Class ?i5Hl_ GoftyrightN" lUiJL.. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/bookofmeditationOOgrig BOOKS BY EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS The Nero Humanism A Book of Meditations Each $1.50 net ; postage 10 cents. To be obtained from booksellers or from the publisher B. W. HUEBSCH, 150 Nassau St., New York A BOOK of MRDITATIOKS By EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS Author of The New Humanism N E TT YORK igo2 B. W. HUEBSCH THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, T«>o CowEe Rec«^d NOV. '^ 1902 CLASS f^ XXa Ne. /A w~ i^ ^^ ^r ; COPY B. Copyright, ig02 by SPWARD HOWARP GRIGGS printed ^ B. w. huebscm NEW YORK Time Sweeps On [Florence, December 3, 1898] THE pink color fades from the light fleeces of cloud, the twilight descends over the city, in the street the crier calls the evening papers, the throng hastens homeward in the dusk : Men work or rest, but Time sweeps on! The glory of Italy crumbles from the walls where fading frescoes decay, it broods over old churches and palaces like the fading light over the darkening city, it is buried in the countless pictures in which it descends from the past : The sun shines and is silent, but Time sweeps on! The Greek is a splendid memory, the Egyptian and Assyrian a dim legend, the palaces of Nineveh are fallen, the splendors of Alexandria are sunk beneath the mud of the Nile. The Jew prays beside the weeping wall that sorrow- fully whispers the past of Solomon, Babylon is lost in the mist, and Tyre and Carthage are but the vibrant echoes of a forgotten dream : Nations rise and fall, but Time sweeps on! Where the Britons, clothed in skins, met under some ancient oak, there vast and gloomy cities vomit their poisonous breath. Where Alexan- der led his adventurous soldiers or Cleopatra TIME SWEEPS ON met the legions of Rome, there English and Ger- man traders barter the machine-woven stuffs of to-day. Where cities stood the sand whirls in wild triumph, and the gardens in which lovers sang echo to some night beast of prey. The golden palace of Theodoric is shrunk to the fragment of a wall. The tomb of an emperor is the play-house of the mob. Causes for which men fought and died are forgotten, and the fighters, too, are locked in the vast embrace : Men live and die, hut Time sweeps on! The figures carved upon the graves of the Crusaders are worn smooth by innumerable feet. The walls of Venetian palaces which echoed to the laughter of gorgeous women are Hpped by the silent kisses of the dead canals. The Forum where Cato and Cicero walked is sunk below the level of the street and littered with the stone waste of what once were temples : Men hate and love, hut Time szvceps on! On, on, relentlessly, unhurried by our passion- ate desires, unchecked by our wild regret, remorselessly, unheedingly. Time sweeps on. Carrying us with it in its merciless and exultant flood, or leaving us stranded like foam-bubbles upon the shore ; sweeping vast civilizations into arrogant being, and surging over their last dying traces : Time ever sweeps on, and on, and on! THE SPIRIT [Paris, December 29, 1898] SUBTLE are the rhythms and harmonies of the spirit. The call of a bird at twilight, the shimmer of light through the forest leaves, the glow that echoes the sun in the evening sky, the pearls of dew on the morning grass — why do these waken such memories and make musical such secret chords of the heart ? The rhythms of the spirit are past comprehension, yet life's sweetness and pain are woven of their invisible harmonies. X THE MYSTERY [Rome, December 15, 1S98] MYSTERY upon mystery ! Out of the dark the child wakens, with strange wonder in his eyes. His play is the echo of life, and he hastens from it to the love and work of the day. The youth reaches back into the dim human ^. past, out into the abyss of nature, above into the blue mystery of the heavens. In the full light of day the man struggles. The hunger for bread, the thirst for fame, the desire to care for those he loves, press upon him. Like the plough across the field he is driven into the narrow furrow of life. The forest invites him and the heaven shines upon him. He has crossed the field and enters the cool shade of the wood. The brooks murmur of miracles and the birds twitter the mysteries of the forest. He passes down the hill-side and comes to the changeless river. He crosses it into the night beyond. Mystery upon mystery ! Retreating ever before us, clothing itself with darkness or veiling itself with light ; hinted in the shimmer of olive-leaves and the cooing of countless doves ; behind the wide eyes of children and the shut lips of pain ; brooding just beyond the tragic destiny, and echoing back from the smile of joy ! Mystery upon mystery! OPPORTUNITY i [Chautauqua, August 14, 1900] WHY can one not realize constantly that to-day is the opportunity for sublime living. Consecrate some fragment of time every day to the quiet effort to see things in relation : do not depend upon the mere accident of dis- tance to give truth. THE TWO FORCES [Paris, October 25, 1898] THE gravitation toward God, the moral ideal, is the centripetal motion of the spirit. Unbalanced by another force it tends to the annulment of self, to absorption in the All in the mood of a Hindoo pantheism. The ever- lasting affirmation of personality is the centri- fugal force of the spirit. Unbalanced by its opposite, this leads to selfishness and egoism. The two together produce that perfect circular motion which is ever active yet ever in harmony, which forever moves toward God, yet forever affirms the independent self. 10 WISDOM [Rome, December 16, 1898] HOW miserably life may deteriorate when it is lived habitually in narrow and mean things. It is not a question of poverty or wealth, though grinding poverty makes it more difficult to live constantly in great interests. But with a very slight command of money one may center one's life in the supreme reaUties. Personal love with its deep below deep of revelation may be ours if we do not degrade it by unworthiness or a cheap familiarity. The miracle of beauty which nature plays over daily before us may be ours, from the first glory of the dawn to the Venetian pageant of the sunset, and on to the sublime shining of the stars of night. The thought of all the seers and poets may speak to us. And with this world of greatness yearning to unfold itself to us we can spend our energies in petty irritation, in spying upon the sHght failures of others, in seeking to secure the best physical comforts for ourselves ! There must be a certain noble prodigality in great living. Some things are of such absolute value that one must spend time, money, life for them without thought or hesitation. If the virtue of common sense is a thrifty prudence in little things, the at least equally important un- common sense consists in knowing the absolute when it comes and accepting it at its worth, II NOTRE DAME DE PARIS [Paris, October 26, 1898] THE evening falls and the gray October sky makes everything sombre, even the autumn leaves that fall from the trees behnia Notre Dame. The great church seems peculiarly impressive ; the stone is softened and darkened, and an air of mystery is given to the forest of statues and carvings that adorn it. Between the doors is a grave and majestic figure of Christ, while arching above are the forms of a hundred angels and the representation of the judgment- day. High above, the columns and their carved adornments are as dainty as lace-work, while still higher are the gray and grotesque forms of beast and demon, born of the mediaeval imag- ination. They look down over Paris with un- changing leer as if filled with sardonic mirth at the tragic irony of the human life that flows by as it has flowed for centuries. The great rose- window and the massive towers add a sombre dignity to the impression of it all. One walks around the church, and other rose-windows and countless statues — a myriad of forms, grave, noble, grotesque, poured out with a rich and yet sombre abandon of imagination — overpower one. The circular chapel juts out behind, while above, the flying buttresses add a fresh maze of graceful forms. Under the falling autumn leaves lie huge figures removed from the church; be- 12 NOTRE DAME DE PARIS hind, among the trees children play half-silently. The mist comes as the gray twilight falls. The Cathedral gathers itself together, vast, unap- proachable, its myriad forms resolved in one great sombre unity, lifted away from the modern world. 13 LIFE [July I, 1901] LIFE is always difficult in proportion to its intensity and reality. In the formulas of the philosophers the problem seems clear and easy, but when we turn to actual living the theory often proves barren and inapplicable. Life is made of a few simple elements : as the physical existence depends upon fresh air, sunshine, simple food, and exercise, so the deeper life is made of love, work, hunger for ideals, appreciation of beauty, desire to know the truth. Yet as no two leaves upon a tree are the same, so each life is a new equation of old and simple forces. It is this that gives the perennial freshness and interest to life. It is this that makes the problem of living one to be solved only in practise, while all that our philos- ophy can accomplish Is to present the universal principles out of which life is made. 14 THE LAST PROVING IS IT not always true that when the purifica- tion of the spirit has been wrought through struggle and pain one more supreme test is apt to come? When Shelley's Prometheus chained upon the mountain of suffering has learned the lesson of three thousand years of pain and can forgive the power that tortures him, then it is the furies are loosed for one last struggle to dominate his soul. If he endures that and rises above it, then the power that chained him is conquered and the freedom of his spirit must become an external liberty. It is often so ; and the sadness of the last proving should only give us a sure faith in the light that must soon dawn. IS TRISTAN UND ISOLDE [Munich, September 5, 1901] NO WORK of Wagner's has ever made upon me the impression Tristan und Isolde produced last night. I felt in it far more dramatic harmony than in Lohengrin, Tann- hauser or Die Meistersinger. Is this, however, not due precisely to the fact that there is so little dramatic action in this opera? In it the interest centers in the musical interpretation of certain powerful states of feeling. There is just enough dramatic action to furnish a basis and reason for these emotional states. Does not this mean that Wagner was mistaken in suppos- ing that the center of interest in his operas was the dramatic action ? Is not the center with him as completely as in the Italian operas in the music, the difference being that Wagner devel- oped a different kind of musical harmony? In the Italian operas various pretty pieces of music are strung together on the thread of some romantic story ; in Wagner there is far higher dramatic unity in the music, since it develops consistently and organically in the interpreta- tion of consecutive emotional states. If I am right in this, the conception of " the music of the future " must be completely revised. The music drama must be pruned of dramatic elements which cannot receive natural interpretation in music. Action must be more 16 " THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE " completely subordinated than in many of Wag- ner's works ; the center of interest must be the emotional states accompanying action and expe- rience, which find their natural and supreme revelation only in music. When these changes come we may hope that the opera will no longer ofifend us with the painful lack of dramatic re- ality which even in Wagner is so often present. Without in the least going back to the older phase of opera, music will be restored to its central place in the combined art, and the real fruit of Wagner's revolution will be harvested. 17 FLORENCE [Fiesole, December 2, 1898. From the piazza below the monastery] THE valley of the Arno sweeps away to the north and east, while across it fold after fold of blue mountains lifts away to the light fleeces of cloud in the sky above. In the heart of the valley lies Florence, its domes and spires darkened by the afternoon shadows. Here and there lazily rising smoke is filled with light by the low afternoon sun. Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's tower stand out strongly in the center ; while on the lower hill-tops and in the nearer valleys is the silver beauty of countless olive trees gleaming exquisitely in the sunshine like the shimmer of a myriad doves in flight. Be- hind, the wind sighs in the pine-trees of the monastery yard, while afar the shining Arno smiles up at the sun. 18 FLORENCE [Florence, November-December. 1898J A TRULY great man is strong in many directions, and periods when life has blossomed out in some unusual way are prolific of such men. The great Florentines of the Renais- sance all have this many-sided quality. To-day an artist who attempted painting, sculpture and architecture would be regarded as a superficial trifler: yet Giotto could plan a campanile that outrivals any other structure of the Renais- sance, carve bas-reliefs in marble upon it, and yet work so continuously and successfully in painting that we think of him particularly in that sphere. So Michael Angelo could paint the ceil- ing of the Sistine Chapel, make marble waken to deep-breathing forms, erect fortifications to defend his city, lift into air the dome of St. Peter's and write sonnets worthy of Dante. While of all the men of the period Leonardo is the culminating example of this myriad-minded- ness. The greatness of these men was not an exag- gerated and over-cultivated talent, but an essen- tial greatness of spirit ; a fundamental, creative force that showed itself readily in any channel to which they turned their energies. They repre- sent human nature raised to a higher power of expression. Our system of specialization is measured upon the abilities of small and unin- 19 GENIUS spired men. Fortunately a world-genius will break through all hmitations ; but if our edu- cational system is to serve the highest life we must seek to awaken the creative spirit from within, instead of fashioning a narrow talent or multiplying an unrelated erudition. WHAT of the fate of the second-class artists, those who just missed being great? Were they conscious of it, and did they mourn over incomplete achievements? Or did they regard themselves as superior and hold any derogatory judgment to be a lack of deserved appreciation? Generally the latter, I think. For usually the outlook of ambition is measured by the vision-point of power: usually, but not always, for besides the tragedy of great power unfulfilled is the rarer tragedy of a great ambi- tion without ability to follow it even to a partial measure of success. Men of talent usually regard themselves as men of genius and are unconscious of the lower value of their work ; men of genius are conscious of their exaltation only in rare moments of great achieving and may be filled at intervals with the bitterest doubt of their own power ; while often they are unaware of the excellence of their greatest works and see only the inadequacy of the result to the inspiration. 20 THE UFFIZI GALLERY Perhaps it is well that it is so, for it makes life and satisfaction possible to less gifted men. But is not the fundamental quality of genius the vastness of the outlook and the unapproachable greatness of the ideal ; and would not any man be touched with some spark of the heavenly fire if he were awakened even to a glimpse of the exalted vision? The impossible ideal and the " divine discontent " it brings, with a limitless power of work : these make genius, these are genius. THE Ufifizi gallery is a bewildering multitude of significant and beautiful forms, from the calm marbles of the ancient world to the vibrant pictures of the Renaissance. The old Christs and Madonnas of the twelfth century, unlovely, untrue m drawing, with impossible conventionalized forms and postures are the basis from which and against which Renais- sance art sprang into being. Works of religious symbolism rather than of art, these old pictures are arbitrary rather than natural symbols of great ideas. One Christ I remember especially: the dark figure hanging awkwardly on the cross, the face strangely distorted in the painter's unskillful effort to express agony : it takes one back into the gloom and earnestness of the dark centuries. 21 THE OPPOSING MOTIVES Curiously enough, in the arrangement of the long corridor, these Byzantine paintings come between antique statues — busts of Roman emperors, rich, full Venuses, figures instinct with natural life and draped in flowing garments. It is the contrast of the two worlds, Christian and pagan, consecrated and abandoned, spiritual and sensuous, from the conflict and union of which sprang the Renaissance. And how fundamental is the conflict and union of these opposing forces in the human spirit ! In some rare balanced soul — a Sopho- cles, a Leonardo, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Browning — they may be so fused together that all sense of struggle is lost and the diiTerent elements are merged in the unity of the unfold- ing life. But in men generally one or the other element dominates, or the two struggle to- gether, giving us a St. Antony or a Fra Lippo Lippi, a Savonarola or a Lorenzo de' Medici. In one man, now one now the other force dom- inates, tearing him with successive exorcisms as each attempts to expel the other. As with men, so with periods, it is rare to find the balanced harmony. It appears a little in some phases of Greek life and in the innocence of the dawning Renaissance ; but in a little time the balance is destroyed, one element is exag- 22 FRA ANGELICO gerated over the other, and the endless battle has begun again. AFTER Venice the work of Fra Angelico stands out with marvelous spirituaHty. In contrast to the gorgeous coloring of the Vene- tians, the magnificent sensuous women of Titian and Tintoretto, the arrogant pageant of rich life of Veronese, how simple, delicate and exalted are the thin, grave, suffering and compassionate Christs, the slender, spiritual virgins, the deli- cate color and unreal forms of Angelico. There is more spirituality in the one half-length figure of Christ rising from the tomb, painted over one of the doorways in the cloister of San Marco, than in all the paintings of Venice. The absence of background in Fra Angelico's work is significant. His utter absorption in the religious meaning of his painting, his sense that every picture was a new consecration of himself to the service of the spiritual life in those about him, made him concentrate his entire attention on the figures and faces that expressed his re- ligious conceptions, and avoid all distracting accessories. Thus the utter simpHcity of Fra Angelico comes more from the spiritual exal- tation of his aim than from the place he occu- pies chronologically in the development of art. The usual environment of his figures is some 23 GHIRLANDAJO simple cloister arcade or vaulted cell, such as those of San Marco. Occasionally he paints simple almost archaic rocks and once a delicate background of trees where the oerspective of the landscape is remarkable, GHIRLANDAJO'S extensive frescoes irri- tate me as always. There is such a sense of self-satisfaction in his work, an absence of all perception of his failure — the complacent ego- tism of mediocrity — which makes his work opposite in impression to that of Andrea del Sarto. Up to a certain point the technique is admirable. The figures are well-drawn, the composition is excellently planned, a realistic individuality shows in the treatment of each face and form, the whole effect is very decorative, " but all the play, the insight and the stretch " — out of him ! and out of him precisely because he was unconscious of the lack. Had he hungered for a higher genius his " reach " would have exceeded his *' grasp ", and his work then would have had the suggestiveness of Andrea del Sarto or the unfulfilled promise of Botticelli. As it is he insults us with the arrogant finality of medi- ocrity, the unanswerable logic of the man who despises the dreamers. But genius breaks through the completed circle and astonishes us with the unexpected. As the highest point of 24 MICHAEL ANGELO morality is the heroic imprudence that annuls the ordinary logic of Hfe, so the loftiest achieve- ments of genius can never be anticipated on the plane of common reasoning. An inspired action differs not in degree but in kind from the most refined calculations of prudence, and so does a work of genius from the carefully planned effects of the most skillful artisan. THE statues for the Medicean tombs show what I felt so deeply in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel — Michael Angelo's power to work to a vast and unified plan. His soul was filled with gigantic conceptions of life, not as cold intellectual theories, but warm with emotion and instinct with imagination. As is the case with all great art, it is a mistake to attempt too close an allegorical interpretation of these symbolic figures. Those who would find a complete political philosophy in them are at fault. The very value of a concrete embodiment of the spirit lies in the fact that it can express what no abstract theory can give. Yet over these six statues, two seated and four recumbent, express- ing the alternating moods of sleep and waking, thought and action, repose and power, broods the vast m.ystery of life, the mystery of the eter- nal conflict of sin and joy, power and failure, life and death, that dominates the spirit of man. 25 MICHAEL ANGELO To Michael Angelo life is never a serene har- mony, but a ceaseless struggle of gigantic and opposing forces ; and however extravagant his representation of force and power in human forms, this but increases the tension with which the convergence of opposing tendencies upon man's spirit must be met. Michael Angelo's life was to some extent a tragedy of unfulfilled power even as Andrea del Sarto's. But in the case of Andrea the limitation was subjective, in the other it was objective. In Andrea it was a paralysis of the spirit, for Angelo a collapse of external conditions that broke off the fulfillment of the life. The parts of Michael Angelo's work that we have are ade- quate, they are perfect fragments of an uncom- pleted plan ; but each work of Andrea's is a subtle suggestion of something higher than itself, unattained. The tragedy of Michael Angelo is like the gloomy exile of Dante — the spectacle of a great and mighty spirit struggling with misappreciation and untoward conditions. The fate of Andrea del Sarto lies in the gray depression of the spirit itself that eats the heart out of every effort. Leonardo was a much more harmonious spirit than Angelo, and for him the opposing forces of the spirit were reconciled in one unity of life. He was sensible of the mystery of life, but to 25 LEONARDO DA VINCI him it was not the eternal struggle of vast forces, but the subtle marvel suggested behind every form. Where Angelo struggled to embody the endless conflict of great forces, Leonardo sought to unify these in the subtle mystery of the smile upon his faces, in the strange charm of his Hghted backgrounds, in the masterly dramatic unity and intensity of his Last Supper. The mystery is as great in the one case as in the other ; but with the one it is the dualistic battle, in the other the informing spirit ; in the one the tragic conflict, in the other the inexplicable solution of this in the fact of life; in the one it is mediaeval, in the other modern. ANDREA DEL SARTO'S Last Supper is no less wonderful than I remembered it. One enters the long room, and a startHng impression is made by the beautiful and har- monious colors of the great picture which covers the wall at the opposite end. The effect of exquisitely molded color grows the more one studies the painting; but that is not its only greatness. Andrea has chosen the same dra- matic moment that Leonardo portrays, when Christ speaks the terrible words " One of you shall betray me ; " and the apostles in horror exclaim " Is it I ? " But where with Leonardo 27 ANDREA'S LAST SUPPER all Is objective and dramatic here the inter- pretation is entirely subjective. Each apostle except John seems to be asking himself the question " Could I do it? " One folds his hands and looks dreamily away as if he were praying that the cup might pass from him. The weakest of all the faces is the Christ face, while the masterpiece is the Judas, who sits upon Christ's right hand. It is the one possible Judas I have seen in a painting. The usual conception of Judas is the hardened criminal Leonardo paints. Such a Judas might have betrayed his master, but would he have been in the circle of the twelve, and afterward would he have gone out and hanged himself in an agony of remorse ? But this Judas leans forward on the balls of his feet ; one hand is pressed against his breast as if he were gasping for breath, the other is stretched out with that appealing gesture we use when we ask a question to which we know there is no answer unless a terrible one. The figure is lean and worn, the face, under the tangled mass of hair, dark and haggard and beseeching, is the face of one who through love might be led on and on until he reached a point where any action or no action would injure some one, and thus be swept over the brink of a terrible crime ; and then in an agony of bitter and unavailing remorse go out and take his own wretched life. 28 ANDREA DEL SARTO Leonardo's picture impresses by its mascu- line majesty, its affirmative command of each type of character and of the dramatic meaning of the whole. Andrea del Sarto's appeals to us through its feminine delicacy, its expression of sensitiveness. In the one the fate is the fate of objective actions, in the other it is the fate of feelings. The one is modern in its objective naturalism, the other is modern in its revelation of the inner personal life. 29 MICHAEL ANGELO [Florence, June, 1901] HERE is something deeply depressing if one remains for a time alone in the pres- ence of these creations of Michael Angelo's upon the Medicean tombs. The sombre moods of Angelo weigh increasingly upon the spirit. Did the man ever smile ? Did the world ever seem to him beautiful and life endurable? Cer- tainly, if so, he has not embodied the gla'cl mood in art. Everywhere, in the dying Adonis, the smiting scenes of the Sistine Chapel, the grave and gloomy Holy Family of the Uffizi, the sombre brooding of these recumbent figures, it is the dark weight of the mystery of life that Michael Angelo embodies. He is indeed the prophet of the afternoon and the sunset in whom is expressed all the terror and something of the sense of relief of the coming night. THE Dawn is the most wonderful of the recumbent figures. Warm and ruggedly voluptuous in beauty, she seems filled with the agony of the life to which she awakens. Dark and grave are the moods of Michael Angelo. His statues never take you into their confidence, but rebuke you and make you feel your insignifi- cance. The exquisite finish of this statue contrasts with the rough-hewn masculine figure of the 30 ANGELO'S LAST WORK Twilight which seems sinking back into the still sleep of the marble from which it has been half- called. The sinister figure of Lorenzo broods above. Moods sombre and terrible, it is these rather than clear thoughts that Michael Angelo expresses. THE Pieta behind the altar in the Cathedral of Florence reveals the last sad phase of Michael Angelo's long life. One feels that the hand driving the chisel trembled with age. The figures seem half-wakened from the stone as if the master's conception were too faint and dim to be made clearly alive. The limp body of Christ rests over against the sorrowing mother, the solemn face of Joseph looks from above, while Mary Magdalen, cold and grave, supports the body from one side. The grouping is har- monious, the execution still masterly, and the mood is the dark, sad mood of age and death with a suggestion of the sigh of relief from the burden of life. How Michael Angelo's work stands out alone in contrast to other Florentine sculptors ! Vast, titanic, gloomy, earnest, never gentle, tender, or delicately appealing, he is to be reverenced and admired rather than loved, to be regarded with awe rather than afifection. It was the late hour of the afternoon as I 31 ANGELO'S LAST WORK looked at this group to-day. The shadows darkened the vast Cathedral, the priests and boys chanted the service, while the great dome broke the sounds until the whole air seemed vibrant with music, and the entire impression was a fitting background for this half-uttered dream of the prophet of the evening. THIS work of Angelo's grows upon me. How different from the early Pieta, the master's first great achievement. There it is the Madonna upon whom the attention centers, and Angelo has given her the grave majesty and superb strength of a Greek goddess who has suffered and become human. Here the Christ is the center ; he is made larger and more power- ful, while the Madonna is more human and less mighty. Inexpressibly beautiful is the Christ face as it leans against the mother's. Not the divine Christ this, but the " man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," solemn, sad as the end- less pain of life. WHAT a mass of poor work must be done that a few great achievements may come into being! How few the masters are! If this is depressing at least it should prevent one's despairing of one's own age. On the other hand, when the masterpiece does 32 THE MASTERPIECE appear it comes so simply and directly, with no flourish and noise, as if it were the most natural thing in the world — as indeed it is. It comes, moreover, as a way of life for the master. Men of talent live to paint, write, carve statues ; men of genius paint, write, carve to live. 33 La Vita Nuova A VITA NUOVA twice was Dante's part— Once when the wonder filled his youthful eyes Of that fair smile which woke for aye his heart, And after guided him through Paradise. Again a new life was his heritage When Beatrice passed beyond his sight. And fickle Florence, in her sudden rage, Made him an exile in the homeless night. A bitter new life was his gloomy fate Who, heavy-hearted, toiled up alien stairs, Hungering with a soul insatiate. Lonely, and crying " Peace ! " in fruitless prayers. The later new life found a vaster form Than this sweet love-song of his dreaming youth ; He faced the pain of death, the changeless storm That reaps the fruit of sin in spite of ruth. He climbed with aching feet the mount where guile Dissolves in fire that burns the dross away. He journeyed on to meet again the smile That gave to Paradise a brighter day. LA VITA NUOVA And on from flight to flight and star to star, He heard the mighty music of the blest, And found Hght deepen Hght, till from afar, God lifted him to action that is rest. And in that beatific sight he found The peace that in the world he sought in vain- Peace from beholding as a perfect round The warring elements of joy and pain. And so within his heart and mind arose The new life conquering the storms of Time, And Dante built a world out of his woes With art unequalled singing the sublime. 35 THE ALPS [Brunnen, Switzerland, June 28, 1901] HOW great a change ! From Florence with its world of old pictures, its frowning pal- aces and noble churches, its noisy stone streets and glaring summer sun, to this majestic sweep of mountains piled behind mountains, here slop- ing gently and clad with meadows and orchards, there sheer and precipitous, and beyond rising in forests of pine, while behind all rise snow-cov- ered peaks radiant in the sunshine. In the midst the marvelous, still beauty of Lake Lucerne, and all about the breath of the earth and the flowers and the twitter of birds. 36 THE V/AY OUT OF PARADISE [June i6, 1900] WHAT is the source of the tendency to grow careless in courtesy — real heart courtesy towards those one loves the most. Is it a peculiarly subtle form of selfishness? One will strive hard to give positive happiness to another and then spoil it all by carelessly giving way to a mood of sullenness or irritation. Is it not the worst selfishness to be so absorbed in details of one's own comfort as to hurt others ? Only by ceaseless watchfulness can one prevent the growth of such habits. 27 Evening on Calton Hill, Edinburgh CURTAINS soft of vapor enfold the city, High on fastness grass-covered, glooms the castle. Glows the western firth like a golden ocean, Everywhere silence. Dimly outlined mountains appear afar off, Faint like dreams that half are forgot and silent. Peace and Night enfold all the sleeping city, Silent and sleeping. 38 The Boulevard St. Germain THE little old lady sits on the bench by the Boulevard St. Germain. Her hair is as white as the snowy bonnet that covers it ; a plain red shawl is about the bent shoulders. She sits very quiet, not seeing much of the bustle of life in the street. It is Sunday afternoon, and the endless stream of men and women keeps pass- ing ; the tram-cars are crowded ; and carriages rich and poor are rolling by. The little old lady sits and thinks ; she is very tired and it is good to rest. She would like to keep on sitting quietly here, thinking and resting. She thinks with a sigh that is half longing, half relief, of the time when she hurried by on the arm of some one to the garden concert or the fete. She thinks about a grave that has been a very long time in the churchyard of a village, she remem- bers how long it is since the flowers withered that she was able to place there last. A dog runs along and stops, begging. A beautiful smile lights up the withered face of the little old lady, and it seems much younger as she speaks to the dog. The smile subsides and the face becomes grave again. The little old lady sits quite still, softly thinking. She is very tired, and she wants to rest, 39 FRANCE [Paris, October 20, 1898] THE right balance of different elements of the spirit is difficult to attain. Thus con- tent and form are seldom found in perfect harmony ; one or the other element is deficient and art fails to be at once meaningful and beau- tiful. In all expressions of French genius to-day one is impressed with the exquisite beauty, grace and skill, but with the frequent lack of signifi- cant meaning. One need not turn to painting, sculpture or the higher literature for an illustra- tion ; the leading articles in the newspapers constantly deepen the feeling. The writer aims not to state certain facts or truths, or to con- vince by a reasonable argument based upon facts, but merely to write what is readable and interesting. He does it with exquisite skill but the general disregard for truth makes the result profoundly immoral. The process tends to de- bauch the national mind, and is it not a cause as well as an expression of the diseased moral and intellectual attitude which France has recently displayed? 40 Alone HOW solitary and desolate the path of life stretches away across the trackless desert. How ceaselessly glares the burning sun. How the sand scalds the face, chokes the breath, and burns the eyes till there are no tears left to weep. Ah, this cruel thirst ! Is every vision of cool shade and crystal water only the ceaselessly mocking mirage of all human hopes ? Am I to fail miserably like all those foolish ones who dared pass beyond the shores where fat slaves eat the bread of comfort in Lethean ease — ■ where despair and failure never enter because the vain deluding shadow of impossible hope has never come? Are my bones to whiten in the ceaselessly glaring sun? Is the pitiless sand at last to cover them and leave again the unbroken and trackless waste ? 41 EXPERIENCE [Augrast 31, 1902] EVERY experience, however bitter, has its lesson, and to focus one's attention on the lesson helps one over the bitterness. It is folly to waste strength in feeling hurt over misunder- standing and unjust criticism. Let one go quietly on toward what is real and in the end what one is piust show. The only answer to un- just criticism is earnest work, the only right re- sponse to praise and appreciation is earnest work. 42 STRASSBURG CATHEDRAL [Strassburg, July 27, 1901] I AM not disappointed in the Strassburg Cathedral: on the contrary it has steadily grown upon me. The first impression with the unfinished tower and the Romanesque central portion is disappointing; but one becomes quickly adjusted to these elements and the majesty of the whole with the bewildering mul- titude of forms impresses one more and more. The west front does not fall short of its reputed grandeur. Probably there is no better example of Gothic art at its highest, when the wondrous wealth of decorative forms is em- ployed without the offensive excess of over- adornment that comes later on. Hardly less, however, does the older, simpler portion of the church, still Romanesque in character, appeal to me. Particularly within, the towering majesty of the simple round columns of the transept is quite as beautiful as the wealth of columns clus- tered together in the vast pillars of the nave. The interior of the church gives one nothing of the feeling of incompleteness expressed by the exterior. The general impression is pecul- iarly harmonious with the forest of columnated pillars, the beautiful windows with stained glass and perfect tracery, the glimpse of the simple transept and the broad expanses of the nave and aisles. 43 THE GOTHIC One finds ever some new detail of beauty in Gothic architecture. A Greek work grows on one through the increasing impression of har- mony and beauty in the whole, a Gothic creation on the contrary through the discovery of ever new forms of beauty in the bewildering and at first almost benumbing variety of adorning details. One can appreciate what a revelation this Cathedral was to Goethe ; one finds it more difficult to understand his strong reaction against the Gothic later on. Yet that too is partly clear when one realizes the mutually ex- clusive character of the two types of art — Greek and Gothic. It Is almost as if the beauty of the one were the failure of the other. 44 To Goethe [Translated from the German dedication prefixed by Bayard Taylor to his version of Faust] I SPIRIT sublime, to spirit-land retiring! Where, light-encircled, ever thou did'st dwell, Far higher now the tasks which thou'rt desiring, Thou singest with a nobler, fuller swell. From each endeavor toward which thou'rt aspiring, From freest ether where thou breathest well, O kindly bend thee, gracious answer bringing To this the latest echo of thy singing! II The long-dust-covered crowns of the old Muses 'Neath thy skilled hand with brightest splendor shined. The age-old secret its strange darkness loses Through younger faith and clearer-seeing mind. Thou had'st the world-wide sympathy which chooses Where'er men are the Fatherland to find. With wonder deep thy pupils see that never The age can die — in thee expressed forever. 45 TO GOETHE III What thou hast sung, all human pains and pleasures, Life's endless contradictions fresh combiaed ; Sweeping the thousand-toned harp with measures. As once it rang to Shakespeare, Homer blind. Dare I into strange tones bear o'er these treasures. Since all who ventured ere me fell behind? O may thy spirit through my accents ringing Sound out the deathless message of thy singing ! SESENHEIM [Sesenheim, Friederikensruhe, July 27, 1901] ANEW sense has come to me of Goethe's selfishness and of the pathos of Friederike's Hfe. I had always felt that Friederike should have been glad she was blessed by even a moment of Goethe's love — and I believe she was glad. But here the impression of the little village with its narrow life has made me feel her suffering. Living here in the small round of activities, with quite unusual capacities for ten- derness and love, Strassburg the great city, and the simple interests of the village life absorbing her attention — he came! Days of joy, months of longing, and — he bade her farewell ! Poor little girl ! wakened only to be denied and for- gotten, while the great man went on, loving other ladies, and doing his life-work in the larger world. Poor Httle girl! left to be god- mother to village children, to fulfill the petty tasks of a minister's household and care for the sick in the neighborhood. And the years have passed and she is gone, and Goethe is gone, and the house is gone, and we sit here on the spot where they so often sat hand in hand. The even- ing twilight darkens, through the young trees is a glimpse of deep red sky. Save for the voice of a peasant and the sound of a distant hammer all is still. Through the little summer-house and the trees the distant blue of the mountains is 47 SESENHEIM discernible. Other days and other times, but love and work and heart-break and heart- hunger — still these are human life. How far away you seem, poor little Fried- erike, laughing girl of a hundred and thirty sum- mers ago ! How glad the time seemed to you, and how painful that visit to Strassburg when you felt his disappointment, and he did not come back the same ! The clouds still gleam in the sunset, a faint twitter of a bird is heard, but your heart is silent. All things end — even pain ; but the unanswered years of heart-hunger? — 1 WE ARE back in the little inn. A group of country fellows is shouting and singing at a table near us. A little lad is playing about the floor. The rain falls softly without. Just a few feet away is the little church, now used by both Catholics and Protestants, and the spot where Friederike lived. One can understand the idyllic feeling Goethe experienced as he ran away from his student work in Strassburg and came to this village in the midst of its calm forest. It all seems so near, and yet so far, so far away. The mystery, ah, the mystery of human life ! We are born, we play and dream, we love, we work and suffer, and we are gone ! What and Whither and Why? 48 SESENHEIM Only the echoes of our cry reverberate in answer. All the evening I have been thinking of our visit to Assisi. Why? Is it because St. Fran- cis, too, fell short of the highest human realiza- tion in his love ? How different are St. Francis and Goethe, and yet the same pathos of human love is in both stories. 49 To a Star-Flower DEAR little star-flower abloom at my feet, What are you waiting for, what is it, Sweet ? Is the ceaseless glare of the sun a pain? Do you long for a sip of the cool, moist rain? There are star-flowers, Dear, in the human world, — Children with angel wings half furled, Who find like you that the sun shines strong, Who at times like you for the soft rain long. There are children. Sweet, of an older age. Who have watched life's miracle stage by stage, To whom the day seems blank and bare. And the night and the rain-drops sweet and fair. For the road of pain outstretches long, The end must come to the sweetest song, And the only check to the tears we weep Is the thought that night will come — and sleep ! 50 VENICE [Venice, November, 1898] VENICE is as mysterious and unique as she seemed before : at once oriental and barbaric in the splendor of her decoration, the strangeness of her natural situation makes her seem a city of dreams. The effect was deepened by the stillness, almost terrible, of the dark canals as we glided through them in the late evening. The ruined palaces, their gorgeous fronts crumbling, their steps lapped by the cold green water, seemed a mirage from some strange day-dream. THE people seem quite as much a ruin sur- viving from the past as do the palaces of Venice. Wide and dark eyes pathetically or wonderingly open on life seem to ask in a dumb, unconscious way why it is — the misery or the mystery of it all. They dwell amidst the ruined magnificence of Venice, unconscious of it yet overshadowed by it, so that their lives do not seem quite fully human. There is no impression of present creative vitality among them, and their lives instead of being strongly centered on the present and constructive for the future seem focused upon the past. Meanwhile, the sun gilds the domes and cam- panili with the same golden splendor as of old, the blue Adriatic smiles back in rivalry at the 51 A VENICE FESTIVAL sky, the moonlight sheds its transfiguring bene- diction over the ruined palaces and the long arcades, and the pulse of nature beats forever creative, unexhausted. IT IS the festival of Santa Maria della Salute ; and all day long the dense throng of people has glided over the temporary bridge to the great church and back again to the countless alleys of the city. Along the way numerous candle-sellers cry the prices of their wares to be used as votive offerings to Mary. In the church the crowded mass of people is like a great heart, to and from which pulsate the veins and arteries of worshipers coming and going: sick women who have dragged themselves here in the hope of a cure ; trembling forms of old people seeking to prolong the pathetic shadow of life that is theirs ; dark-eyed girls hungering for life ; chil- dren pushed hither and thither in the throng. At the door continuous quarreling, half good- natured, between those crowding in and out. In the church the lips of all moving in prayer and the heads bowing, like a wind-swept field of wheat, as some altar bell rings. At the main altar a brilliant mass of lighted candles, continu- ally increased by the offerings of those who have struggled up to the altar steps. Suddenly an avenue is made in the center of the throng, 52 THE PATHOS OF VENICE and a long procession of priests, with banners, incense, gorgeous robes, enters and moves toward the altar : a strange group of men, in many the hard look of narrow selfishness or the marks of gluttony ; rarely an intelligent face, almost never an inspired one. In the midst a group chants a service as the line moves on. Begun to celebrate the release of the city from a frightful pestilence, this church and its festival are a strange memorial of the past. Pathetic — infinitely so — this blind trust in ritual, this immense devotion to an institution consoHng but hardly lifting life to-day. Singularly true also to the spirit of Venice — Hfe to-day domin- ated by the relics and shadows of the past. THE charm of Venice is mingled with a peculiar sadness: the strange mystic sad- ness that is awakened by a falHng gust of autumn leaves under a gray sky or by a sombre but beautiful sunset ; the sadness of long silent arcades through which innumerable feet have passed that walk no more ; the sadness of a still hous3 filled with sweet and tender associations that can never return. As one wanders through the narrow lanes, or glides upon the still canals, or paces to and fro in the great square with the strange splendor of San Marco and the long arcades about one, Venice plays upon one's 53 VENETIAN PAINTERS heart like appealing music full of tender and sad longings, echoing the plaintive memories of splendid days and nights of star-lit joy. THE painters of Venice were singularly true to the spirit of her life. Rarely have I seen a true religious inspiration, nowhere a profound intellectual or moral content in their work. But all, even artists of the second class, paint an imposing variety of splendid forms in action and stately pageants of life. Paul Veronese is in some respects the most characteristic of them all. Without the genius of Titian, which lifted the latter in a measure above his environment and gave him certain traits of the world-master, Veronese had great talent and used it in perfect harmony with the spirit of the life he painted. His vast canvases, full of stately and harmonious figures draped in the gorgeous brocades Venice brought from the orient, express the splendor and almost monotonous luxury of Venetian life. It is the spirit that gives individuality, the intellectual, emotional and aesthetic content of experience that dififerentiates and deepens per- sonality. The multiplication of beautiful or gorgeous forms and the heaping up of luxurious surroundings may impress with a general mag- nificence but cannot conceal a poverty of the spirit. And thus the long succession of paint- 54 VENETIAN PAINTERS ings by Veronese, full of a splendor of color and an exhaustless wealth of magnificent figures in the stately pageant of Venetian life, nevertheless lack the depth of thought and ideal that makes every picture of Giotto or Botticelli, how- ever faulty in execution, an individual creation of genius, as difi^erent from every other as one life is from the next. In spite of his genius some measure of the same truth applies to Titian. His golden light- ing transfigures his subjects with something of the ideality which the situation of Venice gives to her. He was able to seize strongly marked types of the life about him and give them adequate and permanent expression. The indi- viduality that marks every work of genius distinguishes each painting of Titian. Yet he rarely expresses a spiritual ideal or a great human insight. The masterful grasp of history of Michael Angelo, the human and dramatic power of Leonardo, the transfigured spirituality of the Sistine Madonna, and the pathetic and unanswered hunger of Andrea del Sarto, are alike out of his sphere. He can translate into the immortal language of genius the golden splendor of Venetian life, but the spirituality and moral depth which was lacking in the life about him he could not attain. 55 THE ART OF VENICE THERE seems to be a smaller chasm between the masters of Venetian painting and the lesser artists than is the case at Florence. Is not this because imitation is easier than creation, and rather a work of talent than of genius ? To represent the splendor of Venetian life and copy its magnificent types of physical manhood and womanhood required a skill and talent which appears in varying degree in different artists. But to conceive and portray the drama of his- tory Michael Angelo paints on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to give visual birth to the mysti- cal conception of transfigured maidenhood and motherhood Raphael achieves in the Sistine Madonna, or to see and fix the dramatic and human meaning of the crisis Leonardo paints in the Last Supper requires genius, which is widely separated from all degrees of talent and skill. THERE are no gargoyles on San Marco, there is no Dantesque gloom in the paint- ings of Venice. With all the extravagance of form in Venetian painting, the grotesque and terrible rarely enter. Is it partly because the Venetians were unimaginative ? A superabundance of magnificent forms and resplendent colors may embarrass rather than stimulate the imagination, and make art an artificial combination of imitated forms rather THE ART OF VENICE than a spontaneous creation from the spirit. To see too much may be to dream too little, as a luxuriant wealth of opportunity may paralyze the efiort that poverty awakens. But beyond this, was it not the sane health of Venetian life, the absorption in external action and enjoyment, that saved them from the weird gloom of the m.iddle ages and the north? The strength and the weakness of the idealist and dreamer were never theirs, while the limi- tations and the power of the man of wealth and action are everywhere expressed in their lives. IN SOME respects the Venetian painters developed new lines of representation of nature in art. But their work, if anticipating modern landscape painting, was quite unlike the latter. Their mountains and rocks are usually artificial, as with most Renaissance art. It is only in the phase of nature with which they were intimately acquainted, in the marvelous play of light and color on the sky, the clouds and the water — that they were true, idealistically and realistically, to the world they studied and loved. TO-DAY is gray and chill ; the clouds lower over Venice, and the water in the canals is a deeper and colder green. The startling colors of San Marco are softened and dulled, and the 57 VENICE marble porticoes and arcades are cold and dark. It is well to see Venice in this mood. If the splendor of color and the daily miracle of light are her dominant impression, nevertheless the gray moods must come, and they were present in the life and spirit of Venice as well as in the succession of her days. The magnificence in- volved a correlative slavery. The pomp of the oligarchic state rested upon the servility of the mass ; behind the marble palaces was the Ghetto. Venice is both ; and to remember one phase but be blind to the other is to see the sunshine and forget the days of gloom, to watch the thronged piazza of San Marco bathed in its wealth of color, and ignore the dark alleys lined with dead and silent houses whose feet are lapped by the chill water of the still canals. NIGHT falls and the waters of the lagoon shimmer under the gray sky. Across, the campanile and dome of San Giorgio Mag- giore are clearly outlined against the pearl of the sky. Five rowers in a barca bend rhythmically to their oars and send their craft speeding onward. Two boatmen in a barge manage with vigorous effort to keep the great black shape moving slowly. One by one the lights shine out on the distant islands and the far away domes sink more and more deeply into the sky. S8 TITIAN LFlorence. November 28, 1898J WHAT Tintoretto has done with his pas- sionate energy in the golden bodies of his nude women, that Titian with a more quiet mastery has accompHshed in the relaxed volup- tuousness of his redining Venuses in the Tribune of the Uffizi. These women are splen- did courtezans without a trace of intellect or soul to transfigure their rich and harmonious bodies, yet lifted away by the idealization which the golden light upon them imparts. If less master- ful, Tintoretto seems to me more human, and the passionate life that radiates from his women is more attractive than the languorous sensual- ity of these imagined goddesses of pleasure. From the nude women of Titian to Andrea del Sarto's Madonna of the Harpies is a long step, no less psychologically than aesthetically. From the major tones of a positive golden atmosphere we pass to the minor chords of deli- cately mingled color, light, and shade, subtle and suggestive but strongly elusive. What Andrea meant to do, and what after all he accomplished, are almost equally difficult questions. This woman is no resplendent courtezan nor is she a spiritual ideal, she is not the human mother nor the self-abnegating Madonna of innocence and humility. Yet the face is of exquisite beauty and there is a subtle pathos in the unawakened 59 ANDREA DEL SARTO expression of the mouth and eyes. When the full sense of Andrea's sensitive and pathetic per- sonality has once come to us it is awakened by each of his pictures and becomes the subtly impressive background upon which all of his achievements and efforts are seen. 60 THE PROBLEM [Paris, November i, 1898] FOR every attainment one must renounce something. The problem of life is one of proportion. To affirm always the best, and renounce the lower, that is genius. 61 NEW ENGLAND [Walpole, New Hampshire, August 30, 1902] WHx\T a deep pathos there is in the deca- dence of the old virile New England life ! The return of families enriched elsewhere, spending lavishly and building luxurious sum- mer homes, does not compensate for the dying out of the simple, earnest farm life from which has come the leaven of our American nation. At least four families prospered formerly on the land where one dwindles out to-day. There is no calling back the old time : economic condi- tions have changed as vastly as social ones, and the dispersal of the New England stock through- out the nation has been a vast gain in our civ- ilization ; but to return to the old home is to feel the sadness of a decaying life. THE autumn haze is in the air, softening the distant meadows and transfiguring the rolling hills and the groups of trees with the mood of dreams. A breath of air, warm with the summer but fragrant of the autumn, touches the face and moves gently the boughs of the nearer apple-trees. One's imagination reaches back through the generations of children who have romped here and grown into sturdy man- hood and womanhood and passed — on. The changing seasons have gone year after year in swift, calm flight. Over and over, the haze of 62 NEIV ENGLAND autumn has made fainter the soft outlines of the hills, the winter has stripped the trees and laid their outHnes bare against the white fields of snow, spring has touched the old sleeping earth-mother into fragrant and breathing life, summer has brought its soft winds and warm wealth of green. The red Indian and his primeval forest are gone. The generations of sturdy farmers who cleared the fields and filled them with waving grain are gone. The children who trudged through the lanes and filled the little school- houses with merry, vigorous life are gone. The pine-trees spring up in the green meadows and the land threatens to slip back into the sav- agery of earlier days. Life is won only by ceaseless battle, and the good of yesterday is lost unless we achieve it anew to-day. 63 O Love, While Still 'tis Yours to Love I [Translated from the German of Freiligrath] OLOVE, while still 'tis yours to love ! O love, while love you still may keep ! The hour will come, the hour will come. When you shall stand by graves and weep ! And see that warmly glows your heart And love doth cherish, love doth give, As long as close against it beats Another heart where love doth live 1 To him whose heart is opened you, O all you may of kindness show ! And fill his every hour with joy, And fill for him no hour with woe ! And govern well the hasty tongue. For words unkind so soon are born ! O God, I did not mean it so ! — But ah ! the other goes to mourn. O love, while still 'tis yours to love ! O love, while love you still may keep ! The hour will come, the hour will come. When you shall stand by graves and weep ! 64 WHILE STILL 'TIS YOURS TO LOVE Then shall you kneel upon the grave, And hide your tear-dimmed eyes (alas ! They see the other nevermore !) In the long, dampened churchyard grass. And say : '' O see me weeping here, As I upon thy grave bow low ! Forgive me, that I hurt you, Dear ! O God, I did not mean it so ! " Nor sees nor hears he as of yore, Comes not again to banish woe ; The oft-kissed mouth speaks nevermore, " Dear, I forgave you long ago ! " He did forgive you long ago, But often did the hot tears fall For you and for your cruel words — But peace — he rests, beyond your call ! O love, while still 'tis yours to love ! O love, while love you still may keep ! The hour will come, the hour will come, When you shall stand by graves and weep ! 65 SOLITUDE [Lucei-ne, November 14, 1898] THERE is no doubt that a certain repose of life is necessary, not only for balance and elevation of spirit, but for the highest creative energy. If, as Goethe affirms, we must reach out into the manifold human world to avoid degenerating into a narrow egotismi, it is equally necessary to have periods of serene and quiet repose and reception of beauty in nature, art and thought to avoid the dissipation of the energies of the spirit. es GREECE [On ship between Euboea and Andros, October, 1901] ANOTHER calm and exquisite day, but dif- ferent from yesterday. The sea is a far deeper blue, the mountains of Euboea are out- lined so clearly that every change of surface and every rock shows in the transparent air. One feels the southern world about one. And last night how all-wonderful were the stars ! Venus in the west was so brilliant that a distinct path of light was shed across the sea. The milky way was like a great filmy band of white clouds sown with innumerable gems. The Pleiades were just above the horizon in the east, and over the whole cloudless heaven rested the countless multitude of worlds and suns. 67 ATHENS ^Athens, October, igoi] I AM sitting amid the columns of the Parthe- non. Far below, the blue sea stretches away to the fainter blue of the islands. Mutely the scarred columns express the vandalism of the past. But beneath and beyond this they speak of how great a world ! Think of it : Plato walked here, Socrates conversed with his pupils in the streets below, St. Paul preached perhaps from the neighboring hill to w^orshipers of the Un- known God! The whole is too overpowering, I cannot grasp it. THERE is something infinitely pathetic as well as inexpressibly exalting about this hill and its ruined fragments. Whole walls are made of piled up pieces of exquisitely sculptured marble. All about lie fallen columns, archi- traves, capitals. The ruin is different in its impression from that of Rome — Oh, as different as the destinies of the two cities ! There, one is impressed with the vastness of the ruined world, here, with the marvelous beauty that is wrecked beyond recall. Awe is the mood in Rome, in- finite regret and admiration mingled is the mood of Athens. From each slight point of elevation to which one climbs marvelous views stretch away : blue sky and light fleeces of white cloud, blue sea 68 MODERN ATHENS slopes of Hymettos and Pentelikon. The Greeks must have had deep love of natural beauty, though with little of the romantic sentiment and even sentimentality in the modern appreciation of nature. If they enjoyed nature more as chil- dren respond to the sunshine, that they did enjoy and consciously love it the sites chosen for their temples alone would prove. WHAT a blessed sense of freedom there is in this Greek world as compared with Constantinople. You go about as you choose ; no one bothers you. A guide politely offers his services but desists as courteously when you decline them. I have climbed all over the south slope of the Acropolis and sit here in the Odeion of Herodes Atticus quite undisturbed. Modern Athens seems alive and active, if with rather simple life. The number of new buildings appropriately constructed in harmony with the past is astonishing. The town is filled with little cafes which furnish favorite lounging places. The coffee is served in the Turkish style and is deHcious. The majority of the homes are small and the people, excepting the government hangers-'on, seem pitifully poor. Yet there is everywhere a spirit of cheerfulness born of freedom, and therefore a promise of better times. 69 MODERN ATHENS It is interesting to note that here as in Russia they speak of what is going on " in Europe " as if it were quite a different land from this. Indeed Russia, Turkey and Greece seem to stand aside from European civiHzation and to belong as much to the orient as to the west. This is accentuated here by the fact that so large a por- tion of the Greek world has always been Asiatic. WHAT a great day this has been! The Stadion, the view from the hills behind it, a walk by the dry bed of the Ilissos where, when the river and its banks were full of charm, Socrates walked and talked with his companion in the Phsedrus, the study of the ancient theaters on the slopes of the Acropolis, two hours in the museum, and sunset from Mount Lykabettos ! The whole effect has not been disappointing. A sense of wonderful, inex- pressible beauty and a sense of pathetic ruin and desolation — these made up the impression of Athens upon me. The sunset from Lykabettos was beautiful beyond description. Clouds hung low in the western sky, and as the sun came behind they shone like great battlements in blazing fire. From there the clouds scattered over the heaven took fire, and the sea beneath reflected the glow. Mountain beyond mountain rose in majesty. 70 THE GREEK SPIRIT Nature is alive and beautiful as when the Par- thenon first left the artist's hand and the great dramas of ^schylus were first given in the theater of Dionysos. How difficult it is to recall the Greek life, to fill in with the imagination what the few surviv- ing fragments carry of the older world. One must say it over and over : here Plato walked, there Socrates talked with his pupils, here ^schylus entered the theater with bowed head and intense face, wondering if the victory was to be his, there Pericles passed with Phidias his friend talking over the projected improve- ments of the AcropoHs. Yes, it is all true, but how difficult, how difficult to make it real ! One seems to be walking in a dream. I DO not think that Goethe ever really under- stood the Greek world, profoundly as he was influenced by it. His attitude toward it remained to a certain extent scholastic. Nothing could be further from the Greek spirit than the mytholog- ical machinery of the second part of Faust. It is a scholastic study of Greece rather than a living expression of the Greek spirit, archaeological rather than poetic. That Goethe was deeply moved by Greece there is no doubt ; but he remained distinctly a German. He reminds us of the thoroughgoing German student of antiqui- 71 THE GREEK SPIRIT ties, so un-Hellenic in his attitude toward the Greek past. In Schiller I find far more of the truly sympathetic rendering of the Greek spirit, though with less conscious effort and less use of the material of Greek tradition. The whole movement of pseudo-classicism is a false lead. The reproduction of gods, god- desses, centaurs and sea-monsters in the art of the eighteenth century, and even to-day, is as remote from the true Greek spirit as it is lavish in imitating the accident of Greek material and tradition. The true art is not one that copies the detail of Greek works but which executes with the same freedom of spirit and the same love of beauty and truth to nature as in the Greek. And such art will produce works iden- tical in nobility and beauty with the Greek sculptures, but as widely dififerent from these as our civilization is remote from that of clas- sical days. THERE are not In the National Museum In Athens the number of strikingly beau- tiful, well-preserved works one finds in the greater European galleries. But the average is surprisingly high, and in spite of the mutila- tion many of the works have suffered, one can study better here than elsewhere the real spirit of Greek sculpture. 72 FUNERAL RELIEFS I had not expected the depth of feeling present in the funeral reliefs. It is almost inconceivable that these v/ere done by common workmen, but this fact adds greater significance to them. They express the human sentiment of the everyday people of ancient Greece. There is something inexpressibly touching in them. The reaching out of the hand to hold back the departing one, the solemn farewell, the peering into the gloom — these were the same with the light-hearted Greeks as with us of later and sadder days. I have never elsewhere felt the humanity of the Greeks so strongly as in the presence of these memorials of the mystery. Moreover the funeral reliefs give a higher idea of the place of Greek women than one gains from other sources. Whatever the limitations in the lives of Athenian women, family affection, warm personal love were much the same in the Periclean days as they are to-day. Again one is impressed with the simple and common char- acter of the elements that make up human life in all times and places. I HAVE come to understand that the use of color in Greek sculpture and architecture was right. The Greek world is full of color, though form dominates. In their original bril- liant beauty, warm colors were as harmonious 73 GREEK ART to the Greek temples and marbles as the mel- low tint of the decaying stone is to them in their present ruined state. FROM the finished and conventionalized art of Egypt and Assyria, Greek art takes its start. Working within the conventional lines, gradually the freer Greek spirit asserts itself. The body begins to swell into true lines beneath the conventional folds of the drapery, the set smile and features become individualized. When the Greeks broke with these conventional models it was as when the Elizabethans threw ofif the restraint of the miracle-plays or as when the Italians in the Renaissance gave up all Byzan- tine traditions and turned to life. GREEK art everywhere strives to reach an ideal beauty, and truth to nature is always subordinated to this aim. Does this account for the conventional element present throughout Greek art ? It is found in the smile of the archaic statue, in the minor decoration of a temple, in the type of capital and column. Never did the Greeks develop true portrait art, always the features of a real human being were idealized in harmony with the conventional conception of beauty. 74 ATHENS TO-DAY has given me just what I needed to complete my impression of Athens — a clear sense of the surrounding landscape : bare, rocky hills rising into mountains with here and there short pines upon them, dry plains with world-old olives lifting gnarled stems and sil- ver-gray foilage, blue water with beyond bluer mountains rising grandly, and overhead intense sunshine and transparent air magically adorning all. The view of the bay of Salamis was inex- pressibly beautiful, having the added appeal of its great battle. One stood below the hill of Xerxes and tried to call up the past — how diffi- cult it is ! THE few fragments of the mediaeval Chris- tian world seem strangely out of place in Athens. Here mediaeval civilization (and super- stition) never submerged and transformed the classic past as at Rome. The little metropoli- tan church is a symbol of the middle ages here ; tiny, built of fragments of ancient structures, with old reliefs and capitals incongruously set in all over the walls, one even upside down, it is expressive of the slight foothold the middle age gained in Athens. 75 ATHENS [Athens, October, 1901] TO-DAY the air is fresh and clear after the rain. yEgina and the mountains of the Peloponnesus stand out with startling clearness beyond the blue water of the gulf. Every defile and ridge in Hymettos is plainly visible. The Acropolis and its ruins are almost fiercely out- lined against the sky. Such a day must be a true Greek day. I AM at home in Athens and Florence. I understand these people so v/ell: all the lightness of spirit, the quick recovery from strain, the passion for beauty, the capacity for deep religious earnestness, the vein of melan- choly withal underneath, all the lightness and versatility : I understand and love these people, they are mine. [On the Adriatic below Corfu, October, 1901] THE evening and the morning Hght is beau- tiful beyond all expression. There is in it more of the powerful tones of brown, yellow and gold, yet softened and deepened, than in the northern world. Last evening at sunset Mount Parnassos across the gulf of Corinth was trans- figured with this deep light till it seemed as if one could hardly bear the beauty. I have never seen such color in landscapes elsewhere. This 76 GREECE morning at sunrise the same light rested over the sea and upon the mountains of the near-by shore. MY VISIT to Greece is ended. What an experience it has been ! In the main I found what I had expected, but in some ways I was obHged to correct my preconception. For one thing, I found more color in the Greek world than I anticipated. It is true, form dom- inated in ancient art, but it is equally true that color if everywhere subordinated, nevertheless lent its sensuous warmth to the loftiest crea- tions of Greek genius. Art remained simpler with the Greeks than it became with the Ital- ians, there was far less of the illusion of per- spective and the appeal to the fancy and imag- ination. Greek art realized its dream and never tortured and thwarted with the suggestion of the unattainable. Yet withal Greek art covers the whole circle of sensuous appeal ; it was not partial, but universal. I am surprised to find how thoroughly I had learned to appreciate the Greek spirit before going to Greece. If the experience has been a wonder of joy and a revelation of beauty, after all it has only brought out into clearness and fixed with certainty impressions and conceptions I had already attained. 77 "One Day Is Like All" [From a fragment of Mimnermus] TRULY the sun hath obtained a most griev- ous task each and all days ; Never a moment's rest cometh, though wearied out. Unto himself or his horses, what time the dawn rosy-fingered, Leaving old Ocean's breast, mounteth aloft to the sky. Him sweetly-sleeping bears o'er the water's crest the much-loved boat, Hollowed in honored gold, the work of the god of fire. Fitted with wings and sailing from far-off Hesperides islands. Coming unto the land called Ethopian. Here a ready chariot standeth all harnessed and waiting Till the early-born — the Dawn, shall step from the sea ; Then again his chariot the son of Hyperion enters, (Taking upon himself the work of another day.) 78 MUSIC [Rome, December 17, 1898] WHAT a sense of sadness as well as beauty in tender music heard at some distance ! Then it takes an impersonal quality, bringing out all the mysterious shadow that is cast by joy. Subtle, non-intellectual, appeaHng at once to the most fundamental and the most highly refined feelings of the human heart', music is the art singularly expressive of the highly complicated, deeply personal character of modern life. 79 From the Night to the Night THE lights of the Paris boulevard flared in the cold dismal rain. The few men smok- ing and drinking at the Cafe Grand looked gloomy enough. Out of the night and the rain, into the flare of the Cafe lights, came an old man. He held his hat in his hand, and the rain beat down upon beautiful snow-white hair that should have been the glory of a noble old age. He stopped before one of the tables where sat a heavy, coarse-faced man smoking and drinking. The old man did not speak. His head and hands trembled with palsy. The pitiable look of an ill-treated child was in his face. He held out first one deformed and trembling hand, and then the other. He went from one table to the next, and to the next. No one gave him any- thing; and carrying his hat in his trembling hand, the old man passed out into the rain and the gloom of the night. 80 5 TRA T FORD-ON -A VON [Stratford-on-Avon, June 26, 1898] THE sunset last evening was an apocalypse. We stood on the bridge ; down the placid river the church spire rose above the green of the trees. There was no wind to ruffle the sur- face of the water or disturb the peace of the hour. Masses of clouds filled the heavens and gave a more sombre hue to the vivid green of the fields. In the west a deep rift in the clouds was filled with wonderful golden light, while from it radiated upward streams of Hght fading from gold to deeper and more quiet tones. All about were sounds of birds going to sleep. THE cathedral aisle of trees leading to the Stratford church is such a natural temple as must have suggested Gothic interiors to the builders of the north. One looks down the long arch at the gray church, while about are thickly strewn graves under the trees whose boughs shelter the innumerable choir of birds. The sweet peace of ages of repose seems to rest over it all — 3. fitting sepulcher for the poet of humanity. ONE is impressed here, as in every place where the world has been transfigured by a great soul, with the commonplace character of the life from which greatness has sprung. The 81 STRA T FORD-ON -A VON people of Stratford bustle up and down its streets untouched by the glamour of Shake- speare's memory. And as they are in reference to Shakespeare so are men generally in relation to divine things. We are blind and deaf to the revelation that broods over us and around us. The book from Mrhich Shakespeare read is open before us ; the Sphinx of the ages waits breath- less to rede her own riddle if w^e will but listen. 82 SHAKESPEARE [Scranton, Pa., May 4, 1900] IN ANTONY and Cleopatra is revealed the true Shakespeare. Nowhere else is there a greater abandonment to the reckless flood of passion, and nowhere else does the poetry show a more complete unionwith the mood expressed. Words, exclamations, images poured out in a daring flood, yet never once the height lost, never a descent to the ranting plane. Who else could have done it? There is something awe-inspiring in the colos- sal expenditure of life. Renan it is who says that a great crime is " beautiful, like an abysm,'* and such heroic passion as Antony's, aban- doned and terrible, has this sublimity. All that makes the sunset of Rome luridly impressive is gathered up in this play. As Plato taught, the worst things in the world are the corruption of the best, and the virile manhood of Rome, dis- torted, gives us the mad passion of Antony. WHAT does such tragedy do for us? It moves us deeply with the spectacle of life. It takes us out from our narrow sphere into the great world, and we feel the wide vigor of the storm and the sweep of the sea. It amazes us with the vast forces that surge through human existence. In its presentation of life in relation to law it teaches us the deepest lessons, not 83 SHAKESPEARE didactically, but involved in the concrete char- acters it portrays. It exalts us with the lifting power of beauty and the wider vision art achieves. What more would you? It fulfills, condensed and focused, the function of life itself. Thus art is a kind of other experience through which we may complete our lives. WHAT complete harmony with ethical laws there is in Antony and Cleopatra as contrasted with the Merchant of Venice. The latter play leaves us satisfied with the escape of Antonio and the punishment of Shylock's cruelty, yet pained at the unfair baiting of the Jew and wondering how these " Christians " can be so care-free in their merriment while Shylock goes out alone into the night. Is it true to life? Yes, but it is not all the truth, and it is the func- tion of art to show us every tendency it presents worked out to its last conclusion. The cruelty of Shylock receives its just punishment, but the humanity that sobs of the ring Jessica bartered for a monkey — *' It was my turquoise ; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor : I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys " — remains all unfulfilled. The generosity and nobility of Antonio, Bassanio and Portia re- ceives its right end, but the cruelty and race hatred toward Shylock is given and left with- 84 SHAKESPEARE out result. Shakespeare himself would seem to have felt this, blindly perhaps, for he has given us the last anti-climax scene w^here '' the moonlight sleeps upon the bank " and the music calms us for the repose of night. In Antony and Cleopatra, v^^ritten probably long after the Merchant, every strand is woven out to the end. The mad passion of Antony, his heroic strength, his lust, and his loyalty to cer- tain friends and aims — all are carried out to the last conclusion. So is it with Cleopatra, and thus where the Merchant of Venice leaves us charmed, but perplexed and unsatisfied, Antony and Cleopatra leaves us stirred and saddened, but at rest in the sense that there could be no other conclusion and that the action in each phase is finished. THE highest art never photographs life, it reveals life. A machine can copy, only a genius can interpret the world. The painter does not copy the expression a face may have shown, he divines and paints the expression the face must have shown had the man fully revealed himself. So Antony does not say what a certain Roman chieftain might have said; he speaks what Antony, if Antony had spoken adequately, must have said. And to this raising of the character to a 85 SHAKESPEARE higher plane of expression art adds an atmos- phere that focuses and interprets all. The background upon which each action is por- trayed, the mood the whole composition of the scene suggests, the meeting and grouping of the different characters — all this is arranged not as it might have been in life, but as it must have been if life had completed itself and revealed its last meaning in the particular situation. Thus the artist obeys, not historic possibility, but artistic — that is, ethical necessity. 'HERE is always something subliiile in life that rises above the plane of selfish calcu- lation. Prudence, if a necessary, is a mean virtue, and the abandonment of life to heroic imprudence always awakens a thrill which does not come from the well-turned schemes of care- ful thrift. The ends that should sweep us off our feet and make us forego prudence are love, aspiration, the need of one's country, one's friend, one's faith, the great calls of the spirit everywhere. But lower ends may do the same with us, as passion does to Antony or mad ambi- tion to Lady Macbeth. Yet even then, with all the pitiful waste of life and distortion of its aim, there is still something of the grandeur that comes from forgetting lesser calculations of expediency in one supreme struggle of the spirit 86 SHAKESPEARE for what it has taken as its end. What Browning says in the Statue and the Bust — ^that a crime may do as well as a virtue to test the forces of the spirit — is deeply true ; and the expression of the splendid powers of the spirit in vigorous action must always be impressive, whatever the end to which they are directed. WA.S the dark woman of the Sonnets the cause of Shakespeare's Cleopatra ? Some- where he had learned to look into a passionate woman's nature. Cleopatra is distinctly earthly, yet earth of such burning intensity it seems almost fire. She is all passion, yet passion so absolute it is nearly love. A woman to sweep a man into the tangle of her desires and lead him a charmed and yet restless life ; his fate to thirst the more as he drinks from the fountain of her beauty, satiated with delight, yet tantalized in the satisfaction. 87 SHAKESPEARE [Scranton, Pa., May 18, 1900] I FEEL — yielding myself thus week after week to the magic of Shakespeare's genius — as if I had been dwelling for a time among the high Alps. The air is so different from that of the fat plains — pure, clear, intense — one breathes with fuller draughts. When I came among them the sun shone and the lower summits glowed with the sweet radiance of Love's Labor's Lost. A night followed when the peaks were dimly out- lined, but fairy dells gleamed with magic in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Then followed clouds gathering and threatening a storm, but the black masses rolled back, and though still sombre the nearer peaks glowed in the radiant sunset of the Merchant of Venice. Since then have followed days of successive storms, each appearing more terrible than the last. The very mountains seemed to battle in Julius Csesar, while the heaven and earth seemed sinking in a torrent of fire in Antony and Cleo- patra. In Lear an avalanche fell, sweeping trees and houses before it as it rushed down. One fair morning dawned rosy and sweet, but before the first hours were past darkened deeper and deeper into the silent eclipse of Othello ; while once toward evening there fell a weird passion of lightning and rain in Macbeth. The nights between were clear and starlit — all but 88 SHAKESPEARE one. It began with clouds looming ominous; these darkened rapidly and spread in great masses over the peaks. There were flashes of starlight and then deeper gloom. Strange, far- away rumblings of weird thunder were heard, with at intervals sudden gusts of wind and rain. All night the storm threatened, and when morn- ing dawned, gray and comfortless, there settled down the gloom of steady and ceaseless rain in the dark close of Hamlet. But this was not the end. The period of storm passed ; I came down from the terrible heights into the Alpine valleys. The mutterings of thunder were heard as the clouds in dark masses drew away, and at evening the gray was tinged with gold and rose in the sunset of the Winter's Tale ; while at night the calm, serene shining of the stars and the sense of peace was over all with the end of the Tempest. 89 Laddie [Munich, September x, 1901] I HEAR your voice ! With soft half-laugliing, singing Three dear notes; and then a sigh, And soon the dear eyes close And you are still, in sleep. Dear little Laddie, With your fine, intense, glad life ! The vast wide world before you — All its storm and pain and joy, What will you do? How I love you Dear little Laddie with the loving heart! let me hold you close And keep you ever, ever near my heart ! But you must walk alone, And when the hurt comes And the long, long way is hard, Think how your father's heart Ached for you, hungered so to keep The pain away. Dear little Laddie, Sleep, sleep gently still ; 1 kiss your cheek and touch your wayward hair. 90 THE SEA [At sea, off the coast of Spain, May 27, 1901] THESE days have been full of joy. The summer sea, now blue and stretching away like some fair, indefinable dream, now gray or even inky black under the play of the ever-changing clouds, has appealed to me as never before. Night after night of transfigur- ing moonlight, and day after day of peaceful saihng through the living deep have given rest and peace. The boundless reach of the sea at times oppresses, at times rests one. The vast sweep of the circle stretching away and away until the horizon waves seem to beat against the sky, suggesting the unmeasured reach still beyond, is almost overpowering. No wonder the circle has been taken as the symbol of infinity. 91 IDEAS [Paris, October 26, 1898] THE spirit is fertilized by new and masterful ideas. The accumulation of the material of knowledge is useless or worse without the birth of conceptions which can interpret the material. In the middle age painters and sculptors went on copying the conventional figures of Christ and the Madonna, here and there an inspired genius adding an unusual touch of gravity or nobility. Suddenly in the Renaissance a crowd of new and beautiful forms springs into being, and every humble worker shows some measure, however small, of the creative power. It is the result of a new conception of life and beauty, which so charged the atmosphere of the Re- naissance that every one breathed in something of it. Creative power without the presence of fresh, fertilizing ideas is as much of an anomaly in human life as parthenogenesis in nature. In both cases the masculine function of impregna- tion precedes fertile production. 92 NOVELTY [Paris, October 19, 1898] IN ANY period of great artistic luxuriance it is inevitable that some workers should strive to succeed through mere novelty. But this is always an unworthy method and no true success can be attained by it. Novelty is not originality, and a work that strikes the atten- tion with a theatrical shock of surprise is sure to weary and offend after a time. 93 ART [Paris, October 19, 1898] THE Renaissance is the period when the im- mense increase occurs in the production of art for purely decorative purposes. This is cer- tainly not the highest motive inspiring art, and alone it cannot result in the loftiest work. Benvenuto Cellini reaches the highest point of art with no aim above adornment — " art for art's sake " in the lower sense. One hesitates to use that oft-repeated phrase, however, for it may mean art for Hfe's sake, art inspired by the highest creative purpose and undegraded by any narrowlv utilitarian or didactic aim. But the decorative aim as such belongs in the lower and not the higher class. When painting and sculpture are produced to adorn super- ficially the private life of capricious individuals it is as when literature is made a mere polite fringe to fashionable and frivolous society. In such cases the dignity of art is surely sacrificed, and it is regained only when the inspiration be- comes as earnest as the deepest realities of hu- man life. 94 MASTERPIECES [Paris, September 30, 1898] HOW often one is impressed with the fact that there are few really great works in the world. There is much that is great in possibility, and much that contains elements of greatness, but the works which as a whole are completely satisfying are few indeed. In the multitude of paintings in the Louvre, selected from the masterpieces of ten centuries, are there a hundred that satisfy? Among the crowd of statues how sublimely the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory stand out. How few among the hundreds of operas, repeated year after year, give unmarred joy and an uplift of the spirit. If, therefore, one selected more rigorously the sources and associations of one's life, might it not be possible to live more constantly with the best? And to live in an atmosphere of adequate and masterly achievement should certainly ex- ercise a lifting power upon the spirit which would make one less unworthy to live in com- munion with the rare souls of history. 95 PESSIMISM [San Francisco, March 22, 1897] I THINK I have discovered why pessimism has such high artistic possibiUties. We never accept a pessimistic theory of the universe quietly and intellectually ; our spirit rises up in rebellion against the world it portrays. We know in the human heart and mind a hunger for rationality and eternity, a thirst for per- manent love and justice that are infinitely higher than a world of blind mechanical change. Hence if the outer world seems to us the latter we re- volt against it with supreme force, and in this revolt our emotional and imaginative life is ex- cited to the highest point of activity. It is this that gives pessmism its powerful appeal in art, and at the same time explains the lift to our faith which may come from a poem of despair. The protest against the gods is an affirmation of God ; the reaction against the world without, which seems a failure, is an affirmation of the dignity and nobility of the world we know within the human spirit and which is after all divine. Thus I never lay down Omar without a stronger faith in the eternity of the best. 96 ROME [Rome, October, 1901] HOW Strange and yet how familiar Rome seems ! After Athens I am impressed with the vastness of the city in space and time. The cHmate seems distinctly more northern and all day yesterday as I rode through olive fields and vineyards I was impressed with the luxuri- ance of the vegetation as compared with the bare beauty of Greece. Athens stands for one supreme influence in human history, at- taining its expression in a single brilliant period. Rome stands for a maze of influence, layer on layer of civilization being deposited here through a long lapse of centuries. One can grasp Athens and touch the heart of her spirit, one is awed and confused by Rome. AFTER Athens the Vatican marbles satisfy me even less than before. It is impossible to understand Greek art from this collection. Doubtless there are many works here spoiled in smoothing and restoring, but the impression made now by many of them is one of cold, life- less *' stone-dolls." The dignity of content, the exquisite beauty of the true Greek art are alike lacking. No wonder pseudo-classicism went so far astray, since it drew its conceptions of Greek art from such works as these. 97 ROME [Rome, December, iSgS] THERE is no city like Rome. Nowhere else in the world have such tremendous storms of human life centered. Asia, Africa and Europe, the south and the north, the east and the west have met and struggled here in a great cataclysm of life. As the Forum is sunk below the level of the street, so the ancient world seems mysteriously sleeping just beneath the present civilization in Rome, waiting for some strange magic to waken it again to life. It is interesting to see how much of the an- cient as compared with the mediaeval world has survived at Rome. The present Catholic church is her best m-cmorial of the middle age while of the ancient civilization countless remains have been excavated. The fact too is pregnant with significance : for it is not the external expres- sions of the middle age which are a living force to-day, but rather its great spiritual aspirations, while of the ancient world the external, objec- tive phases of life are a vital inheritance at present. It was what the mediaeval world aspired to be, as it was what the ancient world achieved, that gives the permanent value for subsequent life. 98 ROME [Rome, December. 1898] HOW one feels in Rome the prodigal wealth and waste of life and action in the profli- gate decline of the ancient empire. The vast ar- chitectural structures were built by common workmen— an army of them, not to speak of the host engaged in quarrying and shipping marble and travertine and in making bricks. The men who did this work had a narrow horizon and labored for the wage of the day or as slaves for the mere bread they received. What was their Hfe? And upon what human slavery and fear and ignominy were these splendid structures built ! This is the pathos of ancient civilization — the grandeur of it resting upon the backs of a dumb multitude. The earthquakes of human struggle miust shatter such a foundation and in the end overthrow the civilization erected upon it. The temples and palaces that last must be built for the multitude as well as by it, they must be the creation of free and inteUigent ac- tion and not the product of the tyrannous com- pulsion of unmotived hands. I HAVE seen St. Peter's! Last night under the moonlight and against the marvelous background of the sky and its myriad stars, all distracting accidents were submerged and the vast dome upon the majestic temple stood out in 99 L.ofC. ROME harmonious simplicity. It was a revelation of the beauty of the main lines and proportions of the structure when extrinsic elements are removed. In front the great colonnade swept away like a hundred colossal temples stretched out m a line of columns. Behind, the Vatican rose dark and ominous, an occasional light burning in an upper window. One felt how startlingly com- manding was the power almost imprisoned within it, yet reaching out to an unequalled mastery of a vast part of the world. TOO HABIT [London, September 23, 1898] ONE should have the greatest simplicity of physical habits combined with the largest flexibility. How hard the combination is to attain, and yet how important to a life at once sane and fuU ! It is the same problem present everywhere in living — the problem of unstable equilibrium — of an adjustment that is ever in process and never crystallized. lOI CHATEAUBRIAND [Hanford, California, December lo, 1897] IT IS difficult to express the effect Chateau- briand's Atala and Rene have upon me. DeHcate aHke in sentiment and execution, they seem to involve nevertheless a subtle weakness. Is it not due to the separation of refined senti- ment from the sterner action of life? Is it not the very weakness of the cultivated classes of French society in the period of the revolution? The separation of a cultivated class from the more severe realities of the struggle in the midst of which the mass of people lives injures both classes. The struggle for existence becomes sordid and bitter, the culture of the few, selfish and unsound. Unbalanced by vigorous action, sentiment degenerates into sentimentality; un- elevated by sentiment, action becomes sordid and debased. The world in which Chateaubriand lived was shocked into a recognition of realities, brutal and agonizing enough, by the revolution, but before that it had lived in its own introspec- tive imaginings and fancifully created senti- ments. Chateaubriand turns to the new world, not so much because it is a fresh field for real life and action, as because it furnishes a fitting theater for the play of the self-born fancies of the heart. Rousseau's attitude is at once very like this and yet widely diflferent. In his idealization of 102 ROUSSEAU the noble savage there Is the play of the same fanciful sentiment present in Chateau- briand, but the belief in the essential rightness of the instincts and emotions of the heart and the strong desire to give them spontaneous and unhampered expression in life gives Rousseau his stimulating virility, so wanting in the dreamy melancholy of Chateaubriand. The im.pression of the consoling power of Christianity which Chateaubriand wishes to give us in Atala is perhaps imparted less than the sense of repulsion toward a religion which could so fatally mislead a simple and unspoiled nature through the arbitrary assertion of false and mis- taken ideals. The authority of medieval Chris- tianity over sensitive and credulous spirits is as dangerous as it is remarkable. Chateau- briand's Atala presents all the conditions for the sentimental reaction of Rousseau against an authoritative order which Chateaubriand as sen- timentally upholds. 103 FREEDOM WE crave freedom, but freedom is never an end in itself; it is a means to be used for further aims. Its value lies in the extent to which it can assist the development of life. To possess freedom with no life for which to use it is the bitterest farce. One of the saddest sit- uations in human experience comes when, hav- ing previously desired freedom, we discover that we have attained it just when the objects to which we had hoped to dedicate it are irrevoca- bly lost. Life never means complete freedom, and every action and relation is an added bond. Life is to be attained, not through a non-moral freedom of caprice, but through a glad welcom- ing and loyal fulfillment of every bond and obli- gation which comes in the daily path of life. T04 LECKY [Martha's Vineyard, June i6, 1900] LECKY'S Map of Life is a most interesting expression of the cultivated Englishman. Grave, reserved, practical, avoiding over-state- ment, without enthusiasm and inspiration — it could come only from England. There is a sin- gular lack of unity, of fusing power in the book. It is a kind of later Bacon's Essays, without the epigrammatic intensity of Bacon, but with the same worldly wisdom applied to the detail of life. One is alternately interested and de- pressed by the book. It compels respect con- stantly, but the one highest element of wisdom is wanting throughout. There are many excel- lent and shrewd observations, all true, but no- where the combining principle that transfigures these with light and integrates them in relation. Is not this the cause of the element of gloom present throughout the book? Nothing con- fuses and saddens more than the clear apprecia- tion of a multitude of details which seem in re- current and irrepressible conflict with each other. 105 DUTY [San Francisco, January 37, 1896] MEN frequently abandon their property when they no longer have use for it, and imagine they are very benevolent. So when a man finds his life a wreck he is apt to say he will live for others. Yet one can give to others only what one's life is worth to oneself. To abandon a mean situation is not the path to a better one. Only when we are faithful to the little duty are we worthy to meet a larger one. It is often necessary to leave a situation that offers small chance for the realization of our lives, but it makes all the difference in the world whether we sneak meanly out from under the little duty or climb bravely through and over the top. 106 SCHOLARSHIP [December 14, 1898] IN MODERN scientific work entirely too much is made of developing and trading upon every fragment of knowledge one attains. Such a method gives notoriety to the workers, but only multipUes the mass of books full of dead material. One should seek to make each fragment yield its fullest measure of life to one's spirit, but should give out the refined and organ- ized result. Fewer books of higher quality is the need in literature to-day. The idea of a struggle for existence has led us to accept the fact that the great mass of books will be sifted by time, and only the worthy will survive. This is true, but if a larger measure of the sifting could be accomplished within the spirit of the author himself the result would be better for him and for his readers. 107 The Moan of the Pine in the Forest THE flowers are faded, the leaves are dead, Over the meadows a gloom is spread, And the pine-tree moans in the forest. The night draws down, I am growing old. In the evening wind I feel the cold. While the pine-tree moans in the forest. My eyes are seared and I cannot weep, Forever it haunts me awake or asleep — The moan of the pine in the forest. I seem to see a shape pass by, I seem to hear a dying sigh In the moan of the pine in the forest. O God! that terrible human cry! It will haunt me forever until I die In the moan of the pine in the forest. Her face was fair and her soul was white, And I — I came as the gloom of night — Ah, the moan of the pine in the forest ! How sweet you were with your love divine. How close your dear breast pressed to mine — But ah — the moaning cry of the pine — Of the sobbing pine in the forest I 1 08 THE MOAN OF THE PINE IN THE FOREST I am withered and bent and old, And your sweet breast has long been cold 'Neath the moaning pines of the forest. Ah God ! that a soul cannot forget ! The long-dead past must haunt me yet, As the moan of the pine in the forest. The stars are hid in the blackened sky, Heaven ! Hell ! can I never die And forget the moan of the forest? The bitter night-winds sting my cheek, The pine-tree's moan becomes a shriek — The shriek of the pines in the forest. 1 hear above the forest's roar A cry — " I am lost forevermore ! " — Ah, the moan of the pines in the forest ! The voice is lost in the storm-winds' roar, My heart but echoes — " forevermore Lost, lost in the moan of the forest ! " The howling storm-winds swiftly fly, The clouds are whirled in the darkened sky. While the mournful pine-tree moans its cry — The sobbing cry of the forest ! 109 LIFE [On the train, February i6, 1900] €^T IFE is an unstable equilibrium." Men L^ like Wordsworth and Klopstock tend to overemphasize the equilibrium, and life becomes stable and prosaic. Men like Shelley and Heine exaggerate the unstable quality, and the equilib- rium is apt to be lost. This explains why the virtues of sobriety, prudence, regularity are so often associated with a prosaic and common- place type of character, while the irregular but awakened life is so attractive. Men have always liked Carmen, and women are seldom satisfied with men who are *' thoroughly respectable." Doubtless one could depend on Wordsworth's coming home to dinner if he promised to do so, but the worst of it is one would not care so much whether he came or not. Shelley would be quite unreliable, but it would be the heaven of the unexpected when he came. no T ART [Rome, December 18, 1898] HE decline of Roman sculpture shows the same tendency which comes early in the history of art — the effort to achieve greatness by the use of abnormal size. The colossal statues of emperors and gods, like the massive sculptures of the Egyptians and Assyrians, show the mistaken notion that a wanting majesty can be imparted by mere bigness. Yet while the more primitive works have a certain grandeur through earnest intention, the huge creations of decadent Rome are merely big and their size but exaggerates their lack of significance. It is true, increased size, within strict limits, may add to majesty of impression, as an added wealth of lighting exalts the paintings of Rem- brandt and Titian. But these tricks of skill are always dangerous, and the power of artistic con- ception and execution must be unusually great to carry them successfully. As Titian and Rem- brandt were great enough to handle unusual lighting effectively, so Michael Angelo had suffi- cient masculine power to use the device of in- creased size to give to his statues a greater majesty. But Bernini and his followers only caricatured their mediocrity on a large scale when they tried to make vacant marbles impres- sive by multiplying their size. Ill "Of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven" I STOPPED a moment on Piccadilly near the corner of Hyde Park. It was dusk, and the street was beginning to be filled with the people who crowd it at night. I was wearied with human life ; this West End thoroughfare seemed more distressing than Whitechapel. There, was misery, but here the surging crowd of shameless women and hardened men spoke of the brutality of habitual vice. The ceaseless rush of the city life hardens the sympathies of the most sensitive ; rest comes only when the heart grows callous. I longed to escape from men, for I felt as if there were nothing to re- deem humanity. Near me I noticed two little boys, one perhaps ten, the other twelve years old. The little one's face was ghastly white, and his teeth were chattering. '* Can't you walk any more, John- nie? " said the older one. '' No," sobbed John- nie. The older boy had a coarse face, one that showed a bad inheritance behind it. But now he looked sad and perplexed. " Well," he said, ** I'll try to carry you." He was not much larger than the younger lad, but he lifted the little form up tenderly in his arms, and stag- gered down the street. I followed and asked 112 "OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN'' what was the matter. " 'E fell into the Serpen- tine." '* Here, take this, and take him home in the 'bus," I said. His face brightened. An omnibus was just passing, and he cried " hi " in a commanding voice. The big wagon stopped and with infinite tenderness he carried his burden up the steps and into it, and sat down with the limp little body in his lap. The last I saw as the 'bus bowled away was the little white hand and ragged sleeve of the younger boy around his protector's neck, and in the older boy's face that look of lovingly tender mother- hood that some painters have been able to express in the Madonna's face. I walked on, threading my way mechanically through the crowd. I did not see the hideous street with its painted women and brutal men. I saw only the little ragged sleeve and the sweet mother look ; and I thought about an old story of how God was born into the world as a little child. 113 A Life THE strength of gentleness, the might of meekness, The glory of a courage unafraid, A constant love, a tenderness for weakness, Were in her face and in her life displayed. 714 LONDON [London, August 7, 1898] THE debris of life in London is terrible. On the benches in the little squares sit wretched hags ever half-sleeping with drunken- ness and weariness. In and out of the dram- shops stagger men and women in all stages of heavy and coarse degeneration. The parks near the city's center are covered with men lying about in all attitudes of physical exhaustion — immense battle-fields they seem, filled with corpses of those who have gone down in the struggle for existence. The alleys swarm with ill-developed children whose white faces can be discerned beneath the excessive dirt. The immense mass of human wreckage makes the problem seem hopeless. One feels as if one were in the presence of an immense vortex in which lives are ceaselessly going down while one is powerless to help. I have continuously in London the feeling that was intensified to-night by an accident. From the top of an omnibus I saw a horse attached to a hansom come gallop- ing down the slippery pavement wet with the evening fog. The driver's face had upon it a look, half of despairing courage, half of ghastly terror at the almost certain fate. The runaway passed us, and a little beyond the wheel struck violently upon the heavy back wheel of an omni- bus. The hansom shuddered and then collapsed, IIS LONDON the horse tearing himself free from the debris, while the driver was thrown violently through the air and upon the stone sidew^alk ! n6 One Mood of the City THE stream of human Hfe, a ceaseless tide, Through streets and alleys of the city flows : Fair joyous faces brightly shine beside Those whose wan features tell of hopeless woes ; Men who their deeds of sin full fain would hide, And children whose soft cheeks bloom hke the rose: Ah, who shall tell the wonder and the pity Of human life that surges through the city ! The city morning dawneth wan and gray. The very air is heavy with the smell Of all the rotten vices, seeming gay, But black at heart, which make the night a hell ; The throng of workers filleth every way As these haste on to where they buy and sell, — Who gazes on the vain, depressing sight, Must wonder whether day is worse than night. The gamblers gather by the Stock Exchange, The cars and wagons fill the streets with din, Through lanes and by-ways foreign pedlers range ; Children who seek their way to school begin To add a merriment appearing strange 117 ONE MOOD OF THE CITY In all the swarm of madness and of sin ; The idle loafers on the corners stand, The dram-shops gather in their daily band. At noon begins again the dreary round Of those who seek the cook-shops good or ill ; From steaming, dirty kitchens underground The sickening smells arise that quickly fill The streets above. The uninviting sound Of clattering dishes fills the air until Its hunger satisfied, to work or play The hurrying crowd returns till close of day. The throng increases with the afternoon. But changes as the women seek the street To look or buy. Shop-girls denied the boon Of rest, with weary eyes and aching feet Display the wares. The heavy air is soon Ofifensive with cheap perfume and the heat Of human bodies ; while without, the throng Of gazing idlers slowly moves along. The afternoon has faded, and the glow Of sunset climbs aloft the western sky ; The people in the streets, no longer slow, Haste homeward gladly now that night is nigh. The sunset's beauty and the homeward flow Are less oppressive, and a half-heard sigh Seems lightly breathed, because of sweet release That promises the night and rest and peace. ii8 ONE MOOD OF THE CITY The night has come, and from the silent bay I see the myriad Hghts chmb up the hill ; The ferry quietly moves on its way Beneath God's stars which shine so far and still. The city's peace is different from the day Which garish light and troubled noises fill ; The buildings rising dimly outlined seem The fair and peaceful city of a dream. The night, the night has come, and with the night The throng that filled the streets has sought its home; The night, the night is here, and light on light Seems soaring up to reach the heaven's dome ; A different throng of other aspect quite Begins now through the lighted streets to roam ; The victims who in turn on error prey Give night a meaning darker than the day. The gaudy theatres attract their crowd, Saloons and gambhng dens are quickly filled ; Coarse, painted women speak in accents loud,— The voice of vice at night is never stilled, — Belated girls from work-shops hasten cowed. As if escape from harm were what they willed ; Beneath the sidewalk In each filthy den, What once were women dance to wrecks of men. 119 ONE MOOD OF THE CITY O, all the agony and shame and woe Up-gathered in a city's streets at night ! Ah, how the stream of life through ebb and flow Sweeps on to every form of human blight ! The stars of God that seemed to rest us so Are shut in outer darkness by the light That flares down on the life which fills the city With what we love or loathe, but ever pity. 130 HUMANITY [Paris, December 28, 1898] OUT upon the night-wind it is born, faint, tremulous, rising into a deep swell of sound, shaking the fabric of the earth and reach- ing aloft to heaven — the sigh of suffering humanity. It shakes the throne of the despot, and weakens the foundations upon which Pride and Selfishness have built their seemingly eternal palaces. It rings in the ears of the dreamer and makes tremulous the heart of every lover of his fellowmen. More powerful than the wind that lashes the sea, more lasting than the ceaseless hum of toil, pitiable, insistent, menac- ing, it shall not go unheard and unanswered. The ear of God listens, the forces of the universe wait to leap into being to answer its need. Those who cause it shall be swept into ruin, and those who listen and seek to help shall attain a power no tyrant ever dreamed. 121 CONSTANTINOPLE [Constantinople, October, 1901] HOW to express this da}r ! I am bewildered wdth a multitude of new impressions — more stirring and more confusing than I had expected. I was aware that I should have the double interest of two worlds both new to me — the oriental world of the Turkish life, and the majestic and dazzling Byzantine empire, but I did not expect the ancient world to be so much above ground as it is. It is true the fragments are but rare rocks projecting above the floods of centuries, yet these are sufhcient to waken the imagination to some reconstruction of the past. The Hippodrome with its three columns, mute memorials of such grandeur past, still wakens a memory of the frantic crowd that gathered in passionate enthusiasm to witness the races. The Serpent Column — mutilated and based far be- low the present level of the soil — is it the col- umn of Delphi that bore the sacred tripod of Apollo? How it is associated with that far away world of young Greece and the Persian wars ! And this Obelisk from Egypt with its marble bases representing scenes from the life of the Hipprodrome, and the Colossus, wanting its bronze plates, but standing a mute signal of gone ages : how they move the imagination and call up a dead world ! The Bronze Horses Theodosius took from Scio, or some other 122 CONSTANTINOPLE Greek city, the Venetians stole from Constan- tinople and carried away to decorate their church of San Marco ; and Napoleon, repeat- ing the robbery of past conquerors, carried them to Paris, where they would have remained had not modern sentiment become less tolerant of brilliant crimes. But above all, Santa Sophia recalls the grand days. Built by the conqueror of Theodoric's kingdom, it suggests strongly Ravenna's court church, San Vitale, but with more space and majesty though less bewilder- ment of architectural beauty in its interior. Yes, I think I can say that Santa Sophia, the church of Holy Wisdom — barring its Moham- medan disfigurements — is perfectly satisfying in its interior. Every Hne is in harmony with every other. The richness of Byzantine decoration — flowering capitals, exquisite lace work in marble, warm gold mosaics, a wealth of many-colored marbles — is in harmony with the plan and spirit of the whole. That the eastern empire could give birth to such a church is alone a sufficient evidence that it was not all decadence — were evidence wanting of that fact. But all this is of the past world, and over it rides the present like a vast, rolling sea. The worshippers in Santa Sophia kneel toward the corner of the church looking to holy Mecca. The streets are thronged with strange crowds — 123 CONSTANTINOPLE veiled ladies, dark faces under red caps, bare- footed children of oriental look. Over the nar- row alleys of the old town lean latticed win- dows protecting the inmates of the houses from the passer's gaze, but allowing them to watch the streets. Everywhere rise the Mohamme- i dan domes and the light fingers of the minarets. Strange cries come from the sellers of strange wares. A multitude of scurvy dogs fills the street. The dirt and smell of the orient are everywhere. And about all is the blue sea, flowing into the broad mouth of the Golden Horn, washing between Galata and Stamboul, throbbing be- tween the near shores of Europe and Asia, spreading into the blue vast at either side : a strange, new, wonderful world, beating in upon the imagination with a multitude of impressions revealing new aspects of an old humanity . A SECOND day of superb weather and rich, new experience. I began it by climb- ing Galata's tower. The view was unrivalled. On the east swept the coast of Asia away and away, with blue mountains toward the south, while between lay the soft blue marble sea. Con- stantinople rose on its seven hills, mosque beyond mosque breaking the line of buildings with its cluster of domes and minarets. From 124 CONSTANTINOPLE east to west between the central hills swept the vineclad arches of the Aqueduct of Valens. In the center of Stamboul rose the Seraskerat with its tower. To the west were gray hills with dark sweeping groves of cypresses here and there, while in the central foreground wound the blue length of the Golden Horn. For variety of interest, natural, historical, artistic, no view I have enjoyed equals this. IT SEEMED strange to go to a world where the religion was everywhere Roman Catholic with its stately ceremonials : it seems far stranger to come to this world where the religion is non-christian and the occasional for- eign intruder into the mosque is tolerated with scornful contempt. Yet how much is the same in all religions that have become conventional- ized institutions. The droning of the prayers, the bowing to Mecca, the gesticulations of the worshipers, were different in detail from the ritual in other worships ; yet how much the same after all, and may we not say that the unconven- tionalized heart of all religions is also every- where one ? THE Grande Rue de Pera — there indeed is the conglomeration of all nations. Crowded always, from five to seven it is almost 125 CONSTANTINOPLE impassable, and with all kinds and races of people. There seems to be no depth in this Constantinople life, no rooting to the soil. Even the Turk is a stranger within the gates of the city, and all other nations are still more so. One can only lament the great days before the filibus- tering expedition of the Latins and the subse- quent conquests of the Turks. Still is there not something artificial in the very nature of the city? Constantine called the nations here by his bribes and from that time on, Constantinople has been the city of every one and of no one. The meeting place of Europe and Asia, the mistress of the most princely situation in the world, she has been the desired of all races, ravished and held for a time by many, the true bride of none. Never the original seat of a world-mastering people, like Rome, never the source of a re- birth of art and science, like Athens or Flor- ence, she has produced little but has been the theater of how much that is significant in the history of mankind ! THE " Seven Towers " were peculiarly Im- pressive. The ruinous condition of towers and walls told mutely of the happy fact that the cruelties and crimes for which the structure stood belong to the past. Yet one could vividly call them to mind as one looked from a tower 126 THE WALLS across the ruin and over the blue Sea of Mar- mora. The associations of the Tower of Lon- don seem faint beside the romantic horrors for which these seven relics of Mohammedan cruelty stand. But the great experience of the day was the walk along the outside of the land walls. Nowhere else have I gained so clear an idea of the extent, power and meaning of ancient and mediaeval fortifications. And equally great was the impression of ruin — of the never-to-return civilization of the past — which these walls gave. How storm after storm of human life shattered itself upon them, until finally a storm came which shattered them and left them as they are to-day ! Beside the walls for four miles extended the Turkish cemetery. Dark cypresses murmured in multitudes about the countless graves. Many of the head-stones were leaning or fallen. The turbans at the top of the stones for men gave a queer impression. One realizes the extent of Mohammedan life here from these vast acres of the dead. THE Mohammedan Sunday: and all the morning were strange sights, while the crowd seemed a little better dressed than usual. The heart of my day was a trip to Scutari. En- 127 SCUTARI tirely oriental the town seemed with its main streets thronged with buyers and sellers and its side streets silent as the grave. There is some- thing ominous in the row upon row of houses, with their lattice-work windows and never a face visible. An occasional cough or laugh breaks the stillness, but only with a startling evidence of life behind these screened walls. Quite by accident I found my way into the vast cemetery at Scutari. The road reached away indefinitely: on either side stretched a seemingly limitless forest of cypresses, with a maze of darkened tomb-stones underneath in every posture of disarray. Silent, dark, weird seemed these far-reaching graves of the dead, yet only a little more silent and weird than the streets of the oriental town. And all through- out it graves were scattered. Frequently a house was set twenty feet back from the street and in front were placed from two to a dozen graves : living and dead mixed together in quite heterogeneous fashion. And this was true even a few paces away from the principal street with its throng of chaffering people. But returning was the crown of the day and perhaps of the trip. It was the sunset time and the whole heaven was aglow with golden light. The clouds — light fleeces a moment before — were darkened with rosy light. Far up the Bos- 128 CONSTANTINOPLE porus rose the Castle of Europe, Scutari gleamed with warm color, while over Stamboui rested an abyss of gold as the sun went down. Clearly outlined against the heaven were Galata and Pera with the noble tower. Beautiful, incon- ceivably beautiful, was the city of the cross ana crescent; without the awful majesty of Rome, without the human charm of Florence, without the odalisk beauty of Venice sleeping upon her Adriatic couch, yet all-powerful over the imag- ination ; the city of wild, weird romance, of strange destiny, the city of every one and no one, where Occident and Orient are both at home, yet neither can say, '' she is mine." [on board ship] ALIGHT mist, rapidly clearing, rests over Stam.boul ; Galata and Pera are clear in the sunshine. The harbor is full of boats little and great and of busy sea life. From where my ship lies the city encircles me like the crescent that has been its device since the old empire days. Within a few rods of me lie Greek, Ru- manian, Italian, English, Russian, Austrian, Turkish vessels. Across, the Seraglio domes gloom among the trees — cypress and others. Santa Sophia is touched with golden light, and one by one the farther mosques are shining free from the denser air. The bridge is like a dis- 129 CONS TA N TINOPLE tant theatre, with an endless stream of puppets moving in both directions. Galata's tower, in form and color, suggests the Genoese and Italy. All about is the quivering surface of the blue water. Adieu, Byzantium, City of the Greek colonists of so long ago! Adieu, Constanti- nople, new Rome of the first Christian emperor, beautiful and imperial City of the long line of monarchs who ruled wuth power and glory when Rome was all but an abandoned waste, and that withstood unconquered so long assaults from north and east and west ! Adieu, Stamboul, object first of awe and envy to the Mohamme- dan, and then ravished by his cruel power ! Adieu, cosmopolitan City of glory and decay, scene of the slow fading of the Turkish might, taken quietly but firmly more and more by the nations of the west! Adieu, City of glorious beauty and of wild, romantic past, hom.e of every one and of no one, envied by all, possessed of many, the permanent bride of none ! Adieu, sad and glorious City, and when the mosaics of Santa Sophia appear beneath the colors put on by Mohammedan hands, when the crescent is again united with the cross, when the fading empire of the Turk sinks into the night v/hose gathering twilight glooms, may your unguessed destiny be happier than in the romantic days that are behind ; may you be as glad as you are beautiful and as free as you are proud! 130 TEACHING [Berlin, December 4, 1894] THE important thing for any teacher is to know and state the truth. The faculty of arguing can be appHed to false premises as well as to true ones. Many a false view has been logically ** established." We grow in knowledge of truth not so much by processes of argument as by coming to see what is. Indeed the most powerful of all possible arguments is a clear, affirmative statement of a fact. In the end truth conquers and the most skilfully constructed the- ories will disappear if they fail to correspond with reality. It is better to widen a little the horizon than to construct a skillful argument ; it is better to see a little farther into the truth than to over- throw some false theory. As the highest end in knowledge is that wisdom which simply recog- nizes the truth in any concrete situation, so the greatest power in a teacher lies in struggling up towards such wisdom and giving what he finds. Others may not recognize it at once, but he can afford to wait. What he has found will in the end appeal. He can well afford to wait, for truth alone is safe. 131 They Shine So Still [Translated from the German of Heine] THEY shine so still, so steadfast, The stars in heaven above, A thousand years, and each gazes On each in the pain of love. They speak a speech so lovely, So rich; but of all the band Of Philology's learned students This speech can none understand. But I have mastered the language. And shall not forget it soon ; In place of a grammar serves me The face of my heart's dearest one. 132 LOVE [Paris, December 28, 1898] LOVE is the everlasting worker of miracles. When all seems hopeless, and the soul is descending upon the road that has no turning, let it be awakened to love, and immediately all the forces of the spiritual world converge upon it to lift it toward God. Love is the savior, love is the perpetual wonder of life. 133 MAN [At sea, January 19, iSgg] WHAT a variety of worlds touches us daily ! I thought this morning how each of the blue-shirted sailors who assisted in loading the freight was the center of a world as all-impor- tant to him as any other's world can be to that other. The porters on the quay, the cab-drivers, the ship stewards all have their independent spheres of life, yet inextricably interwoven. The smug first-class passenger has a comfortable contempt for what he regards as the human cattle of the steerage, and accepts the innum- erable attentions offered by the various em- ployees, forgetting that these, too, are human beings. In every place is a multitude of worlds impinging upon one another and overlapping in a maze of relations, yet each stretching out for the individual who is the center into an al- most terrible isolation. The great ship gathers together its few hun- dred individuals, holds them in external contact for a week, and then releases them to the four quarters of the earth. Never twice does the same combination occur. Each voyage is the temporary creation of a unique world, destroyed as quickly as it was born. It is as real while it lasts as it is unrecallable when once it is dissolved. 134 THE GREAT REALITIES [At sea, January, 1899] TO HAVE too little money may strengthen character through the struggles it necessi- tates, but it is in danger of developing a selfish- ness in little things. To watch some of the second-class passengers eat is to look on at a very literal struggle for existence. The vulgar calculation on the number of steaks it is possi- ble for one to get is as bad as the unrestrained gluttony in the first cabin, and illustrates the slavery to things that may come from having too little of them as well as from having too much. To live constantly in the presence of the great interests of life — that is the problem, whether one is rich or poor; and it is a problem which can be solved only by constant effort and watch- fulness. We speak often of coming back to the great realities of existence : it is the need of life, but only if it be the great reaHties to which we return and not merely the vulgar ones. Love and thought and religion are great realities, but eating and sleeping and herding are quite as fundamental. Thus in advocating a return to nature it is always important to make very clear what nature it is to which we urge a return. The indiscriminate praising of every natural func- tion simply because it is natural leads to a confusion of .those distinctions of high and low 135 MAN AND NATURE which form one of the most subtle products of spiritual evolution. THE well-informed Englishman discourses dogmatically on the British nation and other universal questions. The garrulous American alternates between unlimited boasting over America and a pessimism that almost gloats in the unparalleled corruption of her poli- tics. A shrewd-faced German sits by, risking a half-ironical remark now and then, while a satir- ical smile lights up his features at some more questionable Anglo-Saxon boast. It is he who is learning from the discussion. HOW wearisome grows the ceaseless move- ment of the ship, the smell of the cooking, the noise of the people ! Yet the sunrise this morning was again a revelation of the fresh vigor of nature, unwearied with all the endless spawn of life she has produced and is ever pro- ducing. Across the dark waves, against the low-lying clouds, was a flame of light like a ship on fire. Above, the heaven was serene. All around the circle of the horizon the band of cloud became rosy with the new light. The bit- ing breath of winter stung one's cheek. A touch of frost blew upon the deck. Hard, forbidding, beautiful, it was Nature, pitiless, conscienceless, but how alive ! 136 NEEDLESS FAILURE [Rome, December 17, 1898] IN THE Stir and hurry of life how careless we are of little courtesies ! We rudely brush aside love that yearns to bless us. Unthink- ingly we wound hearts whose joy or sorrow hangs upon our slightest act or word. Pride or carelessness checks the spontaneous expression of our love. We crush and cast aside the flower of life's mystery, and then bemoan the mo- notony of existence. O to be awake every moment to the wonder and majesty of it all! 137 MODERN ART [Paris, December 28, 1898] IT IS not only a greater depth and content that shows in modern art : the sculptures and paintings of the Luxembourg fill me with an intense feeling of sadness. How often despair is repeated among the motives ! From Cain, deso- late, sweeping across the bitter desert of life, to the Eve Repentant, or the Kiss of the Grand- mother on the brow of the child, the impression of the pitiless tragedy of existence was reiter- ated again and again. There was no such spirit in the Renaissance. In the art of that period one finds beauty, joy, sensuousness, religion ; but never the intense modern humanity and never the utter pathos and tragedy. So with ancient art ; though it may rise to the gravity of the Niobe group or the Laokoon there is nowhere the modern tragedy. Is this infinite sadness of dead yesterdays and broken dreams a peculiar quality of French art or is it a characteristic of the modern spirit gen- erally ? One is inclined to feel that it is but the necessary counterpart of the frequent abandon- ment to sensuality, the absence of sincerity and consecration which show in French life. There is in Paris a vital lack of faith, and without faith the noblest beauty can but generate sadness. For the sense of its transitory character, the vain hunger for permanence, make its evanes- 138 MODERN ART cent presence a source of pain. The statues that represent peace choose usually some moment of respite from the restless pain of consciousness, while those that present life in action are preg- nant with positive tragedy. There must be some answer to all this, some explanation of the strange enigma of life, some power to transform its bitterness into the divine. The modern world is not a child ; it faces the hard problems of adult life. The Renaissance woke like a baby to the beauty of the morning. It was less self-conscious, and was satisfied with a more simple acceptance of life than are we. This is one reason for the endless charm it has for us. With the fuller power of conscious man- hood we must pay the price of losing the naive joy of life which marks the period of childhood. 139 SCHOLARSHIP [London, August n, 189S] WHEN scholarship is carried on by a protected class it tends to lose all relation to reality. It degenerates into a useless game of shuttle-cock, where the worn topic is tossed back and forth among the players. It becomes a self- feeding process. A man who touches life writes something ; men one remove from reality seri- ously consider his work, but with little grasp of its human significance ; then others, scholastics, consider the commentaries of the second class, and so the process goes on, until some true man comes again and ignores the maunderings of the scholastics or brushes them aside, and deals anew with reality. If the useless and aimless stufif could but be swept away and only such literature be produced as deals directly with life what an immense saving of life and power there would be ! 140 Youth THE footlights flared dismally, and the painted woman on the stage sang a song that was intended to be merry, but w^as really burlesque misery. The little girl sat in the or- chestra fauteuils — they were only a franc in this cheap playhouse. She tried to look as if she en- joyed the show, but it was a dismal effort. She had to sit there, it was her trade. She was not hardened yet, she was only sixteen, and her face had a sweet, childish freshness about it ; yet she sat there waiting to make some engagement for the night. Her thoughts wandered very far from the coarse songs of the stage. She seemed to see a child that was she and yet not she, a little child that toiled with its mother in the field sowing the grain. She saw the child go into the rude hut, she saw the mother kiss it good night, she could feel the child's quiet slumber, she dreamed the child's dream. Poor little girl ! Only sixteen, and not hardened with the dull insensibility that is the merciful punishment of sin. How she longed for just a little love ! She would have given her life freely and gladly to any one who would love her just a little. But nobody loved her. The men who sought her company could not love ; they had murdered that possibil- 141 YOUTH ity in themselves long ago, and they were help- ing her to murder hers. Poor little girl! Caught in the toils from which there is no escape. There is only one path, and that steadily down. You will tread it like others. You will welcome the punishment that inevitably comes, — the insensibility to all feeling. But to-night you are so tired, so dis- gusted with it all; yet there is the rent to be paid to-morrow, and the new dress you must have. Best be at your business, for it is getting late. Poor little girl ! A few more glasses of the blinding drink, and you will not mind. Poor little girl ! 142 FRANCE {.Paris, December 26, 1898] IN PARIS one's feelings alternate between love and detestation. There is so much that is admirable and beautiful in Paris, and so much that is despicable. The gayety of the people makes it possible for them to carry oH every- thing, even their vices, v^ith a certain air of mastery and joy. Yet there is so much that is heartless, cruel, superficial, v^icked in Paris. Nothing great can come without entire sin- cerity of purpose and of life. Given this, and one may pass through the fire of mistakes and yet grow on into life ; but without earnestness life means nothing. It is the lack of earnestness that is degrading modern French life. It shows in the quick spasm of irresponsible passion, in the cruel selfishness revealed in a crisis, in the idle curiosity and easy abandonment to cheap dissi- pation. It is a Savonarola these French people need, even more than the fickle Florentines needed him in the old da3^s. The value of skill depends upon character. A special power is good or evil as is the man who uses it. Greatness must rest upon goodness or it is an unloosed storm, as destructive as it is awe-inspiring. This truth must be the founda- tion of all popular education and must be reiter- ated again and again. Yet goodness must never be confounded with 143 POSITIVE MORALITY negative morality. Great errors may be present in a profoundly good life, and a spotless reputa- tion may cover a meaningless existence v^ith no positive expression of the good. The world has been right in forgiving much to men of genius, for their great mistakes are but the corollary oi their original and positive force of life. To push out into untried fields is the peculiar service of genius, and this involves many mistakes. But if the fundamental purpose is deeply earnest, the errors are instructive, like all sincere but unsuc- cessful experiments, and the failure may after all be a step in the forward process of Hfe. 144 TldvTa yicopel I STOOD on the rocks at night on the shore of the vast western ocean, Afar on the sea some storm had stirred into being the billows ; The great sea heaved and rolled, its thunder- ous voice re-echoed. As it cried its terrible cry, the wail of the dream of existence. No moonlight lessened the gloom, the brooding blackness about me, Blackness unbroken by light, save the light of the foaming billows, As afar on the sea a line seemed black on the darkness behind it. And steadily nearer came till it burst into light for a moment, Then dashed out its life on the rocks and sigh- ingly sank in the ocean. Each wave shrieked its terrible cry as it rose to the height of its being, Only to fall again and lose its existence forever; Only a moment of life, of Hght on the terrible blackness. Then to fall for aye in the meaningless vast of the ocean. 145 Hdvra ^(opel The breast of the great sea heaved, it seemed to throb with emotion ; Yet cruel and cold and dead it mocks the cry of the human ; Restlessly moving forever, its breast bears lives into being. Only to crush them out as the leaves crumble back into dust. I hear still the voice of the sea on the rocks by the vast western ocean ; The waves shriek their terrible cry as they break and sink back in the blackness ; The restless sea still bears on its breast the im- petuous billows, E^ch is born into light, each loses its being for- ever. No pause, no rest, no peace in the ceaseless sea of existence ; Last year's leaves are dust, while the flowers of springtime are blooming, I hear still the roar of the sea on the rocks by the vast western ocean, The waves shriek their terrible cry as they break and are lost in the darkness, The restless sea still bears on its breast the im- petuous billows, Each has it moment of light, each is lost in the darkness forever. 146 PIERRE LOT I [November 12, 1897] PIERRE LOTI is a marvelous stylist, and the delicac)^ of his feelings, the fine sym- pathy with which he can interpret widely differ- ent forms of Hfe are as remarkable as his subtle mastery of the vehicle of the French language. I am made to wonder, however, whether he is not one whose fullest promise remains unful- filled. Has he sold the spirit to the senses? Has he used the delicacy of his feelings as a mere opportunity for ever new sensations instead of making them a door to the appreciation of deep human things ? His Iceland Fisherman is full of the majesty of simple life, supremely human and strong in native genius. The heroine is one of the most noble characters in modern Hterature, and the tragic necessities of Hfe under the domi- nance of great natural forces are drawn with supreme power. The vague and majestic per- sonality of the ocean, alternating in mood from beautiful seductiveness to sombre malevolence, forms the artistic background upon which the Breton fisher life is painted. In the Marriage of Loti the heroine is also a richly endowed nature unspoiled by the artificial- ity of civilization, but while Gaud has all the inheritance of refined and exalted instincts which result from countless centuries of moral pro- gress, Rarahu only dimly approaches these 147 PIERRE LOT I through the transfiguration of her savage nature under the miracle of love. The fate in the Iceland Fisherman is the fate of hard and unyielding necessities in the struggle for existence ; the fate in the Marriage of Loti is the subjective abysm that separates the child of centuries of civiliza- tion from the savage. It is difficult to say which fate is the more tragic. As Gaud's capacity for suffering is higher and more delicate than Rarahu's, her tragedy is more powerfully mov- ing; but Rarahu is almost more pathetic, since her situation is so hopeless from the start. Per- haps the most tragic of all human relationships are those which involve intense union at one point and abysmal separation at all others. The impassible barriers are brought more fully into consciousness by the union which exists in one aspect. Such tragedies are possible only in sex-relations, because the physiological basis is simple and universal, while the higher union of love is so intimate and personal. Still I wonder sometimes whether Rarahu's tragedy was inevitable. Is it not the peculiar wonder of love that it can transfigure life, and given an intense union at one point, can bring an interweaving of one personality with another along even the most divergent lines ? Docs not Loti picture Rarahu as awakening through her love to a considerable measure of appreciation 148 PIERRE LOri of those instincts in her lover which were the result of the long ages of civilization behind him ? Therefore might she not, had he remained true to her, have given him a larger realization of life than was possible through his abandon- ment of her? [Palmpol, Brittany, September 8, 1898] OUR trip to the Breton peninsula has been a true literary pilgrimage. In following the experiences out of which Pierre Loti's Ice- land Fisherman was constructed I have been able to study in detail the creation of a work of art. This has been possible in a far more com- plete way than it would be with the Divine Comedy or Faust. Great masterpieces are con- structed on a w^de range of experience which is so transmuted through the soul of the author that it is often impossible to trace back to their exact sources the features of his artistic cre- ation. But the Iceland Fisherman is so simple, it reflects so immediately a special narrow range of experience still alive on the scene of the story, that it is possible to compare each phase of the work of art with the basis of life from which it sprang. The novel is wonderfully true to the Breton fisher-life : it is even exact in detail, yet it is no mere realistic transcript. The cre- ation of Gaud and Yann, the weaving together 149 PIERRE LOT I of the different phases of Hfe and focusing them, is ideaHstic work of a high order. And here the true significance of idealism is evident : it is not to present what exists only in the im- agination, but to interpret the soul of the true. Mere realism copies the body ; the higher union of realism and ideahsm, while presenting the body truly, reveals the soul. Loti has done this, bringing this life to consciousness and reveahng its deeper meaning. And with all its unique characteristics, how universally human this life is : the immediate relation to nature, the battle with the sea, the simple affirmation of human love, the most fundamental tragedy. The religion is almost a Norse dualism : on the one hand is the grim sea, like the Jotuns and the destructive mysterious powers of ice and snow and fire ; on the other the human will, which in its splendid affirmation must master the sea. Yet opposed to this simple Norse dualism is the refined product of cen- turies of Christianity — the sublime tenderness of Christ, the sweet motherhood of the Virgin, the lovable domesticity of Joseph — much wor- shiped here. They are the two eternal elements of the human spirit, the one the vocational battle with the world, the other the personal tenderness of love ; the one masculine, the other feminine ; the one a pagan affirmation of force and will and 150 PIERRE LOT! intelligence, the other a Christian expression of humility, piety and love. LOTI'S work is not of the positive cre- ative type of Shakespeare or Browning: his characters are less created from within than described from without. He is the artist of exquisite appreciation, presenting and trans- figuring his impressions in organic unity, but never taking up into his own soul the fund of human experience and creating it anew out of himself . This helps one to understand why the creator of the Iceland Fisherman could be also the writer of the Marriage of Loti and Madame Chrysantheme. A sensitive artistic nature not balanced by strong self-afiirmation may easily degenerate through giving itself over to the play of ever new sensations. The decadence which apparently took place in Oscar Wilde is the danger to a Loti. The demand of Faust that "All of life for all mankind created Shall be within mine inmost being tested " may be translated into two opposite paths of life. It may mean the highest demand of every awakened soul to become human, to gather up the positive experience of the race in oneself and pass from being an isolated fragment of humanity to becoming Man — the misrocosm, in 151 PIERRE LOT I which the whole is actively focused and which is forever growing toward the image of God. On the other hand it may mean giving oneself over to the chance play of capricious and novel sensations — " To drift with every passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all v/inds can play" — which means the utter disintegration of man- hood. There was much of both elements in Goethe's life. What saved him is expressed in that powerful entry in his diary : *' Ich will Herr werden ! " That affirmation of his will, that end- less struggle to become master of himself, cap- tain of his own soul, is what makes Goethe's work and life so powerfully constructive. This helps one to understand why the work of Leonardo and Michael Angelo thrills as that of Raphael never does. Raphael was exquisitely sensitive to impressions and rendered them easily on the canvas. That he did not degener- ate was partly due to the accident of circum- stances. He was held up by people who constantly demanded the best of him, and he died young. But Leonardo and Michael Angelo were masculine geniuses. Each was master of himself. They took up into themselves the experience they interpreted, and every work they created was a new birth out of the soul of the artist. 152 PIERRE LOT I With all its beauty and its union of realism and idealism, Loti's work belongs in the cate-' gory of artistically transfigured impressions,; and never in that of the higher creation. This explains at once its deHcacy and sensitiveness and its limitations, and helps one to understand the kind of degeneration of which Loti may have been capable. 153 The Over-Soul [1887] I AM the eternal giver of love, And I am the heart receiving; I am the mother heart above, And I am the child's soul breathing. I am the truth the heart believes, And I am the heart believing ; I am the exalted soul who sees. And I am the source of seeing. I am the unknown, knowing all. And I am the essence known ; I am the love in the thrush's call, And I am the sleep of the stone. I am the doer of all good. And I am the good that is done ; I am the spirit within the wood, And I am the light of the sun. I am the song the captive sings, And I am the prisoner chained ; I am the one who contains all things. And I am the all contained. 154 THE PERMANENT [Paris, October 31, 1898] HOW we hunger for the permanent, and how seldom we find it! Is our behef m it wrong? Are we mistaken to trust and hope as we do? Change, change, on every hand! The leaves fall and it is winter again. The spring comes and life begins anew. We are absorbed in the present, whether joyous or sorrowful, and the past quickly grows dim and unreal. Past sorrows are covered with a veil of atmosphere which gives them the beauty of a scarred moun- tain-side seen in the distance. Past joys soon become unreal, and seem faint like a half-remem- bered dream. Yet we cry out that love must last, that the soul is eternal ; we crave to see things " under the aspect of eternity ! " What does it mean ? What does it mean ? we cry : at times bewildered in the gray mist that makes all seem unreal and phantom-like, at times trusting in the sunlight of some fresh morning. There are moments when the figures near us seem least real, when the realities through which we have lived seem to be present with the soul, in an eternal now. Are these moments ghmpses into the absolute, or are they dreams and illusions that cheat the human spirit? ISS MOUNET-SULLY [Paris, October 28, 1898] I WAS greatly interested to find whether Mounet-Sully's CEdipus the King would produce the tremendous effect upon me it did four years ago. It was equally great. The whole impression is vastly above anything else I have ever heard. It was a fresh revelation of what dramatic art may mean. The play and the actor were singularly fitted to each other. The grave majesty of the Greek drama was no more lofty than the reserve power and dignified exaltation of passion in the actor. As before, Mounet-Sully revealed surprisingly the power of the French language in sonorous- ness, depth and vibrating earnestness. But this impressed me less than the power of the actor to master the emotion of his audience and sweep them with him on the breast of the action. And what acting ! The vibrating power of the voice, the dignified impressiveness of every ges- ture, the intense yet exalted and restrained expression of passion, the majesty or serenity that dominated, as in all the best Greek art, the expression of tense feeling — all surpassed any- thing I have ever seen. The whole impressed me as having a deeper content than most Greek art : was it because Mounet-Sully read a more profound range of emotions into the old Greek 156 (EDIPUS THE KING forms? If so he made them not less, but more human. From such a drama one can understand the Aristotehan theory of *' Katharsis," The method of this drama is the exact opposite of that usual in modern plays. In the latter the attempt is to impress by unexpected situations and denouements. But in the Greek drama the impression is made by the dramatic irony of the situation, consciousness of the inevitable out- come being present in the mind of the specta- tors from the start. There is a strange irony in the efforts CEdipus makes to bring about the very situation that must inevitably crush him with its utter tragedy. The effect is to put the observer above the plane of the dramatic action, to cause him to look down on the play of forces, not without pity, but with a feeling that he is above them. One is therefore left with a sense at once of the pitiless destiny that dominates life for those who are unconsciously in its con- trol, and at the same time, of the power of the intelligent will to master fate. While this effect is different from that Aristotle had in mind it is perhaps a permanent truth involved in his pecu- liar theory. What a terrible thing the ancient conception of fate is ! There is a certain permanent justifica- tion for it, since heredity and early environment 157 (EDIPUS THE KING do determine irrevocably certain possibilities and limitations. But the fate is not a jealous divinity visiting material consequences upon infractions of the moral and even ritualistic rules of life. It is only to-day that we are becoming conscious of the power of the free and intelligent will. Maeterlinck may be somewhat common- place, but he is right in saying that it is difficult to conceive an absolute tragedy, other than that resulting from such accidents as death, where a truly wise man is the center ; and such a remark is significant of the consciousness of the freedom of the personal will which increases with its pro- gressive emancipation. MASTERPIECES are surprisingly rare, yet when they come, how simple and inevit- able they seem to be ! It then appears as if all other workers had blindly thwarted their own efforts, while the master simply lent himself actively and freely to the forces of life and nature which found exalted and spontaneous expression through him. There is another side to this : the simplicity and spontaneity result not from absence of active effort, but from its supreme affirmation. Yet might not great achievement be more common if we only accepted life simply and ceased to thwart our best inspirations? How natural and inevitable 158 MOUNET-SULLY was Mounet-Suliy's interpretation of CEdipus! He felt the situation and gave it direct and har- monious expression. A lesser actor would have aimed at extravagant expression without re- sponding to the emotion, and so would have disgusted us with what we have learned to call " theatrical.'* So when Madame Duse plays Camille she enters into the spirit of the charac- ter, and every gesture, every intonation flows necessarily from within. The soul of all genius is to be Man : if one be great, one cannot fail to speak, act, write, paint, live, greatly. 159 Easter THE sun is shining on the Easter morn, The sullen wintry clouds afar are fled, The eastern mountains glow with rosy red, Proclaiming that the world anew is born. And I — with unavailing anguish torn, Who moaned in the dim valley of the dead — Forget how bitter were the tears I shed And how my life seemed endlessly forlorn. For into that lone valley, dim and low, A woman came and placed her hand in mine, And looked into my worn face white with woe, With eyes and smile that seemed as if divine, And whispered to me, " Dear, I love you so, Come with me where God's sunlit summits shine." i6o Herr Werner's Gliick ERR WERNER was a music teacher in a small school in Berlin, patronized exclu- sively by Catholics. His high talents won him the greatest admiration from all his pupils ; the young ladies dreamed of him at night, and in school used their little arts to attract him. But Herr Werner was married to his Art. He studied and worked constantly, dreaming of measuring himself some day with Mendelssohn and Mozart, and even the great Wagner. He used every opportunity for studying musical masterpieces, and rarely missed an important performance at the Opera House. One evening he sat hearing again Gounod's " Faust." The sweet, soft music had a marvelous power over him, but the dramatic story always gave him pain. As Faust ceased his song of passion and longing, Herr Werner turned, over- come by the emotion of the moment, to his next neighbor and said: " But is that love? " " No," came quickly the answer, " Faust does not know how to love, but Margaret does." " Yes, Mar- garet does," he assented. And then he blushed as he saw for the first time the modest girl to whom he had addressed his question. But she smiled so cordially that his embarrassment was i6i HERR WERNER'S GLUCK soon relieved. In the interval between the acts they talked together, and he found that she was capable of appreciating not only the music but the whole human story of the drama. Herr Werner went home with a new image in his brain. He sat down to work for an hour at a waltz he was composing. But he found him- self inserting plaintive little strains that were not at all in harmony with the bright music that preceded them. " H-m," said Herr Werner, ** I must be ill ; I will go to bed." That night, for the first time in his life, Herr Werner dreamed of a pretty girl. The sweet face of his neighbor at the opera took shape in his dreams, and he thought himself walking with its owner in a beautiful, wooded lane, near a falHng stream of water. The next day he seemed abstracted, and to the astonishment of his pupils allowed several mistakes to go uncorrected. And so it went on for a week. Herr Werner could not understand himself. The waltz remained unfinished ; he had no taste for his usual labors. " Well," said he, " it is clear that I have been overworking. I must take an out- ing." So, not knowing where else to go, on Saturday he went in the morning to the Victoria Park. He walked steadily into it in an abstracted frame of mind, not seeing its beauties, until his ear was attracted by the music of falling water. 162 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK He looked up, stopped, and was amazed to see the very lane he had seen in his dream on that memorable night when he first began to feel the effects of " overwork." He saw the very lane, and '' Gott im Himmel ! " gasped Herr Werner, and leaned trembling agamst the nearest tree, for there not twenty feet away was the veritable maiden of the opera and of his dream. She looked up, recognized him and smiled; and in confusion he went towards her. " Ah — Fraulein — 1-— I am so — so overjoyed to see you " stammered Herr Werner. She smiled again — it seemed to him Hke sunshine — arose and gave him her hand. Soon his dream was completely fulfilled as he found himself walking close beside her in the cool shade and in sound of the murmuring water. And so they stayed together the whole day. It seemed to Herr Werner the happiest day of his life. It was not long before they knew all of each other's brief history. She was a governess in a small family, an orphan with no friends in the great city. She, like Herr Werner, was tak- ing a day's rest from " overwork." At noon they went into the Tivoli gardens and had lunch together. Then they returned and spent the afternoon in the park. It seemed to Herr Werner he had never seen such beautiful green trees and blue sky, and such soft, delicate tints 163 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK in grass and flowers. And at sunset the view from the Kreuzberg was enchanting. In the evening they Hstened together to the music in the TivoH gardens, and afterwards Herr Wer- ner went with her to her door. She promised to go with him to an opera the next week. Herr Werner's hoHday apparently did not effect a cure. Indeed his disease seemed to grow upon him. His waltz and opera he did not attempt to finish ; but he found himself writing out sweet, tender little songs which made him blush, and which he was unwilling to show to any one. And so it went on week after week : until Herr Werner and FrauleinSchatte had been, not once only, but many times to the lanes in the Victoria Park and in the Thiergarten. It was 'the sweet time of early fall, and many excursions they took together into the country. Herr Werner had never known the beautiful nature world before. But now he seemed a part of it ; he knew it and loved it. To both of them the time seemed like an end- less dream. They talked freely of their love ; but they did not speak of marriage. It seemed to them this sweet time must always go on just the same. The pupils began to talk of Herr Werner's imexpected behavior, and soon it came to the 164 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK ears of the director. This pompous and narrow- minded dignitary had several daughters of his own, of whom he expected Herr Werner to choose one in due time as his spouse. He said nothing to Herr Werner, however, until the news came to him in the form of a complaint from a pupil's parents that Herr Werner's love was a Protestant. Then was the director's righteous wrath aroused. He sent for Herr Werner to come to his ofBce, and demanded to know what he meant in thus disgracing the school by his constant association with Protestants. No one had ever seen Herr Werner really angry. He was mild and kind, and the most one ever heard from him was a severe word to some particularly idle pupil. But now his face grew white with rage. He could scarcely speak. He managed to say that as his friends were of more value to him than the school, and as he was not a slave, he would forthwith tender his resigna- tion. The director was not prepared for this, and attempted to speak further. But Herr Werner had walked angrily from the room. The next day a conciliatory letter from the director was returned unopened by Herr Werner, and the latter's connection with the school was severed. Now what was Herr Werner to do? He had 165 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK no money and no friends outside of the Cath- olics ; and to these he would not go. He was as yet too little known to be successful as a com- poser. He had grown up in his position in the school, and was entirely without the business abiHty requisite to get another engagement. Fraulein Schatte was almost as incapable as he. They talked it over together, and at last with very sad hearts decided that he must leave Berlin, and she must wait till he had found a substantial position somewhere. They had sel- dom spoken of religious differences, but to-night she looked up into his face, pressed closer to his side and said : *' Henry, will you still be a Catholic?" He had been brought up in his faith as she in hers. He looked down into her questioning face and smiled sadly as he said " Why, Liebchen, what else can I do ? " " Yes, yes, Henry, I know,'' and her face became grave. The last afternoon they spent together in the Victoria Park ; and afterwards walked home in the moonlight. They were very silent, and clung close together ; and when they reached her door, with one long embrace and choking voices they said good-bye. It was a very tear-stained pillow on which Fraulein Schatte's head rested that night. Herr Werner wandered on from place to i66 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK place, but everywhere he was a stranger, and he did not know how to seek a position. At last he came in desperation to Holland, and stopped at Rotterdam. He was kept up by the brave, sweet letters that came from his loved one. He went into a cheap boarding-house at Rotterdam and managed to get a few pupils in the city. But these were not enough to pay even his small expenses, and in despair he accepted an offer to play nightly in a music hall. But his letters stopped coming and he was almost crazed with fear. He wrote and wrote, but no answer came ; until finally he received a brief note telling him that Fraulein Schatte was dead. He tore the letter open and read it. His face grew white and for a time he stood stunned. Then he went to his room and locked himself in, walking up and down in wild anguish. '' She is dead, she is dead," kept ringing in his ears ; and it was as if he were walking in time tO' that terrible refrain. The air of the room seemed to choke him, and he rushed madly out. He walked on and on through the streets and into the country, by green fields where lazy cattle were eating the 'tall grass, past the windmills and the long line of Lombardy poplars, over the canals and by the red-tiled cottages, on and on into the night. That night the pianist was wanting at the 167 HERR WERXER'S GEUCK Casino Concert Hall and the manager was furi- ous. But Herr Werner was too valuable a man to lose, and when he cam.e into the hall the next evening with a white, worn face, all that he received was a few complaining words, to which he made no answer. Herr Werner played wildly that night the usual waltzes and popular pieces he was com- pelled to play ; but from time to tim.e came strains from the piano that hushed the rude talk and laughter in the great hall, and caused people to look at him in curious surprise. Herr Werner did not miss anv more nis^hts at /the concert hall. Xight after night, from eight till twelve, he played there ; night after night he came home to the cheap boarding-house to toss restlessly upon his bed. In the evening after supper he sat frequently in the dining-room with the family and their boarders, until it was time to go to the concert hall. Often he would play for them ; and he was regarded by them all as a queer but very lofty personage. It was here that I found him on one wild rainy night. He sat at the back of the table on a sofa smoking. Near him was the host, a short, fat German, with a loud voice and a self-important air. Two half-drunk sailors were quarrelling over a game of cards. The hostess, a cheery, i68 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK stout little body, sat busily knitting. A one-eyed carpenter was alternately drinking beer and explaining how to foretell the future with a prayer book and a key. After I had finished my supper, they insisted that Herr Werner should play for me a waltz he had recently composed. He played it over — a light, unmeaning thing, with the jingle of popu- lar songs in it — and sighed as he rose, saying he must go to the Casino. On the following evening I asked permission to accompany him. '^ This is not a large the- ater " he said as we walked down the street. *' It is only a concert hall where the working people come. It is in the poorest part of Rotter- dam. You must not expect much." We drank a glass of beer together, and then Herr Werner began to play. Gradually the hall filled. There were blue-shirted sailors with their sweethearts, strong, heavy-faced workingmen with their wives, some wild lads and girls of the lowest class. The hall was filled with tobacco smoke, and the waiters were kept busy filling the glasses with the cheap beer. The musical program was varied by the intro- duction of a few simple variety numbers. Some comic songs were sung, and a few acrobatic feats were performed. A little girl stood on a pedestal, waving in turn the flags of various 169 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK nations, beginning with France and ending with Holland, to each of which Herr Werner played the national air. And so the evening went on, waltz and song following each other. Only once did Herr Werner play a tender thing that seemed to touch one's very heart and awaken all the memories of the past. At eleven I left him and went io my room. Two hours later I heard him come in, and all through the night from time to time I heard his racking cough. A few days later we walked together into the country. We stopped on the outskirts of the town to look back. Beside us was a wide green field, threaded with black canals half covered with a green scum. Here and there in the lux- uriant grass, so deep and fresh in color, lazy cattle were lying. In the background was a grove of trees, far to the right an old windmill, and behind, the mist-like masts of the distant ships. Towards the city rose the roofs of the nearer houses and the spires of the loftier churches. " That," said Herr Werner, pointing to a low spire in the outskirts of the city, " is the Cath- olic church, and that," pointing to a higher spire in the distance, " is the chief Protestant church." And after a pause he said : " But I do not believe in either now, they are all a lie." 170 HERR WERNER'S GLUCK We walked on together until the sun was setting and we were forced to turn our steps toward the city. We stopped a moment to watch the fading red and gold in the western sky. The soft, moist air seemed to rest over all the scene like a benediction, the cattle were lost in the dark green of the distant fields, and the shadows of the tall trees beside us had sunk into the darkness of night. " O my friend," said Herr Werner — " It is years since I have used that word, I am alone, alone in the world — O my friend, I know that I have talents and power. I love music ; in it I can express my soul. I have prostituted my art but still I can begin anew. I know that I can create works which shall delight and instruct mankind." He paused, and the racking cough came ; after a few moments he said : '' But what is the use? What is the use? Hope is gone, and desire is gone. She is dead! She is dead! The separation was so long, and she could not bear it. She was so alone. And I could do nothing. What were my talents worth? — they could not help her! O God, and I loved her so ! I loved her so ! " The man's voice choked with a sob. I took his hand and pressed it. We turned and walked silently toward the city in the gathering night. 171 NOTRE DAME DE PARIS [Paris, September 30, 1898] STRANGE — the grotesques in Gothic art, and not yet sufficiently explained. Notre Dame swarms with them. One lean form, half animal, half devil, looks down over Paris, a strange leer upon its stone face. It has crouched there for centuries, while the tide of life swept on. Giordano Bruno passed beneath it as he wandered restlessly over the world. Erasmus, a vagabond student, smiled up at it knowingly during his early days in Paris. Its grin was above the horrors of St. Bartholomew and the unchained madness of the revolution. It looks down still, the same unchanging leer upon its face — grotesque, ironical, with a darker sneer than Mephistopheles or the denying spirit of the book of Job : it seems the evil genius of Paris, the spirit of its madness and its sin. 172 The Music of Pythagoras [1886J ONE voice speaks from all things And one word is all it speaks, Alike the tempest's gloom, the sunshine's heaven And the heart of man. The tiniest worm which in low highness creeps, Or rock-ribbed mountains from whose heavenly peaks The vision far and wide sweeps on the eye. The word is God, whose meaning no one knows, Nor ever has known, can know, all in all, The one eternal lesson of the universe. Which holds the shining of one face alone, The beating of one heart, the voice of voices. The music of the soul. 173 CONFESSION ONE of the deepest instincts of the heart is that which prompts absolute self-confes- sion. Every true man desires that the world about him should know him as he is, otherwise he is in danger of the pretension and hypocrisy which he fears as the worst blight of his soul. He would even be willing that the misunder- standing multitude should paw and gloat over the confession if by making it he could be under- stood by those with whom he must live and work. What withholds him from verbal confes- sion is that it would not be self-revelation; for the statement of the external incidents and cir- cumstances which he might relate would gen- erally lead to a greater misconception of his life than if he kept silent. The true confession is the confession of the soul of the life, not of its incidents, and for this words are, with rare ex- ceptions, hopelessly inadequate. A higher con- fession is possible in action, and then a man must wait to be understood, compelled often to rest satisfied if a few inspired by love can read through all the expressions to the heart of the life. 174 CORMON'S CAIN [Paris, September 30, 1S98J CORMON'S CAIN is even more powerful than I remembered it : here is the terrible flight from the destiny which cannot be avoided because it is one's own past deed. Remorseless stretches away the desert sand under the cease- less shining of the sun. The fugitives hasten on ; the tall, lean form of Cain, powerful but haggard, one hand stretched out as if to find a path across the trackless v/aste, leads the group. Behind, are the sons and daughters, with the wife and grand- children borne on a litter. Strong and majestic — the figures of these sons of Cain ; easily they carry the litter and the slain animals. One splendid giant tenderly carries his dainty, dark- eyed wife in his arms. But in all the faces is the troubled, restless look of one haunted by the irrevocable past. Even love cannot surmount it, but is subdued to an undertone and dominated by the one tragic mood inspired of relentless destiny. On and on they sweep, from nowhere to nowhere, ever on across the wide desert under the burning sun. No shadow to hide them, no gray sky to rest, no murmuring forest brook to whisper peace, only the scourge without them and the terrible destiny within : fate — the fate of one's own dead past ! 175 COROT [Paris, December 27, 1898] THE work of Corot answers a peculiar need of the modern spirit. I never come back to his landscapes in the Louvre — unreal, idyllic, full of " a light that never was on sea or land " — without feeling a sense of rest and beauty that answers a need made ever deeper by the restless pressure of modern life. This supplemental value of the fine arts has not been sufftciently understood, yet it has a deep meaning. For art should not only ex- press those forces which are dominant in life and action, it must also reveal those minor chords of the spirit whose music is often drowned by the insistent iteration of the major notes of existence, yet which is so necessary to the full symphony of Hfe. 176 RHYTHM [April I, 1897] ONE of the commonest and most pardonable of our mistakes is in imagining that Hfe can ahvays be at high-water mark. The abiUty to feel strongly any emotion depends upon the presence of intervening periods when we do not feel. It is true of both emotions and sensations that the constant presence of the same stimulus dulls temporarily our sensibilities. It is only at rare intervals that we stand upon the heights, and after each such vision there must be the slow toiling over the sand-waste and up the mountain slope. There are times when we are even compelled to wait like Dante during the night, with only the stars of faith, hope and love shining down upon us. So with the personal relations of human Hfe : we cannot be always upon the heights, and it is wrong to blame ourselves overmuch because of our failure to be so. Every mountain means at least two valleys, and the very possibility of standing at times upon the supremest summits depends upon the intervening periods of quiet acceptance of the waiting during the night, or slow struggle toward the yet unattained vision of the day. One reason for our failure to recognize beforehand the inevitable variation of mood and elevation in our personal relations is that in all 177 RHYTHM artistic portraiture of life we represent only the salient points and the dominating tendencies. It is of course just these which are most inter- pretative of the life ; but it is never true that one dominating tendency is the whole of life. Beside it are many others, each of which has its own permanent meaning in the complex personality. 178 ROTTERDAM [A picture near Rotterdam, September 15, 1894] A WIDE, green field, green with that intense luxuriant green peculiar to these moist lands ; a flock of sheep nibbling leisurely at the abundant grass ; here and there a sluggish canal, black and half-covered with scum ; to the left the spire of a church and the roofs of a few houses of the city ; in the background a dense grove of trees ; to the right an old windmill, and beyond it the shadowy masts of the distant ships. A misty air resting over it all, with a dull gray sky broken only by a streak of gold in the western horizon. I LOOK down the long level road at whose end is the gray and gold of the western sky. Children are playing in the sand heap beside me. Down the road, with slow, long strides, comes a workman, his head bent down and his dinner- pail hung over his shoulder. The day is over, night comes, and its sweet magic is suggested in the black lacework of the fir trees against the gold of the sky. The workman is going home — home to rest. 179 A Hand-Organ THE music rang out in the damp air with a melancholy quaver. It was only a hand- organ that the man played in the hall below. The notes trembled up through the dim back staircase and filled the room. The tunes were many, some light, some sombre, but all had the same melancholy quaver. At a table in the room above sat a man. He looked out of the window into the murky air of the street and at the dingy wall of the house opposite. His face was wan and haggard, and rested upon his hand. He sat quite still, neither moving nor speaking. Something in the melan- choly tones of the music awoke in him memories of emotions he had once felt and ideals over which he had once dreamed. They were not his now ; for this man had sold his soul. He sat quite still, his white face resting upon his hand, while up through the dingy staircase came the melancholy notes of the hand-organ and trem- bled on the damp air of the room. 1 80 SELF-REVERENCE [July I, 1901] PERHAPS the greatest obstacle to noble liv- ing is the low view we take of ourselves. People are ashamed of honest feeling, and often consider it an indication of culture to treat the simple realities of love and work with flippant cynicism. A whole literature has grown up expressing this attitude, so poisoning to the springs of action. When this view is not pres- ent, frequently life is regarded on a wholly sordid plane, where work is merely to make a living and love to gratify selfishness. There is no hope that we can appreciate the worth and meaning of life until our love and work come to be to us great ideals to which we must conse- crate ourselves. i8i RAVENNA [Ravenna, June, 1901] AS WE walked through the side streets of this little, strange, old town, our first evening, they seemed wierdly silent and deserted, reminding us of our night walks in the Ghetto of Venice. Utterly different from Flor- ence is this old city, stagnant here beside the alluvial plain that fills the mouth of its ancient port, living because there is no reason to die, dragging on its existence across the years because so many dead years stretch away behind. One can realize how Dante must have chafed at the last years of his exile spent here. Even then Ravenna was a doomed city, sadly remind- ing the beholder of an irrevocable, great past, while Florence was forging ahead with intense life and superabundant activity. It was the golden age of Florentine development, when the great buildings were being constructed and the exquisite painting was at its shining dawn. Sad, indeed, was it that the man who did more than any other to inspire the genius of the following great age In his native city should have been denied even the satisfaction of pillowing his dying head there and of breathing out his spirit in the midst of associations fragrant with the memory of that " Beatrice who was called so by many who knew not wherefore." 182 SAN VITALE [Ravenna, June, 1901] SAN VITALE deserves its reputation/' beau- tiful as an oriental dream" it must have been in its original glory. Even shamelessly painted over, as it is today, its noble lines and bewildering wealth of mosaic in the tribune make an impression quite oriental in character. The mosaics are like very rich tapestries, of Per- sian or other Asiatic make, in color and general effect. Alas ! the greatest part of the beauty is lost in photographs, which give only the con- ception, with little of the feeling of the original. One is impressed in Ravenna, more than any- where else, with the excellent adaptability of mosaic to the purposes of church decoration. The very limitations in the artistic expression of conceptions are of value in compelling that gravity which should belong to religious adorn- ment, while the warm color, so permanent, is fitting to monuments which gather impressive- ness with the lapse of centuries. One can understand the evolution of early Christian architecture better at Ravenna than elsewhere. Two types prevail, the basilica and the round temple. San Vitale is the only one uniting in a way the impression of both styles, fusing the harmony of the circular temple with the majestic and varied beauty of columns and aisles. 183 LA PIN ETA [Ravenna, June, 1901] WHAT a wonderful day we have had ! The- odoric and his dim majesty, the mosaics of bygone ages, basiUcas eloquent of the first great mastery of the world by Christianity, bell-towers of simple brick but matchless in unadorned harmony, the tomb and presence of Dante, the fields with bright-dressed, busy, hay- gathering women, sluggish canals and green rice-fields with avenues of poplars, and best of all the marvelous pine forest sweeping endlessly away, and breathing the memory of Dante's slow steps and bowed, brooding head and Byron's gloomy enthusiasm ! A day rich with association and new, deep impression, never to be forgotten. I was amazed at the majesty of the pine for- est. The books that tell us it is destroyed are wrong. I have never felt the same impression in the presence of any other aspect of nature. The tall stems with the broad dark crowns made the trees seem to lift away, rebuking us. And suddenly a breath of wind, scarce felt be- low, swept the tops, and there arose a wave of melody, deepening into strong, sweeping tones and fading to the faintest pathetic sigh, seem- ing to come from above and away like a whisper of God. No other music is like it. I can under- 184 LA PIN ETA stand Dante's wood in the terrestrial paradise, where the music is like that which •' From branch to branch goes gathering on Through the pine forest on the shore of Chiassi, When iEolus unlooses the Sirocco." And Byron's evening hour sinking over the pine forest by Ravenna's shore has a new meaning. 185 ART AND MORALITY [Paris, September 30, 1898] IF THE English resemble the Romans, the French are the Greeks of to-day. Among the one people is solid strength, a certain dogged, heavy persistence, and an absence of quick sensitiveness and refined appreciation. The other people is volatile and versatile, gifted in all that concerns artistic execution and appreciation, but is sadly lacking in permanent earnestness and vigor of character. As the Greeks conquered their masters and imposed their own specific culture upon the Romans, so, but in a less degree, do the traditions of French art dominate other people to-day. One wonders whether this opposition must always exist. Is it impossible to unite rugged strength and artistic appreciation, versatility and consistent action, art and morality ? If not, the inconoclasts and puritans of all ages were right : but that is unbelievable. Is the higher union to come in America? Is the union of Celtic fire, alertness and sensitiveness, and An- glo-Saxon strength and stability sufficient in America to promise the world the unprece- dented spectacle — a race whose civilization unites the vigor and permanence of Rome with the art and science of Greece? That w^ere a destiny ! 186 Dead IT was a cold, cheerless day. The sunlight struggled through the clouds, but was unable to warm the earth below. She sat at the window, her face resting on her frail hand. From the adjoining room came strains of music which seemed mournful to her, they called up so many memories she wished would die. She looked down into the street below. It was filled with people hurrying to and fro — blindly and aimlessly, it seemed to her. She pressed her hand over her eyes, but she could not weep. Her eyes were dry and burning. She sat a long, long time, and the shadows of night began to fall. She wished — oh, how she longed for just one more day of life. It was so terrible to be dead, and surrounded forever by these gibbering ghosts whose vain forms mocked the joys of Hfe that was passed. She fell into a dream. The ghosts were clothed in human form. She dreamed she was alive. She sat in a lovely garden ; all about were beautiful flowers. She breathed their exquisite perfume, and knew them — they were human joys. She bent down over a little plot of ground through which a tiny sprout was pierc- ing. She knew the little life, it was part of 187 DEAD herself, it was her precious human joy. How tenderly she cared for it. She watered it with tears of gladness, and smiled upon it with the sunshine of faith and hope. And the little love- plant grew strong. By and by — how eagerly she watched it — a little bud formed upon it and unfolded a flower of marvelous color and fra- grance. Ah, the joy! She bent down over it trembling with ecstasy. In her hands she took the beautiful flower — her love-joy, her life, — and broke it from its stem. A moment of delirious ecstasy — and then — a wild cry of horror, for it crumbled to ashes in her hands. She awoke from her dream in an agony of horror. She wrung her hands in wild despair. To dream she was alive, and awake to death ! Life has no such agony; it is reserved for the dead alone. She pressed her wild eyes on her hands, but still she saw the dead about her. It is the horror of death that one must always see the dead. From her lips broke a wail of eternal anguish, which caused the ghosts about her to chatter and gibber. '' O God ! let me forever dream of life ! " — but there is no answer for the prayers of the dead. i88 FAITH [Berlin, November 9, 1894] A STRONG faith in the permanence of what is best is a sufficient basis for life, and is not open to tiie same criticism as a fixed dogma of immortality. Yet I find myself clinging with more and more tenacity to the thought of per- sonal immortality. To my reason that is the only possible solution of the mystery of life. It is because I realize the partial character of my reason that I feel compelled to abstain from stating the faith as a dogma. I must believe that the final solution would appear rational to my reason; yet that does not justify me in asserting that what appears to me now the only rational explanation possible, is true. If there is no eternity of the subject for whom change exists, as well as; of the process of change, it seems to me hopeless to attempt any understanding of the farce of life. Unless there is this eternity there can be no rational basis of morals, no motive for living. Warmly human souls may try to cheat themselves into living for the good of all, but if the whole is a farce wherein is any good for all? Each merely post- pones himself for another, and no one lives. Selfish souls may confess their blank egotism but real life there is none. Neither kindly utili- tarianism nor frank hedonism can cheat us into imagining that the farce of life has a meaning 189 FAITH or that there is any stronger reason for virtue than for Hfe, if nothing is eternal hut change. Yet no one believes life is a farce except those who follow a narrow line of reasoning. Men who earn their living with their own hands, men who stand close to nature, are rarely pessimists. There is something better in human life than farce and failure. Healthy human beings can- not rest in a philosophy of despair. Such a doctrine may satisfy the worn-out nerves of a diseased civilization, but every strong, well life will react against it with immense force. It is in this inevitable reaction that our chief hope lies. If the universe were what the pessimist claims, it would be below the level of human life. No man would create such a world : no man would be guilty of bringing into being such a chaos of irrational folly and failure. If the uni- verse be such, then the heart and reason — the highest outcome of the process — are in utter op- position to the whole process, which is impos- sible. 190 A Love Song THERE is only one song in the robin's breast, And one that the brown thrush sings ; In the music that comes from the ring-dove's nest Ever one cadence rings. There is only one thought in the poet's brain, As he sings to the brave and free ; There is only one word in the minstrel's strain — The word that my heart tells thee. The word that echoes o'er meadow and grove, And goes from me to thee, Is love, love, and forever love — My love, I love but thee. 191 GROWTH [Paris, August 22, 1898] THE capacity for joy in any human being is in direct proportion to the fineness and depth of feeling. Hence any course of Hfe which steadily hardens the feeHngs is destroying the capacity for joy. A man who has lived so as to deaden his sensibilities has sold his human birthright to happiness. Coarse excitement or brutal sensation may be his, but not joy. After all, pleasure is not joy, and the highest happiness we have is part pain. The deepest human craving is not to have pleasurable excite- ment or to avoid pain : it is to touch those deeps of life where there is infinite joy — and pain. Hence the superficiality of all happiness the- ories : they do not comprehend human nature. No healthy human soul would choose in the last resort to be deluded with a pleasurable false- hood rather than to know a bitter truth. We crave love, even though it means pain as well as joy. All education, all refinement bring suflfer- ing and the capacity for suffering, just as they bring joy and the capacity for joy. The pain may in many cases be greater than the joy, yet we choose the growth, for it means life. We would suffer the agonies of a Briinhild rather than be incapable of love. We would submit to the tortures of doubt and questioning that oppressed the soul of Hamlet, rather than rest 192 GROWTH on a distorted truth or be insensible to the mystery of life. The path of life, of growth, of more positive realization, even though it be the path of pain — such is our choice, such is the final choice of all human souls. 193 THE ALPS [Brunnen, July 3, 1901] VV/HITE clouds rest lazily on the mountain W sides. Over the green pines on the rugged slope behind moves slowly a mist-cloud of fog. All is silent but for the cluck of a frog and the distant barking of a dog. Beyond in the distance snovi^-clad heights rise. The warm sun, half-hidden in the clouds, nevertheless heats the lazy air. The green lake faintly ripples against the greener sedge. It is a day for dreams. 194 THE ALPS [Brunnen, July 7, 1901] TO-DAY has been entirely clear, and what a day it has been ! Changing from hour to hour, the lake has varied from light blue to the black green of the evening, while the moods of the mountains have altered again and again. During most of the day a light mist in the at- mosphere has dimmed the distant peaks, but to-night the air is clear and transparent. We have watched the shadows creep up the oppo- site slopes, darkening the wealth of green until now only the peak of the Bristenstock still glows in the sunshine, while over it the clouds are transfigured with rosy light. All is peace. At intervals comes the chirp of a bird just going to sleep for the night. The air is quite still, so that the lake is without a ripple and the leaves near us scarcely stir. Moment by moment the light fades and the colors darken, but so grad- ually that one feels the change in mood rather than clearly sees the process. A wonderful nature-world, lifting, calming, deepening to heart and mind ! 195 THE ALPS [Brunnen, July 15, 1901] TO-NIGHT we had the majesty of a chang- ing storm. The sky darkened and the air grew cool. Before us rose the green sides of the nearer mountains, while in the background snow-covered peaks gleamed in the sunshine. From the left came the storm, drawing over the mountains with a gray curtain of falling rain and covering the distant surface of the lake with mist. The Hghtnings flashed in brilliant lines of silver fire ; the thunder, rolling distant but grim and deep, seemed the voice of the wakened storm. We were at one side : a light patter of rain, a nearer flash of lightning that seemed to take us into the spirit of the tempest, but noth- ing obscured the majesty of the wide view. 196 ART [Paris, October 26, 1898] ART begins as symbolism. A carved statue is produced not for the sake of beauty or truth to Hfe, but as the symbol, often arbitrary, of an idea. With the development of art, truth to life and the achievement of beautiful form tend to replace the arbitrary symbolism that preceded them. But is not something lost? Should not all art be a language for the expres- sion of the spirit? Is not the peculiar attraction that naive painting and sculpture possess for us a result of their symbolic character? As the body is the highest expression of the soul, so true symbolism should be natural and not arbitrary. All nature is a language to voice the spirit. In passing from conventional and arbitrary symbols to forms which are beautiful and natural, art shows a right development. But the danger is that art may be cultivated for the sake of beautiful forms alone, or even to display the mastery of technical difficulties, while it is only when art is as meaningful in content as it is beautiful in form that it is the highest art. Fur- thermore, as an absence of soul is more evident and painful in a beautiful body than in an ugly one, so a lack of content is more offensive in art that is technically perfect than in that which is less masterly in form. 197 INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY [Paris, August 30, 1894] FIVE thousand years ago men were dream- ing about a future life and building up a faith in it. It behooves one to realizes the vast- ness of the mystery of human life, to attempt to comprehend something of the whole experience of man in the long, changing centuries, and not to affirm or deny dogmatically on the basis of the thought of the hour. We are inclined always to consider the last word final, forgetting that every age has been modern to the men of it, and that what seems to us absolute may be but a partial phase in a changing process of thought. How different *' modern thought " will look five hundred years from now! Best keep open to truth, in the certainty that there is a deep below our last sounding, and a height from which our petty hill of vision will be lost in the level plain. 198 Coronado SOFTLY the sunlight rests on the rugged brown slopes of Point Loma, Blue and serene is the sky, peaceful and blue is the sea ; Lightly rises the swell which stirs the breast of the waters, Lightly rises and falls in the breath of a south sea-wind. Nearer the shore the waves seem to pause and rest for a moment, Gathering greater force for a splendid sweep on the sand; Lifting crests of foam, they rush resistlessly onward, Breaking at last with a roar like the sound of a storm in the pines ; Dyingly then they sink silently back to the ocean. Taken again to the heart of the Deep that gave them birth. Nobly the curve of the beach sweeps away to the western mountains, North of the tongue of land the bay sleeps undisturbed ; Far to the south the haze rests lightly over the islands — 199 CORONADO Fortunate isles they seem in their dehcate, dreamy grace. The city seems to sleep, still on its distant hill- sides, Quietly at anchor the ships in the harbor lie ; Peaceful and calm is the day, peace and rest about me, Peace in the silent air, peace in the sweep of the sea. 200 THE DESERT [The Desert, November 20, 1897] A SOMBRE gray sky of that dead leaden color that seems to oppress the heart ; the wide, level stretches of sand waste freckled with patches of dead, yellow weeds ; a fine dust in the air, not sufficient to obscure the vision but choking one's breath; at wide intervals a few rude farm-buildings, huddledtogether by gloomy trees, over all a sense of dreary desolation — the Desert! 201 THE MINISTRY OF NATURE [Paris, December 29, 1898] HOW remote are the high mountains from the activities of a great city ! Where men are heaped together the swarm of restless hfe absorbs one's attention and destroys the per- spective of the spirit. It becomes necessary to go away from it all to feel the lifting power of the unshackled and serene nature-world. The very absence of moral possibility in Nature makes her influence profoundly calming and uplifting to the spirit of man. The peace of the countless centuries of quiet and imcon- scious growth contrasts with the haste and sin and pain of human life. There is thus a min- istry of Nature, the function of which increases steadily with the refining of life. As we must ever go back to the great realities of human life, so we must return to our Nature-mother, who knows when her child would be charmed with the music of her myriad voices, and when, wearied with the glare and the stress of the pitiless day, he longs to rest his tired head in the sweet Lethe he finds on her breast. 202 THE ALPS [Handegg, Switzerland, August ii, 1901] EVENING, and I sit in the little inn, while the foaming river dashes loudly down the steep rocks without, and the silence of the pine-trees that stand all about is full of deep meaning. Nature has done her best for us to-day. Bril- liant sunshine, that revealed the far-away snow- covered mountains ; wild dashing rain, mist-fog, that hid the hills and enveloped us in gloom ; the clearing away of nearer clouds, which left dark peaks sombre against the leaden sky. A wonder- ful day, too, it has been in the range of beauty revealed to us : from the piled ice of the Rhone glacier to the foaming torrent of the Aare shut within its narrow banks, from the ragged rock peaks to the sweep of pine-fringed valley, a world of rugged beauty has been around us. How impossible it is to express in any written or painted form the impressive sweep and ma- jesty of these mountains ! Not only does this nature-world seem forbidding, it so overwhelms that one is appalled with the idea of giving it any expression. 203 Notre Dame des Victoires [Paris, October 26, 1898] A DUSKY interior, with dim light. The round-vauhed church dark with the cease- less smoke of incense and candles. A group of worshipers behind a blazing mass of candles in one transept. Before an altar of the Virgin, covered with countless tablets of thanksgiving, a man kneeling in earnest and silent prayer. Down the low, dim aisle other worshipers here and there in the dusky light. 204 DISCIPLES [December 28, 1898] HOW often the Christians have become the Pharisees ! It is frequently those who profess to be followers of the Master who are engaged in stoning the adulterous woman. And the pitiless attitude of the conventional religion- ist is supported by the arrogant gospel of sel- fishness which has been preached by a material- istic science. A low interpretation of the doc- trine of evolution has made it seem to support the selfishness of those who would crush out all who do not conform to their theory in thought and action. Were the Master to come again there would be some with his name upon their lips among those whom he would have to scourge from the temple and reprove in high places. And how needed is the reiteration of the same gospel that called Peter from his nets and blinded Paul on the road to Damascus. The world is full of the same failure and needs to be called back to the same love, tenderness, mercy and purity. 205 Ma Vie Arrive a son Matin THE room was hot and close, with the crowd of men and women loudly talking and laughing. Tobacco smoke floated above all — the halo of the beershop. The pianist seemed trying to drown the noise of coarse talk by an equally incoherent sound from the piano. Mon- sieur Armand was announced to sing '* Ma vie arrive a son matin." He was a little old man, with a partly bald head having long curly black hair at the sides and behind. He sang with a very grave face. There were many jests in the song, not very bright and rather coarse, which seemed to please the people immensely. But he sang with a strange minor note and a quaver in the song which was out of keeping with what it expressed. Behind the little old man, shroud- ing him, and painting pictures that spoke louder than his song, was the old man's dream. Once, a long time ago, when the little old man was a child, a ray of light had come down and entered into him. It was not very large or very bright, but like all rays of light it lived of itself and it was very hard to kill. It slept in him for a long time ; but by and by, when he grew into manhood, he began to become conscious of it. It made him see things which the people about 206 MA VIE ARRIVE A SON MATIN him did not see. It worried him, for the things it revealed to him were very different from those the men about him did. So he set out to kill it ; but it was a long, hard task. First, he covered it over with the dirt of obscene jests and deeds. But the light still shone through dimly, and worried him more than before ; for it seemed to reprove him for what he had done. So, slowly and with great effort, he collected the slime of depraved desires and habitual vice. Now this slime is very peculiar ; for while at first it is thin and transparent, in a little while it grows black and hard as iron. So the little old man cemented the dirt that covered his light with this iron mortar; and now the light ceased to trouble him. He sighed a great sigh of relief. Now, thought he, I shall be happy. So he buried his face in the dirt and covered his hands and feet with the slime. But he was not happy ; he grew sick of the blackness and smell of the dirt and the slime ; he began to long to see the fair, bright sights that his Hght had revealed to him. So one day he took the pickaxe of re- morse and the heavy iron hammer of de- spair, and set out to break the thick crust that was about his light. He toiled a long time, and by and by the mortar broke into pieces. It was no longer slime and dirt, it 207 MA VIE ARRIVE A SON MATIN was only a heap of broken rubbish. Now the Httle old man looked for his light. But it was not there, it had died. He threw himself down upon the heap of rubbish and gave a great cry. But there was no hope ; and it was only the echoes of that cry of despair that quavered in the undertone of the little old man's song in the beershop. 208 FAITH [Berlin, January 2, 1895] A MORALITY that does not rest upon a basis of faith cannot be permanent. For what we are to do in any detail of Hfe rests upon what we think about the whole of life and its meaning; and while that depends upon all our knowledge, it is not knowledge but faith. Hence the efifort to divorce morality from faith must end in failure. Either the faith will be present still in some form, or the moral teaching will be quite inefifectual. The only sanction for a mor- ality not based on our whole world-view would be the good feelings of the heart (developed on the basis of a better teaching) ; but these feelings would lead to exactly the same result without the moral teaching, hence the latter is an unnecessary encumbrance. A system of moral- ity that does not rest on faith hangs in the air and is without meaning and relation to life. 209 ASSISI [Asslsl, December, 1898] TOWARD the middle of the afternoon the rain-clouds broke and Hfted somewhat, roll- ing back in great dark masses above the valley and hanging low upon the higher mountains. It was under such a sky that we climbed the long road from the Portiuncula to Assisi. From the piazza of Santa Clara the wide stretch of the valley opened beneath us, the nearer hills silver gray with old olive trees, the great mountains dark and purple beyond the plains. The large masses of cloud were lighted up with the setting sun. Through a long break the southern sky was gold and then deepening crimson, while across the lake of flame a dark arm of cloud boldly projected itself. The effect of the sunset was indescribable. Behind us the cold and forbidding stone houses of the mediaeval town clustered in a heap on the side of the hill. Beside us was the plain, rude facade of Santa Clara, with its gigantic but- tresses and one beautifully carved rose-window. While over the valley and the rugged moun- tains the mingled flame and gloom played miracles of light and shadow. A fitting intro- duction to the birthplace of the vast spiritual revival, to the home of one who, more than any other, set the gloom and meditation of the 210 ASSISI middle ages on fire with a new gospel of love and holiness. AFTER ALL, the best memorials of St. Fran- cis are the legends of the Fioretti. These belong to those stories which are truer than his- tory because they are full of the spirit of that about which they play. Here one finds the true St. Francis — loving, earnest, filled with an unworldliness that may easily be mistaken for eccentricity ; exquisitely simple, teaching more by his life than by the inspired simplicity of his preaching. Rightly these stories are accredited to no author : they are the spontaneous creation of the time, expressing the inner significance of the life of Francis. [Half way tap Monte Subasio, December 9, 1898] THE air is full of peace. Above is the warm sunlight and a cloudless sky. Below, the mountain side is covered with a forest of shim- mering olive trees, whence the voices of those harvesting the fruit echo brightly from time to time. Now it is the shouting of a child, now the singing of somic bars of a strangely modulated melody. A little lower down, the valley is filled with a dense rolling mass of white fog, dashed here and there into mountain waves. Across its billowy breast the opposite summits rise deep 211 ST. FRANCIS purple in the sunlight, while afar to the right Perugia glistens. WE HAVE just passed an orchard filled with olive-pickers — men, women, youths and children. All seemed so busy and so happy, singing and talking at their work. One could imagine St. Francis coming by on his way to a week's solitary meditation in his mountain cell and stopping to preach to the peasants. They would gather around him, laughing and chatting, here and there one touched deeply, returning to their work with a tender feeling for the ''little poor man" and with a new sense of awe in their lives. ST. FRANCIS is a rare example of a man living out his inspiration in the place where it comes to him. Usually the prophet must go far away, that physical distance may make possible an appreciation of his greatness. Famili- arity is an almost insuperable obstacle to giving a lofty message. No good comes out of Naza- reth, and Nazareth is always the place where we live. ** Why," we say, " we knew his father, what can this son of a carpenter know that we do not know ; whence comes any unusual mes- sage to him?" And so God's miracles go on, unseen because of their very nearness. It is to 212 ST. FRANCIS the remote we look for a revelation, while all the time it would speak to us from the eyes of those who are near us and would voice itself through the commonplace world in which we live. St. Francis is one great example of a life so utterly and consistently consecrated to a noble aim as to compel appreciation from those immediately about him. 213 Evening MOUNTAIN heights are glowing in red and golden, Softly falls the evening o'er the valley, Hesper brightly shines in the glow of sunset, Everywhere peace ! 214 LOVE [Berlin, November, 1894] THE truest love can endure much and forgive all. It never wearies, it never despairs. It knows that in the end love will bring truth. With all its bitter longing, it can wait and suffer, and it never fails. The truest love is not merely the satisfaction of one aspect of human nature : it answers the whole life. It is the greatest of all joy-bringers and the most wonderful of educators. It can hold one to truth with a power that belongs to no other force. It is ever fresh and new like the morning and the flowers, for it is born anew in each experience, and the wonder it reveals to- day is a deep below deep in comparison to what seemed the infinite joy of yesterday. 21S ROSSETTrS BEAT A BEATRIX [London, August 24, 1898] ROSSETTI'S Beata Beatrix impresses me even more powerfully than four years ago. The painter has succeeded in portraying the woman capable of the transfigured passion which unites the exaltation of the Vita Nuova with the warm and palpitating humanity of Browning's women. Perhaps even Dante fails of something this picture contains, something so peculiarly modern that the mediaeval world could scarcely perceive it. To give this Beat- rice, with the older exaltation of love which reaches its highest point in Dante must be united a passionate humanity depending upon the deepening of the personal relations in mod- ern life. Rossetti was peculiarly fitted to use and interpret the spiritual symbolism of Dante. The flaming figure of Love — the subdued red haloed with golden light, the warm red dove with the gray-olive poppies of sleep, the dial at the hour of Beatrice's death, the dark figure of Dante in the nearer background, the subdued golden sunset over the Arno — all are pulsating with the spirit of the Vita Nuova. The figure of Beatrice is expressive of the highest point of this symbolism. The dark auburn hair, which Rossetti loved to paint, is so delicate and soft that it lies in a warm mass whose contour fades into golden light. The 216 ROSSETTrS BEAT A BEATRIX outer drapery is fresh green in color, the inner robe a subdued bluish gray. The face singularly mingles spiritual life and physical death. The color is gray and yet warm. The nose more sensitive than the Greek, the still nostrils seem- ing on the point of vibrating with the passion of the soul. The mouth is at rest, yet not closed, the deeply-curved lip, such as only a woman cap- able of the heart-warm human love possesses, seems almost palpitating with life. The hands are full of peace, yet sweet and with such power to express the awakened hunger of love. The long throat, the posture expressing at once the peace of death and of transfigured Hfe — the whole forms a masterpiece expressing an ideal elsewhere unattained in painting. 217 EXPERIENCE HOW difficult it is to live with people — even the best people. Small idiosyncrasies come painfully to the surface, differing opinions jar, slight elements of personality involve con- stant strain. It is well not to come too close to one's friends — for the sake of the friendship. Morcver, it is always a mistake to plan a single detail of another's life : the more entirely one avoids this the safer is the relationship. ^i8 MORAL JUDGMENT [Paris, December 28, 1898] ^^OME types of character are very difficult to k3 analyze, and their whole place and mean- ing in Hfe is hard to see. It is not easy to give up the expectation of finding each human being ideal, but the hard lessons of experience compel us to see how mingled of good and evil life is. We must take people for what they are worth and forgive their failure. At the same time we must never relax in our own struggle toward the highest. To look ever toward the noblest ideal for oneself, yet to forgive the failure to live up to it in every other — this is indispensable to right living. 219 EVOLUTION [Bremen, January 12, 1895] IT WAS unfortunate that in the middle ages philosophy was ''the handmaid of theology." It is unfortunate that to-day philosophy is so largely the handmaid of the doctrine of evolu- tion. The theory of physical evolution is prob- ably the most valuable intellectual contribution of modern times, but it by no means explains the universe. Some centuries hence it will probably seem as far from a complete philos- ophy as the Copernican theory seems to us to- day. The enunciation of the theory of evolution has not changed the facts of the higher human life nor destroyed the significance of the cen- turies of thinking over spiritual questions. If we stand close enough to our back-yard fence it will shut off the view of the distant mountains and become the limit of our horizon. Very few men ever get far away from their back-yard fence, and some even bow down be- fore it and say, " See, we have discovered the limit of the universe ; come close that you may know the truth." Let us beware that we do not build out of our theory of evolution a fence across the mystery of the universe, as has been done with so many doctrines. Meanwhile the stars roll on in the perfect harmony of their endless flight ; men and wo- men love and hope and suffer; children laugh 220 EVOLUTION and play over the green earth, and life remains the infinite mystery it has been through all time. 321 NATURE [Lucerne, November 15, 1898] THERE is a power and freedom in a great aspect of nature that does not belong to a masterpiece of painting or perhaps of any other art. As each expression of the human spirit has its own positive significance unequalled by any other, so each of the various moods of Nature has its own unapproachable grandeur, beauty or mystery. The ministry of Nature to man's spirit is beyond all that we have yet consciously under- stood ; and in so placing ourselves that the fulfillment of that ministry is possible lies one of the subtle secrets of exalted and harmonious living. 222 IMMORAL KINDNESS [Berlin, December 3, 1894] ONE of the most vicious phases of conduct is to be generous at the expense of truth, that is, to pretend to kindly feelings which are quite undeserved by the recipient and equally unfelt by the giver. To make everything smooth and pleasant for those who merit a firm rebuke is conduct which may call itself virtue, but is often a result of moral laziness, some temperaments choosing it as the most comfort- able course. 223 TO-DAY [Berlin, November 12, 1894] WE ARE inclined always to postpone life and to underrate the value of the present moment in its opportunities and its happiness. The time somewhat removed is seen in the soft beauty of distant perspective. The bare rocks of human reality are part of the exquisite whole through the magic of the atmosphere. The toil and failure of the past are forgotten, but the positive life and joy are remembered because they are with us forever. In the present, on the other hand, difficulties are exaggerated. The slight physical indisposition, the changing men- tal moods, the lack of some minor specific aid seem insuperable obstacles. We postpone our efforts for a more favorable time, and so life slips away with its best chances unemployed. We should be masters of ourselves, remember- ing that there is but one day in all eternity that is ours — to-day. 224 THE WILL [June II, 1900] NOT in time or place or conditions, is the cause of one's work or idleness, serenity or irritation. Cease seeking in conditions excuses for failure and emancipate yourself from the control of circumstances. 225 L Life [1886] IFE is not to be measured by coarse Time, But flows, ever fresh and beautiful, Forth from the Eternal Heart And bears us on its bosom far and high ; And moments are as years and years as mo- ments ; And birth and death and all things grow to be A thin cloak which would cover but may not hide The Eternal Soul. 226 NOV 29 1902