that nation; I shall not find them defenceless, with idle hands springing at their sides. I shall find them men of love, honor, and truth; men of an immense industry; men whose influence is felt to the end of the earth; men whose very look and voice carry the sentence of honor and shame; and all forces yield to their energy and persuasion. Whenever we see the doctrine of peace embraced by a nation, we may be assured it will not be one that invites injury; but one, on the contrary, which has a friend in the bottom of the heart of every man, even of the violent and the base; one against which no weapon can prosper; one which is looked upon as the asylum of the human race, and has the tears and the blessings of mankind.

In the second place, as far as it respects individual action in difficult and extreme cases, I will say, such cases seldom or never occur to the good and just man; nor are we careful to say, or even to know, what in such crises is to be done. A wise man will never impawn his future being and action, and decide beforehand what he shall do in a given extreme event. Nature and God will instruct him in that hour.

The question naturally arises, How is this new aspiration of the human mind to be made visible and real? How is it to pass out of thoughts into things?

[47]

Not, certainly, in the first place, in the way of routine and mere forms,—the universal specific of modern politics; not by organizing a society, and going through a course of resolutions and public manifestoes, and being thus formally accredited to the public, and to the civility of the newspapers. We have played this game to tediousness. In some of our cities, they choose rioted duellists as presidents and officers of anti-duelling societies. Men who love that bloated vanity called public opinion, think all is well if they have once got their bantling through a sufficient course of speeches and cheerings, of one, two, or three public meetings, as if they could do any thing: they vote and vote, cry hurrah on both sides, no man responsible, no man caring a pin. The next season, an Indian war, or an aggression on our commerce by Malays; or the party this man votes with, have an appropriation to carry through Congress: instantly he wags his head the other way, and cries, Havoc and war!

This is not to be carried by public opinion, but by private opinion, by private conviction, by private, dear, and earnest love. For the only hope of this cause is in the increased insight, and it is to be accomplished by the spontaneous teaching, of the cultivated soul, in its secret experience and meditation,—that it is now time that it should pass out of the state of beast into the state of man; it is to hear the voice of God, which bids the devils, that have rended and torn him, come out of him, and let him now be clothed and walk forth in his right mind.

Nor, in the next place, is the peace principle to be carried into effect by fear. It can never be defended, it can never be executed, by cowards. Every thing great must be done in the spirit of greatness. The manhood that has been in war must be transferred to the cause of peace, before war can lose its charm, and peace be venerable to men.

The attractiveness of war shows one thing through all the throats of artillery, the thunders of so many sieges, the sack of towns, the jousts of chivalry, the shock of hosts,—this namely, the conviction of man universally, that a man should be himself responsible, with goods, health, and life, for his behaviour; that he should not ask of the State, protection; [48] should ask nothing of the State; should be himself a kingdom and a state; fearing no man; quite willing to use the opportunities arid advantages that good government throw in his way, but nothing daunted, and not really the poorer if government, law, and order went by the board; because in himself reside infinite resources; because he is sure of himself, and never needs to ask another what in any crisis it behoves him to do.

What makes to us the attractiveness of the Greek heroes? of the Roman? What makes the attractiveness of that romantic style of living, which is the material of ten thousand plays and romances, from Shakspeare to Scott; the feudal baron, the French, the English nobility, the Warwicks, Plantagenets? It is their absolute self-dependence. I do not wonder at the dislike some of the friends of peace have expressed at Shakspeare. The veriest churl and Jacobin cannot resist the influence of the style and manners of these haughty lords. We are affected, as boys and barbarians are, by the appearance of a few rich and wilful gentlemen, who take their honor into their own keeping, defy the world, so confident are they of their courage and strength, and whose appearance is the arrival of so much life and virtue. In dangerous times, they are presently tried, and therefore their name is a flourish of trumpets. They, at least, affect us as a reality. They are not shams, but the substance of which that age and world is made. They are true heroes for their time. They make what is in their minds the greatest sacrifice. They will, for an injurious Avord, peril all their state and wealth, and go to the field. Take away that principle of responsibleness, and they become pirates and ruffians.

This self-subsistency is the charm of war; for this self-subsistency is essential to our idea of man. But another age comes, a truer religion and ethics open, and a man puts himself under the dominion of principles. I see him to be the servant of truth, of love, and of freedom, and immoveable in the waves of the crowd. The man of principle, that is, the man who, without any flourish of trumpets, titles of lordship, or train of guards, without any notice of his action abroad, expecting none, takes in solitude the right step [49] uniformly, on his private choice, and disdaining consequences,—does not yield, in my imagination, to any man. He is willing to be hanged at his own gate, rather than consent to any compromise of his freedom, or the suppression of his conviction. I regard no longer those names that so tingled in my ear. This is a baron of a better nobility and a stouter stomach.

The cause of peace is not the cause of cowardice. If peace is sought to be defended or preserved for the safety of the luxurious and the timid, it is a sham, and the peace will be base. War is better, and the peace will be broken. If peace is to be maintained, it must be by brave men, who have come up to the same height as the hero, namely, the will to carry their life in their hand, and stake it at any instant for their principle, but who have gone one step beyond the hero, and will not seek another man's life;—men who have, by their intellectual insight, or else by their moral elevation, attained such a perception of their own intrinsic worth, that they do not think property or their own body a sufficient good to be saved by such dereliction of principle as treating a man like a sheep.

If the universal cry for reform of so many inveterate abuses, with which society rings,—if the desire of a large class of young men for a faith and hope, intellectual and religious, such as they have not yet found, be an omen to be trusted; if the disposition to rely more in study, and in action on the unexplored riches of the human constitution,—if the search of the sublime laws of morals and the sources of hope and trust in man, and not in books,—in the present, and not in the past,—proceed; if the rising generation can be provoked to think it unworthy to nestle into every abomination of the past, and shall feel the generous darings of austerity and virtue; then war has a short day, and human blood will cease to flow.

It is of little consequence in what manner, through what organs, this purpose of mercy and holiness is effected. The proposition of the Congress of Nations is undoubtedly that at which the present fabric of our society and the present course of events do point. But the mind, once prepared for [50] the reign of principles, will easily find modes of expressing its will. There is the highest fitness in the place and time in which this enterprise is begun. Not in an obscure corner, not in a feudal Europe, not in an antiquated appanage where no onward step can be taken without rebellion, is this seed of benevolence laid in the furrow, with tears of hope; but in this broad America of God and man, where the forest is only now falling, or yet to fall, and the green earth opened to the inundation of emigrant men from all quarters of oppression and guilt; here, where not a family, not a few men, but mankind, shall say what shall be; here, we ask, Shall it be War, or shall it be Peace?

[ 50]

Art. IV.—ORGANIZATION. ↩

Society cannot remain stationary. It must either go forward or backward. It is a living organism, composed of living active members, who are always doing something, both in their individual and collective capacities. Every act done, either by individuals or by the social body, has some influence on the existing state of society; advances or obstructs the general movement; makes a portion of mankind better or worse; brings them nearer to, or removes them farther from, their true destinies, as determined by the eternal laws of God. There is no middle ground here. If men are not advancing, they are retrograding; if society is not improving, we are certain that it does not stand still.

But the great question is, how it advances? What are the laws and characteristics of its progress? When a change is made in the state of any thing, how do we know that such a change has been for the better? By what signs do we distinguish an onward from a retrograde movement? Great changes are constantly taking place in the forms of matter, in the lives of men, in the constitution of states, in the whole structure and working of society. The elements, the passions, discoveries in literature, in art, all produce stupendous revolutions in human affairs. How do we know, that these [51] various changes are for better or for worse, or that they carry us towards perfection or imperfection?

There is a characteristic, there is a positive internal sign, by which we may detect whether a change in any object has raised it to a higher place of existence, or depressed it to a lower. The mark is this: Its approach to a more or less compact organization. The simple principle of organization, i. e. the adjustment of a variety of parts to a unity of end or result, is the test and measure of perfection in any sphere of existence.

By this is meant, that a thing or movement is greater or less, better or worse, an advance or a retrogradation, just in the degree in which the organization of its parts is more or less perfect. If it has no organization, it exists on an exceedingly low plane of creation, in fact, on the very lowest plane; but the more complete, intricate, and perfect its organization, the more eminent, excellent, and good it is.

The perfection of an organism depends upon two things: first, that there shall be a great variety of parts; and, secondly, that these parts shall act harmoniously towards one end. Where there are few parts, or where those parts, if many, do not co-operate to the same ends, the organization is incomplete, just in the degree in which the conditions are violated.

Thus the vegetable kingdom is said to be higher in the order of nature than the mineral, and the animal than the vegetable. But why higher? Why, in the scale of creation, or the classifications of science, is the tree placed in a more elevated rank than the stone, the lion than the tree, or man higher than all? Simply, because the organization in these cases respectively is more and more complete. The mineral kingdom is a mere aggregation or conglomeration of particles held together by the simplest power of attraction; as any one may discover, who takes a friable stone in his hand, or knocks a gem into pieces with a hammer. Again, the vegetable kingdom, though composed essentially of the same matter as the earthy, exhibits a more compact structure and more perfect forms. Its members cannot be fried in the hands, nor broken by a hammer. The relation of part to part is more [52] intricate and compact, and the attractive power by which they are united exhibits a greater arid more subtle cohesion. Then, the animal kingdom, still composed of the same essential matter, shows a still more compact structure, still more perfect forms ; and its parts are bound by higher powers of attraction, which even resist the attractions of the lower spheres, till man, finally, the summit of all the kingdoms, though made up of the same materials, walks abroad the most complex and concentrated of all structures, the most harmonious and beautiful of all forms. The progress of nature, therefore, from one kingdom to another, from a lower rank in creation to a higher, consists in a gradual passage from a loose and irregular organization to one more complicated and concentric.

Again, if you take any of the natural kingdoms separately, to consider the relative rank of its different members, we shall find the distinction of degree marked by the same principle. In the mineral region, for instance, the grain of sand may be regarded as one of its lowest forms, and the crystal one of the highest; because the former exhibits no traces of organization; while the latter splits into regular mathematical figures, thereby showing a tendency, or mute prophecy, of an organic arrangement of parts.

So, in the vegetable kingdom, mosses and lichens, which are found growing loosely upon the rocks, are among the simplest, and therefore lowest, elements of it; while among the highest is the firm-knit and lordly oak, whose organization has given it a grace of outline which painters envy, and a strength of structure that defies the blasts of a hundred years. Or take, finally, the animal kingdom, with its first rude specimens of animals, almost formless, almost without parts and without powers as the oyster; and ascend gradually through worms, reptiles, fishes, birds, quadrupeds, up to man, do we not find one invariable character of progress all along the ascent, in the increasing compactness, delicacy, and finish of the organization?

But further: even in the growth of the individual members of any one of these kingdoms, this fact is strikingly exemplified. The bird, for example, begins in the lowest phases of [53] its life as a soft, pulpy, formless mass, which can be kept together only by a rude external shell, called the egg; then a small spot or knot is formed in this, and after a while shoots out a single tendril; next another knot is formed, which shoots out another tendril; till the whole egg begins at last to assume the appearance of a network of knots and tendrils. At a subsequent period in the formation, these points condense, and fill out, when a chick is formed, having a remote resemblance to a bird, but without plumage; too weak to move, and not very pleasing to the sight. In the end, as the organization is perfected, this chick grows into the imperial eagle, whose pinions waft him across the loftiest Alleganies, and whose eye gazes undaunted into the mid-day sun. And so too man, whose outset and lowest state after birth is that of the flabby, puling, defenceless, unknowing, almost unconscious infant, becomes in his highest state—each step being marked by a more and more complete organic development—the giant, whose single arm levels the mountains, whose far-reaching intellect discovers worlds millions of miles away in the depths of space, whose imperious will uplifts and dashes together nations in tempestuous conflicts. What marks the difference externally between the poor idiot, who cries "pall-lal" upon the highways, and the myriad-minded Shakspeare, who talks, in his immortal utterances, to the universal heart of all ages? The degree of difference in their respective physical and spiritual organizations. The greatest of men is known, in that he is the most highly organized of men. The progress of each of us towards a nobler standard of humanity is marked by the growing perfection of our organisms. When we raise ourselves to higher intellectual power, we feel that our intellectual forces have been trained, disciplined, adjusted, or, in a word, organized. When we reach loftier moral eminences, we feel that we have received fresh accessions of strength, chiefly through the better organization of our spiritual powers.

But here we arrive at another step in our argument. We have seen that one invariable characteristic attends all the developments of the natural world, in their transitions from a lower to a higher place; and the next question is, Whether [54] the same characteristic does not accompany the advances of society? History shows us conclusively, that nations and bodies of men are in a process of constant change; and it is universally conceded, also, that in many respects this change has been for the better. The passage from barbarism to civilization is called a social advancement. One nation is often said to be ahead of other nations in its attainments. There is great talk, too, everywhere, of the progress of the human species; of the improvement of society; of the gradual advancement of man to a more elevated existence. What does such language mean? What are the marks and sign of this progressWe answer, the same as have been shown to exist in the natural world,—the successive steps of nations or societies to a more and more perfect organization.

The first or simplest state of society, known to our annals, is the savage state, where the members of it subsist in almost complete isolation and independence. Indeed, the bonds of union between them are so rude, that they can hardly be said to possess society at all. They are rather an aggregation, like the particles of a mineral, than a society, like the elements of a plant. Such plans of general government as they have are exceedingly imperfect; and, except occasionally in cases of war and public festivals, they engage in no concerted or unitary actions. The individual is every thing; society, nothing. He pitches his tent where he pleases; cares for nobody, and has nobody to care for him; is without fixed property; and, save a sort of wild friendship which he indulges for his wife or the members of his tribe, is almost without affections. Of course, it is in vain to look for any social organization among these solitary roamers of the wilderness. It is only in the next state of society above this,—which is called the patriarchal,—that traces of organization begin to be clearly seen. Men unite in certain family compacts for mutual defence and assistance. The will of the patriarch is constituted a species of common law; the ties of consanguinity give rise to more or less compact settlements; the members of the tribes acknowledge a controlling head, and submit to regular processes of government. The wild and roaming independence of the savage is surrendered for more [55] compact and regular social relations. Then the barbaric nation arises, where the patriarch of one united family grows into the king or monarch of many united families. The savage horde, before merged into the patriarchal clan, is further consolidated into the barbaric nation. The rude and arbitrary regulations of the previous state are converted into settled laws and a constitutional polity. The adjustment of the power of the government, and the relations of different classes of the people to each other, become more compact, and at the same time more complex. Men are brought into more intimate connections, get more and more mutually dependent, have broader interests in common, and act more frequently in concert. In a word, they are more highly organized. But, after a time, the people rise into greater power as an element of government, which assumes a more definite and responsible shape; industry and wealth, which serve to bind distant nations, are prodigiously developed; men unite more closely, not merely for purposes of Avar, but to cultivate the innumerable arts of peace; laws are digested into complete systems; the industrial and social relations and interests of various classes are consolidated; all the arrangements of society grow more intimate and complex. The universal life of man has more aims in common; all the members of the state feel more closely bound to each other, and act more often and more in concert for comprehensive ends. This state of society is the one in which we live, and is denominated Civilization. It is the last term to which society has yet attained.

Now, who will deny that there is a vast interval between the rude social condition of the savage in his hut, to that of the merchant-prince of England or the United States? Who will deny, that the passage from one to the other denotes a great progress? Yet we have seen, that each step is marked and demonstrated by nearer approaches to a high organization. The change has been a change in organic development. Civilization is better than barbarism, barbarism than patriarchalism, patriarchalism better than savageness,—simply because they are respectively better organized. The degree of organization marks the degree of excellence. This [56] is the universal fact in all the gradations of nature, and in all the advances of humanity.

It is the fortune of the people of the United States, that they see nations springing up almost every day. Our extensive Western frontier is a cradle of infant commonwealths. The whole process of social growth is there laid open to us, as natural growth was in the patent hatching machine, or Eccolobean, exhibited a few years since. We see the first germ deposited in the form perhaps of a single family; we see this family spread out into numerous branches, or other families moving in to unite with it, till the desert and the solitary place blossoms into a flourishing and many-columned city.

Now, what are the successive steps of this progress from the wild wilderness to the thriving mart, from the distant and lonely log-cabin of the prairie to the thronged and temple-covered metropolis? What are the indications of the gradual advance of the settlement from almost savage isolation and insecurity to the peace, wealth, comfort, and refinement of civilized union? The answer is plain: first, gradual increase in the number of the families or persons; and, second, a corresponding multiplication and interweaving of their various relations; or, in other words, their nearer and nearer approach to complete organization.

The original squatter, we know, lives for a while alone, cultivating a narrow patch of ground for food, and shooting his habiliments for the most part from the trees. He is poor, dependent, and half-wild; his own farmer, miller, merchant, mechanic, and governor. He builds his own house, raises his own wheat, makes his own tools, keeps his own store, argues his own causes, teaches his own school. He is without society,—the merest fraction of man.

The first possibility of improvement which comes to him is when he is joined by a few other persons, who relieve him at once of a portion of the laborious tasks and anxieties he was before compelled to undertake, and whose very presence acts upon him as stimulus to a more wholesome activity. He is no longer his own blacksmith, carpenter, tailor, or tradesman. The functions of these, he finds, are better [57] discharged by some of his neighbors, who are willing to exchange the results of their labors for the products of his, whereby he gets more for a less exertion. But both parties soon discover, that there are a great many objects which can be attained only by working in common. Accordingly, they lend a hand to each other in felling forests, erecting houses, and cutting roads. As the population multiplies, the occasions for their mutual assistance increase. They combine their judgments and energies for a greater variety and a more extensive range of purposes. They discuss plans of general usefulness; they lay out streets for their little town; they put up a church and a school-house; they club their funds for the purchase of a library; they organize societies for mutual improvement; they institute tribunals to decide disputes; or, in manifold other modes, they contribute to the general defence and security.

If, now, we suppose a similar town to have grown up not far off, we shall see the two establishing an intercourse between themselves, and combining to construct roads, endow colleges, and accomplish other undertakings convenient to the public good: their internal ties, as they spread, exhibit the same tendency to union which marked their previous internal arrangements. Other towns, again, spring up, which still further multiply and complicate their respective relations. From time to time, the union is rendered more definite and complete, a regular code of laws determines the relations of the respective communities and of their members respectively, and a constitutional government is finally instituted. Thus the single family of the squatter has grown first into a settlement, then into a village, then a township, then a county, next a state, and at last a federated republic. At each step, the relations of the people have extended, multiplied, and complicated. Their union has been strengthened; they have been brought nearer together; they have had more interests and more labors in common; isolation has given place to concentration; rude independence to regulated dependence; the centrifugal tendency of individuals restrained by the centripetal tendencies of society; and transient expedients and loose arrangements, one by one, have been supplanted [58] by a solid and permanent organic unity. Wealth, comfort, refinement, and substantial happiness have, of course, kept pace with the organic movement.

The question at this day is, whether men have even here reached the limit of social progress; whether the principle of social organization is susceptible of any higher applications than it has hitherto received; whether our civilization is the last stage of social improvement; whether the fact of progress is destined to any higher triumphs in the future, similar to those which have illustrated the past. Is it extravagant to anticipate a time when the tendency to union shall have been perfected; when the whole organization of society shall have been rendered more compact and harmonious? Will God suddenly suspend the great law of providential development?

Organization is not life, but it is the sign of life; and the degree and perfection of organization is the test of life. [4]

[ 58]

Art. V.—GENIUS. ↩

The world was always busy; the human heart has always had love of some kind; there has always been fire on the earth. There is something in the inmost principles of an individual, when he begins to exist, which urges him onward; there is something in the centre of the character of a nation, 145.to which the people aspire; there is something which gives activity to the mind in all ages, countries, and worlds. This principle of activity is love: it may be the love of good or of evil; it may manifest itself in saving life or in killing; but it is love.

The difference in the strength and direction of the affections creates the distinctions in society. Every man has a form of mind peculiar to himself. The mind of the infant contains within itself the first rudiments of all that will be hereafter, [59] and needs nothing but expansion; as the leaves and branches and fruit of a tree are said to exist in the seed from which it springs. He is bent in a particular direction; and, as some objects are of more value than others, distinctions must exist. What it is that makes a man great depends upon the state of society: with the savage, it is physical strength; with the civilized, the arts and sciences; in heaven, the perception that love and wisdom are from the Divine.

There prevails an idea in the world, that its great men are more like God than others. This sentiment carries in its bosom sufficient evil to bar the gates of heaven. So far as a person possesses it, either with respect to himself or others, he has no connection with his Maker, no love for his neighbor, no truth in his understanding. This was at the root of heathen idolatry: it was this that made men worship saints and images. It contains within itself the seeds of atheism, and will ultimately make every man insane by whom it is cherished. The life which circulates in the body is found to commence in the head; but, unless it be traced through the soul up to God, it is merely corporeal, like that of the brutes.

Man has often ascribed to his own power the effects of the secret operations of divine truth. When the world is immersed in darkness, this is a judgment of the Most High; but the light is the effect of the innate strength of the human intellect.

When the powers of man begin to decay, and approach an apparent dissolution, who cannot see the Divinity? But what foreign aid wants the man who is full of his own strength? God sends the lightning that blasts the tree; but what credulity would ascribe to him the sap that feeds its branches? The sight of idiotism leads to a train of religious reflections; but the face that is marked with lines of intelligence is admired for its own inherent beauty. The hand of the Almighty is visible to all in the stroke of death; but few see his face in the smiles of the new-born babe.

The intellectual eye of man is formed to see the light, not to make it; and it is time that, when the causes that cloud the spiritual world are removed, man should rejoice in the [60] truth itself, and not that he has found it. More than once, when nothing was required but for a person to stand on this world with his eyes open, has the truth been seized upon as a thing of his own making. When the power of divine truth begins to dispel the darkness, the objects that are first disclosed to our view—whether men of strong understanding, or of exquisite taste, or of deep learning—are called geniuses. Luther, Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, stand with the bright side towards us.

There is something which is called genius, that carries in itself the seeds of its own destruction. There is an ambition which hurries a man after truth, and takes away the power of attaining it. There is a desire which is null, a lust which is impotence. There is no understanding so powerful, that ambition may not in time bereave it of its last truth, even that two and two are four. Know, then, that genius is divine, not when the man thinks that he is God, but when he acknowledges that his powers are from God. Here is the link of the finite with the infinite, of the divine with the human: this is the humility which exalts.

The arts have been taken from nature by human invention; and, as the mind returns to its God, they are in a measure swallowed up in the source from which they came. We see, as they vanish, the standard to which we should refer them. They are not arbitrary, having no foundation except in taste: they are only modified by taste, which varies according to the state of the human mind. Had we a history of music, from the war-song of the savage to the song of angels, it would be a history of the affections that have held dominion over the human heart. Had we a history of architecture, from the first building erected by man to the house not made with hands, we might trace the variations of the beautiful and the grand, alloyed by human contrivance, to where they are lost in beauty and grandeur. Had we a history of poetry, from the first rude effusions to where words make one with things, and language is lost in nature, we should see the state of man in the language of licentious passion, in the songs of chivalry, in the descriptions of heroic valor, in the mysterious wildness of Ossian; till the [61] beauties of nature fall on the heart, as softly as the clouds on the summer's water. The mind, as it wanders from heaven, moulds the arts into its own form, and covers its nakedness. Feelings of all kinds will discover themselves in music, in painting, in poetry; but it is only when the heart is purified from every selfish and worldly passion, that they are created in real beauty; for in their origin they are divine.

Science is more fixed. It consists of the laws according to which natural things exist; and these must be either true or false. It is the natural world in the abstract, not in the concrete. But the laws according to which things exist, are from the things themselves, not the opposite. Matter has solidity: solidity makes no part of matter. If, then, the natural world is from God, the abstract properties, as dissected and combined, are from him also. If, then, science be from Him who gave the ten commandments, must not a life according to the latter facilitate the acquirement of the former? Can he love the works of God who does not love his commandments? It is only necessary that the heart be purified, to have science like poetry its spontaneous growth. Self-love has given rise to many false theories, because a selfish man is disposed to make things differently from what God has made them. Because God is love, nature exists; because God is love, the Bible is poetry. If, then, the love of God creates the scenery of nature, must not he whose mind is most open to this love be most sensible of natural beauties? But in nature both the sciences and the arts exist embodied.

Science may be learned from ambition; but it must be by the sweat of the brow. The filthy and polluted mind may carve beauties from nature, with which it has no allegiance: the rose is blasted in the gathering. The olive and the vine had rather live with God, than crown the head of him whose love for them is a lust for glory. The man is cursed who would rob nature of her graces, that he may use them to allure the innocent virgin to destruction.

Men say there is an inspiration in genius. The genius of the ancients was the good or evil spirit that attended the man. The moderns speak of the magic touch of the pencil, [62] and of the inspiration of poetry. But this inspiration has been esteemed so unlike religion, that the existence of the one almost supposes the absence of the other. The spirit of God is thought to be a very different thing when poetry is written, from what it is when the heart is sanctified. What has the inspiration of genius in common with that of the cloister? The one courts the zephyrs; the other flies them. The one is cheerful; the other, sad. The one dies; the other writes the epitaph. Would the Muses take the veil? Would they exchange Parnassus for a nunnery? Yet there has been learning, and even poetry, under ground. The yew loves the graveyard; but other trees have grown there.

It needs no uncommon eye to see, that the finger of death has rested on the church. Religion and death have in the human mind been connected with the same train of associations. The churchyard is the graveyard. The bell which calls men to worship is to toll at their funerals, and the garments of the priests are of the color of the hearse and the coffin. Whether we view her in the strange melancholy that sits on her face, in her mad reasonings about truth, or in the occasional convulsions that agitate her limbs, there are symptoms, not of life, but of disease and death. It is not strange, then, that genius, such as could exist on the earth, should take its flight to the mountains. It may be said, that great men are good men. But what I mean is, that, in the human mind, greatness is one thing, and goodness another; that philosophy is divorced from religion; that truth is separated from its source; that that which is called goodness is sad, and that which is called genius is proud.

Since things are so, let men take care that the life which is received be genuine. Let the glow on the cheek spring from the warmth of the heart, and the brightness of the eyes beam from the light of heaven. Let ambition and the love of the world be plucked up by their roots. How can he love his neighbor, who desires to be above him? He may love him for a slave; but that is all. Let not the shrouds of death be removed, till the living principle has entered. It was not till Lazarus was raised from the dead, and had received the breath of life, that the Lord said, "Loose him, and let him go."

[63]

When the heart is purified from all selfish and worldly affections, then may genius find its seat in the church. As the human mind is cleansed of its lusts, truth will permit and invoke its approach, as the coyness of the virgin subsides into the tender love of the wife. The arts will spring in fall-grown beauty from Him who is the source of beauty. The harps which have hung on the willows will sound as sweetly as the first breath of heaven that moved the leaves in the garden of Eden. Cannot a man paint better when he knows that the picture ought not to be worshipped?

Here is no sickly aspiring after fame,—no filthy lust after philosophy, whose very origin is an eternal barrier to the truth. But sentiments will flow from the heart warm as its blood, and speak eloquently; for eloquence is the language of love. There is a unison of spirit and nature. The genius of the mind will descend, arid unite with the genius of the rivers, the lakes, and the woods. Thoughts fall to the earth with power, and make a language out of nature.

Adam and Eve knew no language but their garden. They had nothing to communicate by words; for they had not the power of concealment. The sun of the spiritual world shone bright on their hearts, and their senses were open with delight to natural objects. In the eye were the beauties of paradise; in the ear was the music of birds; in the nose was the fragrance of the freshness of nature; in the taste was the fruit of the garden; in the touch, the seal of their eternal union. What had they to say?

The people of the golden age have left us no monuments of genius, no splendid columns, no paintings, no poetry. They possessed nothing which evil passions might not obliterate; and, when their "heavens were rolled together as a scroll," the curtain dropped between the world and their existence.

Science will be full of life, as nature is full of God. She will wring from her locks the dew which was gathered in the wilderness. By science, I mean natural science. The science of the human mind must change with its subject. Locke's mind will not always be the standard of metaphysics. Had we a description of it in its present state, it would make [64] a very different book from "Locke on the Human Understanding."

The time is not far distant. The cock has crowed. I hear the distant lowing of the cattle which are grazing on the mountains. "Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman saith, The morning cometh."

[ 64]

Art. VI.—THE DORIAN MEASURE, WITH A MODERN APPLICATION. ↩

At this moment when so many nations seem to be waking up to re-assert their individuality, and, more than all, when the idea is started, that the object of Providence in societies is to produce unities of life, to which the individuals that compose them shall each contribute something, even as every limb and fibre of the physical system contributes to the wholeness of the body of a man,—it is wise to cast the eye back over the records of history, and ask whether there be any thing in the past which predicts such consummation.

The assertion of the Hebrew nation to an individuality which has ever been believed to be an especial object of Divine Providence, and the fact that this faith, developed in the patriarchs of the nation, and guarded by the system of religious rites which has rendered the name of Moses immortal, have resulted in accomplishing what it predicted,—rises immediately before every one's mind. But the case of the Hebrews, as it is commonly viewed, rather obscures than illustrates the general truth; for the very brilliancy of the illustration so dazzles the eyes which gaze upon it, that they do not see anywhere else in history the same truth illustrated; and thus it is looked upon rather as an exception than as an expression of a general principle on which nations may act.

There is, however, in antiquity another nation, whose idea was also something more than a blind instinct, but which, from the earliest times we hear of it, knew itself to be a moral being, and did not live by accident. This nation was the [65] Dorians, whose antiquities and whole life have been faithfully set forth to modern times by Karl Otfried Müller, but which has not yet been considered sufficiently with reference to general edification in social science.

In order to be intelligible, and because all persons have not access to Müller's books, it is necessary to begin with some historical sketches, which are derived from several sources, and which pertain to other Grecian tribes, as well as to the Dorians.

Greece, in the earliest times of which we have tradition, was a congeries of little nations, independent of each other, but which as a whole were remarkable for one thing; viz. the peculiar relations to each other of their religious and civil institutions. These relations were very loose.

It would seem, from the tradition which appears under the form of the fabulous war of the Titans and Olympic Gods, that at first a sacerdotal government obtained over this region, but that, through the ambition of some talented younger son,—who led that rebellion which always must be smouldering among the subjects of absolute sway, when there is still any human life left to dream of freedom,—this sacerdotal government was overthrown, and a reign of talent and political power began.

The Jupiter of the Olympic dynasty was some Napoleon Bonaparte, who began a new regime made brilliant with the spoils of a past which had been cultivated, and carried the arts of life to great perfection, but which had no elasticity to receive the new floods of life poured forth from the prodigality of a Creator who, in every generation of man, goes forth anew. One does not desire to be altogether pragmatical in the analysis of these old myths. Doubtless, we can interpret the relations of the Titanic and Olympic dynasties as an allegory of the relations of ideas to each other, without the intervention of their historic manifestation; and it is unquestionable that Æschylus, and some other Greeks, so used them. But it is nevertheless not impossible that they are, at the same time, the magnificent drapery of historic facts.

All the stationary nations of antiquity, when we first know of them, are under sacerdotal governments. These [66] governments have a genesis and history, that can be discerned, but which we will, just now, pass by. Their deadening influence, combined with that of an enervating climate and other circumstances, succeeded in checking the progressive life of most nations altogether. But this was not the uniform experience; and in one location especially, circumstances combined favorably, and genius escaped the strait-jacket of custom, and asserted itself. It was genius cultivated; and it had all the advantages of its cultivation.

To its aid came the multitude. Let us be pardoned if we analyze, even like Euhemerus himself. Briareus, the hundred-handed giant, who comes to the assistance of Jupiter, is invoked (so we learn from Homer) by Thetis. Is it the genius of commerce that has made the people rich, and a strong helpmeet, to serve the purposes of the young autocrat, who overthrows the old system, because it is devouring all that it generates? It is remarkable that afterwards is another war, inevitable in like circumstances, and repeated in all subsequent history,—the war of the conquering Olympics, with their instruments the giants. The people has been made use of, and has thereby learned its force: now it asks for participation of power, or perhaps only for a recognized existence as a living part of the body politic. In the Grecian history, Jupiter here triumphs again. He stands at that happy point between the cultivated conservative, and the fresh strong children of earth, who are his foster-brethren, that he has the advantage of both. He rules by fulness of natural life. He rules no less by cultivated genius; for Prometheus assisted him. [5] He has wedded custom, the oldest daughter of Saturn; and, though on occasion he hangs her up and whips her, on the whole he honors her more than all his wives; and she is Juno, queen of Olympus.

We would not try, even if we were able, to trace out the story into all its details, to join on the old mythology with the plain prose of annals. We only mean to show that it is indicated in Grecian traditions, that, in remote antiquity, an immense revolution took place, which broke asunder some [67] great social unity; and that of its fragments were the Greek nations which we see in remotest historical narrations, nestled, in their independence, now among the hills of Arcady, now on the Eurotas, now on the Alpheus, now about the Cyclopic architecture of Argos, now in the Olympic vales of Thessaly, and again on every hill-side and by every stream of Middle Greece; all being alike only in this, that all are independent of each other, all free from sacerdotal rule.

But their antagonism to one another and to the sacerdotal rule is not brutal or furious. They respect each other; they respect the old traditions. The Titans are still served. Ceres has her Eleusis; Neptune, his Isthmus and Ægæan recess; Pluto, his Pheræ; the Furies are worshipped at Athens. The peculiarity of Grecian freedom is, that it respects every thing, consecrates every thing that lives. It worships life as divine, wherever manifested. The very word theos, which represents something out, proves manifestation to the apprehension of man, to have been inseparable, in their opinion, from the idea of God; and their own active character and plastic genius received its impulse from this religious intuition. "As a man's god, so is he." Certainly, as a nation's god, so is it.

Some things were gained by those Titanic and Giant wars, which distinguished Greece, in all future time, from all other nations. The religion, henceforth, was an enacted poetry, and not a sacerdotal rule, as in Asia, or a state pageant and formula, as in Rome. They had diviners, soothsayers, and priests, elected for the year; but never a priesthood, in the full sense of the word. In the heroic ages, and on public occasions, the kings, and, in all times, fathers of families, conducted religious rites. The various worships also dwelt, side by side, with mutual respect. Each tribe, each city, had its own divinities. They were mutually tolerated, mutually reverenced. Hence, the human instincts and divine ideas which each divinity represented were thrown into a common stock. Hence, Homer made of the gods of the several tribes a community acting together; and explained the variations of man's mortal life, by their antagonisms and harmonies. Hence, Hesiod conceived the idea of a Theogony, in which we see a vain attempt to make into one [68] consistent whole, what was but the imperfect reflex of the spiritual life of many nations not harmonized. This high influence of toleration came from the Dorians, who were pre-eminently the genius of Greece.

To that large multitude, whose idea of Dorians is derived from Plutarch's life of Lycurgus (a personage whom the researches of Müller make to be rather shadowy, certainly mythological), it will be a new idea that they were not mainly a military race, nor at all of a conquering spirit, like the Romans. Yet their forcible occupation of Peloponnesus in the age after the Trojan war, and the military attitude of Sparta during the period of recorded history, seem to have given a natural basis to such a view. The truth is, we have looked at Greece too much with eyes and minds that the Romans have pre-occupied. It is necessary to understand distinctly, that Greece, at least Dorian Greece, was, in most important respects, very different from Rome. Both nations had organic genius, but the Greeks only the artistic-organic. The Romans organized brute force, together with the moral force of the Sabines, the cunning of the commercial colonies of Magna Græcia, and the formal stateliness of a sacerdotal Etruria; forming a compound whole, which expressed one element of human nature,—that which commands and obeys. On the other hand, the Greeks organized the harvest of their sensibilities into ideal forms. It was not strength merely or mainly which they sought as the highest good, but beauty, order, which might be expressed by a building, a statue, a painting, a procession, a festival, and, more fully still, by the body politic.

But what is order? It surely is not mere subjection. It means subordination according to a true, which is ever, if largely enough apprehended, a beautiful idea. It is an arrangement around a centre. It is a disposition of elements, such that the weak may borrow of the strong, and the strong be adorned. Thus their aim in politics was far other than to exhibit the right of the strongest. It was to have a society perfectly organized to express the beauty of the most beautiful.

The genesis of the Dorians is yet undiscovered. Like [69] their god Apollo, they are the children of the creative wisdom and mystery. That festival of Apollo, which commemorates his return from the Hyperboræans, is possibly the mythic history of their origin,—too obscure, perhaps too fragmentary, to be clearly elucidated. Sometimes it seems as if they must have come from the foot of the Himmelaya mountains, and that Apollo and the Indian Heri are the same. Other researches, for instance those of Professor Henne, would lead us to believe that they were the emigrating life of the ancient nation, which he believes, and endeavors to prove, had its seat, before history began, in Europe. In favor of this, we may remark that the Hyperboræan procession came from the North-west, passing from the Scythians through a chain of nations on the coast of the Adriatic, by Dodona, through Thessaly, Eubœa, and the Island of Tenos, accompanied with flutes and pipes to Delos.[6]

Another argument for the Dorians being of European origin is, that their character is in strong antagonism to the Asiatic.

But we leave these curious and interesting inquiries for the present, to record what Müller has ascertained. [7] The Dorians, says this indefatigable antiquarian, are first known at the foot of Mount Olympus. The oldest known temple of Apollo was in the Vale of Tempe. Thence they spread in colonies by sea, along the eastern shores of the Archipelago, among the islands, into Crete especially, where they established themselves long before the Trojan war. Their whereabout is always traceable by temples of Apollo. These temples were their centres of artistic cultivation. Apollo is always the god of music, and of all elegant exercises, whether of mind or body, but especially of those of mind.

Within the borders of the mainland, we do not find that the Dorians advanced much, till after the Trojan war. To the [70] early Ionian Greeks, Apollo was a stranger. Homer does not profess to understand his nature, or betray any insight into it. One sees occasionally the mythical origin of Homer's Jupiter. He is generally an autocratic principle, founding his action on natural, self-derived superiority: his will is law, because it has present ascendancy, and is an entity not to be disputed. On the other hand, he is sometimes obviously the ether, and Juno the atmosphere, as in the beautiful episode near the end of Book xiv. where the flowers of earth spring into being on their embrace. Homer's Mars, too, is the blind, uncultured instinct of violence; what the phrenologists call destructiveness. He makes him the war-god of the Trojans, whose instinctive courage he could not deny; reserving Minerva, the art and science of war, as the war-god of the Greeks. There is not a god or goddess, except Apollo, that Homer does not show he understood, and who is not therefore a plaything in his hands. But Apollo comes on the stage, "like night:" he is terrible; he deals mysterious death. Whatever success or movement of the Trojans Homer cannot account for on any natural principle or human instinct, Apollo brings about arbitrarily; and this prevails throughout the "Iliad." Homer was not a Dorian to worship Apollo intelligently; but he was an Ionian, and his candid, open nature did not refuse to see the magnificence and power which was manifested in his name, or to do a certain homage to his divinity which he pays to no other.

Apollo is sometimes confounded with Helius by later Grecian poets; and Homer, in making him the author of the Pestilence, may have had a suggestion of the kind. But nothing is proved more clearly by K. O. Müller, than that the Apollo of the Dorians was not the sun, although the sun's rays are an apt symbol of the genius that radiates beauty everywhere.

Homer's mode of treating Apollo is a testimony to the power of the Dorians of his day. His mode of representing the Cretans and Lycians is another proof of their acknowledged superiority in cultivation; for it was the Dorian colonies that civilized Crete and Lycia. Sarpedon, the [71] golden-mailed son of Jupiter from Lycia, and Idomeneus, the son of the wise Minos, both testify to the same general fact.

The Dorians appear to us, from the first, as a highly cultivated race. Lycurgus did not create the cultivation of the Dorians. Indeed it is probable, that in Sparta the breadth and beauty of this cultivation were injured, in order to concentrate strength, and intensify the individuality of the race, which became more and more precious to the wise, as they compared themselves with other races.

After the Trojan war, the Dorians of Thessaly moved southward, and at last crossed the gulf at Naupactus, and spread over Peloponnesus. K. O. Müller thinks only about twenty thousand crossed at Naupactus, and that they never were in great numerical force. Yet they overturned Peloponnesus. Their mode of warfare was to fortify themselves in some place, and make excursions round. As soon as possible, they built temples to Apollo, and won the people by their superior cultivation. In the course of time, they won Laconia entirely: Messenia was a later conquest. The Ionians fled before them to Attica, and across the Archipelago; while the Achæans of Sparta and Argos retreated to the northern shores, just deserted by the Ionians. But it was by moral rather than physical force, that they took the precedence of all other races in Peloponnesus. Their conquering rule was like no other on historical record. They are the only conquering people who have benefited, by intention and in fact, the nations they conquered. They did give them such freedom as to incorporate them among themselves.

The Dorian rule was freedom by means of law. Their form of government was not at first sight democratical; but neither could it ever, like the Athenian democracy, become an unprincipled tyranny. The Dorians governed themselves, as well as others, by law and religion. Their king was an occasional officer. Hence the moral superiority of the Spartans was always allowed. Hence they were always appealed to by nations oppressed by external or internal tyrants. Let us therefore examine their religion.

The gods of this race were Apollo and Diana, with their [72] parents, Jupiter and Latona. The parents, however, remain in the background: Hesiod, himself a Dorian, makes

"The azure-robed Latona, ever mild,
Gracious to man and to immortal gods,—
Gentlest of all within the Olympian courts,"

the third wife of Jove, next after Metis and Themis. But in all he says, there is nothing but her name which throws any light upon her nature. Leto (Latona) means mystery; and Apollo and Diana are the children of mystery, whether we consider the unexplained origin of the Dorians, or the nature of the principles, Genius and Chastity, which they embody.

It is noticeable, that the Dorian Diana, who must be discriminated from Diana of Ephesus,—a very different divinity—and also from Diana of Arcadia, though in later times they were confounded, is the feminine of Apollo, and nothing else. As he is the severity of intellect, she is the severity of morals. Here the Dorian respect for woman, which is brought out in strong relief by K. O. Müller in his history of Grecian literature, as well as in his account of the Dorian institutions, has its highest expression. Apollo and Diana are twins, and have equal dignity, united by sympathy of nature and sameness of birth; and the latter not at all displaying any subordination to the former. Again, we may remark that Apollo, with all his power and splendor and autocratic character, is 191.never represented as the Supreme God. He tells the mind of his father, Jupiter. Do we not see here the shadow of God and the Word of God? The Dorian Jupiter is never at all the Ionian Jupiter described by Homer, but is absolute, un-manifest, except by the oracle and action of his son. This oracle and action betray the finiteness inseparable from manifestation; but, nevertheless, there is a sublimity about Apollo which we find nowhere else in the Greek heaven. He is no instinct, no power of external nature personified. He is nothing less than the moral and intellectual harmony of the universe. In his action we find the practical religion of the Dorians. He is beautiful: his recreation is music. He leads the Muses with his harp in hand, and even mingles in the dance. He is resplendent; where he is, darkness cannot be: [73] his inevitable arrow destroys deformity. Excellence is his prerogative: whoever contends with him is worsted and dies. His first great oracle commands to man self-consciousness. It is man's prerogative and duty to act, not blindly, but in the light of the past and the future.

There is trace in Greece, as everywhere else in the ancient world, of a worship of nature, which grovelled in the material slime. This appears in the mythology as monsters, especially as serpents which some hero, personifying or concentrating in himself the genius of some Grecian tribe, destroys. Perhaps one hideous form of earth-worship had its seat, in very early times, at Delphusa and Delphi, and was expelled thence by a Dorian colony, who settled there, and built the temple of Apollo. [8] But the most important part of the worship was not a commemoration of historical facts, but the expression of an idea; which, though it has not, in the Apollonic religion, the complete expression that it after wards found in the facts of the Christian history, was no less deep than the central idea of Christianity.

Apollo kills the Pythoness by the necessity of his nature. It is his virtue. But his virtue is a crime that must be expiated. No sooner is the deed done, than, by a necessity as irresistible as that by which he did it, he flies from the scene of the slaughter toward the old Vale of Tempe for purification. On the way occurs the expiation. For eight years, he serves Admetus; and Müller has demonstrated, that Admetus is but a title of Pluto, and that Pheræ was from the earliest times a spot where the infernal deities were worshipped. Having expiated, he goes on to Tempe, and breaks the bough of peace from the laurel groves that encompass the temple, and, returning to Delphi, lays it on the altar.

The interpretation of this fable is awful. Life, then, is sacred: even the all-divine Son of God, if he violate it in its lowest, most degraded manifestation, must expiate the deed afterwards by years of activity in the service of Death. The [74] best life pays this tribute, and thus acknowledges a certain equality before God with its opposite; for even a bad life has divine right, inasmuch as it is. "To be is respectable." The expiation, indeed, is measured, and comes to an end; and Apollo is interpreter of God for evermore, and king, giving a death which does not wound or pain its recipient,—euthanasia, if not immortality. Here, indeed, the symbol falls, both in form and meaning, below the Christian symbol; which makes the Resurrection swallow up, and annihilate with its glory, the Crucifixion. Yet it is something, that the ancient story intimates the cheering truth. The whole thing is fainter in the Grecian form, because addressed to a nation, and not to humanity,—to a nation at a peculiar stage of culture, and not to humanity through countless ages. Apollo may be held as the Word of God to a tribe of ideal Greeks, whose life can be counted by centuries. Christ is the Word of God to humanity, thinking and Buffering all over the globe and through all time, and whose influences take hold of eternity.

But we should not omit to speak here of the fable of Apollo's rescuing Alcestis from Pluto, on his return from Tempe towards Delphi, after his purification. A later fable, which Euripides has immortalized (perhaps originated), makes Hercules the rescuer of Alcestis. This may have been one of the many interchanges of names which took place with respect to Hercules, and that tribe of the Dorians called Heracleides; and which led to the misapprehension, very early in Grecian history, that the children of Hercules were a component part of the Dorian nation, and that the Dorian invasion of Southern Greece was the return of these children to the land of their fathers. K. O. Müller has entirely cleared up this subject. But the point of interest for us is, that this rescue of Alcestis from death was, in either form, a Dorian fable. Müller says there is also trace of a fable of the death of Apollo.

That the fable of Apollo's killing the Pythoness, and expiating it, and becoming purified, was the heart and marrow of the religion of the Dorians, is evident from the fact, that a dramatic representation of it, on a theatre stretching from [75] Delphi to the Vale of Tempe, was the grand mass of the worship. Once in a certain number of years, the death of the Pythoness was enacted in pantomime by a beautiful boy, representing Apollo. Having discharged his arrow, he fled away, along a road always kept in order by the Grecian nations for the express purpose; and, when he arrived at Pheræ, he went through certain pantomimes which represented servitude. This done, he proceeded on the road to Tempe, where he passed the night, and returned next morning with the sacred bough, to break his fast at Pherae. Thence he proceeded back to Delphi, and was met by processions from the sacred city, shouting Io Pæan; and a festival celebrated the laying of the bough upon the altar.

The importance of this great act of worship is apt to be overlooked, especially by England Old and New, who, on account of their Puritan pre-occupations, are not accustomed to look for important results from a form of worship whose festive air and entertaining character give it, in their eyes, the trifling tone of mere amusement. But these nations of the South of Europe are merely not sanctimonious. They live seriously, while they dress the festival of life. The symbolic language of their festivals harmonizes with the symbolic language of nature. They see God in the sunshine and the flowers, rather than in the storm and wilderness. It is utterly impossible for any persons to understand Greece, who persist in believing that Greek festivals and processions were mere amusements, and had not the higher aim and effect of awakening all human energies, by the expression of serious ideas. Every thing in Greece became artistic, and overflowed with beauty, precisely because the people were so intellectual, they caught, and were continually expressing symbolically, the grand ideas of order and harmony which pervade the universe. They neglected nothing, and trifled about nothing, because, by the wayside or the hearthstone, alone as well as in company, they recognized that "the gods were there." See Hesiod, in his "Works and Days," where he gives the minutest directions about the small moralities of paring nails, and other decencies, and sanctions his counsels by these very words.

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The worship of Apollo was not the only worship of Greece, but it was the only national worship of the Dorians; and the predominance of the Dorians in Greece, and their influence over all the other tribes, direct or indirect, placed it in the forefront; and at last the shrine of Delphi seems to have concentrated all religious feeling into itself.

Let us compare this Dorian religion with the other Grecian religions.

Each tribe seems to have had its peculiar god. This god, when examined and analyzed, gives us the genius of the people. They are instincts, which characterized the different tribes, personified. The names only came from foreign lands. Thus Pan, in Egypt, signifies the Supreme God,—nature personified. In Arcadia, the Pelasgic genius worshipped the beauty and music of the surface of nature; and therefore their Pan, whose name they took from the Egyptians that early settled in Peloponnesus, together with the association of God of nature, became a perfect expression of Pelasgic genius,—

    "Who, frisking it, ran
O'er woody cragg'd Pisa, in fun
  And frolic and laughter,
  With skipping nymphs after,
   Shouting out, 'Pan, Pan.'

  Pan, merry musical Pan,
  Piping o'er mountain-tops,
Rough-headed, shaggy, and rusty like tan;
 Dancing, where'er the goats crop,
  The precipice round,
  And his hoofs strike the ground
 With their musical clop-clop.

  Pan is the lord of the hills,
 With their summits all covered with snow;
Pan is lord of the brooks, of the rivers, and rills,
 That murmur in thickets below;
  There he saunters along,
  And listens their song,
 And bends his shagg'd ears as they flow.

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Where the goats seem to hang in the air,
 And the cliffs touch the clouds with their jags,
How he hurries and leaps, now here and now there,
 And skips o'er the white shining crags;
    And, quick to descry
    With his keen-searching eye,
  Bounds after the swift-footed stags!

  Pan drives before him the flocks,
 To shades of cool caverns he takes
And gathers them round him, and, under deep rocks,
 Of the reeds a new instrument makes;
    And with out-piping lips
    Blows into their tips,
 And the spirit of melody wakes." [9]

The Earth was worshipped under the name of Diana at Ephesus and in Arcadia, although no trace of the Dorian goddess of chastity is to be found in the character or the worship of these divinities. They were, in fact, the manifestations, in personal form, of the fecundating principle. In Syria and other places, where their worship was fully developed, their festivals were the gala of licentious passion; and, if in Greece such excesses were checked, it can be ascribed to no cause but that of the restraining presence of the Dorian Apollo, and the superior character of his votaries. The darkness fled before the light, and "concious Law is King of kings."

Again, the Egyptian Hermes, the expression of all severe and awful wisdom, becomes, among the mercenary, thrifty, shifty Arcadians, the Mercury, who is the messenger of the gods, the patron of thieves, the ready go-between, the "brain in the hand." There is not in Grecian literature or art any thing that suggests more to the historic investigator of such subjects than the Homeric hymn to Mercury, where Apollo is made to say, in a transport of gratitude, because Mercury has given to him the lyre,—

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"Now, since thou hast, although so very small,
    Science of arts so glorious, that I swear
(And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,
    Witness between us what I promise here)
That I will lead thee to the Olympian hall,
    Honored and mighty, with thy mother dear;
And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee,
And even at the end will not deceive thee."

We might go through all the names of the mythology, and we shall still find that always the Grecian gods are some one elemental power of nature or of mind personified and worshipped by the people, in whom that power of mind, or around whom that power of nature, obtained. But Apollo was the manifestation of a Triune God. Apollo was never conceived, without a father to give him wisdom and the oracle, and without an object towards whom the activity of his love or hate is manifested.

This spiritual superiority of the Apollonic religion explains its predominance over all the other worships, which it finally swallowed up. Other oracles died out, even that of Dodonæan Jupiter; but Delphi ever became greater. This triumph of the religion of Apollo is a lesson to sectarian Christendom. It triumphed by tolerance; it conquered by accepting.

This fact is most remarkably displayed in its relations with the worship of Bacchus. Nothing could be more antipodal than the genius of these two worships. Bacchus concentrated the spirit of the earth-worships. His name and origin were Asiatic, and his worship had all the characteristics of Asiatic worship. It was the exciting, even to frenzy, of that elemental, mysterious, vital power, which is not idea, but seems its polar basis of life, the source of the substance that we are "without form, and void." The Asiatics always seem to regard this fury as divinity in its purest form. The Dorians opposed to Bacchus, Apollo, who, by the law which he is, arranges in order this blind force. Hence, the characteristic difference of Asiatic and Dorian worship. With the Asiatics, it consisted in a wild excitement of nervous energy, precluding all intellection and all reflection. The Bacchantes, as described by Euripides, could not see with their eyes what [79] they were doing, much less understand with their mind. Agave tears her own son Pentheus limb from limb, while she is filled with the god, and wakes up afterwards to the horrid truth, but with no misgivings of conscience.

Moderation, balance, on the other hand, was the characteristic of the worshipper of Apollo. He was joyous, but calm; everything in balance. Self-possession was his beatification. He saw every thing around him in the pure light of truth and beauty. Hence the character of Dorian music. It was an old saying, that "Apollo hated the sound of the flute," and the lyre was his instrument. Their music must compose, clear the mind, soothe and calm the spirits; not touch and excite the passions.

From a passage in Homer, the speech of Diomede, in Book v. we have reason to infer, that, before his time, there had been an attempt in Thessaly to introduce the worship of Bacchus; and the fundamental antagonism of the two worships is indicated by Lycurgus's armed opposition to it. It is intimated, that the disorder of the worshippers disgusted him. But so reverent are the Greeks, that his subsequent blindness was referred to the anger of the insulted god. In Euripides tragedy, we see the difficulty of introducing the worship of Bacchus into Thebes, by Pentheus's opposition, which seems to be defended by reason and τὸ πρέπον, peculiar to the Greeks; but here the old and wise in experience, represented by Cadmus and Tiresias, are reverent of the new manifestation; and the self-respecting worshipper of the god who alone elevates the human mind to full self-consciousness, because he is the uncompromising opposer, becomes the victim of Bacchus.

The new worship was at last accepted, because it was seen to cover undeniable facts of nature. As in the Eumenides, the battle was admitted to be a drawn one. There is antagonism in life. Life indeed exists only by antagonism, being subjective-objective. So each party of the last-mentioned magnificent drama maintains its position. The intellectual power, which contemplates only the idea, is represented by Apollo; the unmeasured, immeasurable sensibility, in which inhere the passions, is represented by the [80] Furies; and the man Orestes is justified by the free grace of Minerva, who represents the compromise of the Creator of man, in accepting into fellowship with himself the human being, whose very existence is a compromise between the finite and infinite.

Are we surprised to meet these great ideas in heathen Greece? But it cannot be denied that here they are; conceived, indeed, only by the highest mind of his time, of almost any time, and probably not realized very widely; yet they may have been understood more widely than we think. And why should we doubt? It is the Christian's formula, if not his faith, that "His goings forth were of old," and that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Truth has no age; and the mind, at a certain point of elevation, must necessarily find itself in it. To that elevation, no condition is so indispensable as an atmosphere of tolerance.

It may be observed, that Æschylus was not a Dorian. In his time, however, the Dorian culture had spread over Greece; and Æschylus was a Pythagorean, and Pythagoreanism was the philosophic expression of the Dorian religion; for, though Pythagoras was a Samian by birth, he was a Dorian by culture, and lived in the Dorian cities of Magna Græcia, where he endeavored to realize in political institutions the Dorian idea, to which his plans did, in some respects, do more complete justice than the Spartan institutions ascribed to Lycurgus.

But to return: by accepting with reverence and liberality the worship of Bacchus, Apollo modified it. No stronger proof can be given of this than the very fact, that the feasts of Bacchus were celebrated in Athens by the tragic drama, which, with both Æschylus and Sophocles, was consecrated, as it were, to the worship of Apollo. Before that era, all the excesses of the Bacchic orgies had yielded to the superior genius of the Dorian worship. Apollo is the god of Œdipus and his ill-fated family, of Cassandra, of Orestes; and, if he does not appear by name in the "Prometheus," yet nowhere is that depth of idea which belonged to his worship more manifest.

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Nor is this the only fraternization of Apollo with the older gods of Greece, which is on record.

In Arcadia there was, on one side of the hill of Cyllene, an old temple of Mercury; and, on the other side of the same hill, the Dorians afterwards erected a temple to Apollo. In the Homeric hymn to Mercury, mentioned above, we have a mythical story, whose meaning seems to be a commemoration of the reconciliation of the two worships. This hymn is a masterpiece of characterization and humor, and evidently of Dorian origin; for the Dorian god is represented altogether as the most divine. Apollo's majestic honesty and simplicity are finely contrasted with Mercury's subtlety and frisky cunning. It was just the contrast of the Dorian and the Arcadian character. But Mercury supplies the instrument by which the great Apollo may express himself; and this gift becomes the bond of union. So the Peloponnesians were the plastic material which supplied to the Dorian intellectual power the means of manifesting itself.

The Dorians may be considered the masculine principle of Greece, and the other Greeks the feminine. K. O. Müller demonstrates, that the germ of comedy, the germ of tragedy, the germ of architecture and of art generally, always came from the intellectual Dorians; but the seed was thrown into the rich soil of Ionian sensibility, Pelasgian liveliness of apprehension, Achæan subtlety of application; and hence the rich harvest of art in all its kinds. Either race, disconnected with the other, would have been comparatively sterile. In Sparta, where there was most isolation, most repugnance to social union with the other states, there was least flowering out. There, however, was most strength in the root, though the least luxuriance in the branches. In Sparta the race vies with the Hebrew, in that self-springing power which keeps a people individual, and makes it more forcible to give than to receive influences. Like the Hebrew race, it has never been lost. To use the eloquent words of John Müller, in the close of his chapter on Lacedemon, in his "Universal History," vol. i.:—"What an ascendency must that lawgiver have possessed who knew how to persuade the opulent of his country to an equal division of their lands, and to the abolition of [82] money; who changed a whole republic into a single family, and gave to a corrupt populace a love for their country, capable of producing such wonderful effects; who infused into a multitude a degree of valor which never yielded even on the calamitous day of Leuctra, and such mutual forbearance that no civil war broke out among them during seven hundred years, even after the decline of manners; who formed an army which never inquired how strong the enemy was, but only where he was to be found; youth full of obedience and respect for their elders, and at the same time firmly resolved to conquer or die for the liberty of Sparta; old men who, after the field of Leuctra, with only one hundred young soldiers, arrested the victorious enemy in his impetuous career; women who never repined when their sons fell for their country, but bitterly wept when they were not ashamed to survive their leader and fellow-soldiers; and, lastly, a nation eloquent in short proverbs and often in silence, in whom two thousand five hundred years have not wholly extinguished the genius of liberty!

"For after the republic, after Lacedemon itself had perished, neither the Roman power nor the turbulent and degrading sway of the Byzantine monarchy, nor the arms of the Ottoman Turks, have been able wholly to subdue the citizens of Lycurgus. The bravest among them, as the son of Agesilaus long ago counselled them, left their falling country, and fled with their wives and children to the mountains. After they had lost, all, they still saved themselves; and often they descend from the heights of Taygetus, to reap the fields which their more timid countrymen have sown for the oppressor. They still dwell in freedom on the mountains of Maina, under two chiefs, fearless of the Janissaries. . . . . The Mainottes themselves are strong, warlike men, and rival their forefathers of Lacedemon."

Whence came the life of this wondrous people but from their deep theology of a Triune God, their justification by faith, and their sanctification by life? Even from the beginning, as we have seen, Apollo confesses that he is not the Absolute; for, when he touches the house of life, he suffers re-action. The sacredness of a life which neither evil nor [83] deformity could quench, Apollo acknowledges by service of Pluto. His own superior divinity is manifested, in that he never ceases to act and assert himself, under whatever penalty.

Let the self-righteous of modern time, who may not learn of Christ, meditate this lesson promulgated in Greece, and which was one of the formative or creative principles of the Dorian culture and character. The Greeks dared to look the prime difficulty, the great mystery of life, in the face, and reverently to bow before it. It is good for man to shun evil and do good; nay, it is incumbent on him to resist evil. But he must pay the penalty of contact. The Greek was inspired by Apollo to go up man-like, and act, with eyes wide open to the expiation that was to follow; and which, in its turn, he also suffered man-like, without subterfuge or meaching. There are amongst us a people of sickly morality, who never do any thing—for fear of doing wrong.

"O God! forgive our crimes:
Forgive our virtues too, those lesser crimes,
Half converts to the right!"

Apollo may teach such, who will not listen to the same lesson given by Christ, in a form so sublime that its meaning is not dreamed of by thousands who pride themselves on the name of Christian, but do not understand as much of the doctrine as is expressed by the Dorian Apollo. Life is antagonism; action and re-action. Will you not act, for fear of the re-action? You can then choose but to die, or what is worse,—life in death. The Muses will never follow you.

But the Dorian religion was not a mere symbolic representation, an acknowledged theory of the difficulty of life. It was eminently practical. It enjoined on all its votaries personal culture. These people were pious. Their god was in all their thoughts. They lived upon the oracle. It was to them a living guidance, and wise were its utterances. Indeed, all wisdom was included prophetically in the motto on the temple of Delphi. A temple of Apollo, which was a [84] school of arts and sciences, was the nucleus, the heart of every Dorian community. Did they found a colony? It was always at Apollo's command they went forth, and his temple was their first structure. The last myth was of the nymph Cyrene, carried off by Apollo into Africa. The life of the pious Dorian was like his god's,—the destruction of the ugly Pythoness, and a manly endurance; nay, a joyful expiation of all the inevitable consequences of this lofty action, amid the disturbing influences of time and circumstance. He was moderate and severe to himself, but never ascetic: that would not have been moderate. His recreation was music. Education itself was called by the Dorians, learning music. They did not confine this to learning accords of sound; but it was a study of the harmonies of man within himself, with the state, and with nature.

Hence the characteristics of the Dorian politics.

According to Müller, the Dorians did not consider the state merely or mainly "an institution for protecting the persons and property of the individuals contained in it;" but its essence was, that, "by a recognition of the same opinions and principles, and the direction of actions to the same ends, the whole body became as it were one moral agent." Again he says, "Whereas, in modern times, that which commonly receives the name of liberty consists in having the fewest possible claims from the community; or, in other words, in dissolving the social union to the greatest degree possible, as far as the individual is concerned; the greatest freedom of the Spartan, as well as of the Greeks in general, was to be a living member of the body of the state. What the Dorians endeavored to obtain, as a state, was good order (κόσμος), the regular combination of different elements. A fundamental principle of this race is found in the expression of king Archidamus, recorded by Thucydides, that it is most honorable, and at the same time most secure, for many persons to show themselves obedient to the same order (κόσμος). Thus this significant word expresses the spirit of the Dorian government, as well as of the Dorian music and philosophy, which was the Pythagorean system. Therefore, the supreme magistrate among the Cretans was called κόσμος; among the [85] Epizephyrean Locrians, κόσμοπολις." [10] Again, "In the genuine Doric form of government, there were certain predominant ideas which were peculiar to that race, and were also expressed in the worship of Apollo, viz. those of harmony and order, τὸ εὔκοσμον;of self-control and moderation, σωφροσύνη; and of manly virtue, ἀρετή. Accordingly, the constitution was formed for the education as well of the old as the young; and, in a Doric state, education was upon the whole a subject of greater importance than government. And this is the reason that all attempts to explain the legislation of Lycurgus, from partial views and considerations, have necessarily failed. It was soon perceived, that external happiness and enjoyment were not the aim of these institutions; but then it was thought, with Aristotle, that every thing could be traced to the desire of making the Spartans courageous warriors, and Sparta a dominant and conquering state; whereas the fact is, that Sparta was hardly ever known to seek occasion for a war, or to follow up a victory: and, during the whole of her flourishing period (i.e. from about the fiftieth Olympiad to the battle of Leuctra), she did not make a single conquest by which her territory was enlarged. In fine, the Doric state was a body of men acknowledging one strict principle of order, and one unalterable rule of manners; and so subjecting themselves to this system, that scarcely any thing was unfettered by it, but every action was influenced and regulated by the recognized principles."

Considering the prevalent ignorance, even misconception, of the whole political and social state of the Dorians, one is tempted to go into particulars, and copy out the large proportion of K. O. Müller's second volume, which shows so satisfactorily that the aristocracy of these states was not an aristocracy of persons, but of principles; that the people were the most moderate, gentle, humane, modest of the Greeks; the least overbearing, whether in the relations of governor with governed, master with servant, conquering with [86] conquered race, or paramount state in the confederacy. Their principle was respect and justice to the inferior, protection to the weak, and true organization for life. With the rich humor and pure mirthfulness known only to the serious and chaste, they were severe without austerity; simple in private life, that they might be splendid in all that pertained to religious rites and public duties; with pure and dignified relations of friendship, realized on both sides, by husbands and wives, by the unmarried of both sexes, and by the old and the young. Virtue, in the strict sense of the word, seems never to have pervaded any society, ancient or modern, so completely as it did the Dorian. For, if friendship—and not philanthropy, or the charity which is founded on the Christian's faith and hope—was their highest social characteristic, yet, on the other hand, must be subtracted from their condition those depths of spiritual vice and social wrong, to which the eternities, unfolded by the same hope and faith, have opened the passions of Christendom.

But the question for us is, whether, on the new platform upon which Christendom finds itself, now that the spiritual future has descended as it were into human life, there may not be found a harmony corresponding to the Dorian measure;—whether there may not be a social organization which does as much justice to the Christian religion and philosophy, as the Dorian state did to Apollo. We have seen, that there is a correspondence, point by point, between Apollo and Christ. Christ attacked sin, as Apollo attacked the Pythoness; and, in the contest, the serpent bruised his heel. Christ "descended into hell," as Apollo served Admetus. The humiliation was temporary; the triumph proved the God. It is the only Pagan religion which can be brought into any comparison with Christianity, because it is the only one which involves the contemplation of man in an objective relation with Divinity; and its inferiority consists, not in its leaving out the antagonism,—rather the triplicity of life; for it did not do this,—but in its not estimating the infinite reach of passion. The Dorians do not represent, all of humanity: they were of an exceptional organization. Apollo was not "tempted in all points, like as we are." He was not all of [87] God, and not all of man. He was only so much of God as the universe, exclusive of passion, manifests; and so much of man as may be comprehended in the esthetic element. But he was enough of God and of man, that his chosen people should exhibit a rounded organization in their political and social condition, and so become a type of that future harmony of Christendom, when "the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and a young child shall lead them."

With the Dorians, as we have seen, the political problem was for the whole body to become κόσμος, by a path which should make each individual κόσμος; for they had such faith in the divine order as to believe these ends were correlative. Hence, by necessity, "in a Doric state, education was a subject of greater importance than government;" and, in point of fact, as long as the education was uncorrupted, the government lasted. In every Doric state where, as in Corinth and Magna Græcia, intercourse with foreign nations, and opportunity for individual accumulation of wealth, relaxed the severity of personal culture, the state declined, and such luxury and corruption ensued as has made the name of Sybarite a by-word among nations.

We will first speak of the forms and objects of this education, and then of the spirit of it; and afterwards proceed to speak of an education of Christendom as true to Christ as this was to Apollo,—out of which, therefore, should grow political forms and activity worthy the name of kingdom of heaven upon earth.

The Dorians assumed, that in a company of men guided by Apollo, inhered a power which circumscribed the liberty of the individuals that composed it to the interests of the company as such; and that this social power must legitimate itself, by discharging a duty of which they had also the intuition, viz. that of unfolding each of its members into the harmonious exercise of his powers.

Perhaps they saw proof of this priority of the social to the individual right in the fact, that the human being is socially dependant, before he is individually conscious. His growth into bodily perfection is not self-directed. It cannot take place, unless it be subjected to laws, according to an ideal of [88] which the individual is not conscious, and which he cannot discover without assistance from the society into which he is born.

The Dorian society, therefore, first judged of the body, and decided whether or not it was sufficiently well organized to be capable of its place in the social body, and then assumed, without hesitation, the direction of its development. For a certain number of years, indeed, the child was left with its parents, whose instincts, enlightened by the general tone of the state, were believed to be the most faithful guardians of its physical well-being; but, at seven years old in Sparta, and at a somewhat later date in some other Dorian states, [11] the more public education began, and the child joined classes to be taught song and the choral dance, with other exercises of body, by which a complete physical development and action might take place. Here let us observe, that the Dorian gymnastic was always accompanied by music, as the intellectual exercises were called. Not a shade of brutality was ever allowed in the Spartan gymnasium. Boxing and violent wrestling were prohibited; also gladiators, i. e. combatants who used arms. The wrestling was never permitted to touch upon that violence which would injure the body, or give occasion for the combatants to cry for mercy. The foot-race was the exercise in which the Dorians oftenest bore away the crown of victory at the Olympic games. Their bodies were strengthened and hardened by hunting, and exposure to the extremes of heat and cold, hunger and fatigue, in the refreshing open air. The scourging at the temple of Diana Orthia, mentioned in history, was not Dorian. The Diana Orthia was not Apollo's sister, but the earth-goddess, spoken of above; and this gloomy and bloody superstition was the tenacity of the old religion upon the Doric ground. The custom of compelling or allowing the children to steal their food, in order to educate them in dexterity and self-dependence, seems an exception to the common probity of Dorian life; but, in judging of it, we must remember that food was in common, and thus no individual right seemed to [89] be invaded. This custom, and that of the bridegroom's stealing his bride,—as the form of marriage,—seem to indicate an open and merry contest of the individual with the social power, in the one case; and of masculine with feminine force, in the other;—a gay admission of the fact, that the problem of adjustment, in either case, was not quite solved, and that it should be left to the right of the strongest, heroically exercised. The Doric organization of society, in these respects, bears the same relation to the ideal Christian organization, as the hero to the saint. But the law of property, and the physical advantage of the masculine sex, never descended with the Dorians to the brutality of the Roman rule, where the debtor, and woman from her birth to her death, were absolute chattel slaves. [12]

The gymnastic exercises of youth were not confined to the male sex. The virgins also contended in classes. But there is no proof of Plutarch's assertion, that they contended naked before men. There is sufficient circumstantial evidence against this. [13] Their bodily exercises were in private, although, in some religious festivals, they raced in public, as well as danced, but in the usual Dorian dress for virgins. This dress, it is true, only covered the bosom, and reached to the knee; and it is a noticeable fact, in connection with the known chastity of this race, where adultery was unknown before Alcibiades' visit to Sparta, and every approach to impurity was punished with death. The married women among the Dorians alone appeared veiled, or with long garments. The education of girls was so invigorating to mind and body, they could be safely trusted to the chaste instincts of true womanhood. But the Athenians, and other later Greeks, whom Asia had corrupted with its female license, and who were thrown upon the virtue of outward restraints, might have characterized the Dorian virgins as "naked;" not being able to appreciate the drapery of purity.

That to which we sequestrate the name of music stands in the forefront of Dorian education. The musical ear is that [90] region which connects the bodily and spiritual life, and it occupies a large portion of the consciousness in the favored organizations of the people of the South of Europe. Its due proportion denotes physical perfection, and is one of the most obvious indications of the capacity of an individual or of a people for a high culture.

Since this is so, in the character of the music must be the deepest secret of the education of a people; and that the Dorians thought this, is evident from the rigidity and solemnity of all their regulations about music, and that the penalty of death was threatened against any one who violated the sanctity of the ancient music by new measures, or even new strings to the lyre.

The true Dorian music was that which entirely expressed the idea of the Dorian character. It was the sound of Apollo in the soul. The movement was just that which waked up the intellect to the perception of all law, and checked the passions from falling into deliquescence; making the whole human being a calm, clear-sighted, creative power. That they believed this music was in the universe, objective to the soul, is expressed by the Pythagorean symbol of the music of the spheres, apprehensible through the silence which was but another name for the perfect act of intellection. There was therefore ideal propriety in the Dorians making music their central activity. Not only did all bodily exercise thus become more or less of a dance, and an intellectual impress was made upon passion, but, what is more important, thus they formed, in the consciousness of each individual, a standard by which all their activity was measured.

The dances of the Dorians were intellectual in their character,—sometimes representative of historical events,—sometimes of foreign customs,—sometimes they were allegorical; in all instances, even when comic, they expressed thought, and stimulated intellectual activity; while the dances of other nations expressed the softer passions merely, and tended to immorality.

The dancing in chorus of young men, of virgins, and of old men, were parts of the public worship. The motions of the young men, says Müller, were vigorous, and often of a [91] military character; those of the virgins were in measured steps, with feminine gestures; and the whole was solemn and grave for the participation of age.

It is impossible here to go into the history of Dorian music and dancing; but its early purity, as well as its subsequent corruption, its action upon the ceremonies of other worships than that of Apollo, and the re-action of other worships upon it,—all testify to the wisdom of the Dorians in making the music and dance an affair of legislation.

The power of music and the dance is exemplified especially in the fact, that with the Dorians they entered even into war, and elevated the exercise of destructiveness into an elegant art. It may be thought that this has been of no advantage to humanity, in the long run (a point of which we may not judge, perhaps, as the end is not yet); but there can be no doubt that, if war does exist, the subjection of it to the Dorian measure of music and motion has robbed it, as Burke would say, of half its ferociousness, by taking away all its brutality.

Song was the accompanying, or immediately consequent, step to the mimetic and allegoric dance; and perhaps here we may discover the origin of the multitude of measures in Greek poetry. Lyric poetry prevailed over every other among the Dorians, and was cultivated by both sexes. It originated with the Dorians, as epic poetry has originated in almost all the other tribes, and is to be referred to the predominance of religion. The ode is the natural address of the cultivated mind to the god whose very nature is proportion, and whose own sound is music. The later history of the drama is well known. The earlier history of comedy, as well as tragedy, leads us immediately to the Dorians, whose intellectual sharpness and power originated humorous expression, if not wit itself, to a remarkable degree. Humor is impossible with the intellectually effeminate. Bucolics were the accompaniment of rustic dances, and elegies of those dances which celebrated astronomical changes; and this opens out a new vista of thought as to the derivation of the very idea of dancing from the motions of the heavenly bodies. The poems of Homer were recited at first by Ionian rhapsodists; but Terpander the Dorian is said to have first set them to a regular [92] tune. He is also said to have first mixed Greek and Asiatic music. Another consequence of the Dorian music and dance was the sculpture of Greece, which took its ideal character from the Dorians, who had Apollo for model, and the unveiled human form, beheld with a chaste delight in the gymnasium, for their school of art. Their love for proportion, harmony, and regularity, rather than for luxuriance of ornament and glitter, is also exemplified in their architecture, which betrays a certain relation to the sculpture of the nation and era. Thus the Dorian measure came to characterize their artistic eye, as well as ear and limb, and the body received its highest education; almost reminding one of the sublime image of Milton, who speaks of the time when, by the natural ascension of matter,—

"bodies shall at last all turn to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and, wing'd, ascend
Ethereal."

But the music of the Dorians comprehended their moral and intellectual culture, which was very much the same in both sexes. We may infer a natural education of the affections, and that discipline which precludes selfishness in its grossest form, from the fact, that the family spirit was free and genial. The Dorian called his wife, mistress; and it was no unmeaning title; for women enjoyed a real influence in the management of their families, and as mothers. "Aristotle speaks," says Müller, "of their influence on the government, in the time of the ascendency of Sparta: it increased," he says, "still more when a large part of the landed property fell into the hands of women." He adds, that, "little as the Athenians esteemed their own women, they involuntarily revered the heroines of Sparta; and this feeling is sometimes apparent even in the coarse jests of Aristophanes." Again, "In general, it may be remarked, that, while among the Ionians women were merely considered in an inferior and sensual light, and though the Æolians allowed their feelings a more elevated tone, as is proved by the amatory poetesses of Lesbos,—the Dorians, as well at Sparta as in the South of Italy, were almost the only nation who esteemed the higher [93] attributes of the female mind as capable of cultivation." The anecdote of the daughter of Cleomenes, who warned her father, though yet a child, of the Persian's gold, is still more in point than the pretty story of Agesilaus found playing horse with a stick to amuse his infant-boy. It proves rational relations and intercourse between parents and children.

The moral influence of the relation of friendship is to be considered in the Dorian education. Every well-educated man was bound to be the love of some youth, who was called his Listener, as he was called Inspirer; and these words express the pure and intellectual connection. Plutarch, who has much misrepresented this "friendship," admits, however, that for some faults the inspirer was punished, instead of the listener. The listener had also liberty by law to punish his inspirer for any insult or disgraceful treatment. The friends could represent each other in the public assembly, and stood side by side in war. Cicero testifies to the sanctity of the Dorian friendship.

It was only in Sparta and Crete that this institution was recognized by the state; but it was founded on feelings which, it is evident, belonged to the Dorian race; for, in their other cities, particular friends are spoken of by name. The relation was not merely of men. Noble women would have their female listeners; and sometimes a female inspirer had a small company of girls, who cultivated music and poetry. In his history of Grecian literature, K. O. Müller gives details respecting this. The moral and intellectual training implied in the existence and respect for the family, presided over by cultivated female intelligence, is an explanation of the long conservation of the Dorian virtue, and prevented the hardening effect of what seems to us living in public. The Dorian men eat in public in messes, and had λέσχαι, or little clubs, at which they conversed with a freedom guarded by a high sense of honor; and to these conversations the youths were gradually introduced by their inspirers. Instead of the gossip which destroys mind, the conversation, rational, brilliant with wit and humor, was of the sort which makes the man, by keeping him in relation with worthy objects. The sentences of this conversation, which have [94] been handed down to us, are diamonds cut with diamonds; and the young Dorians were trained in concise, witty, and symbolic expression, to fit them for it. It was the object to learn, in the first place, to see the truth, and sharply define it in their thought, in order to express it exactly. This developed to their mind all the intellectual treasures of the Greek language, as the constant demands for the ode and choral song searched out all its melodies. Nor was this study of grammar, in the highest and etymological sense, including logic, their only purely intellectual training. In default of the comparative study of languages, which makes our severest discipline, they had geometry. The mystic numbers of Pythagoras probably covered an application of mathematics to nature, to trace which had a high intellectual effect; but they studied geometry with practical applications, such as we seldom enter into: witness the discoveries made of the generation of beautiful forms from simple ground forms and circles, as displayed in the architecture of the Parthenon and recent discoveries of symmetrical beauty in the antique vases. [14]

The Dorians proper seemed to have nothing to do in time of peace, but to converse. But the Perioikoi, or that part of the nation descended from the conquered race, were included in all the education; and these were not only warriors, on apparently equal footing with the Dorians proper, but agriculturists, artisans, and traders; manufacturers, artists, and mariners. In some instances, the Perioikoi of Laconia were citizens of Sparta; for, as Müller says, "the Doric dominion did not discourage or stifle the intellectual growth of her dependant subjects, but allowed it full room for a vigorous development."

It might seem like dodging to speak of the Dorians, and say nothing of the Helots.

This subject is undoubtedly involved in some obscurity. But one thing is pretty evident. The Helots were not enslaved by the Dorians: they were slaves of the conquered people, and the Dorians did not destroy their relation to the Perioikoi, when they subjected the latter. This is "the height [95] and front of their offending." As to Plutarch's story of the Spartans making the Helots drunk, in order to teach their children, by the disgusting association, to be temperate,—its foundation, in fact, is indicated by Müller, who, in speaking of the dances, mentions the dances of the Helots, indigenous with themselves; some of which represented riotous scenes, and in which drunken persons were probably represented. The Dorians were not responsible for these dances, which very probably it would have been a cruel oppression to suppress. Undoubtedly there were evils and injustices in separable from slavery, from which the Dorians did not deliver the Helots; but in Sparta there was a legal way for them to gain liberty and citizenship. Callicratidas, Lysander, and Gylippus were of the race of the Helots.

In speaking of the Dorian education, we must not omit to say, that the Pythagorean philosophy was its highest instrument. Pythagoras was the philosophic interpreter of Apollo; and the triumph and proof of the reality of the Dorian intellectual culture were given in the fact, that, in the Pythagorean league, "the philosophy of order, of unison, of κόσμος,—expressing, and consequently enlisting on its side, the combined endeavors of the better part of the people,—obtained the management of public affairs, and held possession of it for a considerable time; so that, the nature and destination of the political elements in existence being understood, and each having assigned to it its proper place, those who were qualified, both by their rank and talents, were placed at the head of the state; a strict personal education having, in the first place, been made one of their chief obligations, in order by this means to pave the way for the education of the other members of the community."

Other effects of this intellectual culture were to be seen in other parts of Greece, where the germs of comedy and tragedy, sculpture and architecture, fructified. The Dorian was the father of Greek literature, in its multifarious forms; but the mothers were Achæan, Ionian, Pelasgic. Does not the Dorian genius and character pervade the page of Thucydides? and, but for Spartan culture, would Pericles have given name to his era?

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Without going any farther into minutiæ, we may finally speak of the spirit of the Dorian education. It was purely human. It began and ended in man. From the exercises of the gymnasium even to the possession and exercise of political power, there was nothing proposed for pursuit beyond the excellence attained, and the honor of that. We see in Homer's time, that prizes of real value were proposed to the Achæan victors, in contests of strength and skill. But with the Dorians, crowns of no intrinsic value were the prizes,—mere symbols of an excellence which was its own reward. The Dorian strength and beauty continued unimpaired just so long as they could thus symbolize the "superiority of man to his accidents." The son of the morning fell, as soon as his eye turned from the worship of objective truth to subjective indulgence: and his works did follow him; the grand style rapidly giving place to effeminacy, until, where Æschylus had been, was Seneca the Roman tragedian; and every thing in proportion. "The ancients described beauty," said Goethe; "the moderns describe beautifully."

But the Dorian culture was applied only to a fragment of the great race of humanity: it was the perfect form of one wave which has passed away on the tide of time. The question is, May the great flood itself take this perfect form? Can Christ govern mankind as completely as Apollo governed the Dorians?

In order to this, religion must enspirit political forms as truly with us as with them, and an adequate education conserve them. Being Americans, we can take leave to skip the difficult task of legitimating, upon the doctrine of Christianity, the states of modern Europe. We doubt whether any philosopher of history may do that. It is our privilege to live under political forms that it is not difficult to trace quite immediately to our religion. For the United States, in its germ, was a Christian colony; and the oracle which directed it was deeper in the breasts of the Pilgrims than they themselves knew, or could adequately unfold, either in doctrine or practice. But later times have read the writing; and the fathers of the Federal Constitution built the temple, [97] whose foundations the Pilgrims had laid (we would reverently say it) after the model of one "not built with hands, eternal in the heavens." For the Federal Constitution corresponds to the spiritual constitution of man, and has elasticity to admit his growth. It is the unity of a triplicity. The universal suffrage expresses the Passion; the legislative and judicial departments, the Intelligence; and the executive, the Will, of the people. This political form was made out ideally by Sir Harry Vane, in his letter to Cromwell, when that remarkable person pretended to call his friends to counsel him as to what form he should give the government of England in the day of his power. Cromwell rejected it on the plea, that the sovereign grace of God, on which all progress depended, could be more readily found in an executive officer, whom a church recognized to be one of God's elect, than in the common sense of the electors of a legislalature. But this was but a new form of the old divine right, as the Protectorate proved; and Sir Harry Vane was farther justified by the growth of our government into an actual fact, a hundred and fifty years later.

It follows from such a political form, that the political action of the nation must reflect the character of the nation, point for point. The suffrage shows the prevalent character of its passion; the Congress and Supreme Court manifest its degree of intelligence, which necessarily will preserve a certain ratio to its passion, since it is elected by it; and the President expresses its will, on the penalty of being removed, if he does not execute its will, and also approve himself to the "sober second thought." It is an inevitable evil, that, like the principle of will in an individual, he will ever be more expressive of the passion than of the intelligence; for his interest depends more immediately upon it. He goes counter to the intelligence, to execute the impulses of the passion. Moreover, the intelligence of the people, as that of the individual is liable to be, is rounded in by its passion; and the too prevalent "doctrine of instructions" increases the danger of this.

In the last analysis, then, all is dependant upon the passion. "Out of the heart are the issues of life."

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From this statement, the dangers to which our political system is exposed are obvious. It is the same as that to which every man is exposed,—the revolving in a vicious circle of unenlightened passion, unprogressive mind, and headlong will. The national safety, like man's individual salvation, depends upon the intelligence being informed by a Spirit above itself, so that it may mediate wisely between the passion and the will; elevating the character of the one, and directing the movements of the other. In short, a true spirit of culture must do for the national heart what the ever-incoming grace of God does for the individual soul. The chief danger to a nation and to a man is from within, that the passion and the will may be too strong for the uncultured intelligence. And the danger in our nation is in proportion to the breadth of the national life. All humanity is in it. Our geographical extent and position expose us to the access of all temptation. Not a pleasure, not a dominion, but is opened upon our desire. Every susceptibility of human nature to ambition, to avarice, and to sensual induldulgence, is addressed. What an original affluence of intellect, what a training of mind, is necessary in order to grasp all this life, and legislate for it in such a manner that it may not prove suicidal! In truth, man seems to be placed under the United States' government, free of the universe, and, as in the case of Adam in his garden, amid such a luxuriance of all that is desirable, that the chances are entirely that he shall miss of the tree of life, which is not so obvious to the eyes, but requireth that they be "purged with euphrasie and rue."

Nevertheless, it is our only hope that we should eat of the tree of life, and the passion of this people be subjected to the κόσμος which breathes in a baptism of fire from the Rock of Joseph, whence rose man glorified as God. In other words, we must be educated by our religion, which comprehends in its scope the life that now is, no less than that which is to come;—a religion which honoreth the spirit in its regenerate human manifestation, even as it honoreth it absolute and unmanifest in the Father.

To explain:—The religion we profess teaches us, that [99] men, in the first phase of their existence, become empassioned by any and all the objects in the universe with which they are in contact; and that they are, in fact, hurried hither and thither, perpetually losing themselves through the richness of their subjective nature, in objects which are at best but signs of an absolute good, of which they have the undying but undefined presentiment. For the various objects which entrance the eye of the natural man, and draw him to adventure his bark towards them, may be likened to light-houses on the rock-bound coast of a rich country, which are mistaken by savage discoverers for the riches that they indicate; and the ignorant mariner rushes towards them, and gets shipwrecked on the rocks upon which they are built.

To stop here: our religion would be gloomy, but it teaches us another thing. It teaches us, that the first phase of human life does not exhaust us, but that it is ours to see the futility of all feeling and activity, unenlightened by God's plan for making his finite creature live on an infinite principle. And to see this futility, and bravely acknowledge it, is to die to the life of mere passion, and to rise to the intellection of the secret of life eternal, which is no less than this: All human passion is to re-appear even upon earth, no longer as master, but as servant, to do the behests of that will, become by gratitude an infinite principle of love, and displaying the office of every faculty and every feeling of human nature, to manifest something of the divine life.

Never before the birth of our political constitution, which was not made by man, but grew up from the instincts of Christian men who had brooked no control of their relations with God, was there any nation on earth, within which the life eternal could unfold its proportions; and it is not wonderful, therefore, that we are slow to enter upon our inheritance, and have not yet unfolded a system of education correspondent to our large privileges.

Let us, however, briefly touch some outlines of such a system; and, in order to give form to our remarks, we will run a sort of parallel between the form of culture proper for us, and the Dorian form that we have just considered.

Men do not now, in sitting in judgment upon the physical [100] system of the new-born, proceed so summarily as did the Dorians with the infirm of body. They accept this evil, when it comes; and the education of the blind, of the deaf, even of the idiot, is in proportion to that richness of resource, indicated, as the gift of God to man, by him who is said to have healed by his touch all the ills that flesh is heir to. A study and analysis of the physical constitution of man, and of the origin and law of its life, united with a sacred sense and practice of duty, shall, in some future on earth, ensure to all who are born, a fair physical constitution, and a subsequent preservation of the same—perhaps to euthanasia.

This part of culture rests so much with parents, that it can only be indirectly reached by a public system. Yet society should feel it a duty, as society, to provide for the study and diffusion of all knowledge on this subject. A partial apprehension of the Christian religion, in times past, has led to a general perversion of thought concerning every thing pertaining to the body. To die bodily with Christ has been that for which saints were canonized. Strange that even those who so clung to the letter which killeth, should have read so partially the letter, that they did not see, that, if Christ's body was tormented and buried, yet it rose again, not subject to decay, but capable of being assimilated to the glory which eye hath not seen; for God did not suffer his holy one to see corruption. The symbolic meaning of the death has been considered much more deeply than the symbolic meaning of the resurrection, which is the complement of the spiritual truth he died to express. Christendom has depreciated the physical system, so that the conscience, which should form and preserve the body in a perfect harmony with nature, has not been developed. Truly, as St. James saith, "he that sinneth in one thing sinneth in all." By this neglect, the mind and spirit have been warped, weakened, and injured, beyond our power to estimate.

A truly Christian system of culture would not neglect a proper gymnastic of the body. It appropriates all that the Dorian culture discovered. Not only the military drill, with running, fencing, and every exercise that developes without brutalizing, should be made a part of the exercises of the [101] school; but boys and girls should be exercised, as of old, in every species of dance which expresses an idea. The musical ear should be early trained, and the body be taught to move in measure. Nothing but the artificial asceticism which arose from that one-sided view of religion which the too energetic Puritans had, could have crushed out of human nature, even so far as it has done in New England, the natural tendency to dance, and degraded the music of motion with associations of presumptuous sin. It is unquestionable that a corrupt people will dance in a manner to corrupt themselves still more; but "to them that hath shall be given." The system of dancing, natural to the innocent-minded and intellectually cultivated, will refine and elevate. [15]

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By an intellectual dancing, nothing is meant which is heavy or pedantic. There will undoubtedly be solemn dances; but so there will be fanciful ones,—the Mother Goose and fairy-tale for the very young, the innocent love-tale of later youth, enriched by the imagination, till the ballet is commensurate with the opera. Whatever can be expressed in music may be heightened in effect by an accompanying dance; and Sophocles and Æschylus have taught us (for they trained their own choruses, and Sophocles led his in person), that the highest and gravest genius may employ itself in idealizing the motions of the body.

But mere good-will cannot bring this art to high degrees of perfection. A peculiar genius, which must be born, and cannot be made, is needed here, not less than to compose for the harp or organ. The dancing of Christian Europe is still Pagan, and even the Dorian dances are mostly forgotten. Yet out of that Pagan material might be raised an art of dancing not unworthy of the name of Christian.

Dancing is an admirable initiation of the young into the love and practice of music; because the beauty of measure, first appreciated by measured motion, disciplines the mind to measure time. It is not necessary so elaborately to defend the introduction of music into general education, as of dancing; for only one small sect of Christendom has undertaken to exclude music absolutely from human expression. [16] The largest sect of Christendom, the Roman Catholic church, has developed it so completely, that, on the wings of harmonies which essay to penetrate and reveal the heart of mysteries too generally hidden by "words without counsel which darken knowledge," the world did for a long period, and, in some degree, does in all time, rise above the narrowing influences of that creed which condemns to everlasting woe all who are out of the pale of the church, and even excludes from heaven those who, in involuntary unconsciousness of its existence, fail to pass under its baptizing waters. [17]

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But though music is made a part of almost all Christian worship, and though its great masters have proved by their compositions, that it expresses the highest ideas, and even the most varied thoughts, as well as sentiments, of humanity more adequately than words can do; yet it does not take its place in American education, even upon a par with reading. Somewhat of the practice of music in choral singing, it is true, begins to enter into our common-school education. But this hardly goes beyond the metropolis; and the theory of music is not taught in any school or college in our country, with the exception of the asylums for the blind, and a few private schools. There are multitudes of the fathers of our country who, as school-committee men, direct its education, who never have thought of music but as an amusement of the senses; who never have dreamed of its moral, far less of its intellectual, influences. And there are some who look upon it, when introduced into religious services, as a mere rest of the weak mind from the laborious act of worship.

But it is time that the importance of music, taught thoroughly, especially in its theory, should be recognized in education; and that the hideous screaming, without melody, measure, or harmony, which is heard in most places of Protestant worship, should be stilled, together with the scraping of violins and bass-viols, and the pounding of the keys of piano-fortes and organs, to the destruction of all musical ear, and the derangement of every standard of proportion which God has planted in the nervous organization of man, for the first discipline of the mind to order.

One objection that is made to the introduction of music into common education is the time that it would occupy, which, it is said, should be taken up with more useful exercises. But, waiving the circumstance, that this objection entirely begs the question respecting the comparative importance of music in education, we reply, that, were music and dancing a regular part of school exercises every day, as they should be, it would be no hardship to children to remain more hours at school. These exercises could profitably be so arranged that they would break the monotony of book-studies, and supersede the boisterous, and too often [104] mischievous play-hours, which make the neighborhood of a school a thing to be eschewed by all decent society. The advantages to health of mind and body are no less to be esteemed than the elegance of carriage and general gracefulness which would inevitably take the place of the uncouth, romping manner, or awkward, stiff want of manner, not only of our country people, but even of the inhabitants of our cities.

In the small degree in which music now is introduced into schools, it is appropriated to the forms of religious worship. This is well, and might be much extended, when, by a thorough study of the theory of music, the vast treasury of religious strains which the genius of the Old World has accumulated, shall be put within the powers of execution of more learners. Music affords, indeed, the only means of persuading the soul of childhood into any thing that may bear the name of worship, at the early age before experience has revealed to the soul its necessities, and opened its eyes upon the great truth which solves the problem of evil, and gives the second birth. But music does do this. It awakens presentiments which may be said to be the wings which the condescending Deity occasionally fastens upon the child, to raise him into the empyrean where he shall by and by intelligently dwell. Music, as we have intimated above, is in a region above sectarianism, and affords a common ground upon which the divided in opinion may meet; and if all religious instruction (we do not mean all moral science) which is imparted to the young could be confined to that which can be conveyed in music, that perplexity of mind upon the subject, which is the generating cause of most of the speculative infidelity of modern times, might never take place, because the mind would not turn to the greater questions of life, before it was sufficiently enriched by experience, and matured in judgment, to cope with them. The Protestant education does not wholly err in exercising the understanding upon these themes. We are not arguing for what Fenelon calls, and means to commend it, "the profound darkness of the true faith." We would only have the æsthetic element developed, as nature meant it should be, before the mere [105] understanding shall be sharpened to chop a logic which, at that stage of development, can make but "a series of empty boxes" for the soul to dwell in.

Having thus introduced the young mind to the science of order, by the music of motion and of sound, elements in which childhood will dwell in their χαος, if not in their κόσμος, we proceed to the training of the eye and hand, by imitative drawing and the arts of design.

If singing should take the lead of reading, so should drawing of writing. The eye should be accustomed to pictures from very babyhood; and it is marvellous to those who are inexperienced, to see how, very early, mere drawing, in the sketchy style, is perfectly understood by children. "Severe simple lines" are amongst the readiest means of developing the intellect. The mechanical difficulty, too, of using the chalk or lead may be very easily mastered. Quite little children will be amused to draw lines, and thus learn to steady the muscles of the hand to a purpose; and, as soon as the mind is a little developed, a rough imitation of forms begins. By and by, a little practical perspective can be taught by means of holding a thread, horizontally and vertically, over the points of a solid rectilinear figure, in order to see the bearing of its outlines upon the plane of the picture; and thus the discouraging disgust that children are apt to feel, as they learn to compare their attempts with the originals which they make their models, will be avoided. The idea of perspective drawing once taken, the career of improvement is entered upon at once. [18]

Geometry, as well as arithmetic, may be begun at an earlier age with children than is generally believed, if it is taught disencumbered of the verbiage of demonstration that disgraces our text-books; and it will unite itself to drawing, by being carried out into descriptive geometry, and applied to the drawing of the antique architecture and vases. This application will recommend it to many minds which now are [106] matured without any mathematical discipline, on the idea that this is only necessary for the mechanically scientific.

Before dismissing the subject of educating the eye to form, it is to be remembered, that modelling, as well as drawing, should be practised in all places of education. [19]

After this preparation of body and mind, reading and writing should be taught at once, and in such a manner as to make our own language the "open Sesame" to all speech. At present, the American people—although a congeries, as it were, of all peoples—is comparatively dumb. In no country which is called civilized, are even the cultivated classes themselves so completely sequestrated to the use of one language. While its economical interests, as well as its intellectual necessities, cry out for a general facility in speaking foreign tongues, the system of language-teaching falls confessedly below that of other nations. In the schools of Holland, the children grow up, speaking with facility four languages,—English, German, French, and Dutch. But it begins to be seen, that there is a natural and intellectual philosophy of expression; and that a true philological art can be taught to every child who learns to read and write, that shall make the native tongue appreciated in all its deep significance, and prepare the mind for such a comparison of our own with other tongues, as shall immensely facilitate their acquisition; and this glossology, while it affords so great an incidental advantage, shall discipline the intellect, like the learning of any natural science; showing grammar and logic to be, not mere technics, but the forms of thought, and languages themselves to be nothing less than the monuments of the history of the human mind in its first intuitions [107] and reflections. On the ethereal element upon which the spirit of man works with the ethereal instrument voice, is this history carved; or rather in this element has human thought vegetated, not to the eye, but to the ear.

And perhaps it may take no more years to gain a key to the expressed mind of man, than are devoted now to learn by rote a few books in Greek and Latin; and which, after all, are so learned that only the exceptions among the university-educated (as the frequenters of our partial colleges are, as if in mockery, called) can read Latin and Greek with pleasure to themselves. Still fewer can write these languages, and almost none can speak them. Philology should be studied as the most important of sciences, not only for the sake of knowing the works of art and science that the various languages contain, but because words themselves are growths of nature and works of art, capable of giving the highest delight as such; and because their analysis and history reveal the universe in its symbolic character. Moreover, no language, learned in the light of philology, could be forgotten. Indeed, it would seem as if no knowledge conveyed in words could be forgotten, if the words were understood as the living beings that they are when seen in their origin.

But it would take a volume to unfold this subject adequately. The value of language-learning to discipline the mind into power and refinement has been always blindly felt; but, not being understood as well as felt, it has not justified itself to the practical sense especially of this country; and nothing is more common than to hear all study of languages, except of those to be used in commercial and other present intercourse, condemned as at best a costly and unprofitable luxury. These languages are therefore learned by rote, more or less, on such a substratum of Latin and Greek as is thought necessary to facilitate their acquisition. In the best instances, there is some study of idiomatic construction, some investigation of the composition of sentences, as characteristic of a people; but the words themselves are used as counters, and there is no investigation of their composition, and their correspondent relation to the nature they echo on the one side, and the thought they symbolize on the other.

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A certain preparation is required for children's entering upon the study of language in the right way, which would be involved in the training of ear, eye, and hand, mentioned above. By means of drawings and pictures, a great deal of information will be conveyed respecting objects of nature and art, and such processes as are capable of pictorial representation; and then, if the learning to read and write isdelayed to the age even of six or seven, the mind has not been left uncultivated, but has learned to love order, and to use language; especially if exercised, as children should be at the first schools, to reproduce in their own words what their teachers tell them of the pictures and objects of nature which are put before them. [20]

A true study of language not only involves a development of the relations of nature and mind, in the forming of an intellectual conscience, but leads to a study of nature of a fundamental character. Science, which has been defined "the universe in the abstract," when put into appropriatewords thoroughly understood, would be breathed into the mind and assimilated, as the body breathes in and assimilates air and food. Thus the common student would, like Newton, read the propositions of the Euclids of every science,and be able to skip the labored demonstrations without loss. The clear mind, undarkened by "words without knowledge," would find it sport and recreation to apply science to the progress of mechanical art; and a vast amount of energywould be left to explore new worlds of nature, and manifest thought in new forms of beauty.

The mere enjoyment of an education, such as has been here hinted at, is the least of its advantages, though it is one not to be despised. Its use in preserving the race under the political forms which, as we showed above, are alone, of all yet discovered, elastic enough to admit the whole man to be unfolded, can be shown to be probable. The mass of mankind have no fancy for governing; and they would not be driven to meddle with what they know nothing of, if there [109] was no social oppression to cast off, or they could so exercise their energies as to be in a state of enjoyment already. At present, everybody in this country is running to the helm of state, in order to see if they cannot succeed in steering the ship into some pleasanter waters; and, in the old countries, they are engaged in throwing overboard the cargo it is carrying, that they may save the ship perchance from sinking, old and leaky as it is. But, in a nation truly cultivated, life would prove so rich, that every man could afford to pursue his own vocation; and "nothing should hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain." Or, if it is fanciful to suppose that quite this millenium is to be attained in this sphere,—into which is born, in every generation, a fresh mass of chaotic life, to be trained and cultivated by truth and beauty,—yet more and more approximation is to be looked for, as the ages roll on. In the mean time, we need lose no opportunity that we have. There is no reason why we should not instantly begin to work on this plan. Our country is full of means. Europe is pouring out upon us her artists and scholars. We are rich, and can tax ourselves for conservative as well as for destructive purposes. Why not employ these artists and scholars to make a new revival of learning, which shall be, to times to come, what that, produced by the dislodged Greeks of the captured Eastern Empire, was to Europe in the fourteenth century? Why should not our merchants become, like the merchant-princes of Italy, the patrons of science and art, and give their children as well as their money to these pursuits? How many of the growing evils of our society would be crushed, as they are taking root, if, as fast as Americans became rich, they should leave the pursuit of riches to those who are poorer, and use the advantage of the leisure they have earned, to cultivate what the ancients expressively call "the humanities;" at least educate their children to live, rather than to accumulate superfluous means of living; to be living men, rather than instruments of living! "Is not the life more than raiment?"

It is plain, that, if we can spend a hundred millions of dollars in a year for so questionable a purpose as the late war of Mexico, we have resources on which we might draw for [110] public education. And, were education organized and set to music, as the art of destruction is, and that which it is to gain made as definite an object to the imagination, can it be doubted that it could raise its corps of volunteers, ready to spend and be spent for the truth, beauty, and power over nature, which are offered as rewards to the striving?

Great institutions, large and combined efforts, are doubtless necessary; universities, properly so called, in which a universal culture should be made possible; and these should exist in all our great cities, sending forth their branches into the country towns, or at least their scholars, until the passion of all this people be inspired with truth and beauty. But, if this only adequate measure is still delayed, let every man and woman who see into the subject cultivate their own natures, and those of their children and immediate circle. No hour, redeemed from sordid or brutal degradation, but shall tell. Thy Father worketh hitherto; and do thou work, nothing doubting. It is thus that thou shalt enter spiritually into the legislature of thy country, and help redeem its heart to progress. For it is with thy country as with thyself: unless an ever-progressing truth inform that department which mediates between the passion and the will, it will revolve in a vicious circle, till all freedom, and all capacity for freedom, expire.

Only the Truth can make us free, and keep us free.

CRAWFORD'S ORPHEUS. ↩

For ever passeth Beauty's form
    To Nature's deep abyss:
Not always Love, unchanged and warm,
Dares with his lyre old Night to charm,
    And win the faded bliss.

But always Poet's heart believeth,
    Whatever Time may say,
There is no loss but Song retrieveth:
He is a coward-heart that leaveth
    The Light of Life,—Death's prey.

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Blest be the Poet's hand that toiled
    To carve in lasting stone
The act that in all time hath foiled
Despair's terrific power, and spoiled
    Destruction of his own.

Thus ever, from the vulgar day,
    The Hero shades his eyes;
Peering through dim Obstruction's sway:—
Perchance, upon his darkened way
    The cherished form may rise!

He sees her not! and what though low
    Lies Cerberus overwrought,
His lyre hath quickened Lethe s flow,
Cast coolness o'er Cocytus' glow;
    All this he heedeth not:

He only knows thou art not won—
    The "perfect good and fair:"
The race of life is yet to run;
The only deed is yet undone;
    The Hero still must dare.

A SPIRIT'S REPLY. ↩

Thou who hast sought thy Light of Life
    Through Hades' horrors black,
Hast charmed them all, and won thy quest,
    And wouldst thy way retrack,—

Rest thou—as he of old did not—
    Upon the promise fair,
That Beauty aye shall follow him
    Who all for her will dare.

As thou didst count no bygone loss,
    Count step by step no gain;
But trust that in the upper air
    She'll be with thee again.

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Art. VII.—CORRESPONDENCE. ↩

The fact that nature answers to spirit is one which is confined to no new or narrow circle of experiences. The world at large is the school which believes in it; and daily life, in all its immense detail, is the theatre of its exemplification. The young child acts upon it spontaneously, when the changeful play of the mother's countenance is interpreted into gentle love or gentle rebuke; and mankind, in the main, are satisfied with the living face, as the natural representative of the soul. Love and dislike attach to the human countenance as though it were the inner man. Moreover, the whole body, in its obedience to the will, is known universally as answering to the spirit; and its actions are not regarded as mechanical, but as spiritual, by virtue of the correspondence. The difficulty under which the learned labor, of conceiving a connection between virtues and machines, is no difficulty at all for the common faith; which, in truth, embraces the learned themselves, and maintains that the bodily good deeds of good men are noble, and that their willing arms are the real extending of their spiritual powers and inclinations. It is the same with the Arts, which comprehend all rational actions, as contradistinguished from divine or natural operations; for whatever arts we learn and practise, answer to particular ends for which they are acquired and exercised, and are estimated, by all who understand them, in proportion to their correspondence with the design in the mind of the inventor, and to the requirements of those for whose sake they are applied. An art without an end is an absurdity; a body without a soul is fearful to souls; a face without a mind is idiocy, worse than death. No wonder, then, that we enjoy an intuitive perception of the correspondence of means to ends, and of nature to spirit; for otherwise the universe would be a vast charnel-house, and society upon earth a mere brotherhood of the dead.

If the face, the body, the actions, and the inventions of mankind are always interpreted by an instinctive application of the law of correspondence, the frame of nature itself is also [113] felt, according to the same law, in the workings of the poetic faculty; a power the most eminently passive to the great influences of substantial truth. For Poetry is the synthesis of our other perceptions, the universalization of our common thoughts, the midway hospice in ungenial times for the way worn traveller from the religion of the past to the religion of the future. When church and state, theology and philosophy, forsake the universal verities of existence, then poetry takes them up. In such times, it becomes the church, the provisional spouse of the Father of the fatherless. It is the only faculty to which all facts are welcome in all times. Place the most pinched sectary in the seat of the Muses, and you see his puckered lips expand into round and flowing smiles; and "his eye, in a fine frenzy rolling," communes manifestly with superior beings from all the quarters of the opened heavens. Unwittingly he transcends his creed, and all the creeds of his generation, and utters profundities which perplex his own understanding the moment the spiritual wine has ceased to work upon him. As the prisoner of doctrine, he pusillanimously wrings his hands over the problems of existence, of which his own doctrines are the difficulty; but in his poetic enfranchisement, by the clue of unfearing love and harmony, he easily and gaily perambulates the open gardens of virtue and beauty, where feeling and delight are all-sufficient expositors of the unity of creation. Obsequious to the guidance of the spirit of nature, he submits himself unconsciously, naturally, to the principles and laws whereby nature issues into satisfaction. The first of these conditions for poetry is, that all things in the world shall be capable of an application to the human heart,—that objects seemingly dead shall still be fitly the objects of love or dislike, from relevancy, whether of harmony or discord, to the affections of mankind. Thus poetry is the complement of our social instincts, as it proclaims that the connection of the soul with nature is not limited to correspondence with the head or the body, or the works of the hands or the inventions of the thought, but extends to the kingdoms of the earth and the entire fabric of the universe; and that every form, great or small, breathes out life, and aspires to personality and animation. In this [114] way, poetry is creative, because it revives the bodies of nature with new but congenial spirits, and completes their intended animation, by repossessing them in the name of the human soul.

This, however, is nearly all that can be said of the appreciation of correspondence by mankind at present. It is, wherever we find it, only an instinctive knowledge, and maintained for the necessity of the case; enough being admitted to carry on the business of the world, or to authorize the jaded mind to take refreshment in the ideal realms of song. For the rest, correspondence has died away out of religion; it has had neither revival nor shelter in the conceptions of philosophy; and science, preoccupied with engagements and distractions, has not yet had leisure to base it, where its lower foundations will lie, upon the rocks and mountains of nature. Let us briefly review the reasons which prevent its admission within the pale of knowledge in any of these spheres.

It may be premised, that the acknowledgment of correspondence as a general law, depends upon the acknowledgment of God as one infinite Being, who has created all things for one infinite end. Whatever impairs the force of this idea, or perplexes its ultimate unity, also essentially disturbs the doctrine of correspondence. If there be not unity in the design of nature, then one thing is not answerable to, or serviceable for, another, which is the same as to say, that there is no universal correspondence. But where, among the religions and sects of the old world, is the theology which is not virtually polytheism? As against the heathen religions, we admit the charge easily enough: their votaries bow down to wood and stone; and the fact is as palpable as the idol. They conceive of God as a finite being, man, animal, or thing; or perhaps they conceive of a multitude of gods; and it is; impossible that creative or universal functions should attach to these, or that the uses of all things, in all worlds, should ascend by steps to such local and partial centres. Who can imagine for a moment that any of the gentile or national deities are the infinite ends of creation? But no finite power, and no number of such powers, could even modify the universe correspondentially, still less create it so. [115] The utmost unanimity among a thousand deities would not amount to particular, but only to general unity, and general only for some one district of the planet. In short, to think finitely of God is to think of him from the resistance of matter, and the environment of adverse circumstances, and not from love, wisdom, order, and unity, the omnipotent principles to which nature is completely plastic, and the grounds of the endless forms that minister to each other in their degrees, and specifically answer to one infinitely manifold end in the mind of the Creator.

The Pagan polytheism, then, can afford no place to a doctrine of universal correspondence; because Paganism does not admit the fact of a creation, but regards matter as either eternal or non-existent, and only conceives of an arbitrary modification of natural powers by a multitude of beings generically like ourselves; and, we may almost say a fortiori, neither can that more condensed and compact form of the same sensuality, which may be denominated Christian Polytheism. The theory of three gods and a devil, the cautious Heathenism and Manichæism of polite nations, is as destructive of all notions of regime and unity as if the three were three thousand; and darkness and light, good and evil, were co-equally universal and divine. Thus, the Tritheist has no doctrine of a Creator, from which to deduce the universality of correspondence. But the counterpoise to this Tritheism lies naturally in the abstract admission of a unity in the Godhead, combined with the practical worship of the three mental idols; which brings us to the second point, or the aspect of Philosophy towards Correspondences.

The present philosophies are the re-action of the human mind, thoroughly ashamed of its theology, but unable to escape from it, except into pure negations. This is the reason of their abstract character; for, were they to let themselves down into shapes or images, they would alight at once among the monstrosities of the existing churches. Hence they flit over the whole of our intellectual possessions, as though there was no church in the world; and, in their unresting isolation from reality, proclaim in the strongest manner the want of correspondence between the different [116] organs of the mind. Their general doctrine is, that God is an abstraction;—an abstraction one and infinite; force, substance, mind, intelligence, wisdom, love,—what you please; but all these abstractions still, allied to no form, and barely allowed to be or exist. Where theology commits suicide, philosophy is its unhappy ghost; a thing with no power of embodiment; haunting the world, not dwelling in it; and disturbing the business of life, without aiding to bear and lighten its real burdens. Nevertheless, philosophy contains the shells of truth, and the general principle of correspondence. For force and substance answer to their peculiar manifestations; mind, intelligence, wisdom, love, infinite as well as finite, correspond to their own appropriate means, adaptations, ends, and delights. All this, philosophy recognizes, and produces even the general formula, that the human mind is the image of the Divine, and that man is the mirror of the universe. But the mischief lies here, that these philosophical principles are confirmed abstractions, or closed ideas, containing no internal series, and incapable of tallying with the indefinite multiformity of men and things. For where an indivisible unity, like the God of the metaphysician, or the blank forms of consciousness, is the first degree or term, it is plain that it can correspond to nothing distinct in the second sphere, or the region of causes, and to nothing really various in the third, or the region of effects. Spiritualities, seized upon as a general formula, and carefully emptied of all particulars, can bear no relation to a world like ours, or a creature like man, where, and in whom, parts are distinguished from parts, in form as well as function, to a degree which baffles the most instructed faculty; and where, indeed, succession and detail of things comprise all the means of God. If there be no series, but a blank, in our knowledge of the higher and the highest, if it number none but closed ideas, plainly we cannot apply it to the series of the lower, and see piece for piece in each sphere; or discern the specific wisdom of any given natural form, still less the distinct carrying-out in nature of any spiritual principle of existence. Now, this settled emptiness is the sole attribute of all confirmed abstractions; and philosophy, for the present at least, [117] is forced, as we have shown, to continue abstract, for fear of falling into the incongruous imagery of the vulgar Christianism. The result is, that while, by its antagonism to the corruptions of theology, and the rational examination of the grounds of that antagonism, it gains some true maxims, these are confined to general admissions without details; for the very existence of this protesting philosophy depends upon its quarrel with the positive sphere, which is the lawful domain of theology. Such is the case with the philosophical maxim, that man is a microcosm, and the mirror of the universe, which, although recognized a hundred times, yet remains in the mind unapplied; and indeed the very men who enunciate as a maxim would be the last to sanction any attempt at detailed proof of it, in the field of nature or the sciences. All philosophy, in fine, implies or proclaims correspondence; no philosophy studies it. The shadow of the doctrine is grasped; its power and substance are neither believed nor desired.

But, if philosophy refuses to impregnate the natural sciences with those germs which it contains, or to put them through the circle of growth and fructification, it is only to be expected, that a counterpoise and re-action should arise to its abstruse barrenness; and this counterpoise exists in the sciences confining themselves to reality within the rigid limits of material law. Philosophy was seen to be the protest against theology; science is the protest against both, but proximately and prominently against the former. Hence, for the present, science is opposed to all general principles arising at once from the mind, and bestows its favor only upon its own generalizations, which are so slow in clearing even the material world, that it must be ages of ages before even the existence of correspondence could come before it as a question. For the prospects of a science which receives the seeds of truth at the beginning are very different from those of a science which has to make them before it can sow them; for this is a hopeless task, against the nature and possibilities of science. No wonder, then, that science, refusing to be distended with the data of subjective philosophy, should cleave to matter as a practical certainty, and seek to locate the whole of [118] knowledge under the dome of the visible heavens; building up cities of material philosophy and material theology, in rivalry of those other mansions which were the prospect and consolation of seers and prophets, and simple hearts, in less sophisticated ages. No wonder that she excludes useless truths from her careful foundations; for her aim is progress, in contradistinction to the immobility of philosophy, and hence she takes no cognizance even of the truth itself, unless it be presently capable of application and enlargement. This is the reason why there is no science of correspondences; the doctrine of correspondence being an abstraction standing by itself, which gains from theology no life or impetus sufficient to make it circulate downwards, and take body and clothing among the things of this world.

So great is the dread with which the inductive or scientific regard the philosophical class, that the former disregard practically the plainest and truest maxims of the latter, in order to break for ever with all knowledge which is apparently unprofitable. Truth, in its commonest forms, becomes therefore suspect to the scientific analyst, lest some root of philosophic barrenness should lurk under it. You may venture such a truism as this, that the general is made up of its appropriate particulars; but the scientific man will refuse to apply it in its own mode to organization, or any set of natural objects, or to deduce from it any of those harmonies of construction which it manifestly involves. He will rather postpone indefinitely these precious results of so plain a principle, than run the risk of landing himself among the eunuchs of philosophical systems.

It is, however, far from my intention to deny, that there are exceptions to this view, both with relation to theology and science; for there are exceptions to every general statement, and it will indeed be my object to show presently, that there is a theology in existence which not only admits the notion of correspondence, but fills it with details; and a science in outline which will receive open-armed the instructions of that theology, and apply them to natural facts, as its most ennobling function. But this theology and science are not orthodox, or central to our present state, but exceptional [119] and transitional, and will require a new general state before they can become ruling influences in the world. Meanwhile, nothing could be more destructive to existing limitations and prejudices than a doctrine of correspondences, which might be inferred from the dread wherewith our thinkers regard analogical reasoning, although, by the way, reasoning and analogizing are fundamentally one process.

What is the first postulate for the successful prosecution of a science of correspondence? Evidently this, that there be at least as much detail in the higher sphere, as the mind or the senses discern in the lower, with which the higher is to correspond. Otherwise it is clear, that the two spheres can not compare with each other in the way of apposite particular equivalents. For example, if light is the lower term, and truth the higher; and if light embraces the phenomena of reflection, refraction, polarization, &c.; then truth cannot correspond to light, unless there be modes of truth answering to reflection, refraction, &c. &c. and to the other exhibitions of which light is the ground. Where the two fail to tally, the higher is occult, or its series is confused into uniformity, in which case it is impossible to say what it corresponds to. The beginning of mystery coincides, therefore, with the cessation of correspondence.

We may go a step further than this, and declare that the highest object of knowledge, or the divine nature, must be capable of presenting to the mind as many truths as equal the totality of things; or otherwise there can be no correspondence. Indeed, in point of number, there never was, or can be, a polytheism which furnished a sufficiency of detail in this respect alone. It is therefore of primary importance to receive a doctrine of God sufficiently ample to provide all the principles of correspondences, at the same time that is sufficiently unitary to contain them, and all things else, in one Divine Idea. This doctrine can be no other than that of the Humanity of God. For, according to the maxims of the philosophers themselves, all nature is combined in man, so that he is a microcosm, or miniature world, and man himself must be comprised in a Divine Man; which shows that the Divine Humanity is a doctrine co-extensive with all [120] things, and therefore an adequate origin for the whole existence of correspondences.

But, quitting the ground of number or measure, we may assert on other grounds, that the positive root of the doctrine of correspondences, as of all universal doctrines, lies in the admission of the Divine Humanity. For, apart from this, we have no right, save as a convenience of thought, to attribute ends, or Divine Ideas, or even a Divine Mind, to the Creator; failing which, the idea of God becomes altogether closed or occult, and can answer to no series of existence, either successive or simultaneous. Ignorance of correspondence depends, then, mainly upon ignorance or denial of the Divine Humanity; and, conversely, the possibility of our knowledge of the doctrine depends expressly upon the quantity and quality of our knowledge of the love and other attributes of the same intelligible humanity. It is not to be understood, that this doctrine of God need always be consciously admitted, in order to a belief in the unity of creation, and the universality of correspondence; but only that, for this purpose, it must always be accepted, either tacitly or openly, before the laws of Divine Order can be deduced from their genuine fountain. We know, however, that many simple men do really live an unconscious life, upon this glorious reception; nor is it to be doubted, that its bright rays have streamed down often for a few moments upon the pages of philosophers; nay, have been habitually though invisibly present, wherever worthy and open conceptions of nature and human destiny were the staple thoughts of the good or great in our own and other generations.

The Divine Humanity, then, is the only refuge from abstractions on the one hand, and from idolatry on the other. It is the only doctrine of God which involves neither mystery nor mental degradation; therefore the only doctrine which can be central to the whole of human knowledge. It is the sun, of which all the objects of science are the correspondences; even that brightness of wisdom by which the worlds were made. Radiant in the depths of the human soul, it makes our finite nature the delegated centre of the correspondential world; and as it constitutes man the image of [121] God, so it enables him to conclude, that his own constitution is in reality the minimal end of correspondence, and the microcosm of the microcosm. It opens up a highway from man to God, a broad path upon which the angels are ascending and descending; and empowers us to conclude with reverent intentions from the one to the other, and to reconcile the science of correspondence with the truth, that "His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways." We may, therefore, now pass on to finite man, as the secondary fountain of correspondence, or the modifying principle of the universe. Let us, then, narrow our field for a time to this convenient limit, and illustrate the law of correspondency from our own familiar actions and objects.

Now, what is the series and procession of all human works? Man undoubtedly lives for a multiplicity of ends, which arise to him one after another; and he proposes them to himself, in the sevenfold ages of his lifetime. These ends, we must repeat, are not abstractions, but objects containing indefinite details. For instance, the love of which children are the object; or, to abridge so extensive a theme, let us take only that portion of the love which proposes the education of our offspring. Here the end or object (the end and object are the same ultimately, and the end is complete in proportion as it is correlative to the object primarily) comprises, or may comprise, all the results of moral and intellectual training, all the perfections of the character of the child; which perfections are the points to be attained. When the end is somewhat comprehended in detail, the next step is to place under or submit to it a series of means exactly adapted to advance it; so that, for every item that is desired, there shall be a specific adequate instrument or cause of gratification, and at least as many pieces in the cause as there are general divisions in the end. In the present instance, these pieces of the cause are all the suitable means of education. The last step is to direct the end, and to apply the causes, to the proper subject, or to the child, the genuine natural effect, recipient of education; an effect, however, less manifold than the cause, even as the cause is comparatively poor, in relation to the universal end.

[122]

Here observe again, what it is impossible to observe too often, that the end we have been considering is not a closed idea, or a blank point, but a human being spiritually cultivated towards perfection ; and that the same must be the case with all other ends, because they have the like divisions with their objects, and thereby correspond piecemeal, as well as in general, with their effects. Also that the more thorough the correspondence between end, cause and effect, the more do we realize in the last sphere that which we intend in the first; and the less perfect the correspondence, the more devoid of will and intelligence is the worker, and the more abortive the work. In the latter case, the ends are absent from the causes, or the causes omitted from the effects; or heterogeneous ends and causes are introduced, and operate confusion in the result. Let us further observe, as a corollary from the preceding, since human efforts themselves are always directed to the subjects of the Divine creation, that our action can never be perfectly harmonious, until it is consciously regulated by the universals of correspondence; until humanity is the transparent medium and directing rein of Providence; or, in other words, until the modifying principle coincides with the creative. This is the attachment of correspondence to God, or its inauguration into religion.

Having regarded man in one of his parental functions, let us now regard the Creator under the same type of love, and we shall recognize that the Divine Father has prepared his universe for the spiritual education or sustenance of all his children. The goodness and wisdom of all possible generations in all worlds is the object of his works; a greatest Man, containing all men for ever, and for ever increasing in its correspondence to his own infinite humanity. And this end or object, again, is not a closed idea, a blank point, a metaphysical unity, or an abstraction, but a subject more abound ing in detail than the created universe; and hence, indeed, its power of abridging itself into a given correspondence with the creation.

This indefinitely ample and specific end marches to its accomplishment through all the Works of God in either world, and directly through his Word, whence there is a most [123] particular analogy between the Word and the Works, and correspondence between both and the end. In fine, Revelation and Creation are the means of God, answering to and carrying out the Divine End or Idea.

Man is the subject to whom the Divine care applies, and hence the above end and means generate the very potencies of man; the great movement of the universe enters his body, and becomes his constitution. The world lives in him, and fits him to live in the world. Not a stone, or a plant, or a living creature, but carries up its heart's thread into his loom, there to be wound into human nature, and therefrom and thenceforth, in its form and fortunes, to obey the progress of his own immortal destinies. For, as was said before, while creation is the work of God, modification is the function of man; or, in other words, the world is continually created by God through man, that is to say, co-ordained to humanity.

Such are some of the preliminaries of a doctrine of particular correspondences: let us now look a little more closely at what it is that makes correspondence. We have seen, that the created universe consists of chains of specific correspondences, reaching from heaven to earth. What, then, is the condition of correspondence between any two things in these different spheres? To this it may be answered, that gradation or subordination of use is the first principle of the law, and that the same also is the universal principle of connection between spirit and nature, and particularly between the soul and the body. Thus, in studying correspondence, we are virtually studying the connection between the soul and the body, and between the natural world and the spiritual. This, the pressing difficulty of human thought for thousands of years, turns out to be only soluble upon the neglected theory of correspondence.

The body corresponds to the soul. Why so? it will be asked. Simply because the body is the soul over again, or is the vicegerent of the soul in a new sphere whither the soul itself could not penetrate. The body is a form co-ordained to the service of the soul, shapen into usefulness by forces emanating from the soul. As the human hand shapes the pen, and then writes with it, so the soul forms the body, and [124] then makes active use of the properties resulting from the form. The connection between the soul and the body is not more mysterious than the connection between the pen-maker and the pen; excepting, indeed, that our knowledge of the pen is so much more complete than our knowledge of the body. A science of the body, had we such a science, which displayed its uses, or its specific fitness to minister to the soul, would as evidently account for the attachment of the soul to the body, as the capabilities of the pen account for its connection with the fingers of the ready writer. It is, in both cases, the bond of service, of love, of use; for what other connecting principle is possible? Is this too simple for the philosophers? Nevertheless, it is the one only ground of any connection they ever formed, or could form, either with man or thing, since the world began. Unity of system alone would prescribe, that answerableness or correspondence of use be the tie between all spirit and all nature, and between each particular spirit and its bodily organ, as it confessedly is the tie which unites man to all his works, and the channel which carries forth human ends through the extensive ramifications of our mundane dwelling.

Correspondence, then, in nature means correspondence of use. Let us, however, as the first of all correspondences is that of the soul with the body, proceed to make the latter somewhat more objective, that we may see its uses more distinctly, and connect it more easily in thought with the uses of other instruments. For this purpose, let us admit that the soul or spirit itself is the spiritual or real body, and that the natural body is the well-furnished house, the admirable circumstance, of the soul. Something like the following analogical discourse may result from this point of view, in which a stand is taken further inwards, to gain distance, distinctness, and integrity for the object.

The soul being assumed as the real body, the natural body will represent all the arts of life, whether economic or æsthetic. Thus the eye is its window, telescope, microscope, and serves for the whole series of media which transparent substances proffer to vision, and which are as curious and exquisite for appearance as they are excellent for use; for the [125] eye receives the finest of impressions from things, and gives the finest of expressions from the soul. So likewise the ear is the hearing trumpet of the real body, which would otherwise be deaf to the sounds of nature; it embraces all the means of reverberation, whether in the free air, or of cheerful voices from the household ceiling, or of more solemn sounds from the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault; in short, both the whole instrumentality and the whole architecture of sound. But the nose is to the real body the prophecy of more devices than have yet entered our arts; for hitherto sweet odors and aromas are but casual visitants of the soul, and have few artificial aids for preservation or concentration; they come and go with the fitful winds, and where is the vessel, that can hold them? For the nose seems more deficient of analogies in art than either the eye or the ear, and hence we can only identify it unworthily as the scent-bottle of the real nose. To pass over the other senses, we next observe that, the legs are the whole outward art of locomotion, from passive to active, from the nails of the toes to the wheel of the knee, and the globe of the hip; in short, from the cane to the railroad: the real body uses them in nature, whether for the support of its lowliness, or the means of its swiftness, or the equipage of its pride: they are the dignified columns of all movement, material as well as social; the rich soul's carriage, and the poor soul's crutches. But the arms and hands are all the finer machineries or inventions which are wielded directly by the arms and hands of the soul; they are the pen and the sword; the instrument of many strings; strength and manipulation in all their bearings; in short, the mechanics of animal intelligence, whereby the nice conveniences of truth are brought to the rooms and walls of the microcosmal home. Then the abdomen is the natural kitchen of the soul, raising to sublimity the processes of the gastrosophic art; preparing from all things in its indefinite stores one universal dish, lower than cookery, higher than philosophy, even the natural blood of life, to be served up day by day in repasts for the spiritual man: the viand of viands, solid and fluid all in one; varying from hour to hour, and suited with more than mathematic truth to the constitution of the eater. [126] Then, again, the chest distributes, with a power of wisdom dictated from the halls above, this daily bread of the body of the soul; and the wisdom that ordains and distributes, enters the very feast, and it becomes a living entertainment; and the brain is the steward and keeper of the animated house, perennially receiving order and law from the soul or unseen body, and transplanting them into its mundane economy. Yea, and the brain is its natural universe, its widespread landscapes, its illimitable ocean, its blue vault of heaven; its royal library, studio, theatre, church, and whatever else is a place of universal sympathy for the soul. And, lastly, the skin is dress and clothing in every sphere, convenient, beautiful, or official, and it is the very mansion itself; for our houses are but our fixed and stiffest clothes, standing by themselves, and large enough to admit of some degree of movement; and these houses represent over again, even on their outside, the busy scene within, and themselves have eyes or windows, mouths or doors, and in general a parallelism true beyond our suspicions, with the real bodies of their inhabitants; for they are clothes which fit generally, ay, and particularly too.

Now, by this artifice, of holding out our bodies at some distance from us, we are enabled to illustrate for the commonest thought the connection or correspondence between the soul and the body; and, though there may be other motives of connection, yet it is sufficient to remark for the present, that, according to all the foregoing analogy, it is because the body is so replete with the most exquisite convenience, that it is the chosen residence or domestic establishment of the soul. Given a tenement of the kind stored with the sumptuous apparatus of the universe, and it is impossible that the soul which answers to it should not be present to, and fitly use, or, what is the same thing, animate it. Not to admit thus much, would be to think meanly indeed of the soul, and of the Framer of the soul. This, then, is the first solution, quite satisfactory so far as it goes, of this hitherto intractable question. Other solutions are too simple to be comprehended at all in these difficult ages.

But let us now reverse the picture, and suppose, for [127] example's sake, that a savage is introduced for the first time into one of our convenient mansions, and that he knows the use neither of table nor chair, knife nor fork, bed nor carriage, but that his naked body and unarmed hand have been accustomed to direct fellowship, or fight, with nature. Can he account for the connection of the civilized man with his house? By no means. Unhoused body that he is, we see in him a full type of those who dwell on the purity and freedom of disembodied spirits, and cannot conceive the bond between spirit and nature, because they know nothing of the uses of nature to spirit. At first, then, the savage cannot divine why his civilized brother limits himself to a house, because he is uninformed of the good of a house. As he learns the uses of the furniture, and, still more, the mode of using it, the points of connection come forth one by one; and when all the uses are understood, then, for the first time, he has a plenary understanding both of the reason and mode of the permanent act of inhabitation.

Just so it is with the body and the soul. The physiological savage (I beg his pardon), who has been unaccustomed to the means of thought, and approaches all subjects directly with his undoctrinated, undisciplined senses, knows not of the body as a rational abode, but as a raw substance in the midst of nature; and how, then, should he see its connection with a soul? For the uses of things are the reasons why they are used. And hence the perception of the connection of nature with spirit is the exact measure of the perception of the uses of nature. To see the one is to see the other; as to miss the one is to miss the other also.

The soul corresponds directly to the body; it corresponds remotely, or through the body, which is the perfection of physical art, to the house in which the man lives. Or, to put the matter proportionally, the soul is to the body as the body is to the house. In a secondary sense, therefore, the house, including all the implements of social life, may be said to correspond to the body. For the body has to live in the material universe; but this it cannot do nakedly. Its skin is not a sufficient shelter, or a sufficient space, for life on the planet; its hands are not strong enough, or long enough, to move all and do [128] all by themselves. And, not to pursue the enumeration, the body, wishing to be at home in the world, must build up in the world a medium corresponding to itself, for itself to dwell in. This medium is the house; which is a correspondence, because it extends the active and passive powers of the human frame to the general system of nature, and is a defence as well as a medium. The precise uses of the house, and all it contains, are the parts of this correspondence: they are the handles by which the body holds the house; and the form of the use need only be stated to explain the mode of the connection.

Strictly speaking, however, the connection between two things is subsequent to their correspondence, and is the use or fruit of the latter; and we therefore return, for the present, to the consideration of correspondence, and proceed to remark, that, whenever one thing is to a higher sphere what another thing is to a lower, correspondence has place between the two. Correspondence is, therefore, definite proportion between different spheres. Thus truth is to the spiritual world what light is to the natural world; wherefore truth and light are correspondences. Love is to the spiritual world what heat is to the natural; therefore love and heat correspond to each other. The understanding is to the soul what the lungs are to the body; therefore the understanding and the lungs correspond to each other. This is the formula of that high kind of correspondence which is identical with the law and order of creation, whereby the Divine Ideas are embodied in the creatures. For the threefold world is a celestial equation, always co-ordinated from above and below, and fluent in a widening stream from node to node, and from immensity to immensity.

I have said that the lungs correspond to the understanding; and, to exercise abstraction, which is the ghost of thought, let us draw out the uses of the two a little particularly, that we may see with our eyes that they correspond, or that the one is in the body what the other is in the mind. Now, the understanding gives distinct division, or shapen general force, to the affections of the man: it is those affections formed from without, as the will is the same actuated from within. The [129] lungs give the capacity of separate or circumstantial action to the organs of the body, and take up or absorb the propulsions of the heart by the formal attractions of the organs themselves: they enfranchise the organs from the general force and form, as the understanding enfranchises the man from the domination of the surrounding universe. The understanding dictates precise motives into the soul from without, and by the bonds of truth, which are its membranes, acts specifically upon the affections. The lungs, through their universal connections in the body, carry distinct motions into the system, and operate physically upon the vital parts. The understanding admits invigorating elements of truth from heaven: the lungs receive fresh air from the atmospheres. The understanding, obeyed in action, conciliates the earth with heaven, and joins spiritual powers to bodily works: the lungs, in their healthy operation upon an obedient frame, mediate between the brain and the body, and draw the animal spirit of the former into the blood and muscles of the latter. But, not to extend too far this parallelism of uses, we may state in brief, that the understanding distributes the affections into series, and provides for the separate and alternate, as well as combined, action of these series; and that analogously the lungs dispart the natural motions into free series, moment these into expansion and contraction, and also provide a general movement into which all particular actions cease as their office expires.

Now, then, so far as this has gone, the lungs are to the body what the understanding is to the mind. Quoad understanding, the mind cannot pass really out of its own sphere, or grapple with the material body; but it descends in its form, and adopts the prepared lungs, which receive because they express its form of motion, and, in performing their functions, carry out its designs in the lower world. This, then, is the correspondence between the two, that they are co-ordained, and the higher finds in the lower an answerable minister for extending its effects to a new goal. Similarity of end ensures correspondence; also the virtual presence of the superior in the inferior, and reciprocal conjunction of each with each. And this endures so long as the lower can serve the higher, [130] and rightfully demand the wages of the service, or continuance of life; but it is annulled, and death takes place, when from any cause such service becomes impossible.

Correspondence is, then, first, co-ordination by creation; and, secondly, adoption and inauguration into analogous uses. The lungs are delineated by the soul, as a bodily form capable of communicating, when the time arrives, with its future understanding; the understanding is a spiritual organization co-ordinate with the lungs, and which, as it comes into being, by harmony of end flows into them, and by continuous harmony into the body. In the Divine Idea, which contains the soul or first end, the understanding generates the lungs, which are but itself according to matter; in human nature, the lungs come first, and the understanding afterwards; and then the two are co-ordinate, and the understanding, as a motion, generates the distinct animations of those organs, or the pulmonic functions. In creation, therefore, while there is absolute correspondence or causation, particular as well as general, subsisting between the Divine Ideas and universal nature, there is on the other hand a modifying power assigned to man as always becoming a partaker in the Divine End, whereby the Creator consents to actualize in the world all the forms, whether good or bad, which man evolves in his mind; precisely to maintain inviolate the creative law of correspondence, whereby the world is the exact habitation of humanity. As a great authority has said, "God passes through man into the world, and has nothing in common with nature excepting through man; whence the perfection of nature depends upon the perfection of man. For God, the Author and Builder of nature, disposes the world exactly according to the character of man, the medium whereby he communicates with the world." In the earliest ages, indeed, the whole creation corresponded, as far as possible, to the Divine Idea, and the first men also; but as the times ran down, and man decayed, then the creation corresponded to our fallen race, as their only dwelling and their best education. Thus the primary as well as the secondary world corresponded at first to the will of God; the later or subversive world, to the realized waywardness of mankind itself, free to [131] draw to an indefinite extent upon the Divine permissions, which granted legions of substantial evils in all the kingdoms of nature.

Light is to the eye what truth is to the mind; and heat is to the body what love is to the man. Hence heat and light are the natural vicegerents of truth and love; because, by accordance of use, they prolong and extend the empire of truth and love through inferior nature. The Divine Light, per se, cannot enter the material creation; but, by the obsequious arm of light-giving suns, it reaches the lowest world with creative love and power, and becomes omnipresent even through death itself by the perfect correspondence of the instrument to the end. This correspondence necessarily carries with it the greatest force; for wherever there is a well-adapted instrument of use, a body expressly built and informed by nature for accomplishing a given design, there that design or end is spiritually present with it (for likeness of end or love is spiritual presence), and inaugurates it into active functions. Thenceforth there is no way of severing the two but by injuring the instrument, or unfitting it for the purposes of that principle which can make use of it. This principle cleaves to its convenient form on the same grounds, and with tenfold the tenacity, that a wealthy citizen cleaves to his comfortable and convenient home, or civilized mankind in general to the appliances which make their position in the world.

On account of the universality of this force, the magic of the ancient world arose out of the science of correspondences. The conjuring rod and the paraphernalia of the magician's cave were symbols, into which, as appropriate bodies, spiritual forces entered. For, the natural circumstances occurring in a certain order, by the laws of creation the upper world will animate them, and rush down through them with new and marvellous efficacity. This, indeed, is the ground for which the two comprehensive symbols of Christianity, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, are solid means or verities, and not superstitious abracadabra. But it is not surprising, after obscurant philosophers have been preaching for ages against the power of circumstances, and endeavoring to erect the freedom of the human will upon the ruins of natural facts, [132] that the world should know little of natural order, and nothing of the effects which it does, and is designed to, produce in the happiness and highest relations of mankind.

If the creations of an infinite Being, or the house and do main in which man is to dwell, are necessarily correspondences, so also are whatever revelations he vouchsafes for the edification of his finite creatures. If, in a real sense, there be a Word of God,—if that Word be not the fruit of an exalted enthusiasm of our finite faculties, but the outward gift of Heaven,—then as the world is made by correspondence, so must the Word be written by correspondence; and the inevitable effect of a devout and still more of an intelligent reading of such a volume must be the instantaneous presence of the Divine Soul in the letter, converting the heart, and making wise the simple. This follows in the strictest manner from the premiss of a Word sent down from heaven by the golden rod of correspondence. How amazing our interest in the existence of such a Word, and the ministrations of such a Science! Better, for very hope's sake, to hold to them, than to sit in the seat of the wittiest scorner, or to wrap up the proud soul in the threefold honors of skepticism! Philosophy has nothing but darkness to offer, when it rejects precise and unitary ideas of inspiration, whether for the emptiness of rationalism, or for the incoherency and caprice of the Protestant ideas of the Divine Truth, from which the only safeguard is the blessed inconsequence of those who entertain them.

A correspondential Word is not, however, necessarily unalterable in its outward form, or incapable of modification and contorsion. On the contrary, its letter may take a new and subversive shape, just as the creation itself has received the imprint of the Fall, and, in the majority of its subjects, reflects the social and individual depravation of its secondary Master. The harshness of the Jewish Word, and the hiddenness of much of the Christian, is, then, no more against the indwelling of the Divine Love in these difficult forms, than the savagery and hostility of the creation is against the fact of a beneficent Creator. It is finite man to whom all things ultimately correspond; and it is even for his benefit [133] that all things, good and evil, were and are created. By virtue of the science of correspondences, this will become clear as heaven's light, and the meaning: of evil will be seen to be good, even Divine Goodness itself.

It has been said already, that the first and most intelligible of correspondences is that of the body with the soul, and that the specific uses of the body demonstrate the parts of the soul. Now branching out from the human body, we find two great series of subsidiary or remote correspondences: viz. on the one part, all the works of the hands, the whole world of art and society; on the other part, the forms of the three kingdoms of nature. The first of these spheres is notoriously the prolongation of the powers of man; the second is admitted even by naturalists to be the prolongation of his interior powers, or organization. The first is his own world of finite creation; the second, his divinely co-ordinated world, where he can modify, but not create; or where he is the medium, but not the rational origin, of forms. Herein lie the origin and currency of the law of series; of series which work for each other, and reciprocally gratify each other, through the ample range of the universe. The arts of outward life are to man what the three kingdoms of nature are to the human body: each ensures the secondary omnipresence of its principle in its own arena. Thus, each vegetable, animal, and plant is referable to some province of the human body, and thereby to a corresponding province of the soul, as each invention belongs to some province of human arms, and human wants or wills. For the series runs inwards by many moments, and triple graduations, to the central complex or unit, which corresponds, and offers the series, to the form and mechanism immediately above it, or the unseen soul of the centre, and sun of the extended system. In this way there is a primary correspondence between souls and bodies; between ends, causes and effects; between the spiritual world and the natural; between the centres of life and the centres of intelligence and movement; and a secondary correspondence between the primordial centres and the circumferences of the movement, in so far as the circumferences advance the ends of the centres. So the very stones, or the [134] horny nails and terminations of the earth, return by mutuality of services to God, and the creation respires its existence on the perpetual condition of spending alike its worlds and particles, or its days and its very seconds, upon humanity.

This is an analytic view of correspondence: there is also a synthetic view, and the difference between the two may be perhaps thus illustrated. The analytic form traces the series of nature to the living body, and the correspondence of the body to the states of the mind or soul, according to the division which is adopted of those states. As an example of this view, birds are said to correspond to rational thought; for they fly in the aërial series which terminates in the lungs, and the lungs correspond to the understanding. The synthetic form, however, is different: it deals, not with the roots of man, but with his fruits; not with his principles, but with his actions or ends; not with individuals, but with that which is the necessary sphere for individuals, viz. societies; not with the fractions of units, but with the powers of numbers; not with thoughts, but with dramas and representations. Thus it takes the life, arts, and manners of the social man as the one term; and the forms of nature as the other. And although it traces these to ultimate psychological grounds in each individual, yet its method consists in regarding nothing that is more minute than the actions of societies, as parallel to the developments of the creation. This is a very noble form of the study of universal analogy, in no way contrary to the analytic form, though much more concrete, and dealing with masses of thought, and expressing its results in new terms; also criticising man for his politics and social laws, rather than for his religious principles; in a word, judging of ages by their fruits, both in action, and in the representations or tableaux of the universe. The first of these methods is represented in the writings of the penetrating, celestial Swedenborg; the latter, in those of the gigantic and earth-born Fourier. They are the arms and legs of spiritual science, and the five toes of the one are as indispensable as the five jewelled fingers of the other. The first without the last may be part of a dandy bust, but not of a locomotive being.

The analogies of this synthetic method, which, like the [135] analytic, has its own limits and advantages, lie between human characters, as wholes, and the objects of nature: thus between the concrete terms of friendship, love, obedience, constancy, inconstancy, pride, vanity, coquetry, or any of the other phrases which express the practical shades of difference observable in private life: also between the various systems, political, social, commercial, with their numberless details, and the same objects of nature; for these systems are but the mechanized aggregates of human characters, gravitating into masses which have such inevitable properties. This species of symbolism is doubtless very ancient; but, as we said before, it has acquired new importance and precision from the labors of the noble-minded Fourier.

Where the powers of inward contemplation or psychological analysis are feeble, this Science of Universal Analogy will be an invaluable substitute for the Science of Correspondences; and it may serve to educate many minds, and even many nations, in the laws of unity, where the material faculties and interests are more developed than the spiritual. In short, it may prove a mighty lever in the hands of a living doctrine of creation and correspondences, co-ordinating the truths of nature for truths of life which are yet to come.

There is, however, one caution which cannot be too often enforced in the prosecution of analogies and correspondences. It is, that both terms of the intellectual equation must lie within some sphere of experience, or no conclusion will be valid from the one to the other. Where the upper term is intangible, there may indeed be "analogical conjectures" respecting it; yet the fact that the lower corresponds to it, will not indicate what the higher is, but rather what it is not; for correspondence subsists where different forms extend the same principles to different spheres. To infer from the lower to the higher, without also having experimental knowledge of the higher, would be like concluding from a staff or walking stick, to the hand and arm, or to the limbs; concluding, in fact, that the arms and legs are superior specimens of wooden manufacture. But this would be to miss out all the difference of the higher correspondent, or to mistake correspondence for useless identity. Experience, therefore, is in[136] dispensable in both spheres; and, if there were no actual experience of the spiritual world, there could be no safe conclusion, except a negative one, from the natural world to the spiritual. Therefore correspondence does not engender, but simply follows experience; and analogies illustrate, but do not demonstrate. As an intellectual fact, correspondence subsists between the known and the known, and not between the known and the unknown. And the notion of sameness excludes that of correspondence.

Correspondence, moreover, is a science to be worked; not a bare general intuition to be speculatively particularized. It cannot be drawn out of ignorance by any fineness of deduction. The philosophy that pursues it must be content to study it in the school of facts, with industry, or, what is the same thing, with induction. Even its true results, with the exception of a very few general cases, cannot be confirmed by an appeal to self-evidence; so little attestation of the majority of truths does "the self" at present carry with it. When we are told by a writer like Swedenborg, that a horse corresponds to intellectual truth, an ass to scientific truth, a camel to general scientifics, the mind makes almost no response to so bizarre a statement, and we even doubt the very existence of the principle which forces us into any such details. And why? Only because we expect to arrive at the truth of these matters by the force of our inexperience; because philosophy is too proud to submit to induction. Otherwise we should suspend our judgment absolutely, until either the assertion were confirmed or denied by numerous true or false results, or by our repetition of the process by which it was arrived at. For, in contradicting it, we are supplanting something by nothing, and arguing that the first appearance of unlikeliness is justly condemnatory of all assertions; than which nothing can be more contrary to fact; for truth is stranger than fiction, and spirit and nature are more exquisitely modish and formal than human artificiality.

And what is the way to extend the science of correspondences, or rather to develope the general idea into a science? Undoubtedly, by studying the uses of all things to whatever is around and above them, and so pressing inwards from [137] every side to humanity, whose nature is spirit, and whose light is life; also by studying the evolutions of humanity, as it goes out to meet the uses of the creation, and to marry them by correspondence. But it is in the Word of God especially that the study of correspondence may begin, and has begun. For the material elements of the Word are the central symbols of nature; the object of the Word is the universal being, even mankind; and the life of the Word is God. Here, then, is the concentration of things, the divinely selected field of the principles of science. For this reason, perhaps, the objects mentioned in the Word may have a cardinal and representative peculiarity in themselves, so as to constitute them a just abridgment of nature; and the science of correspondences, without ignoring other objects, may at least begin with them; especially as the Father of our spirits uses them as the immediate vehicles of His instructions, which nature in itself is not, save by reflection, and through long sciences. But, however this may be, probably the first attempt should consist in the verification of those correspondences which are already alleged in worthy writers; also a gathering up of those which are implied in human discourse, and in the very texture of many languages. This verification may be attempted by the construction of new tables, representing in series the uses of each object, and dividing these series into degrees; by which means the connections of nature with nature will be wonderfully opened to the mind, and things will be brought together which never shook hands in human sight before. Also the upper term must be similarly tabled with reference to the mind. And then the correspondence may be tried, as the spiritual die and the natural cast are perfected. By such tables, not one of which, to my knowledge, has ever been framed,—for the corn of nature has had no granary, though the straw has been carefully stacked,—the mind will be led from sphere to sphere, through regions more wide even on this earth than all our present conceptions of universal existence, and will prove the truth of the adage, that any road duly followed up will lead to the end of the world, and that there is a love in all things which enlarges the least spaces to infinity, and that uses are the vessels or [138] channels whereby it circulates humanely through all things. I believe that the construction of only six such tables would be such a wide gate of knowledge, such an oil of flexibility, such a clue to more than Cretan labyrinths, such a highway to the acknowledgment of God, that it. would open an age of new intellectual power, and form indeed the veritable beginning of the inductive study of the spiritual sciences.

We said before, that it requires experience of both the terms, in order to perceive their reciprocal correspondence: we may now add, that it will also require genius, according to the express declaration of Swedenborg, that great inductive student of correspondences. Both these assertions are indeed but truisms; for where is the science, or where the part of any science, how physical soever it matters not, which has not had to wait for the celestial gifts of experience and genius, before it could take its seat in the Congress of Knowledge?

Genius, in the sense of mental fitness for this study, implies especially a harmony of mind with the ends of creation, and an entrance thereby into the streams of causative wisdom; and as correspondence is the connection of things, so also it is their delight and love, and delight and tranquillity and sweet opportunity are the conditions of the soul which are the most generative of the perceptions of correspondence. Therefore the poets hitherto have dwelt in this bond more than others, because they have been resigned and childlike, and have walked with God in liberty, and been content to drink of the river of his pleasures.

Correspondence, we said, is the nexus of creation, and it will therefore be especially manifest in what Lord Bacon calls transitive instances, when, in point of fact, creation is taking place. For example, if, when thoughts were arising in the mind, birds of various kinds were invariably to arise in the heavens or upon the earth, the mind would be at no difficulty to assign the minute correspondence between the two things thus emerging piecemeal into visibility together. Such new creations would be startling evidences to common-sense perception. It is, however, clear that nature upon this planet is far less active now than in earlier ages, when the [139] scenery of existence, and the living souls of the drama, were entirely changed from age to age, and new species and genera arose in myriads out of the womb of the universal mother. Also the activity of the human mind is similarly in abeyance. Scores of sacred books, of influential religions, whose fossils are now extant in Asia and in the traditions of Northern Europe, originated from the powers of man in remoter periods, and were as collateral growths in the great banyan tree of primitive Revelation. These religions were at that time spiritual, and full of correspondences. Given out by particular men, they yet manifestly wore the impress of the spirit-land, and were genuine powers in nature. They held commissions from heaven, and kept the consciences of nations. Modern ages, however, until of late, have not produced one such hieroglyphic, with the exception of the Revelations of Mahomet and Swedenborg. The ages of metaphysical philosophy are not ages of spiritual productiveness, but of doubt, fear, and inaction. They cudgel nature for what they gain, and fail of her co-operation. The world is as stubborn as an ass to their elaborate sciences. It is not remarkable that impuissant ages should know nothing of creation, and nothing of correspondence, since they are not themselves creative; and nature reflects, by correspondence, their own barrenness and hypocrisy, and appears therefore to be callous and dead to humanity and the soul.

Hypocrisy I say, because hypocrisy is a superior term of non-correspondence. And this hypocrisy lies in the real sensuality and theoretical Puritanism of metaphysical philosophy, which, recognizing the immense perceptions and possessions of the senses, makes of the mind only the sharp point of the pyramid, of which sense is the broad basis; and consequently gives the senses all power; or power as possessors of all within the horizon, while the mind is limited to a pin's point in space; for the conception of a mind absolutely sundered from space is a mere pretence, which words necessarily repudiate.

However, under the expansive influence of a doctrine and progressive science of correspondences, this pyramidal mode of thought, in which like a wasting flame the mind rises [140] upwards, and the point of perfection is the point of cessation, must give place to columnar progress, in which the length and breadth of the spiritual world will be recognized as the top of worldly knowledge, and the solidity of all things in and from their first principles will be guaranteed by our distinct perception of the inalienable spaces that are occupied by their spiritual beginnings. Then will idealism and materialism be shouldered over the verge of the world by the exceeding fulness thereof; and the fitness of things for their perceived Divine ends will again engender, as at first, the profound study of correspondence, as the beginning and end of knowledge, or the Science of sciences.

For, properly speaking, the uses of things are the principal knowledges, or the principles of knowledge, and the uses of things are the reasons of usage, or the grounds of correspondency; and as all things, whether ends, causes or effects, also have specific uses, so all things are made into ends by the first end, and are the subjects of correspondence. Thus correspondence is transferred outwards, with ends, from sphere to sphere, and is omnipresent in the great circle of the universe. Its science is thus the crown of those sciences which show the adaptation of nature to the developments of humanity; and the analytic investigation of uses or ends is the point of union between the ancient and the modern worlds,—between the physical sciences as now studied, and the ancient science of correspondence.

The doctrine of correspondence teaches the value and the limits of circumstances in affecting our minds and actions, and shows in what powerful spiritual streams outward situations and events may place us. Without in the slightest degree perilling the doctrine of free-will, it rather makes the strength of that freedom an object of statistic and experimental, than of a priori knowledge. It shows that circumstances are the nidus of both heaven and hell; and that the presence of the innermost good depends upon the presence of an order corresponding to it, in the disposition of society, and the distribution of the world; for every corporeal being, of whatever kind, is used or animated by the spiritual world according to its form, and its form is the essence which [141] proceeds from without, even as the essence is the form proceeding from within. In short, outward nature, hereditary nature, the influences of the age, the instructions of the parent and the teacher, the light of truth and revelation, are all circumstances; and will is the organ which acts according to them, or not at all; and freedom is the state of preparation, before the will is fully made up to act. Thus man is the conductor of correspondences, and also the modifier; for, in making what use of things he pleases, man draws down new and different influences from the spiritual sphere, which give rise to new and appropriate extensions of the creation.

In fine, the science of correspondence is the most mathematical, mechanical, or intellectual of the sciences. The foundation of it is justice or equation, and the working of the law ensures permanent equilibrium in the world. Grounded primarily for human knowledge upon the felt correspondence of the soul with the body, and the connection between the two, it first infers, and then scientifically demonstrates, the pervading fact of correspondence and connection in all other relations. Correspondence of the individual with the society, of both with the world, of all with the Word, and of the Word with Divine Truth in the heavens, is in reality the bond wherewith God has bound in one the sheaves of his great universe. It is the system of the world. The perception of this, or of the uses of things, is one important phasis of the understanding of universals. When this understanding comes, the main study will be to put things through all their uses, or to bring nature into generative conditions with spirit. From the bed of this state, new creations must arise in all the kingdoms of nature, so as to gratify the heavens with many and desirable children; and the earth, even as Sarah, will smile, in her apparent old age, at the fertility of the regenerate creation. "The barren woman shall rejoice, and be a fruitful mother of children." Then the doctrine will be exemplified, not in schools or dry diagrams, but in garden and in grove, in arts like nature, and in growths like art, in new messengers of truth and instruction, growing in the night from the sportive soil, from no seed but heaven, yet with no mystery, because in the fulness of time, and in the [142] attraction of requirement; and, even in the physical world, the use and beauty and completing series of all things will be as an advancing testimony of the correspondence of God with nature, and of that supreme correspondence which constitutes the Marriage of the Lamb.

POSTSCRIPTUM.

From what has been said we may infer, that the relation of cause and effect, as of end and cause, is no other than the relation of correspondence; and that the perception of causation depends primarily upon our perception of the uses of effects as carrying out causes. This applies to that which is strictly causation. The continuity of the principle reaches, however, to the relation of prior and superior to posterior and inferior effects. Thus there is the evolution of actual will into forcible motion, in which production the will passes as motion into the dead sphere, or will is the cause and soul of motion, as motion is the effect and body of will. This is a case of genuine correspondence; for will and motion are each the other, or the others. Will is spiritual force, or force raised into the spiritual world; force, or active motion, is will dropped down into the lower world: the difference of cause and effect being therefore only the difference between the two spheres into which one single principle introduces itself. Besides the alteration or qualification of will into motion, there is also the expansion and vibration of motion into widening natural spheres, or the transference and transmission of motion from one subject to another. This is the only kind of cause and effect recognized by one class of metaphysicians. It also is, however, only the continuity of a single principle through different circumstances; and that principle is force, and that force is will, the unimpaired transference and account of which fall under the head of the mechanical and dynamical, and not of so-called metaphysical sciences. If any one asks what is power, we say therefore that it is originally will, and no abstraction, but embodied in the human arm; and that from this central body and symbol it is transferred to all machineries, and extends [143] through the world as a Divine arm, or Almighty power. For the arts are the comparative anatomy of the will and understanding, the three kingdoms of mind, as the three kingdoms of nature are the comparative anatomy of the soul. And there might with profit be a parallel distribution of the two into mineral, vegetable, and animal; the body, in both cases, being, though in different departments, a fourth, or what Fourier denominates, the hominal kingdom.

Besides justifying the common-sense perceptions of cause and effect, correspondence also justifies the usage of analogies, metaphors, and similitudes, so frequent by the human mind, and so attractive in discourse when fitly used. For the one infinitely manifold principle of creation passes down into the worlds by indefinite streams or series, and yet is but one principle, realizing many uses, tending all to the return to unity. For example, all things in our houses are for the one end of enfranchising man from the wants and forces of nature; and therefore they all carry one principle, but subdivide or anatomize it into different parts. Thus are they all images of one principle, and all, therefore, images also of one another; for things that are equal to the same are equal to each other. Hence there is nothing but resembles, if we catch the right point of view, all other things in all worlds. The human body is an image of the cosmical body; the house, of both; the room, of all three; the trades and commerces also, of all; and so forth. So the creation may, in considering its analogies, be regarded as a globe, on which the poles are the generative centres, from which radiate, and to which converge, the lines of longitude. These lines each correspond in its whole length; the frigid to the temperate, the temperate to the torrid. The first part of the line engenders the second, and the second the third. This generation is, and is by, correspondence. Analogy may be represented by the lines of latitude, which intersect the former, and bring them all into relation, making of the whole a solid coherent sphere. The lines of analogy are not, moreover, merely straight, but run in all curves and declinations, and make the coherence of all things most multiple and safe. These lines are to be studied by the constitution of a science of [144] universal analogies, whose home shall be the entire globe of knowledge. It is the most superficial in contact with the most deep of the sciences; Analogy in contact with Correspondency; Poetry and Imagination in contact with Divine, Creative Truth; human fancies justified and accepted by God himself: for it is impossible for the most vagrant fancy to fancy half the odd analogies which science reveals; and hence fancy will become but the useful matter of fact, incomprehensive scullery-maid of science. As instances of these analogies, we may cite many things from the superficial parts of the animal kingdom. Thus, for instance,—not to mention man, who is like all the animals, which similitude occasionally blazes out with striking splendor, as in the pig-faced lady,—the Ox tribe, in the buffalo, the bison, the aurochs, &c., by its mane and contour, evidently touches upon the lion, the fountain of the feline; by the Brahmin bull, and other species with humps, it touches upon the camel tribe; by other characteristics, with the deer tribe; and so forth. The ass, by the zebra, touches upon the tiger; and the tiger, and the cats, by their marks, as well as their flexibility, upon the snakes. The camel, very evidently, as Fourier has said, upon the slave; the toad upon the pauper; and so forth. The blushing rose upon the maiden's cheek; the fragrance upon her modesty. Flowers upon sexual characteristics and delights; and so forth. All these analogies, which extend causation laterally, or give breadth to correspondency, are, in our view, as much running lines of the creation as the lines of correspondency, and are not fanciful, unless fancy be admitted as a poor caterer for science. In a word, in the orb of thought, they are, as we said before, the Divine or real lines of latitude; the relation and friendliness of truth subsisting between all things.

It is not going too far to say, that Analogy is the breadth or the truth of truth. It is the intersection of the mountains and rivers and hedgerows of analogy that makes the field of truth to be, not a blank arena with a mathematical diagram, but a living landscape. It is analogy which gives flowing imagery to all ideas; for that which is not the body of a truth, which is not in its immediate sphere, becomes its clothing. [145] Thus all things are indifferently bodies or clothes, and these clothes are themselves created and living. Analogy is indeed the breadth of truth, because it shows how the true is true diversely in many things or parallel fields; and, in continuity with that analogy which consists in the relation between parallel streams of existence, there is that mere likeness which appears every now and then on the very surface of nature, and proclaims a connection where its reason and principle are at present inscrutable. By such points of likeness everything is surrounded, and becomes a plenary mean even in visible appearance to other things all around it: as between the stag's antlers and forest-trees; between flowers and insects, butterflies and papilionacæ, &c. &c. Thus, at the very bottom of the vegetable kingdom, a substance, the mushroom, fungi, &c. blazes out precisely like animal substance.

[ 145]

Art. VIII.—MAIN-STREET. ↩

A respectable-looking individual makes his bow, and addresses the public. In my daily walks along the principal street of my native town, it has often occurred to me, that, if its growth from infancy upward, and the vicissitude of characteristic scenes that have passed along this thorough fare, during the more than two centuries of its existence, could be presented to the eye in a shifting panorama, it would be an exceedingly effective method of illustrating the march of time. Acting on this idea, I have contrived a certain pictorial exhibition, somewhat in the nature of a puppet-show, by means of which I propose to call up the multiform and many-colored Past before the spectator, and show him the ghosts of his forefathers, amid a succession of historic incidents, with no greater trouble than the turning of a crank. Be pleased, therefore, my indulgent patrons, to walk into the show-room, and take your seats before yonder mysterious curtain. The little wheels and springs of my machinery have been well oiled; a multitude of puppets are [146] dressed in character, representing all varieties of fashion, from the Puritan cloak and jerkin to the latest Oak Hall coat; the lamps are trimmed, and shall brighten into noon tide sunshine, or fade away in moonlight, or muffle their brilliancy in a November cloud, as the nature of the scene may require; and, in short, the exhibition is just ready to commence. Unless something should go wrong,—as, for instance, the misplacing of a picture, whereby the people and events of one century might be thrust into the middle of another; or the breaking of a wire, which would bring the course of time to a sudden period,—barring, I say, the casualties to which such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable, I flatter myself, ladies and gentlemen, that the performance will elicit your generous approbation.

Ting-a-ting-ting! goes the bell; the curtain rises; and we behold—not, indeed, the Main-street—but the tract of leaf-strewn forest-land, over which its dusty pavement is hereafter to extend.

You perceive, at a glance, that this is the ancient and primitive wood,—the ever-youthful and venerably old,—verdant with new twigs, yet hoary, as it were, with the snowfall of innumerable years, that have accumulated upon its intermingled branches. The white man's axe has never smitten a single tree; his footstep has never crumpled a single one of the withered leaves, which all the autumns since the flood have been harvesting beneath. Yet, see! along through the vista of impending boughs, there is already a faintly-traced path, running nearly east and west, as if a prophecy or foreboding of the future street had stolen into the heart of the solemn old wood. Onward goes this hardly perceptible track, now ascending over a natural swell of land, now subsiding gently into a hollow; traversed here by a little streamlet, which glitters like a snake through the gleam of sunshine, and quickly hides itself among the underbrush, in its quest for the neighboring cove; and impeded there by the massy corpse of a giant of the forest, which had lived out its incalculable term of life, and been overthrown by mere old age, and lies buried in the new vegetation that is born of its decay. What footsteps can have worn this [147] half-seen path? Hark! Do we not hear them now rustling softly over the leaves? We discern an Indian woman—a majestic and queenly woman, or else her spectral image does not represent her truly—for this is the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule, with that of her sons, extends from Mystic to Agawam. That red chief, who stalks by her side, is Wappacowet, her second husband, the priest and magician, whose incantations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with grisly phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the woods, at midnight. But greater would be the affright of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored in the pool of water at his feet, he could catch a prophetic glimpse of the noon-day marvels which the white man is destined to achieve; if he could see, as in a dream, the stone-front of the stately hall, which will cast its shadow over this very spot; if he could be aware that the future edifice will contain a noble Museum, where, among countless curiosities of earth and sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as memorials of a vanished race!

No such forebodings disturb the Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet. They pass on, beneath the tangled shade, holding high talk on matters of state and religion, and imagine, doubtless, that their own system of affairs will endure forever. Meanwhile, how full of its own proper life is the scene that lies around them! The gray squirrel runs up the trees, and rustles among the upper branches. Was not that the leap of a deer? And there is the whirr of a partridge! Methinks, too, I catch the cruel and stealthy eye of a wolf, as he draws back into yonder impervious density of underbrush. So, there, amid the murmur of boughs, go the Indian queen and the Indian priest; while the gloom of the broad wilderness impends over them, and its sombre mystery invests them as with something preternatural; and only momentary streaks of quivering sunlight, once in a great while, find their way down, and glimmer among the feathers in their dusky hair. Can it be that the thronged street of a city will ever pass into this twilight solitude,—over those soft heaps of the decaying tree-trunks,—and through the swampy places, green with water-moss,—and penetrate [148] that hopeless entanglement of great trees, which have been uprooted and tossed together by a whirlwind! It has been a wilderness from the creation. Must it not be a wilderness for ever?

Here an acidulous-looking gentleman in blue glasses, with bows of Berlin steel, who has taken a seat at the extremity of the front row, begins, at this early stage of the exhibition, to criticise.

"The whole affair is a manifest catch-penny," observes he, scarcely under his breath. "The trees look more like weeds in a garden, than a primitive forest; the Squaw Sachem and Wappacowet are stiff in their pasteboard joints; and the squirrels, the deer, and the wolf, move with all the grace of a child's wooden monkey, sliding up and down a stick."

"I am obliged to you, sir, for the candor of your remarks," replies the showman, with a bow. "Perhaps they are just. Human art has its limits, and we must now and then ask a little aid from the spectator's imagination."

"You will get no such aid from mine," responds the critic. "I make it a point to see things precisely as they are. But come! go ahead!—the stage is waiting!"

The showman proceeds.

Casting our eyes again over the scene, we perceive that strangers have found their way into the solitary place. In more than one spot, among the trees, an upheaved axe is glittering in the sunshine. Roger Conant, the first settler in Naumkeag, has built his dwelling, months ago, on the border of the forest-path; and at this moment he comes eastward through the vista of woods, with his gun over his shoulder, bringing home the choice portions of a deer. His stalwart figure, clad in a leathern jerkin and breeches of the same, strides sturdily onward, with such an air of physical force and energy, that we might almost expect the very trees to stand aside, and give him room to pass. And so, indeed, they must; for, humble as is his name in history, Roger Conant still is of that class of men who do not merely find, but make, their place in the system of human affairs: a man of thoughtful strength, he has planted the germ of a city. There stands [149] his habitation, showing in its rough architecture some features of the Indian wigwam, and some of the log-cabin, and somewhat, too, of the straw-thatched cottage in Old England, where this good yeoman had his birth and breeding. The dwelling is surrounded by a cleared space of a few acres, where Indian corn grows thrivingly among the stumps of the trees; while the dark forest hems it in, and seems to gaze silently and solemnly, as if wondering at the breadth of sunshine which the white man spreads around him. An Indian, half hidden in the dusky shade, is gazing and wondering too.

Within the door of the cottage, you discern the wife, with her ruddy English cheek. She is singing, doubtless, a psalm-tune, at her household work; or perhaps she sighs at the remembrance of the cheerful gossip, arid all the merry social life, of her native village beyond the vast and melancholy sea. Yet the next moment she laughs, with sympathetic glee, at the sports of her little tribe of children, and soon turns round, with the home-look in her face, as her husband s foot is heard approaching the rough-hewn threshold. How sweet must it be for those who have an Eden in their hearts, like Roger Conant and his wife, to find a new world to project it into, as they have; instead of dwelling among old haunts of men, where so many household fires have been kindled and burnt out, that the very glow of happiness has something dreary in it! Not that this pair are alone in their wild Eden; for here comes Goodwife Massey, the young spouse of Jeffrey Massey, from her home hard by, with an infant at her breast. Dame Conant has another of like age; and it shall hereafter be one of the disputed points of history, which of these two babies was the first town-born child.

But see! Roger Conant has other neighbors within view. Peter Palfrey likewise has built himself a house, and so has Balch and Norman and Woodbury. Their dwellings, indeed,—such is the ingenious contrivance of this piece of pictorial mechanism,—seem to have arisen, at various points of the scene, even while we have been looking at it. The forest-track, trodden more and more by the hob-nailed shoes of these sturdy and ponderous Englishmen, has now a distinctness [150] which it never could have acquired from the light tread of a hundred times as many Indian moccasins. It will be a street, anon. As we observe it now, it goes onward from one clearing to another, here plunging into a shadowy strip of woods, there open to the sunshine, but everywhere showing a decided line, along which human interests have begun to hold their career. Over yonder swampy spot, two trees have been felled, and laid side by side, to make a causeway. In another place, the axe has cleared away a confused intricacy of fallen trees and clustered boughs, which had been tossed together by a hurricane. So, now, the little children, just beginning to run alone, may trip along the path, and not often stumble over an impediment, unless they stray from it to gather wood-berries beneath the trees. And, besides the feet of grown people and children, there are the cloven hoofs of a small herd of cows, who seek their subsistence from the native grasses, and help to deepen the track of the future thoroughfare. Goats also browse along it, and nibble at the twigs that thrust themselves across the way. Not seldom, in its more secluded portions, where the black shadow of the forest strives to hide the trace of human footsteps, stalks a gaunt wolf, on the watch for a kid or a young calf; or fixes his hungry gaze on the group of children gathering berries, and can hardly forbear to rush upon them. And the Indians, coming from their distant wigwams to view the white man's settlement, marvel at the deep track which he makes, and perhaps are saddened by a flitting presentiment, that this heavy tread will find its way over all the land; and that the wild woods, the wild wolf, and the wild Indian, will alike be trampled beneath it. Even so shall it be. The pavements of the Main-street must be laid over the red man's grave.

Behold! here is a spectacle which should be ushered in by the peal of trumpets, if Naumkeag had ever yet heard that cheery music, and by the roar of cannon, echoing among the woods. A procession—for, by its dignity, as marking an epoch in the history of the street, it deserves that name,—a procession advances along the pathway. The good ship Abigail has arrived from England, bringing wares and [151] merchandise, for the comfort of the inhabitants, and traffic with the Indians; bringing passengers too, and, more important than all, a Governor for the new settlement. Roger Conant and Peter Palfrey, with their companions, have been to the shore to welcome him; and now, with such honor and triumph as their rude way of life permits, are escorting the sea-flushed voyagers to their habitations. At the point where Endicott enters upon the scene, two venerable trees unite their branches high above his head; thus forming a triumphal arch of living verdure, beneath which he pauses, with his wife leaning on his arm, to catch the first impression of their new-found home. The old settlers gaze not less earnestly at him, than he at the hoary woods and the rough surface of the clearings. They like his bearded face, under the shadow of the broad-brimmed and steeple-crowned Puritan hat;—a visage, resolute, grave, and thoughtful, yet apt to kindle with that glow of a cheerful spirit, by which men of strong character are enabled to go joyfully on their proper tasks. His form, too, as you see it, in a doublet and hose of sad-colored cloth, is of a manly make, fit for toil and hardship, and fit to wield the heavy sword that hangs from his leathern belt. His aspect is a better warrant for the ruler's office, than the parchment commission which he bears, however fortified it may be with the broad seal of the London council. Peter Palfrey nods to Roger Conant. "The worshipful Court of Assistants have done wisely," say they between themselves. "They have chosen for our governor a man out of a thousand." Then they toss up their hats,—they, and all the uncouth figures of their company, most of whom are clad in skins, inasmuch as their old kersey and linsey-woolsey garments have been torn and tattered by many a long month's wear,—they all toss up their hats, and salute their new governor and captain with a hearty English shout of welcome. We seem to hear it with our own ears; so perfectly is the action represented in this life-like, this almost magic picture!

But have you observed the lady who leans upon the arm of Endicott?—a rose of beauty from an English garden, now to be transplanted to a fresher soil. It may be, that, [152] long years—centuries indeed—after this fair flower shall have decayed, other flowers of the same race will appear in the same soil, and gladden other generations with hereditary beauty. Does not the vision haunt us yet? Has not Nature kept the mould unbroken, deeming it a pity that the idea should vanish from mortal sight for ever, after only once assuming earthly substance? Do we not recognize, in that fair woman s face, the model of features which still beam, at happy moments, on what was then the woodland pathway, but has long since grown into a busy street?

"This is too ridiculous!—positively insufferable!" mutters the same critic who had before expressed his disapprobation. "Here is a pasteboard figure, such as a child would cut out of a card, with a pair of very dull scissors; and the fellow modestly requests us to see in it the prototype of hereditary beauty!"

"But, sir, "you have not the proper point of view," remarks the showman. "You sit altogether too near to get the best effect of my pictorial exhibition. Pray, oblige me by removing to this other bench; and, I venture to assure you, the proper light and shadow will transform the spectacle into quite another thing."

"Pshaw!" replies the critic: "I want no other light and shade. I have already told you, that it is my business to see things just as they are."

"I would suggest to the author of this ingenious exhibition," observes a gentlemanly person, who has shown signs of being much interested,—"I would suggest, that Anna Gower, the first wife of Governor Endicott, and who came with him from England, left no posterity; and that, consequently, we cannot be indebted to that honorable lady for any specimens of feminine loveliness, now extant among us."

Having nothing to allege against this genealogical objection, the showman points again to the scene.

During this little interruption, you perceive that the Anglo-Saxon energy—as the phrase now goes—has been at work in the spectacle before us. So many chimneys now send up their smoke, that it begins to have the aspect of a village street; although every thing is so inartificial and inceptive, [153] that it seems as if one returning wave of the wild nature might overwhelm it all. But the one edifice, which gives the pledge of permanence to this bold enterprise, is seen at the central point of the picture. There stands the meeting-house, a small structure, low-roofed, without aspire, and built of rough timber, newly hewn, with the sap still in the logs, and here and there a strip of bark adhering to them. A meaner temple was never consecrated to the worship of the Deity. "With the alternative of kneeling beneath the awful vault of the firmament, it is strange that men should creep into this pent-up nook, and expect God s presence there. Such, at least, one would imagine, might be the feeling of these forest-settlers, accustomed, as they had been, to stand under the dim arches of vast cathedrals, and to offer up their hereditary worship in the old, ivy-covered churches of rural England, around which lay the bones of many generations of their forefathers. How could they dispense with the carved altar-work?—how, with the pictured windows, where the light of common day was hallowed by being transmitted through the glorified figures of saints?—how, with the lofty roof, imbued, as it must have been, with the prayers that had gone upward for centuries?—how, with the rich peal of the solemn organ, rolling along the aisles, pervading the whole church, and sweeping the soul away on a flood of audible religion? They needed nothing of all this. Their house of worship, like their ceremonial, was naked, simple, and severe. But the zeal of a recovered faith burned like a lamp within their hearts, enriching every thing around them with its radiance; making of these new walls, and this narrow compass, its own cathedral; and being, in itself, that; spiritual mystery and experience, of which sacred architecture, pictured windows, and the organ's grand solemnity, are remote and imperfect symbols. All was well, so long as their lamps were freshly kindled at the heavenly flame. After a while, however, whether in their time or their children's, these lamps began to burn more dimly, or with a less genuine lustre; and then it might be seen, how hard, cold, and confined, was their system,—how like an iron cage was that which they called Liberty!

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Too much of this. Look again at the picture, and observe how the aforesaid Anglo-Saxon energy is now trampling along the street, and raising a positive cloud of dust beneath its sturdy footsteps. For there the carpenters are building a new house, the frame of which was hewn and fitted in England, of English oak, and sent hither on shipboard; and here a blacksmith makes huge clang and clatter on his anvil, shaping out tools and weapons; and yonder a wheelwright, who boasts himself a London workman, regularly bred to his handicraft, is fashioning a set of wagon-wheels, the track of which shall soon be visible. The wild forest is shrinking back; the street has lost the aromatic odor of the pine-trees, and of the sweet fern that grew beneath them. The tender and modest wild-flowers, those gentle children of savage nature that grew pale beneath the ever-brooding shade, have shrunk away and disappeared, like stars that vanish in the breadth of light. Gardens are fenced in, and display pumpkin-beds and rows of cabbages and beans; and, though the governor and the minister both view them with a disapproving eye, plants of broad-leaved tobacco, which the cultivators are enjoined to use privily, or not at all. No wolf, for a year past, has been heard to bark, or knoAvn to range among the dwellings, except that single one whose grisly head, with a plash of blood beneath it, is now affixed to the portal of the meeting house. The partridge has ceased to run across the too-frequented path. Of all the wild life that used to throng here, only the Indians still come into the settlement, bringing the skins of beaver and otter, bear and elk, which they sell to Endicott for the wares of England. And there is little John Massey, the son of Jeffrey Massey and first-born of Naumkeag, playing beside his father's threshold, a child of six or seven years old. Which is the better-grown infant,—the town or the boy?

The red men have become aware, that the street is no longer free to them, save by the sufferance and permission of the settlers. Often, to impress them with an awe of English power, there is a muster and training of the town-forces, and a stately march of the mail-clad band, like this which we now see advancing up the street. There they come, fifty [155] of them, or more; all with their iron breastplates and steel-caps well burnished, and glimmering bravely against the sun; their ponderous muskets on their shoulders, their bandaliers about their waists, their lighted matches in their hands, and the drum and fife playing cheerily before them. See! do they not step like martial men? Do they not manœuvre like soldiers who have seen stricken fields? And well they may; for this band is composed of precisely such materials as those with which Cromwell is preparing to beat down the strength of a kingdom; and his famous regiment of Ironsides might be recruited from just such men. In every thing, at this period, New England was the essential spirit and flower of that which was about to become uppermost in the mother-country. Many a bold and wise man lost the fame which would have accrued to him in English history, by crossing the Atlantic with our forefathers. Many a valiant captain, who might have been foremost at Marston Moor or Naseby, exhausted his martial ardor in the command of a log-built fortress, like that which you observe on the gently rising ground at the right of the pathway,—its banner fluttering in the breeze, and the culverins and sakers showing their deadly muzzles over the rampart.

A multitude of people were now thronging to New England; some, because the ancient and ponderous frame-work of Church and State threatened to crumble down upon their heads; others, because they despaired of such a downfall. Among those who came to Naumkeag were men of history and legend, whose feet leave a track of brightness along any pathway which they have trodden. You shall behold their life-like images,—their spectres, if you choose so to call them,—passing, encountering with a familiar nod, stopping to converse together, praying, bearing weapons, laboring or resting from their labors, in the Main-street. Here, now, comes Hugh Peters, an earnest, restless man, walking swiftly, as being impelled by that fiery activity of nature which shall hereafter thrust him into the conflict of dangerous affairs, make him the chaplain and counsellor of Cromwell, and finally bring him to a bloody end. He pauses, by the meetinghouse, to exchange a greeting with Roger Williams, whose [156] face indicates, methinks, a gentler spirit, kinder and more expansive, than that of Peters; yet not less active for what he discerns to be the will of God, or the welfare of mankind. And look! here is a guest for Endicott, coming forth out of the forest, through which he has been journeying from Boston, and which, with its rude branches, has caught hold of his attire, and has wet his feet with its swamps and streams. Still there is something in his mild and venerable, though not aged presence,—a propriety, an equilibrium in Governor Winthrop's nature, that causes the disarray of his costume to be unnoticed, and gives us the same impression as if he were clad in such grave and rich attire as we may suppose him to have worn in the Council Chamber of the colony. Is not this characteristic wonderfully perceptible in our spectral representative of his person? But what dignitary is this crossing from the other side to greet the governor? A stately personage, in a dark velvet cloak, with a hoary beard, and a gold chain across his breast: he has the authoritative port of one who has filled the highest civic station in the first of cities. Of all men in the world, we should least expect to meet the Lord Mayor of London—as Sir Richard Saltonstall has been, once and again—in a forest-bordered settlement of the western wilderness.

Farther down the street, we see Emanuel Downing, a grave and worthy citizen, with his son George, a stripling who has a career before him: his shrewd and quick capacity and pliant conscience shall not only exalt him high, but secure him from a downfall. Here is another figure, on whose characteristic make and expressive action I will stake the credit of my pictorial puppet-show. Have you not already detected a quaint, sly humor in that face,—an eccentricity in the manner,—a certain indescribable waywardness,—all the marks, in short, of an original man, unmistakeably impressed, yet kept down by a sense of clerical restraint? That is Nathaniel Ward, the minister of Ipswich, but better remembered as the simple cobbler of Agawam. He hammered his sole so faithfully, and stitched his upper-leather so well, that the shoe is hardly yet worn out, though thrown aside for some two centuries past. And next, among these Puritans and Roundheads, we [157] observe the very model of a Cavalier, with the curling lovelock, the fantastically trimmed beard, the embroidery, the ornamented rapier, the gilded dagger, and all other foppishnesses that distinguished the wild gallants who rode headlong to their overthrow in the cause of King Charles. This is Morton of Merry Mount, who has come hither to hold a council with Endicott, but will shortly be his prisoner. Yonder pale, decaying figure of a white-robed woman who glides slowly along the street, is the Lady Arabella, looking for her own grave in the virgin soil. That other female form, who seems to be talking—we might almost say preaching or expounding in the centre of a group of profoundly attentive auditors, is Ann Hutchinson. And here comes Vane.———

"But, my dear sir," interrupts the same gentleman who before questioned the showman s genealogical accuracy, "allow me to observe, that these historical personages could not possibly have met together in the Main-street. They might, and probably did, all visit our old town, at one time or another, but not simultaneously; and you have fallen into anachronisms that I positively shudder to think of!"

"The fellow," adds the scarcely civil critic, " has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter-skelter, without caring whether they were contemporaries or not,—and sets them all by the ears together. But was there ever such a fund of impudence! To hear his running commentary, you would suppose that these miserable slips of painted pasteboard, with hardly the remotest outlines of the human figure, had all the character and expression of Michael Angelo's pictures. Well!—go on, sir!"

"Sir, you break the illusion of the scene," mildly remonstrates the showman.

"Illusion! What illusion?" rejoins the critic, with a contemptuous snort. "On the word of a gentleman, I see nothing illusive in the wretchedly bedaubed sheet of canvass that forms your back-ground, or in these pasteboard slips that hitch and jerk along the front. The only illusion, permit me to say, is in the puppet-showman's tongue,—and that but a wretched one, into the bargain!"

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"We public men," replies the showman, meekly, "must lay our account, sometimes, to meet an uncandid severity of criticism. But—merely for your own pleasure, sir—let me entreat you to take another point of view. Sit further back, by that young lady, in whose face I have watched the reflection of every changing scene; only oblige me by sitting there; and, take my word for it, the slips of pasteboard shall assume spiritual life, and the bedaubed canvass become an airy and changeable reflex of what it purports to represent."

"I know better," retorts the critic, settling himself in his seat, with sullen, but self-complacent immovableness. "And, as for my own pleasure, I shall best consult it by remaining precisely where I am."

The showman bows, and waves his hand; and, at the signal, as if time and vicissitude had been awaiting his permission to move onward, the mimic street becomes alive again.

Years have rolled over our scene, and converted the forest-track into a dusty thoroughfare, which, being intersected with lanes and cross-paths, may fairly be designated as the Main-street. On the ground-sites of many of the log-built sheds, into which the first settlers crept for shelter, houses of quaint architecture have now risen. These later edifices are built, as you see, in one generally accordant style, though with such subordinate variety as keeps the beholder's curiosity excited, and causes each structure, like its owner's character, to produce its own peculiar impression. Most of them have one huge chimney in the centre, with flues so vast that it must have been easy for the witches to fly out of them, as they were wont to do, when bound on an aerial visit to the Black Man in the forest. Around this great chimney the wooden house clusters itself, in a whole community of gable-ends, each ascending into its own separate peak; the second story, with its lattice-windows, projecting over the first; and the door, which is perhaps arched, provided on the outside with an iron hammer, wherewith the visitor's hand may give a thundering rat-a-tat . The timber frame-work of these houses, as compared with those of recent date, is like the skeleton of an old giant, beside the frail bones of a modern man of [159] fashion. Many of them, by the vast strength and soundness of their oaken substance, have been preserved through a length of time which would have tried the stability of brick and stone; so that, in all the progressive decay and continual reconstruction of the street, down to our own days, we shall still behold these old edifices occupying their long-accustomed sites. For instance, on the upper corner of that green lane which shall hereafter be North-street, we see the Curwen House, newly built, with the carpenters still at work on the roof, nailing down the last sheaf of shingles. On the lower corner stands another dwelling,—destined, at some period of its existence, to be the abode of an unsuccessful alchymist,—which shall likewise survive to our own generation, and perhaps long outlive it. Thus, through the medium of these patriarchal edifices, we have now established a sort of kindred and hereditary acquaintance with the Main-street.

Great as is the transformation produced by a short term of years, each single day creeps through the Puritan settlement sluggishly enough. It shall pass before your eyes, condensed into the space of a few moments. The grey light of early morning is slowly diffusing itself over the scene; and the bellman, whose office it is to cry the hour at the street-corners, rings the last peal upon his hand-bell, and goes wearily homewards, with the owls, the bats, and other creatures of the night. Lattices are thrust back on their hinges, as if the town were opening its eyes, in the summer morning. Forth stumbles the still drowsy cow-herd, with his horn; putting which to his lips, it emits a bellowing bray, impossible to be represented in the picture, but which reaches the pricked-up ears of every cow in the settlement, and tells her that the dewy pasture-hour is come. House after house awakes, and sends the smoke up curling from its chimney, like frosty breath from living nostrils; and as those white wreaths of smoke, though impregnated with earthy admixtures, climb skyward, so, from each dwelling, does the morning worship its spiritual essence bearing up its human imperfection find its way to the heavenly Father's throne.

The breakfast-hour being past, the inhabitants do not, as [160] usual, go to their fields or workshops, but remain within doors; or perhaps walk the street, with a grave sobriety, yet a disengaged and unburthened aspect, that belongs neither to a holiday nor a Sabbath. And, indeed, this passing day is neither, nor is it a common week-day, although partaking of all the three. It is the Thursday Lecture; an institution which New England has long ago relinquished, and almost forgotten, yet which it would have been better to retain, as bearing relations to both the spiritual and ordinary life, and bringing each acquainted with the other. The tokens of its observance, however, which here meet our eyes, are of rather a questionable cast. It is, in one sense, a day of public shame; the day on which transgressors, who have made themselves liable to the minor severities of the Puritan law, receive their reward of ignominy. At this very moment, the constable has bound an idle fellow to the whipping-post, and is giving him his deserts with a cat-o'-nine-tails. Ever since sunrise, Daniel Fairfield has been standing on the steps of the meeting-house, with a halter about his neck, which he is condemned to wear visibly throughout his lifetime; Dorothy Talby is chained to a post at the corner of Prison Lane, with the hot sun blazing on her matronly face, and all for no other offence than lifting her hand against her husband; while, through the bars of that great wooden cage, in the centre of the scene, we discern either a human being or a wild beast, or both in one, whom this public infamy causes to roar, and gnash his teeth, and shake the strong oaken bars, as if he would break forth, and tear in pieces the little children who have been peeping at him. Such are the profitable sights that serve the good people to while away the earlier part of lecture-day. Betimes in the forenoon, a traveller—the first traveller that has come hitherward this morning—rides slowly into the street, on his patient steed. He seems a clergyman; and, as he draws near, we recognize the minister of Lynn, who was pre-engaged to lecture here, and has been revolving his discourse, as he rode through the hoary wilderness. Behold, now. the whole town thronging into the meeting-house, mostly with such sombre visages, that the sunshine becomes little better than a shadow, when it falls [161] upon them. There go the Thirteen Men, grim rulers of a grim community! There goes John Massey, the first town-born child, now a youth of twenty, whose eye wanders with peculiar interest towards that buxom damsel who comes up the steps at the same instant. There hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old beldam, looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray, and whom many of her neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. There, too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing and good-for-nothing, whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping-post. Last of all, there, goes the tithing-man, lugging in a couple of small boys, whom he has caught at play beneath God's blessed sunshine, in a back lane. What native of Naumkeag, whose recollections go back more than thirty years, does not still shudder at that dark ogre of his infancy, who perhaps had long ceased to have an actual existence, but still lived in his childish belief, in a horrible idea, and in the nurse s threat, as the Tidy Man!

It will be hardly worth our while to wait two, or it may be three, turnings of the hour-glass, for the conclusion of the lecture. Therefore, by my control over light and darkness, I cause the dusk, and then the starless night, to brood over the street; and summon forth again the bellman, with his lantern casting a gleam about his footsteps, to pace wearily from corner to corner, and shout drowsily the hour to drowsy or dreaming ears. Happy are we, if for nothing else, because we did not live in those days. In truth, when the first novelty and stir of spirit had subsided,—when the new settlement, between the forest-border and the sea. had become actually a little town,—its daily life must have trudged onward with hardly any thing to diversify and enliven it, while also its rigidity could, not fail to cause miserable distortions of the moral nature. Such a life was sinister to the intellect, and sinister to the heart; especially when one generation had bequeathed its religious gloom, and the counterfeit of its religious ardor, to the next: for these characteristics, as was inevitable, assumed the form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration, by being inherited from the example and precept of other human beings, and riot from an original and spiritual [162] source. The sons and grandchildren of the first settlers were a race of lower and narrower souls than their progenitors had been. The latter were stern, severe, intolerant, but not superstitious, not even fanatical; and endowed, if any men of that age were, with a far-seeing worldly sagacity. But it was impossible for the succeeding race to grow up, in Heaven's freedom, beneath the discipline which their gloomy energy of character had established; nor, it may be, have we even yet thrown off all the unfavorable influences which, among many good ones, were bequeathed to us by our Puritan forefathers. Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.

"What is all this?" cries the critic. "A sermon? If so, it is not in the bill."

"Very true," replies the showman; "and I ask pardon of the audience."

Look now at the street, and observe a strange people entering it. Their garments are torn and disordered, their faces haggard, their figures emaciated; for they have made their way hither through pathless deserts, suffering hunger and hardship, with no other shelter than a hollow tree, the lair of a wild beast, or an Indian wigwam. Nor, in the most inhospitable and dangerous of such lodging-places, was there half the peril that awaits them in this thoroughfare of Christian men, with those secure dwellings and warm hearths on either side of it, and yonder meeting-house as the central object of the scene. These wanderers have received from Heaven a gift that, in all epochs of the world, has brought with it the penalties of mortal suffering and persecution, scorn, enmity, and death itself;—a gift that, thus terrible to its possessors, has ever been most hateful to all other men, since its very existence seems to threaten the overthrow of whatever else the toilsome ages have built up;—the gift of a new idea. You can discern it in them, illuminating their faces—their whole persons, indeed, however earthly and cloddish—with a light that inevitably shines through, and makes the startled community aware that, these men are not as they themselves [163] are; not brethren nor neighbors of their thought. Forthwith, it is as if an earthquake rumbled through the town, making its vibrations felt at every hearthstone, and especially causing the spire of the meeting-house to totter. The Quakers have come! We are in peril! See! they trample upon our wise and well-established laws in the person of our chief magistrate; for Governor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long habits of authority,—and not one of the irreverent vagabonds has moved his hat! Did you note the ominous frown of the white-bearded Puritan governor, as he turned himself about, and, in his anger, half uplifted the staff that has become a needful support to his old age? Here comes old Mr. Norris, our venerable minister. Will they doff their hats, and pay reverence to him? No: their hats stick fast to their ungracious heads, as if they grew there; and—impious varlets that they are, and worse than the heathen Indians!—they eye our reverend pastor with a peculiar scorn, distrust, unbelief, and utter denial of his sanctified pretensions, of which he himself immediately becomes conscious; the more bitterly conscious, as he never knew nor dreamed of the like before.

But look yonder! Can we believe our eyes? A Quaker woman, clad in sackcloth, and with ashes on her head, has mounted the steps of the meeting-house. She addresses the people in a wild, shrill voice,—wild and shrill it must be, to suit such a figure,—which makes them tremble and turn pale, although they crowd open-mouthed to hear her. She is bold against established authority; she denounces the priest and his steeple-house. Many of her hearers are appalled; some weep; and others listen with a rapt attention, as if a living truth had now, for the first time, forced its way through the crust of habit, reached their hearts, and awakened them to life. This matter must be looked to; else we have brought our faith across the seas with us in vain; and it had been better that the old forest were still standing here, waving its tangled boughs, and murmuring to the sky out of its desolate recesses, instead of this goodly street, if such blasphemies be spoken in it.

So thought the old Puritans. What was their mode of [164] action may be partly judged from the spectacles which now pass before your eyes. Joshua Buffum is standing in the pillory. Cassandra Southwick is led to prison. And there a woman,—it is Ann Coleman,—naked from the waist upward, and bound to the tail of a cart, is dragged through the Main-street at the pace of a brisk walk, while the constable follows with a whip of knotted cords. A strong-armed fellow is that constable; and each time that he flourishes his lash in the air, you see a frown wrinkling and twisting his brow, and, at the same instant, a smile upon his lips. He loves his business, faithful officer that he is, and puts his soul into every stroke, zealous to fulfil the injunction of Major Hawthorne's warrant, in the spirit and to the letter. There came down a stroke that has drawn blood! Ten such stripes are to be given in Salem, ten in Boston, and ten in Dedham; and, with those thirty stripes of blood upon her, she is to be driven into the forest. The crimson trail goes wavering along the Main-street; but Heaven grant, that, as the rain of so many years has wept upon it, time after time, and washed it all away, so there may have been a dew of mercy, to clease this cruel blood-stain out of the record of the persecutor's life!

Pass on, thou spectral constable, and betake thee to thine own place of torment! Meanwhile, by the silent operation of the mechanism behind the scenes, a considerable space of time would seem to have lapsed over the street. The older dwellings now begin to look weather-beaten, through the effect of the many eastern storms that have moistened their unpainted shingles and clapboards, for not less than forty years. Such is the age we would assign to the town, judging by the aspect of John Massey, the first town-born child, whom his neighbours now call Goodman Massey, and whom we see yonder, a grave, almost autumnal-looking man, with children bf his own about him. To the patriarchs of the settlement, no doubt, the Main-street is still but an affair of yesterday, hardly more antique, even if destined to be more permanent, than a path shovelled through the snow. But to the middle-aged and elderly men who came hither in childhood or early youth, it presents the aspect of a long [165] and well-established work, on which they have expended the strength and ardor of their life. And the younger people, native to the street, whose earliest recollections are of creeping over the paternal threshold, and rolling on the grassy margin of the track, look at it as one of the perdurable things of our mortal state,—as old as the hills of the great pasture, or the headland at the harbor's mouth. Their fathers and grandsires tell them, how, Avithin a few years past, the forest stood here with but a lonely track beneath its tangled shade. Vain legend! They cannot make it true and real to their conceptions. With them, moreover, the Main-street is a street indeed, worthy to hold its way with the thronged and stately avenues of cities beyond the sea. The old Puritans tell them of the crowds that hurry along Cheapside and Fleet-street and the Strand, and of the rush of tumultuous life at Temple Bar. They describe London Bridge, itself a street, with a row of houses on each side. They speak of the vast structure of the Tower, and the solemn grandeur of Westminster Abbey. The children listen, and still inquire if the streets of London are longer and broader than the one before their father s door; if the Tower is bigger than the jail in Prison Lane; if the old Abbey will hold a larger congregation than our meeting-house. Nothing impresses them, except their own experience.

It seems all a fable, too, that wolves have ever prowled here; and not less so, that the Squaw Sachem, and the Sagamore her son, once ruled over this region, and treated as sovereign potentates with the English settlers, then so few and storm-beaten, now so powerful. There stand some school-boys, you observe, in a little group around a drunken Indian, himself a prince of the Squaw Sachem's lineage. He brought hither some beaver-skins for sale, and has already swallowed the larger portion of their price, in deadly draughts of fire-water. Is there not a touch of pathos in that picture? and does it not go far towards telling the whole story of the vast growth and prosperity of one race, and the fated decay of another?—the children of the stranger making game of the great Squaw Sachem's grandson!

But the whole race of red men have not vanished with that [166] wild princess and her posterity. This march of soldiers along the street betokens the breaking-out of King Phillip's war; and these young men, the flower of Essex, are on their way to defend the villages on the Connecticut; where, at Bloody Brook, a terrible blow shall be smitten, and hardly one of that gallant band be left alive. And there, at that stately mansion, with its three peaks in front, and its two little peaked towers, one on either side of the door, we see brave Captain Gardner issuing forth, clad in his embroidered buff-coat, and his plumed cap upon his head. His trusty sword, in its steel scabbard, strikes clanking on the door-step. See how the people throng to their doors and windows, as the cavalier rides past, reining his mettled steed so gallantly, and looking so like the very soul and emblem of martial achievement, destined, too, to meet a warrior s fate, at the desperate assault on the fortress of the Narragansetts!

"The mettled steed looks like a pig," interrupts the critic, "and Captain Gardner himself like the devil, though a very tame one, and on a most diminutive scale."

"Sir, sir!" cries the persecuted showman, losing all patience,—for, indeed, he had particularly prided himself on these figures of Captain Gardner and his horse,—"I see that there is no hope of pleasing you. Pray, sir, do me the favor to take back your money, and withdraw!"

"Not I!" answers the unconscionable critic. "I am just beginning to get interested in the matter. Come! turn your crank, and grind out a few more of these fooleries."

The showman rubs his brow impulsively, whisks the little rod with which he points out the notabilities of the scene,—but, finally, with the inevitable acquiescence of all public servants, resumes his composure, and goes on.

Pass onward, onward, Time! Build up new houses here, and tear down thy works of yesterday, that have already the rusty moss upon them! Summon forth the minister to the abode of the young maiden, and bid him unite her to the joyful bridegroom! Let the youthful parents carry their first-born to the meeting-house, to receive the baptismal rite! Knock at the door, whence the sable line of the funeral is next to issue! Provide; other successive generations of men, [167] to trade, talk, quarrel, or walk in friendly intercourse along the street, as their fathers did before them! Do all thy daily and accustomed business, Father Time, in this thoroughfare, which thy footsteps, for so many years, have now made dusty! But here, at last, thou leadest along a procession which, once witnessed, shall appear no more, and be remembered only as a hideous dream of thine, or a frenzy of thy old brain.

"Turn your crank, I say," bellows the remorseless critic, "and grind it out, whatever it be, without further preface!"

The showman deems it best to comply.

Then, here comes the worshipful Capt. Curwen, Sheriff of Essex, on horseback, at the head of an armed guard, escorting a company of condemned prisoners from the jail to their place of execution on Gallows Hill. The Witches! There is no mistaking them! The witches! As they approach up Prison Lane, and turn into the Main-street, let us watch their faces, as if we made a part of the pale crowd that presses so eagerly about them, yet shrinks back with such shuddering dread, leaving an open passage betwixt a dense throng on either side. Listen to what the people say.

There is old George Jacobs, known hereabouts, these sixty years, as a man whom we thought upright in all his way of life, quiet, blameless, a good husband before his pious wife was summoned from the evil to come, and a good father to the children whom she left him. Ah! but when that blessed woman went to heaven, George Jacob s heart was empty, his hearth lonely, his life broken up; his children were married, and betook themselves to habitations of their own; and Satan, in his wanderings up and down, beheld this forlorn old man, to whom life was a sameness and a weariness, and found the way to tempt him. So the miserable sinner was prevailed with to mount into the air, and career among the clouds; and he is proved to have been present at a witch-meeting as far off as Falmouth, on the very same night that his next neighbors saw him, with his rheumatic stoop, going in at his own door. There is John Willard too; an honest man we thought him, and so shrewd and active in his business, so practical, so intent on every-day affairs, so constant at his little place of trade, where he bartered English goods [168] for Indian corn and all kinds of country produce! How could such a man find time, or what could put it into his mind, to leave his proper calling, and become a wizard? It is a mystery, unless the Black Man tempted him with great heaps of gold. See that aged couple,—a sad sight truly,—John Proctor, and his wife Elizabeth. If there were two old people in all the county of Essex who seemed to have led a true Christian life, and to be treading hopefully the little remnant of their earthly path, it was this very pair. Yet have we heard it sworn, to the satisfaction of the worshipful Chief Justice Sewell, and all the Court and Jury, that Proctor and his wife have shown their withered faces at children's bedsides, mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor little innocents in the night-time. They, or their spectral appearances, have stuck pins into the Afflicted Ones, and thrown them into deadly fainting-fits with a touch, or but a look. And, while we supposed the old man to be reading the Bible to his old wife,—she meanwhile knitting in the chimney-corner, the pair of hoary reprobates have whisked up the chimney, both on one broomstick, and flown away to a witch-communion, far into the depths of the chill, dark forest. How foolish! Were it only for fear of rheumatic pains in their old bones, they had better have stayed at home. But away they went; and the laughter of their decayed, cackling voices has been heard at midnight, aloft in the air. Now, in the sunny noontide, as they go tottering to the gallows, it is the devil's turn to laugh.

Behind these two,—who help another along, and seem to be comforting and encouraging each other, in a manner truly pitiful, if it were not a sin to pity the old witch and wizard,—behind them comes a woman, with a dark, proud face that has been beautiful, and a figure that is still majestic. Do yon know her? It is Martha Carrier, whom the devil found in a humble cottage, and looked into her discontented heart, and saw pride there, and tempted her with his promise that she should be Queen of Hell. And now, with that lofty demeanor, she is passing to her kingdom, and, by her unquenchable pride, transforms this escort of shame into a triumphal procession, that shall attend her to the gates of her [169] infernal palace, and seat her upon the fiery throne. Within this hour, she shall assume her royal dignity.

Last of the miserable train comes a man clad in black, of small stature and a dark complexion, with a clerical band about his neck. Many a time, in the years gone by, that face has been uplifted heavenward from the pulpit of the East Meeting-house, when the Rev. Mr. Burroughs seemed to worship God. What!—he? The holy man!—the learned!—the wise! How has the devil tempted him? His fellow-criminals, for the most part, are obtuse, uncultivated creatures, some of them scarcely half-witted by nature, and others greatly decayed in their intellects through age. They were an easy prey for the destroyer. Not so with this George Burroughs, as we judge by the inward light which glows through his dark countenance, and, we might almost say, glorifies his figure, in spite of the soil and haggardness of long imprisonment,—in spite of the heavy shadow that must fall on him, while Death is walking by his side. What bribe could Satan offer, rich enough to tempt and overcome this man? Alas! it may have been in the very strength of his high and searching intellect, that the Tempter found the weakness which betrayed him. He yearned for knowledge; he went groping onward into a world of mystery; at first, as the witnesses have sworn, he summoned up the ghosts of his two dead wives, and talked with them of matters beyond the grave; and, when their responses failed to satisfy the intense and sinful craving of his spirit, he called on Satan, and was heard. Yet—to look at him—who, that had not known the proof, could believe him guilty? Who would not say, while we see him offering comfort to the weak and aged partners of his horrible crime,—while we hear his ejaculations of prayer, that seem to bubble up out of the depths of his heart, and fly heavenward, unawares,—while we behold a radiance brightening on his features as from the other world, which is but a few steps off,—who would not say, that, over the dusty track of the Main-street, a Christian saint is now going to a martyr's death? May not the Arch Fiend have been too subtle for the court and jury, and betrayed them—laughing in his sleeve the while—into the [170] awful error of pouring out sanctified blood as an acceptable sacrifice upon God's altar? Ah! no; for listen to wise Cotton Mather, who, as he sits there on his horse, speaks comfortably to the perplexed multitude, and tells them that all has been religiously and justly done, and that Satan's power shall this day receive its death-blow in New England.

Heaven grant it be so!—the great scholar must be right! so, lead the poor creatures to their death! Do you see that group of children and half-grown girls, and, among them, an old, hag-like Indian woman, Tituba by name? Those are the Afflicted Ones. Behold, at this very instant, a proof of Satan's power and malice! Mercy Parris, the minister's daughter, has been smitten by a flash of Martha Carrier's eye, and falls down in the street, writhing with horrible spasms and foaming at the mouth, like the possessed ones spoken of in Scripture. Hurry on the accursed witches to the gallows, ere they do more mischief!—ere they fling out their withered arms, and scatter pestilence by handfuls among the crowd!—ere, as their parting legacy, they cast a blight over the land, so that henceforth it may bear no fruit nor blade of grass, and be fit for nothing but a sepulchre for their unhallowed carcasses! So, on they go; and old George Jacobs has stumbled by reason of his infirmity: but Goodman Proctor and his wife lean on one another, and walk at a reasonably steady pace, considering their age. Mr. Burroughs seems to administer counsel to Martha Carrier, whose face and mien, methinks, are milder and humbler than they were. Among the multitude, meanwhile, there is horror, fear, and distrust; and friend looks askance at friend, and the husband at his wife, and the wife at him, and even the mother at her little child; as if, in every creature that God has made, they suspected a witch, or dreaded an accuser. Never, never again, whether in this or any other shape, may Universal Madness riot in the Main-street!

I perceive in your eyes, my indulgent spectators, the criticism which you are too kind to utter. These scenes, you think, are all too sombre. So, indeed, they are; but the blame must rest on the sombre spirit of our forefathers, who wove their web of life with hardly a single thread of [171] rose-color or gold, and not on me, who have a tropic love of sunshine, and would gladly gild all the world with it, if I knew where to find so much. That you may believe me, I will exhibit one of the only class of scenes, so far as my investigation has taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and strong drink, and indulge an outbreak of grisly jollity.

Here it comes, out of the same house whence we saw brave Captain Gardner go forth to the wars. What! A coffin, borne on men's shoulders, and six aged gentlemen as pall-bearers, and a long train of mourners, with black gloves and black hat-bands, and every thing black, save a white handkerchief in each mourner's hand, to wipe away his tears withal. Now, my kind patrons, you are angry with me. You were bidden to a bridal-dance, and find yourselves walking in a funeral procession. Even so; but look back through all the social customs of New England, in the first century of her existence, and read all her traits of character; and if you find one occasion, other than a funeral-feast, where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice, I will set fire to my puppet-show without another word. These are the obsequies of old Governor Bradstreet, the patriarch and survivor of the first settlers, who, having intermarried with the Widow Gardner, is now resting from his labors, at the great age of ninety-four. The white-bearded corpse, which was his spirit s earthly garniture, now lies beneath yonder coffin-lid. Many a cask of ale and cider is on tap, and many a draught of spiced wine and aquavitse has been quaffed. Else why should the bearers stagger, as they tremulously uphold the coffin?—and the aged pall-bearers, too, as they strive to walk solemnly beside it?—and wherefore do the mourners tread on one another s heels?—and why, if we may ask without offence, should the nose of the Reverend Mr. Noyes, through which he has just been delivering the funeral discourse, glow like a ruddy coal of fire? Well, well, old friends! Pass on, with your burthen of mortality, and lay it in the tomb with jolly hearts. People should be permitted to enjoy themselves in their own fashion; every man to his taste; but New England must have been a [172] dismal abode for the man of pleasure, when the only boon-companion was Death!

Under cover of a mist that has settled over the scene, a few years flit by, and escape our notice. As the atmosphere becomes transparent, we perceive a decrepit grandsire, hobbling along the street. Do you recognize him? We saw him, first, as the baby in Goodwife Massey's arms, when the primeval trees were flinging their shadow over Roger Conant's cabin; we have seen him, as the boy, the youth, the man, bearing his humble part in all the successive scenes, and forming the index-figure whereby to note the age of his coeval town. And here he is, old Goodman Massey, taking his last walk,—often pausing,—often leaning over his staff,—and calling to mind whose dwelling stood at such and such a spot, and whose field or garden occupied the site of those more recent houses. He can render a reason for all the bends and deviations of the thoroughfare, which, in its flexible and plastic infancy, was made to swerve aside from a straight line, in order to visit every settler's door. The Main-street is still youthful; the coeval Man is in his latest age. Soon he will be gone, a patriarch of fourscore, yet shall retain a sort of infantine life in our local history, as the first town-born child.

Behold here a change, wrought in the twinkling of an eye, like an incident in a tale of magic, even while your observation has been fixed upon the scene. The Main-street has vanished out of sight. In its stead appears a wintry waste of snow, with the sun just peeping over it, cold and bright, and tinging the white expanse with the faintest and most ethereal rose-color. This is the Great Snow of 1717, famous for the mountain-drifts in which it buried the whole country. It would seem as if the street, the growth of which we have noted so attentively,—following it from its first phase, as an Indian track, until it reached the dignity of side-walks,—were all at once obliterated, and resolved into a drearier pathlessness than when the forest covered it. The gigantic swells and billows of the snow have swept over each man's metes and bounds, and annihilated all the visible distinctions of human property. So that now, the traces of former times [173] and hitherto accomplished deeds being done away, mankind should be at liberty to enter on new paths, and guide themselves by other laws than heretofore; if, indeed, the race be not extinct, and it be worth our while to go on with the march of life, over the cold and desolate expanse that lies before us. It may be, however, that matters are not so desperate as they appear. That vast icicle, glittering so cheerlessly in the sunshine, must be the spire of the meeting-house, incrusted with frozen sleet. Those great heaps, too, which we mistook for drifts, are houses, buried up to their eaves, and with their peaked roofs rounded by the depth of snow upon them. There, now, comes a gush of smoke from what I judge to be the chimney of the Ship Tavern—and another—another—and another—from the chimneys of other dwellings, where fireside comfort, domestic peace, the sports of children, and the quietude of age, are living yet, in spite of the frozen crust above them.

But it is time to change the scene. Its dreary monotony shall not test your fortitude like one of our actual New England winters, which leave so large a blank—so melancholy a death-spot—in lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time. Here, at least, I may claim to be ruler of the seasons. One turn of the crank shall melt away the snow from the Main-street, and show the trees in their full foliage, the rose-bushes in bloom, and a border of green grass along the side-walk. There! But what! How! The scene will not move. A wire is broken. The street continues buried beneath the snow, and the fate of Herculaneum and Pompeii has its parallel in this catastrophe.

Alas! my kind and gentle audience, you know not the extent of your misfortune. The scenes to come were far better than the past. The street itself would have been more worthy of pictorial exhibition; the deeds of its inhabitants, not less so. And how would your interest have deepened, as, passing out of the cold shadow of antiquity, in my long and weary course, I should arrive within the limits of man's memory, and, leading you at last into the sunshine of the present, should give a reflex of the very life that is flitting past us! Your own beauty, my fair townswomen, would [174] have beamed upon you, out of my scene. Not a gentleman that walks the street but should have beheld his own face and figure, his gait, the peculiar swing of his arm, and the coat that he put on yesterday. Then, too,—and it is what I chiefly regret,—I had expended a vast deal of light and brilliancy on a representation of the street in its whole length, from Buffum's Corner downward, on the night of the grand illumination for General Taylor's triumph. Lastly, I should have given the crank one other turn, and have brought out the future, showing you who shall walk the Main-street tomorrow, and, perchance, whose funeral shall pass through it!

But these, like most other human purposes, lie unaccomplished; and I have only further to say, that any lady or gentleman, who may feel dissatisfied with the evening s'entertainment, shall receive back the admission fee at the door.

"Then give me mine," cries the critic, stretching out his palm. "I said that your exhibition would prove a humbug, and so it has turned out. So hand over my quarter!"

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Art. IX.—ABUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT. ↩

It seems to be very generally felt, that the morals of politics in the United States have declined gradually, since the establishment of our constitution; and yet there is no agreement in the opinions of men, as to the cause of the decline.

It can, we think, hardly be attributed to any general decline of morals in the nation; for careful observation shows us, that, while certain classes in our cities have been departing further and further from the true idea of a republican society, the people of the country at large, and especially the farming population, have been approaching nearer to it, and have thus more than compensated for the loss. The votaries of fashion and of pleasure have done something, certainly, to ingraft the vices and follies of Europe upon our native stock; and the debris of the immense flood of emigration which accumulates along our shores cannot but increase the [175] grinding competition which is so rapidly swelling the lists of criminals and paupers in our great cities. But, meanwhile, our common school systems, our Lyceum lectures and libraries, our newspapers and pamphlets, and especially the great Temperance Reform, have rendered an immense service in opening the intellectual and moral views of the farmers, and rural population of all classes. Our factories, too, have added to their intelligence and property, without, thus far, having injured their morals. On the whole, we think it may be safely affirmed, that the entire population of the non-slaveholding states is better fitted now for the exercise of universal suffrage, than it was when the Constitution was proclaimed. We are aware, that, in the opinion of many persons, the undeniable growth of our farming population in intelligence and external morality has been accompanied by a loss of reverence and loyalty which fully counteracts the gain. We are not, however, of this opinion. The loss of reverence complained of has been, we think, rather the growth of a spirit of analysis and inquiry, and a separation of hollow forms from those which still symbolize or express a sentiment, than a real loss of reverence for religion or virtue; and this is best proved by the fact of the moral reform everywhere visible throughout the country, in the greater sobriety, industry, and refinement of the people, and in the growing disposition to look into the moral and religious basis of our laws and social habits.

As for the slaveholding states, it may be true that they have suffered a general moral decline. We are by no means sure that such is the fact, however; but, in relation to questions of slavery, their legislation seems to indicate it. At the same time, we cannot at all agree with those who are disposed to trace all our national sins to the one foul blot of slavery; nor can we believe that our Constitution, in recognizing and permitting slavery, and providing for the restoration of fugitive slaves, has admitted a poison which can be cast out only by breaking up the whole organism. This seems to us a hopeless and a faithless doctrine, and is tantamount to an assertion that the Constitution not only has one great evil in it, but that it has little or no good in it. If it [176] has, on the whole, a healthy principle of life in it, which is worth preserving, may it not be made to throw off the poison, without sacrificing its existence? Does not analogy teach us this mode of treatment? We do not cut down the tree because the worm has tapped it, nor kill the animal stricken by disease,—at least, not until well assured that the recuperative powers of life are completely exhausted; and who shall say that the Constitution of these United States has reached that point of prostration? That slavery has done much, and is still doing much, to retard the moral advance of our Northern people, we are not disposed to deny; and that it has had hitherto an undue influence in our national councils, to which many disgraceful acts of the legislature and the executive are entirely due, is beyond question. But why has it possessed this power? Not, we apprehend, from any sympathy felt by the people of the North with slaveholders, as such,—not because these Northern people had become demoralized by slave-legislation,—not because the members of Congress had sworn to support the Constitution; but because these Northern voters and their representatives were selfish and ignorant and passionate men, more desirous to gain their private and their party ends, by allying themselves with the slaveholding power, than they were to eradicate a moral blot from our national system, at a sacrifice of, what they supposed to be, their interests. This barrier to improvement is, however, giving way. The voters are becoming more enlightened upon the true merits of the case; their consciences are getting awakened; and, besides, the conduct of the South is driving them to action, and their very selfishness will prompt them to prevent further extension of slavery and slaveholding influence. Let us now suppose this to have been done; the party tactics and selfish passions of the North to have been turned fully and successfully against the slave-power; would there not still remain a vice in our political condition, which would continue to degrade the morals of politics, and warp a fundamental idea of our Republic from its original and only true basis? We apprehend, that, unless other changes than any we have hitherto adverted to were made, there would be such a vice in full [177] activity, and that we should still be left in the extraordinary situation of a people who, under a popular form of government, is improving in its social life, while it is degrading in its political life. The vice we allude to, and which appears to us so fatal, is the perversion of the character of the representative, and, of course, of the representative government.

If there was any one point upon which the founders of our Republic especially depended as a security against the misfortunes which have overtaken all the earlier democratic states, it was doubtless our representative system, by means of which they hoped to avoid the introduction of the passions of the multitude into the councils of the nation. Mr. Madison, in one of his articles in the "Federalist," says, speaking of the delegation of government to persons elected, the effect is "to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interests of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to partial and temporary considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen, that the public voice, pronounced by representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves convened for the purpose."

Again, in the same letter, he says, that the representation of the Union will present the advantage of a body "whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices, and to schemes of injustice."

This doctrine sounds strangely to us now, with our party pledges and instructing legislatures. It is because we have lost the true idea of a representative, and have substituted for it one of an attorney or agent,—a mouthpiece of a certain number of voters in some obscure district. Instead of selecting the wisest and the best man, and allowing him to go, entirely unshackled, to investigate and decide for us, we have come to choosing the man who will make the most ready professions and promises; the object not being to select a representative of the wisdom and conscience, that is, of the highest character, of the district, but to select an able or a noisy expounder of the preconceived notions and [178] opinions of the district, so as to place the Legislature as nearly as possible in the position in which it would be, were the voters of the district personally present, with all their ignorance, prejudice, and passion. But this is precisely what the founders of the Constitution wished to avoid, in establishing a representative republic, since, they argued, that it would be more stable and sound than a pure democracy, because the government would not be administered by the people themselves, who are so easily misled by the ruling passions of the hour, but by the choicest spirits, whose wisdom and patriotism would secure them against local and temporary influences, and whose voice would therefore "be more consonant with the public good, than the voice of the people themselves, convened for the purpose."

It is not our intention here to inquire how the perversion of the representative character has gradually been brought about; but merely to call attention to the fact, that it is now complete, and that, without an amendment in this particular, it is in vain to look for a return to the purity of our institutions. If senators feel that they must either resign or vote as instructed by a majority of their State Legislature, whatever may be their own views;—if they forget that they are chosen by the State, not merely to do its bidding, to represent its will at any given moment, like an attorney, but to act under the Constitution for their State, but in the interests of truth and justice as applied to the Union and the world, and with a direct responsibility to their Maker only; if they lose sight of this high duty and this high responsibility, how can they preserve the dignity of the Senate? how can they retain the character of authority, without which government becomes contemptible? It was clearly not the intention of the founders of our Constitution to make senators and representatives directly responsible to the bodies choosing them, as principals whose wishes alone they were to consult; for such a responsibility takes away all character of freedom, whether of thought or act. It degrades the representative, not only morally, but also intellectually; for, if all he has to think of is the opinion and will of his constituents, the newspapers will be his chief study, and the caucus his arbiter of political science. He is [179] degraded from the proper position of a true man, as much so as a lawyer who is arguing, for money, a case which he does not believe in; and the most that can be expected of senators or representatives, under such a system, is, that they should become keen and unscrupulous. How, then, can we expect men of the highest moral stamp to come forward, or, if they do come forward, to retain their places and their honesty both? As mere agents, they would be morally bound to resign, when required to act contrary to their sense of right; and, with the changing majorities, this would be very likely, in the natural course of things, to happen during the term for which they are chosen. [21] Can any one believe that it was intended by the fathers of our country to place senators in such a position as this,—to make them the mere puppets of popular changes? The idea, as applied to a Senate, is ridiculous; and whether applied to the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the Executive, it is destructive of the element of stability, which was chiefly sought in the establishment of a representative form of government, as well as to all true liberty, which can exist only as connected with stability. [22] [180] The truth is, that the whole notion of a government responsible to the people, in the sense usually understood, is absurd. It may be best, in certain stages of social progress, to have an elective government, and one chosen, like our own, by universal suffrage; but this can be true only on the supposition, that the nation will, on the whole, choose better men to govern, than would be chosen under an oligarchy or a despotism; and this can happen only if the men so chosen feel their responsibility to God more directly and intimately than if placed in power by an aristocracy, or the chances of birth or of war.

The difference in the mode of selecting the government is of little importance, excepting so far as it produces this effect; and, when once the choice is made, in one form of government or another, the governing power remains responsible only to God. It has the proper character of government, only so far as it embodies the eternal principles of God; and its only right, therefore, is the divine right. There may be a great choice in forms of appointing and changing the rulers, as tending to increase or diminish the temptations to depart from uprightness in the administration; arid we are well convinced, that our own Constitution, as understood by those who made it, is better suited to our state of society than any which has yet appeared in the world; but there can be no difference in the nature of the responsibility of the government, when established. In no case can the parties, chosen to administer it, look to the human appointing power as the guide to right government: here, indeed, they may meet with an exhibition of might, which may support it or overturn it; but, to find the right, they must look higher. On the other hand, a delegated government should be looked up to

[181]

by the citizens, during its existence, with all the respect which can be shown to any government. If it is not more worthy of respect than any other, it should be abandoned, as not the best form of government. It deserves respect as embodying the collective wisdom and virtue of the country, which it is supposed to do, and ought to do; and, if it does not, it is the fault of the people, and may be remedied at the next election. During its existence, however, it cannot lose its freedom, without losing its character of a government; it cannot be, at once, the servant and the ruler of the nation. The term "public servants" seems to have added to the confusion of ideas, if it did not arise from them. How can the persons, to whom we have given authority over us, be our servants? The servile character destroys all authority.

There can be no doubt, that the successful candidates for office will be found among those who are content to look no further than to their constituents, so long as the public demands nothing better. If it wishes its deliberative assemblies to resemble collections of sharp attorneys, squabbling for the so-called interests of their principals, it will find no lack of men well qualified and ready to squabble; but if it wants men fitted to be legislators in a great nation, which ought to lead the movements of true liberty in the world, and every part of whose political structures is destined to be studied in the old world, and to exert some influence either for good or for evil, it must adhere to the original theory of the Constitution, which is based upon true patriotism and toleration. Without these, its machinery will not work. No clever pretences, no balancing of selfish interests, will prevent its running down. The latter may do to keep the wheels going in some Constitutions, of a lower order; but ours was intended for, and can only be worked by, men of honesty and intelligence, "whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices, and to schemes of injustice." How far pledges arid instruction will conduce to this latter end, can be seen without much elucidation.

This brings us back to the apparent contradiction adverted to in the beginning of these remarks, namely, that the morals of the nation have been and are actually improving, while the [182] morals of politics are sinking. We have ascribed this anomalous state of things principally to the perversion of the idea of a representative government; but it may be asked, why, if the people have advanced in knowledge and character, have they allowed this abuse to creep in? The answer is, that, although the people have improved, they are still far short of the standard which the fathers of our country set before themselves, and had in view for the nation; and, meanwhile, time has developed the temptation and the opportunities to abuse. The people, instead of being above the Constitution, as we hear frequently said, are, in our opinion, still far below it, morally and intellectually, and especially in one grand characteristic,—that of toleration.

The obstacles which have constantly retarded the advance of true liberty in the world, in all countries and at all times, may be divided into two classes: those which have been wilfully raised and maintained by gross, barefaced selfishness, cruelty, love of conquest, and the like; and those which men have unconsciously interposed in the path of freedom, blinded by various forms of self-love and ignorance. Among the latter, intolerance has played, and still plays, a most prominent part, and no less in this Republic, which boasts of its freedom, than in the older countries, where its baneful effects are known and confessed. By means of this bigotry or intolerance, the great body of honest voters (and we presume that the majority of voters, of all parties, act with honest intentions) are prevented from looking on more than one side of the questions submitted to them, without being at all aware of it themselves. With the best intentions in the world, they may thus conduce to the moral debasement of their representatives. Having themselves what they conceive to be a full understanding of important social and political questions, in which they are supported by those with whom they principally associate and sympathize, they are equally unable and unwilling to look fairly on the other side; and they naturally, under the circumstances, conclude that, as the other party cannot have any right on its side, they are bound to take all steps in their power to secure the adoption of their own views. Here the evil of the thing begins to show itself, [183] when they are induced to overlook the moral character of the means employed to produce conformity with their views. The first and most obvious means is to secure a candidate who will promise, first of all, to be guided by their opinions, or, what is the same thing, to make his own coincide with theirs. The first point, therefore, is to make sure of your candidate's views: if he be a good man and intelligent besides, why, so much the better, but first make sure of his views! This is the feeling, and it may exist among men of zealous, honest, and improving character; but it cannot be applied to the representative without curtailing his liberty, and reducing his moral status: for making sure of his views means making sure of your man; he becomes your man, loses property in himself, and feels that he must either do what you expect of him, or betray a trust. Is this man fitted to be a leader, a ruler, for ever so short a time? Is he not rather, from the day of his election, tempted to be a follower, an anxious watcher of the tides of popular feeling?

The earnestness which makes men insist on what they believe to be the right qualification in their candidate is a virtue; but the ignorance which makes them think that none but their own view can possibly be right, and that they can add to a man's fitness to take a part in the important work of government (which must be, either to his intelligence, knowledge, or honesty), by depriving him of his liberty, if not a positive vice, is certainly a deplorable fault. We could hardly believe, if we did not see it done on all sides, that men of intelligence and of the purest intentions would be disposed to adopt such a course. That corrupt party leaders should seek to bind and direct their tools, we can readily understand; but that men of conscience, of all parties, the "conscience party" no less than others, should make haste to reduce their candidates, as quickly as possible, to mere partisans,—should wish to curtail them of their full proportions as men, to take from them, in fact, that which constitutes them especially men,—which is their freedom of thought and action,—is one of the strangest things under the sun.

There may be a confusion in some minds between the [184] limitations to powers conferred by the Constitution on different members of government, and the abridgment of the liberty of the party acting within the range of those powers. Such persons may argue, that, as there is a limit to the legal action of each member of the government, the liberty of each is curtailed; and hence that there is no liberty in the representative but to do the will of his constituents. The two things, however, are entirely distinct. The Constitution establishes checks and limitations of power, in order to prevent the abuse of liberty. The establishment of the limitations shows of itself, that, within the range of the powers granted, liberty should remain unimpaired; otherwise no limitation would be needed. The limitation relates entirely to the nature of the powers to be exercised, not at all to the freedom of mind and will in the exercise of the powers granted,—whereas all party pledges strike at the latter; and they cannot do this under the pretence that it is to prevent the abuse of liberty, for two reasons; first, because the Constitution, in the limitations referred to, has already established the necessary check; and, secondly, because liberty, to be abused, must be exercised; whereas they destroy liberty.

Republicans, who wish to retain the purity of their institutions, must beware lest they allow their zeal to outstrip their liberality. They must remember that the same reasons, which make it their duty to spread their views of good government by all proper means, make it equally incumbent upon those who differ from them to do likewise; and that invading the liberty of a citizen, and, above all, of one who is to assume the responsibilities of office, is a highly improper means. It is all-important for the zealous to be liberal and tolerant; for the salvation of the Republic rests with them. The indolent and the selfish will certainly never raise our national standard of right; the work must be done by the zealous. They are the salt; but, if their saltness be neutralized by the ashes of intolerance, where shall we look for help?

If now we glance at the actual state of things, as compared to what we have said it should be, the contrast, if it Avere not too important in its consequences, would be absolutely [185] ridiculous. Hardly a candidate for any office is put up, that he is not assailed by a dozen zealous party leaders, who urge him to pledge himself to something. Temperance men, tariff men, free-trade men, native Americans, free-soilers, abolitionists, all push forward their sine qua non, and say, "Agree to our terms first, or we will not vote for you, however otherwise qualified." It is in vain for the candidate to point to his past course and his general character, and beg to be allowed to go to his duties entirely free; to decide all practical questions upon their merits, when they shall arise. This satisfies no one; and, after being bandied about by his tormenters for a time, he makes a bargain, and agrees to be a sound politician, as party A understands it, if party A will support him, or as party B understands it, if party B will support him; or sometimes, when the claims are not absolutely contradictory, he buys the votes of several squads of voters with his ready-coined promises, and so makes up a bundle of political virtues, at what he perhaps considers a low price. But he is mistaken. The price he has paid is exorbitant beyond reckoning. He has exchanged all that is real in political virtue for a bundle of shams!

The history of our Congress, of late years, is the history of this school of politics. The scholars have made rapid progress, and in their annual exhibitions have given the world ample proof of it; so that the electors who have chosen them have often become ashamed of their choice, and have come to feel that their representatives, instead of being, as they should be, above the level of the nation, are actually below it; and yet they express astonishment that this should be so. Do they not remember that they chose these men to be their "servants," and that the master is greater than the man? Have they forgotten that they chose them without faith, depending not on their virtue and character, but on their promises and supposed interests; that they did not expect to bind these representatives to them by their independence and courage, but rather by their selfishness and their fears; and that there is nothing ennobling in this connection, but, on the contrary, every thing degrading? How can they expect, then, that men so chosen should be leaders of the [186] people? There may be a few bright examples among them, but the great body must be time-servers. There is no getting the results of virtue and high-mindedness out of selfish calculations and fears. Arrange it as you will, it always comes back to the hopeless problem, which Carlyle says modern shrewdness is wasting time on,—namely, "Given a world of knaves, to educe an honesty from their joint action."

It may be thought, and perhaps justly, that the election of General Taylor by so large a majority, in the face of his refusals to make himself a party man, indicates some re-action in the feelings of the people in regard to pledged candidates. There is no doubt an instinctive admiration felt for one who exhibits an independence of this kind; and when, as in the case of General Taylor, it happens to be supported by other qualities which strike the imagination of the people, it may be triumphantly carried through. But the difficulty is, that it is merely an instinctive feeling, and not an intelligent opinion, in favor of this independence, and that only with a portion of the people. Many feel, on the contrary, as if it were a kind of underhand proceeding in a candidate to refuse to "support" the party which is about to "support" him. They look upon it as a species of fraudulent reserve in a bargain, by which they may be entrapped into giving their price, without receiving their equivalent. Even those who have an admiration of the kind of mind which disdains to bind itself, are afraid to give way to the feeling. The "sober second thoughts," so much lauded, come in and spoil their better instincts. They think they must bind a man by his ambition or his interests to agree with and act for them, lest his intelligence or his conscience should lead him to take some other course. Here is exactly the difficulty.

The representative is regarded as the agent of his constituents, chosen to do their bidding. They would like to have a noble and a free agent, provided always he will do their bidding: in short, they wish to secure the aid and guidance of virtue, by means which can command the services only of selfishness. Even in General Taylor's case, we fear that his sound views, shown in refusing to hold out any hopes to any class of partisans, was but little appreciated in fact, [187] although it was much talked of, by his supporters. His successes as a soldier, together with his general manliness and humanity of character, were universally acknowledged, and probably obtained him nine-tenths of the votes which were cast for him.

If the views we have presented be sound; if it be true that our political character has been degrading, since the first few years of our national existence, without any corresponding decline in the intelligence and morals of the people, and even in the face of an improvement in those qualities, mainly in consequence of a perversion of the representative character, which has assimilated our Republic too closely to a pure democracy, the question becomes interesting,—Can this democratic usurpation, which threatens to sweep all before it, be arrested ? In considering this question, we think it must be admitted by all, that the mere fact of a constant improvement in the character of the people is of itself a very hopeful symptom. If the people have improved under all the degrading influences of party warfare, they may improve still more; they may improve until they see the evil clearly, and have virtue enough to overcome it. It is evident that the only check to the license of democracy in this country is to be found in the character of the people themselves; and fortunately our most enlightened men are no longer weighed down by the hopeless theory which still blots out the light of the future from the eyes of many a sincere patriot and worldly-wise legislator of Europe. There the opinion has always prevailed, and still prevails with those who have the power, that, when democracy has once begun to feel its influence increasing, nothing can prevent its finally degenerating into license and anarchy, excepting an opposing interest of some kind, as a counterpoise,—such as a wealthy privileged class, or a ruler supported by a powerful army. They do not admit, that any check to the headlong course of democracy can be found in the morality and intelligence of the people, whom they consider as necessarily too blind and passionate to put any restraints upon themselves; or rather to keep any.

This view may be true enough as applied to the present [188] condition of the people of Europe, and we fear not altogether inapplicable to the present condition of this country; but, admitting this, does it follow that, because the democracy has never yet been sufficiently enlightened to see its errors, and curb its overbearing tendency, it can never become so? Certainly it does not follow; but, on the other hand, if the fact be that the people have improved, with full liberty in their hands, and a tendency to license in political matters gaining ground, it is a fair inference that they can go on advancing until a majority shall see clearly, that, in order to attain the highest results, they must be governed; and that, in order to have a conscientious and efficient government, they must bind themselves to it, in a spirit of loyalty, during its term of existence; surrendering frankly into the hands of their delegates the powers apportioned to them by the Constitution, to be used, in all freedom, under the best lights which this representative government can command.

The people, however, cannot learn this self-restraint, with out a most efficient and extended system of education. As the population increases, with such immense recruits, too, from the ignorant and shiftless of other lands, it will be impossible even to maintain our present relative degree of virtue and wisdom, without constant effort.

This subject has been most ably and fully handled by the late Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in his various Reports, in which, we think, he has made it apparent, that, if the Common School system is extended and improved as it ought to be, and especially if in their management the utilitarian views are kept subordinate to those of an elevated morality, the people may be educated to a point which will enable them to carry out fully the highest theory of our Constitution, and perhaps eventually to devise a better one.

[ 189]

Art. X.—RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. ↩

I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all;" and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.

This American government,—what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow; yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The [190] character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better goverment. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a [191] whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small moveable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be

"Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
  As his corse to the ramparts we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
  O'er the grave where our hero we buried."

The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, &c. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most [192] part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a hole to keep the wind away," but leave that office to his dust at least:—

"I am too high-born to be propertied,
 To be a secondary at control,
 Or useful serving-man and instrument
 To any sovereign state throughout the world."

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of '75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them: all machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the "Duty of Submission to Civil [193] Government," resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say, "that so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God that the established government be obeyed, and no longer."—"This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other." Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.

In their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does any one think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?

"A drab of state, a cloth-o'-silver slut,
 To have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt."

Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, be cause the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; [194] for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect, do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, [195] made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to, shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. Oh for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,—one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the alms-houses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the mutual insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what [196] gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico,—see if I would go;" and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at nought; as if the State were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of order and civil government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin, comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,—the union between themselves and the State,—and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in the same relation to the State, that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union, which have prevented them from resisting the State?

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are [197] cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle,—the perception and the performance of right,—changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with any thing which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, [198] exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not every thing to do, but something; and because be cannot do every thing, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.

I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.

I meet this American government, or its representative the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year, no more, in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing [199] your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with,—for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel,—and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action? I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,—if ten honest men only,—aye, if one honest man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State's ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister,—though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her,—the Legislature would not wholly waive the subject the following winter.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, [200] should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her,—the only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do any thing, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.

I have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goods,—though both will serve the same purpose,—because they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the [201] rich man—not to make any invidious comparison—is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavour to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. "Show me the tribute-money," said he;—and one took a penny out of his pocket;—If you use money which has the image of Cæsar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Cæsar's government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; "Render therefore to Cæsar that which is Caesar's, and to God those things which are God's,"—leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know.

When I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences of disobedience to it to their property and families. For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, [202] and depend upon yourself, always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said,—"If a State is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a State is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame." No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State, than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. "Pay it," it said, "or be locked up in the jail." I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:—"Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined." This I gave to the town-clerk; and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list.

[203]

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hinderance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, [204] "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the door-way, when I entered. But the jailer said, "Come, boys, it is time to lock up;" and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer, as "a first-rate fellow and a clever man." When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and, as the world goes, I believe he was. "Why," said he, "they accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it." As near as I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated.

He occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw, that, if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various [205] occupants of that room; for I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp.

It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the middle ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village-inn,—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.

In the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called for the vessels again, I was green enough to return what bread I had left; but my comrade seized it, and said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after, he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till noon; so he bade me good-day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again.

When I came out of prison,—for some one interfered, and paid the tax,—I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth, and emerged a tottering and gray-headed man; and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene,—the town, and State, and country,—greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and [206] friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly purpose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that, after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that most of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village.

It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, "How do ye do?" My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker's to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour,—for the horse was soon tackled,—was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off; and then the State was nowhere to be seen.

This is the whole history of "My Prisons."

I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and, as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with,—the dollar is innocent,—but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what, advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.

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If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good.

This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his action be biassed by obstinacy, or an undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour.

I think sometimes, Why, this people mean well; they are only ignorant; they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I think, again, this is no reason why I should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill-will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and [208] expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.

I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity. I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better a patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; but seen from a point of view a little higher, they are what I have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?

However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.

I know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects, content me as little as any. Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the [209] institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind's range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency, or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of '87. "I have never made an effort," he says, "and never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came into the Union." Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, "Because it was a part of the original compact,—let it stand." Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect,—what, for instance, it behoves a man to do here in America to-day with regard to slavery, but ventures, or is driven, to [210] make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private man,—from which what new and singular code of social duties might be inferred?—"The manner," says he, "in which the government of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for their own consideration, under their responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me, and they never will." [23]

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak, who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

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The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,—for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,—is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

HYMN OF A SPIRIT SHROUDED. ↩

O God! who, in thy dear still heaven,
    Dost sit, and wait to see
The errors, sufferings, and crimes
    Of our humanity,
How deep must be thy Causal love!
    How whole thy final Care!
Since Thou, who rulest over all,
    Canst see, and yet canst bear.

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THE MEDITATIONS OF A WIDOW. ↩

I.

August, 18—.

Springtime,—it surely came,—its roundelays!
Wherefore these full, rich notes and Summer tone?
I only knew it was thy Spring to Life,—
Above the life of seasons and decay,—
True Life, not knowing stint, nor blight, nor check,
One everlasting growth in incorruption!

Now joyous Summer passeth in her wealth.
She filleth clusters; hangeth gold on boughs;
Prepare th the full sheaf, the luscious sweets,
Gorgeous apparel; dresses for lilies,
And for daisies too; soft hues for Even
And for Morn; Music, the livelong day;
And Fountains cool, to freshen all.
I only know that heat and taint and toil
Can never come to thee! Thou'st found thy wealth,
Where thine affections reached, in thy mock-life;
Hast found that River (either side the Tree
Whose leaves—oh thou art rich!—unfolded to thee
Fadeless), for the people, past and coming;
The fount of freshness, overflowing all:
And thou hast learned the rich undying strain,
Trumphant, glorious Alleluia!

II.

October, 18—.

Autumn, I know thee well,—thy cool all-hail!
Thou introducest change: Beauty is pale:
Those flashes but proclaim "passing away."
Why art thou stern upon our lingering love?
Why dost deride and blow upon our joys?
Why spend thyself to strew our seeming wealth,
And give our very comforts to the wind?
Thine awful whisperings are of Grandeur come,
And we must hear acclaim of Majesty,
Till, half congealed with awe, we breathe "Amen!
Let Beauty die; our homage is to Thee." [213]
All change is God; immutably the same
In form of Beauty and sublime display;
In most dread hours, His glory beameth out
To light up glory in the human soul.

Thou, thou hast passed all change of human life,
And not again to thee shall Beauty die,
Or Greatness in his robe of terror come.
No devastation passeth o'er those fields;
The fruits abide, and who partake abide
Their high communings. Life and Death is not.

III.

December, 18—.

Winter, dread Undertaker, thou art come!
And how unique are thy official deeds!
The living and the dead, uncoffined, both
Live in our meanest traversings concealed.

The heralds of thy coming scattered truths;
And, gorgeously arrayed, they looked so gay,
Admiring them, we lost the lesson quite.

Then those Old Priests, with withered arms, stood up
And read a service: requiems were pealed,
And under-tones of death; long deep-drawn sighs
Passed o'er the living at their tasks and plays.
And what a burial! Sexton nor grave
The buried bound about, and palled—all one—
And thou dost bury o'er the safe-interred,
As thou had st power to shut them deeper down
Into the cold dark trophy-room of Death.
As well might boast of hulls and husks and shells,
And other old investments dropped by life,
In passage up to higher, purer life.
Oh! there is Life so pure, commingles nought
To satiate the greedy maw of Death;
All unincumbered, incorrupt, and free!
Those dear remains can feel no adverse power,—
The Life that laid them down is free from stain,
And never shall put off its robe of light!

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Art. XI.—LANGUAGE. ↩

No man was ever deeply and intensely fired with a conviction of a truth which he knew to be of vital importance to his fellow-men, that he did not burn to communicate it. And no man ever felt the full force of this desire of communication, who has not brooded at times over the fact of language, and its want of effectiveness; while at the same time it has seemed to him, that the difficulty was not altogether in the vagueness and inexpressiveness of language itself; for that the words often unfolded a mysterious power of acting on his own mind, whenever it was raised to a certain pitch of exaltation, assuring him that, if they should find other minds equally in earnest, they would burn and breathe into them also.

Dr. Bushnell could not have evinced so conclusively in any other way, that he was full of a truth it behoved other men to know, than by falling upon Language itself, and calling his readers to consider its nature, introductory to the treatment of a great subject. [24] But, though his general view is great, and many of his observations upon language are profound, we take leave to say that he has stopped, in his analysis, short of a truth which might be unfolded, and has admitted to his investigation a boundary which does not exist. He has seen and said, that the world which meets the senses has for its final cause to unfold the intelligence of man into consciousness, and to bring about that communion of the finite, with the infinite intelligence which is life. He has seen also, that men live within one another's sight and hearing, and in communion with each other, not only for lower ends, but ulteriorly for that higher end. In fine, he sees that all nature and human life have a representative, as their highest character, and that it is this which it most behoves men to understand.

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Still more, he has seen that men are linguistic, as truly, naturally, inevitably, as that they are locomotive or intellectual; and therefore there is a priori reason to believe, that language is not arbitrary or accidental, but springs out of nature, with which it has vital connection. He says, that man is a speaking, as he is a seeing creature; that the parable of God's bringing all creatures to Adam, to name, signifies, that men named things by a pre-established law connecting the mind and outward nature with each other. He even sees, that every word is, in the last analysis, the sign or vocal form of some material thing or action; but what is remarkable is, that while he sees all this, and farther sees that the application of words to moral and religious subjects follows the, same laws of imagination that are exemplified in those sentences which are called "figures of speech," he does not seem to see that the same laws of imagination determined the elements of single words to their subjects, so that every word which is not an imitation of nature, like hum, buzz, boom, is, as it were, a poem; in short, that there is some natural and inevitable reason why every word should be what it is; that there is a foregoing impossibility of lepus and lupus and vulpes and wolf and fox (fugax) to be tortoise or sloth, though words as different as hare and lepus may both signify the same animal, viewed according to different characteristics. He sees as much difference between sol and sun, and stella and astre, as between nubes and cloud; and ends at last with a restatement of the old and superficial theory, that language is, after all, arbitrary, the creature of convention.

But we have not introduced Dr. Bushnell's name to criticize the shortcomings of his Essay, as philological science, since he does not profess to be an adept in it; but because the justice he has done to the subject of language as a power acting and re-acting upon the mind, helping or hindering it in the investigation of truth, must awaken a sense of the importance of the subject, and affords a good opportunity to direct an intelligent attention to the philological essay, entitled the "Significance of the Alphabet." [25]

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When a great scientific discovery is made, and given forth to the world abstracted from its applications and a full development of its uses, it is apt to fall unobserved, and perhaps sleep for years. The world knows only of seeds that have sprouted. And yet, that a theory of language which, as an organic whole, and in some degree demonstrated as true, is certainly original, should have been passed over [26] so long, as at best but an ingenious and curious speculation, is somewhat strange. For, if it pretends to touch the heart of the matter, it must be either impertinently foolish, calling for animadversion and ridicule, or it is of serious import. The truth upon the subject has relations with every department of human knowledge and thought.

For what is language? It is the picture and vehicle of all that has been present to the mind of Humanity, stretching back beyond all histories and other literatures; and its bearings are incalculable upon the discovery and retention of truth, as well as upon the discipline and activity of the human mind which is in relation to it. The human mind is in relation to nature as the stone-cutter or the artist to the quarry; and language is at once the representation and vehicle of all that has been quarried.

"One man dies, and other men enter into the fruits of his labor." How? Because these fruits are conserved, or rather live and move, in language. Language must therefore be a necessary product, and what it is, precisely because it could not be otherwise; therefore within the multitude of languages, and beneath the confusion of tongues, there must be something of a universal character, which gives meaning to the articulations of sound. This has seemed so probable, a priori, from the time of Socrates [27] to the present day, that again and again the idea has been broached, and sometimes a clue has seemed to be caught. But all experience seems at first sight to be against it. Dr. Bushnell brings forward [217] the argument drawn both from the existence of diverse languages and from the failure of all systems of etymology that have been broached, as if these were conclusive against it, and as a warning to future inquirers not to stumble on dark mountains. But always the discoveries of science seem impossible till they are made, and every erroneous path that is taken is called a conclusive experience. Let us not be discouraged. Euler, when announcing the formula of the principle of circular motion, said, "This is true, though all experience is against it." The mathematical student of the celestial motions understands this, however paradoxical it may sound. Language is another exponent of the same paradox. There is a universal truth with respect to language which contradicts those special facts of each language called idioms. And these exceptions also prove the rule. There is, in short, a view to be taken of this subject which reconciles the two opposite views which Dr. Bushnell speaks of, viz. the a priori probability of a universal language, and the a posteriori fact of a diversity of languages; and this view will account for that strange power in the form of some words which he notices, and for the pertinacity of being which characterizes these children of the air.

The vast importance of nomenclature to natural science is exemplified in that of chemistry. This nomenclature is, in fact, the best instance of the invention of a language in modern scientific annals. There is a rational principle obvious. The new words explain themselves. A great deal of the time of students of all sciences is used up in settling the meaning of words,—defining; that is, attempting to clear away by one set of words the confusion occasioned by the use of another set, called scientific terms. Grammar and mathematics, for instance, are talked of in a mongrel of Latin and Greek words, whose laborious paraphrasing into equivalent English keeps off the mind, for a long time, from the real subject in hand. It is a commonly acknowledged drawback on all school-instruction, that the mind is employed about words, as counters, which prevents the faculties from being refreshed by those realities of nature intended to be signified by them. It is a common remark, that it is not until the learner has [218] left school, and come into relation with things, that his lessons are vivified, made to cultivate his mind, and stimulate his character. But the desired revolution in school-education would be accomplished, if words were looked at as transparent vases of realities of nature, and every department of science was treated in terms that, instead of hiding, revealed these realities clearly, as a picture reveals the objects of natural history. And why is it not so? The reason is, that the key to the meaning of language—its secret—is not in the common possession.

Dr. Bushnell has seen, and verified to his mind in a sufficient number of instances, that words which consist of several syllables elucidate complex ideas by the combination. He might have spoken of the word consider in English, made of con and sedeo. We consider a subject, when we sit down in company with it. In German, the same act of the mind is expressed by überlegen. The German lies over the subject of his consideration. To occur means to run (curro) to meet (ob), and in England thoughts occur, and sometimes strike, while in Germany they fall into people (einfallen). It is curious enough to run through languages, and trace national characteristics evinced by words of this kind, that reveal operations of mind which are familiar or easily explained. But it is not necessary to stop here, as Dr. Bushnell has done. He says, p. 48:—

"There is only a single class of intellectual words that can be said to have a perfectly determinate significance, viz. those which relate to what are called necessary ideas. They are such as time, space, cause, truth, right, arithmetical numbers, and geometrical figures. Here the names applied are settled into a perfectly determinate meaning, not by any peculiar virtue in them, but by reason of the absolute exactness of the ideas themselves. Time cannot be any thing more or less than time; truth cannot, in its idea, be any thing different from truth; the numbers suffer no ambiguity of count or measure; a circle must be a circle, a square a square. As far as language, therefore, has to do with these, it is a perfectly exact algebra of thought, but no further."

He, however, had already asked:—

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"What is the real and legitimate use of words, when applied to moral subjects? for we cannot dispense with them, and it is uncomfortable to hold them in universal scepticism, as being only instruments of error."

And this question follows a long disquisition, whose object is to show that "physical terms are never exact, being only names of genera."—"Much less have we any terms in the spiritual department of language that are exact representatives of thought." He answers his own question, therefore, with this remark, of which he does not seem to follow out the whole value:—

"Words are used as signs of thoughts to be expressed. They do not literally convey, or pass over, a thought out of one mind into another, as we commonly speak of doing. They are only hints or images held up before the mind of another, to put him upon generating or reproducing the same thought, which he can do only as he has the same personal contents, or the generative power out of which to bring the thought required." Nay, we would add, he must also have the generative power of making the words so, and not otherwise; that, whatever superficial difference they may have, yet, taken in some point of view, there is a certain identity of all words applied to the same thought.

But Dr. Bushnell does not see this. He says: "Yet, in the languages radically distinct, we shall find that the sounds or names which stand for the same objects have generally no similarity whatever; whence it follows irresistibly, that nothing in the laws of voice or sound has determined the names adopted."

This conclusion is drawn so irresistibly by means of the mistake that Dr. Bushnell, with many famous etymologists, has made, of conceiving "no similarity whatever" in words, except in their sound, i.e. their similarity of effect on the ear. It is very true, as he says, "No theory of sound, as connected with sense, in the names of things, will be found to hold extensively enough to give it any moment;" although, "when sounds are the objects named, they will very naturally be imitated, as in hoarse and hiss."

But words should be considered not merely as sounds, but as articulations of sound.

[220]

The discovery and first principle of the author of the “Significance of the Alphabet” is, that words are to be considered, not merely or chiefly by their effect on the ear, but in the process of their formation by the organs of speech. Looked at in this point of view, words may be identified at once, although they may sound differently from each other, as garden and hortus and wirta and ogrod and zahrada. And this is the great idea in which lies a revolution not only for the treatment of philology itself, but for the method of intercommunicating the knowledge of all particular languages, and of elucidating all sciences communicable by words.

Dr. Bushnell, having quoted Prof. Gibbs's theory of case, published in the “Christian Spectator,” vol. ix. says, it is there shown that “as words themselves are found in space, so they are declined, or formed into grammar, under the relations of space;” and infers “that such results in grammar do not take place apart from some inherent law or system pertaining either to mind or to outward space, or to one as related to the other;” and adds that it will sometime be fully seen, that “the outer word is a vast menstruum of thought or intelligence. There is a logos in the forms of things, by which they are prepared to serve as types or images of what, is inmost in our souls; and there is a logos also of construction in the relations of space, the position, qualities, connections, and predicates of things, by which they are formed into grammar. In one word, the outer world which envelopes our being is itself language, the power of all language.‘Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge; there is no speech nor language where their sound is not heard; their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.’”

Let Dr. Bushnell add from Dr. Kraitsir's theory the other element, and see that there is a logos also in the apparatus of articulation; and he will have, but not otherwise, demonstrable ground for his next paragraph, which is eloquent with a suggestion, which, as he justly afterwards remarks, is “sufficient of itself to change a man's intellectual capacities and destiny; for it sets him always in the presence of divine [221] thoughts and meanings, makes even the words he utters luminous of Divinity, and, to the same extent, subjects of love and reverence.”

This is the passage we mean:—

“And if the outer world is the vast dictionary and grammar of thought we speak of, then it is also an organ throughout of intelligence. Whose intelligence? By this question we are set directly confronting God, the universal Author; no more to hunt for him by curious arguments and subtle deductions, if haply we may find Him; but He stands expressed everywhere, so that, turn whichsoever way we please, we behold the outlooking of His intelligence. No series of Bridgewater treatises, piled even to the moon, could give a proof of God so immediate, complete, and conclusive.”

It is not the purpose here to give an abstract of the little book, called the “Significance of the Alphabet.” Indeed, it would be impossible. One peculiarity of it is, that it is so condensed it admits of no farther condensation. It rather needs a paraphrase, and it certainly ought to have a sequel of some practical elementary books which may make it possible to apply its principles for the purpose of transforming the present system of language-teaching in schools. It is said the author is superintending the preparation of some. A whole series is necessary, from the a b c book to a manual of the Sanscrit. Indeed, from him might be expected the realization of that idea of a lexicon which Herder has sketched in his “Conversations on the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry.” One of the interlocutors of the conversation asks,—after having granted, with respect to the Hebrew, “the symbolism of the radical sounds, or the utterance of the feeling that was prompted, while the object itself was present to the senses; the sound of the feelings in the very intuition of their causes:—But how is it with the derivations from these radical terms? What are they but an overgrown jungle of thorns, where no human foot has ever trod?

“eutyphron.

“In bad lexicons this is indeed the case, and many of the most learned philologists of Holland have rendered the way [222] still more difficult by their labors. But the time is coming when this jungle will become a pleasant grove of palms.

“alciphron.

“Your metaphor is Oriental.

“eutyphron.

“So is the object of it. The root of the mother-word will stand in the centre, and around her the grove of her children. By influence of taste, diligence, sound sense, and the judicious comparison of different dialects, lexicons will be brought to distinguish what is essential from what is accidental in the signification of words, and to trace the gradual process of transition; while in the derivation of words, and the application of metaphors, we shall behold the invention of the human mind in its act, and more fully understand the logic of ancient figurative language. I anticipate with joy the time, and the first lexicon, in which this shall be well accomplished. For the present I use the best we have. . . .

“alciphron.

“It will be long yet before we shall repose ourselves in your palm-grove of Oriental lexicography. Pray, in the meantime, illustrate your ideas of derivation by an example.

“eutyphron.

“You may find examples everywhere, even as the lexicons now are. Strike at the first radical form that occurs, as the primitive ‘he is gone,’ and observe the easy gradation of its derivatives. A series of expressions signifying loss, disappearance, and death, vain purposes, and fruitless toil and trouble, go on in soft transitions; and, if you place yourself in the circumstances of the ancient herdsmen, in their wandering, unsettled mode of life, the most distant derivative will still give back in its tones something of the original sound of the word, and of the original feeling. It is from this cause that the language addresses itself so much to our senses, and the creations of its poetry become present to us with such stirring effect. The language abounds in roots of this character; and our commentators, who rather go too deep than too superficially, have shown enough of them. They never know when to quit, and, if possible, would lay bare all the roots [223] and fibres of every tree, even where one would wish to see only the flowers and fruits.

“alciphron.

“These are the black demons, I suppose, upon your plantation of palms.

“eutyphron.

“A very necessary and useful race. We must treat them with mildnessfor, if they do too much, they do it with a good motive.”

In answer to some criticisms [28] that have been made upon the “Significance of the Alphabet,” such as that it is a dark hint, rather than a full elucidation of the subject, the history of the book may be given. It was merely the enlargement by Dr. Kraitsir of some notes taken by a hearer of one or two lectures of a series which he delivered in Boston to an audience of about a score of persons! This particular portion of the series, touching the true pronunciation of the Latin language, it was advised by the late John Pickering, should be put forth, to excite, if possible, a controversy that should be the means of introducing the whole subject to the public attention; and he promised to further it in the periodicals of the day. But the day it was published was the very day when that eminent philologist, having finished correcting the last proof of his Greek dictionary, said, “This is the last printed page I shall read.” The words were prophetic: in a few days he was, in fact, no more.

The book, however, is not so “dark a hint” as may be supposed by those who have not studied it. Even the notes are treatises. The note on mathematical phraseology, and which involves the reference of the words line and circle to the true standard of meaning, not only serves " to elucidate the life-principle of philology, but of mathematical discipline." So the note upon grammatical terms, and the last note on the appropriation of words, are only “dark with excessive bright.” In the notes, also, he has collected the authorities for the Latin pronunciation out of the ancient grammarians, [224] to whom Latin was vernacular. Yet doubtless the whole series of lectures was a much more adequate treatment of the subject; and we will close this article, which is already a kind of pot-pourri, with an extract from a letter written by one of that small audience, and which vies well with the eloquent passage that Dr. Bushnell has quoted from Prof. Gibbs, in the 31st page of his essay:—

“Language, before apparently a mere ordinary vehicle, became in his hands the chariot of Ezekiel, ‘celestial equipage instinct with spirit,’ the fabric not behind the noble uses. His science is to all who have the boon of speech what anatomy is to the painter. His descriptions of the structure and nature of vocal sounds charm like the explanations of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Indeed, they display a scheme of more subtle symbolism, and one which, if in its own region less beautiful, is richer than music.

“The common enjoyment of the study of languages, arising from their social character, their revelations of community of thought and sentiment, is greatly enhanced by Dr. Kraitsir's lively and penetrating methods. The identity of roots presented by him affects the imagination with a sense of the closest fraternity, and recalled to my mind with new force the words of an eloquent advocate for the study of languages, who, in dwelling upon the sympathies it stirred up, exclaimed with the prophet, ‘Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?'"

[ 224]

Art. XII.—VEGETATION ABOUT SALEM, MASS. ↩

The vegetation of Salem is remarkably foreign. Two species belonging to different families, and both of exotic origin, threaten to take complete possession of the soil.

The first, the well-known wood-wax (Ginista tinctoria), is running rapidly over all the hills and dry pastures. This plant seems to occupy in this vicinity the place which the furze-bush occupies on the heaths and commons of England; or it may resemble, in its manner of possessing the soil, the [225] heather of the Highlands of Scotland. Not, indeed, in its appearance: in that particular it faintly resembles the yellow broom, the Spartium, so prettily celebrated by Mary Howitt in her juvenile sketches of natural history:—

"Oh the broom, the yellow broom!
    The ancient poets sung it;
And dear it is on summer-day
    To lie at rest among it."

The wood-wax, however, has found no favor in this vicinity. It is annually burned to the ground, in utter detestation; yet, phœnix-like, it springs from its ashes; and, by the height of summer, it laughs from the midst of its yellow flowers at all the efforts that have been made to destroy it. In England, this plant is useful in the arts; it is employed with woad, the Isatis tinctoria, another plant, to give a green color to woollen cloth. The wood-wax affords a yellow dye, the woad a blue coloring matter; and the admixture of the products of both plants produces a very fair green. The cheapness of indigo will always prevent the New England farmers from growing the Isatis for its blue color; otherwise we might hope for a market for the wood-wax; for, where the one is employed, the other becomes necessary. In former times, the Genista obtained some celebrity as a medical plant; but, on this head, I suppose that we must conclude with the naturalist of Almondsbury, that the mild assuasives of our forefathers are unequal to contention with the abused constitutions of these days.

Second among obnoxious intruders stands the white-weed. This plant is as great a nuisance in our mowing ground as the wood-wax in our pastures. Some fields are so infested as to present at haying-time the appearance of a waving ocean of white blossoms. I am not aware of any remedy for the evil, save the application of a more vigorous agriculture.

These foreigners seem to have chosen this vicinity as their favorite place of abode. There is a tradition, that they were introduced as garden ornaments, and that they have strayed away from the flower-border, and sought in the fields and pastures the wild liberty they so much love. It is somewhat [226] hazardous to impeach a popular tradition; but it appears much more likely that they were brought over in some of the first grass-seed that came from England. Both plants are perennial, spreading rapidly from the root, and propagating with equal facility from the seed. These abundant powers of reproduction meeting with a genial soil and a loose husbandry, it is no wonder that they should produce the effects so obvious in our neighborhood. The white-weed belongs to that class of plants whose seeds are often furnished with feathery appendages, like the dandelion, thistle, and many others; a race of wanderers that traverse the earth with astonishing rapidity.

Next to the wood-wax and white-weed, the knap-weed (Centaurea nigra) deserves attention. This plant, of recent introduction from Europe, is making rapid advances in our neighborhood. It should be pointed out to our farmers, who ought by all means to resist its invasion. It is a most villanous weed, utterly unfit for fodder, whether green or dry. It is sometimes called the thistle without thorns; but it will prove a thorn in the sides of some of our husbandmen, difficult of expulsion, if it is suffered to continue its advances. It propagates by creeping roots and feathery seeds, much after the manner of the white-weed.

Of all the plants that threaten the agriculturalist, perhaps none is more formidable than the Canada thistle (Cnicus arvensis), which has probably reached us from the great Western prairies. This plant is known to every one: it forms extensive beds by the road-sides, and frequently in the pastures. The hard, gravelly soil of this vicinity is not very favorable to its growth. It loves a rich loam, through which it can send its runners with ease and facility. Mr. Curtis, an English gentleman, in order to test the astonishing powers of reproduction possessed by this plant, deposited about two inches of a root in his garden. In the course of one summer, it had thrown out, under ground, runners on every side: some of these runners were eight feet long; and some of them had thrown up leaves eight feet from the original root. The whole together, when taken up and washed, weighed four pounds. In the spring following, it made its appearance, [227] on or about where the small piece was originally planted. There were between fifty and sixty young plants which must have eluded the gardener's search, though he was particularly careful in extracting them. From these facts it may be readily conceived how difficult it is to extirpate this weed, when once it has taken possession of the soil.

Among our introduced plants, there are some that love to follow the footsteps of civilized man, and whose chosen locality is always around his dwelling. Among the most prominent of these, are the common shepherd's purse (Thlaspi Bursa pastoris); the chickweed of our gardens (Stellaria media); the knot-grass (Polygonum aviculare), that fringes every foot-path, and seems to grow the more for being trodden upon; the plantain (Plantago major), that is always found in city, town, or village, whether on the banks of the Ganges, the Thames, or the Missouri. It is said that the Indians of New England used to call this plant "Englishman's foot," because it always sprung up in the footsteps of the first settlers.

There is a beautiful little bluebell found between Danvers and Salem, the Campanula glomerata, brought, very likely, from the chalk hills of England, where it grows abundantly. It is now fairly naturalized, and appears to be as innocent as it is beautiful. It is yearly extending the bounds of its locality, though at present, I believe, it is riot found in any other spot in the United States. It is a flower well worthy of cultivation, requiring a dry soil, approaching as much as possible the character of the Alpine region, of which it is a native.

In the vicinity of this city, the English white-thorn, the hawthorn of the poets, of which so much has been written, is slowly naturalizing itself. It is certainly a useful shrub, forming beautiful fences, and contributing much to the garden-like appearance of England. To the English it may well counterbalance the myrtle of more genial climes. To the people of this section of the United States, it can never become of much importance. Here there is abundance of stone; and, while such an indestructible material can be found, live fences ought not to be adopted. A live fence has certainly a tendency to beautify the scenery, and to give [228] a garden-like aspect to the land it encloses; but it cannot compare in point of utility with a firm stone wall. When a hedge becomes gapped, it requires years to repair it; but, if a stone wall falls down, it is very soon replaced. Live fences, however, may be used to advantage where stone is not to be found. Sometimes they may be introduced as ornaments, with very good effect.

There is a native shrub, abundant in this vicinity, most admirably adapted for fences,—the common cockspur-thorn (Cratægus Crus galli). In all the essentials of a fencing shrub it fully equals the English hawthorn, to which, indeed, it is closely allied. The spines of this shrub are more than an inch long; so that a hedge formed of it would present an almost impregnable barrier, bidding defiance to all intruders, whether biped or quadruped. Several plants of this shrub have been suffered to stand near the entrance of the Forest-river road, till they have assumed the size of trees. In the spring, they are covered with a profusion of white blossoms; and, in the fall, their rich scarlet fruit never fails to attract attention. In these particulars, this shrub strikingly resembles its English congener. Indeed, the points of resemblance are so many and so striking that it ought to be called the American hawthorn. Like the English haw, its fruit requires two years to vegetate.

The barberry, so very abundant in our vicinity, is supposed to be an introduced shrub. It corresponds exactly with the Berberis vulgaris of Europe. It has only a limited locality on the seaboard of New England, and is riot found anywhere else on this continent. The vigor of its growth is especially note-worthy. It rises by the way-side; it grows in the chinks and crevices of the rocks; it spreads over neglected pastures, and looks around with a saucy confidence that seems to say, "All the world was made for barberry bushes."

It is doubtless the design of nature, that plants should be colonized; that there should be a change of localities; that, when any part of the earth is rendered unfit for producing one race of plants, it shall be furnished with seeds of another. The husbandman does but imitate this process of nature, when he pursues what is called a rotation of crops. Various [229] are the expedients to which nature resorts to produce this end. The seeds of lofty trees are often furnished with wings; and, by the aid of the autumnal winds, they are borne to a great distance. Sometimes birds are employed as the carriers of seeds; and they transport them with amazing rapidity. Nuttall tells us that "pigeons killed near the city of New York have been found with their crops full of rice collected in the plantations of Georgia or Carolina." The parasitical misletoe, the once-sacred emblem of the Druids, bears a small white berry of an extremely viscid pulp. The birds, who are fond of this fruit, are apt to encumber their bills with the glutinous substance; and, to clean them, they rub them upon the branches of trees where they happen to alight, thus depositing the seeds in the very place where nature intended they should grow.

It is perhaps proper to observe, that the misletoe is a parasitical plant that grows in Europe and the Southern States. It attaches itself to the oak, the apple, the maple, the ash,—indeed, to most deciduous trees,—and grows upon them, a suspended bush of evergreen, altogether unique in its appearance. It sustains itself by drinking the sap of its supporter.

The oak, the walnut, the chestnut, and some other trees, produce ponderous seeds, too large for distribution by the feathered tribes. But a kind and watchful Providence has not been unmindful of their dispersion and deposition in spots favorable to their future growth. These trees are the favorite haunts of the squirrel; and to his charge is committed the planting of future forests of these varieties; among whose branches his own race may build their soft abodes, lick the morning dew, and pursue their innocent gambols, and finally provide for man a rich material for his industry and enterprise.

As a gentleman was one day walking in the woods, his attention was diverted by a squirrel, which sat very composedly on the ground. He stopped to observe his motions; in a few minutes the squirrel darted to the top of a noble oak, beneath which he was sitting. In an instant he was down with an acorn in his mouth; and, after finding a soft [230] spot, he quickly dug a small hole, deposited his charge, the germ of a future oak, covered it up, and then darted up the tree again. In a moment he was down with another, which he buried in the same manner; and thus he continued to labor as long as the observer thought proper to watch him.

The instinct of the little animal may be directed to a provision for his future wants; but the Giver of all good has endowed him with such an active and untiring industry, that he does more than supply all these; and the surplus rises to adorn the earth, and proclaim the wondrous works of Him who is perfect in knowledge.

The capsules of some plants burst with a spring, and the seeds are scattered broadcast by the impulse. The garden balsam, and all the violet race, are examples of this mode.

It is well known how the burdock and the burr marygold (Bidens frondosa) hook themselves by a mechanical contrivance to the clothes of persons and the coats of animals, illustrating in the most familiar manner the economy of nature in the dispersion of seeds.

But, after all, man is the great agent in promoting vegetable migration. It is by his agency that the most precious seeds are borne across the wide ocean. He carries them in all his wanderings among his richest treasures; while others follow his course, whether he will or not, mingling with his rarer seeds, or adhering unseen to his household stuff. The animal fleabane (Erigeron Canadense) was sent from Canada to France, in bales of fur, and from thence, by natural propagation, into all the countries of Europe. The tree primrose (Œnothera biennis), so common in our own vicinity, was first naturalized in the neighborhood of Liverpool, and from thence distributed by its own spontaneous effort all over the civilized world.

It is by the agency of man that the lofty forests are levelled to the ground, and the bosom of the earth laid bare for the reception of a new race of plants. Our own vicinity is a remarkable exemplification of the fact. All around us we see trees, shrubs, and herbacious plants, that once were strangers to the soil. A change is still sweeping over the face of nature. The noble race of forest-trees, and the [231] beautiful tribe of wild-wood flowers that nestle at their feet, and find shelter and shade beneath their boughs, are fast fading away. A few blows of the woodman's axe, and the tree whose branches have braved a hundred winters lies prostrate with the ground.

The time is not distant when public attention must be drawn to the planting of forest-trees in this country. Timber is growing scarce, while the arts and manufactures, which have taken such deep root among us, are calling for a more enlarged supply. Timber has now to be brought from afar, at an annually increasing expense; while large tracts of land are approaching a state of barrenness, by being laid bare to the searching influence of the sun and wind. We have destroyed our forests with recklessness, and posterity must feel the consequences! Indeed, our bleak pastures and bare hills begin to reproach us for not making some effort to shelter the one, and clothe the other.

The mechanics have a deep interest in this matter. How often does the profitable prosecution of a certain branch of business depend upon the abundance and cheapness of its staple material! Has the ship-builder no interest in the growth of our pasture oaks? Is the wheelwright insensible to the advantages of an abundant supply of ash and elm? When we see huge loads of barrels entering our cities, when we see high piles of chairs and other manufactures of wood coming from far back in the country, and, above all, when we observe our merchants building their ships on the banks of distant rivers, do not these things proclaim the growing scarcity of timber around us?

Societies of Natural History could not render a greater public service than that of ascertaining the comparative value of the different species of timber-trees suitable for this climate. In this pursuit they may be materially aided by intelligent and enterprising mariners. These ought to be requested to collect, in their voyages and travels, the seeds of all such forest-trees as are likely to grow in this latitude. Evelyn, who spent his life in an effort to enrich his native England by plantations, says, "I would encourage all imaginable industry in those that travel foreign countries, and especially [232] gentlemen who have concerns in our American settlements, to promote the culture of such plants and shrubs and trees, especially timber, as may yet add to those we find already agreeable to our climate." We all know with what patience, pains, and expense, the modern nations of Europe have searched the most distant climes for valuable vegetable productions.

We have noticed the astonishing exuberance with which our naturalized vegetation appears to flourish. It is a fact that ought to be regarded, and we may perhaps deduce from it an important lesson. It seems to point to a change of seed, to show that new seeds and a fresh soil are important conditions in vegetable economy. Perhaps we ought to take the hint from nature, and look beyond the old forest stocks of the neighborhood for timber-trees of a rapid and vigorous growth. I would not disparage the goodly race of trees that once adorned the county of Essex. I fear that we shall never look upon their like again. But it is doubtful whether they would take to the soil in the form of artificial plantations as kindly as some varieties brought from a distance. Every one knows that a new orchard cannot be raised on the site of an old one; and it is equally well known, that, when a forest of hard-wood trees is cut down, there the pines and softer woods succeed a spontaneous growth. The locust is here attacked by an insect, and is fast declining in our neighborhood, and I believe all along the Atlantic shore; while it is now appearing in its pristine vigor, a naturalized tree, in all the South of France. Michaux says that it is likely to become abundant in Europe, where it is a stranger, and scarce in America, its native clime.

A rotation of crops is as needful for forest-trees as for the more humble agricultural productions.

Where are the forests of Lebanon, into which Solomon sent his fourscore thousand hewers of wood? Dwindled at last to some half a dozen cedars, as if the earth was tired of producing, for so long a period, the same race of plants.

The larch plantations of Scotland are a striking example of the importance of a change of seed.

In the year 1738, a Scottish gentleman was seen wending [233] his way from the British metropolis to his paternal estate at Glenlyon, in Perthshire. He travelled on horseback, after the fashion of the times, with his servant well mounted, and bearing his portmanteau behind him. On the top of the portmanteau was lashed one of the richest treasures for Scotland that ever passed the Tweed. It was a few foreign larch-trees, the Larix communis, or common white larch of Germany. These few trees this public-spirited individual generously distributed on his route to those persons in Scotland who would give them that care and trial which it was desirable they should receive. The course of a few years soon began to demonstrate their superiority over the old Scotch pine. Growing side by side, these vigorous strangers soon over-topped and looked down upon the aborigines of the soil. The difference in favor of the German larch was found to be immense. "It bears," says Sang, a celebrated forest manager, "the ascendency over the Scotch pine in the following important circumstances:—It brings double the price per foot, and arrives at a timber size in a half or a third part of the time. The timber of the larch at thirty or forty years is equal in quantity, and vastly superior in quality, to the Scotch pine of a hundred years. A larch-tree of fifty years growth has been sold for twelve guineas, while a Scotch pine of the same age, and from the same soil, has not brought more than fifteen shillings."

Towards the close of the last century, when the arts, commerce, and manufactures, began to rise in Scotland, her nobles soon learned to calculate the value of an abundant supply of useful timber. Happily the experiment had been tried, and the species of timber-trees best suited to the climate and soil of Scotland was already known. In the year 1796, more than five millions of larch-trees were raised by one nurseryman in Edinburgh. The Duke of Athol planted two hundred thousand every year for a number of years, and on one occasion he set out more than a million within the year. Nor was it merely planting. In the year 1820, this patriotic nobleman had the satisfaction of seeing a thirty-six gun frigate launched, built entirely of larch timber of his own raising. Throughout the British Isles, the larch has been [234] planted by thousands and millions; and, what is very extraordinary, the most barren land is converted into fine pasturage by the process. The larch succeeds best on poor land, while the annual fall of its leaves soon gives rise to a fine natural grass that is highly valuable for grazing. Land has been let at a yearly rent of from ten shillings to three pounds the acre, that, before the planting of the larch, was not worth so many pence. It is calculated that in the next age the Highlands of Scotland alone will be able to furnish the whole commerce of Britain with timber for its shipping. The spirit for planting continues to the present time. In 1820, the London Society for the Promotion of the Arts presented a gold medal to one individual, for planting nearly two millions of forest-trees, one half of which were larch. Most assuredly, those individuals who have thus enriched their country deserve well of posterity.

The celebrated Coke, of Norfolk, has been a successful planter of forest-trees. It is said that, soon after this gentleman came into possession of his estate, the lease of a certain parcel of land expired. This land (eleven thousand acres) had been let at a yearly rent of three shillings per acre; but this the lessee thought too much, and offered only two shillings; to which Coke replied, "No, I will sooner turn it into a hunting-ground;" and he immediately set to planting it with oak, larch, and the Spanish chestnut. In a few years, the annual thinnings alone yielded him more than the former rental. At the time of his marriage, this magnificent wood-lot was valued at ₤220,000.

The planting of trees is by no means such a hopeless or heartless affair as some people imagine. A short time since, I called upon an aged gentleman [29] of this county, and was politely invited to see his trees. As we passed beneath a noble range of plane-trees, whose bending boughs seemed to do homage to their planter, my friend informed me that the trees I was then admiring, some of which were sixty or seventy feet high, and five or six feet in circumference, were a fine seed between his thumb and finger, after he was five [235] and forty years of age. When I alluded to his public spirit and disinterested benevolence, he replied in a tone of mingled satisfaction and regret, "I now wish that I had planted a hundred trees where I only planted one."

There is reason to believe, that the late Timothy Pickering held the larch-tree in high estimation, and thought of it as a suitable tree for covering the bare hills of his native county. At any rate, he was among the first to give it a trial. Something like five and twenty years ago, he imported two hundred of these trees. They now form the ornament of his late estate at Wenham. I have known them for more than eighteen years; and, during that period, they have exhibited a growth of great promise. Their seeds ripen kindly in this climate, and a second generation of spontaneous growth has arisen from these imported trees. We may now reckon this valuable timber-tree among the naturalized products of New England.

If the individual who plants a common tree deserves the thanks of posterity, how much larger is the debt of gratitude due to him who introduces and blesses his country with a new and useful race of trees!

Those who visit Wenham in the middle of the summer, and behold the original range of larch-trees, cannot fail to be struck with their appearance. Their light foliage and fine pyramidal forms, differing materially from the pines around us, suggest at once their exotic origin; while the richly ornamental and tasteful manner in which they are disposed, tells at once that their planter was no ordinary individual.

There is something peculiarly affectionate and grateful in associating the remembrance of a great man with some particular tree. Who has not heard of Pope's willow, or of the mulberry that Shakspeare planted?—and who could have stood beneath the shade of the one, or have gazed upon the other, with ordinary emotion? Something of this reverence will be felt by those who ride by the larches of a Pickering's planting; and time will not diminish the interest. I do not wish to be understood as particularly recommending the German larch, though I think it highly worthy of a trial on poor land. Nothing but experiment can determine the trees [236] best suited to this climate, if indeed any can be found superior to the old stocks. It is time that attention was awakened to the subject; for who can calculate the advantages of an abundant supply of useful timber to a commercial and manufacturing people?

We possess one tree, among many that are richly ornamental, of surpassing beauty. I allude to our common elm (Ulmus Americana). The grace, the beauty, the magnificence of this tree is only to be exceeded by the princely palm. Planted in rows along the streets, it is the pride of our towns, suggesting to the mind a far better idea of ease and comfort, than it could derive from the most exquisite statuary.

In Danvers, a little on this side of Aborn-street, in a barnyard on the land of the late Benjamin Putman, stands an elm of great beauty. A finer specimen of the elm, a more perfect tree, is seldom seen. Such is the vigor, the healthiness, and unshorn symmetry of its form, that it appears not yet to have arrived at maturity. There is a remarkable boldness in the manner in which the numerous branches spring from the parent stem, and form its fine symmetrical head. During a ride of six or seven hundred miles along the turnpike roads of England, the summer before last, I carried this tree in the eye of my mind as a standard; and truly in all that long ride I could not find one that appeared so perfect.

The Boston elm is a larger tree; but it is braced and bolted with bars of iron, and the mind is pained with the symptoms of approaching decay. To the lone farm-house or the detached villa, the elm is a most graceful appendage. I hope, however, I shall be forgiven if I say a word on the manner in which it is sometimes planted. It is too common to plant trees, while young, close before the dwelling, so that in a few years they totally obscure the building they were designed to ornament. Trees should be planted so as to flank the building, if it be a detached cottage or villa: in this position they will usually furnish sufficient shade, without obscuring the view, either from within or without the dwelling.

This climate does not possess an evergreen ivy; but our common creeper (Vitis hederacea) is a most excellent [237] substitute. In many respects it surpasses the ivy of Europe. Being deciduous, it never becomes a gathering-place for snow in winter, or dampness in spring. I am surprised that it does not work its way into favor. The ivy has always been a favorite. It was held in reverence by the ancients; and in the elder world it is associated with all that is venerable. It mantles the lonely abbey ruin, and creeps over the mouldering remains of feudal power. I think our creeper would be more generally admired, were we more discriminating in the use of it. It is very often trained against a newly painted vestibule of much architectural spruceness; and it soon begins to obscure those embellishments that cost the owner no small sum, and then down comes the creeper in disgrace. Its proper place is to cover up the blank side of an out-house, or to give grace to some rustic wall or fence. Perhaps I shall better convey my idea of its use by observing that the ivy or creeper would be a beautiful ornament to the Gothic style of the Episcopal Church of Salem. The wild beauty of its pendant laterals would be in correct keeping with the Gothic arch, and add much to the remarkable appearance of the building. But, on the other hand, it would be altogether out of place to allow it to creep over, and mar, the delicate proportions, and obscure the fine architecture, of the South Meeting-house.

The indigenous vegetation of our immediate vicinity does not, indeed, present a landscape of the most luxuriant growth. We cannot boast the palm, the lemon, the orange, the clove, and the cinnamon-tree. But, if the eye is not allowed to behold a perpetual spring, it is permitted, during our fleeting summers, to enjoy a beautiful variety of flowers, that spring up in rapid succession, and pass like a shifting scene before it; filling the heart with joy and gladness, and the imagination with a thousand forms of grace and beauty, on which it may love to linger when the charming reality has passed away. From the time that the little Draba opens its tiny petals to cheer us with the hope of returning spring, till the last flower of the summer, the blue-eyed gentian, weeps over the departed year, it is one succession of bright hues and beautiful forms. At least, it is so to all who have eyes to behold, [238] and souls to enjoy, the pure pleasures that flow from a contemplation of the works of God in creation.

How beautiful is all nature in the springtime of flowers! How lovely are the woods when the young leaves are expanding,—when the first green garniture of summer is bursting into existence! The lowly hepatica opens its gemlike flowers at the foot of some lofty tree, eager to greet the first ray of summer-like sunshine that visits the earth. The tinted petals of the anemone quiver in the breeze, as the winds of the spring pass by. The early thalictrum exhibits its singular, flower-like tassels of purple and yellow. The delicate corydalis blooms on the bare rock; and the stranger who beholds it for the first time wonders that a flower of so much beauty should be bom to " blush unseen." Who can tread the green carpet of the earth, in the spring of the year, and not feel delighted at the first appearance of the modest houstonia, peeping out from among the young grass, and seeming, as an eminent naturalist beautifully expresses it, "like handfuls of the pale scattered flowers of the lilac, which had come too early to maturity"? The "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower," the mountain daisy, which the poet Burns buried with his ploughshare, and then sung its requiem in never-dying rhyme, was not more worthy of a poet's effort than this graceful harbinger of a New England summer.

A love of flowers has always ranked among the refined pleasures of a polished people. "Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered; let no flower of the spring pass by us," were the words of the royal sage, in the days of Israel's glory, when the sons of Jacob sat every man beneath his own vine and fig-tree,—when the roses of Sharon bloomed in the palaces of Jerusalem, and the daughters of Judah gathered lilies by the waters of Kedron, to scatter them in the courts of the Temple. No sooner had the warlike Roman conquered and incorporated the surrounding states, and made Rome the mistress of all Italy, than the villas of the Roman citizens studded the whole country, from the Straits of Messina to the mountains that formed her northern barrier. It was to embellish these, that the fruits and the flowers of the East were gathered by the [239] Roman soldiers, in their martial expeditions, and poured into the lap of Italy. Nor is the savage insensible to the charms of nature. We are told that an Otaheitean was once taken to Paris, and shown all the splendors of that gay metropolis; but his heart yearned for the simple beauties of his own native isle. On being taken to the Garden of Plants, the unexpected sight of a banana-tree so reminded him of the hills and streams of his distant home, that he sprang forward to embrace it; and, with his eyes bathed in tears, he exclaimed in a voice of joy, "Ah! tree of my country!" and seemed by a delightful illusion to be transported to the land of his birth.

But to return to our own loved hills, and the flowers that cover them. Among these the blood-root (Sanguinaria Canadensis) well deserves a passing notice. It puts up from the ground with remarkable caution. A single leaf of a white and woolly texture rises from the ground, and enfolds a little flower-bud, wrapping it round as with a mantle. In this guarded manner, it abides the vicissitudes of our spring weather. When a warm day arrives, a milk-white flower, of singular delicacy, shoots up, and bares its lovely bosom to the sun. When clouds obscure the sky, or when night falls, the little flower closes its milk-white petals, the single leaf gathers closer round the flower-stem; and thus, like a fairy taking her rest, it awaits the touch of another sunbeam. We import the snow-drop, we cherish it with care, and it well repays our attention; but this delicate native, equally worthy of our regard, is seldom seen in our gardens. So true is it that flowers, like prophets, have no honor in their own country.

In the earlier part of spring, the Columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) shakes its gay bells over all our rocky hills. Starting from every chink and crevice, it clothes the rude features of our ancient rocks in a vernal robe of scarlet and gold. This flower seems, in a peculiar manner, to have gained the regard of the young. On the first fine days of spring, the youth of both sexes may be observed returning into town, laden with ample bouquets of its pendulous flowers; while ever and anon they drop them on the side-walks, as if [240] to invite the busy crowd of care-worn citizens to leave the town's dull smoke,—to forget for a while their ponderous ledgers, and to go forth into the fields to sympathize with the spirit of loveliness which is abroad in all the land. Would this be waste or improvement of time? Let Wordsworth reply:—

    "Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her. 'Tis her privilege,
Through ail the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of common life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all that we behold
Is full of blessings."

And again,

    "Therefore, let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk,
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee; and, in after-years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude or fear or pain or grief
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember nature,
And these her benedictions!"

I do not know that a more delightful task could be assigned to any one, than that of observing the vegetation of this vicinity. Among our plants are many of great interest and beauty; and certainly nothing can be more fraught with instruction and delight than occasional visits to the charming localities in which they grow. Who is there that has ever pursued this branch of natural history, that does not recollect the many scenes of rural beauty and loveliness into which it has led him? How often, when gathering his floral treasures, has he not paused to admire the silent and sylvan [241] retreats in which he has found them! All around this neighborhood, there are scenes that challenge the best efforts of the painter; and he who holds converse with the flowers soon learns the best points of view, and becomes a privileged spectator.

Among our native plants are many that deserve a place in the flower-border, and none more so than the lily tribe. The superb lily, which is rarely found in this vicinity, and the Canada and Pennsylvanian lilies, are among the most beautiful flowers that bloom. There is something exceedingly graceful in the general aspect of the Canada lily, when it assumes a good size in the rich soil of a garden. It rises with a clean stem, throwing off whorls of green and beautiful leaves, at regular intervals, to the height of five or six feet; crowning the whole with a pyramidal cluster of drooping bells. Many of the foreign lilies excel the Canadense in the beauty of their flowers; but none approach the delicate and tropical symmetry of its habit.

The superb cardinal flower will be remembered by every one: it is the ornament of our water-courses in the long days of summer. It has been cultivated to high perfection, and should always occupy a place in our gardens.

We have growing among us one of the neatest little garden hedge-plants that the earth produces, the little privet (Ligustrum). It is found abundantly on the road to Manchester. It is of beautiful foliage, and in summer produces spikes of sweet-smelling flowers, like miniature bunches of white lilac. In the days of Parkinson and Evelyn, this shrub used to be clipped into the forms of birds, beasts, and fishes, and nobody knows what. Time, however, has not diminished the estimation in which it is held. I have often observed it forming the screen hedges within the iron railings that, surround the public gardens in the great squares of London. For the formation of interior or garden hedges, there are few shrubs that approach it in appearance of neatness and beauty.

We have plants all around us of singular habits and strange propensities.

The Cuscuta, or Dodder, which is found in the moist land of this neighborhood, affords a specimen of the parasitic tribe [242] of plants, which fasten and feed upon others. The Cuscuta is a bright yellow leafless vine, bearing a profusion of small white flowers. It rises from the ground like any other vegetable; and, after attaining a certain height, it looks round, and seizes upon the first plant that comes in its way. Like a little vegetable boa constrictor, it takes a few spiral turns round its victim; and, when it finds itself firmly fixed, it disengages itself from its own root, lets go its hold upon the earth, and depends for the future on the plant upon which it is seated. In this way it blooms and perfects its seed, without any direct communication with the earth. If the seeds of this plant are sown, they will come up and grow for a season; but they soon die, if they have no plant to which they can attach themselves. Pope, in his "Essay on Man," says:—

"That thus to man the voice of Nature spake:—
Go, from the creatures thy instruction take;
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail,
Speed the thin oar, and catch the driving gale."

Who knows but man caught the idea of multiplying choice fruits by grafting, from observing with what facility parasitic plants attach themselves to others, and draw nourishment from roots that are not their own?

The dog's-bane that is found all around us, the silk-weed that grows by the way-side, and the sundew that is found in every old peat meadow, are all strongly sensitive, and strangely destructive of insect life.

The dog's-bane opens its nipper-like filaments; and when a fly puts in his proboscis in search of honey, they close like a steel trap, and the little victim remains a provision till he dies.

The leaves of the Drosera, or sundew, are furnished with a sort of hair-like spines, which support minute globules of a clear liquor; and, when thirsty insects descend to drink this nectar, the spines fall upon them and entangle them, and the whole leaf bends with a sort of muscular effort to secure the intruder; nor is there any escape from the irritated plant. [243] These strange propensities are not to be construed as instances of wickedness or cruelty in plants. Our profound ignorance of the causes and motives of action of all created things should teach us to humble ourselves before the great Creator, whose ways are wondrous and past finding out. "Certainly we do know that all unnecessary sufferings, sufferings that have no salutary tendency, or subserviency to the happiness or welfare of created beings, can find no place under the government of an infinitely perfect and gracious Ruler."

It was noticed by Linnæus, that the flowers of the barberry are remarkably sensitive. If the filament of the flower be touched by any substance, as the blade of a penknife or a bit of stick, it instantly falls upon the stigma with apparent violence.

The common locust is remarkably sensitive of light. In the glory of a noonday sun, its foliage appears enlivened. The little leaflets that form its wing-like leaves look upward, as if they were anxious to drink in the light and warmth of his reviving rays. At night, or in cloudy weather, they all hang their heads as if asleep. The whole tree wears altogether a different aspect at eventide. I very well remember the first time that I observed this sensitiveness in some young trees of this genus. I thought they had met with some accident, and were dying. The next morning, however, I was pleasingly surprised to find that they all looked up to the sun as joyously as ever. Like some young animal, they appeared heartily refreshed by a good night's sleep. A little girl who had observed this phenomenon in a locust that grew before her nursery window, upon being required to go to bed a little earlier than usual, replied with much acuteness, "O mother! it is not yet time to go to bed: the locust-tree has not yet begun to say its prayers."

Some of our most common plants are remarkable in the choice of their localities. The hemlock loves to luxuriate in the ruin and desolation of cities. Wherever there is a deserted mansion, with its garden in ruins, there is sure to be found the fatal hemlock, as if the very ground were accursed, and brought forth poisonous plants. The ghostly mullein stalks over worn-out and neglected pastures, the emblem of sterility. The black nightshade and the dubious [244] form of the thorn-apple rise from neglected heaps of rubbish, as if the noxious exhalations had assumed a material form, to warn man of the consequences of uncleanness.

There is a spot within the bounds of our county, that is classic ground to the naturalist,—where grow some plants that are not common to these northern regions. I am sure that I need only mention the laurel woods of Manchester, the farthest northern boundary of the Magnolia, to awaken the most pleasing recollections. Those who have seen these Kalmia groves, at the time of their flowering, can not soon forget the scene they present. The whole appears like an enchanted land. I have sometimes thought that this wild wood garden, full of sweet odors and graceful forms, must have been torn from some more genial clime, wafted across the calm bosom of our bay, and placed, some stilly night, just where it is, to give us a glimpse of a more favored creation. There, in the low ground, is found the Cymbidium, the Pogonia, and the beautiful Orchis fimbriata; plants that may vie with the proudest exotics, and which, in another hemisphere, are cherished among the most favored children of the earth. And shall I forget the Rhodora, that, like the almond, gives forth its lively purple flowers ere yet its leaves are expanded,—a shrub better known arid more valued abroad than in its own native land? Above all, there, too, is found the Magnolia, with its unrivalled foliage, saturating the air for miles with the odor of its flowers. We are certainly favored beyond measure in having within our borders a type of that genus of plants which is esteemed for flower and foliage the most magnificent the earth produces.

The pencil can give but a faint idea of the splendor of the Magnolia grandiflora; and the pen altogether fails in the effort to describe its charms. The South may well be proud of the possession of a tree of such noble bearing. The leaves are glossy, and of a most luxuriant softness. The young branches are of a fine, purplish brown, producing flowers at the extremity of each; and, when the tree rises to the height of sixty or seventy feet, and each branch holds up its petalled vase of ivory whiteness, as if presenting incense to the sun, it affords an appearance of beauty and grandeur that rivals the proudest productions of man.

[245]

Many of the nations of the earth have chosen a flower for their emblem. The roses of England are well known in story. Ireland has chosen the lowly shamrock, which is found in every field; and its adoption is said to be as old as the introduction of Christianity into the island.

Dear is the thistle to the heart of the Scotchman; but faded for ever are the lilies of France.

The Carolinian rallies beneath the palmetto; and on the earliest coins of old Massachusetts we find a pine-tree,—emblematic, no doubt, of the source from which she drew her earliest wealth. If ever these United States should choose a symbol from the vegetable world, let that symbol be the magnolia!

THE TWOFOLD BEING. ↩

The dew of youth on her pure brow lay;
Her smile was the dawn of Spring's softest day;
Spring's rosy light was on all her way.

She seem'd an oasis in desert lands;
We thank'd God for her with lifted hands,
Then turn'd again to the weary sands.

But Life came on with its withering glare,
And swept down all the sweet beauty there,
And left the fount dry and the branches bare.

When I look'd again on her alter'd face,
The glow had all vanish'd, and left no trace,—
Not a lingering gleam of her maiden grace.

Yet that form, as in earliest beauty fair,
Can my mind shape out, in this evening air:
Not a trait, not a shadow, is wanting there.

So now two beings for one I find;
One walks on earth, one lives in my mind;
Yet mystic relations these two still bind.

[246]

O Seer! which the reality?—
The beauty, all gone ere again I could see;
Or this vision my soul hath eternally!

---

Yet there may be more than the eye can scan:
Have such bright creations no wider plan?
Doth God love the beautiful less than Man?

It seems as if nothing could fill our dearth;
But the beauty that stayed not on dark cold earth
May have fled again to the land of its birth.

It fled the pangs of life's constant rack;
But, when the soul takes the heavenward track,
It shall come like a sweet child nestling back.

For the loveliness that Earth's fairest wear
Must be one and the same with the beauty there
Of the transfigured angels of heavenly air.

And the parted soul shall take its stand
In familiar guise 'mid the sister-band,—
Deck'd with the glory of God's right hand.

And for us, when the walls of flesh are riven,
And to open'd spirit-eyes is given
To see the beloved again in heaven,—

'Mid the fathomless joys of that wondrous scene,
Will come once more the presence serene
Of that pure beauty's unearthly mien.

Then shall Time's veil uplifted be,
And our life's long dreams of anxiety,
Like clouds o'er a sunny hill, shall flee.

And it will be seen by the spirits pure,
How little is left upon earth to endure,
When we learn that all which is fair is sure.

[247]

THE FAVORITE.↩

I.

I would not have thee criticized
  By vain or vulgar eyes;
I would not have thee eulogized
 By one who could not prize
That maiden purity and calm
Which form thy most especial charm.

I want a poet's heart, to read
  Thy soft, appealing glance,
Who, for his pains, should have the meed,
  While watching thy sweet countenance,
Of sunny smiles, that sudden spread
  Across thy lips, and, passing thence,
  Upon thy brow their light dispense.

Half child, half woman! the pure faith,
  That every thing was made for love,
Which saved our childish days from scathe,
  Still bears thy floating feet above
The thorns and briars which must tear
Those who find no such path of air.

And, surely, natural to thee
  Such confidence must prove,
Stealing from every treasury
  Thy proper hoard of love;
For at the first sound of thy voice
The closest stores unlock their choice.

Almost I weep to let thee go:
  Fain would I watch above thy path,
The least approaching shade to know,
  That thy unventured Future hath,
To lead thee in Life's sweetest ways,
And feed thee on Love's heartfelt praise.

[248]

II.

I watch'd the rose-clouds rise around the scene
  Wherein thy life's fair pageant on did glide,
And every hour, with iris-colored sheen,
  Tinging thy loveliness and girlish pride.

Fond lingering on childhood's fairy isle,
  Thy innocent feet yet press'd its dewy flowers;
But joys of youth impatient strove to wile
  Thy half-waked soul to more entrancing bowers.

The sternest eyes dropp'd gentlest looks of love,
  The coldest hands strewed incense at thy feet;
And, in the cloudless zenith arch'd above,
  Not one dark shade thy fearless gaze could meet.

Yet still thine unsuspicious, placid glance
  Found nothing strange in such a beauteous lot,
But saw the coming years, like dreams, advance,
  And of their solemn meaning question'd not.

Nor fear'd I for thee,—but bewilder'd, charm'd,
  Lured by a magic never felt before,
I never dream'd mine idol could be harm'd,
  And careless flung for thee one perfume more.

I saw thy head grow giddy in the breath
  Of adulation, fanning out the air
Common and pure, and with a subtle death
  Poisoning and making false thine atmosphere.

Oh! perishing of too much love and praise!
  Oh! foolish mortals, spoiling all their best!
Who now our floweret—too much forced—can raise,
  Or from its bloom exotic bravely wrest?