Concord Days
by Amos Bronson Alcott · English · Gutenberg #46209 · 410,625 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Concord Days
Author: Amos Bronson Alcott
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONCORD DAYS ***
CONCORD DAYS.
[Illustration]
CONCORD DAYS
BY
A. BRONSON ALCOTT
"Cheerful and various thoughts not always bound
To counsel, nor in deep ideas drowned."
JAMES HOWEL.
BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1872.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
BY A. BRONSON ALCOTT,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
_Stereotyped and Printed by_
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, BOSTON.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
APRIL.
PAGE
DIARIES 3
MY HOUSE 4
OUTLOOK 10
THOREAU 11
SELF-PRIVACY 21
SUNDAY LECTURES 23
EMERSON 25
RECREATION 41
GENEALOGIES 45
SCHOLARSHIP 49
MAY.
RURAL AFFAIRS 59
PASTORALS 65
CHANNING'S "NEW ENGLAND" 66
CONVERSATION 72
MARGARET FULLER 77
CRASHAWS'S IDEAL WOMAN 79
CHILDHOOD 83
PYTHAGORAS 88
CONVERSATION WITH CHILDREN 92
PLUTARCH'S LETTER TO HIS WIFE 108
JUNE.
BERRIES 117
CHANNING'S "BLUEBERRY SWAMP" 121
LETTERS 123
BOOKS 133
CRASHAW'S VERSES ADDRESSED TO A LADY 140
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY 143
PLOTINUS 148
IDEAL CULTURE 151
GOETHE 157
CARLYLE 160
JULY.
INDEPENDENCE DAY 167
PHILLIPS 172
GREELEY 176
AGE OF IRON AND BRONZE 178
CONVERSATION ON ENTHUSIASM 183
SWEDENBORG 187
HAWTHORNE 193
LANDOR 197
SLEEP AND DREAMS 201
GENESIS AND LAPSE 205
AUGUST.
PLATO'S LETTERS 213
PLATO 217
PLATO'S METHOD 222
SOCRATES 234
BERKELEY 236
BOEHME 237
MR. WALTON'S LETTER 240
CRABBE ROBINSON'S DIARY 245
COLERIDGE 246
SELDEN'S TABLE-TALK 249
WOMAN 253
SEPTEMBER.
WALDEN POND 259
CHANNING'S "WALDEN" 259
THE IDEAL CHURCH 265
COLLYER 269
BEECHER 269
IDEALS 270
HEYWOOD'S "SEARCH AFTER GOD" 273
[Illustration]
APRIL.
1869.
"Now fades the last long streak of snow."
--_Tennyson._
[Illustration]
CONCORD DAYS.
DIARIES.
THURSDAY, 1.
Come again into my study, having sat some time for greater comfort
in the sunnier east room by an open fire, as needful in our climate,
almost, as in that of changeable England. Busy days these last, with a
little something to show for them. After all, I am here most at home,
and myself surrounded by friendly pictures and books, free to follow
the mood of the moment,--read, write, recreate. I wish more came of
it all. Here are these voluminous diaries, showy seen from without,
with far too little of life transcribed within. Was it the accident of
being shown, when a boy, in the old oaken cabinet, my mother's little
journal, that set me out in this chase of myself, continued almost
uninterruptedly, and now fixed by habit as a part of the day, like the
rising and setting of the sun? Yet it has educated me into whatever
skill I possess with the pen, I know not to how much besides; has made
me emulous of attaining the art of portraying my thoughts, occupations,
surroundings, friendships; and could I succeed in sketching to the life
a single day's doings, should esteem myself as having accomplished the
chiefest feat in literature. Yet the nobler the life and the busier,
the less, perhaps, gets written, and that which is, the less rewards
perusal.
"Life's the true poem could it be writ,
Yet who can live at once and utter it."
All is in the flowing moments. But who shall arrest these and fix the
features of the passing person behind the pageantry, and write the
diary of one's existence?
MY HOUSE.
SATURDAY, 3.
My neighbors flatter me in telling me that I have one of the best
placed and most picturesque houses in our town. I know very well the
secret of what they praise. 'Tis simply adapting the color and repairs
to the architecture, and holding these in keeping with the spot.
A house, like a person, invites by amiable reserves, as if it loved
to be introduced in perspective and reached by courteous approaches.
Let it show bashfully behind shrubberies, screen its proportions
decorously in plain tints, not thrust itself rudely, like an inn, upon
the street at cross-roads. A wide lawn in front, sloping to the road
gracefully, gives it the stately air and courtly approach. I like
the ancient mansions for this reason; these old Puritan residences
for their unpretending air, their sober tints, in strict keeping
with Wordsworth's rule of coloring, viz. that of the sod about the
grounds. A slight exaltation of this defines best the architecture by
distinguishing it from surrounding objects in the landscape. Modest
tints are always becoming. White and red intolerable. And for some
variety in dressing, the neighboring barks of shrubbery suggest and
best characterize the coloring.
As for fences and gates, I was told that mine were unlike any other in
the world, yet as good as anybody's, hereby meaning to praise them,
I infer. If less durable than others, the cost is inconsiderable,
and has the associated pleasure, besides, of having come out of such
ideal capital as I had invested in my own head and hands. A common
carpenter would have spent more time in planing and fixing his pickets
and set something in straight lines with angular corners to deform the
landscape; then the painter must have followed with some tint mixed
neither by nature nor art. Now my work delights my eyes whenever I step
out-of-doors, adding its ornament to the spot. Grotesque it may be with
its knotted ornaments, Druid supports, yet in keeping with the woods
behind it. Besides, what pleasure the construction has given! Form,
color, ornamentation alike concern builder and occupant, as they were
blossoms of his taste and of the landscape. A good architect is both
builder and colorist, and should be a good man besides, according to
the ancient authorities. Roman Vitruvius claims as much, if not more,
of him:--
"It is necessary," he says, "that an architect should be instructed in
the precepts of moral philosophy; for he ought to have a great soul,
and be bold without arrogance, just, faithful, and totally exempt
from avarice. He should have a great docility, which may hinder him
from neglecting the advice that is given him, not only of the meanest
artist, but also of those that understand nothing of architecture; for
not only architects but all the world must judge his works."
Houses have their history, are venerable on account of their age and
origin. Even our newly-settled country of but a century or two has
already crowned homesteads still standing with royal honors. Mine, I
conjecture, is not far from one hundred and fifty years' standing.
It was a first-class country house in its day, with its window-seats
in parlor and chambers, ornamental summers and casements, its ample
fireplaces, and lean-to on the northern side. Like most of its period
it was open to the road with overshadowing elms still embowering
the mansion; had a lion-headed door-knocker, and huge chimney-tops
surmounting the gables. Of learned ancestry, moreover; having been
the homestead of a brother of President Hoar, of Harvard College, and
remained in possession of members of that venerable family down to
near the beginning of the present century. The site is hardly surpassed
by any on the old Boston road; the woods behind crowning the range
of hills running north almost to the village, and bordering east on
Wayside, Hawthorne's last residence. It must have been chosen by an
original settler, probably coming with the Rev. Peter Bulkeley from
England, in 1635.[1]
[Footnote 1: Johnson, in his "Wonder Working Providence Concerning
New England," describes the company of settlers on their way from
Cambridge, under the lead of the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, the principal
founder of Concord.]
The ancient elms before the house, of a hundred years' standing and
more, are the pride of the yard. It were sacrilege to remove a limb or
twig unless decayed, so luxuriant and far-spreading, overshadowing the
roof and gables, yet admitting the light into hall and chambers. Sunny
rooms, sunny household. "Build your house," says a mystic author, "upon
a firm foundation, and let your aspect be towards the east, where the
sun rises, that so you may enjoy its fruitfulness in your household and
orchards."
Whether the first settler planted these elms, or whether they are
survivors of the primitive forest which was felled to make way and
room for the rude shelter of the hardy settlers, is not ascertained.
Their roots penetrate primitive soil; the surrounding grounds have
become productive by the industry and skill, mellowed and meliorated
by the humanities of their descendants. They came honestly by their
homesteads, paying their swarthy claimants fair prices for them; the
landscape is still inviting by its prairie aspects, its brook-sides and
meadows where the red men trod.
It was these broad meadows beside the "Grass ground River" that
tempted alike the white and red man,--the one for pasturage, the other
for fishing,--and brought the little colony through the wilderness
to form the settlement named "Musketaquid," after the river of that
name (signifying grass ground), and later taking that of Concord, not
without note in history.
"Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies;
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees,
Supplanters of the tribe, the planters dwelt."
The view from the rustic seat overlooking my house commands the
amphitheatre in which the house stands, and through which flows Mill
brook, bordered on the south and east by the Lincoln woods. It is a
quiet prospect and might be taken for an English landscape; needs but
a tower or castle overtopping the trees surrounding it. The willows by
the rock bridge over the brook, the winding lane once the main track
of travel before the turnpike branching off from the old Boston road
by Emerson's door was built, adds to the illusion, while on the east
stands the pine-clad hill, Hawthorne's favorite haunt, and hiding his
last residence from sight.
On the southwest is an ancient wood, Thoreau's pride, beyond which is
Walden Pond, distant about a mile from my house, and best reached by
the lane opening opposite Hawthorne's. Fringed on all sides by woods,
the interval, once a mill pond, is now in meadow and garden land, the
slopes planted in vineyards, market gardens and orchards lining the
road along which stand the farmers' houses visible in the opening.
This road has more than a local interest. If any road may claim
the originality of being entitled to the name of American, it is
this,--since along its dust the British regulars retreated from their
memorable repulse at the Old North Bridge, the Concord military
following fast upon their heels, and from the hill-tops giving them
salutes of musketry till they disappeared beyond Lexington, and gave a
day to history.
An agricultural town from the first, it is yet such in large
measure; though like others in its neighborhood becoming suburban
and commercial. Fields once in corn and grass are now in vineyards
and orchards, tillage winding up the slopes from the low lands to
the hill-tops. The venerable woods once crowning these are fast
falling victims to the axe. The farmsteads are no longer the rural
homes they were when every member of the family took part in domestic
affairs; foreign help serves where daughters once served; they with
their brothers having left the housekeeping and farming for school,
factories, trade, a profession, and things are drifting towards
an urbane and municipal civilization, the metropolis extending its
boundaries, and absorbing the townships for many miles round.
Moreover, the primitive features of the landscape are being obliterated
by the modern facilities for business and travel, less perhaps than in
most places lying so near the metropolis; the social still less than
the natural; the descendants of the primitive fathers of the settlement
cherishing a pride of ancestry not unbecoming in a republic, less
favorable for the perpetuation of family distinctions and manners than
in countries under monarchical rule.
OUTLOOK.
MONDAY, 5.
One's outlook is a part of his virtue. Does it matter nothing to
him what objects accost him whenever he glances from his windows,
or steps out-of-doors? He who is so far weaned from the landscape,
or indifferent to it, as not to derive a sweet and robust habit of
character therefrom, seems out of keeping with nature and himself.
I suspect something amiss in him who has no love, no enthusiasm for
his surroundings, and that his friendships, if such he profess, are
of a cold and isolate quality at best; one even questions, at times,
whether the residents of cities, where art has thrown around them a
world of its own, are compensated by all this luxury of display,--to
say nothing of the social artifices wont to steal into their costly
compliments,--for the simple surroundings of the countryman, which
prompt to manliness and true gentility. A country dwelling without
shrubbery, hills near or in the distance, a forest and water view, if
but a rivulet, seems so far incomplete as if the occupants themselves
were raw and impoverished. Wood and water god both, man loves to
traverse the forests, wade the streams, and confess his kindred
alliance with primeval things. He leaps not from the woods into
civility at a single bound, neither comes from cities and conversations
freed from the wildness of his dispositions. Something of the forester
stirs within him when occasion provokes, as if men were trees
transformed, and delighted to claim their affinities with their sylvan
ancestry.
Man never tires of Nature's scene,
Himself the liveliest evergreen.
THOREAU.
My friend and neighbor united these qualities of sylvan and human in a
more remarkable manner than any whom it has been my happiness to know.
Lover of the wild, he lived a borderer on the confines of civilization,
jealous of the least encroachment upon his possessions.
"Society were all but rude
In his umbrageous solitude."
I had never thought of knowing a man so thoroughly of the country,
and so purely a son of nature. I think he had the profoundest passion
for it of any one of his time; and had the human sentiment been as
tender and pervading, would have given us pastorals of which Virgil and
Theocritus might have envied him the authorship had they chanced to be
his contemporaries. As it was, he came nearer the antique spirit than
any of our native poets, and touched the fields and groves and streams
of his native town with a classic interest that shall not fade. Some
of his verses are suffused with an elegiac tenderness, as if the woods
and brooks bewailed the absence of their Lycidas, and murmured their
griefs meanwhile to one another,--responsive like idyls. Living in
close companionship with nature, his muse breathed the spirit and voice
of poetry. For when the heart is once divorced from the senses and all
sympathy with common things, then poetry has fled and the love that
sings.
The most welcome of companions was this plain countryman. One seldom
meets with thoughts like his, coming so scented of mountain and field
breezes and rippling springs, so like a luxuriant clod from under
forest leaves, moist and mossy with earth-spirits. His presence was
tonic, like ice water in dog-days to the parched citizen pent in
chambers and under brazen ceilings. Welcome as the gurgle of brooks
and dipping of pitchers,--then drink and be cool! He seemed one with
things, of nature's essence and core, knit of strong timbers,--like
a wood and its inhabitants. There was in him sod and shade, wilds and
waters manifold,--the mould and mist of earth and sky. Self-poised
and sagacious as any denizen of the elements, he had the key to every
animal's brain, every plant; and were an Indian to flower forth
and reveal the scents hidden in his cranium, it would not be more
surprising than the speech of our Sylvanus. He belonged to the Homeric
age,--was older than pastures and gardens, as if he were of the race of
heroes and one with the elements. He of all men seemed to be the native
New-Englander, as much so as the oak, the granite ledge; our best
sample of an indigenous American, untouched by the old country, unless
he came down rather from Thor, the Northman, whose name he bore.
A peripatetic philosopher, and out-of-doors for the best part of
his days and nights, he had manifold weather and seasons in him;
the manners of an animal of probity and virtue unstained. Of all
our moralists, he seemed the wholesomest, the busiest, and the best
republican citizen in the world; always at home minding his own
affairs. A little over-confident by genius, and stiffly individual,
dropping society clean out of his theories, while standing friendly
in his strict sense of friendship, there was in him an integrity and
love of justice that made possible and actual the virtues of Sparta
and the Stoics,--all the more welcome in his time of shuffling and
pusillanimity. Plutarch would have made him immortal in his pages had
he lived before his day. Nor have we any so modern withal, so entirely
his own and ours: too purely so to be appreciated at once. A scholar by
birthright, and an author, his fame had not, at his decease, travelled
far from the banks of the rivers he described in his books; but one
hazards only the truth in affirming of his prose, that in substance
and pith, it surpasses that of any naturalist of his time; and he is
sure of large reading in the future. There are fairer fishes in his
pages than any swimming in our streams; some sleep of his on the banks
of the Merrimack by moonlight that Egypt never rivalled; a morning of
which Memnon might have envied the music, and a greyhound he once had,
meant for Adonis; frogs, better than any of Aristophanes; apples wilder
than Adam's. His senses seemed double, giving him access to secrets not
easily read by others; in sagacity resembling that of the beaver, the
bee, the dog, the deer; an instinct for seeing and judging, as by some
other, or seventh sense; dealing with objects as if they were shooting
forth from his mind mythologically, thus completing the world all round
to his senses; a creation of his at the moment. I am sure he knew the
animals one by one, as most else knowable in his town; the plants, the
geography, as Adam did in his Paradise, if, indeed, he were not that
ancestor himself. His works are pieces of exquisite sense, celebrations
of Nature's virginity exemplified by rare learning, delicate art,
replete with observations as accurate as original; contributions of the
unique to the natural history of his country, and without which it were
incomplete. Seldom has a head circumscribed so much of the sense and
core of Cosmos as this footed intelligence.
If one would learn the wealth of wit there was in this plain man,
the information, the poetry, the piety, he should have accompanied
him on an afternoon walk to Walden, or elsewhere about the skirts
of his village residence. Pagan as he might outwardly appear, yet
he was the hearty worshipper of whatsoever is sound and wholesome
in nature,--a piece of russet probity and strong sense, that nature
delighted to own and honor. His talk was suggestive, subtle, sincere,
under as many masks and mimicries as the shows he might pass; as
significant, substantial,--nature choosing to speak through his
mouth-piece,--cynically, perhaps, and searching into the marrows of men
and times he spoke of, to his discomfort mostly and avoidance.
Nature, poetry, life,--not politics, not strict science, not society
as it is,--were his preferred themes. The world was holy, the things
seen symbolizing the things unseen, and thus worthy of worship, calling
men out-of-doors and under the firmament for health and wholesomeness
to be insinuated into their souls, not as idolators, but as idealists.
His religion was of the most primitive type, inclusive of all natural
creatures and things, even to "the sparrow that falls to the ground,"
though never by shot of his, and for whatsoever was manly in men, his
worship was comparable to that of the priests and heroes of all time. I
should say he inspired the sentiment of love, if, indeed, the sentiment
did not seem to partake of something purer, were that possible, but
nameless from its excellency. Certainly he was better poised and more
nearly self-reliant than other men.
"The happy man who lived content
With his own town, his continent,
Whose chiding streams its banks did curb
As ocean circumscribes its orb,
Round which, when he his walk did take,
Thought he performed far more than Drake;
For other lands he took less thought
Than this his muse and mother brought."
More primitive and Homeric than any American, his style of thinking was
robust, racy, as if Nature herself had built his sentences and seasoned
the sense of his paragraphs with her own vigor and salubrity. Nothing
can be spared from them; there is nothing superfluous; all is compact,
concrete, as nature is.
His politics were of a piece with his individualism. We must admit that
he found little in political or religious establishments answering to
his wants, that his attitude was defiant, if not annihilating, as if he
had said to himself:--
"The state is man's pantry at most, and filled at an enormous cost,--a
spoliation of the human commonwealth. Let it go. Heroes can live on
nuts, and freemen sun themselves in the clefts of rocks, rather than
sell their liberty for this pottage of slavery. We, the few honest
neighbors, can help one another; and should the state ask any favors
of us, we can take the matter into consideration leisurely, and at our
convenience give a respectful answer.
"But why require a state to protect one's rights? the man is all. Let
him husband himself; needs he other servant or runner? Self-keeping is
the best economy. That is a great age when the state is nothing and man
is all. He founds himself in freedom, and maintains his uprightness
therein; founds an empire and maintains states. Just retire from
those concerns, and see how soon they must needs go to pieces, the
sooner for the virtue thus withdrawn from them. All the manliness of
individuals is sunk in that partnership in trade. Not only must I come
out of institutions, but come out of myself, if I will be free and
independent. Shall one be denied the privilege on coming of mature age
of choosing whether he will be a citizen of the country he happens to
be born in, or another? And what better title to a spot of ground than
being a man, and having none? Is not man superior to state or country?
I plead exemption from all interference by men or states with my
individual prerogatives. That is mine which none can steal from me, nor
is that yours which I or any man can take away."
"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."
A famous speech is recorded of an old Norseman thoroughly
characteristic of this Teuton. "I believe neither in idols nor demons;
I put my sole trust in my own strength of body and soul." The ancient
crest of a pick-axe, with the motto, "Either I will find a way or
make one," characterizes the same sturdy independence and practical
materialism which distinguishes the descendants of Thor, whose symbol
was a hammer.
He wrote in his Journal:--
"Perhaps I am descended from the Northman named Thorer, the dog-footed.
He was the most powerful man of the North. To judge from his name,
_Thorer Hund_ belonged to the same family. Thorer is one of the most,
if not the most common name in the chronicles of the Northmen. Snörro
Sturleson says, 'from Thor's name comes Thorer, also Thorarimnn.'
Again, 'Earl Rognvald was King Harald's dearest friend, and the king
had the greatest regard for him. He was married to Hilda, a daughter
of Rolf Nalfia, and their sons were Rolf and Thorer. Rolf became a
great Viking, and of so stout a growth that no horse could carry him,
and wheresoever he went, he went on foot, and therefore he was called
Gange-Rolf.' Laing says in a note, what Sturleson also tells in the
text, 'Gange-Rolf, Rolf-Ganger, Rolf the walker, was the conqueror of
Normandy. Gange-Rolf's son was William, father of Richard, who was the
father of Richard Longspear, and grandfather of William the Bastard,
from whom the following English kings are descended.'"
"King Harald set Earl Rognvald's son Thorer over Möre, and gave him
his daughter Alof in marriage. Thorer, called the Silent, got the same
territory his father Rognvald had possessed. His brother Einar going
into battle to take vengeance on his father's murderers, sang a kind of
reproach against his brothers, Rollang and Rolf, for their slowness,
and concludes:--
'And silent Thorer sits and dreams
At home, beside the mead bowl's streams.'
"Of himself it is related, that 'he cut a spread eagle on the back of
his enemy Halfdan.'
"So it seems that from one branch of the family were descended the
kings of England, and from the other, myself."
In his journal I find these lines:--
"Light-headed, thoughtless, shall I take my way
When I to Thee this being have resigned;
Well knowing when upon a future day,
With usurer's trust, more than myself to find."
NOTE. "Thoreau was born in Concord on the 12th of July, 1817.
The old-fashioned house, its roof nearly reaching to the ground
in the rear, remains as it was when he first saw the light in
the easternmost of its upper chambers. It was the residence of
his grandmother, and a perfect piece of our New-England style
of building, with its gray, unpainted boards, its grassy,
unfenced door-yard. The house is somewhat isolate and remote from
thoroughfares. The Virginia road is an old-fashioned, winding, at
length deserted pathway, the more smiling for its forked orchards,
tumbling walks, and mossy banks. About the house are pleasant,
sunny meadows, deep with their beds of peat, so cheering with its
homely, heath-like fragrance, and in its front runs a constant stream
through the centre of that great tract sometimes called 'Bedford
Levels,'--this brook a source of the Shawsheen River. It was lovely
that he should draw his first breath in a pure country air, out of
crowded towns, amid the pleasant russet fields.
"His parents were active, vivacious people; his grandfather, by
his father's side, coming from the Isle of Jersey, a Frenchman and
Catholic, who married a Scotch woman named Jennie Burns. On his
mother's side the descent is from the well-known Jones family of
Weston, Mass., and the Rev. Charles Dunbar, a graduate of Harvard
College, who preached in Salem, and at length settled in Keene, New
Hampshire. As variable an ancestry as can well be afforded, with
marked family characters on both sides. About a year and a half from
Henry's birth, the family removed to the town of Chelmsford, thence
to Boston, coming back, however, to Concord when he was of a very
tender age; his earliest memory of most of the town was a ride to
Walden Pond with his grandmother, when he thought that he should
be glad to live there. He retained a peculiar pronunciation of the
letter R, with a decided French accent. He says, 'September is the
fifth month with a burr in it.' His great-grandmother's name was
Marie le Galais, and his grandfather, John Thoreau, was baptized
April 28, 1754, and partook of the Catholic sacrament in the parish
of St. Helier, Isle of Jersey, in May, 1773. Thus near to old France
and the church was our Yankee boy.
"A moment may be spent on a few traits of Thoreau, of a personal
kind. In height he was about the average. In his build, spare, with
limbs that were rather longer than usual, or of which he made a
longer use. His face once seen could not be forgotten; the features
quite marked, the nose aquiline, or very Roman, like one of the
portraits of Cæsar (more like a beak, as was said), large overhanging
brows above the deepest-set blue eyes that could be seen,--blue in
certain lights, and in others gray,--eyes expressive of all shades of
feeling, but never weak or near-sighted; the forehead not unusually
broad or high, full of concentrated energy and purpose; the mouth,
with prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought when shut,
and giving out when open a stream of the most varied and unusual
and instructive sayings. His hair was a dark brown, exceedingly
abundant, fine, and soft, and for several years he wore a comely
beard. His whole figure had an active earnestness as if he had not
a moment to waste. The clenched hand betokened purpose. In walking
he made a short cut if he could, and when sitting in the shade, or
by the wall-side, seemed merely the clearer to look forward into the
next piece of activity. Even in the boat he had a wary, transitory
air, his eyes on the lookout; perhaps there might be ducks, or the
Blondin turtle, or an otter, or sparrow. He was a plain man in his
features and dress,--one who could not be mistaken, and this kind of
plainness is not out of keeping with beauty. He sometimes went as far
as homeliness, which again, even if there be a prejudice against it,
shines out at times beyond a vulgar beauty."
W. ELLERY CHANNING.
SELF-PRIVACY.
THURSDAY, 8.
"A sweet self-privacy in a right soul
Outruns the earth, and lines the utmost pole."
For a diary, slight arches will suffice to convey the day's freight
across; the lighter these, the speedier and more graceful the transit.
Any current event, passing thought, rumor, were transportable, if
simply dispatched. And the more significant, as the more familiar and
private. Life were the less sweet and companionable if cumbered with
affairs, overloaded with thought, dizzied with anxieties. Better the
quiet temper that takes the days as they pass, and as if an eternity
were vouchsafed for completing one's task, the time too short to waste
in murmurs or postponements.
"Cares, like eclipses, darken our endeavors;
Our duties are our best gods."
A quiet life furnishes little of incident; dealing with thoughts and
things in a meditative manner, it has the less for those who have a
more stirring stake in current affairs. Yet one fancies that what
interests himself may interest others of like mind, if not of like
pursuits; and more especially when, as in a diary, he writes only of
what has some real or imagined relation to what concerns him. His
record may be careless, inconsequent, like the days it chronicles,
with but the slender thread of sleep connecting its leaves; or perhaps
the newspaper, once an accident, and coming irregularly, links his
evening with morning, morning with evening; newspaper before breakfast,
before business, before sleep; daily bread. One almost defines his
culture, his social standing, by the journals he takes. Observe the
difference between persons and neighborhoods familiar with current
newspapers and those who are not. Very different from the times when
a country boy must ride his miles after his Saturday's work to get
some glimmering of what was passing in the great world around him;
before libraries and lectures were established, steam and lightning
were carriers and couriers for all mankind. No life is insular now.
Every thought resounds throughout the globe. Electricity competes
with thought in the race. The telegraph, locomotive, the press,
render cabinets and colleges almost superfluous. Travel makes all
men countrymen, makes people noblemen and kings, every man tasting
of liberty and dominion. And who but the kings themselves can unking
themselves?
Still, like most things, our periodical literature is far from being
a pure benefit, and one may quote Plato's saying as applicable to the
superficial culture which this of itself fosters: "Total ignorance
were in no wise a thing so vile and wicked, nor the greatest of evils;
but multifarious knowledge and learning acquired under bad management,
causes much more harm."
Rather what is thought and spoken in drawing-rooms, clubs, in private
assemblies, best intimates the spirit and tendencies of a community.
Things are known but at second-hand as represented in public prints,
or spoken on platforms. Admitted to private houses, one may report
accurately the census of civility, and cast the horoscope of the coming
time. Nor do I sympathize with some of my friends in their dislike
of reporters. One defends himself from intrusion, as a general rule;
but where the public have a generous interest in one's thoughts, his
occupations and manners, the discourtesy is rather in withholding these
from any false modesty. Besides, the version is more likely to be
nearer the truth than if left to chance curiosity, which piques itself
all the more on getting what was thus withheld, with any additions the
mood favors.
SUNDAY LECTURES.
SUNDAY, 11.
The course of Sunday lectures at Horticultural Hall opened in January
closes to-day. They have proved a brilliant success. Each speaker
has attracted, besides the body of steady attendants, his personal
friends, thus varying the audiences from Sunday to Sunday, and giving
an example of varied teaching unprecedented in our time. The reports
of these discourses, imperfect as they are, deserve preservation. They
have relation to the drift of thinking in our New-England community
especially, and are of historical importance. If not accepting all
that has been spoken on this platform by the successive speakers,
one may take a hearty interest in these adventures into the world of
thought and duty; nor can any who have attended steadily from Sunday
to Sunday question their serving a religious need of the time. The
views of persons, distinguished as are most of the speakers, are not
insignificant, since these are not among the least of the influences
secretly, if not openly, moulding the manners and institutions of a
community in which the thoughts and aims of the humblest individuals
have weight, and the young are so eager to learn of their thoughtful
elders.
When I recollect the ardor with which I sought the acquaintance of
those whom I imagined had ideas to communicate, and my delight in such
when found, I am led to think how very desirable were an institution to
which young students might resort during such portion of the year as
might be most convenient, to enjoy the fellowship of some of our most
cultivated persons,--scholarships being provided for such as had not
the means of defraying the necessary expenses,--thus enabling bright
young men and women, whether college graduates or not, to complete what
colleges do not give. Not every student comes into that intellectual
sympathy with his professor, which renders instruction most enjoyable,
yet without which the highest ends of culture are not attained. With
a faculty composed of persons whose names a moment's thought will
suggest, opportunities would be given for that sympathetic communion of
mind with mind in which all living instruction and influence consist.
EMERSON.
TUESDAY, 13.
Emerson has lately completed a course of readings on English Poetry
to an appreciative company in Boston. It is a variation of his method
of communicating with his companies, and not less becoming than even
his usual form of lecture. It matters not in his case; for such is the
charm of his manner, that wherever he appears, the cultured class will
delight in his utterances; and one may quote Socrates in Phædrus, where
Plato makes him say, "For as men lead hungry creatures by holding out a
green bough, or an apple, so you, Phædrus, it would seem, might lead me
about all Attica, and, indeed, wherever else you please, by extending
to me discourses out of your books." Not less aptly Goethe describes
him, in his letters to Schiller, where he calls the rhapsodist, "A
wise man, who, in calm thoughtfulness, shows what has happened; his
discourse aiming less to excite than to calm his auditors, in order
that they shall listen to him with contentment and long. He apportions
the interest equally, because it is not in his power to balance a too
lively impression. He grasps backwards and forwards at pleasure. He
is followed, because he has only to do with the imagination, which
of itself produces images, and which, up to a certain degree, is
indifferent what kind he calls up. He does not appear to his auditors,
but recites, as it were, behind a curtain; so there is a total
abstraction from himself, and it seems to them as though they heard
only the voice of the Muses."
See our Ion standing there, his audience, his manuscript before him,
himself also an auditor, as he reads, of the Genius sitting behind him,
and to whom he defers, eagerly catching the words,--the words,--as if
the accents were first reaching his ears too, and entrancing alike
oracle and auditor. We admire the stately sense, the splendor of
diction, and are charmed as we listen. Even his hesitancy between
the delivery of his periods, his perilous passages from paragraph to
paragraph of manuscript, we have almost learned to like, as if he were
but sorting his keys meanwhile for opening his cabinets; the spring of
locks following, himself seeming as eager as any of us to get sight
of his specimens as they come forth from their proper drawers, and we
wait willingly till his gem is out glittering; admire the setting, too,
scarcely less than the jewel itself. The magic minstrel and speaker,
whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ-stops, delivers the sentiment from
his breast in cadences peculiar to himself; now hurling it forth on the
ear, echoing; then, as his mood and matter invite, dying away, like
"Music of mild lutes,
Or silver-coated flutes,
Or the concealing winds that can convey
Never their tone to the rude ear of day."
He works his miracles with it, as Hermes did, his voice conducting
the sense alike to eye and ear by its lyrical movement and refraining
melody. So his compositions affect us, not as logic linked in
syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather, as preludes, in which one is not
tied to any design of air, but may vary his key or note at pleasure, as
if improvised without any particular scope of argument; each period,
paragraph, being a perfect note in itself, however it may chance chime
with its accompaniments in the piece, as a waltz of wandering stars,
a dance of Hesperus with Orion. His rhetoric dazzles by its circuits,
contrasts, antitheses; imagination, as in all sprightly minds, being
his wand of Power. He comes along his own paths, too, and in his own
fashion. What though he build his piers downwards from the firmament
to the tumbling tides, and so throw his radiant span across the
fissures of his argument, and himself pass over the frolic arches,
Ariel-wise,--is the skill less admirable, the masonry the less secure
for its singularity? So his books are best read as irregular writings,
in which the sentiment is, by his enthusiasm, transfused throughout the
piece, telling on the mind in cadences of a current undersong, giving
the impression of a connected whole,--which it seldom is,--such is the
rhapsodist's cunning in its structure and delivery.
The highest compliment we can pay the scholar is that of having
edified and instructed us, we know not how, unless by the pleasure
his words have given us. Conceive how much the lyceum owes to his
presence and teachings; how great the debt of many to him for their
hour's entertainment. His, if any one's, let the institution pass
into history, since his art, more than another's, has clothed it with
beauty, and made it the place of popular resort, our purest organ of
intellectual entertainment for New England and the Western cities.
And besides this, its immediate value to his auditors everywhere, it
has been serviceable in ways they least suspect; most of his works,
having had their first readings on its platform, were here fashioned
and polished, in good part, like Plutarch's morals, to become the more
acceptable to readers of his published books. Does it matter what topic
he touches? He adorns all with a severe sententious beauty, a freshness
and sanction next to that of godliness, if not that in spirit and
effect.
"The princely mind, that can
Teach man to keep a God in man;
And when wise poets would search out to see
Good men, behold them all in thee."
'Tis over thirty years since his first book was printed. Then followed
volumes of essays, poems, orations, addresses; and during all the
intervening period, down to the present, he has read briefs of his
lectures through a wide range, from Canada to the Capitol; in most
of the Free States; in the large cities, East and West, before large
audiences; in the smallest towns, and to the humblest companies. Such
has been his appeal to the mind of his countrymen, such his acceptance
by them. He has read lectures in the principal cities of England
also. A poet, speaking to individuals as few others can speak, and to
persons in their privileged moments, he is heard as none others are.
The more personal he is, the more prevailing, if not the more popular.
'Tis everything to have a true believer in the world, dealing with men
and matters as if they were divine in idea and real in fact; meeting
persons and events at a glance directly, not at a millionth remove, and
so passing fair and fresh into life and literature.
Consider how largely our letters have been enriched by his
contributions. Consider, too, the change his views have wrought in our
methods of thinking; how he has won over the bigot, the unbeliever,
at least to tolerance and moderation, if not acknowledgment, by his
circumspection and candor of statement.
"His shining armor,
A perfect charmer;
Even the hornets of divinity
Allow him a brief space,
And his thought has a place
Upon the well-bound library's chaste shelves,
Where man of various wisdom rarely delves."
Poet and moralist, he has beauty and truth for all men's edification
and delight. His works are studies. And any youth of free senses and
fresh affections shall be spared years of tedious toil, in which
wisdom and fair learning are, for the most part, held at arm's-length,
planets' width, from his grasp, by graduating from this college. His
books are surcharged with vigorous thoughts, a sprightly wit. They
abound in strong sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, subtile insights,
noble morals, clothed in a chaste and manly diction, fresh with the
breath of health and progress.
We characterize and class him with the moralists who surprise us
with an accidental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of phrase,--as
Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Saadi, Montaigne, Bacon,
Selden, Sir Thomas Browne, Cowley, Coleridge, Goethe,--with whose
delightful essays, notwithstanding all the pleasure they give us, we
still plead our disappointment at not having been admitted to the
closer intimacy which these loyal leaves had with their owners' mind
before torn from his note-books, jealous, even, at not having been
taken into his confidence in the editing itself.
We read, never as if he were the dogmatist, but a fair-speaking
mind, frankly declaring his convictions, and committing these to our
consideration, hoping we may have thought like things ourselves;
oftenest, indeed, taking this for granted as he wrote. There is nothing
of the spirit of proselyting, but the delightful deference ever to
our free sense and right of opinion. He might take for his motto
the sentiment of Henry More, where, speaking of himself, he says:
"Exquisite disquisition begets diffidence; diffidence in knowledge,
humility; humility, good manners and meek conversation. For my part,
I desire no man to take anything I write or speak upon trust without
canvassing, and would be thought rather to propound than to assert
what I have here or elsewhere written or spoken. But continually to
have expressed my diffidence in the very tractates and colloquies
themselves, had been languid and ridiculous."
Then he has chosen proper times and manners for saying his good things;
has spoken to almost every great interest as it rose. Nor has he let
the good opportunities pass unheeded, or failed to make them for
himself. He has taken discretion along as his constant attendant and
ally; has shown how the gentlest temper ever deals the surest blows.
His method is that of the sun against his rival for the cloak, and so
is free from any madness of those, who, forgetting the strength of the
solar ray, go blustering against men's prejudices, as if the wearers
would run at once against these winds of opposition into their arms for
shelter. What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of
him, that he harbors another's prejudices with a hospitality so cordial
as to give him for the time the sympathy next best to, if, indeed, it
be not edification in, charity itself? For what disturbs more, and
distracts mankind, than the uncivil manners that cleave man from man?
Yet, for whose amendment letters, love, Christianity, were all given!
* * * * *
There is a virtuous curiosity felt by readers of remarkable books to
learn something more of their author's literary tastes, habits, and
dispositions, than these ordinarily furnish. Yet to gratify this is a
task as difficult as delicate, requiring a diffidency akin to that with
which one would accost the author himself, and without which graceful
armor it were impertinent for a friend even to undertake it. We may
venture but a stroke or two here.
All men love the country who love mankind with a wholesome love,
and have poetry and company in them. Our essayist makes good this
preference. If city bred, he has been for the best part of his life
a villager and countryman. Only a traveller at times professionally,
he prefers home-keeping; is a student of the landscape, of mankind,
of rugged strength wherever found; liking plain persons, plain ways,
plain clothes; prefers earnest people; shuns egotists, publicity; likes
solitude, and knows its uses. Courting society as a spectacle not less
than a pleasure, he carries off the spoils. Delighting in the broadest
views of men and things, he seeks all accessible displays of both for
draping his thoughts and works. And how is his page produced? Is it
imaginable that he conceives his piece as a whole, and then sits down
to execute his task at a heat? Is not this imaginable rather, and the
key to the construction of his works? Living for composition as few
authors can, and holding company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs,
subservient to thought, his products are gathered as they ripen,
stored in his commonplaces; their contents transcribed at intervals,
and classified. It is the order of ideas, of imagination observed
in the arrangement, not of logical sequence. You may begin at the
last paragraph and read backwards. 'Tis Iris-built. Each period is
self-poised; there may be a chasm of years between the opening passage
and the last written, and there is endless time in the composition.
Jewels all! Separate stars. You may have them in a galaxy, if you like,
or view them separate and apart. But every one finds that, if he take
an essay, or verses, however the writer may have pleased himself with
the cunning workmanship, 'tis cloud-fashioned, and a blind pathway for
any one else. Cross as you can, or not cross, it matters not, you may
climb or leap, move in circles, turn somersaults;
"In sympathetic sorrow sweep the ground,"
like his swallow in Hermione. Dissolving views, prospects, vistas
opening wide and far, yet earth, sky,--realities all, not illusions.
Here is substance, sod, sun; much fair weather in the seer as in
his leaves. The whole quaternion of the seasons, the sidereal year,
has been poured into these periods. Afternoon walks furnished their
perspectives, rounded and melodized them. These good things have been
talked and slept over, meditated standing and sitting, read and
polished in the utterance, submitted to all various tests, and, so
accepted, they pass into print. Light fancies, dreams, moods, refrains,
were set on foot, and sent jaunting about the fields, along wood-paths,
by Walden shores, by hill and brook-sides, to come home and claim their
rank and honors too in his pages. Composed of surrounding matters,
populous with thoughts, brisk with images, these books are wholesome,
homelike, and could have been written only in New England, and by our
poet.
"Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And through my rock-like, solitary wont
Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.
For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring
Visits the valley;--break away the clouds,--
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird,
Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree,
Courageous, sing a delicate overture
To lead the tardy concert of the year.
Onward and nearer rides the sun of May;
And wide around, the marriage of the plants
Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain
The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,
Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade,
Are touched with Genius. Yonder ragged cliff
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.
... The gentle deities
Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds,
The innumerable tenements of beauty,
The miracle of generative force,
Far-reaching concords of astronomy
Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds;
Better, the linked purpose of the whole,
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty
In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave.
The polite found me impolite; the great
Would mortify me, but in vain; for still
I am a willow of the wilderness,
Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts
My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk,
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds.
For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear:
'Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie?
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass
Into the winter night's extinguished mood?
Canst thou shine now, then darkle,
And being latent feel thyself no less?
As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye,
The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure,
Yet envies none, none are unenviable.'"
I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his
books--shall I say his conversation?--gives me,--his pains to be
impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of
himself were an offence offered to self-respect, the courtesy due to
intercourse and authorship; thus depriving his page, his company, of
attractions the great masters of both knew how to insinuate into their
text and talk without overstepping the bounds of social or literary
decorum. What is more delightful than personal magnetism? 'Tis the
charm of good fellowship as of good writing. To get and to give the
largest measure of satisfaction, to fill ourselves with the nectar
of select experiences, not without some intertinctures of egotism so
charming in a companion, is what we seek in books of the class of his,
as in their authors. We associate diffidence properly with learning,
frankness with fellowship, and owe a certain blushing reverence to
both. For though our companion be a bashful man,--and he is the worse
if wanting this grace,--we yet wish him to be an enthusiast behind all
reserves, and capable of abandonment sometimes in his books. I know
how rare this genial humor is, this frankness of the blood, and how
surpassing are the gifts of good spirits, especially here in cold New
England, where, for the most part,
"Our virtues grow
Beneath our humors, and at seasons show."
And yet, under our east winds of reserve, there hides an obscure
courtesy in the best natures, which neither temperament nor breeding
can spoil. Sometimes manners the most distant are friendly foils for
holding eager dispositions subject to the measures of right behavior.
'Tis not every New-Englander that dares venture upon the frankness, the
plain speaking, commended by the Greek poet.
"Caress me not with words, while far away
Thy heart is absent, and thy feelings stray;
But if thou love me with a faithful breast,
Be that pure love with zeal sincere exprest;
And if thou hate, the bold aversion show
With open face avowed, and known my foe."
Fortunate the visitor who is admitted of a morning for the high
discourse, or permitted to join the poet in his afternoon walks to
Walden, the cliffs, or elsewhere,--hours likely to be remembered as
unlike any others in his calendar of experiences. I may say for me
they have made ideas possible by hospitalities given to a fellowship
so enjoyable. Shall I describe them as sallies oftenest into the
cloud-lands, into scenes and intimacies ever new, none the less novel
or remote than when first experienced, colloquies, in favored moments,
on themes, perchance,
"Of Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute;"
nor yet
"In wand'ring mazes lost,"
as in Milton's page;
But pathways plain through starry alcoves high,
Or thence descending to the level plains.
Interviews, however, bringing their trail of perplexing thoughts,
costing some days' duties, several nights' sleep oftentimes to restore
one to his place and poise for customary employment; half a dozen
annually being full as many as the stoutest heads may well undertake
without detriment. Certainly safer not to venture without the sure
credentials, unless one will have his pretensions pricked, his conceits
reduced to their vague dimensions.
"Fools have no means to meet
But by their feet."
But to the modest, the ingenuous, the gifted, welcome! Nor can any
bearing be more poetic and polite than his to all such, to youth and
accomplished women especially. I may not intrude further than to
say, that, beyond any I have known, his is a faith approaching to
superstition concerning admirable persons, the divinity of friendship
come down from childhood, and surviving yet in memory if not in
expectation, the rumor of excellence of any sort being like the arrival
of a new gift to mankind, and he the first to proffer his recognition
and hope. His affection for conversation, for clubs, is a lively
intimation of this religion of fellowship. He, shall we say, if any,
must have taken the census of the admirable people of his time, perhaps
numbering as many among his friends as most living Americans, while
he is recognized as the representative mind of his country, to whom
distinguished foreigners are especially commended on visiting us.
Of Emerson's books I am not here designing to speak critically, rather
of his genius and personal influence; yet, in passing, may remark that
his "English Traits" deserves to be honored as one in which England,
Old and New, may alike take national pride as being the liveliest
portraiture of British genius and accomplishments there is,--a book,
like Tacitus, to be quoted as a masterpiece of historical painting, and
perpetuating the New-Englander's fame with that of his race. 'Tis a
victory of eyes over hands, a triumph of ideas. Nor has there been for
some time any criticism of a people so characteristic and complete. It
remains for him to do like justice to New England. Not a metaphysician,
and rightly discarding any claims to systematic thinking; the poet in
spirit, if not always in form; the consistent idealist, yet the realist
none the less,--he has illustrated the learning and thought of former
times on the noblest themes, coming nearest of any to emancipating the
mind of his own from the errors and dreams of past ages.
* * * * *
Plutarch tells us that of old they were wont to call men [Greek:
phôta], which imports light, not only for the vehement desire man has
to know, but to communicate also. And the Platonists fancied that the
gods, being above men, had something whereof man did not partake,
pure intellect and knowledge, and they kept on their way quietly. The
beasts, being below men, had something whereof man had less, sense and
growth, so they lived quietly in their way. While man had something
in him whereof neither gods nor beasts had any trace, which gave him
all the trouble, and made all the confusion in the world,--and that was
egotism and opinion.
A finer discrimination of gifts might show that Genius ranges through
this threefold dominion, partaking in turn of their essence and degrees.
Was our poet planted so fast in intellect, so firmly rooted in the
mind, so dazzled with light, yet so cleft withal by duplicity of gifts,
that fated thus to traverse the mid-world of contrast and contrariety,
he was ever glancing forth from his coverts at life as reflected
through his dividing prism, the resident never long of the tracts he
surveyed, yet their persistent Muse nevertheless? And so housed in the
Mind, and sallying forth from thence in quest of his game, whether of
persons or things, he was the Mercury, the merchantman of ideas to his
century. Nor was he personally alone in his thinking. Beside him stood
his townsman, whose sylvan intelligence, fast rooted in Nature, was yet
armed with a sagacity, a subtlety and strength, that penetrated while
divining the essences of creatures and things he studied, and of which
he seemed Atlas and Head.
Forcible protestants against the materialism of their own, as of
preceding times, these masterly Idealists substantiate beyond all
question their right to the empires they sway,--the rich estates of an
original Genius.
RECREATION.
FRIDAY, 16.
A-field all summer, all winter in-doors, was the Anglo-Saxon rule, and
holds good for the Anglo-American to-day. Englishmen still, here in
New England we borrow, at some variance with the sun's courses, our
calendar from the old country. Ordinarily our seasons fall almost a
month later, our winter hardly opening till New-year's, nor spring till
All Fools' Day, the date of which can hardly fall amiss, and with All
Saints' may be left indefinite in wit's almanac. Doubtless there is a
closer sympathy than we suspect between souls and seasons. Sensitive to
climate within as weather without, our intelligence dips or rises as
the signs range from Aries to Pisces in the ideal ephemeris, measuring
to faculty and member in turn the rising or falling tides, and so
determining our solar and lunar periods.
"'Tis not every day that I
Fitted am to prophesy;
No; but when the spirit fills
The fantastic pinnacles
Full of fire, then I write
As the Godhead doth indite.
Thus enraged, my lines are hurled,
Like the sibyls, through the world.
Look, how next the holy fire
Either slakes, or doth retire;
So the fancy carols, till when
That brave spirit comes again."
Nature is the best dictionary and school of eloquence; genius the
pupil of sun and stars, wood-lands, waters, the fields, the spectacle
of things seen under all aspects, in all seasons and moods. Blot
these from his vision, and the scholar's page were of small account.
Letters show pale and poor from inside chambers and halls of learning
alone; and whoever will deal directly with ideas, is often abroad
to import the stuff of things into his diction, and clothe them in
a rhetoric robust and racy, addressing the senses and mind at once.
One is surprised at finding how a little exercise, though taken
for the thousandth time, and along familiar haunts even, refreshes
and strengthens body and mind. A turn about his grounds, a sally
into the woods, climbing the hill-top, sauntering by brook-sides,
brings him back with new senses and a new soul. One's handwriting
becomes illuminated as he turns his leaves, the thoughts standing out
distinctly, which before were blurred, and failed to show their import.
Then his thought is sprightliest, and tells its tale firmly to the end.
It sets flowing what blood one has in his veins, quickening wonderfully
his circulations; he is valiant, humorsome, the soul prevailing in
every part, and he takes hope of himself and the world around him.
An open fire, too, that best of friends to greet him within doors for
most of the months; better than councils of friends to settle numerous
questions wont to smoulder and fret by an air-tight, or flash forth in
no lovely manner at unexpected moments. And where else is conversation
possible? A countryman without an open fire will consider whether he
can afford to spend himself and family to spare his wood-lot. It was
comforting to see the other day on a bookseller's counter, tiles of
porcelain, with suggestive devices of the graceful hospitalities of the
olden time, when every mantelpiece had its attractions of fable and
verse, the conversation enhanced by the friendly blaze, around which
the family gathered and paid their devotions to friendships, human and
divine.
"Go where I will, thou lucky Lar, stay here
Close by the glittering chimney all the year."
Then, a country-seat for summer and a city residence for the winter
were desirable. For recreation, the due allowance taken from business,
leisures as profitable as labors, alike enjoyable, and promoting the
relish for more.
"Books, studies, business, entertain the light,
And sleep as undisturbed as death the night.
Acquaintance one would have, but when it depends
Not on the number, but the choice of friends.
His house a cottage more
Than palace, and should fitting be
For all his use, no luxury."
One's house should be roomy enough for his thought, for his family
and guests; honor the ceilings, and geniality the hearthstone. Ample
apartments, a charming landscape and surroundings; these have their
influence on the dispositions, the tastes, manners of the inmates,
and are not to be left out of account. Yet, without nobility to grace
them, what were the costly palace, its parlors and parks, luxuries and
elegancies, within or without,--the handsome house owing its chief
beauty to the occupants, the company, one's virtues and accomplishments
draw inside of the mansion; persons being the figures that grace the
edifice, else unfurnished, and but a showy pile of ostentation and
folly, as desolate within as pretentious without.
"Two things money cannot buy,
Breeding and integrity."
"It happens," says Plutarch, "that neither rich furniture, nor
moveables, nor abundance of gold, nor descent from an illustrious
family, nor greatness of authority, nor eloquence, and all the charms
of speaking, can procure so great a serenity of life, as a mind free
from guilt and kept untainted, not only from actions but from purposes
that are wicked. By this means the soul will be not only unpolluted,
but not disturbed; the fountain will run clear and unsullied, and
the streams that flow from it will be just and honest deeds, full of
satisfaction, a brisk energy of spirit which makes a man an enthusiast
in his joy, and a tenacious memory sweeter than hope, which, as Pindar
says, 'with a virgin warmth cherishes old men.' For as shrubs which are
cut down with morning dew upon them, do for a long time after retain
their fragrance, so the good actions of a wise man perfume his mind
and leave a rich scent behind them. So that joy is, as it were, watered
with those essences, and owes its flourishing to them."
GENEALOGIES.
MONDAY, 19.
One values his chosen place of residence, whether he be a native or
not, less for its natural history and advantages than for its civil and
social privileges.
"The hills were reared, the rivers scooped in vain,
If learning's altars vanish from the plain."
And all the more, if, while retaining the ancient manners, it cherish
the family sentiment against the straggling habits which separate
members so widely in our times that intercourse is had seldomer than of
old; names of kindred hardly surviving save in the fresh recollections
of childhood by the dwellers apart; far more of life than we know being
planted fast in ancestral homes, the best of it associated with these,
as if there were a geography of the affections that nothing could
uproot.
A people can hardly have attained to nationality till it knows its
ancestor and is not ashamed of its antecedents. If such studies were
once deemed beneath the dignity of an American, they are no longer.
We are not the less national for honoring our forefathers. Blood
is a history. Blood is a destiny. How persistent it is, let the
institutions of England, Old and New, bear testimony, since on this
prerogative--call it race, rank, family, nature, culture, nationality,
what you will--both peoples stand and pride themselves, lion and eagle,
an impregnable Saxondom, a common speech, blazoning their descent.
"Ours is the tongue the bards sang in of old,
And Druids their dark knowledge did unfold;
Merlin in this his prophesies did vent,
Which through the world of fame bear such extent.
Thus spake the son of Mars, and Britain bold,
Who first 'mongst Christian worthies is enrolled;
And many thousand more, whom but to name
Were but to syllable great Shakespeare's fame."
A strong race, the blood flows boldly in its veins, truculent, if need
be, aggressive, and holding its own, as pronounced in the women as in
the men, here in New England as in Old, the dragon couchant and ready
to spring in defence of privileges and titles; magnanimous none the
less, and merciful, as in the times of St. George and Bonduca. One
needs but read Tacitus on the Manners of the Ancient Germans, to find
the parentage of traits which still constitute the Englishmen, Old and
New, showing how persistent, under every variety of geographical and
political conditions, is the genius of races.
'Tis due to every name that some one or more inheriting it should
search out its traits and titles, as these descend along the stream
of generations and reappear in individuals. And we best study the
fortunes of families, of races and peoples, here at their sources. Even
heraldries have their significance. And it is accounted the rule that
names are entitled to the better qualities of their emblazonries, each
having something admirable and to be honored in its origin.[2]
[Footnote 2: Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,
in Antiquities concerning the most Noble and Renowned English Nation,
1634, treating of the origin of names, says:--
"For a general rule, the reader may please to note, that our surnames
of families, be they of one or more syllables, that have either a _k_
or a _w_, are all of them of the ancient English race, so that neither
the _k_ or _w_ are used in Latin, nor in any of the three languages
thereon depending, which sometimes causes confusion in the writing our
names (originally coming from the Teutonic) in Latin, Italian, French,
and Spanish languages. Neither the _k_ nor _w_ being in the Latin
nor in the French, they could not be with the Normans in use, whose
language was French, as also their surnames. As for the surnames in our
Norman catalogue which have in them the letters _k_ and _w_, which the
French do not use, these are not to be thought to have been Norman, but
of those gentlemen of Flanders which Baldwin, the Earl of that country
and father-in-law unto the Conquerer, did send to aid him. Besides
these, sundry other surnames do appear to have been in the Netherlands
and not in Normandy; albeit they are without doubt set in the list of
the Normans. And whereas in searching for such as may remain in England
of the race of the Danes, they are not such as, according to the vulgar
opinion, have their surnames ending in _son_. In the Netherlands,
it is often found that very many surnames end in _son_, as Johnson,
Williamson, Phillipson, and the like; _i. e._ sons of that name of
John, etc.
"Then some have their surnames according to the color of hair or
complexion, as white, black, brown, gray, and reddish; and those in
whom these names from such causes begin, do thereby lose their former
denomination. Some again for their surnames have the names of beasts;
and it should seem for one thing or another wherein they represented
some property of theirs; as lion, wolf, fox, bull, buck, hare, hart,
lamb, and the like. Others of birds; as cock, peacock, swan, crane,
heron, partridge, dove, sparrow, and the like. Others of fish; as
salmon, herring, rock, pilchard, and the like. And albeit the ancestors
of the bearers of these had in other times other surnames, yet because
almost all these and other like names do belong to our English tongue,
I do think him to be of the ancient English, and if not all, yet the
most part. And here by occasion of these names, I must note, and that
as it were for a general rule, _that what family soever has their first
and chief coat of arms correspondent unto their surname, it is evident
sign that it had that surname before it had those arms_."]
Thus the Cock is alike the herald of the dawn and sentinel of the
night; the emblem of watchfulness and of wisdom; of vigilance and of
perseverance, and _Semper Vigilans_, the appropriate motto of family
arms bearing the name with its variations.
So the poet
OF THE COCK.
"Father of Lights! what sunny seed,
What glance of day, hast thou confined
Unto this bird? To all the breed
This busy ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night
And dreams of paradise and light,
It seems their candle howe'er done
Was tin'd and lighted at the sun."
SCHOLARSHIP.
WEDNESDAY, 28.
Apart they sit, the better know,
Why towns and talk sway men below.
Freedom from affairs, and leisure to entertain his thoughts, is the
scholar's paradise. Hardly less the delight in comparing notes with
another in conversation. It is the chiefest of satisfactions this last,
where sympathy is possible and perfect. One does not see his thought
distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's. Personal
perspective gives the distance necessary to bring out its significance.
"There are some," says Thoreau, "whose ears help me so much that my
things have a rare significance when I read to them. It is almost too
good a hearing, so that, for the time, I regard my writing from too
favorable a point of view." Yet the criticism of admiration is far more
acceptable and the more likely to be just than that of censure. Much
learning does not make an accomplished critic; taste, sensibility,
sympathy, ideality, are indispensable. A man of talent may apprehend
and judge fairly of works of his class. But genius alone comprehends
and appreciates truly the works of genius.
Nor are all moods equally favorable for criticism. "It may be owing to
my mood at the time," says Goethe, "but it seems to me, that as well
in treating of writings as of actions, unless one speak with a loving
sympathy, a certain enthusiasm, the result is so defective as to have
little value. Pleasure, delight, sympathy in things, is all that is
real; and that reproduces reality in us; all else is empty and vain."
One must seize the traits as they rise with the tender touch, else they
elude and dissolve in the moment; pass into the obscurity out of which
they emerged, and are lost forever. Much depends upon this, that one
make the most of his time, and miss no propitious moods.
Rarely does one win a success with either tongue or pen. Of the books
printed, scarcely never the volume entire justifies its appearance in
type. Much is void of deep and permanent significance, touches nothing
in one's experience, and fails to command attention. Even subjects
of gravest quality, unless treated suggestively, find no place in a
permanent literature. It is not enough that the thing is literally
defined, stated logically; it needs to be complemented ideally,--set
forth in lucid imagery to tell the story to the end. Style carries
weight oftentimes when seemingly light itself. Movement is necessary,
while the logic is unapparent,--all the more profound and edifying as
it appeals to and speaks from the deeper instincts, and so makes claims
upon the reader's mind. That is good which stands strong in its own
strength, detached from local relations. So a book of thoughts suggests
thought, edifies, inspires. Whatever interests at successive readings
has life in it, and deserves type and paper.
My code of composition stands thus, and this is my advice to whom it
may concern:--
Burn every scrap that stands not the test of all moods of criticism.
Such lack longevity. What is left gains immensely. Such is the law.
Very little of what is thought admirable at the writing holds good over
night. Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of
a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it
sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to
your friend, if he be an author especially. You may read selections to
sensible women,--if young the better; and if it stand these trials, you
may offer it to a publisher, and think yourself fortunate if he refuse
to print it. Then you may be sure you have written a book worthy of
type, and wait with assurance for a publisher and reader thirty years
hence,--that is, when you are engaged in authorship that needs neither
type nor publisher.
"Learning," says Fuller, "hath gained most by those books by which the
printers have lost." It must be an enlightened public that asks for
works the most enlightened publishers decline printing. A magazine were
ruined already if it reflected its fears only. Yet one cannot expect
the trade to venture reputation or money in spreading unpopular views.
Ben Jonson wrote to his bookseller:--
"Thou that mak'st gain thy end, and wisely well
Call'st a book good or bad, as it doth sell,
Use mine so too; I give thee leave, but crave
For the luck's sake, it thus much favor have;--
To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought,
Not offered as it made suit to be bought;
Nor have my title page on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving man
Who scarce can spell the hard names, whose knight less can.
If, without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 't will, well."
Time is the best critic, and the better for his intolerance of any
inferiority. And fortunate for literature that he is thus choice and
exacting. Books, like character, are works of time, and must run the
gauntlet of criticism to gain enduring celebrity. The best books may
sometimes wait for their half century, or longer, for appreciative
readers--create their readers; the few ready to appreciate these
at their issue being the most enlightened of their time, and they
diffuse the light to their circle of readers. The torch of truth thus
transmitted sheds its light over hemispheres,--the globe at last.
"Hail! native language, that with sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavoring tongue to speak,
And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips
Half unpronounced slide through my infant lips,
Driving dull silence from the portal door
Where he had mutely sat two years before--
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask
That now I use thee in my latter task.
Now haste thee strait to do me once a pleasure,
And from thy wardrobe bring thy chiefest treasure,
Not those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight,
Which takes our late fantastics with delight,
But cull those richest robes, and gay'st attire,
Which deepest spirits and choicest wits admire."
Thus wrote Milton at the age of nineteen, and made his college
illustrious and the language afterwards. Yet the purest English is
not always spoken or written by graduates of universities. Speech is
the fruit of breeding and of character, and one shall find sometimes
in remote rural districts the language spoken in its simplicity and
purity, especially by sprightly boys and girls who have not been vexed
with their grammars and school tasks. Ours is one of the richest of
the spoken tongues; it may not be the simplest in structure and ease
of attainment; yet this last may be facilitated by simple and natural
methods of studying it. Taught by masters like Ascham or Milton,
students might acquire the art of speaking and of writing the language
in its purity and elegance, as did these great masters in their day.
Ascham lays down this sensible rule: "He that will write well in any
tongue, must follow this advice of Aristotle: '_to speak as the common
people do, to think as wise men do, and so should every man understand
him, and the judgment of wise men about him_.'"
George Chapman, the translator of Homer, thus speaks of the scholarly
pedantries of his time, of which ours affords too many examples:--
"For as great clerks can use no English words,
Because (alas! great clerks) English affords,
Say they, no height nor copy,--a rude tongue,
Since 'tis their native,--but, in Greek and Latin
Their wits are rare, for thence true poesy sprung,
Through which, truth knows, they have but skill to chat in,
Compared with what they might have in their own."
Camden said, "that though our tongue may not be as sacred as the
Hebrew, nor as learned as the Greek, yet it is as fluent as the Latin,
as courteous as the Spanish, as court-like as the French, and as
amorous as the Italian; so that being beautified and enriched out of
these tongues, partly by enfranchising and endenizing foreign words,
partly by implanting new ones with artful composition, our tongue is as
copious, pithy, and significative as any in Europe."
If one would learn its riches at sight, let him glance along the pages
of Richardson's Dictionary; and at the same time survey its history
from Gower and Chaucer down to our time.
"If there be, what I believe there is," says Dr. Johnson, "in every
nation, a style which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of
phraseology so component and congenial to the analogy and principles
of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this
style is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among
those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of eloquence.
The polite are always catching modish expressions, and the learned
depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making
it better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar when
the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and
below refinement, where propriety resides, and where Shakespeare seems
to have gathered his comic dialogues. He is therefore more agreeable
to the ears of the present age than any other author equally remote,
and among his other excellences deserves to be studied as one of the
original masters of the language."
[Illustration]
MAY.
"Sweet country life, to such unknown
Whose lives are others, not their own,
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee."
--_Herrick._
RURAL AFFAIRS
MONDAY, 3.
Fair spring days, the farmers beginning the planting of the season's
crops. One cannot well forego the pleasures which the culture of a
garden affords. He must have a little spot upon which to bestow his
affections, and own his affinities with earth and sky. The profits in a
pecuniary way may be inconsiderable, but the pleasures are rewarding.
Formerly I allowed neither hoe, spade, nor rake, not handled by myself,
to approach my plants. But when one has put his garden within covers,
to be handled in a book, he fancies he has earned the privilege of
delegating the tillage thereafter, in part, to other hands, and may
please himself with its superintendence; especially when he is so
fortunate as to secure the services of any who can take their orders
without debate, and execute them with dispatch; and if he care to
compare opinions with them, find they have views of their own, and
respect for his. And the more agreeable if they have a pleasant humor
and the piety of lively spirits.
"In laborer's ballads oft more piety
God finds than in _Te Deum's_ melody."
"When our ancestors," says Cato, "praised a good man, they called him a
good agriculturist and a good husbandman; he was thought to be greatly
honored who was thus praised."
Without his plot of ground for tillage and ornamentation, a countryman
seems out of place, its culture and keeping being the best occupation
for keeping himself wholesome and sweet. The garden is the tie uniting
man and nature. How civic an orchard shows in a clearing,--a garden
in a prairie, as if nature waited for man to arrive and complete
her, by converting the wild into the human, and thus to marry beauty
and utility on the spot! A house, too, without garden or orchard, is
unfurnished, incomplete, does not fulfil our ideas of the homestead,
but stands isolate, defiant in its individualism, with a savage,
slovenly air, and distance, that lacks softening and blending with
the surrounding landscape. Besides, it were tantalizing to note the
natural advantages of one's grounds, and at the same time be unskilful
to complete what nature has sketched for the hand of art to adorn and
idealize. With a little skill, good taste, and small outlay of time
and pains, one may render any spot a pretty paradise of beauty and
comfort,--if these are not one in due combination, and not for himself
only, but for those who shall inherit when he shall have left it. The
rightful ownership in the landscape is born of one's genius, partakes
of his essence thus wrought with the substance of the soil, the
structures which he erects thereon. Whoever enriches and adorns the
smallest spot, lives not in vain. For him the poet sings, the moralist
points his choicest periods.
I know of nothing better suited to inspire a taste for rural affairs
than a Gardener's Almanac, containing matters good to be known by
country people. All the more attractive the volume if tastefully
illustrated, and contain reprints of select pastoral verses,
biographies, with portraits of those who have written on country
affairs, and lists of their works. The old herbals, too, with all their
absurdities, are still tempting books, and contain much information
important for the countryman to possess.[3]
[Footnote 3: To the list of ancient authors, as Cato, Columella, Varro,
Palladius, Virgil, Theocritus, Tibullus, selections might be added from
Cowley, Marlowe, Browne, Spenser, Tusser, Dyer, Phillips, Shenstone,
Cowper, Thomson, and others less known. Evelyn's works are of great
value, his Kalendarium Hortense particularly. And for showing the state
of agriculture and of the language in his time, Tusser's Five Hundred
Points of Husbandry is full of information, while his quaint humor
adds to his rugged rhymes a primitive charm. Then of the old herbals,
Gerard's is best known. He was the father of English herbalists, and
had a garden attached to his house in Holbern. Coles published his
Adam in Eden, the Paradise of Plants, in 1659; Austin his Treatise on
Fruit Trees ten years earlier. Dr. Holland's translation of the School
of Salerne, or the Regiment of Health, appeared in 1649. Thos. Tryon
wrote on the virtues of plants, and on health, about the same time, and
his works are very suggestive and valuable. Miller, gardener to the
Chelsea Gardens, gave the first edition of his Gardener's Dictionary
to the press in 1731. Sir William Temple also wrote sensibly on
herbs. Cowley's Six Books of Plants was published in English in 1708.
Phillips' History of Cultivated Plants, etc., published in 1822, is a
book of great merit. So is Culpepper's Herbal.]
Cowley and Evelyn are of rural authors the most attractive. Cowley's
Essays are delightful reading. Nor shall I forgive his biographer
for destroying the letters of a man of whom King Charles said at his
interment in Westminster Abbey, "Mr. Cowley has not left a better in
England." The friend and correspondent of the most distinguished poets,
statesmen, and gentlemen of his time, himself the first poet of his
day, his letters must have been most interesting and important, and but
for the unsettled temper of affairs, would doubtless have been added to
our polite literature.
Had King Charles remembered Cowley's friend Evelyn, the compliment both
to the living and dead would have been just. Evelyn was the best of
citizens and most loyal of subjects. A complete list of his writings
shows to what excellent uses he gave himself. The planter of forests in
his time, he might be profitably consulted as regards the replanting of
New England now.
Respecting his planting, and the origin of his Sylva, he writes to his
friend, Lady Sunderland, August, 1690:--
"As to the Kalendar your ladyship mentions, whatever assistance it may
be to some novice gardener, sure I am his lordship will find nothing in
it worth his notice, but an old inclination to an innocent diversion;
and the acceptance it found with my dear, and while he lived, worthy
friend, Mr. Cowley; upon whose reputation only it has survived seven
impressions, and is now entering on the eighth, with some considerable
improvement more agreeable to the present curiosity. 'Tis now, Madam,
almost forty years since I first writ it, when horticulture was not
much advanced in England, and near thirty years since it was published,
which consideration will, I hope, excuse its many defects. If in the
meantime it deserve the name of no unuseful trifle, 'tis all it is
capable of.
"When, many years ago, I came from rambling abroad, and a great deal
more since I came home than gave me much satisfaction, and, as events
have proved, scarce worth one's pursuit, I cast about how I should
employ the time which hangs on most young men's hands, to the best
advantage; and, when books and grave studies grew tedious, and other
impertinence would be pressing, by what innocent diversions I might
sometimes relieve myself without compliance to recreations I took no
felicity in, because they did not contribute to any improvement of
mind. This set me upon planting of trees, and brought forth my Sylva,
which book, infinitely beyond my expectations, is now also calling
for a fourth impression, and has been the occasion of propagating
many millions of useful timber trees throughout this nation, as I
may justify without immodesty, from many letters of acknowledgement
received from gentlemen of the first quality, and others altogether
strangers to me. His late Majesty, Charles II, was sometimes graciously
pleased to take notice of it to me; and that I had by that book alone
incited a world of planters to repair their broken estates and woods
which the greedy rebels had wasted and made such havoc of. Upon
encouragement, I was once speaking to a mighty man then in despotic
power to mention the great inclination I had to serve his majesty in a
little office then newly vacant (the salary I think hardly £300), whose
province was to inspect the timber trees in his majesty's forests,
etc., and take care of their culture and improvement; but this was
conferred upon another, who, I believe, had seldom been out of the
smoke of London, where, though there was a great deal of timber, there
were not many trees. I confess I had an inclination to the employment
upon a public account as well as its being suitable to my rural genius,
born as I was, at Watton, among woods.
"Soon after this, happened the direful conflagration of this city,
when, taking notice of our want of books of architecture in the English
tongue, I published those most useful directions of ten of the best
authors on that subject, whose works were very rarely to be had, all
written in French, Latin, or Italian, and so not intelligible to
our mechanics. What the fruit of that labor and cost has been, (for
the sculptures, which are elegant, were very chargeable,) the great
improvement of our workmen and several impressions of the copy since
will best testify.
"In this method I thought proper to begin planting trees, because they
would require time for growth, and be advancing to delight and shade at
least, and were, therefore, by no means to be neglected and deferred,
while buildings might be raised and finished in a summer or two, if the
owner pleased.
"Thus, Madam, I endeavored to do my countrymen some little service, in
as natural an order as I could for the improving and adorning of their
estates and dwellings, and, if possible, make them in love with those
useful and innocent pleasures, in exchange for a wasteful and ignoble
sloth which I had observed so universally corrupted an ingenious
education.
"To these I likewise added my little history of Chalcography, a
treatise of the perfection of painting and of libraries, medals, with
some other intermesses which might divert within doors as well as
altogether without."
PASTORALS.
SATURDAY, 8.
False were the muse, did she not bring
Our village poet's offering--
Haunts, fields, and groves, weaving his rhymes,
Leaves verse and fame to coming times.
Is it for the reason that rural life here in New England furnishes
nothing for pastoral verse, that our poets have as yet produced so
little? Yet we cannot have had almost three centuries' residence on
this side of the Atlantic, with old England's dialect, traditions, and
customs still current in our rural districts for perspective, not to
have so adorned life and landscape with poetic associations as to have
neither honey nor dew for hiving in sweet and tender verse, though it
should fall short of the antique or British models. Our fields and
rivers, brooks and groves, the rural occupations of country-folk,
have not been undeserving of being celebrated in appropriate verse.
Our forefathers delighted in Revolutionary lore. We celebrate natural
scenery, legends of foreign climes, historic events, but rarely indulge
in touches of simple country life. And the idyls of New England await
their poet, unless the following verses announce his arrival:--
NEW ENGLAND.
"My country, 'tis for thee I strike the lyre;
My country, wide as is the free wind's flight,
I prize New England as she lights her fire
In every Prairie's midst; and where the bright
Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern night,
She still is there the guardian on the tower,
To open for the world a purer hour.
"Could they but know the wild enchanting thrill
That in our homely houses fills the heart,
To feel how faithfully New England's will
Beats in each artery, and each small part
Of this great Continent, their blood would start
In Georgia, or where Spain once sat in state,
Or Texas, with her lone star, desolate.
· · · · ·
"'Tis a New-England thought, to make this land
The very home of Freedom, and the nurse
"Of each sublime emotion; she does stand
Between the sunny South, and the dread curse
Of God, who else should make her hearse
Of condemnation to this Union's life,--
She stands to heal this plague, and banish strife.
"I do not sing of this, but hymn the day
That gilds our cheerful villages and plains,
Our hamlets strewn at distance on the way,
Our forests and the ancient streams' domains;
We are a band of brothers, and our pains
Are freely shared; no beggar in our roads,
Content and peace within our fair abodes.
"In my small cottage on the lonely hill,
Where like a hermit I must bide my time,
Surrounded by a landscape lying still
All seasons through as in the winter's prime,
Rude and as homely as these verses chime,
I have a satisfaction which no king
Has often felt, if Fortune's happiest thing.
"'Tis not my fortune, which is meanly low,
'Tis not my merit that is nothing worth,
'Tis not that I have stores of thought below
Which everywhere should build up heaven on earth;
Nor was I highly favored in my birth;
Few friends have I, and they are much to me,
Yet fly above my poor society.
"But all about me live New-England men,
Their humble houses meet my daily gaze,--
The children of this land where Life again
Flows like a great stream in sunshiny ways,
This is a joy to know them, and my days
Are filled with love to meditate on them,--
These native gentlemen on Nature's hem.
"That I could take one feature of their life,
Then on my page a mellow light should shine;
Their days are holidays, with labor rife,
Labor the song of praise that sounds divine,
And better, far, than any hymn of mine;
The patient Earth sets platters for their food,
Corn, milk, and apples, and the best of good.
"See here no shining scenes for artist's eye,
This woollen frock shall make no painter's fame;
These homely tools all burnishing deny;
The beasts are slow and heavy, still or tame;
The sensual eye may think this labor lame;
'Tis in the man where lies the sweetest art,
His true endeavor in his earnest part.
· · · · ·
"He meets the year confiding; no great throws,
That suddenly bring riches, does he use,
But like Thor's hammer vast, his patient blows
Vanquish his difficult tasks, he does refuse
To tread the path, nor know the way he views;
No sad complaining words he uttereth,
But draws in peace a free and easy breath.
· · · · ·
"This man takes pleasure o'er the crackling fire,
His glittering axe subdued the monarch oak,
He earned the cheerful blaze by something higher
Than pensioned blows,--he owned the tree he stroke,
And knows the value of the distant smoke
When he returns at night, his labor done,
Matched in his action with the long day's sun.
· · · · ·
"I love these homely mansions, and to me
A farmer's house seems better than a king's;
The palace boasts its art, but liberty
And honest pride and toil are splendid things;
They carved this clumsy lintel, and it brings
The man upon its front; Greece hath her art,--
But this rude homestead shows the farmer's heart.
"I love to meet him on the frozen road,
How manly is his eye, as clear as air;--
He cheers his beasts without the brutal goad,
His face is ruddy, and his features fair;
His brave good-day sounds like an honest prayer;
This man is in his place and feels his trust,--
'Tis not dull plodding through the heavy crust.
"And when I have him at his homely hearth,
Within his homestead, where no ornament
Glows on the mantel but his own true worth,
I feel as if within an Arab's tent
His hospitality is more than meant;
I there am welcome, as the sunlight is,
I must feel warm to be a friend of his.
· · · · ·
"How many brave adventures with the cold,
Built up the cumberous cellar of plain stone;
How many summer heats the bricks did mould,
That make the ample fireplace, and the tone
Of twice a thousand winds sing through the zone
Of rustic paling round the modest yard,--
These are the verses of this simple bard.
"Who sings the praise of Woman in our clime?
I do not boast her beauty or her grace;
Some humble duties render her sublime,
She the sweet nurse of this New-England race,
The flower upon the country's sterile face,
The mother of New England's sons, the pride
Of every house where these good sons abide.
"There is a Roman splendor in her smile,
A tenderness that owes its depth to toil;
Well may she leave the soft voluptuous wile
That forms the woman of a softer soil;
She does pour forth herself a fragrant oil
Upon the dark austerities of Fate,
And make a garden else all desolate.
"From early morn to fading eve she stands,
Labor's best offering on the shrine of worth,
And Labor's jewels glitter on her hands,
To make a plenty out of partial dearth,
To animate the heaviness of earth,
To stand and serve serenely through the pain,
To nurse a vigorous race and ne'er complain.
"New-England women are New-England's pride,
'Tis fitting they should be so, they are free,--
Intelligence doth all their acts decide,
Such deeds more charming than old ancestry.
I could not dwell beside them, and not be
Enamored of them greatly; they are meant
To charm the Poet, by their pure intent.
"A natural honest bearing of their lot,
Cheerful at work, and happy when 'tis done;
They shine like stars within the humblest cot,
And speak for freedom centred all in one.
From every river's side I hear the son
Of some New-England woman answer me,
'Joy to our Mothers, who did make us free.'
"And when those wanderers turn to home again,
See the familiar village, and the street
Where they once frolicked, they are less than men
If in their eyes the tear-drops do not meet,
To feel how soon their mothers they shall greet:
Sons of New England have no dearer day,
Than once again within those arms to lay.
"These are her men and women; this the sight
That greets me daily when I pass their homes;
It is enough to love, it throws some light
Over the gloomiest hours; the fancy roams
No more to Italy or Greece; the loams
Whereon we tread are sacred by the lives
Of those who till them, and our comfort thrives.
"Here might one pass his days, content to be
The witness of those spectacles alway;
Bring if you may your treasure from the sea,
My pride is in my Townsmen, where the day
Rises so fairly on a race who lay
Their hopes on Heaven after their toil is o'er,
Upon this rude and bold New-England shore.
"Vainly ye pine woods rising on the height
Should lift your verdant boughs and cones aloft;
Vainly ye winds should surge around in might,
Or murmur o'er the meadow stanzas soft;
To me should nothing yield or lake or crost,
Had not the figures of the pleasant scene
Like trees and fields an innocent demean.
"I feel when I am here some pride elate,
Proud of your presence who do duty here,
For I am some partaker of your fate,
Your manly anthem vibrates in my ear;
Your hearts are heaving unconsumed by fear;
Your modest deeds are constantly supplied;
Your simpler truths by which you must abide.
"Therefore I love a cold and flinty realm,
I love the sky that hangs New England o'er,
And if I were embarked, and at the helm
I ran my vessel on New England's shore,
And dashed upon her crags, would live no more,
Rather than go seek those lands of graves
Where men who tread the fields are cowering slaves."
W. ELLERY CHANNING.
CONVERSATION.
MONDAY, 17.
If one would learn the views of some of our most thoughtful New-England
men and women, he will find their fullest and freshest expression in
the discussions of the Radical Club. Almost every extreme of Liberalism
is there represented, and its manners and methods are as various as
the several members who take part in the readings and conversations.
It is assumed that all subjects proposed for discussion are open to
the freest consideration, and that each is entitled to have the
widest scope and hospitality allowed it. Truth is spherical, and seen
differently according to the culture, temperament, and disposition of
those who survey it from their individual standpoint. Of two or more
sides, none can be absolutely right, and conversation fails if it
find not the central truth from which all radiate. Debate is angular,
conversation circular and radiant of the underlying unity. Who speaks
deeply excludes all possibility of controversy. His affirmation is
self-sufficient: his assumption final, absolute.
Yes, yes, I see it must be so,
The Yes alone resolves the No.
Thus holding himself above the arena of dispute, he gracefully settles
a question by speaking so home to the core of the matter as to
undermine the premise upon which an issue had been taken. For whoso
speaks to the Personality drives beneath the grounds of difference, and
deals face to face with principles and ideas.[4]
[Footnote 4: "Dialectics treat of pure thought and of the method of
arriving at it. A current misapprehension on the subject of dialectics
here presents itself. Most people understand it to mean argument, and
they believe that truths may be arrived at and held by such argument
placed in due logical form. They demand the proof of an assertion,
and imply something of weakness in the reasoning power in those who
fail to give this. It is well to understand what proof means. Kant
has shown us in his Critique of Pure Reason, that the course of all
such ratiocination is a movement in a circle. One assumes in his
premises what he wishes to prove, and then unfolds it as the result.
The assumptions are in all cases mere sides of antinomies or opposite
theses, each of which has validity and may be demonstrated against the
other. Thus the debater moves round and round and presupposes one-sided
premises which must be annulled before he can be in a state to perceive
the truth. Argument of this kind the accomplished dialectician never
engages in; it is simply egotism when reduced to its lowest terms. The
question assumed premises that were utterly inadmissible.
"The process of true proof does not proceed in the manner of
argumentation; it does not assume its whole result in its premises,
which are propositions of reflection, and then draw them out
syllogistically. Speculative truth is never contained analytically in
any one or in all of such propositions of reflection. It is rather the
negative of them, and hence is transcendent in its entire procedure.
It rises step by step, synthetically, through the negation of the
principle assumed at the beginning, until, finally, the presupposition
of all is reached. It is essentially a going from the part to the
whole. Whatever is seized by the dialectic is turned on its varied
sides, and careful note is made of its defects, _i. e._ what it lacks
within itself to make it possible. That which it implies is added to
it, as belonging to its totality, and thus onward progress is made
until the entire comprehension of its various phases is attained.
The ordinary analytic proof is seen to be shallow after more or less
experience in it. The man of insight sees that it is a 'child's
play,--a mere placing of the inevitable dogmatism a step or two
back--that is all. _Real speculation proceeds synthetically beyond what
it finds inadequate, until it reaches the adequate._'"
WM. T. HARRIS.]
Good discourse sinks differences and seeks agreements. It avoids
argument, by finding a common basis of agreement; and thus escapes
controversy, by rendering it superfluous. Pertinent to the platform,
debate is out of place in the parlor. Persuasion is the better weapon
in this glittering game.
Nothing rarer than great conversation, nothing more difficult to prompt
and guide. Like magnetism, it obeys its own hidden laws, sympathies,
antipathies, is sensitive to the least breath of criticism. It requires
natural tact, a familiarity with these fine laws, long experience, a
temperament predisposed to fellowship, to hold high the discourse by
keeping the substance of things distinctly in view throughout the
natural windings of the dialogue. Many can argue, not many converse.
Real humility is rare everywhere and at all times. If women have the
larger share, and venture less in general conversation, it may be from
the less confidence, not in themselves, but in those who have hitherto
assumed the lead, even in matters more specially concerning woman. Few
men are diffident enough to speak beautifully and well on the finest
themes.
Conversation presupposes a common sympathy in the subject, a great
equality in the speakers; absence of egotism, a tender criticism of
what is spoken. 'Tis this great equality and ingenuousness that renders
this game of questions so charming and entertaining, and the more that
it invites the indefinable complement of sex. Only where the sexes are
brought into sympathy, is conversation possible. Where women are, men
speak best; for the most part, below themselves, where women are not.
And the like holds presumably of companies composed solely of women.
Good discourse wins from the bashful and discreet what they have to
speak, but would not, without this provocation. The forbidding faces
are Fates to overbear and blemish true fellowship. We give what we are,
not necessarily what we know; nothing more, nothing less, and only to
our kind, those playing best their parts who have the nimblest wits,
taking out the egotism, the nonsense; putting wisdom, information, in
their place. Humor to dissolve, and wit to fledge your theme, if you
will rise out of commonplace; any amount of erudition, eloquence of
phrase, scope of comprehension; figure and symbol sparingly but fitly.
Who speaks to the eye, speaks to the whole mind.
Most people are too exclusively individual for conversing. It costs
too great expenditure of magnetism to dissolve them; who cannot leave
himself out of his discourse, but embarrasses all who take part in it.
Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only.
Conversation with plain people proves more agreeable and profitable,
usually, than with companies more pretentious and critical. It is wont
to run the deeper and stronger without impertinent interruptions,
inevitable where cultivated egotism and self-assurance are present
with such. There remains this resource, of ignoring civilly the
interruption, and proceeding as if the intrusion had not been
interposed.
"Oft when the wise
Appears not wise, he works the greater good."
"Never allow yourself," said Goethe, "to be betrayed into a dispute.
Wise men fall into ignorance if they dispute with ignorant men."
Persuasion is the finest artillery. It is the unseen guns that do
execution without smoke or tumult. If one cannot win by force of wit,
without cannonade of abuse, flourish of trumpet, he is out of place in
parlors, ventures where he can neither forward nor grace fellowship.
The great themes are feminine, and to be dealt with delicately. Debate
is masculine; conversation is feminine.
Here is a piece of excellent counsel from Plotinus:--
"And this may everywhere be considered, that he who pursues our form of
philosophy, will, besides all other graces, genuinely exhibit simple
and venerable manners, in conjunction with the possession of wisdom,
and will endeavor not to become insolent or proud, but will possess
confidence, accompanied with reason, with sincerity and candor, and
great circumspection."
MARGARET FULLER.
THURSDAY, 20.
Horace Greeley has just issued from the "Tribune" office a uniform
edition of Margaret Fuller's works, together with her Memoirs first
published twenty years ago. And now, while woman is the theme of public
discussion, her character and writings may be studied to advantage.
The sex has had no abler advocate. Her book entitled "Woman in the
Nineteenth Century" anticipated most of the questions now in the air,
and the leaders in the movement for woman's welfare might take its
counsels as the text for their action. Her methods, too, suggest the
better modes of influence. That she wrote books is the least of her
merits. She was greatest when she dropped her pen. She spoke best
what others essayed to say, and what women speak best. Hers was a
glancing logic that leaped straight to the sure conclusion; a sibylline
intelligence that divined oracularly; knew by anticipation; in the
presence always, the open vision. Alas, that so much should have been
lost to us, and this at the moment when it seemed we most needed and
could profit by it! Was it some omen of that catastrophe which gave her
voice at times the tones of a sadness almost preternatural? What figure
were she now here in times and triumphs like ours! She seemed to have
divined the significance of woman, dared where her sex had hesitated
hitherto, was gifted to untie social knots which the genius of a Plato
even failed to disentangle. "Either sex alone," he said, "was but half
itself." Yet he did not complement the two in honorable marriage in his
social polity. "If a house be rooted in wrong," says Euripides, "it
will blossom in vice." As the oak is cradled in the acorn's cup, so the
state in the family. Domestic licentiousness saps every institution,
the morals of the community at large,--a statement trite enough, but
till it is no longer needful to be made is the commonwealth established
on immovable foundations.
"Revere no God whom men adore by night."
Let the sexes be held to like purity of morals, and equal justice meted
to them for any infraction of the laws of social order. Women are the
natural leaders of society in whatever concerns private morals, lead
where it were safe for men to follow. About the like number as of men,
doubtless, possess gifts to serve the community at large; while most
women, as most men, will remain private citizens, fulfilling private
duties. Her vote as such will tell for personal purity, for honor,
temperance, justice, mercy, peace,--the domestic virtues upon which
communities are founded, and in which they must be firmly rooted to
prosper and endure. The unfallen souls are feminine.
Crashaw's Ideal Woman should win the love and admiration of her sex as
well as ours.
"Whoe'er she be
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;
"Where'er she lie
Lock'd up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny;
"Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;
"Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine,
"Meet you her my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my absent kisses.
"I wish her beauty
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire, or glistening shoe-ty.
"Something more than
Taffata or tissue can,
Or rampant feather, or rich fan.
"More than the spoil
Of shop, or silkworm's toil,
Or a bought blush, or a set smile.
"A face that's best
By its own beauty drest,
And can alone command the rest.
"A face made up
Out of no other shop
Than what nature's white hand sets ope.
"A cheek where youth
And blood, with pen of truth,
Write what the reader sweetly rueth.
"A cheek where grows
More than a morning rose,
Which to no box his being owes.
"Lips, where all day
A lover's kiss may play,
Yet carry nothing thence away.
"Looks, that oppress
Their richest tires, but dress
And clothe their simplest nakedness.
"Eyes, that displaces
The neighbor diamond and out-faces
That sunshine by their own sweet graces.
"Tresses, that wear
Jewels, but to declare
How much themselves more precious are.
"Whose native ray
Can tame the wanton day
Of gems that in their bright shades play.
"Each ruby there,
Or pearl that dare appear,
Be its own blush, be its own tear.
"A well-tamed heart,
For whose more noble smart
Love may be long choosing a dart.
"Eyes, that bestow
Full quivers on Love's bow,
Yet pay less arrows than they owe.
"Smiles, that can warm
The blood, yet teach a charm
That chastity shall take no harm.
"Blushes, that been
The burnish of no sin,
Nor flames of aught too hot within.
"Days, that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a fore-spent night of sorrow.
"Days, that in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind are day all night.
"Life, that dares send
A challenge to his end,
And when it comes say, 'Welcome, friend.'
"Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old Winter's head with flowers.
"Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers,
'Bove all, nothing within that lowers.
"Whate'er delight
Can make day's forehead bright,
Or give down to the wings of night.
"In her whole frame,
Have nature all the name,
Art and ornament the shame.
"Her flattery,
Picture and poesy,
Her counsel her own virtue be.
"I wish her store
Of worth may leave her poor
Of wishes; and I wish--no more."
CHILDHOOD.
SUNDAY, 23.
My little grandsons visit me at this becoming season of birds and apple
blossoms. They accompany me to the brook, and are pleased with their
willow whistles and sail-boats,--toys delightful to childhood from the
first. Their manners, that first of accomplishments, delight us in
return, showing that the sense of beauty has dawned and their culture
fairly begun. 'Tis a culture to watch them through their days' doings.
Endless their fancies and engagements. What arts, accomplishments,
graces, are woven in their playful panorama; the scene shifting with
the mood, and all in keeping with the laws of thought and of things.
Verily, there are invisible players playing their parts through these
pretty puppets all day long.
To conceive a child's acquirements as originating in nature, dating
from his birth into his body, seems an atheism that only a shallow
metaphysical theology could entertain in a time of such marvellous
natural knowledge as ours. "I shall never persuade myself," said
Synesius, "to believe my soul to be of like age with my body." And yet
we are wont to date our birth, as that of the babes we christen, from
the body's advent so duteously inscribed in our family registers, as if
time and space could chronicle the periods of the immortal mind, and
mark its longevity by our chronometers.[5] Only a God could inspire a
child with the intimations seen in its first pulse-plays; the sprightly
attainments of a single day's doings afford the liveliest proofs of
an omniscient Deity revealing his attributes in the motions of the
little one! Nor is maternity less a special inspiration throbbing
ceaselessly with childhood as a protecting Providence, lifelong. Comes
not the mother to make the Creator's word sure that all he has made
is verily good? For without mother and wife, what more than a rough
outline of divinity were drawn? "That man," says Euripides, "hath made
his fortune who hath married a good wife." For what would some of us
have accomplished, what should we have not done, misdone, without her
counsels to temper our adventurous idealism? Heaven added a new power
to creation when it sent woman into it to complete what He had designed.
[Footnote 5: "Infants," says Olympiodorus, "are not seen to laugh
for some time after birth, but pass the greater part of their time
in sleep; however, in their sleep they appear both to smile and cry.
But can this any otherwise happen than through the soul agitating the
circulations of their animal nature in conformity with the passions it
has experienced before birth into the body? Besides, our looking into
ourselves when we seek to discover any truth, shows that we inwardly
contain truth, though concealed in the darkness of oblivion." Does atom
animate and revive thought, or thought animate and illuminate atom? And
which the elder?]
"He is a parricide to his mother's name,
And with an impious hand, murthers her fame,
Who wrongs the praise of woman; that dares write
Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite
The milk they lent us."
When one becomes indifferent to women, to children and young people, he
may know that he is superannuated, and has withdrawn from whatsoever is
sweetest and purest in human existence. One of the happiest rewards of
age is the enjoyment of children. And when these inherit one's better
gifts and graces, sinking the worse, or omitting them altogether, what
can be added to fill the cup of parental gratitude and delight? I fail
to comprehend how the old and young folks are to enjoy a future heaven
together, unless they have learned to partake in the enjoyments of
this. Shall we picture future separate heavens for them?
Sing, sing, the immortals,
The ancients of days,
Ever crowding the portals
Of earth's populous ways;
The babes ever stealing
Into Eden's glad feeling;
The fore-world revealing
God's face, ne'er concealing.
Sing, sing, the child's fancies,
Its graces and glances,
Plans, pastimes, surprises,
Slips, sorrows, surmises.
Youth's trials and treasures,
Its hopes without measures,
Its labors and leisures;
His world all before him,
High heaven all o'er him;
Life's lengthening story,
Opening glory on glory;
By age ne'er o'ertaken,
By youth near forsaken.
Sings none this fair story,
But dwellers in its glory;
Who would the youth see,
A youth he must be;
Heaven's kingdom alone
To children doth come.
The family is the sensitive plant of civility, the measure of culture.
Take the census of the homes, and you have the sum total of character
and civilization in any community. Sown in the family, the seeds of
holiness are here to be cherished and ripened for immortality. Here is
the seminary of the virtues, the graces, accomplishments, that adorn
and idealize existence. From this college we graduate for better or for
worse. This faculty of the affections, this drinking freshly at the
springs of genius and sensibility, this intimacy with the loveliest and
best in life, is the real schooling, the truest discipline, without
which neither mind nor heart flourish; all other advantages being
of secondary account; wealth, wit, beauty, social position, books,
travel, fellowships, are but sounding names, opportunities of inferior
importance, compared with this endowment of personal influences.
Here, in this atmosphere of love and sympathy, character thrives and
ripens. And were the skill for touching its tender sensibilities,
calling forth its budding gifts, equal to the charms the child has
for us, what noble characters would graduate from our families,--the
community receiving its members accomplished in the Personal graces,
the state its patriots, the church its saints, all glorifying the
race. One day the highest culture of the choicest gifts will be deemed
essential to the heads of families, and the arts of nurture and of
culture honored as the art of arts.
"Boys are dear to divinity," dear to all mankind. What more charming
than to watch the dawning intelligence, clearing itself from the mists
which obscure its vision of the world into which it has but lately
entered? The more attractive, since a fine sentiment then mingles
mythically with the freshness of thought, confuses the sexes, as if
the boy were being transformed into the girl, first entering her wider
world of affection; and the girl in turn were being metamorphosed into
the boy, first becoming conscious of the newer world of intellect; each
entering, by instinct, into the mind of the other. I know not which
is the more charming each in their ways, the coy manners of girls, or
the shy behavior of beautiful boys,--mysteries both to each other, nor
less to their elders. 'Tis the youthful sentiment, whether feminine
or masculine, that renders friendship delightful, the world lovely;
this gone, all is gone that life can enjoy. "There are periods in one's
life," says Pythagoras, "which it is not in the power of any casual
person to connect finely, these being expelled by one another, unless
some sympathetic friend conduct him from birth in a beautiful and
upright manner."
PYTHAGORAS.
Of the great educators of antiquity, I esteem Pythagoras the most
eminent and successful. Everything of his doctrine and discipline comes
commended by its elegance and humanity, and justifies the name he bore
of the golden-souled Samian, and founder of the Greek culture. He seems
to have stood in providential nearness to the human sensibility, as
if his were a maternal relation as well, and he owned the minds whom
he nurtured and educated. The first of philosophers, taking the name
for its modesty of pretension, he justified his claim to it in the
attainments and services of his followers; his school having given us
Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Plutarch, Plotinus, and others of almost
equal fame, founders of states and cultures.
He was most fortunate in his biographer. For, next to the Gospels,
I know of nothing finer of the kind than the mythological portrait
drawn of him by Jamblichus, his admiring disciple, and a philosopher
worthy of his master. How mellow the coloring, the drapery disposed
so gracefully about the person he paints! I look upon this piece of
nature with ever fresh delight, so reverend, humane, so friendly in
aspect and Olympian. Nor is the interest less, but enhanced rather
by the interfusion of fable into the personal history, the charm of
a subtle idealism being thus given it, relating him thereby to the
sacred names of all times. There is in him an Oriental splendor, as
of sunrise, reflected on statues, blooming in orchards, an ambrosial
beauty and sweetness, as of autumnal fruits and of women.
"In all he did,
Some picture of the golden times was hid."
Personally, he is said to have been the most beautiful and godlike of
all those who had been celebrated in history before his time. As a
youth, his aspect was venerable and his habits strictly temperate, so
that he was reverenced and honored by elderly men. He attracted the
attention of all who saw him, and appeared admirable in all eyes. He
was adorned by piety and discipline, by a mode of life transcendently
good, by firmness of soul, and by a body in due subjection to the
mandates of reason. In all his words and actions, he discovered an
inimitable quiet and serenity, not being subdued at any time by
anger, emulation, contention, or any precipitation of conduct. He
was reverenced by the multitude as one under the influence of divine
inspiration. He abstained from all intoxicating drinks, and from animal
food, confining himself to a chaste nutriment. Hence, his sleep was
short and undisturbed, his soul vigilant and pure, his body in a state
of perfect and invariable health. He was free from the superstitions
of his time, and pervaded with a deep sense of duty towards God, and
veneration for his divine attributes and immanency in things. He fixed
his mind so intently on the attainment of wisdom, that systems and
mysteries inaccessible to others were opened to him by his magic genius
and sincerity of purpose. The great principle with which he started,
that of being a seeker rather than possessor of truth, seemed ever to
urge him forward with a diligence and an activity unprecedented in the
history of the past, and perhaps unequalled since. He visited every
man who could claim any degree of fame for wisdom or learning, whilst
the relics of antiquity and the simplest operations of nature seemed
to yield to his researches; and we moderns are using his eyes in many
departments of activity into which pure thought enters, being indebted
to him for important discoveries alike in science and metaphysics.
"His institution at Crotona was the most comprehensive and complete of
any of which we read. His aim being at once a philosophical school,
a religious brotherhood, and a political association. And all these
characters appear to have been inseparably united in the founder's
mind. It must be considered as a proof of upright intentions in
Pythagoras which ought to rescue him from all suspicion of selfish
motives, that he chose for his associates persons whom he deemed
capable of grasping the highest truths which he could communicate, and
was not only willing to teach them all he knew, but regarded the utmost
cultivation of the intellectual faculties as a necessary preparation
for the work to which he destined them. He instituted a society, an
order, as one may now call it, composed of young men, three hundred
in number, carefully selected from the noblest families, not only of
Crotona, but of the other Italian cities.
"Those who confided themselves to the guidance of his doctrine and
discipline, conducted themselves in the following manner:--
"They performed their morning walks alone in places where there
happened to be an appropriate solitude and quiet, and where there were
temples and groves, and other things adapted to give delight. For
they thought it was not proper to converse with any one till they had
rendered their own soul sedate and co-harmonized with the reasoning
power. For they apprehended it to be a thing of a turbulent nature to
mingle in a crowd as soon as they rose from bed. But after the morning
walk, they associated with each other, and employed themselves in
discussing doctrines and disciplines, and in the correction of their
manners and lives.
"They employed their time after dinner, which consisted of bread and
honey without wine, in domestic labors and economies, and in the
hospitalities due to strangers and their guests, according to the laws.
All business of this sort was transacted during these hours of the day.
"When it was evening, they again betook themselves to walking, yet not
singly as in the morning walk, but in parties of two or three, calling
to mind, as they walked, the disciplines which they had learned, and
exercising themselves in beautiful studies.
"After bathing again, they went to supper; no more than ten meeting
together for this purpose. This meal they finished before the setting
of the sun. It was of wine and maize, bread and salad. They were of
opinion that any animal, not naturally noxious to the human race,
should neither be injured nor slain.
"After supper, libations were performed; and these were succeeded by
readings, the youngest reading, and the eldest ordering what should be
read and after what manner.
"They wore a white and pure garment, and slept on beds the coverlets of
which were of white linen."
CONVERSATION WITH CHILDREN.
MONDAY, 24.
My book of Conversations, held with Children in Boston near forty years
ago, has found an admiring reader at last. He writes:--
"I have just found in a second-hand bookstore your two volumes
of Conversations on the Gospels, and have read them with benefit
and delight. Nowhere have I seen the Gospels so spiritualized, so
rationalized, Platonized. The _naïveté_ aside, it seems the product
of a company of idealists. Is it possible that common human nature in
children, thrown upon its own resources, can exhibit such intelligence,
or instinct, if you please to call it so? Were these children taken as
they came, or were they selected, culled?"
They came from families occupying various social advantages, and were a
fair average of children thus born and bred. I give a sample of one of
the conversations as reported from their lips at the time. Their ages
were from six to twelve years.
CONVERSATION ON WORSHIP.
Mr. Alcott read (having previously read the beginning) the remainder of
the Conversation of Jesus with the woman of Samaria (John iv. 16-30),--
16. Jesus saith unto her, Go call thy husband, and come hither.
17. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto
her, Thou hast well said I have no husband:
18. For thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not
thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.
19. The woman said unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.
20. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in
Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
21. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father.
22. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews.
23. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the father seeketh
such to worship him.
24. God _is_ a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship _him_
in spirit and in truth.
25. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is
called Christ; when he is come, he will tell us all things.
26. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am _he_.
27. And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked
with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest
thou with her?
28. The woman then left her water-pot, and went her way into the
city, and saith to the men,
29. Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did: is not
this the Christ?
30. Then they went out of the city, and came unto him.
Before he had time to ask the usual question,--
SAMUEL T. (_spoke_). I was most interested in this verse: "He that
drinks of this water shall thirst again, but he that drinks of the
water that I shall give him, shall never thirst." He means by this,
that those who heard what he taught, and did it, should live always,
should never die, their spirits should never die.
MR. ALCOTT. Can spirits die?
SAMUEL T. For a spirit to die is to leave off being good.
EDWARD J. I was interested in the words, "For the water I shall give
him will be in him a well of water." I think it means that when people
are good and getting better, it is like water springing up always.
They have more and more goodness.
SAMUEL R. Water is an emblem of holiness.
MR. ALCOTT. Water means spirit, pure and unsoiled.
EDWARD J. It is holy spirit.
ELLEN. I was most interested in these words: "Ye worship ye know not
what." The Samaritans worship idols, and there was no meaning to that.
MR. ALCOTT. What do you mean by their worshipping idols?
ELLEN. They cared about things more than God.
MR. ALCOTT. What kind of false worship do you think Jesus was thinking
about when he said: "Woman, the hour is coming and now is, when neither
in this mountain--"?
ELLEN. Oh! she thought the place of worship was more important than the
worship itself.
MR. ALCOTT. Well! how did Jesus answer that thought?
ELLEN. He told her what she ought to worship, which was more important
than where.
MR. ALCOTT. Some of you, perhaps, have made this mistake, and thought
that we only worshipped God in churches, and on Sundays. How is
it,--who has thought so?
(_Several held up hands, smiling._)
Who knew that we could worship God anywhere?
(_Others held up hands._)
What other worship is there besides that in the church?
EDWARD J. The worship in our hearts.
MR. ALCOTT. How is that carried on?
EDWARD J. By being good.
NATHAN. We worship God by growing better.
AUGUSTINE. We worship God when we repent of doing wrong.
JOSIAH. I was most interested in this verse: "God is a spirit, and they
that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." It means
that to feel our prayers is more important than to say the words.
LEMUEL. And when we pray and pray sincerely.
MR. ALCOTT. What is praying sincerely?
LEMUEL. Praying the truth.
MR. ALCOTT. What is to be done in praying the truth? When you think of
prayer, do you think of a position of the body--of words?
LEMUEL (_earnestly_). I think of something else, but I cannot express
it.
MR. ALCOTT. Josiah is holding up his hand; can he express it?
JOSIAH (_burst out_). To pray, Mr. Alcott, is to be good, really; you
know it is better to be bad before people and to be good to God alone,
because then we are good for goodness sake, and not to be seen, and
not for people's sake. Well, so it is about prayer. There must be
nothing outward with prayer; but we must have some words, sometimes;
sometimes we need not. If we don't feel the prayer, it is worse than
never to say a word of prayer. It is wrong not to pray, but it is more
wrong to speak prayer and not pray. We had better do nothing about it,
Mr. Alcott! we must say words in a prayer, and we must feel the words
we say, and we must do what belongs to the words.
MR. ALCOTT. Oh! there must be doing, must there?
JOSIAH. Oh! yes, Mr. Alcott! doing is the most important part. We must
ask God for help, and at the same time try to do the thing we are to be
helped about. If a boy should be good all day, and have no temptation,
it would not be very much; there would be no improvement; but if he had
temptation, he could pray and feel the prayer, and try to overcome it,
and would overcome it; and then there would be a real prayer and a real
improvement. That would be something. Temptation is always necessary to
a real prayer, I think. I don't believe there is ever any real prayer
before there is a temptation; because we may think and feel and say our
prayer; but there cannot be any doing, without there is something to be
done.
MR. ALCOTT. Well, Josiah, that will do now. Shall some one else speak?
JOSIAH. Oh, Mr. Alcott, I have not half done!
EDWARD J. Mr. Alcott, what is the use of responding in church?
MR. ALCOTT. Cannot you tell?
EDWARD J. No; I never knew.
JOSIAH. Oh! Mr. Alcott!
MR. ALCOTT. Well, Josiah, do you know?
JOSIAH. Why, Edward! is it not just like a mother's telling her child
the words? The child wants to pray; it don't know how to express its
real thoughts, as we often say to Mr. Alcott here; and the mother says
words, and the child repeats after her the words.
EDWARD J. Yes; but I don't see what good it does.
JOSIAH. What! if the mother says the words, and the child repeats them
and feels them,--really wants the things that are prayed for,--can't
you see that it does some good?
EDWARD J. It teaches the word-prayer--it is not the real prayer.
JOSIAH. Yet it must be the real prayer, and the real prayer must have
some words.
But, Mr. Alcott, I think it would be a great deal better, if, at
church, everybody prayed for themselves. I don't see why one person
should pray for all the rest. Why could not the minister pray for
himself, and the people pray for themselves? and why should not all
communicate their thoughts? Why should only one speak? Why should not
all be preachers? Everybody could say something; at least, everybody
could say their own prayers, for they know what they want. Every person
knows the temptations they have, and people are tempted to do different
things. Mr. Alcott, I think Sunday ought to come oftener.
MR. ALCOTT. Our hearts can make all time Sunday.
JOSIAH. Why, then, nothing could be done! There must be week-days, I
know--some week-days; I said, Sunday oftener.
MR. ALCOTT. But you wanted the prayers to be doing prayers. Now some of
the rest may tell me, how you could pray doing prayers.
GEORGE K. Place is of no consequence. I think prayer is in our hearts.
Christian prayed in the cave of Giant Despair. We can pray anywhere,
because we can have faith anywhere.
MR. ALCOTT. Faith, then, is necessary?
GEORGE K. Yes; for it is faith that makes the prayer.
MR. ALCOTT. Suppose an instance of prayer in yourself.
GEORGE K. I can pray going to bed or getting up.
MR. ALCOTT. You are thinking of time, place, words.
GEORGE K. And feelings and thoughts.
MR. ALCOTT. And action?
GEORGE K. Yes; action comes after.
JOHN B. When we have been doing wrong and are sorry, we pray to God to
take away the evil.
MR. ALCOTT. What evil, the punishment?
JOHN B. No; we want the forgiveness.
MR. ALCOTT. What is for-give-ness? Is it anything given?
LEMUEL. Goodness, holiness.
JOHN B. And the evil is taken away.
MR. ALCOTT. Is there any action in all this?
JOHN B. Why, yes; there is thought and feeling.
MR. ALCOTT. But it takes the body also to act; what do the hands do?
JOHN B. There is no prayer in the hands.
MR. ALCOTT. You have taken something that belongs to another; you pray
to be forgiven; you wish not to do so again; you are sorry. Is there
anything to do?
JOHN B. If you injure anybody, and can repair it, you must, and you
will, if you have prayed sincerely; but that is not the prayer.
MR. ALCOTT. Would the prayer be complete without it?
JOHN B. No.
ANDREW. Prayer is in the spirit.
MR. ALCOTT. Does the body help the spirit?
ANDREW. It don't help the prayer.
MR. ALCOTT. Don't the lips move?
ANDREW. But have the lips anything to do with the prayer?
MR. ALCOTT. Yes; they may. The whole nature may act together; the body
pray; and I want you to tell an instance of a prayer in which are
thoughts, feelings, action; which involves the whole nature, body and
all. There may be prayer in the palms of our hands.
ANDREW. Why, if I had hurt anybody, and was sorry and prayed to be
forgiven, I suppose I should look round for some medicine and try to
make it well.
(_Mr. Alcott here spoke of the connection of the mind with the body, in
order to make his meaning clearer._)
SAMUEL R. If I had a bad habit, and should ask God for help to break
it; and then should try so as really to break it, that would be a
prayer.
CHARLES. Suppose I saw a poor beggar boy hurt or sick, and all
bleeding; and I had very nice clothes, and was afraid to soil them, or
from any such cause should pass him by, and by and by I should look
back and see another boy helping him, and should be really sorry and
pray to be forgiven, that would be a real prayer; but if I had done the
kindness at the time of it, that would have been a deeper prayer.
AUGUSTINE. When anybody has done wrong, and does not repent for a good
while, but at last repents and prays to be forgiven, it may be too late
to do anything about it; yet that might be a real prayer.
MR. ALCOTT. Imagine a real doing prayer in your life.
LUCIA. Suppose, as I was going home from school, some friend of mine
should get angry with me, and throw a stone at me; I could pray not to
be tempted to do the same, to throw a stone at her, and would not.
MR. ALCOTT. And would the not doing anything in that case be a prayer
and an action? Keeping your body still would be the body's part of it.
LUCIA. Yes.
ELLEN. I heard a woman say, once, that she could pray best when she
was at work; that when she was scouring the floor she would ask God to
cleanse her mind.
MR. ALCOTT. I will now vary my question. Is there any prayer in
Patience?
ALL. A great deal.
MR. ALCOTT. In Impatience?
ALL. No; not any.
MR. ALCOTT. In Doubt?
GEORGE K. No; but in Faith.
MR. ALCOTT. In Laziness?
ALL (_but Josiah_). No; no kind of prayer.
JOSIAH. I should think that Laziness was the prayer of the body,
Mr. Alcott.
MR. ALCOTT. Yes; it seems so. The body tries to be still more body; it
tries to get down into the clay; it tries to sink; but the spirit is
always trying to lift it up and make it do something.
EDWARD J. Lazy people sometimes have passions that make them act.
MR. ALCOTT. Yes; they act downwards. Is there any prayer in
Disobedience?
ALL. No.
MR. ALCOTT. Is there any in submission? In forbearing when injured? In
suffering for a good object? In self-sacrifice?
ALL (_eagerly to each question_). Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
(_Mr. Alcott here made some very interesting remarks on loving God with
all our heart, soul, mind, etc., and the Idea of Devotion it expressed.
Josiah wanted to speak constantly, but Mr. Alcott checked him, that
the others might have opportunity, though the latter wished to yield
to Josiah._)
JOSIAH (_burst out_). Mr. Alcott! you know Mrs. Barbauld says in her
hymns, everything is prayer; every action is prayer; all nature prays;
the bird prays in singing; the tree prays in growing; men pray; men can
pray more; we feel; we have more--more than nature; we can know and do
right; Conscience prays; all our powers pray; action prays. Once we
said here, that there was a "Christ in the bottom of our spirits" when
we try to be good; then we pray in Christ; and that is the whole.[6]
[Footnote 6: This improvisation is preserved in its words. Josiah, it
may be named, was under seven years of age, and the other children were
chiefly between the ages of six and twelve years.]
MR. ALCOTT. Yes, Josiah, that is the whole. That is Universal
Prayer--the adoration of the Universe to its Author!
CHARLES. I was most interested in this verse--"The day is coming, and
now is, when men shall worship the Father," etc. I think that this
means that people are about to learn what to worship, and where.
MR. ALCOTT. Have you learned this to-day?
CHARLES. Yes; I have learnt some new things, I believe.
MR. ALCOTT. What are you to worship?
CHARLES. Goodness.
MR. ALCOTT. Where is it?
CHARLES. Within.
MR. ALCOTT. Within what?
CHARLES. Conscience, or God.
MR. ALCOTT. Are you to worship Conscience?
CHARLES. Yes.
MR. ALCOTT. Is it anywhere but in yourself?
CHARLES. Yes; it is in Nature.
MR. ALCOTT. Is it in other people?
CHARLES. Yes; there is more or less of it in other people, unless they
have taken it out.
MR. ALCOTT. Can it be entirely taken out?
CHARLES. Goodness always lingers in Conscience.
MR. ALCOTT. Is Conscience anywhere but in Human Nature?
CHARLES. It is in the Supernatural.
MR. ALCOTT. You said at first that there was something in outward
Nature which we should worship.
CHARLES. No; I don't think we should worship anything but the Invisible.
MR. ALCOTT. What is the Invisible?
CHARLES. It is the Supernatural.
JOHN B. It is the Inward--the Spiritual. But I don't see why we should
not worship the sun a little as well--
MR. ALCOTT. As well as the Sun-maker? But there are sun-worshippers.
JOHN B. Yes; a little; for the sun gives us light and heat.
MR. ALCOTT. What is the difference between your feeling when you think
of the sun, or the ocean (_he described some grand scenes_), and
when you think of Conscience acting in such cases as--(_he gave some
striking instances of moral power_). Is there not a difference?
(_They raised their hands._)
What is the name of the feeling with which you look at Nature?
SEVERAL. Admiration.
MR. ALCOTT. But when Conscience governs our weak body, is it not a
Supernatural Force? Do you not feel the awe of the inferior before a
superior nature? And is not that worship? The sun cannot produce it.
JOSIAH. Spirit worships Spirit. Clay worships Clay.
MR. ALCOTT. Wait a moment, Josiah. I wish first to talk with the
others; let me ask them this question: Do you feel that Conscience is
stronger than the mountain, deeper and more powerful than the ocean?
Can you say to yourself, I can remove this mountain?
JOSIAH (_burst out_). Yes, Mr. Alcott! I do not mean that with my body
I can lift up a mountain--with my hand; but I can feel; and I know that
my Conscience is greater than the mountain, for it can feel and do; and
the mountain cannot. There is the mountain, there! It was made, and
that is all. But my Conscience can grow. It is the same kind of Spirit
as made the mountain be, in the first place. I do not know what it may
be and do. The Body is a mountain, and the Spirit says, be moved, and
it is moved into another place.
Mr. Alcott, we think too much about clay. We should think of Spirit.
I think we should love Spirit, not Clay. I should think a mother now
would love her baby's Spirit; and suppose it should die, that is only
the Spirit bursting away out of the Body. It is alive; it is perfectly
happy. I really do not know why people mourn when their friends die.
I should think it would be matter of rejoicing. For instance: now, if
we should go out into the street and find a box--an old dusty box--and
should put into it some very fine pearls, and by and by the box should
grow old and break, why, we should not even think about the box; but if
the pearls were safe, we should think of them and nothing else. So it
is with the Soul and Body. I cannot see why people mourn for bodies.
MR. ALCOTT. Yes, Josiah; that is all true, and we are glad to hear it.
Shall some one else now speak besides you?
JOSIAH. Oh, Mr. Alcott! then I will stay in the recess and talk.
MR. ALCOTT. When a little infant opens its eyes upon this world, and
sees things out of itself, and has the feeling of admiration, is there
in that feeling the beginning to worship?
JOSIAH. No, Mr. Alcott; a little baby does not worship. It opens its
eyes on the outward world, and sees things, and perhaps wonders what
they are; but it don't know anything about them or itself. It don't
know the uses of anything; there is no worship in it.
MR. ALCOTT. But in this feeling of wonder and admiration which it has,
is there not the beginning of worship that will at last find its object?
JOSIAH. No; there is not even the beginning of worship. It must have
some temptation, I think, before it can know the thing to worship.
MR. ALCOTT. But is there not a feeling that comes up from within, to
answer to the things that come to the eyes and ears?
JOSIAH. But feeling is not worship, Mr. Alcott.
MR. ALCOTT. Can there be worship without feeling?
JOSIAH. No; but there can be feeling without worship. For instance, if
I prick my hand with a pin, I feel, to be sure, but I do not worship.
MR. ALCOTT. That is bodily feeling. But may not the little infant find
its power to worship in the feeling which is first only admiration of
what is without.
JOSIAH. No, no; I know what surprise is, and I know what admiration
is; and perhaps the little creature feels that. But she does not know
enough to know that she has conscience, or that there is temptation.
My little sister feels, and she knows some things; but she does not
worship.
MR. ALCOTT. Now I wish you all to think. What have we been talking
about to-day?
CHARLES. Spiritual Worship.[7]
[Footnote 7: Here I was obliged to pause, as I was altogether fatigued
with keeping my pen in long and uncommonly constant requisition. I was
enabled to preserve the words better than usual, because Josiah had so
much of the conversation, whose enunciation is slow, and whose fine
choice of language and steadiness of mind, makes him easy to follow and
remember.--_Recorder._]
PLUTARCH'S LETTER TO HIS WIFE.
SUNDAY, 30.
I sometimes think the funeral rites and cemeteries of a people best
characterize its piety. Contrast the modern with the primitive
grave-yards,--their funeral services so dismal, doleful, despairing: as
if their faith in immortality were fittest clad in sables, and death
were a descent of souls, instead of an ascension. What fairer views of
life and of immortality our fresher faith exhibits. Verdure, cheerful
marbles, tasteful avenues, flowers, simple epitaphs, inscriptions
celebrating the virtues properly humane. What in the range of English
lyric verse is comparable to Wordsworth's ode, entitled Intimations
of Immortality in Childhood, or his prose Essay on Epitaphs. Nor
is the contrast so disparaging between these and Pagan moralities.
Christianity can hardly add to the sweetness and light, the tenderness,
trust in man's future well-being, shown in Plutarch's consolatory
Letter to his Wife on the death of his little daughter. One becomes
more Christian, even, in copying it.
PLUTARCH TO HIS WIFE--ALL HEALTH.
"As for the messenger you dispatched to tell me of the death of my
little daughter, it seems he missed his way as he was going to Athens.
But when I came to Tanagra I heard of it by my niece. I suppose by
this time the funeral is over. I wish that whatever happens, as well
now as hereafter, may create you no dissatisfaction. But if you have
designedly let anything alone, depending upon my judgment, thinking
better to determine the point if I were with you, I pray let it be
without ceremony or timorous superstition, which I know are far from
you. Only, dear wife, let you and me bear our affliction with patience.
I know very well, and do comprehend what loss we have had; but if I
should find you grieve beyond measure, this would trouble me more than
the thing itself; for I had my birth neither from a stock nor stone,
and you know it full well; I having been assistant to you in the
education of so many children, which we brought up at home under our
own care.
"This much-lamented daughter was born after four sons, which made me
call her by your own name; therefore, I know she was dear to you, and
grief must have a peculiar pungency in a mind tenderly affectionate
to children, when you call to mind how naturally witty and innocent
she was, void of anger, and not querulous. She was naturally mild
and compassionate, to a miracle. And she showed delight in, and gave
a specimen of, her humanity and gratitude towards anything that had
obliged her, for she would pray her nurse to give suck, not only to
other children, but to her very playthings, as it were courteously
inviting them to her table, and making the best cheer for them she
could. Now, my dear wife, I see no reason why these and the like
things which delighted us so much when she was alive, should, upon
remembrance of them, afflict us when she is dead. But I also fear, lest
while we cease from sorrowing, we should forget her, as Clymene said:--
I hate the handy horned bow,
And banish youthful pastimes now,
because she would not be put in mind of her son, by the exercises
he had been used to. For nature always shuns such things as are
troublesome. But since our little daughter afforded all our senses
the sweetest and most charming pleasure, so ought we to cherish her
memory, which will in many ways conduce more to our joy than grief. And
it is but just that the same arguments which we have ofttimes used to
others should prevail upon ourselves at this so seasonable a time, and
that we should not supinely sit down and overwhelm the joys which we
have tasted with a multiplicity of new griefs. Moreover, they who were
present at the funeral, report this with admiration, that you neither
put on mourning, nor disguised yourself, or any of your maids; neither
were there any costly preparations, nor magnificent pomp, but that all
things were managed with prudence and moderation. And it seemed not
strange to me, that you, who never used richly to dress yourself, for
the theatre or other public solemnities, esteeming such magnificence
vain and useless, even in matters of delight, have now practised
frugality on this finest occasion.... There is no philosopher of your
acquaintance who is not in love with your frugality, both in apparel
and diet; nor a citizen, to whom the simplicity and plainness of your
dress is not conspicuous, both at religious sacrifices and public shows
in the theatre. Formerly, also, you discovered on a like occasion, a
great constancy of mind when you lost your eldest son. And again, when
the lovely Charon left us. For I remember when the news was brought me
of my son's death, as I was returning home with some friends and guests
who accompanied me to my house, that when they beheld all things in
order, and observed a profound silence everywhere (as they afterwards
declared to others), they thought no such calamity had happened, but
that the report was false. So discreetly had you settled the affairs of
the house at that time, when no small confusion and disorder might have
been expected. And yet you gave this son suck yourself, and endured
the lancing of your breast to prevent the ill effects of a contusion.
These are things worthy of a generous woman, and one that loves her
children....
"Moreover, I would have you endeavor to call often to mind that time
when our daughter was not as yet born to us, then we had no cause to
complain of fortune. Then, joining that time with this, argue thus with
yourself, that we are in the same condition as then. Otherwise, dear
wife, we shall seem discontented at the birth of our little daughter
if we own that our circumstances were better before her birth. But
the two years of her life are by no means to be forgotten by us, but
to be numbered amongst our blessings, in that they afforded us an
agreeable pleasure. Nor must we esteem a small good for a great evil,
nor ungratefully complain of fortune for what she has actually given
us, because she has not added what we wished for. Certainly, to speak
reverently of the gods, and to bear our lot with an even mind, without
accusing fortune, always brings with it a fair reward....
"But if you lament the poor girl because she died unmarried and without
offspring, you have wherewithal to comfort yourself, in that you are
defective in none of these things, having had your share. And those are
not small benefits where they are enjoyed. But so long as she is gone
to a place where she feels no pain, she has no need of our grief. For
what harm can befall us from her when she is free from all hurt? And
surely, the loss of great things abates its grief when it is come to
this, that there is no more ground of grief, or care for them. But thy
Timoxena was deprived but of small matters, for she had no knowledge
but of such, neither took she delight but in such small things. But for
that which she never was sensible of, nor so much as once did enter her
thoughts, how can you say it is taken from you?
"As for what you hear others say, who persuade the vulgar that the
soul when once freed from the body, suffers no inconvenience or evil,
nor is sensible at all, I know that you are better grounded in the
doctrines delivered down to us from our ancestors, as also in the
sacred mysteries of Bacchus, than to believe such stories, for the
religious symbols are well known to us who are of the fraternity.
Therefore, be assured that the soul, being incapable of death, suffers
in the same manner as birds that are kept in a cage. For if she has
been a long time educated and cherished in the body, and by long custom
has been made familiar with most things of this life, she will (though
separable) return to it again, and at length enters the body; nor
ceases it by new birth now and then to be entangled in the chances and
events of this life. For do not think that old age is therefore evil
spoken of and blamed, because it is accompanied with wrinkles, gray
hairs, and weakness of body; but this is the most troublesome thing in
old age, that it stains and corrupts the soul with the remembrances of
things relating to the body, to which she was too much addicted; thus
it bends and loves, retaining that form which it took of the body.
But that which is taken away in youth, being more soft and tractable,
soon returns to its native vigor and beauty, just like fire that is
quenched, which, if it be forthwith kindled again, sparkles and burns
out immediately.
As soon as e'er we take one breath
'T were good to pass the gates of death,
before too great love of bodily and earthly things be engendered in
the soul, and it become soft and tender by being used to the body,
and, as it were, by charms and portions incorporated with it. But the
truth of this will appear in the laws and traditions, received from
our ancestors; for when children die, no libations nor sacrifices are
made for them, nor any other of those ceremonies which are wont to be
performed for the dead. For infants have no part of earth or earthly
affections, nor do they hover or tarry about their sepulchres or
monuments, where their dead bodies are exposed. The religion of our
country teaches us otherwise, and it is an impious thing not to believe
what our laws and traditions assert, that the souls of infants pass
immediately into a better and more divine state; therefore, since it is
safer to give credit to our traditions than to call them in question,
let us comply with the custom in outward and public behavior, and let
our interior be more unpolluted, pure and holy."
[Illustration]
JUNE.
Rose leaves and buds, the season's flowers,
Scenting afresh the summer hours,
The ruddy morn, the evening's close,
Day's labors long and night's repose.
BERRIES.
TUESDAY, 1.
Rise with the sun, if you would keep the commandments. The sleep
you get before midnight goes to virtue; after sunrise, to vice. "It
is wise," says Aristotle, "to be up before daybreak, for such habit
contributes to health, wealth, and wisdom." If this virtue, commended
alike by antiquity and by our sense of self-respect, has fallen into
discredit in modern times, it was practised by our forefathers and bore
its fruits. They
"With much shorter and far sweeter sleep content,
Vigorous and fresh about their labors went."
"He that in the morning hath heard the voice of virtue," says
Confucius, "may die at night." And it were virtuous to rise early
during our June mornings to breakfast on strawberries with the robins,
or what were as good, partake of Leigh Hunt's delicious Essay on these
berries. One tastes them from his potted pages. And his very quotations
are palatable.
"My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holburn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there;
I pray you send for some of them."
An ancient may read "Concord" instead of "my Lord of Ely's" gardens,
and enjoy the sight moreover of his grandson's vermilioned fingers
while picking them; the berries in no wise inferior to his Lordship's
in flavor or color, and far larger in size,--that Yankee superstition.
But one tastes none like the wild ones plucked fresh from the meadows
of his native place, while the dews sparkled in the grasses, and the
bobolink sought to decoy him from her nest there when he approached it.
The lay lingers in the ear still:--
"A single note, so sweet and low,
Like a full heart's overflow,
Forms the prelude,--but the strain
Gives us no sweet tone again;
For the wild and saucy song
Leaps and skips the notes among
With such quick and sportive play,
Ne'er was merrier, madder lay."
Herrick dished his with fresh cream from his "little buttery":--
"You see the cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry,
Or some fine tincture like to this
Which draws the sight thereto."
So Milton's Eve in Eden,--
"From many a berry and from sweet kernels pressed,
She tempered dulcet creams."
And Aratus, whom St. Paul quotes concerning the gods, calls the berries
in aid in describing the roseate cheek of health:--
"Fair flesh like snow with vermilion mixed,"
a line that took Goethe's fancy when composing his Theory of Colors.
Randolph, too, Ben Jonson's young friend, rides out of London with
"worthy Stafford" in quest of some,--
"Come, spur away,
I have no patience for a longer stay;
But I must go down
And leave the changeable air of this great town.
I will the country see,
Where old simplicity,
Though hid in gray,
Doth look more gay
Than foppery in plush and scarlet clad;
Farewell ye city wits that are
Almost at city war,--
'Tis time that I grew wise when all the world is mad.
"Here from the tree
We'll cherries pluck, and pick the strawberry;
And every day
Go see the wholesome girls make hay,
Whose brown hath lovelier grace
Than any painted face
That I do know
Hyde Park can show.
"Then full, we'll seek a shade,
And hear what music's made;
How Philomel
Her tale doth tell,
And how the other birds do fill the choir,
The thrush and blackbird lend their throats,
Warbling melodious notes,
We will all sports enjoy that others do desire."
The strawberry, it appears, was not restored to gardens till within a
century or two back. Evelyn mentions "planting them out of the woods."
I do not find it mentioned as a cultivated plant in the Greek or Roman
rural authors. Phillips, in his History of Fruits, gives this pleasant
account of the origin of its name. That of "an ancient practice of
children threading the wild berries upon straws of grass," somewhat as
rude country boys thread birds' egg-shells like beads, as ornaments for
their mirrors. He says that this is still a custom in parts of England
where they abound, and that so many "straws of berries" are sold for
a penny,--a more picturesque style of marketing than in pottles, or
boxes. Evelyn mentions the kinds common in his time: Common Wood,
English, American, or Virginia, Polona, White, Ivy Red, the Green, and
Scarlet.
Culpepper, in his British Herbal, says: "This plant is so well known
that it needs no description. It grows in woods and is planted in
gardens. It flowers in May; the fruit ripens soon after. Venus owns
the herb. The fruit, when green, is cool and dry; but when ripe, cool
and moist." He gives a list of its medical virtues, among which, he
says, "the water of the berries, carefully distilled, is a remedy and
cordial in the panting and beating of the heart." It were almost worth
having this trouble to be cured by his strawberry cordials.
He describes the raspberry, also called thimbleberry, and ascribes to
it similar medical virtues.
Of bilberries, he says there are two sorts common in England,--the
black and red. The red bilberry he calls "whortleberry," and says:
"The black groweth in forests, on the heath, and such like barren
places. The red grows in the north parts of this land, as Lancashire,
Yorkshire, etc., flowers in March and April, the fruit ripening in July
and August." "Both are under the dominion of Jupiter," and, if we may
believe him, are very virtuous, it being "a pity they are used no more
in physic than they are." In August we gather as good in
OUR BLUEBERRY SWAMP.
"Orange groves mid-tropic lie,
Festal for the Spaniard's eye,
And the red pomegranate grows
Where the luscious southwest blows;
Myrrh and spikenard in the East
Multiply the Persian's feast,
And our northern wilderness
Boasts its fruits our lips to bless.
Wouldst enjoy a magic sight,
And so heal vexation's spite?
Hasten to my blueberry swamp,--
Green o'erhead the wild bird's camp;
Here in thickets bending low,
Thickly piled the blueberries grow,
Freely spent on youth and maid,
In the deep swamp's cooling shade,
Pluck the clusters plump and full,
Handful after handful pull!
Choose which path, the fruitage hangs,--
Fear no more the griping fangs
Of the garden's spaded stuff,--
This is healthy, done enough.
Pull away! the afternoon
Dies beyond the meadow soon.
Art thou a good citizen?
Move into a blueberry fen;
Here are leisure, wealth, and ease,
Sure thy taste and thought to please,
Drugged with nature's spicy tunes,
Hummed upon the summer noons.
"Rich is he that asks no more
Than of blueberries a store,
Who can snatch the clusters off,
Pleased with himself and them enough.
Fame?--the chickadee is calling;--
Love?--the fat pine cones are falling;
Heaven?--the berries in the air,--
Eternity--their juice so rare.
And if thy sorrows will not fly,
Then get thee down and softly die.
In the eddy of the breeze,
Leave the world beneath those trees,
And the purple runnel's tune
Melodize thy mossy swoon."
W. E. CHANNING.
LETTERS.
THURSDAY, 3.
"Love is the life of friendship; letters are
The life of love, the loadstones that by rare
Attractions make souls meet and melt, and mix,
As when by fire exalted gold we fix."
But for letters the best of our life would hardly survive the mood
and the moment. Prompted by so lively a sentiment as friendship, we
commit to our leaves what we should not have spoken. To begin with
"Dear Friend" is in itself an address which clothes our epistle in
a rhetoric the most select and choice. We cannot write it without
considering its fitness and taxing our conscience in the matter. 'Tis
coming to the confessional, leaving nothing in reserve that falls
gracefully into words. A life-long correspondence were a biography of
the correspondents. Preserve your letters till time define their value.
Some secret charm forbids committing them to the flames; the dews of
the morning may sparkle there still, and remind one of his earlier Eden.
"Deeds are masculine, words feminine; letters are neither," wrote
Howel. Rather say, letters are both, and better represent life than
any form in literature. Women have added the better part, the most
celebrated letters having been written by women. If your morning's
letter is not answered and dispatched forthwith, 'tis doubtful if it
will ever be written. Then there are those to whom one never writes,
much as he may wish to cultivate correspondence. He reserves them for
personal intercourse.
I hardly know which I most enjoy, the letter I send after my visitor,
or the visit itself: the presence, the conversation, the recollection.
Memory idealizes anticipation; our visit is made before we make
it, made afterwards, as if love were a reminiscence of pleasures
once partaken in overflowing fulness. The visit that is not all we
anticipated is not made; we meet as idealists, if we meet at all.
My moments are not mine, thou art in sight
By days' engagements and the dreams of night,
Nor dost one instant leave me free
Forgetful of thy world and thee.
The popular superstition favors long visits. I confess my experience
has not borne out the current creed. Compliment, of course, is of the
other opinion, if we must take her fine accents of "stay, stay longer."
But a week's stay with an angel would hardly bear the epithet angelic
after it was over. Fewer and farther between. Good things are good
to keep long by temperate use. 'Tis true a visitor who comes seldom
should not fly away forthwith. And 'tis a comfort in these fast times
to catch one who has a little leisure on hand, deaf the while to the
engine's whistle. _Stay_ is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.
But if one does not stay while staying, better let him go where he
is gone the while. One enjoys a visitor who has much leisure in him,
in her especially,--likes to take his friends by sips sweetly, not at
hasty draughts, as they were froth and would effervesce forthwith and
subside. Who has not come from an interview as from a marriage feast,
feeling "the good wine had been kept for him till _now_"?
* * * * *
Does it imply a refinement in delicacy that nuptial verses have no
place with us in marriage ceremonies; that the service has lost the
mystic associations wont to be thrown around it by our ancestors
down almost to our time? Once epithalamium verses were esteemed the
fairest flowers, the ornament of the occasion. If the poet sometimes
overstepped modern notions of reserve, the sentiments expressed were
not the less natural if more freely dealt with. Spenser, for instance,
suggests the loveliest images, and with all his wealth of fancy
ventures never a glimpse that a bride can blame; while Donne delights
in every posture of fancy, as if he were love's attorney putting in
his plea for all delights,--yet delicately, oftentimes, and on other
occasions, as in these lines entitled "Love Tokens":--
"Send me some token that my hope may live,
Or that my ceaseless thoughts may sleep and rest;
Send me some honey to make sweet my hive,
That in my passions I may hope the best.
I beg no ribbon wrought with thine own hands
To knit our loves in the fantastic strain
Of new-touched youth; nor ring to show the stands
Of our affection:--that as that's round and plain,
So should our loves meet in simplicity,--
No, nor the corals which thy wrist infold
Laced up together in congruity
To show our thoughts should rest in the same hold:
No, nor thy picture, though most gracious,
And most desired since 'tis like the best,
Nor witty lines which are most copious
Within the writings which thou hast addressed:
Send me not this, nor that, to increase my store,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more."
To the Lady Goodyeare he writes:--
"MADAM:--I am not come out of England if I remain in the noblest part
of it, your mind. Yet I confess it is too much diminution to call
your mind any part of England, or this world, since every part of
even your body deserves titles to a higher dignity. No Prince would
be loath to die that were assured of so fair a tomb to preserve his
memory. But I have a greater advantage than this, for since there is
a religion in friendship, and death in absence, to make up an entire
friend there must needs be a heaven too; and there can be no heaven
so proportional to that religion and that death, as your favor.
And I am the gladder that it is a heaven, than it were a court, or
any other high place of this world, because I am likelier to have
a room there, and better, cheap. Madam, my best treasure is time,
and my best employment of that (next my thoughts of thankfulness
to my Redeemer) is to study good wishes for you, in which I am, by
continual meditation, so learned that any creature except your own
good angel, when it does you most good, might be content to come and
take instruction from
Your humble and affectionate servant,
J. D.
Amyens, the 7th of February, year 1611."
What delicacy of compliment, coupled with nobility of sentiment, the
fresh color of flattery not less, the rhetoric so graceful. One asks
if our New-England reserve has added any graces to the Elizabethan
courtliness, and if any feel quite at home in its tight costumes. Is it
a want of taste if one is taken with such courtly compliments, lofty
appreciation of character, such stately idealism, extravagant as it may
appear, and bordering on insincerity? I wish my behavior, my letters,
my address, may blush becomingly, court my friends' eyes as well as
affections, by coy diffidences, win by lively phrase, telling how
lovely presence is. Friendship is a plant that loves the sun,--thrives
ill under clouds. I know temperaments have their zones, and can excuse
the frigid manner of some in whose breasts there burns a hidden flame.
There is a reserve that seems to fear the affections will be frosted
by exposure, if not protected from any wind of acknowledgment. If
"your humble servant" is written seldomer at the end of the letter,
and "Sir" and "Madam" have dropped the once "Dear" and "My Dear"--used
these adjectively for ceremony's sake,--the address has lost so much
warmth and all the _abandon_ the words once implied. Must I withhold
expressing all I would, lest I should seem to imply more than I meant?
And has one nothing personal and private to communicate? It were not
unbecoming to inquire if our Puritan culture still held us in check,
life and literature were under eclipse, and the shadow threatening to
become central and total.
* * * * *
Of celebrated letters, Pliny's are among the most delightful. A perusal
of them refreshes and restores the old faith in persons and the
possibilities of friendship. Alas for an age, if indifferent to this
antique of virtue, the fair fellowships it celebrates, in the noble
names of which he gives so many illustrious examples in his charming
pages. Virtue seems something to be sought, to live and die for,
every accomplishment a part of it, and a possession. I confess to a
feeling, as I read, so modern and consonant to ideas and designs dear
to me, that for the time I seem to recover brothers and friends--if it
were not egotism to say it--in the aims and ends which I have so long
loved and still cherish as life's pursuit and problem. A vein of noble
morality pervades these letters which renders them admirable reading
for all times and ages. And his allusions to his own life and pursuits,
the glimpses he gives of his friends, commend his pages to all who seek
virtue and wisdom at their sources. To his friend Paternus he writes
with a tenderness and humanity to which the epithet Christian would add
little.
"The sickness which has lately run through my family, and carried
off several of my domestics, some of them, too, in the prime of their
years, has deeply afflicted me. I have two consolations, however; while
though they are not adequate to so considerable a loss, still they are
consolations. One is, that as I have always very readily manumized my
slaves, their death does not seem altogether immature, if they lived
long enough to receive their freedom; the other, that I have allowed
them to make a kind of will, which I observe as religiously as if they
were legally entitled to that privilege. I receive and obey their
last requests as so many absolute commands, suffering them to dispose
of their effects to whom they please; with this single restriction,
that they leave them to some of the family, which to persons in their
station is to be considered as a sort of commonwealth. But though I
endeavor to acquiesce under these reflections, yet the same tenderness
which led me to show them these indulgences, still breaks out and
renders me too sensitively affected by their deaths. However, I would
not wish to be incapable of these tender impressions of humanity,
though the generality of the world, I know, look upon losses of
this kind in no other view than as a diminution of their property,
and fancy, by cherishing such an unfeeling temper, they discover
superior fortitude and philosophy. Their fortitude and philosophy I
will not dispute; but humane, I am sure they are not; for it is the
very criterion of true manhood to feel those impressions of sorrow
which it endeavors to resist, and to admit not to be above the want
of consolation. But perhaps I have detained you too long upon this
subject, though not so long as I would. There is a certain pleasure
in giving vent to one's grief, especially when we pour out our sorrow
in the bosom of a friend, who will approve, or, at least, pardon our
tears. Farewell."
Again to Geminitus:--
"Have you never observed a sort of people who, though they are
themselves the abject slaves of every vice, show a kind of malicious
indignation against the immoral conduct of others, and are the most
severe to those whom they most resemble? Yet surely a beauty of
disposition, even in persons who have least occasion for clemency
themselves, is of all virtues the most becoming. The highest of
character in my estimation, is His, who is as ready to pardon the moral
errors of mankind as if he were every day guilty of some himself, and
at the same time as cautious of committing a fault as if he never
forgave one. It is a rule, then, which we should upon all occasions,
both private and public, most religiously observe, _to be inexorable to
our own failings, while we treat those of the rest of the world with
tenderness, not excepting even those who forgive none but themselves_,
remembering always that the humane, and, therefore, as well as upon
other accounts, the great Thrasea, used frequently to say, '_He who
hates vice hates mankind_.' You will ask me, perhaps, who it is that
has given occasion to these reflections. You must know a certain person
lately,--but of that when we meet,--though, upon second thoughts, not
even then, lest while I condemn and expose his conduct, I should act
counter to that maxim I particularly recommend. Whoever, therefore, and
whatever he is, shall remain in silence; for though there may be some
use, perhaps, in setting a mark upon the man, for the sake of example,
there will be more, however, in sparing him, for the sake of humanity."
Again:--
"There are, it seems," he writes to his friend Septitius, "certain
persons who in your company have blamed me, as being upon all occasions
too lavish in commendation of my friends. I not only acknowledge the
charge, but glory in it; for, can there be a nobler error than an
overflowing benevolence? But still, who are these, let me ask, that are
better acquainted with my friends than I am myself? Yet, grant there
are such, why will they deny me the satisfaction of so pleasing an
error? For, supposing my friends deserve not the high encomiums I give
them, certainly I am happy in believing they do. Let them recommend,
then, this ungenerous discernment to those who imagine (and their
number is not inconsiderable) that they show their judgment when they
indulge their censure. As for myself, they will never persuade me that
I can love my friends too well."
* * * * *
How amiable and just are sentiments like these rendering odious the
carping censure and ill-natured criticism which finds free currency
between those who, while meeting as acquaintances, perhaps affecting
friendship for each other, yet speak disparagingly, and are loath to
acknowledge the merit which they see in each other's character and
acquirements. It is safer, and certainly more becoming, to overpraise
than to undervalue and dispraise another. Faults are apparent enough,
and, for the most part, superficial; in the atmosphere of affection
and respect they fall away presently and disappear altogether, while
virtues may be too deep sometimes and delicate in expression to be
recognized readily by those who seek for blemishes rather. Modest
praise is the freshest and purest atmosphere for modest virtue to
thrive in and come to maturity. And the most exalted qualities of
character admiration alone brings into the relief that discloses their
proportions and reveals their lustre. A certain sentiment of worship
insinuates itself into our affections for a near and dear friend; and
while endearing us the more, yet holds us at the distance of reverence
and of self-respect that belongs to the noblest friendships. 'Tis the
poverty of life that renders friendship poor and cold. I am drawn to
one who, while I approach yet seems distant still; whose personality
has a quality so commanding as to forbid a familiarity not justified
by affection and reason alike, and whom I never quite come up to, but
yet is akin to me in the attributes that win my regard and insure my
affection. A good man is a bashful man; he affects all who come within
his influence with that grace. Do not the gods blush in descending to
meet alike our affections and our eyes?
"The eldest god is still a child."
BOOKS.
TUESDAY, 8.
Next to a friend's discourse, no morsel is more delicious than a ripe
book, a book whose flavor is as refreshing at the thousandth tasting
as at the first. Books when friends weary, conversation flags, or
nature fails to inspire. The best books appeal to the deepest in us and
answer the demand. A book loses if wanting the personal element, gains
when this is insinuated, or comes to the front occasionally, blending
history with mythology.
My favorite books have a personality and complexion as distinctly
drawn as if the author's portrait were framed into the paragraphs and
smiled upon me as I read his illustrated pages. Nor could I spare
them from my table or shelves, though I should not open the leaves
for a twelvemonth;--the sight of them, the knowledge that they are
within reach, accessible at any moment, rewards me when I invite their
company. Borrowed books are not mine while in hand. I covet ownership
in the contents, and fancy that he who is conversant with these is the
rightful owner, and moreover, that the true scholar owes to scholars a
catalogue of his chosen volumes, that they may learn from whence his
entertainment during leisure moments. Next to a personal introduction,
a list of one's favorite authors were the best admittance to his
character and manners. His library were not voluminous. He might
specify his favorites on his fingers, and spare the printer's type.
"Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose
them." And without Plutarch, no library were complete.
Can we marvel at his fame, or overestimate the surpassing merits of his
writings? It seems as I read as if none before, none since, had written
lives, as if he alone were entitled to the name of biographer,--such
intimacy of insight is his, laying open the springs of character,
and through his parallels portraying his times as no historian had
done before: not Plato, even, in the livelier way of dialogue with
his friends. Then his morals are a statement of the virtues for all
times. And I read the list of his lost writings, not without a sense
of personal wrong done to me, with emotions akin to what the merchant
might feel in perusing the bill of freight after the loss of his
vessel. Hercules, Hesiod, Pindar, Leonidas, Scipio, Augustus, Claudius,
Epaminondas, minds of mark, all these and other precious pieces gone
to the bottom: his books on the Academy of Plato, The Philosophers,
and many more of this imperial freight, to be read by none now. Still,
there remains so much to be grateful for; so many names surviving to
perpetuate virtue and all that is splendid in fame, with his own. I for
one am his debtor, not for noble examples alone, but for portraits of
the possibilities of virtue, and all that is dearest in friendship, in
his attractive pages. It is good exercise, good medicine, the reading
of his books,--good for to-day, as in times it was preceding ours,
salutary reading for all times.
Montaigne also comes in for a large share of the scholar's regard.
Opened anywhere, his page is sensible, marrowy, quotable. He may be
taken up, too, and laid aside carelessly without loss, so inconsequent
is his method, and he so careless of his wealth. Professing nature
and honesty of speech, his page has the suggestions of the landscape,
is good for striking out in any direction, suited to any mood, sure
of yielding variety of information, wit, entertainment,--not to be
commanded, to be sure, without grave abatements, to be read with good
things growing side by side with things not such and tasting of the
apple. Still, with every abatement, his book is one of the ripest and
mellowest, and, bulky as it is, we wish there were more of it. He
seems almost the only author whose success warrants in every stroke of
his pen his right to guide it: he of the men of letters, the prince
of letters; since writing of life, he omits nothing of its substance,
but tells all with a courage unprecedented. His frankness is charming.
So his book has indescribable attractions, being as it were a Private
Book,--his diary self-edited, and offered with an honesty that wins
his readers, he never having done bestowing his opulent hospitalities
on him, gossiping sagely, and casting his wisdom in sport to any who
care for it. Everywhere his page is alive and rewarding, and we are
disappointed at finding his book comes to an end like other books.
Lord Herbert's Autobiography is a like example of sincerity and
naturalness. If he too often play the cavalier, and is of a temper
that brooks not the suspicion of insult, he is equally eager to defend
when friendship or humanity render it a duty. The brothers, Edward
and George, were most estimable characters. To George how largely are
we in debt for his sacred verses, the delight and edification of the
saints wherever they are known. Add Vaughan and Crashaw. And making
due allowance for the time when Herrick's verses were written, his
temptation to suit the tastes of courtiers and kings, his volumes
contain much admirable poetry, tempered with religious devotion. He
wrote sweet and virtuous verse, with lines here and there that should
not have been written. But he is an antidote to the vice in his lines,
and may well have place in the scholar's library with Donne, Daniel,
Cowley, Shakespeare, and contemporaries.
If one would learn the titles and gain insight into the contents of the
best books in our literature, let him track Coleridge in his readings
and notes as these have been collected and published in his Literary
Remains and Table Talk. He explored the wide field of literature and
philosophy, and brought to light richer spoils than any scholar of his
time, or since. His reading was not only choice, but miscellaneous.
Nothing of permanent value appears to have escaped his searching
glance, and his criticisms on books are among the most valuable
contributions to British letters. He knew how to read to get and give
the substance of the book in sprightly comment and annotation on the
text. His judgments are final and exhaustive. To follow him were an
education in itself.
One's diary is attractive reading, and productive, if he have the art
of keeping one.
Thoreau wrote in his:--
"I set down such choice experiences that my own writings may inspire
me, and at last I may make wholes of parts. Certainly it is a distinct
profession to rescue from oblivion and to fix the sentiments and
thoughts which visit all men, more or less, generally, and that the
contemplation of the unfinished picture may suggest its harmonious
completion. Associate reverently and as much as you can with your
loftiest thoughts. Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is
a nest-egg by the side of which another will be laid. Thoughts
accidentally thrown together become a frame in which more may be
developed and exhibited. Perhaps this is the main value of a habit of
writing or keeping a journal,--that is, we remember our best draught,
and stimulate ourselves. My thoughts are my company. They have a
certain individuality and separate existence, large personality.
Having by chance recorded a few disconnected thoughts and then brought
them into juxtaposition, they suggest a whole new field in which it
is possible to labor and think. Thought begets thought. I have a
commonplace-book for facts, and another for poetry. But I find it
difficult always to preserve the vague distinctions which I had in my
mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more
poetry,--and that is their success. They are translated from earth to
heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant,
perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, I should
need but one book of poetry to contain them all.
"I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be
printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related
ones were brought together into separate essays. They are allied to
life, and can be seen by the reader not to be far-fetched; thus, more
simple, less artful. I feel that in the other case, I should have a
proper form for my sketches. Here facts and names and dates communicate
more than we suspect. Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay
than in the meadow where it grew, and we had to wet our feet to get
it? Is the scholastic air any advantage? Perhaps I can never find so
good a setting for thoughts as I shall thus have taken them out of.
The crystal never sparkles more brightly than in the cavern. The world
have always liked best the fable with the moral. The children could
read the fable alone. The grown-up read both. The truth so told has
the best advantages of the most abstract statement, for it is not the
less universally applicable. Where else will you ever find the true
cement for your thoughts? How will you ever rivet them together without
leaving the marks of your file?
"Yet Plutarch did not so. Montaigne did not so. Men have written
travels in this form; but perhaps no man's daily life has been rich
enough to be journalized. Yet one's life should be so active and
progressive as to be a journey. But I am afraid to travel much, or to
famous places, lest it might completely dissipate the mind. Then I am
sure that what we observe at home, if we observe anything, is of more
importance than what we observe abroad. The far-fetched is of least
value. What we observe in travelling are to some extent the accidents
of the body; but what we observe when sitting at home are in the same
proportion phenomena of the mind itself. A wakeful night will yield as
much thought as a long journey. If I try thoughts by their quality, not
their quantity, I may find that a restless night will yield more than
the longest journey."
These masterpieces, Thoreau's Diaries, are a choice mingling of
physical and metaphysical elements. They show the art above art which
was busied about their composition. They come near fulfilling the
highest ends of expression; the things seen become parts of the
describer's mind, and speak through his Person. Quick with thought, his
sentences are colored and consolidated therein by his plastic genius.
* * * * *
Of gifts, there seems none more becoming to offer a friend than a
beautiful book, books of verse especially. How exquisite these verses
of Crashaw's, "Addressed to a Lady with a Prayer Book."
"Lo, here a little volume, but great book,
Fear it not, sweet,
It is no hypocrite,
Much larger in itself, than in its look.
"It is, in one rich handful, heaven and all
Heaven's royal hosts encamp'd, thus small,
To prove that true schools used to tell
A thousand angels in one point can dwell.
"'Tis Love's great artillery
Which here contracts itself and comes to lie
Close couched in your white bosom, and from thence
As from a snowy fortress of defence
Against the ghostly foe to take your part,
And fortify the hold of your chaste heart.
"It is the armory of light,
Let constant use but keep it bright,
You'll find it yields
To holy hands and humble hearts,
More swords and shields
Than sin hath snares, or hell hath darts.
Only be sure
The hands be pure
That hold these weapons, and the eyes
Those of turtles, chaste and true,
Wakeful and wise.
"Here is a friend shall fight for you;
Hold this book before your heart,
Let prayer alone to play his part.
"But O! the heart
That studies this high art,
Must be a sure housekeeper,
And yet no sleeper.
"Dear soul, be strong,
Mercy will come ere long,
And bring her bosom full of blessings;
Flowers of never-fading graces
To make immortal dressings
For worthy souls, whose wise embraces
Store up themselves for him, who is alone
The spouse of virgins, and the Virgin's Son.
"But if the noble bridegroom when he come
Shall find the wandering heart from home,
Leaving her chaste abode
To gad abroad
Amongst the gay mates of the god of flies,
To take her pleasures, and to play
And keep the devil's holiday;
To dance in the sunshine of some smiling
But beguiling
Spear of sweet and sugared lies;
Some slippery pair
Of false, perhaps as fair,
Flattering, but forswearing eyes,
Doubtless some other heart
Will get the start,
And stepping in before,
Will take possession of the sacred store
Of hidden sweets and holy joys,
Words which are not heard with ears
(Those tumultuous shops of noise),
Effectual whispers, whose still voice
The soul itself more feels than hears;
Amorous languishments, luminous trances,
Sights which are not seen with eyes;
Spiritual and soul-piercing glances,
Whose pure and subtle lightning flies
Home to the heart and sets the house on fire,
And melts it down in sweet desire,
Yet doth not stay
To ask the window's leave to pass that way.
An hundred thousand loves and graces,
And many a mystic thing
Which the divine embraces,
Of the dear spouse of spirits with them will bring,
For which it is no shame
That dull mortality must not know a name.
Of all this hidden store
Of blessings, and ten thousand more,
If when he come
He find the heart from home,
Doubtless he will unload
Himself some otherwhere,
And pour abroad
His precious sweets
On the fair soul whom first he meets."
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
THURSDAY, 10.
The first number of Volume III. of the "Journal of Speculative
Philosophy" comes to hand, printed in fair type, with promise of
attracting attention from thinkers at home and abroad. And it is a
significant fact that the most appreciative notice yet taken of this
Journal comes from Germany, and is written by the President of the
Berlin Philosophical Society. Nor less remarkable that this first
attempt to popularize Philosophy, so far as practicable, should
date from the West, and show an ability in dealing with speculative
questions that may well challenge the attainments of thinkers
everywhere,--the translations showing a ripe scholarship, and covering
almost the whole range of historic thinking.[8]
[Footnote 8: "Nothing is more interesting in the history of the human
mind than the tendency of enlightened souls in all ages to gather
in clusters, as in the material world crystallization goes on by
the gathering of individual atoms about one axis of formation. Thus
the schools of Greek Philosophy, the Pythagorean, the Eleatic, the
Peripatetic, the Alexandrian, were human crystallizations about a
central idea, and generally in a given locality,--as Samos, Athens, or
the Lucanian city of Elea, where Zeno learned lessons of Parmenides,
and whence they both journeyed to Athens in the youth of Socrates, and
held their "Radical Club" at the house of Pythodorus in the Ceramicus.
The Schoolmen and the Mystics of the middle ages clustered together in
the same way about Abelard. Thomas Aquinas, Occam, Gerson, Giardano
Bruno, the early Italian poets, rally in groups in the same way; so
do the Elizabethan Dramatists, the Puritan Politicians, the English
Platonists. Coming nearer our own time, there are the Lake Poets of
England, the Weimar circle of genius, in Germany, the Transcendental
Idealists in Concord and Boston, and finally, the German American
Philosophers of St. Louis, concerning whom we now speak. In all
these Schools and Fellowships of the human soul, a common impulse,
aided by accident of locality and other circumstances, trivial only
in appearance, has led to the formation of that strictest bond,
the friendship of united aspirations. New England has so long been
considered the special home of ideas, that it may surprise one to
learn that St. Louis, on the Mississippi, has become the focus of a
metaphysical _renaissance_; yet such it has become. A few Germans,
New Englanders, and Western men gathered there, having found each
other out, began to meet, expatiate, and confer about Kant and Hegel,
Fichte, and Sir William Hamilton. Soon they formed a Philosophical
Society, and by and by, having accumulated many manuscripts, they began
to publish a Magazine of "Speculative Philosophy." At first, this
publication came out semi-occasionally, but finally settled down into
a regular Quarterly, with contributors on both sides of the Atlantic,
and from various schools of metaphysical thought. The January number
is, indeed, a remarkable production. Every article is good, and most of
them profound; no such collection of striking varieties of philosophic
thought has been made public for a long time as this. The Journal
is edited by William T. Harris, LL.D., Superintendent of the Public
Schools of St. Louis."
F. B. SANBORN,
_in "Springfield Republican," March, 1869._]
England, too, has at last found a metaphysician that Coleridge would
have accepted and prized. And the more that he follows himself in
introducing philosophy from Germany into Britain. James Hutchison
Stirling's fervor and strength in advocating Hegel's ideas command the
highest respect. Having had Schelling's expositor in Coleridge, we now
have Hegel's in Stirling; and, in a spirit of catholicity shown to
foreign thought unexpected in an Englishman, promising not a little in
the way of qualifying favorably the metaphysics of Britain. Nothing
profound nor absolute can be expected from minds of the type of Mill,
Herbert Spencer, and the rest,--if not hostile, at least indifferent
to and incapable of idealism; naturalists rather than metaphysicians.
It will be a most hopeful indication if Stirling's book, the "Secret of
Hegel," find students among his countrymen. Cavilling there will be,
of course, misapprehension, much nonsense uttered concerning Hegel's
Prime Postulates. But what was thought out fairly in Germany, must find
its way and prompt comprehension in England; if not there, then here
in New England, out of whose heart a fresh philosophy should spring
forth, to which the German Hegel shall give impulse and furtherance.
The work has already begun, with Harris's publishing the thoughts of
the world's thinkers, himself familiar with the best of all thinking.
I look for a more flowing, inspiring type of thought, Teutonic as
Greek, of a mystic coloring transcending Boehme, Swedenborg, and freed
from the biblicisms of the schools of our time. Hegel's secret is that
of pure thoug
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