Qass Book COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT J Rev. Dr. BUSHNELL'S WORKS. SERMONS FOE THE NEW LIFE. 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL, AS CONSTI- tutiiig the One System of God. 1 vol. 8vo. Cloth, $2.50. CHRISTIAN NURTURE, An entirely new edition. Kevised and enlarged. 1 vol. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. WORK AND PLAY; OR, LITERARY VARIETIES. Ivol. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS: FORBIDDING HIS possible Classification with Men. 1 vol. 18mo. Antique cloth, red edges, 65 cents. Copies sent hy mail, postpaid, on receipt of price. -4 WORK AND PLAY; OR LITERARY VARIETIES BY HORACE^BUSHNELL CCpYRiGHT"'^^ NEW YOEK: CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND ST. 9/1- 1864 No, 2.1 , - . / T5/2.3f Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, By CHAELES SCRIBNER, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. A^ ^ 3 1 JOHN F. TROW, PEIXTEB, STEREOTTPER, AVD ELECTROTTPEB, 46 & 50 Greene Street, New Tort n ^fV I.' *" ADVERTISEMENT At the suggestion of a friend, who is himself an author, I have named this volume from its first article ; partly because it must have a name, and partly because the matter of it rep- resents the spontaneous overplus and literary by-play, of a la- borious profession. A good many of the articles it contains have been pub- lished before in the pamphlet form ; and the frequent letters I receive, requesting copies, when they are no longer to be had, have suggested, in fact, this republication of them in a more permanent shape. It will not be amiss that articles are inserted, which have not before been published. As the contributions of the volume represent opinions and impressions that belong to dates, or periods of life, widely separated, no exact consistency of view will be expected or demanded. In the article on " The Growth of Law," a reflection more severe by implication than by statement, is cast upon those reformers who have it for a point of endeavor, to show that slavery was not permitted in the ancient Scriptures. I con- fess that my impressions are somewhat modified by the late argument of my friend Dr. J. P. Thompson. At the same 1^ VI ADVERTISEMENT. time, I do not see that any thing really decisive is depending on that question. Doubtless it is all the better if slavery can get no complexion of favor from the Scripture usage, yet still it is quite well even if it can. If there is, by God's appoint- ment, and is always to be, a progress in law, nothing more is wanted for its final condemnation, than to show that the day of it is now gone by, and a state is reached, in which the world is capable of better things. And if it can be shown that Christianity itself expects, and deliberately prepares, just this kind of advancement in the social capability of mankind, slavery is then just as truly ruled out by the Scripture, as if it were specifically condemned. The ground which I took in this arttcle, twenty years ago, coincides exactly, it will be seen, with the very able, and more strictly Scriptural, argu- ment of Prof. Goldwin Smith, just now published. But if it should turn out that we are all in a mistake in our argu- ments, I think it will be discovered, ere long, that God has a way of uprooting slavery that is Providentially right. H. B. CONTENTS. Page. Advertisement, , 5 Contents, t I.— Work and Play, 9 II.— The True Wealth or Weal of Nations, 43 III.— The Growth of Law, 18 lY. — The Founders Great in their Unconsciousness, 124 Y. — Historical Estimate of Connecticut, IQl YI.— Agriculture at the East, 227 YIL— Life, or the Lives, ; 262 YIIL— City Plans, 308 IX.— The Doctrine of Loyalty, 337 X. — The Age of Homespun, 368 XL— The Day of Eoads, 403 XII. — Religious Music, 440 I. ¥ORK AND PLAY.* Mr. President, and Brethren of the Society, — There are many subjects or truths, and sometimes those of the greatest moment, whicli can not well be formally announced. They require to be offered rather by suggestion. They will enter the mind and be in it only as they are of it, generated by the fertile activity of a meditative spirit. This is frequently true even in matters of scientific discovery, where also it is often remarked, that the best suggestives are the humblest instances ; such as the mind can play itself upon with the greatest facility, because it is not occupied by their magnitude or oppressed by their gTandeur. Some lamp is seen swinging on its chain, some apple Mling from the tree, and then, perchance, the thoughtful looker-on, taking the hint that nature gives, will be able also to look in ; thus to uncover truths not meas- ured by their instances, — laws of the universe. More true is this, if possible, of moral subjects ; for there are many of these which the soul will not suffer to be thrust upon her. She must ask for them, catch * Delivered as an Oration before the Society of tlie Phi Beta Kappa, in the University of Cambridge. August 24, 1848. 10 WORK AND PLAY. the note of them in some humble suggestive, entertain them thoughtfully, take them into her feeling, and there, encouraging, as it were, their modesty, tempt them to speak. So especially it is with the subject in which I desire to engage you on the present occasion. No formal announcement will probably do more for it, than just to thrust it on your disrespect. Let me call to my aid, then, some thoughtful spirit in my audience ; not a poet, of necessity, or a man of genius, but a man of large meditation, one who is ac- customed to observe, and, by virtue of the warm affini- ties of a living heart, to draw out the meanings that are hid so often in the humblest things. Eeturning into the bosom of his family, in some interval of care and labor, he shall come upon the very unclassic and certainly unimposing scene, — his children and a kitten playing on the floor together; and just there, possibly, shall meet him suesrestions more fresh, and thousrhts of higher reach concerning himself and his race, than the announcement of a new-discovered planet, or the revo- lution of an empire would incite. He surveys, with a meditative feeling, this beautiful scene of muscular play, — the unconscious activity, the exuberant life, the spirit of glee, — and there rises in his heart the concep- tion, that possibly he is here to see the prophecy or symbol of another and higher kind of play, which is the noblest exercise and last end of man himself. Worn by the toils of years, perceiving, with a sigh, that the unconscious joy of motion here displayed is spent WORK AND FLAT. 11 ia himself, and that now he is effectually tamed to the doom of a working creature, he may yet discover, in the lively sympathy with play that bathes his inward feeling, that his soul is playing now, — enjoying, with- out the motions, all it could do in them ; manifold more than it could, if he were down upon the floor himself, in the unconscious activity and lively frolic of child- hood. Saddened he may be to note how time and work have changed his spirit and dried away the playful springs of animal life in his being ; yet he will find, or ought, a joy playing internally over the face of his working nature, which is fuller and richer as it is more tranquil ; which is to the other as fulfillment to proph- ecy, and is, in fact, the prophecy of a better and far more glorious fulfillment still. Having struck, in this manner, the great world-prob- lem of WORK AND PLAY, his thoughts kindle under the theme and he pursues it. The living races are seen, at a glance, to be offering in their history, everywhere, a faithful type of his own. They show him what he himself is doing and preparing, — all that he finds in the manifold experience of his own higher life. They have, all, their gambols, all, their sober cares and la- bors. The lambs are sporting on the green knoll ; the anxious dams are bleating to recall them to their side. The citizen beaver is building his house by a laborious carpentry ; the squirrel is lifting his sail to the wind on the swinging top of the tree. In the music of the morn.- iug, lie hears the birds playing with their voicos, and. 12 WORK AND PLAT. wlien the day is up, sees them sailing round in circles on the upper air, as skaters on a lake, folding their wings, dropping and rebounding, as if to see wha^ sport they can make of the solemn laws that hold the upper and lower worlds together. And yet these play-chil- dren of the air he sees again descending to be carriers and drudges ; fluttering and screaming anxiously about their nest, and confessing by that sign that not even wings can bear them clear of the stern doom of work. Or passing to some quiet shade, meditating still on this careworn life, playing still internally with ideal fancies and desires unrealized, there returns upon him there, in the manifold and spontaneous mimicry of nature, a liv- ing show of all that is transpiring in his own bosom; in every flower, some bee humming over his laborious chemistry and loading his body with the fruits of his toil ; in the slant sunbeam, populous nations of motes quivering with animated joy, and catching, as in play, at the golden particles of the light with their tiny fin- gers. Work and play, in short, are the universal ordi- nance of God for the living races ; in which they sym- bolize the fortune and interpret the errand of man. iS"o creature lives that must not work and may not play. Returning now to himself and to man, and meditat- ing yet more deeply, as he is thus prepared to do, on work and play, and play and work, as blended in the compound of our human life ; asking again what is work and what is play, what are the relations of one to the other, and which is the final end of all, he discovers, in what he was observing round him, a sublimity of im- WOBK AND PLAY. 13 port, a solemnity even, that is deep as the shadow of eternity. To proceed intelligently with our subject, we need, first of all, to resolve or set forth the precise philo- sophic distinction between work and play ; for upon this distinction all our illustrations will depend. That, in practical life, we have any hesitancy in making the distinction, I by no means intimate. At least, there are many youths in the universities, not specially advanced in philosophy, who. are able to make their election with the greatest facility, be the distinction itself clear or not. But as I propose, on the present occasion, to speak of the state of play in a manner that involves a philo- sophic extension of the idea, I am required to distin- guish the idea by a careful analysis. You will discover, at once, that work and play, taken as modes of mere outward, muscular activity, can not be distinguished. There is motion in both, there is an exercise of force in both, both are under the will as act- ing on the muscular system ; so that, taken outwardly, they both fall into the same category. Indeed, they can not be discriminated till we pass within, to view them metaphysically, considering their springs of ac- tion, their impulse, aim, and object. Here the distinction becomes evident at once ; name- ly, that work is activity for an end ; play, activity as an end. One prepares the fund or resources of enjoy- ment, the other is enjoyment itself Thus, when a man goes into agriculture, trade, or the shop, he consents to 2 14 WORK AND PLlY. undergo a certain expenditure of care and labor, wliicli is only a form of painstaking riglitly named, in order to obtain some ulterior good wliicli is to be liis reward. But when the child goes to his play, it is no painstak- ing, no means to an end ; it is itself rather both end and joy. Accordingly, it is a part of the distinction I state, that work suffers a feeling of aversion, and play ex- cludes aversion. For the moment any play becomes wearisome or distasteful, then it is work ; an activity that is kept up, not as being its own joy^ but for some ulterior end, or under some kind of constraint. Another form of the distinction is made out, and one that is more accurately adapted to philosophic uses, by saying that work is done by a conscious effort of will, and that play is impulsive, having its spring in some in- spiration, or some exuberant fund of life back of the will. So that one is something which we require of ourselves, the other something that we must control ourselves not to do. We work because we must, be- cause prudence impels. We play because we have in us a fund of life that wants to expend itself But man is not a muscular creature only; he does not consist of mere bones and integuments. He is a creature also of thought, feeling, intelligence, and char- acter. And what we see of him in the muscular life he is, or should be, in the higher domain of spirit. Kegarding the child as a creature full of life and spon- taneous motion, thus and therefore a playing creature, we are to see in him, not the measure, but the sign, of that which shall be. For as the race began with an WORK AXD PLAY. 15 outward paradise, which, being lost, may yet offer the type of a higher paradise to be gained, so each life be- gins with muscular play, that, passing through the hard struggles of work, it may carry its ideal with it, and emerge, at last, into a state of inspired liberty and spon- taneous beauty. In short, we are to conceive that the highest and complete state of man, that which his na- ture endeavors after and in which only it fulfills its sub- lime instinct, is the state of play. In this view, study is to be regarded as work, until the disciple gets beyond voluntary attention, application constrained by prudence, rivalry, ambitious prepara- tions for life, and begins to dwell in beauty and truth as inspirations. For then he passes into another and more perfect kind of activity, an activity that is spon- taneous or impulsive, and is to itself both reward and end. And this kind of activity, call it enthusiastic or in- spired, or by whatever name, we shall discover is com- monly regarded as a higher and nobler — ^in fact the only perfect acti\T.ty conceivable. In the article of memory, for example, we regard a spontaneous mem- ory, that which mirrors all the past before us without any effort of recollection, as the only perfect memory. But a reflective memory, supported by mnemonic con- trivances, and assisted by recollective efforts, is so far in the nature of work ; and the necessity of work argues the imperfection of the instrument. Our idea of a per- fect or complete memory is, that it reports the past spontaneously, or in play. 16 ttork: and play. When we ascend to the higher modes of action^ such as involve the inventive exercises of reason, fancy, im- agination, or the sentimental exercises of feeling, pas- sion, humor, we find that we are even offended by the signs of work ; or, if not offended, we are unsatisfied, jnst in proportion to the evidence of work or effort ob- truded on our attention. For work, we allow, argues defect or insufficiency, and to say that the man lahors is the same as to say that he fails. Xothing is sufficient or great, nothing fires or exalts us, but to feel the divine energy and the inspiring liberty of play. Then, again, as we ascend still higher, to modes of activity that are moral and religious, we become quite intolerant of anv thinsr in the nature of work. To be good or true, for the sake of some ulterior end, is the same as to value goodness and truth second to that end; which is the same as to have no sense of either. So, if some benefit or gift is bestowed upon us by constraint, and not from any compassion for our lot or interest in our welfare, we deem the gift itself an insult, and call the charity hvpocrisy. In like manner purity, forced by self-restraint or maintained by mere prudence, argues impurity. True purity, that which answers the perfect ideal, is spontaneous; unfolding its artless, unaftected spotlessness in the natural freedom of a flower. It could not defile itself without an effort. Nay, it is sup- posable that perfect purity could not even blush. In like manner, self-denial is never a complete virtue till it becomes a kind of self-indulgence. It must bathe itself in the fountains of a self-oblivious charity. Forgetting WORK AND PLAY. 17 feme and reward, rising above the constraints of pru- dence, and losing tlie nature of work, it must become tlie spontaneous impulse of our being, a joyous overflow of the soul's liberty. It follows, in this view, that work is in its very na- ture temporary, or should be, having for its end the realization of a state of play. Passing through activity for an end, we are to come into activity as an end ; be- yond which, of course, there is nothing higher. As we rest in the one, we are to cease from the other. And might we not have said as much beforehand? Who that considers the ethereal nature of a soul can conceive that the doom of work is any thing more than a tempo- rary expedient, introduced or suffered to perfect our discipline? To imagine a human creature dragged along, or dragging himslf along, under the perpetual friction of work, never to ascend above it ; a creature in Grod's image, aching for God's liberty, beating ever vainly and with crippled wings, that he may lift him- self into some freer, more congenial element — ^this, I say, were no better than to quite despair of man. Nay, it were to confess that all which is most akin to God in his human instincts is only semblance without reality. Do we not all find within us some dim ideal, at least, of a state unrealized, where action is its own impulse; where the struggles of birth are over, and the friction of interest and care is no longer felt ; where all that is best and highest is freest, and joyous because it is free ; where to be is to be great, because the inspiration of the soul is full, and to do is easy as to conceive ; where ac- 2^ 18 WORK AND PLAY. tion is itself sublime, because it is the play of ease and the equilibrium of rest ? Let no one imagine that I derogate thus from the dignity of work. Kather do I dignify it the more, that I represent it as the preparative to a state so exalted. Possibly our modern writers, in their zeal to dignify work, have sometimes excluded or omitted the notice of this, which is its only dignity. Indeed, some of our poets seem to have worked harder to change the world's work into poetry, than the world need have done to fin- ish it in prose. Work is transitional, having its good in its end. The design is, that, by a fixed law of na- ture, it shall pass into play. This is its proper honor and joy. Let us notice, then, for a moment, in what manner work becomes the preparative or necessary condition of play. Observe the child as a playing creature in the muscular life. Full of animated glee, unable to contain the brimming life that is in him, he must needs expend himself in action. He leaps about the ground, climbs into the trees, screams among his fellows in notes that tingle on the air ; not because he will, or has any ulte- rior end, but because the play-fund is in him, and he must. But we do not always note that a period of trial answering to work was necessary to prepare this liberty of motion ; that the child had first to practice eye, voice, ear, hand, foot, putting forth carefully by little and lit- tle, and gradually getting possession of the bodily ma- chinery that now plays so nimbly. Every muscle in WORK AND PLAY. 19 his body had, in fact, to be graduated in the little uni- versity of motion, before he was ready for play. He had many falls to suffer, in order to get the balance of his members ; much crying to do, to get possession of his voice ; and this, I suppose, must be taken for work. By the same kind of necessity is mental and spiritual work necessary to the play-state of the soul. The man must go into experiment, through experiment or study get possession of his soul, so that he can turn every faculty whithersoever he will, and have the whole in- ternal machinery in the exactest play. I speak not here of the discipline merely of schools and colleges, but, as much, of the struggles we encounter and the scenes through which we pass in this great school of life — its objects, relations, and duties; its sturdy trials, fears, falls, crosses ; its works, and wars, and woes ; all discovering to us, and thus helping us to possess, our- selves. We get the helm thus of our thoughts, tempers, passions, aspirations, and wants. And if a vigorous training in the school be added, our capacities of taste, fancy, observation, and reason are also discovered, and limbered for the free activity of spiritual play. It will also be seen that this free state of man in- volves a moral experience, and possibly somewhat of a bad or selfish experience, whereby his choices may be settled in the permanent love of goodness. For this, in fact, is the greatness of all greatness, that it is of the man himself — the measure of his own free aims and as- pirations. And if so much depends on the soul's choices-, it needs to be made wise that it may choose 20 WORK AND PLAY. wisely, and possibly to choose unwisely in order that it may be wise. Thus it descends into selfishness and evil, which are only forms of work, there to learn the wisdom of goodness in the contrasts of distaste, weari- ness, and hunger. And this, I suppose, is the solution of the various travail that is given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith. Some men work to get money ; others, quite as hard to spend it. Some men work to get reputation ; others, who have it by accident, work harder in seeing it go by a law. There is a labori- ous ease, and even a laborious idleness. What we call pleasure is commonly but another name for work; a strenuous joy, a laboriously prepared and therefore wea- risome happiness. We all go to our self-serving and work, till at last we learn, it may be, to cease from our- selves, and then — we play. But there is yet another office served by work, with- out which the state of play is never complete. The man must find inspiring forces, objects that exalt the feeling, ideals to embrace that will beget a spontaneous greatness in him. But he is ignorant, at first, even of facts ; and how shall he find his ideals, unless they are discovered in the practical throes of experience, la- bor, and study ? How shall he turn himself to things that shine with their own brightness, ideal objects born of the soul's own thought, and luminous by a divine quality hid in themselves, unless he has sweltered for a time in self-exercise and the dust of labor ? Then, at last, he conceives and embraces in his love sublimity, beauty, honor, truth, charity, God ; and the inspiration WORK AND PLAY. 21 he feels imparts to him somewhat of a higher na- ture, spontaneously good, wise, great,— joyous of ne- cessity. Thus it is that work prepares the state of play. Passing over now to this latter, observe the intense longing of the race for some such higher and freer state of being. They call it by no name. Probably most of them have but dimly conceived what they are after. The more evident will it be that they are after this, when we find them covering over the whole ground of life, and filling up the contents of history, with their counterfeits or misconceived attempts. If the hidden fire is seen bursting up on every side, to vent itself in flame, we may certainly know that the ground is full. Let it not surprise you, if I name, as a first illustra- tion here, the general devotion of our race to money. This passion for money is allowed to be a sordid pas- sion, one that is rankest in the least generous and most selfish of mankind ; and yet a conviction has always been felt, that it must have its heat in the most central fires and divinest affinities of our nature. Thus the poet calls it the auri sacra fames — sacra^ as being a curse, and that in the divine life of the race. Childhood be- ing passed, and the play-fund of motion so far spent that running on foot no longer appears to be the joy it was, the older child, now called a man, fancies that it will make him happy to ride ! Or he imagines, which is much the same, some loftier state of being — call it rest, retirement, competence, independence — no matter 22 WORK AND PLAY. by what name, only be it a condition of use, ease, lib- erty, and pure enjoyment. And so we find the whole race at work to get rid of work : drudging themselves to-day, in the hope of play to-morrow. This is that sa- cra fames J which, misconceiving its own unutterable longings after spiritual play, proposes to itself the dull felicity of cessation, and drives the world to madness in pursuit of a counterfeit, which it is work to obtain, work also to keep, and yet harder work oftentimes to enjoy. Here, too, is the secret of that profound passion for the drama, which has been so conspicuous in the culti- vated nations. We love to see life in its feeling and activity, separated from its labors and historic results. Could we see all human changes transpire poetically or creatively, that is, in play, letting our soul play with them as they pass, then it were only poetry to live. Then to admire, love, laugh ; then to abhor, pity, weep, — all were alike grateful to us ; for the view of suffer- ing separated from all reality, save what it has to feel- ing, only yields a painful joy, which is the deeper joy because of the pain. Hence the written drama, off'er- ing to view in its impersonations a life one side of life, a life in which all the actings appear without the ends and simply as in play, becomes to the cultivated reader a spring of the intensest and most captivating spiritual incitement. He beholds the creative genius of a man playing out impersonated groups and societies of men, clothing each with life, passion, individuality, and cha- racter, by the fertile activity of his own inspired feeling. Meantime the writer himself is hidden, and can not WORK AND PLAY. 23 even suggest his existence. Hence egotism, wliicli also is a form of work, tlie dullest, most insipid, least inspir- ing of all kinds of endeavor, is nowhere allowed to ob- trude itself. The reader himself, too, has no ends to think of or to fear, —nothing to do, but to play the cha- racters into his feeling as creatures existing for his sake. In this view, the drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play. But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading, we invent our own scene- ries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked, when he becomes an auditor and spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat ; the characters, definitely measured, have lost their in- finity, so to speak, and thus their freedom; and what before was play descends to nothing better or more in- spired than work. It is called going to the play^ but it should rather be called going to the work ; that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera ! that is it) — men and women inspired through their memory, and acting their inspirations by rote ; panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whipping out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfill the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble coun- terfeit of play, which some of us would call only ^'very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. The^? 24 WORK AND PLAY. are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power, — namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed. In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are re- solvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. "We must get above prudence and economy, into something that par- takes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call cour-age^ taking our name from the heart. It is the greatness of a great heart ; the repose and confidence of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty, duty itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere pru- dence and contrivance, he is also lifted above fear. Life to him is the outgoing of his great heart, — heart- age^ action from the heart. And because he now can die, without being shaken or perturbed by any of the dastardly feelings that belong to self-seeking and work, because he partakes of the impassibility of his prin- ciples, we call him a hero, regarding him as a kind of god — a man who has gone up into the sphere of the divine. Then, since courage is a joy so high, a virtue of so great majest}^, what could happen but that many will WORK AND PLAY. 25 covet both the internal exaltation and the outward re- pute of it? Thus comes bravery, which is the counter- feit, or mock virtue. Courage is of the heart, as we have said ; bravery is of the will. One is the sponta- neous joy and re^DOse of a trul}' great soul; the other, bravery, is after an end ulterior to itself, and in that view, is but a forni of work, — about the hardest work, too, I flmcy, that some men imdertake. TThat can be harder, in fact, than to act a great heart, when one has nothino' but a will wherewith to do it ? Thus vou will see that conrao'e is above dano-er; bravery in it, doing battle on a level with it. One is secure and tranquil, the other suppresses agitation or conceals it. A right mind fortifies one, shame stimu- lates the other. Faith is the nerve of one, risk the plague and tremor of the other. For if I may tell you just here a very important secret, there be many that are called heroes who are vet without courao'e. They brave danger by their will, when their heart trembles. They make up in violence what they want in tranquil- litv, and drown the tumult of their fears in the rag-e of their passions. Enter the heart and you shall find, too often, a dastard spirit lurking in your hero. Call him still a brave man, if vou will, onlv remember that he lacks courage. Xo, the true hero is the great, wise man of duty ; he whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the smile of God ; he who meets life's perils with a cautious but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a Christian 3 26 WORK A XI) PLAY. victor at the post of dl^t3^ And if we must have heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of truth and mercy. But if bravery be not the same as courage, still it is a very imposing and plausible couiiterfeit. The man himself is told, after the occasion is passed, how heroic- ally he bore himself, and when once his nerves have become tranquillized, he begins even to believe it. And since we can not stay content in the dull, unin- spired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness our- selves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war — wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart un- der. We collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning, by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called an army, a magnanimous aiid brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce color, the glitter of steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot — under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave to-day, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans— what of these? nobody thinks of WORK AND PLAY. 27 these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch of heroes ! And this is the Devil's play, that we call war. We have had it going on ever since the old geologic era was finished. We are sick enough of the matter of it. We understand well enough that it is not good economy. But we can not live on work. We must have courage, inspiration, greatness, play. Even the moral of our na- ture, that which is to weave us into social union with our kind before God, is itself thirsting after play ; and if we can not have it in good, why then let us have it in as good as we can. It is at least some comfort, that we do not mean quite as badly in these wars as some men say. We are not in love with murder, we are not simple tigers in feeling, and some of us come out of bat- tle with kind and gentle qualities left. We only must have our play. Note also this, that, since the metaphysics of fighting have been investigated, we have learned to make much of what Ave call the moral of the army ; by which we mean the feeling that wants to play brave. Only it is a little sad to remember that this same moral, as it is called, is the true, eternal, moral nature of the man thus terribly perverted, — that which was designed to link him to his God and his kind, and ought to be the spring of his immortal inspirations. There has been much of speculation among the learn- ed concerning the origin of chivalry ; nor has it always been clear to what human elements this singular insti- 28 WORK AND PLAY. tution is to be referred. But when we look on man, not as a creature of mere understanding and reason, but as a creature also of play, essentiall}' a poet in that which constitutes his higher life, we seem to have a so- lution of the origin of chivalry, which is sufl&cient, whe- ther it be true or not. In the forswearing of labor, in the brave adventures of a life in arms, in the intense ideal devotion to woman as her protector and avenger, in the self-reuouncing and almost self-oblivious worship of honor — what do we see in these but the mock-moral doings of a creature who is to escape self-love and the service of ends, in a free, spontaneous life of goodness ; in whom courage, delicacy, honor, disinterested deeds, are themselves to be the inspiration, as they are the end, of his being ? I might also show, passing into the sphere of religion, liow leo'al obedience, which is work, alwavs descends into superstition, and thus that religion must, in its very nature and life, be a form of play — a worship offered, a devotion paid, not for some ulterior end, but as being its own end and joy. I might also show, in the same manner, that all the enthusiastic, fanatical, and properly quietistic modes of religion are as many distinct coun- terfeits, and, in that manner, illustrations of my subject. But this you will see at a glance, without illustration. Only observe how vast a field our illustrations cover. In the infatuated zeal of our race for the acquisition of money, in the drama, in war, in chivalry, in perverted religion — in all these forms, covering almost the whole ground of humanity with counterfeits of play, that are WOBK AND PLAY. 29 themselves t&e deepest movements of the race, I show you the boundless sweep of this divine instinct, and how surely we may know that the perfected state of man is a state of beauty, truth, and love, where life is its own end and joy. Passing now into the life of letters, we may carry ^vith us a light that wall make intelligible and clear some important distinctions that are not always appre- hended. Here is the distinction between genius and talent, w^hich some of our youthful scholars are curious to set- tle. Grenius is that which is good for play, talent that w^hich is good for work. The genius is an inspired man, a man whose action is liberty, whose creations are their own end and joy. Therefore we speak, not of the man's doing this or that, but of the man's genius as do- ing it; as if there were some second spirit attendant, yielding him thoughts, senses, imaginations, fires of emotion, that are above his measure — lifting him thus into exaltations of freedom and power that partake of a certain divine quality. His distinction is, in fact, that he is a demonized or demonizable man. Talent, on the other hand, we conceive to be of the man him- self, a capacity that is valuable as related to ends and uses, such as the acquisition of knowledge or money, to build, cultivate, teach, frame polities, manage causes, fill magistracies. But w^e need to add that talent, in every sphere, passes into sfenius throua'h exercise : for if o-eniuses are. 30 WORK AXL) PLAY. born, as we sometimes hear, they must yet be born again of study, struggle, and work. First the man comes into action, gets possession of himself, fills out the tone of his energies by efforts and struggles that are of the will. If then ideas find him, when he is ploughing in uses, and drop their mantle on him, he be- comes a prophet. I say, if they find him; for he is lit- tle likely to find them, by going after them. Inspira- tion sought is inspiration hindered. It must be a call. Xo man makes a breeze for his vessel by blowing in the sail himself. Xeither is any man to act the genius will- fully, or to have it for a question, previous to study and work, whether possibly he is boiTi to the life of genius. To preconceive the life is, in fact, not to suffer it. The most any mortal can do in this matter is to do nothing, — save to offer a pure, industrious, lively nature to all beauty and good, and be willing to serve them, till he is permitted to reign with them. If then there fall into his bosom, as it were out of heaven, thoughts, truths, feehngs, acts of good to be done, all of which are joy and reward in their own nature, and the man, taking- fire in these, as with something divine, rises into play, that is the kind of activity we mean by the word genius. For if there be an example, now and then, of some pre- cocious fondling, who appeal's to be born to inspiration, and begins to play in the lap, as it were, of mere nature — plays in the university as a poet, too divinely gifted for the tough discipline of study — if possibly he is reck- oned a genius, he will yet turn out to be a genius of the small order, and it will be wonderful, if, as lambs and W OK K AND PLAY. 81 kittens are sobered by the graver habit of their major- ity, the growth of his beard does not exhaust his inspi- ration. However this may be, all the heavy and mass- ive forms of genius, all the giants of inspiration, are sons of work. Such being the distinction between talent and genius, we shall look for a like distinction in their demonstra- tions ; the distinction, namely, of work and play, activ- ity for an end and activity as an end, that of the empty and that of the full, the acquisitive and the creative, the ascent of the ladder and the ascent of fire. Here lies the distinction between wit and humor, a distinction which the rhetoricians have not always dis- tinctly traced, though well aware of some real and very wide difference in their effects. Wit is work, humor is play. One is the dry labor of intention or design, am- bition eager to provoke applause, malignity biting at an adversary, envy letting down the good or the exalted. The other, humor, is the soul reeking with its own moisture, laughing because it is full of laughter, as ready to weep as to laugh ; for the copious shower it holds is good for either. And then, when it has set the tree a- dripping, " And liuug a pearl in very cowslip's ear," the pure sun shining after will reveal no color of inten- tion in the sparkling drop, but will leave you doubting still whether it be a drop let fall by laughter, or — a tear. The rhetoricians have also labored much to make out some external definition by which prose may be distin- 82 WOKK AXD PLAY. guished from poetn^. Xo sucli distinction is possible, till we pass into tlie mind of the writer, and contemplate his subjective state. If he writes for some use or end ulterior to the writing, and of course superior as a mo- tive, or if we read with a feeling produced that the writ- ing is only means to an end, that is prose. On the other hand, everv sort of writim^ which is its own end, an utterance made because the soul is full of feeling, beauty, and truth, and wants to behold her own joy, is poetry. She sings because the music is in her heart. Her divine thousrht burns, and words flock round about, fanning the fire with their wings, till she goes up in flame, unable to stay. Poetry, therefore, is play, as distinguished from prose, which is work. Hence, too, poetr\' is distinguished from prose by a certain quality that we call rhythm. For when a man thinks or acts for an end ulterior, sug- gested by self-love, then the drag of his end, being to- wards himself, makes a specialty of him, — he is a mote in the great universe, centered in itself and not in the sun, and pulling to get something to or in itself; there- fore he is out of rhvthm in his feelinsf, and the music of the stars will not chime with him. But when he lets go his private want or end to play, then he is part of the great universe under God, and consciously one with it, and then he falls into the rhythmic dance of the worlds, giving utterance, in beat and number, to a feel- ing that is itself played into beat and number, weaving and waving with those graces that circle the throne of all beautv, and chimino- with the choirs of li^rht in their AVORK AXD PLAY. 33 universal, but, to the most of mankind, inaudible, hymn. Or, to bring an instance from below the stars, where no fiction may be suspected; as the mountains of the world, having a certain secret law of rhythm in their moulds and granite masses, take up the discordant sounds of horns or screaming voices, part the discords, toss the silvering harmonies about in reduplicating beats of echo, and fine away the notes till they seem vibra- tions of spirit, pulsing still, after the air is silent ; so, when a man falls under inspiration from God and his worlds, and begins to play, his soul forthwith becomes a tuneful creature ; his thouo:hts submit to the univer- sal rhythmic laws, and when he speaks he sings. If in verse, then, the number is cast by the feeling or inspiration ; all is of the feeling, and the words are gathered into their places, not by choice, but by a cer- tain instinct which they themselves feel after ; as when birds of passage hook themselves to each other in waving lines of propagated action, all feeling all, and chiming in the beat of their wings. If the writing be in the form of prose, and yet be truly in play, still it will be felt that some higher law than choice has called the words into their places. 'We have still a feeling of number and rhythm, and certain mystic junctures and cadences, born, as it were, of music, remind us that the son of song is here. The same may be said of the orator ; for there is no definite line of distinction, as many imagine, between the true orator and the poet, — unless we say that the orator is the poet in action, the impersonation of rhythm 34 WOKK AXD PLAY. and pla}^ For though, the speaker begins with a cause which he is charged to gain, yet as he kindles w^ith his theme and rises into inspired action, his men become gods, his cause is lifted out of the particular into the universal, or into such a height that speaking for it be- comes an end in itself, and his advocacy, raised above the mere prose level, becomes a lofty, energetic impro- vising. What he began with a purpose hurries him on now as a passion. His look changes. His voice takes a modulation not of the will. His words and cadences seem rather to make use of him than to be used by him. His action, being no longer voluntary, but spontaneous, falls into the rhythm of play, where you distinguish the sharp, invective iambic, the solemn, religious spondee, the swift trochaic run of eagerness or fear, the heavy molossic tread of grief or sorrow. He becomes, in fact, a free lyric in his own living person, the most ani- mated and divinest embodiment of pla}^, — thus and therefore a power sublime above all others possible to man. Pursuing the same method, I might also exhibit a similar distinction of work and play between rhetorical beauty, labored by the rules of the professors, and the free beaut}^ of original creation. Criticism holds a like relation to all the productive energies of genius ; logic also a like relation to the spiritual insight of reason ; understanding a like relation to the realizations of faith. There is yet another topic which requires to be illus- trated, in order to complete my subject, but which I can touch only in the briefest manner. I speak of philoso- WORK AXD PLAY. 35 phic method, or the true method of scientific discovery. The inductive method, sometimes called the Baconian, is commonly represented in a manner that would make the philosopher the dullest of beings, and philosophy the dullest of all drudgeries. It is merely to classify facts on a basis of comparison or abstraction ; that is, to arrange a show-box and call it philosophy! No, the first and really divine work of philosophy is to generate ideas, which are then to be verified by facts or experi- ments. Therefore we shall find that a certain capacity of elevation or poetic ardor is the most fruitful source of discovery. The man is raised *to a pitch of insight and becomes a seer, entering into things through God's constitutive ideas, to read them as from God. For what are laws of science but ideas of God, — those regulative types of thought by which God created, moves, and rules the worlds ? Thus it is that the geometrical and mathematical truths become the prime sources of scien- tific inspiration ; for these are the pure intellectualities of being, and have their life in God. Accordingly, an eloquent modern writer says, — ''I am persuaded that many a problem of analysis of Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Euler, and the solution of many an equation, sup- pose as much intuition and inspiration as the finest ode of Pindar. Those pure and incorruptible formulas which already were before the world was, that will be after it, governing throughout all time and space, being, as it were, an integral part of God, put the mathemati- cian in profound communion with the Divine Thought. In those immutable truths, he savors what is purest in 36 WORK AND PLAY. the creation. He says to the worlds, like the ancient, — ^Let us be silent, we shall hear the murmuring of the Gods.^ " Accordingly we find, as a matter of historic fact, that the singular and truly wonderful man who first broke into the ordinances of heaven and got a foothold there for definite science was inflamed and led on by the in- spirations of geometry. ^'Figures pleased me," he says, ^'as being quantities, and as having existed before the heavens." Therefore he exjDected to find the heavens included under geometric figures. Half mad with pro- phetic feeling, and astrologically possessed also by the stars, he goes up among them praying and joking and experimenting together, trying on, as it were, his geo- metric figures to see how they will fit, and scolding the obstinacy of heaven when they will not ; doubting then whether ^^ perhaps the gibbous moon, in the bright con- stellation of the Bull's forehead, is not filling his mind with fantastic images;" returning again to make ano- ther trial, and enduring labors which, if done in the spirit of work, would have crushed any mortal, — till, at last, behold ! his prophetic formula settles into place ! the heavens acknowledge it! And he breaks out in holy frenzy, crying, — ''What I prophesied two-and- twenty years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits ; what I believed before I had seen Ptolemy's Harmonics ; what I had promised my friends ; that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, I have brought to light ! It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of light ; three months since the WORK AXD FLAY. 37 dawn ; very few days since the unveiled sun, most ad- mirable to gaze on, burst out upon me. Notbing holds me ; I indulge my sacred fury ! I triumph over man- kind ! The die is cast; the book is written, — to be read, either now, or by posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, as God has been wait- ing six thousand years for an observer!" And yet this man was no philosopher, some will say ; he did not proceed by induction and the classifi- cation of facts, he only made a lucky guess ! Be it so, it was yet such a guess as must be made before science could get any firm hold of the sky; such a guess as none but this most enthusiastic and divinely gifted mor- tal, trying at every gate of knowledge there, could ever have made. So too it is now,' always has been, always will be, — boast of our Baconian method as we may, misconceive the real method of philosophy as we certainly do, — all great discoveries, not purely accidental, will be gifts to insight, and the true man of science will be he who can best ascend into the thoughts of God, he who burns be- fore the throne in the clearest, purest, mildest light of reason. Thus, also, it was that Linnaeus, when the mystic and almost thinking laws of vegetable life began to open upon him, cried, — ^'' Deum sempiternum^ omniscium^ om- nipotentem^ a tergo transeuntem^ vidi^ et ohstupuir So, too, when the animate races are to open their won- drous history, you yourselves have seen the hand of play, or of scientific genius, dashing out, stroke by 4 38 WORK AXD PLAY. stroke, in a few free lines, those creative types of God in which the liWng orders had their spring ; and have seemed, in the chalk formation of the lecture-room, to see those creatures leaping into life, which the other and older chalk formation under ground has garnered there, as the cabinet of Jehovah. But it is time to bring these illustrations to a close, and it is scarcely for me to choose the manner. They have their own proper close, towards which they have all the way been drawing us, and that we must now ac- cept; namely, this, — that, as childhood begins with play, so the last end of man, the pure ideal in which his being is consummated, is a state of play. And if we look for this perfected state, we shall find it nowhere, save in re- ligion. Here at last man is truly and completely man. Here the dry world of work and the scarcely less diy counterfeits of play are left behind. Partial inspirations no longer suffice. The man ascends into a state of free beauty, where well-doing is its own end and joy, where life is the simple flow of love, and thought, no longer colored in the prismatic hues of prejudice and sin, re- joices ever in the clear white light of truth. Exactly this we mean, when we say that Christianity brings an offer of liberty to man ; for the Christian liberty is onh'- pure spiritual play. Delivered of self love, fear, con- trivance, legal constraints, termagant passiohs, in a word, of all ulterior ends not found in goodness itself, the man ascends into power, and reveals, for the first time, the real greatness of his nature. WORK AXD PLAY. 39 I speak thus, not professionally, but as any one, wlio is simply a man of letters, shonld. I am well aware that ChristiaDity has hitherto failed to realize the noble consummation of which I speak. We have been too much in opinions to receive inspirations ; occupied too much with fires and anathemas, to be filled with this pure love ; too conversant with mock ^-irtues and un- charitable sanctities, to receive this beautv or be kindled by this heavenly flame. And yet how evident is it that religion is the only element of perfected freedom and greatness to a soul ! for here alone does it finally escape from self, and come into the perfect life of play. For just as the matter of the worlds wants a law to settle its motions and be its element of order, so all intelligences want their element of light, rest, beauty, and play in Grod. Hence we are to look, as the world rises out of its barbaric fires and baptized, animosities into the sim- ple and free life of love, to see a beauty unfolded in hu- man thought and feeling, as much more graceful as it is freer and closer to God. Christian love is demonstrably the only true ground of a perfect aesthetic culture. In- deed, there is no perfect culture of any kind, which does not carry the man out of himself, and kindle in his human spirit those fi^ee aspirations that shall bear him up, as in flame, to God's own person. Therefore I believe in a future age, yet to be revealed, which is to be distinguished from all others as the godly or godlike age, — an age not of universal education sim- ply, or universal philanthropy, or external freedom, or political well-being, but a day of reciprocity and free 40 WORK AXD PLAY. intimacy between all souls and God. Learning and re- ligion, the scholar and the Christian, will not be divided as they have been. The nniversities will be filled with a profound spirit of religion, and the bene orCtsse will be a fountain of inspiration to all the investigations of study and the creations of genius. I raise this expectation of the future, not because some prophet of old time has spoken of a day to come, when ''the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof," (for I know not that he meant to be so interpreted,) but because I find a pro- phecy of play in our nature itself, which it were a vio- lation of all insight not to believe will some time be fulfilled. And when it is fulfilled, it will be found that Christianity has, at last, developed a new literary era, the era of religious love. Hitherto, the love of passion has been the central fire of the world's literature. The dramas, epics, odes, nov- els, and even histories, have spoken to the world's heart chiefly through this passion, and through this have been able to get their answer. For this passion is a state of play, wherein the man loses himself, in the ardor of a devotion regardless of interest, fear, care, prudence, and even of life itself. Hence there gathers round the lover a tragic interest, and we hang upon his destiny, as if some natural charm or spell were in it. Now this pas- sion of love, which has hitherto been the staple of liter- ature, is only a crude symbol in the life of nature, by which God designs to interpret, and also to foreshadow, the higher love of religion, — nature's gentle Beatrice, WOKK AND PLAY. 41 who puts her image in the youthful Dante, by that to attend him afterwards in the spirit-flight of song, and be his guide up through the wards of Paradise to the shining mount of God. What, then, are we to think, but that God will some time bring us up out of the liter- ature of the lower love, into that of the higher ? — thati as the age of passion yields to the age of reason, so the crude love of instinct will give place to the loftier, finer, more impelling love of God ? And then, around that nobler love, or out of it, shall arise a new body of literature, as much more gifted as the inspiration is purer and more intellectual. Beauty, truth, and wor- ship ; song, science, and dut}^, will all be unfolded to- gether in this common love. Society must of course receive a correspondent beauty into its character and feeling, such as can be satisfied no longer with the old barbaric themes of war and passion. To be a scholar and not to be a Christian, to produce the fruits of genius without a Christian inspiration, will no longer be thought of; and religion, heretofore looked upon as a ghostly constraint upon life, it will now be acknowledged, is the only sufficient fertilizer of genius, as it is the only real emancipator of man. If now it be doubted whether a hope of so great beauty is ever to be realized here on earth ; whether, indeed, the visions of the Christian seers that look this way are more than rhapsodies of their poetic mood, it must be enough that just such rhapsodies of promise are chanted by the world's own order. Let no expecta- tion seem romantic because it wears the air of poetry ; 4- 42 WORK AND PLAY. for religion is itself the elemental force of all free beauty, and thus of a life essentially poetic. Its in- spired seers and prophets are the poets of God. Its glorious future bursts up ever into song, and pictures itself to the ^aew in j)oetic sceneries and visions. Even the occupations and felicities of the good beyond life are representable only in the play of choirs and chinies of poetic joy. ^lusic and rhythm are the natural pow- ers, indeed, of order and crystallization, in the social life of all moral natures ; as we see in the fact that the ancient laws of the race were framed in verse, and sung into authoritv, as the carmen necessarhnn of the state. Therefore I can easily persuade myself, that, if the world were free, — free, I mean, of themselves, — brought up, all, out of work into the pure inspiration of truth and charity, new forms of personal and intellectual beauty would appear, and society itself reveal the Or- phic movement. No more will it be imagined that poetry and rhythm are accidents or figments of the race, one side of all ingredient or ground in nature. But we shall know that poetry is the real and true state of man, the proper and last ideal of souls, the free beauty they long for, and the rhythmic flow of that universal play in which all life would live. II. THE TRUE WEALTH OR WEAL OF NATIONS.* Mr. President, — It is truly a great satisfaction to me, that I appear before you, not to claim a place, but only to supply a chasm in the succession of your distinguished and elo- quent speakers. I am thus permitted to feel, that I discharge an office rather of good vrill and fraternity, than of ambition ; and if I do not leap into the chasm that has occurred, with exactly the zeal of a Curtius, I may at least cherish the hope, as I go down, that the ground will close over me, and the line of your dis- tinguished orators pass on without any mark of disrup- tion. I propose to speak of the greatness and happiness of states, and especially of our own ; which I shall do, not ambitiously, or as coveting the distinction of an orator, but in the way of practical and grave discussion. Wherein consists, and how shall be attained, the true greatness and felicity of a state ? My chief concern will be to offer something which, ■^ Delivered as an Oration before the Society of Phi Beta. Kappa, Yale College, August 15, A. D. 18-37. 4A THE TRUE WEALTH for argument and doctrine, is worthy of so grave a problem. I hope it may appear, that a ground is here open for the erection of a science more adequate, in some respects, than the science, so called, of political economy ; and one that shall base itself on higher and more determinate principles. That the body and form of such a science can be developed in a single discourse, will not be supposed. If I am only able to open a pas- sage, so that we may look in upon the field to be occu- pied, or if I may but excite to investigation of the subject the young men of this honored university, who are soon to fill public stations and difluse the leaven of their opin- ions in every part of the republic, my end will be an- swered. If any, in our present crisis of diflSiculty and depres- sion, have ceased to hoj)e for their country, it needs to be remembered, as a check to this precipitate despair, how much of mischief and misrule every great nation has had to survive. Moreover, I know not the time when the prospects of our country, judiciously viewed, were brighter than now. That we are able to bear so violent a shock, without any disruption of the laws, is enough, in itself, to encourage new confidence in our institutions. This strong-handed compulsion, too, which has checked the impetuosity and the increasing reck- lessness of our people, is accomplishing, by force, what arguments and warnings were powerless to effect — com- pelling them to know the worth of principles and of wise and judicious leadei's. We have not yet come to the end of our institutions, but rather to an inteiTeg- OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 45 num of sobriety and reason, in which truth may find a place to interpose her counsels, and in which, I trust, the most solid and healthful principles are to find a more ready reception. It is in this confidence that I now speak. And while I am encouraged by the temper of the times, I can not expel the conviction, too, of some positive and peculiar agreement between my subject — I trust also between the principles to be advanced — and a destiny of real greatness, certainly to be reached by our country. There are too many prophetic signs admonishing us, that Almighty Providence is pre-engaged to make this a truly great nation, not to be cheered by them, and set ourselves to a search after the true principles of national welfare, with a confidence that here, at last, they are to find their opportunity. This western world had not been preserved unknown through so many ages, for any purpose less sublime, than to be opened, at a certain stage of history, and become the theater wherein better principles might have room and free development. Out of all the inhabitants of the world, too, a select stock, the Saxon, and out of this the British famil}^, the noblest of the stock, was chosen to people our country ; that our eagle, like that of the prophet, might have the cedars of Lebanon, and the topmost branches of the ce- dars, to plant by his great waters. A belt of temperate climate was also marked out for our country, in the midst of a vast continent, with a view, it would seem, to preserve the vigor of the stock, and make it fruitful here, as it ever has been, in great names and great ac- 46 THE TRUE WEALTH tions. Furthermore, it is impossible to glance at the very singular territory we occupy, without perceiving that the two great elements of force are to be developed together, in this people, as they never yet have been in history. These elements, of course, are weight and motion — vastness of conception and vigor of action. Though we have a field every way ample to contain two hundred millions of inhabitants, there is yet no vast central inland, remote from the knowleds^e and commerce of mankind, where a people may dream out life, in the gigantic but crude and sluggish images of Asiatic repose. Vast as it is, and filling the minds of its people always with images of vastness, it is yet sur- rounded, like the British islands, and permeated, like Venice itself, by the waters of commerce — becoming thus a field of vastness, not in repose, but in action. On the west it meets the Pacific, and the waters of another hemisphere. On the east and south, a long bold line of coast sweeps round, showing the people more than a thousand leagues of the highway of the world. On the north, again, stretches a vast mediter- ranean of congregated seas, sounding to each other in a boisterous wild chorus, and opening their gates to the commerce of far distant regions. Then again, across the land, down all the slopes and through valleys large enough for empires, sweep rivers that are moving lakes. All the features of the land are such as con- spire to form a people of vast conceptions, and the most intense practical vigor and activity. And already do these two elements of force appear in our people, in a OR WEAL OF XATIOXS. 47 combination more striking and distinct than ever before in any people whose education was so unripe. Iseed I say, that such a people can not exist without a great history. We have been told, that stars of nobility and orders of hierarchy, as they exist in the old world, are indispensable, as. symbols, to make authority visible, and inspire the people with great and patriotic senti- ments. But how shall we long for these, in a country where God has ennobled the land itself in every feature, filling it with the signs of his own august royalty, and training the people up to spiritual vastness and force by sj^mbols of his own ! But we detain our subject. Plato, Locke, and other philosophers who have written theoretically concerning government, failed to establish any conclusive doctrine, only because they busied themselves in planning con- stitutions, and discussing the forms of government. Forms must be the birth of circumstances, not of any abstract or absolute doctrine. The attempt of Locke, seated in his study, to produce a complete frame of government for South Carolina, was one of signal au- dacity, and worthy of the very signal defeat it met in its application. Civil philosophy, if any such thing is possible, must begin with a definition of the object of the civil state, and confine itself to adjusting the principles, not the forms, by which that object may be secured. There is always some end or object, some good pursued by a state, which determines its polity. The institutions of Lycur- 48 THE TRUE AVEALTH gus, for example, have their object in the formation of a valorous people. The Spartan state, accordingly, never advances in wealth or in the arts, never becomes a truly polite nation, never even adds to her empire by conquest. All the lines of her history and polity terminate to- gether in producing a den of lions. The Eoman state, in like manner, concentrated its aim on the pursuit of empire, and no bird or beast of prey was ever more constant to its instincts, than the Eoman policy to its object, till it achieved the dominion of the world. Other nations have pursued objects more complex, fall- ing of course into systems of polity equally complex with their objects. The great fundamental question, then, on which everything in civil philosophy hinges, is to determine what is the end which a state ought to pursue, or in what the true greatness and felicity of a state consists. Which makes it the more remarkable, that almost no thought has been expended in bringing this question to a definite settlement. Even Lord Bacon soberly puts forth the atrocious, the realh^ Satanic' doc- trine, '' that it is the principal point of greatness, in any state, to have a race of military men, and to have those laws and customs which mav reach forth unto them iust occasions (as may be pretended) of war." What a con- ception to be given out by a philosopher! And yet even this verv shockinsr wav of srreatness would have, at least, the merit of making a soldierly and manly peo- ple — just what we are most likely to miss of in the present drift of society. For it is the really shameful fact, that we are now turning our policies and public OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 49 measures, more and more, on questions of money and trade ; as if property were the real end of statesmanship. Since the words wealth and lueal are brothers of the same family, many appear to imagine that the political economists, Adam Smith and his disciples, having care- fully defined that national wealth which is to be the end of their science, have therein defined that national weal which is the true end of statesmanship — a mistake that has occurred the more naturally, that the general deifi- cation of money begets a tendency in the same direction. And so it comes to pass, in the modern school of na- tions, especially in those that have conquered to them- selves the great principle that government is for the good of the governed, that their evil genius seems about to plunge them into the miserable delusion of confound- ing the good of the governed with money and posses- sions; and so to rob them of all the noble advantages they had gained. Ceasing to care, any more, for what the people are, the great question now is, what they are to have ? Under the supposed auspices of the new sci- ence, a new era of misgovernment is thus inaugurated. And the danger is that the free nations so called will become mercenary as free ; nations without great senti- ments or great men ; without a history ; luxurious, cor- rupt, and, in the end, miserable enough to quite match the worst ages of despotism. There is, besides, in the new science of political econ- omy, careful as it is in its method, and apparently un- answerable in its arguments, an immense oversight, which is sure to be discovered by its final effects on so- 5 50 THE TRUE WEALTH ciety, and to quite break up the aspect of reality it has been able to give to its conclusions. It deifies, in fact, the laws of trade ; not observing that there is a whole side of society and human life which does not trade, owns no laws of trade, stands superior to trade, wields, in fact, a mightier power over the public prosperity it- self—just because it reaches higher and connects with nobler ends. Could these price-current philosophers only get a whole nation of bankers, brokers, factors, ship-owners and salesmen, to themselves, they would doubtless make a paradise of it shortly — only there might possibly be no public love in the paradise, no manly temperance, no sense of high society, no great orators, leaders, heroes. After all it is not the whole question — this question of economy. Suppose, for example, that some very young nation, one that has not yet run itself into all manifold industries and forms of creation, like the older nations, were to put implicit faith in the new science, and consent to buy, always, what she can cheaper buy than create ; so to become, in fact, a producer of but one article — cotton, for example, or wheat. Such a state will be no complete creature, like a body whose breathing, pulsing, digesting, assimilative, and a hun- dred other, processes, all play into each other, in that wonderful reciprocity that makes a full-toned vital or- der, but it will be like a body having only a single function. It will be low in organization. It will have no great consciousness and scarcely any consciousness at all. For it has no relational system of parts and OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 51 offices. The men are repetitions, in a sense, of each other, and society is cotton, or wheat, all through — nothing more. Mind is dull, impnlse morbid and unre- liable. There is no great feeling, nothing to make either a history of, or a man. Living thus a thousand years, the nation becomes nothing better than a pro- vincial country a thousand years old. Could they now sell out all the great gains, made by their wise trading economy, and buy, for such a price, the dear, deep public love that belongs to a people duly manifolded in their works and productive arts, the rich gifts of feeling and sentiment, the ennobled state-consciousness, out of which spring the soldiers and heroes, the orators and poets, and the great days of a great people, it would be juBt the wisest trade and best economy they have ever known — best, I mean, not only for the char- acter it would bring, but for their creative energy and even for the total, at last, of their wealth itself Nay, if they would only march disgustfuUy out, some day, leaving all their lands and properties behind, just to get rid of their ineffable commonness, their exodus, for a purpose so manly and so truly great, would even beat the exodus of Aloses. What, then, it is time for us to ask, is that wealth of a nation which includes its weal, or solid well-being ? that which is the end of all genuine policy, and all true statesmanship ? It consists, I answer, in the total value of the persons of the people, National wealth is personal, not material. It includes the natural capacity, the in- dustry, the skill, the science, the bravery, the loyalty, 52 THE TKUE WEALTH the moral and religious worth of the people. The wealth of a nation is in the breast of its sons. This is the object which, accordingly as it is advanced, is sure to bring with it riches, justice, liberty, strength, stabil- ity, invincibility, and every other good; or which, being neglected, every sort of success and prosperity is but accidental and deceitful. That any statesman should look upon the persons of his countrymen as secondary, in consequence, to money and possessions ; or that he should not value the reve- nue of great abilities and other high qualities that may be developed in them, — vigor, valor, genius, integrity, — above any other possible increase or advantage, discloses a sordid view of state policy, and reflects on tlie people themselves, in a manner fit to be resented. ^' You will confer," says Epictetus, "the greatest benefit on your city, not by raising the roofs, but by exalting the souls of your fellow-citizens ; for it is better that great souls should live in small habitations, than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses." It is not difficult to feel the justice of this noble declaration ; for it is not a secret to saij one of mankind, that a very rich man may yet be a very insignificant man, a very unhappy man, a very dishonorable man, — nay, that he must be so, if he has lived only for gain, and made all wisdom to consist in economy. To understand that states are made up of individuals, is still less difficult. Well was it that the sordid god of gold and of misers was placed under ground; by what strange mistake is he to be brought up now and installed king of nations? OK WEAL OF NATIONS. 53 The truth, which I assert, and which seems too evi- dent to require any formal argument, is happily illus- trated by reference to the Mexican state, as contrasted with our own. It was not a peaceful band of emigrants or exiles who landed there to find a refuge, and a place to worship God according to their own consciences. It v/as not the Saxon blood, nor the British mind, filled with the determinate principles and lofty images of freedom enshrined in the English tongue. They came in the name of a proud empire, armed for conquest and extirpation. The infernal tragedy of Guatemozin was the inaugural scene of Mexican justice. They loaded themselves with gold and silver. They rioted in plun- der and spoil, founded nothing, cherished no hope of liberty, practiced no kind of industry but extortion, erected no safeguards of morality. What is the result ? Worthless, or having no personal value in themselves, there has grown out of them what alone could grow ; a nation of thriftless anarchists and intriguers, without money at the very mouth of their mines, without char- acter abroad or government at home, and with nothing to hope for in the future, better than they have suffered in the past. How striking an example, to show, that neither a fine country nor floods of gold and silver, can make a nation great, without greatness in the breasts of her sons ! Eevert now to the simple beginnings of our founders. They brought hither, in their little ships, not money, not merchandise, no array of armed force, but they came freighted with religion, learning, law, and the 54 THE TRUE WEALTH spirit of men. They stepped forth upon the shore, and a wild and frowning wilderness received them. Strong in God and their own heroic patience, they began their combat with danger and hardship. Disease smote them, but they fainted not ; famine, but they feasted on roots with a patient spirit. They built a house for God, then for themselves. They established education and the observance of a stern but august morality, then legislated for the smaller purposes of wealth and con- venience. They gave their sons to God ; through him, to virtue ; and through virtue, to the state. So they laid the foundations. Soon the villages began to smile, churches arose still farther in the depths of the wilder- ness, industry multiplied her hands, colleges were es- tablished,, the beginnings of civil order completed them- selves and swelled into the majesty of states. And now, behold, the germs of a mighty nation are mani- fest — a nation of law, art, industry, and power, rushing on a career of expansion never equaled in the history of man! What addition, we are now tempted to ask, could any amount of wealth have made to the real force and value of these beginnings ? Or, having a treasure in her sons, what is there beside, whether strength, growth, riches, or anything desirable, which a state can possibly fail of? Wealth is but the shadow of men ; and lordship and victory, it has been nobly said, are but the pages of justice and virtue. But let us descend, for a few moments, to grounds of mere economy. Let it be granted, that wealth is the true and principal object of state polity. I am anxious OK WEAL OF NATIOXS. OO to inquire, how wealth is to be created, and especially, in what form wealth is to be accumulated. It would almost seem that the fancy which floats so delightfully before the minds of men, in their pursuit of private gain, must throw the same charm over national wealth. The state is to become prodigiously rich, they seem to imagine, against her old age ; and then she will be able, with the stock laid in, to support her great family at their ease, on the mere interest of the money. But how is her great wealth to be laid up, or in what shape ? Isot in notes and bills, certainly, that are due from one to another within the nation ; for it adds nothing to the wealth of a family, that one of the sons owes another. Not in specie ; for gold and silver are good for nothing in themselves, but only as they will buy something else. And if thev were confined within the nation, and not allowed to purchase articles from abroad, as the case supposes, they would only pass from hand to hand within the nation, and the prices of all articles would be raised, according to the plenty there is of gold and silver. Silver, perhaps, being as plenty as iron, a ton would be exchanged for a ton of iron, and the man who owns a hundred tons of it, would have it piled up in the street — as rich as he now is with a few thousand dollars, and no more. But if not in notes and bills, not in specie, in what form is the national wealth to be laid up? In a cultivated territory, I reply, in dwellings, roads, bridges, manufactories, ships, temples, libraries, fortifications, monuments; — things which add to the beauty, comfort, strength, or productiveness, of the na- 56 THE TRUE WEALTH tion. But what are all these things, but the products and representatives of personal quality and force in the people? And what shall ever maintain them in good keeping or repair, but snch quality and force ? Taken together, they are scarcely more than a collection of the tools of industry and production ; and if a nation, with- out application, or skill, or such a state of morals as permits the security of property, were to receive a country ready furnished with such a wealth, the pro- ductive farms would soon be impoverished, the towns decayed, the ships rotten, the stands of art and machi- nery dilapidated and wrecked. Only change the qual- ity of the British people into that of the Mexican, and five years w^ould make their noble island a seat of pov- erty and desolation. Where then is accumulation, in what form is wealth to be laid up, but in the personal quality and value of the people? This immaterial wealth, too, which many would think quite unsubstan- tial in its nature, is really more imperishable and inde- structible by far than any other. There is never any amount of property and goods laid up by a nation, which the mere accident of a war, or an unsettled gov- ernment, may not destroy, in a few years, so as to leave the nation virtually poor. But immaterial values, such as native capacity, attachment to home, knowledge, skill, courage, and the like, are a stock, which ages only of reverse and declension can utterly consume. No failure of commerce, no famine, no war and confla- gration desolating the land, no rapacity of conquest, can reach these treasures. Time only, with all his le- OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 0/ gions of rnin, can slowly master them. And if, per- chance, a respite should be given, they will suddenly start up as a capital that had been invisible, .and, in a few years, fill the land with all its former opulence. Take another aspect of the subject. The great foe to wealth which statesmen have to contend with, is dead consumption — that which annihilates value without re- producing it. It can be shown, for example, from un- questionable data, that fashionable extravagance in our people, such as really transcends their means to a de- gree that is not respectable; theatrical amusements, known to be only corrupt and vulgar in character ; to- gether with inteniperate drinking, and all the idleness, crime, and pauperism, consequent, have annihilated, since we begran our historv, not less than three or four times the total wealth of the nation. This dead con- sumption is the great cancer of destruction, which eats against all industry and production. It must be kept out, or cut out, or the flesh must be more than supplied, else there is no advance of wealth. Xow if economy is to furnish the law of civil administration, as according to current reasonings it is, let economy provide a rem- edy against this all-devouring and fatal consumption. And since it originates only in a corruption of quality in the people — in a want of simplicity, temperance, providence, and good manners — since the spendthrifts of the family are the bad sons, let the statesman take care not to educate spendthrift sons. Let him turn his whole attention to the great subject of preparing a just, provident, industrious people. Let him spare no possi- 58 THE TRUE WEALTH ble expense for this object. Let him, in fact, forget all economy in his devotion to higher aims, and by that time he will be a consistent and thorough economist. But the distribution of wealth is a matter of more* consequence to a state than its amount. When the Eoman state was at the height of its wealth, there were not more than twenty landholders in Italy ; the rest of the people were dependents — an idle, thriftless, profli- gate race, ripe for every possible mischief and sedition. There could not be a more miserable condition in anv state ; it permitted no such thing as character, law, se- curity, or domestic comfort. But I will require it of any statesman to show how a more equal division of property can be effected, without robbery, unless by means of intelligence, application, frugality, devotion to home and family, in the breasts of the people. Let me add, that the changes now rapidly taking place in New England, the broad and partially hostile distinc- tions that begin to display themselves, are sad omens, and leave us no time to squander in merely economical policies. It is farther to be noted, that the wealth of a nation must be defended, as well as constructed. "We have not yet reached the day when mere principles of equity are a sufficient bulwark to nations. Even if the days of absolute conquest are past, there are yet a thousand liabilities to violent encroachments on the honor and rights of a people, which they can not be passive under, without sacrificing a national spirit, and well-nigh dis- solving the bonds of government itself. But where lies OR WEAL OF XATIOXS. 59 the strength of a nation's defense? In such things as monej^ purchases — ships, fortifications, and magazines of war ? 'No ! the real bulwarks of a nation are the bodies of her sons ; or, I should rather say, the spirit and principles of her sons. They are public love, wis- dom, and high command, attachment to home, and bravery. Courage is necessary to the spirit and true manhood of a people, though pursuing a policy even of non-resistance. And true courage is a high trait. It is not to be bought with, money, not to be inspired by an occasion. It can not be infused into a mean-bred and sensual people. It is the brother in arms of con- scious integrity. In its highest examples it is super- natural, and by faith in God waxes valiant. How often has the single sentiment of courage been worth more to a people, in a merely economical estimate, than any possible amount of treasure ? To seek farther illustration of a position so nearly self-evident as the one I advance, would only reflect suspicion upon it. The personal value of a people is the only safe measure of their honor and felicity. Economy holds the same place in their polity, which it holds in the life of a wise and great man — a subordi- nate place, and when subordinate, honorable. But their highest treasures as a state, they behold in capa- ble and manly bodies, just principles, high sentiments, intelligence, and genius. To cherish these in a people, to provide a noble succession of poets, philosophers, lawgivers, and commanders, who shall be the directing head, and the nerves of action ; to compact all into one 60 THE TRUE WEALTH energetic and stately body inspirited by public love — this is the noble study of true ' philosophic statesman- ship. ^'Alas, sir!" exclaimed Milton, suddenly grasp- ing this whole subject as with divine force, ^' a common- wealth ought to be but as one huge Christian person- age, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look, what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state." Here, in a single sentence, he declares the true idea of a state, and of all just administration. But however correct in theory, such views, it will be suspected, are, after all, remote and impracticable. How, especially, can we hope to bring our intractable democracy upon so high a ground of principle ? I can not entirely sympathize with such impressions. His- tory clearl}^ indicates the fact, that republics are more ductile than ^nj other form of government, and more favorable to the admission of high-toned principles, and the severer maxims of government. The confederate republics of Crete, and the daughter republic of Sparta, were no other than studied and rigorous systems of direct personal discipline upon the people, in which wealth and ease were in no wise sought, but sternly rejected. And in what monarch}^, or even despotism, of the world, where but in plain republican Eome, the country of Cato and Brutus, is a censor of manners and morals to be endured, going forth with his note-book, and for any breach of parental or filial duty observed, for seduction of the youth, for dishonor in the field, for OR WEAL OF XATIOXS. 61 a drinking bout, or even for luxurious manners, inflict- ing a civil degradation upon the highest citizens and magistrates ? The beginnings, too, of our own history, are of the same stern temperament, and such as per- fectly to sympathize with the highest principles of gov- ernment. Indeed I have felt it to be, in the highest de- gree, auspicious, that the ground I vindicate before you requires no revolution, being itself the true Amer- ican ground. May we not also discover even now, in the worst forms of radicahsm and j)olitical depravation among us, a secret elemental force, a law of republican feeling, which, if appealed to on high and rigid prin- ciples, would yield a true response? AYe fail in our conservative attempts, more because our principles are too low, than because they are too high. A course of administration, based on the pursuit of wealth alone, though bad in principle anywhere, is especially bad in a republic. It is more congenial to the splendors and stately distinctions of monarchy. It concentrates the whole attention of the nation upon wealth. It requires measures to be debated only as they bear upon wealth. It produces thu.s a more egregious notion of its dignity, continually, both in the minds of those who have it, and of those who have it not, and thus it exasperates every bad feeling in a republic, till it retaliates destruc- tion upon it. But a system of policy, based on the high and impartial principles of philosophy, one that respects only manly bodies, high talents, great senti- m.ents and actions, one that values excellence of person, whether found in the palaces of the rich or the huts of 62 , THE TRL'E WEALTH the poor, holding all gilded idleness and softness in the contempt they deserve — such a system is congenial to a republic. It would have attractions to our people. Its philosophic grounds, too, can be vindicated by a great variety of bold arguments, and the moral absurd- ity of holding wealth in higher estimation than personal value, can be played out in the forms of wit and satire, so as to raise a voice of acclamation, and overwhelm the mercenary system with ntter and final contempt. I ought to say, that no constitutional change in our system is requisite or contemplated. It is only neces- sary that we sustain the distinctness and high independ- ence of the state governments. The general govern- ment is mainly fiscal and prudential in its sphere of action. The highest and most sacred duties belong to the individual states. It is the exact and appropriate sphere of these, to prepare personal wealth in the peo- ple. They should be as little absorbed, therefore, as possible, in the spirit and policy of the general govern- ment. Each state should have the interest, in itself, of a family, a sense of character to sustain, a love of its ancestors and its children, a just ambition to raise its quota of distinguished men, to be honored for its litera- ture, its good manners, and the philosophic beauty of its disciplinary institutions. But let ns glance at some of the practical operations of our doctrine more particularly. The personal value of the people being the great object of pursuit, the first care of a state will of course be to preserve and ennoble the native quality or stock of its people. It is a well- OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 68 known principle of physiology, that cultivation, bodily and mental, and all refinements of disposition and prin- ciple do gradually work, to increase the native volume and elevate the qualitj' of a people. It is by force of this principle, long operating, that states occupying a similar climate have become so different in tempera- ment, talent, and quality of every kind. In this prin- ciple, a field of promise truly sublime opens on the statesmen of a country. And yet, I know not that more than two or three lawgivers ever made the ennob- ling of theii' stock a subject of practical attention. The fi'ee mingling and crossing of races in the higher ranges of culture and character would doubtless be a great benefit to the stock. But the constant importation, as now, to this country, of the lowest orders of people from abroad, to dilute the quality of our natural manhood, is a sad and beggarly prostitution of the noblest gift ever conferred on a people. Who shall respect a people, who do not respect their own blood ? And how shall a national spirit, or any determinate and proportionate character, arise out of so many low-bred associations and coarse-grained temperaments, imported from every clime ? It was in keeping, that Pan, who was the son of every body, was the ugliest of the gods. It is well known, too, that vices and degraded manners have a sad effect in sinking the quality of a people. We hear of one whole people, who are in danger of dwindling to absolute extinction, by force of this simple cause. And let the day but come to any people, when it is true that every man participates in the infected blood 6-4 THE TRUE WEALTH of drunkenness, or any corrupt vice, and it will be a people as certainly degenerate, to some degree, in bod- ily stature and force, in mental quickness and gener- osity. Do I then speak of enforcing morals by law ? Certainly I do. Only a decent respect for the blood of the nation requires it. But the punishments declared against such vices as poison the blood of a nation, ouo'ht to be suitable : thev ouo-ht to be such as denote only contempt. If it would be too severe, in the man- ner of an ancient Eoman punishment, to inclose the de- linquent in a sack, with some appropriate animals, and throw him into the water, let him somehow be made a mark for mocker}' and derision. But let there be no appearance of austerity in the laws against vice. Let cheerful and happy amusements be provided, at the public expense. Let the youth be exercised in feats of agility and gTace, in rowing and the spirited art of horsemanship. Erect monuments and fountains, adorn public walks and squares, arrange oranamental and sci- entific gai'dens, institute festivals and games for the con- test of youth and manhood in practical invention, in poetry, philosophy, and bodily prowess. Provide ways and means, go to any expense, to enliven the state and make the people happy, without low and vulgar pleas- ures. The sums now expended, every j'ear, in a single article of appetite and of dead consumption, would de- fray every expense of this kind. In the same view, great cities will not be specially desired, and all confined employments will be obviated, as far as possible. For it is not in great cities, nor in the confined shops of trade, OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 65 but principally in agriculture, that the best stock or staple of men is grown. It is in the open air, in com- munion with the sky, the earth, and all living things, that the largest inspiration is drunk in, and the vital energies of a real man constructed. The modern im- provements in machinery have facilitated production to such a degree, that when they become diffused through the world, only a few hands, comparatively, will be requisite in the mechanic arts; and those engaged in agriculture, being proportionally more numerous, will be more in a condition of ease. Here opens a new and sublime hope. If a state can maintain the practice of a pure morality, and can unite with agriculture a taste for learning and science, and the generous exercises I have named, a race of men will ultimately be raised up, having a physical volume, a native majesty and force of mind, such as no age has yet produced. Or if this be not done, if the race are to sink down into idleness and effeminate pleasures, as production is facilitated, the gTcat inventions, we prize will certainly result in a dwarfed and degraded staple of manhood. Pass, now, from the subject of native quality and ca- pacity, to that of personal and moral improvement. Grod has given eyes to the body of man, by which to govern his feet and guide his other motions. So he has given to the mind a regulative eye — a faculty, whose very office it is to command all the others. But, sup- pose some one to busy himself in devising a system by which men shall be entibled to walk by the sense of smell or of touch. It were not a more absurd ingenu- 6'' 66 THE TRUE WEALTH itj, than to attempt a state policy which shall govern men through their appetites, or their love of gain, or their mere fears. The conscience must be entered, or der and principle must be established in the seat of the soul's regency ; and then a conservative and genial power will flow down thence on every other faculty and disposition, every frame of bodily habit, every em- ployment and enterprise, and the whole body of the state will rise with invigorate thrift and full proportion in every part. To this end, a state must be grounded in religion. Though not established as a part of the political system, it must be virtually incorporate in the principles and feelings of the people. If it were possi- ble for a people to subsist without some kind of relig- ion, it would be a mere subsistence — without morals, without a true public enthusiasm, without genius, or an inspired literature. The highest distinction they could possibly attain to, would be the advancement of mate- rial philosophy. Being worshipers of matter, they miQ:ht be o'ood observers of matter, but onlv in the lower and individual aspects of things; the Higher Eeason, which dictates all material forms and relations, and dwells in them, they could not perceive. *^ They that deny a God," says Bacon, *^ destroy man's nobility; for, certainly, man is of kin to the beasts by his body, and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys likewise magnanim- ity and the raising of human nature ; for take an exam- ple of a dog, and mark what a^courage and generosity he will put on, when he finds himself maintained by a OR WEAL OF KATIOKS. 67 man, who to him is instead of a God; which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without that confi- dence of a better nature than his own, could never at- tain." This confidence of a better nature is religious faith ; and here it is that man begins to look beyond mere sense and outward fact in his thoughts. And in this point of view, religion is seen to be the spring of all genius. Genius is but an intellectual faith. It looks round on the world and life, and beholds not a limit, in some sense, not a reality ; but the confidence, in all, of a better nature. The forms, colors, and experiences of life, are not truth to it, but only the imagery of truth. Boundaries break way, thought is emancipated, a mighty inspiration seizes and exalts it ; and what to others is fact and dead substance, to it is but a vast chamber of spiritual imagery. Colors -are the hues of thought, forms embody it, contrasts hold it in relief, proportions are the clothing of its beauty, sounds are its music. Whose the thought is, its own reflected, or God's presented, it may never pause to inquire; or with the immortal Kepler, it may exclaim, in the pious ecstasy of a child — O Lord, I think thy thoughts after thee ! In either case, the world is changed — it is no more the whole, but only the sign of things. The blank walls of sense are become significant, and a world beyond the world is beheld in distinct embody- ment. Nearly allied to religion, as a power ennobling man, is reverence for ancestors. There is something essen- tially bad in a people who despise or do not honor their 68 THE TRUE WEALTH originals. A state .torn from its beginnings is frag- mentary, incapable of public love, or of any real na- tionality. Ko such people were ever known to develop a great character. Eome was not ashamed to own that she sprung of refugees and robbers, and boasted, in every age, her old seer Numa who gave her laws and a religion. Athens could glory in the fiction that her ancestors were grasshoppers, sprung out of the earth as an original race. England has never blushed to name her noble families from the Danish or Saxon pirates who descended on her coast. Piety to God, and piety to ancestors, are the only force which can impart an or- ganic unity and vitality to a state. Torn from the past and from God, government is but a dead and brute ma- chine. Its laws take hold of nothing in man which re- sponds ; they are only paper decrees, made by the men of yesterday, which the men of to-day have as good right to put under their feet. What is it which gives to the simple enactment of words written on paper, the force of law — a power to sway and mould a mighty na- tion? Is it the terror of force? Why does not all force disclaim it ? Is it that some constituted body of magistrates enacts it? But how do the magistrates themselves become subject to it, in the very act of pro- nouncing it, as if it were uttered by some authority higher than they? This is the only answer: Law is uttered by the National Life — not by some monarch, magistrate, or legislature, of to-day, or of any day, but by the state ; by that organic force of which kings, magistrates, legislatures, of all times, have been but the OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 69 hands, and feet, and living instruments; that force which has grown up from small and perilous begin- nings, strengthened itself in battles, spoken in the voices of orators and poets, and been hallowed at the altars of religion. Grlorious and auspicious distinction it is, therefore, that we have an ancestry, who, after every possible deduction, still overtop the originals of every nation of mankind — men fit to be honored and held in reverence while the continent endures. I have not time to show in what way religion and a suitable reverence to ancestors may be promoted in our state and nation. If only a due sense of their dignity and necessity were felt, the means would not be difficult to reach. Only let every statesman, or magistrate, honor religion in his private life ; let him say nothing, in his speech publicly, to reflect on the sacredness of religion ; make no appeal to passions inconsistent with it in the people — by that time wisdom will find out ways to do all which is necessary. So let every public man who has profaned the ashes of his ancestors, ex- ulted in sweeping down their safeguards and landmarks, and excited the ignorant people to a prejudice against them, degrading to themselves and destructive to public love — ^let him, I say, cease from his crime, and receive better feelings to his heart. And there, in the place where Washington sleeps, let the statesman who denies a monument because it is an expense, fall down and draw from the hallowed earth, if he may, some breath of justice and magnanimity. Beginning thus, I trust we might not cease till every spot signalized in our his- 70 " THE TRUE WEALTH tory is marked by some honorable token of national re- membrance. There is not a nobler office for a state, than the edu- cation of its youth, or one more congenial to a just am- bition. Abandoning the mercenary and merely eco- nomical policy, and ascending to higher views, it \Yill behold its richest mines in the capabilities of its sons and daughters. Upon the cultivation of these it will concentrate the main force of its polity, and will pro- duce to itself a glorious revenue of judges, senators, and commanders; wives to adorn and strengthen the spheres of great men; citizens who will make every scene of life and every work of industry to smile. Oh ! I blush, for once, to think of my country ! It has gone abroad — we ourselves have declared — that we are an enlightened people. And doubtless a republican na- tion, one too that has filled the world with its name, must be a nation of special culture. Suppose a commis- sioner were sent out from some one of the venerable kingdoms of the old world, to examine and report upon our admirable systems of schools. First of all, he will say, when he returns, I found in America no system of schools at all, and scarcely a system in any one school. I ascertained, that in four states adjacent to each other, there were more children out of school than in all the kingdom of Prussia. Traveling through New England, which is noted for its schools, I observed that the school- houses were the most comfortless and mean -looking class of buildings, placed in the worst situations, with- out shades or any attraction to mitigate their barbarit3\ OK WEAL OF nations'. 71 Into these dirty shops of education, the sons and daughters are driven to be taught. I found, on in- quiry, that a man, for example, who would, give a cheap sort of lawyer from ten to twenty dollars for a few hours' service, is giving the professor of education from one to two dollars for a whole winter's work on the mind of his son. On the whole, I found that the Americans were very providently engaged in planting live oak timber for the service of their navy in future generations, but I did not discover that they had any particular concern, just now, about soldiers, command- ers, and magistrates for the coming age. The picture is, alas ! too just. Indeed, the public are not altogether insensible to these things. I hear them often com- plained of by those who do not seem to understand that they are only the legitimate fruit of their own principles. What other result could possibly appear, in a country whose policy itself is only concerned with questions of loss and gain ? A national literature consummates and crowns the greatness of a people. The best actions, indeed, and the highest personal virtues, are scarcely possible, till the inspiring force of a literature is felt. There can not even be a high tone of general education without a literature. A state must have its renowned orators and senators ; the spirit of its laws and customs must be de- veloped in a venerable body of judicial learning; its constitutions must have been clothed with gravitj^ and authority by the admiration of philosophers and wise men; its beginnings, its great actions, its fields of 72 THE TRUE WEALTH honor, the names of its lakes, rivers, and mountains, must have been consecrated in song ; then the nation becomes, as it were, conscious of itself, and one, because there is a spirit in it which the men of every class and opinion, nay, the earth and the air, participate. But, alas ! there must be something of true manhood and spiritual generosity, to produce such a literature. A mercenary mind is incapable of true inspiration. The spirit of gain is not the spirit of song : and philosophers will not be heard discoursing in the groves of paper cities. Besides, had our country been pursuing, as it ought, the noble policy of producing its wealth in the persons of its people, those relaxations by which the right of suffrage has been put into the hands of the imworthy, would never have been made. And then, after they were made, our most cultivated citizens would not have withdrawn from their country so despairingly; they would have come forward, in the spirit of public devotion, and contributed all their energies to the noble purpose of making our whole people, since they are called to rule, fit to rule. They would even have consoled themselves in that which they had feared, by the discovery of a philosophic ne- cessity, that their country, at whatever sacrifice, should be completely torn from British types, in order to be- come a truly distinct nation. Least of all, would the best talents of the nation have lent themselves to the task of soberly reasoning out discouragement to our in- stitutions, because they are not supported by noble and priestly orders. The worst radicalism which our coun- OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 73 try has ever suflfered, lias been this, which, under the guise of a sickly and copied conservatism, has discour- aged all nationality, by demanding for the state that which is radically opposed to its fundamental elements, and which God and nature have sternly denied. A na- tion must be distinct, and must respect itself as distinct from all others, else it can not adorn itself with a litera- ture, or attain to any kind of excellence. And, in this view, the most efficient promoter and patron of Ameri- can literature, is that man who has honored the consti- tution of his country by the noble stature of his opin- ions and his eloquence ; who has stood calm and self- collected in the midst of factious doctrines and corrupt measures on every side, and whose voice has been heard in the darkest hours, speaking words of encour- agement and hope to his countrymen. Fully impressed with the grandeur of the British state and constitution, and copiously enriched himself by the wealth of British literature, he has yet dared to renounce a state of cli- ency, and be, in a sense, the first American. It is only needed now, that a voice of faith should break out in our colleges and halls of learning, and that our consti- tutions be set forth in their real grounds, and vindicated by a philosophy strongly and truly American, to hasten wonderfully the day of our literature. And the tokens are, that we must have a literature, not scholastic or cosmopolitan, like that of Germany, which is the litera- ture of leisure and seclusion ; but one that is practical and historical, one that is marked by a distinct nation- ality, like the Athenian and the British ; one, too, it 7 74 THE TKUE WEALTH must be, of vast momentum in its power on the world. It will be eloquence, humor, satire, song, and philoso- phy, flowing on with and around our history. And as our history is to be a struggle after the true idea and settlement of liberty, so our literature will partake in the struggle. It will be the American mind wrestling with itself, to obtain the true doctrine of civil freedom ; overwhelming demagogues and factions, exposing usurp- ations, exploding licentious opinions, involved in the fearful questions which slavery must engender, borne, perhaps, at times, on the high waves of revolution, re- clining at peace in the establishment of order and jus- tice, and deriving lessons of wisdom from the conflicts of experience. As American and characteristic, it will re- volve about and will ever be attracted towards one and the same great truth, whose authority it will gradually substantiate, and, I trust, will at length practically en- throne in the spirit and opinions of our people. This truth is none other than, that liberty is justice se- cured. Establishing this truth in a general and per- manent authority, which I trust it may do in the very process of investing the same with a glorified body in letters, it will bring our history to a full consummation. It will place our nation on the same high platform with the divine government, which knows no liberty other than law ; and there it shall stand immortal, because it has found the rock of immortal principle. But I must close. I have detained you too long, and yet I have only touched on a few points in this vast OR WEAL OF NATIONS. YD subject, and witli studied brevity. Wben I think of the amount of talent assembled here, in this honorable society, and in the numerous band of young men pre- paring here to act a part in their country, a feeling of duty constrains me to address you personally. May I not hope, that the principle I have asserted, approves itself to the sober and serious conviction of your judg- ment? And have you not some generous kindlings of desire and purpose stirring in your breasts, that move you to be advocates and champions for your country, in a cause of so great honor ? Feel, in every place and station, that you defraud your country, and, worse than this, defraud the honor of your own mind, if you do not resist, and, on every proper occasion, denounce every merely mercenary scheming policy of government. Eemind your countrymen of their persons, and the no- bler wealth of the mind. A field is open before you, wherein to win a just and holy renown. Be not afraid to be republicans. Be not afraid of a principle. He who has a principle is inspired. Doubtless there is some dif&culty in swaying the opinions and prejudices of our people. Cut the worst impediment truth has ever had to complain of, in our country, has been in its spiritless and distrustful advocates. There needs to be a certain exaltation of courage and inspired perti- nacit}^ in the advocates of truth. She must not be dis- trusted, or cloaked in disguises and accommodations. She must go before, in full unsoiled whiteness, and the majesty and spirit of her gait must invigorate her fol- lowers. Truth is the daughter of God. He possessed 76 THE TRUE WEALTH lier in the beginning of his wa}^ Silence is her voice. The charmed orbs heai* it forever, and, following and revolving, do but transcribe her word. The masses and central depths also know her presence, and the gems sparkle before her in their secret places. The bnried seeds and roots inwardly know her, and pencil- ing their flowers and preparing their several fragrances, send them np to bloom and exhale around her. She penetrates all things. ISTot laws, not bars, nor walls, can exclude her goings. Even prejudice, and the mad- ness of the people, which can not look upon her face, do yet behold her burnished feet with secret amaze- ment. Understanding, then, that truth is almighty, let us become her interpreters and prophets. Have faith in truth. Install her in the affections of your youth, consecrate to her all your talents, and the full vigor of your lives, and be assured that she will in no wise per- mit you to fail ; she will fill joii with peace and lead you to honor. In the principles I have now asserted, I have a fall and immutable confidence. They are true principles. They have power to impress themselves. They only want enthusiasm to worship them, voices to speak them, minds to reason for them, and courage steadfast and resolute to maintain them, and having these they can not fail to reign. And in that, I see the dawn of a new and illustrious vision. I see the nation rising from its present depres- sion, with a chastened but good spirit. I see education beginning to awake, a spirit of sobriety ruling in busi- OR WEAL OF NATIONS. 77 ness and in manners, religion animated in her heavenly work, a higher self-respect invigorating our institutions, and the bonds of our country strengthened by a holier attachment. Our eagle ascends 'and spreads his wings abroad from the eastern to the western ocean. A hun- dred millions of intelligent and just people dwell in his shadow. Churches are sprinkled throughout the whole field. The sabbath sends up its holy voice. The seats of philosophers and poets are distinguished in every part, and hallowed by the affections of the people. The fields smile with agriculture. The streams, and lakes, and all the waters of the world, bear the riches of their commerce. The people are elevated in stature, both mental and bodily; they are happy, orderly, brave, and just, and the world admires one true exam- ple of greatness in a people. 7^ III. THE GROWTH OF LAW* Few persons, it is presumed, have failed to observe, that there are two great stages in the matters of human life and experience, one of which is always preparing, and merging itself in, the other. It is so, not simply in the sense of an apostle, when he says — '' first that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual ;" but, with- out going out of the world, or over to the resurrection, for the matter of the contrast, we may say universally — what is physical first, what is moral afterwards. The child begins his career as a creature of muscles and integuments, a physical being endued with sensa- tion. Whole years are expended in making acquaint- ance with the body he lives in. By acting in and through this organ, he discovers himself, begins to be a thinking and reflective creature, and finally flowers into some kind of character. The world itself is first a lump of dull earth, a mere physical thing seen by the five senses. The animals that graze on it, see it as we do. But thought, a little * Delivered as an Oration before the Society of Alumni, in Yale Col- lege, Aug. 16, A. D. 1843. THE GROWTH OF LAW. 79 farther on, begins to work upon it and bring out its laws. The heights are ascended, the depths explored, and every star and atom is found to be so congener to thought, that mind can think out and assign its laws. The whole field of beiijg thus brought into science, takes an attribute of intelligence and reflects a Univer- sal Mind. Every object of knowledge and experience, too, discovers moral ends and uses, and assumes a visi- ble relation to our spiritual training. Now the old physical orb on which our five senses grazed is gone, we can not find it. All objects are become mental ob- jects, and matter itself is moral. If we speak of language, this, as every scholar knows, is i^hysical in every term. Words, all words, are only names of external things and objects. Next, the words, which are mere physical terms — names, that is, of ob- jects, colors, shapes, acts, motions — pass into use as figures of thought and vehicles of intelligence. The physical world takes a second and higher existence, thus, in the empire of thought. Its objects beam out, transfigured with glory, and the body of matter be- comes the body of letters. The story of Orpheus is now no more a fiction ; for not only do the woods and rocks dance after this one singer, but all physical ob- jects, in heaven and earth, having now found an intel- lectual as well as a material power, follow after the cre- ative agency of thinking souls, and pour themselves along, in trains of glory, on the pages of literature. Even religion is physical in its first demonstrations — a thing of outward doing ; a lamb, burned on an altar 80 , THE GPvOT\'TH OF LAW. of turf, and rolling up its smoke into heaven; a gorgeous priesthood; a temple, covered with a king- dom's gold, and shining afar in barbaric splendor. Well is it if the sun and the stars of heaven do not look down upon realms of prostrate worshipers. Nay, it is well if the hands do not fashion their own gods, and bake them into consistency in fires of their own kind- ling. But, in the later ages, God is a spirit ; religion takes a character of intellectual simplicity and enthrones itself in the summits of the reason. It is wholly spirit- ual, a power in the soul, reaching out into worlds be- yond sense, and fixing its home and rest where only hope can soar. Civil government, also, in its first stages, classes rather with the dvnamic than with the moral forces. It is the law of the strongest ; a mere physical absolut- ism, without any consideration of right, whether as due to enemies or subjects. At length, after it has worn it- self deep into the neck of nations, by long ages of arbi- trary rule, the masses begin to heave with surges of un- easiness. They discover the worth of their being in what it suffers. They reason about rights ; they rebel and revolutionize ; they set limits to power and define its objects; till, at length, government loses its physical character and seeks to rest itself on moral foundations, — on the good it does, the love it wins, the patriotic fire it kindles; in a word, on the moral sentiment of the governed. Now it is to be with virtue itself and its law, pre- THE GROWTH OF LAW. 81 cisely as it is in these other matters — this I undertake to show. The same kind of transition from a coarse, raw, physical state is here preparing, and is to be finally passed. All wrongs partake, more or less, of violence. All crude moralities are deformities gendered by poli- cies, lies, and revenges — by mixtures of passion, force, and fear. Whatever we call moral disorder in the world comes of the fact, that men are willful, forceful, withdrawing towards what is physical, and away from the pure affinities of principle. But there is and is to be a growth of law, and a growth into law, and the moral imperative is thus to obtain a more and more nearly spontaneous rule in the world ; till finally the transition above named will be made, and a better cir- cle of history entered — the same, if you will indulge the fancy, which gleamed so brightly, as a future golden age, on the vision of the ancient sages and seers of classic days — the same, with no indulgence of fancy, which wiser sages and prophets more inspired have boldly promised. Of course it will not be supposed that I dare to an- ticipate any such consummation, on the ground of a mere natural progress in the race. I take the world with all God's supernatural working, that of his Provi- dence, that of his Spirit, all Christianity, in fact, in- cluded in it. In this largest, most comprehensive, view of the race, it is that I venture on so large a promise. If, then, I can help you to anticipate any so splendid re- sult to the painful and wearisome history of our race ; if I can bring to the toils of virtue in our bosoms, any 82 THE GROWTH OF LAW. such confidence or hope of triumph ; if I can open to learning and genius these exhilarating hopes and these wide fields of empire; I shall not speak in vain, or want a justification before you. At this venerable seat of learning letters are subordi- nate always to virtue and religion; which makes it only the more fit, in addressing you as Alumni, that I offer to engage you in the question, when, or by what means, shall society and learning have their common aims fulfilled in the complete sovereignty of truth and right among men ? As the founders had the highest veneration for the classics and for intellectual ornament of every kind, and could yet value their foundation as the means to a yet higher end — in which they embraced whatever is good or magnificent in the future history of the race — so the institution still values itself and is valued by its numerous body of friends, in every part of our great country, as the support of truth and right- eousness. We ourselves cleave to it as to a good mother, whose name and remembrance is made dearer to us, by the moral experience of life and the wisdom of years. Possibly, if mere learning or literary splen- dor were its object, it might have gained an easier ce- lebrity, and, with less of elegant learning, might have had the repute of more. But virtue and truth have a long run, and it will be found, as the years and ages wear away, and society ascends to its destiny of splen- dor, that this institution, modestly ordained to be the servant of virtue, ascends with it, and gains to itself the THE GROWTH OF LAW. 83 highest honors of learning, by its union to the highefet well-being and glory of the race. We stand here, then, on a moral eminence, where learning nnites her destinies to that of virtue, we look abroad up and down the track of human life, to see whither it leads, and especially, to fortify our confi- dence of a day when all the great forces of society — policy, law, power, learning, and art — shall bow to the lordship of moral ideas, and the just sovereignty of their rule in all human affairs. What now, let us ask, is necessary to this result — by what means, if at all, shall it be reached? This we shall see by a glance at the nature of the moral depart- ment, or law side of our human life. In what is called virtue, there are two distinct spheres and kinds of obligation ; that of fundamental principle, and that of outward, executory practice, or expression. In the allegiance of the soul to the funda- mental principle, all virtue consists; in the due con- fo*rmity of outward action to the code which regulates that sphere, the virtue is fitly exercised and worthily expressed. Inquiring next for the fundamental principle, it is right; a simple, original, necessary idea, a kind of cate- gory indeed of the soul's own nature ; for, as we could not ask when? if we had no idea of time, or how many ? if we had no idea of number, or what proposi- tions are true ? if we had no idea of truth, so we could never ask what things are right? if we had not the 84 THE GROWTH OF LAW. idea of right, self-announced and asserting its rightful authority in our consciousness. "We think in these nat- ural categories, and without them could not even begin to think as intelligences at all — should not, in fact, he men. To define this idea of right is impossible because it is simple ; the most we can do is to note that a straight line is the natural symbol of it; therefore we call it right^ or rectus ; that is, straight. Or we may note that scripture, so very close to nature — '^.et thine C3'es look right on, and thine eyelids look straight before thee." By this ideal law we should be bound, even if wo existed apart from all relations, just as God was bound before all his acts of ci'eation ; therefore we call it the law absolute. But we haye another law exactly twin to this in terms of relational existence ; it is love. This latter belongs more especially to religion, which is itself relational, as respects God, since God imdertakes — that is the whole aim of his government — to be the defender of right. But the two are so far measures each of the other, that whoever is fixed and centralized in one, will be in the other, as God Himself is. Here, now, as we have intimated, is the substance of virtue ; it is righteousness, it is love. Being so entered into the principle of all virtue, the next question will be, passing into the second sphere of virtue, by what acts, doings, works, dispositions, shall we fitly represent, execute, outwardly express, the principle into which we have come? Having the substance, what shall be the THE GROWTH OF LAW. 85 manners and modes by wliich we are to show it and give it fit exercise? It is here, as when we pass out of the pure mathematics into computations of forms, dis- tances, orbits, and forces. The real substance of virtue is constituted by no outward doings or practices. These have no moral character in themselves. Merit and demerit are never measured by them, but only by the fundamental law. In these true virtue is only concerned to act herself out. And there is no small difficulty in solving the question, how ? For this world of outward action is made up of infinite particulars, separable by no absolute distinctions, and flowing continually to- wards or into each other. Thus we shall ask what the scripture, as a revelation of God, enjoins, either directly or by analogy ? then what is the practice sanctioned by custom or the common law of society ? what is useful, equal, true, beautiful ? — in a word, what forms of action are aesthetically fit to express the light, or a right spirit? These rules of conduct thus elaborated are, of necessity, only proximate. They may be crude and discordant ; they may be such as even to limit, and, as a more cultivated age might judge, to corrupt the strength of virtue. Of course, there is room for indefi- nite amplification and refinement in this outward code, if by any means it may be accomplished. We have a way of speaking which attributes the ap- proval or disapproval of outward acts to the conscience. But according to the scheme of ethics here adopted, this is true only in a popular sense. The conscience is our sense of the authority of right, or our consciousness of 8 86 THE GROWTH OF LAW. receiving or rejecting this great internal law. All questions of outward duty are questions of custom, rev- elation, judgment, taste — they belong to the sphere of outward criticism, in which we are impelled hy the in- ternal law, and seek to realize it. The conscience is no out-door faculty, as the popular language supposes. That we come into being with a conscience in which all possible acts in all possible circumstances, are discrim- inated with infallible certainty beforehand and apart from the aid of experience and judgment, is incredible. Quite as hard for belief is it that, if our conscience were required, hy itself^ to settle all the questions of duty as they occur, (which perhaps is the popular notion,) it would not rise up, like Mercury among the gods as Lu- cian fancies, and protest against the infinite business of all sorts it has thrown upon it. Having now in view this two-fold nature of law, we perceive that there are two ways in which it may possi- bly advance its power, and only two. If the tone of the conscience, or of its ideal law can be invigorated ; if also the aesthetic power, that which discriminates in outward forms, can be so disciplined, or so enriched in spiritual culture, as to distinguish all that is most be- neficent and beautiful in conduct, bringing on thus to perfection the code of outward practice, the two great conditions of moral advance are fulfilled. That just this two-fold process is, and, in all past ages, has been, going on I shall now undertake to show. I will then take up three great forces of history, always generically distinct from each other, the Greek, the Koman, and the THE GROWTH OF LAW. 87 Christiau, showing how they have conspired and are always, in fact, operating together, to advance the power of moral ideas, and establish their complete reign in the world. Is there any law, then, in human history, by which the authority of conscience is progressively invigorated ? Leaving out of view religious causes, of which I will speak in another place, consider the remarkable and ever widening contrast that subsists, between the earli- est and latest generations of history, in respect to a re- flective habit. The childlike age, whether of the indi- vidual or of the race, never reflects on itself The lit- erature and conduct of the early generations are marked by a certain primitive simplicity. The whole motion of their being travels outward, as the water from under the hills, and no drop thinks to go back and see whence it came. They act and sing right out, unconscious even in their greatness, as the harp of its music, or the light- ning of its thunder. Virtue in such an age is mainly impulsive. It is such a kind of virtue as has not in- tellectually discovered its law. If now the mind be- comes reflective in its habit, if it analyzes itself and discovers, among all the powers and emotions of the soul — some permanent, and many fugitive as the winds — one great, eternal, irreversible law, towering above every other attribute of reason, thought, and action, and asserting its royal prerogatives ; if it discovers remorse coiled up as a wounded snake and hissing under the throne of the mind ; if, too, it discovers the soul itself, 88 THE GROWTH OF LAW. as a spiritual nature, strong with inherent immortahty, and building with a perilous and terrible industry here, the structure of its own future eternity ; it can not be that the moral tone of the conscience will not be power- fully invigorated. And the transition I here describe, from an unreflective to a reflective habit, is one that is evermore advancing, and will be to the end' of the world. Next, as it were, to give greater verity to ideas and laws of mental necessity and so to the law of the con- science developed by reflection, geometry and the exact sciences will be discovered. The Pythagorean disci- pline began, we are told, with a period of silence ; and as silence, according to Lord Bacon, is the fermentation of the thoughts, the disciples were thus started into a habit of reflection. Next they were exercised in geom- etry, to make them aware of the reality, rigidity, and invincibility of ideal truth — that kind of truth which is developed by reflection. Then they passed into the law of virtue, and through this up to God. The school of Crotona was, thus, a miniature of the great world it- self The mathematics are mere evolutions of necessary ideas ; and the moral value of a strong mathematical discipline has, in this view, never been adequately esti- mated. By no other means could the mind be so effectively apprised of the distinct existence, the firm- ness, and the stern necessity of principles. Mere ele- gant literature would leave it in a mire of outward con- ventionalisms, a mere aesthetic worker among the flux- ing matter of forms, incapable of a strong philosophic THE GROWTH OF LAW. 89 reflection^ and quite as much of those sallies into the ideal world which nerve the highest ranges of poetry. If, besides, the exact sciences are found to reign, as they do, over the great realm of nature and physical science, and the popular mind sees them sym- bolized to view, in all visible existence, then will a new and more forcible impression of what law and principle are, become universal. Looking up to the heavens and beholding all the innumerable orbs and powers of the universe obedient to ideal laws, and revolving in forms of the mind ; seeing the earth crystallize into shapes of ideal exactness and necessity, and the very atoms of the globe yoke themselves under the mental laws of arith- metic ; seeing, in a word, the whole compact of creation bedded in ideal truth, and yielding to the iron laws of necessity, it becomes impossible not to feel some new impression of the rigidity of moral principle, as a law of the mind, its distinct existence, its immutable obliga- tion. Next- you will observe, as if to carry on these impres- sions and make them practical, that as society advances, public law becomes a rigid science, and the rights of so- ciety are subjected to the stern arbitrament of justice. Public law is moral. It is the public reason, revolving about the one great principle of right, and constructing a science of moral justice. Executive power, with all its splendid prerogatives, is seen withdrawing to make room for a higher law; even right. Tribunals of jus- tice are erected and made independent. They are to sit clothed with the sacred majesty of right. Their ad- 8- 90 THE GROWTH OF LAW. judications are to be stern decrees of Nemesis, declara- tions of exact, scientific justice between the parties. This at least is the theory of public litigation ; and if it should happen that actual justice is dispensed as seldom as the most caustic satirists of the law pretend, still it is a thing of inestimable consequence that justice should be thus impersonated among men. It is a solemn con- cession to the supremacy of right, such as helps to im- press a cultivated people with a new sense of the im- partial authority of reason and principle. If now a condition of civil liberty be achieved (and this, we know, belongs to the advanced stages of his- tory) the tone of moral obligation will be strengthened in a yet higher degree. Liberty is literally freedom from constraint, according to the manner of intoxica- tion ; and it must be confessed that in those great up- heavings and revolutions, by which the shackles of un- just dominion have been burst asunder, the constraints of order and the barriers of law have too often been ut- terly swept away. The Liberty worshiped is true son of Liber, rightly named, as some of the witty ancients may have thought, from the stout old god of the vine. He goes forth, over hill and dale, drawn by his father's lions, brandishing the wrathful thyrsus, boasting his new inventions, and filling the people's heads with the strong wine of democracy, till sense and reason are crazed by its fumes. But the sober hour comes after, and then it will be found that the individual has emerged from under the masses in which he lay buried — a person, a distinct man, a subject of law, an eternal THE GROWTH OF LAW. 91 subject of God. Discharged from the constraints of force, he is free to meet the responsibilities of virtue, and he stands out sole and uncovered before the smok- ing mount of the conscience, to receive its law. The very doctrine of liberty, too, when it finds a doctrine, will be that force put upon the conscience or the reason, is sacrilege. Conscience, it will declare, is no other than the sacred throne of Grod, which no power or po- tentate may dare to touch. Mounting thus above all human prerogative to set its own stern limits and hold back the strong hand of power, as in these latter ages it is beginning to do, how high is the reach of con- science seen to be, how mighty its grasp, how impartial its reign ! I have thus alluded, as briefly as I could, to three or four stages or incidents in the progress of history which make it clear that the moral tone of the conscience must be ever advancing in power and clearness. Pass on now to the outward code of virtue, that which regulates her conduct and forms of action. Though there is no merit or demerit, nothing right or wrong, in any outward conduct as such, still the interests of virtue are deeply involved in the perfection of the outward code. The internal life of virtue can neither propagate its power nor diffuse its blessings, except through the outward state. Furthermore, as expression always in- vigorates what is expressed, and as the outward reacts on the inward by a sovereign influence, it becomes a matter of the highest consequence, as regards the inter- 92 THE GROWTH OF LAW. nal health of virtue, that she should have her outward code complete and, withou.t exception, beautiful. Accordingly there is a work of progressive legislation continually going forward, by which the moral code is perfecting itself. This code, as outward, is no fixed immutable thing, as many suppose. Custom is its in- terpreter, and it grows up in the same way as the com- mon or civil law, or the law merchant, by a constant process of additions and refinements. Life itself is an open court of legislation, where reasonings, opinions, wants, injuries, are ever drawing men into new senses of duty and extending the laws of society, to suit the demands of an advanced state of being. All art and beauty, every thing that unfolds the power of outward criticism, enters into this progress. So does Christian love, which is ever seeking, as the great apostle per- ceives, to execute its spirit, in the most perfect forms of conduct. As when he prays — That your love may abound yet more and more in all knowledge and judg- ment [oLKf^TfCfig^ aesthetic discernment] that ye may ap- prove things that are excellent. Moral legislation is, in fact, one of the highest inci- dents of our existence. Not that man here legislates, but God through man ; for it is not by any will of man, that reason, experience and custom are ever at work to make new laws and refine upon the old ; these are to God as an ever smoking Sinai under his feet, and, if there be much of dissonance and seeming confusion in the liloudy mount of custom, we may yet distinguish the sound of the trumpet, and the tables of stone, we THE GROWTH OF LAW 93 shall see in due time, distinctly written, as by no human finger. Laws will emerge from the experience of life, and get power to command us. Let us not seem, in this view, to strike at the immuta- bility of virtue. "We have no such thought. The law of virtue is immutable and eternal, above all expedi- ency or self-interest; all change, circumstance, power, and plan; necessary as God, necessary even to God. But the substance of virtue lies, as we have said, in no outward forms of conduct, and it is only these that are subject to modification. Thus there is such a thing as time, and time is ever the same thing in its nature. But where is time ? Not in the sun, not in the dial, not in the clock or watch ; or, if there, it is as much everywhere else. Time is ideal, a thing of the mind. But, though time is nowhere in the outward world, it has its signs and measures there, and what matter is it if they are changed? that does not affect the immutable nature of time. Measured by the sun, the moon, the hour-glass, the clock or watch, the flight of birds or the opening of flowers, time is still the same. So it is with virtue; it is the same unchanging, eternal principle, though its outward code of manifestation has variety and progress. Neither let us seem to impugn the authority of the revelation. The statutes of revealed law may be di- vided into two classes. First the class comprising such as are given for their inherent beneficence ; the points of the decalogue, for example, and the golden rule of the New Testament ; which, being the want of all ages, 94 THE GROWTH OF LAW. are to be drawn out farther and farther in their ramifi- cations and refinements, and be the staple, as it were, of a complete moral code. Secondly the class compris- ing permissive statutes, like the license given by Moses to buy slaves of the nations round about; which, as they impose no obligation, have no permanent . signifi- cance, except in showing that slavery is not inherently and in all cases and ages a necessary wrong ; also ordi- nances of things useful at the time, but liable to be su- perseded — as for example sacrifices and ritual observ- ances ; also commands that get their fitness and propri- ety from the present condition or custom of societ}^' — such as the law against taking interest for the loan of money, and that forbidding a woman to appear in pub- lic having her head uncovered; also mandates given for retribution's sake, like the ^^ statutes not good" of which the prophet spake; also permissions and com- mands, not because they are the best, but because they are the best that a crude-minded, wild, or half-barba- rous people can appreciate enough to accept as obliga- tory, or the best which can be enjoined without provok- ing results of barbarity worse than the mischiefs tempo- rarily allowed — of which I may give as example the silent permissions of polygamy, and the law permitting husbands to put away their wives by a divorce which is their own act ; a law which Christ himself declares was given " because of the hardness of their hearts ;" that is to save the hapless wives from being dispatched by a more summary method. I have made this exact and rather tedious specifica- THE GROWTH OF LAW. 95 tion, just to save the doctrine I wish to assert from the imputation of a trespass on the sacred authority of scrip- ture. You perceive, as regards the first class of stat- utes, that they are going, by the supposition, directly into the great mill of human casuistries, to be refined upon, run out into subtle applications more and more distinct from the crude applications of the early times, and so to be roots of a vast codified system of ethics. And the work will be going on for ages, ripening slowly and by imperceptible degrees. Thus, for exam- ple, it is a very simple thing to say — ^" Thou shalt not steal," — ^but the growth of society, property, and mer- cantile law, will raise thousands of questions where the sharpest perception will distinguish, with much diffi- culty, precisely what is and is not included under the principle of the law. As regards the whole second class, manifold and va- rious as it is, you will see that modifications, discontin- uances, and even contrary rules of practice, are, by the supposition, possible, and likely to appear. They are such as are casual in their very nature, appropriate only to the present time, and a great part of them such as belong to the crudity and the barbarous perceptions and manners of an early stage of society. For nothing is more plain, than that a barbarous people could not receive a perfectly beautiful code of conduct. Is it any- thing new, that if you give a clown directions how to execute a beautiful painting, he could not even take the sense of the directions? or, if you should give him a full code of politeness, that he could not enter into its 96 THE GROWTH OF LAW. terms? But how vast in compass, and multifarious in number, and complicated in form, are the rules of a perfect code of life, compared with the strokes of a painter's art, or the items of a polite conduct ! What scope is there here for criticism ! what exactness of dis- cipline does it require, only to imderstand what is wise. or useful, or fair, in all cases, even when it is revealed ! What sharpness of taste, only to discriminate or con- ceive all beautiful actions, when expressly commanded — greater, by far, than any nation as yet possesses ! Neither let us wonder, if it takes many ages to clear the moral code of all barbarous anomalies, and bring it to a full maturity. Experience must have a long and painful discipline, philosophy must go down into the grounds of things, rights must be settled, letters ad- vanced, the beautiful arts come into form ; God must wait on the creature, and conduct him on through long ages of mistake and crudity — command, reason, try, enlighten, brood, as over chaos, by his quickening power — and then it will be only by slow degrees that the moral taste of the world will approximate to a co- incidence with the perfect moral taste of God. Let us now see if facts will justify our reasonings. Far back, in the remotest ages of definite history, we find one of the world's patriarchs so fortunate or unfor- tunate as to be the inventor of wine, by which he is buried in the excesses of intoxication, we know not how many times, with no apparent compunction. Say- ing nothing of abstinence, not even the law of temper- ance had yet been reached. Another, who is called the THE GROWTH OF LAW. 9 i-r *' father of the faithful," has not yet so refined upon the moral statute against lying, as to see that prevarication is to be accounted a lie. Accordingly, he more than once, shows his ingenuity in a practice on words, with no apparent sense of wrong. A successor, in equal honor as a religious man, deceives his blind father by a trick of disguise, and steals the blessing of his brother. He takes advantage also of this brother's hunger to ex- tort his birthright from him — acts which in our day would cover him with infamy. These were all holy men. It was not so much sin as barbarism, that mar- red their history. These instances of unripe morality furnish no ground of cavil against the Scriptures, but, to all reasoning minds, they are the strongest evidences of their real antiquity and truth. I have not time to lead you through the Jewish history. The remarkable fact in it is, that, with so high notions of the principle, the outward style of virtue is yet so harsh, so visibly barbarous. You seem to be in a raw physical age, where force and sensualism and bigotry of descent dis- play their odious and unlovely presence, even in men of the highest worth and dignity. As you approach the later age of their literature and history, you per- ceive a visible mitigation of its features. Christianity then appears. The old outward regimen of beggarly elements is swept away, new precepts of benevolence and forbearance are given, the Jew is lost in the man, and the man becomes a brother of his race. How sub- lime the contrast, then, of Genesis and John ! What we see, in this glance at sacred histor}^, is 9 98 THE GROWTH OF LAW. quite as conspicuous in the general review of humanity. The moral code of a savage people has always some- thing to distinguish it as a savage people's code. So with that of a civilized. The very changes and inven- tions of society necessitate an amplification and often a revision, of the moral code. Every new state, office, art, and thing must have its law. The old law maxim, cuilihet in sua arte credendum esf^ every trade must be suffered to make its law, is only half the truth — every trade will make its law. If bills of exchange are in- vented, if money is coined, if banks are established, and offices of insurance, if great corporate investments are introduced into the machinery of business, it will not be long before a body of moral opinions will be genera- ted, and take the force of law over these new creations. Fire-arms also, printing, theatres, distilled spirits, cards, dice, medicine, all new products and inventions, must come under moral maxims and create to themselves a new moral jurisprudence. The introduction of popular liberty makes the subject a new man, lays upon him new duties, which require to be set forth in new maxims of morality. Already have I shown you, in these brief glances, a new world created for the dominion of law. And what was said of the human body, growing up to maturity, is equally true of the great social body : — "For nature crescent does not grow alone, In thews and bulk, but as this temple waxes, The inward service of the mind and heart Grows wide withal." I also hinted, that new arts and inventions must often THE GROWTH OF LAW. 99 SO change the relations of old things and practices, as to require a revision of their law. The Jew may rightly take his interest money now, for other reasons than be- cause the Mosaic polity is dissolved. He is not the same man that his fathers were. He lives in a new world, and sustains new relations. The modes of business, too, are all so changed by the credit system, which makes a capital of character, that the merits of receiving interest money are no more the same, although the mere out- ward act is such as to be described in the same words. At this very moment, we have it on hand to revise the moral code in refierence to three very important subjects — wine, slavery, and war. The real question, on these subjects, if we understood ourselves, is not, on one side, whether we can torture the Scripture so as to make it condemn all that we desire to exclude; nor, on the other, whether we are bound, for all time, and eternity to boot, to justify what the Scripture has sometim^e suffered. But the question, philosophically stated, is, whether new cognate inventions and uses, do not make old practices more destructive, old vices more incura- ble ; whether a new age of the world and a capacity of better things, have not so changed the relations of the practices in issue, that they are no longer the same, and no longer to be justified. Physically speaking, it is the same act to go into a certain house, and to go into it having a contagious disease — not morally. Physically speaking, it is the same act to go into it having a con- tagious disease, and to go into it when the inmates have found a new medicine which is proof against the conta- 100 THE GROWTPI OF LAW. gion — not morally. In this view, it is nothing to say that wine-drinking is restrained in the Scripture by no law but temperance ; for the neighborhood of distilled liquors, a modern invention, makes it no longer the same thing, but a thing so different that abstinence, possibly, is the only adequate rule of beneficent prac- tice. This, precisely, is the question we are now litigat- ing. In the same way, since the mitigation of the war- state of nations, and the extended sense of fraternity between them, have widened the basis of moral ideas, human slavery is no longer to be justified by ancient examples ; for the advanced sentiment of the world, under Christianity, makes it capable of a better and juster practice. In this manner the moral import of actions, physically the same, is thus ever changing, and no reform is bad, because it requires a revision of law ; for the change of condition, wrought by time, may be so great as to render the former law inapplicable. It is conceivable that even a positive statute of revelation may lose its applicability, by reason of a radical change in the circumstances it was designed to cover. Nor can it properly be said that such a statute is repealed — it is only waiting for the circumstances in which its virtue lay. A new rule contradictory to it in words, may yet be wholly consistent with it, and bring no re- flection on its merits. Accordingly, in what are called reforms, the real problem more frequently is to revise or mitigate law, perhaps to legislate anew. And there is no evil in the human state, nothing opposed to the general good and happiness, which can not be lawed out of ex- THE GROWTH OF LAW. 101 istence by an adequate appeal to truth and reason, which are God's highest law. Nothing, I will add, which shall not thus be lawed oiit of existence. Thus it is within the memory of persons now living, that a clergyman of England, specially distinguished for his piety, forsook the slave trade, by compulsion of Providence, and not because of any Christian scruples concerning it. Night and morning he sent up his prayers to God, blended with the groans of his captives, and had his Christian peace among the lacerated limbs and the unpitied moans of as many as his ship could hold. In ow a law is matured against this traffic, and the man is a monster who engages in it. And if you will see the progress of the moral code, you may take your map and trace the exact countries which this new law has reached, just as you may trace, from an emi- nence, the shadows of the clouds, as they sail over a landscape. If you will see the work of moral legislation on a scale yet more magnificent, jou have only to advert to what is called the international code. I know of noth- ing which better marks the high moral tone of modern history, than that this sublime code of law should have come into form and established its authority over the civ- ilized world within so short a time ; for it is now scarce- ly more than two hundred years since it took its being. In the most polished and splendid age of Greece and Grecian philosophy, piracy was a lawful and even hon- orable occupation. Man, upon the waters, and the shark, in them, had a common right to feed on what 9* 102 THE GROWTH OF LAW, they could subdue. Nations were considered as natu- ral enemies, and for one people to plunder another, bj force of arms, and to lay their country waste, was no moral wrong, any more than for the tiger to devour the lamb. In war, no terms of humanity were binding; and the passions of the parties were mitigated by po constraints of law. Captives were butchered or sold into slavery at pleasure. In time of peace, it was not without great hazard that the citizen of one country could venture into another for purposes of travel or business. Go now with me to a little French town near Paris, and there you shall see in his quiet retreat, a silent, thoughtful man bending his ample shoulders and more ample countenance over his table, and recording with a visible earnestness something that deeply concerns the world. This man has no office or authority to make him a lawgiver, other than what belongs to the gifts of his own person — a brilliant mind, enriched by the am- plest stores of learning, and nerved by the highest prin- ciples of moral justice and Christian piety. He is, in fact, a fugitive and an exile from his country, separated from all power but the simple power of truth and rea- son. But he dares, you will see, to write De Jure Belli et Pads. This is the man who was smuggled out of prison and out of his country, by his wife, in a box that was used for much humbler purposes, to give law to all the nations of mankind in all future ages. On the sea and on the land, on all seas and all lands, he s^all bear swav. In the silence of his study, he THE GROWTH OF LAW. 103 stretches forth the scepter of law over all potentates and peoples, defines their rights, arranges their intercourse, gives them terms of war and terms of peace, which they may not disregard. In the days of battle, too, when kings and kingdoms are thundering in the shock of arms, this same Hugo Grotius shall be there, in all the turmoil of passion and the smoke of ruin, as a pre- siding throne of law, commanding above the command- ers, and, when the day is cast, prescribing to the victor terms of mercy and justice, which not even his hatred of the foe, or the exultation of the hour, may dare to transcend. The system of commercial law, growing out of the extension of trade and commerce, in modern times, is another triumph of moral legislation almost equally sub- lime with the international. The science of municipal law, too, has not been less remarkable for its progress. Saying nothing of the common law, or law of England, which is, in a sense, the child of the civil or Eoman law, what mind can estimate the moral value and power of this latter code, extended, as its sway now is, over nine-tenths of the civilized world ! Now all these systems of law, international, commer- cial and civil, are founded in the natural reasons of the moral code, and are, in fact, results of moral legislation. Considered, too, as accumulations of moral judgment, elaborated in the lapse of ages, they constitute a body of science, when taken together, compared with which every other work of man is insignificant. No other has cost such infinite labor and patience, none has em- 104 THE GROWTH OF LAW. bodied such a stupendous array of talent, none has brought into contribution so much of impartial reason or constructed such libraries of scientific learning. Under these extensions of law, the world has become another world. Anarchy and absolute will are put aside to suffer the dominion of justice. The nations are become, to a great extent, one empire. The citizen of one country may travel and trade securely in almost every other. Wars are mitigated in ferocity, and so far is the moral sentiment of the world advanced in this direction, that military preparations begin to look for- mal and wear the semblance of an antiquated usage. We may almost dare to say as Pandulph to Lewis, and with a much higher sense : — " Therefore, thy threatening colors now wmd up And tame the savage spirit of wik^ war, That, like a lion fostered up at hand. It may lie gently, at the foot of peaee. And be no further harmful than in show." Who shall think it incredible that this same progress of moral legislation, which has gone thus far in the in- ternational code, may ultimately be so far extended as to systematize and establish rules of arbitrament, by which all national disputes shall be definitely settled, without an appeal to arms ! An(J so it shall result that, as the moral code is one, all law shall come into unity, and a kind of virtual oneness embrace all nations. We shall flow together in the annihilation of distances and become brothers in the terms of justice. And so shall that sublime declaration of Cicero, in bis Eepublic, THE GROWTH OF LAW. 105 where he sets forth the theoretic unity of law, find a re- .public of nations, where it shall have a more than theo- retic verity: — ^'JSTec erit alia lex Eomae, alia Athenis, alia nunc, aha posthac, sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, et sempiterna, et immortalis continebit, unus- que erit communis quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus. lUe legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator!" I have thus endeavored to show that, as virtue is two-fold, so there is a two-fold law of progress by which it is advanced in human society — one by which the in- ward principle invigorates its tone, another by which its outward code is extended and made to accord more nicely with the highest beaiity and the most perfect health of virtue. Both lines of progress have been ac- tive up to this time, with results as definitely marked as the progress of history itself. What now is to come? By what future events and changes shall the work go on to its completion ? That must be unknown to us, though the present momentum of society is enough, by itself, to assure us in what line the future motion must proceed. There are, at the same time, three great forces in this motion, which we know are incapable of exhaustion. These must always work on together, as they have done up to this time, to assist the triumph of the moral element. Other forces have entered into history, such as the Gothic irruptions, the crusades, the feudal system, the free cities and their commerce, which, being more nearly physical, lose their distinct existence as soon as 106 THE GROWTH OF LAW. ihej are incorporate, and are manifested only by their ces Lilts. Not so with, the three of which I am to speak —they belong to all future time, and will never cease iheir distinct activity. These three are the Greek, the Roman and the Christian training. The Greek, as be- longing to the outward department of virtue and assist- ing it by the high aesthetic discipline of its literature. The Eoman, as asserting the ideal law of virtue and giving it a corporate embodiment. The Christian, as descending from heaven to pour itself into both, quicken their activity and bring them into earnest con- nection with a government above. The first thing to be observed in the Greek character and literature, is its want of a moral tone. A mere in- cidental remark of Schlegel touches what might rather be made the staple of criticism, in the works of this wonderful people. ''Even in those cases," he says, " where the most open expression of deep feeling, moral- it}^, or conscience, might have been expected, the Greek authors are apt to view the subject of which they treat, as a mere appearance of the life, with a certain perfect, undisturbed, and elaborate equability." How could it be otherwise, where an Aristotle, endowed with the most gigantic and powerful intellect ever given to man, could only -define virtue itself as the middle point be- tween two extremes, and every moral evil as being either too much or too little ? Socrates and his splen- did disciple, it is true, had a warmer and more adequate idea of virtue ; though it will escape the notice of no THE GROWTH OF LAW. 107 thoughtful scholar, that they were charmed with virtue, rather as the Fair than as the Eight. This is specially true of Plato. He draws her forth out of his own intel- lectual beauty, as Pygmalion his ivory statue, and, as this was quickened into life by the word of Venus, so his notion of virtue takes its life from the charms in which it is invested. Evil and vice, too, connect, in his mind, rather with deformity and mortification than with remorse. On the whole, there is almost no civilized people whose morality is more earthly and cold than that of the Greeks. At the same time, their sense of beauty in forms, their faculty of outward criticism, is perfect. Their temples and statutes are forms of perfect art. Their poets and philosophers chisel their thoughts into groups of marble. Their religion or mythology is scarcely more than a gallery of artistic shapes, exquis- itely sensual. They alone, of all people, in fact, have a religion without a moral; gods for the zest of com- edy; gay divinities that go hunting, frolicking and thundering over sea and land. Genius only worships. The chisel is the true incense, to hold a place in epic machinery, the true circle of Providence. Everything done or written is subtle, etherial, beautiful, and cold ; even the fire is cold — a combustion of icicles. There can be no true heat where there is no moral life. They love their country, but they do not love it well enough to suffer justice to be done in it, or to endure the pres- ence of virtue. Their bravery is cunning, their patriot- ism an elegant selfishness. In their ostracism, they 108 THE GROWTH OF LAW. make public envy a public right, and faction constitu- tional. We look up and down their history, survey their temples without a religion, their streets lined with chiseled divinities, set up for ornamental effect, we listen to their orators, we open the shining rolls of their literature, and exclaim, beautiful lust! splendid sensuality ! elegant faction ! gods for the sake of orna- ment ! a nation perfect in outward criticism, but blind, as yet, to the real nature and power of the moral ideas. And yet this people have done a work, in their way, which is even essential to the triumph of virtue. Their sense of beauty, their nice discriminations of art and poetic genius, are contributions made to the outward life and law of virtue. A barbarous people, like the wild African or Indian, vou will observe, have no sense of form, and their moral code will, for that reason, be a crude and shapeless barbarism. To mature the code of action, therefore, and finish its perfect adaptation to the expression of virtue and the ornament of life, requires a power of form or of outward criticism, in full devel- opment. Considered in this view, it is impossible to overrate the value of the Greek art A whole depart- ment of human capacity, the talent of forms or of out- ward criticism and expression, must be the disciple of Greece to the end of the world. This same Greek beauty, which can never perish, will go into the Eoman life, and assist in that process of legal criticism by which the civil law shall be matured. Then it will go into the wild Gothic liberty that is thundering, as yet, along the Baltic and through the plains of Scythia, to THE GROWTH OF LAW. 109 humanize it, and make the element of liberty an ele- ment of order and virtue. It will breathe a spirit of beauty into every language and literature of every civ- ilized people ; and their intellectual and moral life will crystallize into the forms of beauty thus evolved, lose their opacity, and become transparent to the light of reason and law. The Christian faith, too, whose pre- rogative it is to make all the works both of man and of God subservient to its honor, will take to itself all the beauty of all the Greeks and make it the beauty of holiness. We come now to the Eomans, a people of as high originality as the Greeks, though not so regarded by the critics, because their originality did not run into the forms of literature. The ideal of the Greeks was beauty, that of the Eomans law and scientific justice. We need not suffer the common wonder, therefore, that all the ambition of the Roman scholars, aided by hordes of emigi^ant rhetoricians, could not reproduce the Gre- cian classic spirit in that people ; for whatsoever power of outward criticism was awakened, followed after the Roman ideal, going to construct the moral rigors of the Stoic philosophy and fashion the sublime structure of civil jurisprudence. And Greece was as incapable of the Roman law, as Rome of the Grecian literature. Which of the two has made the greatest and most orig- inal gift to the future ages, it will ever be impossible to judge. It was a distinction of the Roman people, that they had a strong sense of moral principle. They could feel 10 110 THE GROWTH OF LAW. the authority of what some call an abstraction, and sujffer its rigid sway. Their conscience had the tone of a trumpet in their bosoms. This was owing, in part, we may believe, to their martial discipline ; for it is a peculiarity of this, that it bends to nothing in the indi- vidual, his interest, comfort, or safety. It is as desti- tute of feeling as an abstraction, and accommodates the soldier to the absolute sway of rigid law. Accustomed to the stiff harness of discipline, to be moved by the unbending laws of mechanism up to the enemy's face and the bristling points of defense, there to live or die, as it may happen, without any right to consider which; a nation of soldiers learns how to suffer an absolute rule, and, if the other and more corrupt influences of war do not prevent, is prepared, with greater facility, to acknowledge the stern ideal law of virtue. The Eomans, too, had a religion, a serious and pow- erful faith, gods that kept their integrity and held a re- lation to the conscience. Even Mars himself, their tu- telary deity, in so far as he was a Eoman and not a Greek, was, on the whole, a much better Christian than some who have presided in Eome, with quite other pretensions; as will scarcely be thought extravagant hj the scholar, who duly considers, with what rever- ence they guarded the sacred ancile let fall from heaven to be the pledge of their safety ; or compares the pro- cessions of the Salii, with others of a more recent date and of a different name. It was also a beautiful dis- tinction of the religious character of this people, that they alone, of all heathen nations, erected temples to THE GROWTH OF LAW. Ill the mere ideals of virtue — Faith, Concord, Modesty, Peace. The Eomans, also, were an agricultural people, nam- ing their noble families after the hean^ the pea^ the len- tik, vetches^ and other plants; retaining the sobriety, frugality, and all the rigid virtues of a life in the fields. These are the people to suffer a censorship, in which every licentious and effeminate habit shall expose the subject to a public degradation ; the only people, I will add, that has ever existed, capable of such a discipline. Pass out with me, now, into the Tusculan country, and I will show you one of these old Puritans. A simple rustic house is before you, the house of a small country farmer. A man with red hair, and a pair of grey eyes twinkling imder his fiery eyebrows, a muscu- lar, iron-faced man meets you at the gate. This man will boast his dinner as a triumph of economy — bread baked by his wife, and turnips boiled by himself Of pleasure he is ignorant. He keeps a few slaves, whom he turns away when they become old ; for it is his way to make a rigid abstraction even of the principle of economy. In the morning he rises early, and goes forth into the neighboring towns to plead causes. He returns, in the afternoon, puts on his frock, and goes out to work among the slaves. He is a man of wit, and is to be called the Eoman Demosthenes. He is to be a great commander, and a part of his prowess will be that he spends nothing on himself and makes the army pay its way by its victories. He will reap the honors of a triumph, he will be consul, he will be cen- 112 THE GROWTH OF LAW. sor. And when Oato is censor, woe to the man who has defrauded the treasury ! every man than gets over the line of sober drink ! every high liver ! every dandy ! Then, to crown all, this man shall say — for he loves to carry out a principle — that ^^he had rather hig good ac- tions should go unrewarded, than his bad ones unpun- ished." Inexorable, in whatever relates to public jus- tice, inflexibly rigid in the execution of his orders, he will make history confess, that the Eoman government had never before appeared, either so awful or so amiable. Eoman virtue, therefore, became a proverb, to denote that strength of principle, which can bend to no outward obstacle or seduction. And the pitch of public virtue displayed by this people, especially in the days of the ancient republic, is one of the greatest moral phenomena of history. Always warlike in their habit, inured to scenes of devastation and blood, ambitious for their city and ignorant of any right in the world but the imperial right of Eome, they were, at the same time, careless of pleasure and of wealth, stoics in fortitude and self-denial, immovable in conjugal fidelity, reverent to parents, in- capable of treachery to their country or disobedience to the laws, exact and even superstitious in the rites of piety. Unjust to every other people, they were yet the firm adherents of law and justice among themselves. They went to war with religious preliminaries. The military oath was their sacrament^ in which they engaged for a real presence ; and though it was to be a presence in veritable blood, it was yet so religiously fulfilled as THE GROWTH OF LAW. 113 to be a bond of virtue. They, at first, sent forth their legions to make war, more, it would seem, because they loved the discipline, than because they wanted the plunder. The tramp of their victorious legions was heard resounding at the gates of cities and across the borders of nations ; their leaders were returning, every few months, with triumphal entries into the city, that a most just people might enjoy and glory in the spectacle of their own public wrongs ; till at last, debauched by the plunder of their victories, they may be said to have conquered, on the same day, both the world and their own virtue together. Nor is even this exactly true ; for it is remarkable, that they gave back to the subject nations the justice denied them in their conquest, and set up the tribunals of Eoman law on the fields of Eo- man lawlessness ! Equally remarkable is it, that in the most dissolute age of the empire, the power of scientific law could not be eradicated from the hearts of this wonderful people. While the monster Commodus sits upon the throne, Papinian and Ulpian occupy the bench, adding to the civil code the richest contributions of legal science ! And even the signatures of Caracalla and his ministers will be found, not seldom, inscribed on the purest materials of the Pandects ! What, then, if Eome did not excel in literature? Had she not another talent in her bosom quite as rich and powerful, the sublime talent of law ? In her civil code, she has erected the mightiest monument of reason and of moral power that has ever yet been raised by human genius. The honest pride of Cicero was not 10* 114: THE GROWTH OF LAW. misplaced, wiien lie said: *'How admirable is the wis- dom of our ancestors! We alone are masters of civil prudence, and our superiority is the more conspicuous, if we deign to cast our eyes on the rude and almost ri- diculous jurisprudence of Draco, Solon and Lycurgus." Little, however, did he understand, when he thus spake, what gift his country was here preparing for the human race. Could he have pierced the magnificent future, when this same Roman law should have its full scien- tific embodiment ; could he have seen, at the distance of twenty centuries, the barbarians of northern and western Europe compacted into great civilized nations, and, after having vanquished the Eoman arms and em- pire, all quietly sheltered under the Eoman jurispru- dence ; a new continent rising to view, beyond the lost Atlantis, to be fostered in its bosom ; a spirit of law in- fused into the whole realm of civilized mind and reveal- ing its energy now in the common law of England, now in the commercial code, and, last of all, in the interna- tional — all matured in the pervading light and warmth of the Eoman; liberty secured by the security of jus- tice ; the fire of the old Eoman virtue burning still in the bosom of legal science and imparting a character of intellectual and moral gravity to the literature, opinions and life of all cultivated nations ; and then, to crown the whole, the visible certainty that the Eoman law has only just begun its career, that it must enter more* and more ^ddely into the fortunes of the race and extend its benign sway wherever law extends, till the globe, with all its peoples, becomes a second Eoman empire, THE GROWTH OF LAW. 115 and time itself the only date of its sovereignty ; — seeing all this, the great orator must have confessed, that every conception he had before entertained of the majesty and grandeur of the Eoman jurisprudence, was weak enough to be scarcely better than null. Our minds, even now, can but faintly conceive the same. Such is the moral value of the Greek art and litera- ture, such of the Eoman law ; one as a contribution to the outward form of virtue, the other to the authority and power of the moral sentiment itself. These are gifts wrought out from below; extorted, as we may say, from society. It remains to speak of a third power, descending from above, to bring the Divine Life into history and hasten that moral age, towards which its lines are ever converging. Hitherto, we have spoken of causes developed by the mere laws of soci- ety, which laws, however, when deeply sounded, are but another name for God, conducting history to its ends, by a latent presence of supernatural force. In the religion of Christ we are to view him as coming into mental contemplation objectively to the intellect and heart, and operating thus as a moral cause. In his incarnate person descending into the world from a point above the world, God shows an external govern ment of laws and retributions, connected with the inter- nal law of the conscience ; opens worlds of glory and pain beyond this life ; presents himself as an object of contemplation, fear, love and desire; reveals his own infinite excellence and beauty, and, withal, his tender- 116 THE GROWTH OF LAW. ness and persuasive goodness ; and so pours the Divine Life into the dark and soured bosom of sin. But you will perceive that a certain degree of intel- lectual refinement and moral advancement was neces- sary to make the approach of so great excellence and beauty intelligible. A race of beings immersed in the wild superstitions of fetichism could not receive the di- vine. And, therefore, it was not till the Greek letters and the Eoman sovereignty were extended through the world, that Jesus Christ made his appearance. He is, at once, the Perfect Beauty and the Eternal Eule of God ; the Life of God manifested under the conditions of humanity; by sufferings, expressing the Love of God ; by love, attracting man to his breast. Now there enters into human history a divine force which is not latent. The law from within meets the objective real- ity and beauty of God from without ; conscience links with a government above, and morality is taken up into the bosom of religion. I will not trace the historical action of Christianity, or show how it has subordinated and wrought in all other causes, such as I have named. Every one knows that this new religion, sprung of so humble a begin- ning, has had force enough, somehow, to take the rule of human society for the last eighteen hundred years. Ancient learning, ancient customs and religions, emi- grations, wars and diplomacies, all the foundations of thrones and the bulwarks of empire, have floated, as straws, on this flood. And now it is much to say, that where we are, thither Christianity has borne us, and THE GROWTH OF LAW. 117 what we are in art, literature, commerce, law and lib- erty, Christianity, appropriating all previous advances, has made us. I will only point you, beside, to a single sj^mptom of the times, which shows yon whither human history is going. It is a remarkable distinction of the present era, that we are deriving rules of common life and obli- gation from considerations of beneficence. We per- ceive that the internal law of the conscience includes not only justice but love. The spirit of Christianity, as revealed in the life of Jesus, has so far infused itself into human bosoms, that we feel bound to act, not as fellow men, but as brothers to the race. "We propose what is useful, we reason of what is beneficent. Gov- ernment, we claim, is a trust for the equal benefit of subjects. As individuals we are concluded, in all mat- ters, by the necessities of public virtue and happiness. All the old rules of morality, which hung upon the cold- er principle of justice, are suffering a revision to execute the principle of love, and everything in public law and private duty is coming to the one test of beneficence. Here I will rest my argument. I undertook to show you that human history ascends from the phj^sical to the moral, and must ultimately issue in a moral age. I first exhibited the fact of a two-fold progress in past history, accordant with the two-fold nature of the moral code. What stupendous events and overturnings are, hereafter, to come pouring their floods into the currents of human historv, we can not know or conjecture; but 118 THE GROWTH OF LAW. I have brought into view three great moral forces, of whose future operation, as of whose past, we may well be confident — the Greek Art, the Eoman Law, and the Christian Faith. These three being indestructible, in- capable of death, must roll on, down the whole future of man, and work their effects in his history. And, if we are sure of this, we are scarcely less sure of an age of law, or of the final ascendency of the intellectual and moral life of the race. I anticipate no perfect state, such as fills the over- heated fancy of certain dreamers. The perfectibility of man is forever excluded here, by the tenor of his exist- ence. He is here in a flood of successive generations, to make experiment of evil, to learn the worth of virtue in the loss of it, and by such knowledge be at last con- firmed *in it. As long, therefore, as he is here, evil will be, and life will be a contest with it. But a day will come, when the dominion of ignorance and physical force, when distinctions of blood and the accidents of fortune, will cease to rule the world. Beauty, reason, science, personal worth and religion will come into their rightful supremacy, and moral forces will preside over physical as mind over the body. Liberty and equality will be so far established that every man will have a right to his existence, and, if he can make it so, to an honorable, powerful and hajopy existence. Policy will cease to be the same as cunning, and become a study of equity and reason. It is impos- sible that wars should not be discontinued, if not by the progress of the international code, as we have hinted, THE GROWTH OF LAW. 119 yet by the progress of liberty and intelligence ; for the masses who have hitherto composed the soldiery, must sometime discover the folly of dying, as an ignoble herd, to serve the passions of a few reckless politicians, or to give a name for prowess to leaders whose bravery consists in marching them into danger. The arbitra- ment of arms is not a whit less absurd than the old English trial by battle, and before the world has done rolling, they will both be classed together. Habits of temperance must result in a gradual improvement of the physical stature and intellectual capacity of the race. The enormous expenditures of war and vice being dis- continued, and invention, aided by science, having got the mastery of nature, so as to make production more copious and easy, the laboring classes will be able to live in comparatively leisure and elegance, and find ample time for self-improvement. Now begins the era of genius ; for all the mind there is, being brought into action, and that in the best con- ditions of intellectual health, it must result that the em- inent minds will tower as much higher, as the level whence they rise is more elevated. The old leaden at- mosphere of a physical age will be displaced by an in- tellectual atmosphere, quickening to the breath and full of the music of new thoughts. Society being delivered of all that is low, and raised to a general condition of comfort and beauty, will become a new and more in- spiring element. The general peace of nations and the nobler peace of virtue, will make the reflective faculty as a clear sounding bell in a calm day ; every depth of 120 THE GROWTH OF LAW. nature will be sounded and brought into the clear light of philosophy. The imagination will be pu- rified by the subjection of the passions, and fired by the vigor of a faith that sees, in all things visi- ble, vehicles of the invisible, in everything finite, a sym- bol of infinity. But, what is the greatest pre-eminence, it will come to pass that, as the ideal of the Greeks was beauty, and that of the Eomans law, so this new age shall embrace an ideal more comprehensive, as it is higher than all, namely, Love. The magnificent genius of Plato at- tained to some indistinct conception of this same thing, in that intellectual love, so much extolled by him, as being the power of all that is divine in virtue — the love of kindred souls thirsting after truth, and tracing back their way to that bright essence, whose image they dimly remember, and which, having cast its shadow on them in some previous state, made them forever kindred to each other and to it. But the love of which I speak is this and more — a love to souls not kindred, a love of action and of power, as well as of sentiment and of mu- tual affinity. This love is no partial idea, as every other must be ; it is universal, it embraces all that is beneficent, pure, true, beautiful; God, man; eternity, time. To build up, to adorn, to increase enjoyment; to receive the whispers of that Original Love which in- habits all the heights and depths; to sing out the rhythm and eternal harmony of that music wherewith it fills, not the stars only, but all the recesses of being; to go up into the heights of reason after its plan, and THE GROWTH OF LAW. 121 lay the head of philosophy on its bosom ; to weep, re- joice and tremble before it, everywhere present, every- where warm and luminous, palpitating in all that lives, blushing into all that is beautiful, bursting out as a fire, in all that is terrible — thus employed, filled with this love, as by a storm falling out of heaven, lifted and ce- lestially empowered by it, the new moral age must needs unfold a regenerated capacity and construct a lit- erature, more nearly divine, than has yet been con- ceived. All that is great in action, disinterested in suftering, strong in the abhorrence of evil, beautiful in art, wise in judgment, deep in science — the keen, the soft, the wrathful and piercing, as well as the gentle and patient — every side and capacity of mind will display itself, and as the talent of the Creator unfolds its gran- deur in love, so by love, the talent of his creature will roll out into that full-toned harmony of act and power which constitutes the distinction of genius. Brothers in letters, I may not close without some reference more personal to ourselves and closer to the occasion. We are here, once more, in the classic shades where our youthful beginnings were nurtured. We most filially venerate and love the place. Nowhere else does memory drop the element of tense and be- come experience as here. Our youth returns upon us ; its day-dreams even are here, as we left them, floating on the air and resting in the trees. As now our hearts are open to ingenuous feeling, let us take to ourselves one more lesson before we part, and resolve to wed 11 122 THE GROWTH OF LAW. ourselves, unchangeably, to the good of mankind and the final triumph of right. First of all let us, as scholars, have faith in the fu ture. No man was ever inspired through his memory. The eye of Genius is not behind. Nor was there ever a truly great man, whose ideal was in the past. The offal of history is good enough for worms and monks, but it will not feed a living man. Power moves in the direction of hope. If we can not hope, if we see noth- ing so good for history as to reverse it, we shrink from the destiny of our race, and the curse of all impotence is on us. Legions of men, who dare not set their face the way that time is going, are powerless ; you may push them back with a straw. They have lost their virility, their soul is gone out. They are owls flying towards the dawn and screaming, with dazzled eyes, that light should invade their prescriptive and congenial darkness. Every scholar should be so far imbued with the phi- losophic spirit, as to remember that ways and manners, which stand well with prescription, do not always stand well with reason, and that respectable practice is often most respectably assaulted. Suffer no effeminate dis- gusts ; neither always be repelled, when a good object is maintained by crude and even pernicious arguments. Men are often wiser in their ends than in their reasons, and, if we see them staggering after the light, our duty is not to mock them, but to lead them. Consider how God has stood by man's history and labored with him in his crudest follies, and even by means of them con- trived to help him on. THE GROWTH OF LAW. 123 We have a country where the legislation of right is free as it never was before in any other. Everything true, just, pure, good, great, can here unfold itself with- out obstruction. To say that we are called to be a nation of lawgivers, in the public constitution, is not all ; we are called to be lawgivers in a higher and more sacred capacity. Political law, as supported by force, is here weak, that it may be strong as supported by reason. Our institutions postulate, in everything, a a condition of love to the right, and their destiny is to be magnificent, as it is a destiny of principle and truth. Be it then our part, as scholars, to be lawgivers, bringing forth to men the determinations of reason, and assistino; them to construct the science of a'oodness. And consider that it is sound opinion, not multitudi- nous opinion, that takes the force of law. Have faith in truth, never in numbers. The great surge of num- bers rolls up noisily and imposingly, but flats out on the shore, and slides back into the mud of oblivion. But a true opinion is the ocean itself, calm in its rest, eternal in its power. The storms and tumultuous thunders of popular rage and bigoted wrong will some- time pause, in their travel round the sphere, and listen to its powerful voice. And if the night comes down to veil it for a time, it is still there, beating on with the same victorious pulse and waiting for the day. A right opin- ion can not die, for its life is in moral ideas, which is the life of God. Have patience, and it shall come to pass, in due time, that what you rested in the tranquillity of rea- son, has been crowned with the majesty of law. IV. THE FOUNDERS GREAT IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS.^ Gentlemen of the New England SocifexY: It is a filial sentiment, most honorably signified by yoUj in the organization of your Society, and the regu- lar observance of this anniversary, that the founders and first fathers of states are entitled to the highest honors. You agree, in this, with the fine philosophic scale of awards offered by Lord Bacon, when he says, ^' The true marshaling of the degrees of sovereign hon- ors are these : In the first place, are Conditores ; found- ers of states. In the second place, are Legislaiores ; law- givers, which are sometimes called second-founders, or Perpetui Principes^ because they govern by their ordi- nances after they are gone. In the third place, are Lih- eratores ; such as compound the long miseries of civil wars, or deliver their countries from the servitude of strangers or tyrants. In the fourth place, are Propaga- toreSj or Propugnatores imperii; such as in honorable wars enlarge their territories, or make noble defense against invaders. And in the last place, Patres patrice^ * Delivered as an Oration before the New England Society of New York, Dec. 21, A. D. 1849. THE FOUNDEKS GREAT, ETC. 125 which reign justly, and make the times good wherein they live." Holding this true scale of honor, which you may the more heartily do, because you have fathers who are en- titled to reverence for their worth as well as their his- toric position, you have undertaken to remember, and with due observances to celebrate, each year, this twenty-second day of December, as the day Conditorum Eeipuhlicoe. Be it evermore a day, such as may fitly head the calendar of our historic honors; a day that remembers with thoughtful respect and reverence the patience of oppressed virtue, the sacrifices of duty, and the solemn fatherhood of religion ; — a register also of progress, showing every year by what new triumphs and results of good, spreading in wider circles round the globe, that Being whose appropriate work it is to crown the fidelity of faithful men, is Himself justifying your homage, and challenging the homage of mankind. Meantime, be this one caution faithfully observed, that all prescriptive and stipulated honors have it as their natural infirmity to issue in extravagant and forced commendations, and so to mar not seldom the reverence they would fortify. "We pay the truest hon- ors to men that are worthy, not by saying all imagina- ble good concerning them : least of all can we do fit honor, in this manner, to the fathers of New England. It as little suits the dignity of truth, as the iron rigor of the men. If it be true, as we often hear, that one may be most effectually "damned by faint praise;" it may 11^ 126 THE FOUNDERS GREAT also be done as fatally, by what is even more unjust and, to genuine merit, more insupportable, by over- vehement and undistinguishing eulog}^ We make al- lowance for the subtractions of envy ; but when love invents fictitious grounds of applause, we imagine some fatal defect of those which are real and true. There is no genuine praise but the praise of justice: " For fame impatient of extremes, decays Xot less bv envT, than excess of praise." In this view, it will not be an offense to you, I trust, or be deemed adverse to the real spirit of the occasion, if I suggest the conviction that our New England fa- thers have sometimes suffered in this manner — not by any conscious design to over-magnify their merit, but by the amiable zeal of inconsiderate and partially quali- fied eulogy. In particular, it has seemed to be a fre- quent detraction from their merit, that results are as- cribed to their wisdom, or sagacious forethought as pro- jectors, which never even came into their thoughts at all ; and which, taken only as proofs of a Providential purpose working in them, and of God's faithful adher- ence to their history, would have yielded a more rever- ent tribute to Him, and raised them also to a far higher pitch of sublimity in excellence. The very greatness of these men, as it seems to me, is their unconsciousness. It is that so little conceiving the future they had in them, they had a future so magnificent — that God was in them in a latent power of divinity and world- disposing counsel which they did not suspect, in a wis- dom wiser than they knew, in principles more quicken- IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 127 ing and transforming than they could even imagine themselves, and was thus preparing in them, to lift the whole race into a higher plane of existence, and one as much closer to Himself. And just here is the difficulty that most consciously oppresses me in the engagement of the present occasion. It is to praise these great men justl}^ — to say what is fit to them and not unfit to God. It is to make uncon- sciousness in good the crown of sublimity in good ; to set it forth as their special glory, in this view, that they executed by duty and the stern fidelity of their lives, what they never propounded in theory, or set up as a mark of attainment — so to meet the spirit of the occa- sion, and to raise in you the fit measure of enthusiasm, by the sober wine alone of justice and truth. Do I then deny what has been so often observed in the great characters of history, that they commonly act their part under a visible sense or presentiment of the greatness of their mission ? Is it a fiction that they are thus exalted in it, made impassible, borne along as by some fate or destiny, or, to give it a more Christian name, some inspiration or call of God? Nothing is more true; it is in fact the standing distinction the sublimity itself of greatness. ** Souls destined to o'erleap the vulgar lot, And mould tlie world unto the scheme of God, Have a fore-consciousness of their high doom." Ignorant of this, we can not understand what great- ness is. To us it no longer exists. ' But we need, in 128 THE FOUNDERS GREAT the acceptance of, a truth so ennobhiig to human his- tory, to affix those terms and restrictions under which it is practically manifested, else we make even history itself fantastic or incredible. Whoever appears to assert any great truth of science or religion, wanted by his age, ought to feel an immov able conviction that the truth asserted will prevail, else he is no fit champion. But as regards the particular effects it will produce in human society ; these he can not definitely trace. He can only know that, falling into the great currents of causes, complex and multi- tudinous as they are, some good and beneficent results will follow, that are worthy of its divine scope and or- der. In like manner, the hero of an occasion, exalted by the occasion to be God's instrument, we may believe is sometimes gifted with a confidence that is nearly pro- phetic, and by force of which he is able to inspire others with a courage equal to the greatness of the en- counter. Thus it was that Luther, in virtue of a confi- dence that other men had not, became the hero of the Eeformation, But when we speak of inventions, insti- tutions, policies, migrations, revolutions, which are not single truths or occasions, but inaugurations of causes that can reveal their issues only in the lapse of centu- ries, the projectors and leaders in these can be sure, at most, only of the grand ideal that inspires them ; but by what medial changes and turns of history God will bring it to pass, or in what definite forms of social good it will finally clothe itself, they can but dimly conceive. And this is what I mean, when I speak of the uncon- IN THEIR UNCOXSCIOUSXESS. 129 scions, or iindesigning agency of the fathers of New England, considered as the authors of those great polit- ical and social issues which we now look upon as the highest and crowning distinctions of our history. Their ideal was not in these, but in issues still farther on and more magnificent, to which these are only Providential media or means. Occupied by the splendor of these medial stages of advancement, and unable to imagine anything yet more glorious to be revealed hereafter, we conclude that we have reached the final result and his- toric completion of our destiny ; and then we cast about us to ask what our sublime fathers attempted, and settle a final judgment of their merits. Sometimes we smile at their simplicity, finding that the highest hope they conceived in their migration, was nothing but the hope of some good issue for religion ! We secretly wonder, or, it may be, openly express our regret, that they could not have had some conception of the magnificent results of hberty and social order that were here to be revealed. And in this view, we often set ourselves to it, as a kind of filial duty, to make out for them what we so much desire. Who of us, meantime, is able, for once, to imagine that the shortness may be ours, the prophecy and the greatness theirs ? We want them to be heroes, but we can not allow them to be heroes of faith. This indeed" is a great day for heroes, and our literature is at work, as in a trade, upon the manufacture. But it will some- time be discovered that, in actual life, there are two kinds of heroes — heroes for the visible, and heroes for 130 THE FOUNDERS GREAT the invisible ; they that see their mark hung out as a flag to be taken on some turret or battlement, and they that see it nowhere, save in the grand ideal of the in- ward life ; extempore heroes fighting out a victory defi- nitely seen in something near at hand, and the life-long, century -long, heroes that are instigated by no ephemeral crown or more ephemeral passion, but have sounded the deep base-work of God's principle, and have dared calmly to rest their all upon it, come the issue where it may, or when it may, or in what form God will give it. The former class are only symbols, I conceive, in the visible life of that more heroic and truly divine great- ness in the other, which is never offered to the eyes in forms of palpable achievement. These latter are God's heroes — heroes all of faith; the other belong to us; flaming as dilettanti figures of art in romances, figuring as gods in the apotheosis of pantheistic literature, or it may be striding in real life and action over fields of battle and pages of bloody renown. If our New Eng- land fathers do not figure as conspicuously in this latter class of heroes as some might desire, may they not sometime be seen, when the main ideal of religion is fulfilled, to have been the more truly great because of the remoteness and the sacred grandeur of their aims ? And if the political successes in which, as Americans, we so properly indulge our pride, are but scintillations thrown off in the onward career of their historic aims and purposes, little honor can it do them to discover that these scintillations are the primal orbs and central fires of their expectation. IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 131 Let us offer them no such injustice. They are not to be praised as a band of successful visionaries, coming over to this new world, in prophetic lunacy, to get up a great republic and renovate human society the world over. They propound no theories of social order. They undertake not, in their human will or wisdom, to be a better Providence to the nations ; make no prom- ise of the end they will put to all the human ills, or of melting off the ice of the poles to cap them with a ^^ bo- real crown " of felicity. Had they come to build a new future, in this manner, by their will, according to some preconceived theory of their head, the first awful year of their settlement would have broken their confidence, and left them crying, as home-sick children, . for some way of return to their country. The " craven scruple Of thinking too precisely of tlie event, — A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom, And ever three parts coward — " would have shaken their fortitude with an ague as fatal as that which, in the first dreadful winter, assailed the life of their bodies — giving us, in their history, one other and quite unnecessary proof, that man is the weakest and most irresolute of beings when he hangs his purpose on his expectations. But coming in simple duty, duty was their power — a divine fate in them, whose thrusting on to greatness and triumphant good, took away all questions from the feeble arbitrament of their will, and made them even impassible to their bur- THE FOUNDERS 6BSAT dens. And they went on building their unknown fa- ture, the more resolutely because it was unknown. For, though unknown^ it was present in its power — present, not as in their projects and wise theories, but as a latent heat, concealed in their principles, and works, and prayers, and secret love, to be given out and become palpable in the world's cooling, ages after. Xor is this susrcrestion of a latent wisdom or law present in their migration, any conceit of the £ancy ; for as in the growth of a man or a tree, so also in the pri- mal germ of nations and social bodies, there is a secret Form or Law present in them, of which their after- growth is scarcely more than a fit actualization or de- velopment. This secret germ, or presiding form of the nascent order, has the force also of a creative, constitu- tive instinct in the body, building up that form by a wisdom hid in itself; though conceived, in thought, by no one member. By this instinctive action languages are struck out as permanent forms of thought, in the obscurest and most savage tribes, squared by the nicest principles of symmetry and grammatic order, having hid in their single words whole chapters of wisdom that, some thousands of years after, wiU be opened by a right explication, to the astonished gaze of the philo- sophic student By the same instinctive germinal force, unconsciously present in a people, the future in- stitutions and forms of liberty will be constructed ; just as the comb of the hive is built by the instinctive ge- ometry of the hive, though not by the geometric sci- IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 133 ence of any one or more single bees in it. And some- what in this manner it was that our institutions were present in the fathers and founders of our history. They had in their religious faith a high constructive instinct, raising them above their age and above them- selves; creating in them fountains of wisdom deeper than they consciously knew, and preparing in them powers of benefaction that were to be discovered only by degrees and slowlj^-, to the coming ages. If you will show them forth as social projectors or architects of a new democracy, they stubbornly refuse to say or do anything in that fashion. They are found protesting rather against your panegyric itself Or if they have come to your acquaintance overlarded in this manner, so that you really regard them as the successful and de- liberate revolutionizers of the modern age, you will need to wash off these coarse pigments and daubs of eulogy, as with nitre and much soap, and set them be- fore you shining in the consecrating oil of faith, before you can truly conceive them as the fathers of American history. Their greatness is the unconscious greatness of their simple fidelity to God — the divine instinct of good and of wisdom by which God, as a reward upon duty, made them authors and founders of a social state under forms appointed by Himself. It has been already assumed in this general outline of my subject, that the practical aim or ideal of our fa- thers, in their migration to the new world, was religion. This was the star of the East that guided them hither. 12 VSi THE FOUNDERS GREAT They came as to the second cradle-place of a renovated Messiahship. They declare it formally themselves, when they give, as the principal reason of their under- taking, ^'the great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation for the propagating and advancing the kingdom of Christ, in these remote parts of the world.""^ It appears, however, that they had a retrospective ref- erence, in their thoughts, as well as the prospective ex- pectation here stated. Thus, it is affirmed by Mr. Hil- dersham, who had full opportunity to know their pre- cise designs, that the colonists, as a body, before com- ing over, ^^ agreed in nothing further, than in this gen- eral principle — that the reformation of the Church was to be endeavored according to the word of God.^'f But precisely what, or how much they intended by this, will be seen nowhere else, with so great clearness, as in the ever memorable parting address which Eobin- son made to the Pilgrims, at their embarkation. Here we behold the real flame of their great idea. He said : ^*I charge you before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than I have followed Christ. And if God shall reveal anything to you, by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you ever were to receive anything by my ministry ; for I am confident that God hath more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word. I can not suffi- ciently bewail the condition of the Eeformed churches, who have come to a period in religion, and will go no * Young's nironiclets, p. 47. f Cotton Mather, p. 18. IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 135 further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans can not be driven to go beyond Luther ; for whatever part of God's will he hath further imparted by Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And so also the Oalvinists stick where Calvin left them — a misery much to be lamented. For though they both were shining lights in their times, yet God hath not re- vealed his whole will to them. Eemember now you.r church covenant, whereby you engage with God and one another, to receive whatever light shall be made known to you from His written word. For it is not possible that the Christian world is so lately come out of such thick anti-Christian darkness, and that full per- fection of knowlege should break forth at once."^ A most remarkable passage of history, in which this truly great man is seen asserting a position, at least two whole centuries in advance of his age. His residence abroad, among so many forms of opinion and of order, has quickened in his mind the germ of a true compre- hensive movement. . He also perceives the impossibil- ity that the full maturity of truth and order should have burst forth in a day, as distinctly as a philosophic historian of the nineteenth century. The Eeformation, he is sure, is no complete thing — probably it is more incomplete than any one has yet been able to imagine. And then he has the faith to accept his own conclusion. Sending out the little half-flock of his church, across the wide ocean, he bids them go to watch for light ; and there, in the free wilderness of nature, unrestrained by * Young's Chronicles, p. 396-7. 136 THE FOUNDERS GREAT his own teachings, to complete, if possible, the un- known measure of Holy Eeformation. This was the errand he gave them, and in this we have the fixed ideal of their undertaking. And they meant by ^' reformation," all that God should teach them and their children of the coming ages, by the light that should break forth from His holy word — all that was needed to ^^^'epare the purity and universal spread of Christian truth, and open to mankind the reign of Christ in its full felicity and glory. They fixed no limits. It might include more than they at present thought, or could even dare to think. Still they had courage to say — "Let the reformation come in God's measures, and as He himself wdll shape it." And for this, they entered, with a stout heart, upon the perils and privations of their most perilous undertaking. Doubtless they had the natural feelings of men, but they were going to bear the ark of the Almighty, and could not painfully fear. Eobinson had said — and he knew what was in them — "It is not with us as with other men, whom small things discourage, and small discontents cause to wish themselves home again. ""^ Confidence most sublime! justified by a history of pa- tience equally sublime. AVe shall see, before I close, whether the errand of reliofious reformation, thus ac- cepted, was an illusion, or whether it contained, in fact, the spring of all our political successes, and of other and still greater that are yet to come. * Young's Chronicles, p. 61. IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 137 Let us pause a moment tere and change the scene. We will leave the ^'pinched fanatics" of Leyden, as they are sometimes called, weeping their farewell on Eobinson's neck, and turn ourselves to England. As- cending out of the dull and common-place level of re- ligion, we will breathe, a moment, in the higher plane of wisdom and renowned statesmanship. The philoso- pher and sage of St. Albans, hereafter to be celebrated as the father of modern science, sits at his table, in the deep silence of study, preparing a solemn gift of wis- dom for his countrymen. His brow hangs heavy over his desk, and the glow of his majestic face, and the clear lustre of his meditative eye, reveal the mighty soul discoursing with the inward oracle. The noble property-holders and chartered land-companies of the realm are discoursing, everywhere, of the settlement of colonies in the new world, and discussing the causes of failure in the settlements heretofore attempted — he has taken up the theme, and is writing his essay '' Of Plan- tations." And the advice he offers to their guidance is summarily this— Make a beginning, not with "the scum of the people," but with a fair collection of single men, who are good in all the several trades of industry. Make as much as possible of the spontaneous products of the country, such as nuts and esculent roots; but expect to support the plantation, in great part, by sup- plies from the mother country, for the first twenty years, and let the supplies be dealt out carefully, "as in a besieged town." "As to government, let it be in the hands of one, assisted with some counsel, and let 12- 138 THE FOUNDERS GREAT them have commission to exercise martial laws with some limitations.'' ^^When the plantation grows to strength, then it is time to plant with women as with men." Need I stay to imagine, before an American audi- ence, what kind of history must follow a plantation or- dered in this manner — a plantation without the family state, without the gentle strengthening influence of wo- man, governed by a single head, under martial law ! Behold the little May Flower rounding, now, the southern cape of England — filled with husbands and wives and children, families of righteous men, under "covenant with God and each other," "to lay some good foundation for religion :" — engaged both to make and to keep their own laws, expecting to supply their own wants and bear their own burdens, assisted by none but the Grod in whom they trust. Here are the hands of industry! the germs of liberty! the dear pledges of order ! and the sacred beginnings of a home ! That was the wisdom of St. Albans — this of Leyden. Bacon is there — Eobinson is here. There was the deep sagacity of human statesmanship — here is the divine oracle of duty and religion. religion ! religion ! true daughter of God ! wiser in action than genius itself in theory ! How visible, in such a contrast, is the truth, that whatever is wisest in thought and most heroic in impulse, flows down upon men from the summits of re- ligion — and is, in fact, a divine'birth in souls ! We are not, then, to conceive, and must not attempt IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 139 to show, that our fathers undertook the migration with any political objects in view ; least of all as distinctly proposing to lay the foundations of a great republic. Their end was religion, simply and only religion. Out upon the lone ocean, feeling their way cautiously, as it were, through the unknown waves, exploring, in their busy fancies and their prayers, the equally unknown future before them, they as little conceived that they had in their ship the germ of a vast repubhc that, in two centuries, would command the respect and attract the longing desires of the nations, as they saw with their eyes the lonely wastes about them whitening with the sails and foaming under the swift ships of that re- public, already become the first commercial power of the world. The most sanguine expectation of theirs I have anywhere discovered, which, however, was not political, but religious, was ventured by Gov. Bradford, viz. : — '^ That as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here may, in some sort, shine even to the whole nation!" This one small candle lighting the thousands of all England, is not quite as bold a figure of enthusiasm now as it was when it was uttered, and will probably be somewhat less extravagant, a hundred years hence, than now. No ! they cross the sea in God's name only, sent by Him, as they believed, to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness — Pre- pare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. But whither those straightened paths will lead, and in what shape the new kingdom of the Lord will come, they as little conceive as John the Baptist himself. 140 THE FOU^^DERS GREAT Let us not be surprised, then, neither let it be any derogation from their merit, if we find them actually opposed, not seldom, in thought or speculative view, to opinions and institutions, now regarded as being most distinctively American. In this I partly rejoice; for some of the distinctions we boast, it is their most real praise, not to have sought or accepted. Thus we boast that we have made solemn proof to the world of the great principle, that civil government has its founda- tion in a social compact- — that it originates only in the consent of the governed — that self-government is the inalienable right of every people — that true liberty is the exercise and secure possession of this prerogative — that majorities of wills have an inherent right to deter- mine the laws — and that government by divine right is only a solemn imposture. I will not deny that, in some very partial and qualified sense, these supposed doctrines of ours may be true. But taken in the more absolute sense, in which they are boasted by many, they compose a heap of as empty and worthless chaff as ever fed the conceit of any people in the world. What are formal compacts, what is self-government, what are majorities of wills, taken as foundations of civil order? Or, if we speak of right, what right is there of any kind, which is not divine right? Or, dropping all such refinements, what truth can there be in abstract principles of order, discovered by us, which make every other government that has existed in the world, for six thousand years, an imposture, or a base- less usurpation ? IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 141 But if it be conceived that there are three distinct or- ders of government, adapted to three distinct stages of social advancement — the government of force, the gov- ernment of prescription, and the government of choice — and then that the particular terms of order just named are most appropriate and happiest for us, taken as modes or machinery of government, and not as theo- retic and moral foundations ; if we say these will best accommodate our liberties, and secure its in the high position to which God has raised us, it is well. But then we need to add that law is law, binding upon souls, not as human will, or the will of just one more than half the full grown men over a certain age, but a power of God entering into souls and reigning in them as a divine instinct of civil order, creating thus a state — perpetual, beneficent, the safeguard of the homes and of industry, the condition of a public feeling and a con- sciously organic life. This it is that makes all govern- ment sacred and powerftil, that it somehow stands in the will of God ; nay, it is the special dignity and glorj^- and freedom of our government, that it rests, so little, on the mere will or force of man, so entirely on those principles of justice and common beneficence which we know are sacred to God. And it is the glory also of our founders and first fethers that they prepared us to such a state. Had they managed to weave nothing into our character more adequate than we sometimes discover in our political dogmas, we should even have wanted the institutions about which we speculate so feebly, and should have been as hopeless of an}^ settled 142 THE FOUNDERS GREAT terms of order, as we now are confident of our baseless and undigested principles. I can not withstand the temptation to recite, just here, another passage from Eobinson. I do it, partly because it so exactly meets the genius of our institu- tions, and reveals so beautifully the moral springs of our history, and partly because it prepares a way so aptly for other suggestions jet to be offered. He gives the Pilgrims, on their departure, a written letter of ad- vice to be carried with them, in which are contained the following remarkable words — words which I could even wish were graven in tablets of stone, as the words of a father before Washington, and set up over the doors of our Congress, our State Legislatures, our town halls and political assembly rooms, there to stand, meeting the eyes of our people as long as the nation exists — certain always of this, that when the spirit of the words is wholly gone, the nation will exist no- longer : ^^ Lastly, whereas you are to become a body politic, using civil government amongst yourselves, and are not furnished with any persons of special eminency above the rest [no knights or noble orders] to be chosen into office of government, let your wisdom and godliness appear, not only by choosing such persons as do en- tirely love and will diligently promote the common good, but also in yielding unto them all due honor and obedience in their lawful administrations ; not behold- ing the ordinariness of their persons, but God's ordi- nance for your good ; nor being like the foolish multi- IN THEIK UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 143 tude, wlio more honor the gay coat [understand the stars and ribbons of nobility] than either the virtuous mind of the man, or the glorious ordinance of the Lord. But you know better things, and that the image of the Lord's power and authority, which the magistrate bear- eth, is honorable in how mean persons soever. And this duty you may the more willingly and conscionably perform, because you are, at least for the present, to have only them for your ordinary governors, which yourselves shall make choice of for that work."^ But, while our founders stand right, when viewed in relation to what is most really fundamental in our insti- tutions, we must not expect them to concur in all that we now regard as most properly and distinctly Amer- ican. They had no schemes of democracy to execute. They were not, in fact, or in their own view, republi- cans in their ideas of government. When Eobinson's doctrine of church order was assailed as being a scheme of Christian democracy, he repelled the imputation as a slander, insisting, instead, that it was a plan of order '^plainly aristocratical."f They were all, to a man, royalists and true Englishmen — pleased with the hope of " endeavoring the advancement of his Majesty's do- minion.":]: Some of them delighted in being able to write "J/r." before their names, and the others would have cast out any man as a leveler and disorderly per- son, who dared to controvert the validity of that hio-h * Young's Chronicles, p. 95. f Punchard, p. 348. X Cotton Mather, p. 6. li-i THE FOUNDERS GREAT distinction. Does any one the less certainly know that their whole scheme of principle and order was virtually and essentially republican, even from the first? They as little thought of raising a separation of church and state as of planting a new democracy. They accepted in full and by formal reference, the En- glish doctrine on this subject, and Eobinson even pro- fessed his willingness to accept the ^'oath of suprem- acy," which acknowledges the king as the rightful head of the church. When a new settlement or town was planted, they said, not that the settlers were become a body politic, but that they were ^4nchurched." And when Davenport preached on the terms of suffrage, the problem stated was, ^'how to order a frame of civil government in a plantation whose design is relig- ion."^ And yet we can look back now and see as distinctly as possible, that their very doctrine of church-member- ship must necessitate a final separation of church and state. For, if none but the true members of Christ can be included in the church, and none but such as are in- cluded can have the right of suffrage, then it must shortly appear that many good neighbors and virtuous sons and brothers are reduced to the condition of aliens in the commonwealth. Accordingly, we find that the settlers of the Hartford Colony, who had begun to see the pernicious consequences of the restricted suffrage in Massachusetts, in the beautiful constitution they adopt- ed — the first written constitution of a purely represent- * Bacon, p. 280. IN THEIR UNCOXSCIOUSNESS. 145 ative republican government known to human history — opened the right of suffrage to all whom the several towns might elect as freemen. And thus, in less than twenty years after the settlement of Plymouth, the sep- aration of church and state is visibly begun — a step is taken which can possibly issue in this alone, though the result is not completely and formally reached, till a hundred and fifty years have passed away. I wish it were possible to claim for our fathers the honor of a free toleration of religious opinions. This it would seem that they might have learned from their own wrongs and sufferings. But they were not the men to think of finding their doctrines in any woes of their flesh. They had, in fact, a conscience against tol- eration, lest the state, ''whose end is religion," should seem to connive at false doctrines and schismatic prac- tices. Therefore, when Cromwell was proposing toler- ation in England, the Synod of Massachusetts even pro- tested against the measure as licentious. And one of their ministers, the eccentric pastor of Ipswich, was stirred up to publish, in England, a most violent dia- tribe against it. He delighted in the old maxim that "true religion is ignis 'prohationis^^ — a test of fire. In- deed this narrow-spirited man had lived in the midSt of toleration, upon the continent, and had not discovered its Christian beauty. "I lived," he says, ''in a city where a Papist preached in one church, a Lutheran in another, a Calvinist in a third ; a Lutheran one part of the day, and a Calvinist the other, in the same pulpit. The religion of that place was but motley and meagre, 146 THE FOUXDEKS GKEAT and tlieir aflfections leopard-like.''''^ Alas ! for the brave pastor of Ipswich, how clear is it now, that the tolera- tion he so much dreaded really belonged to all but the rather testy prejudices that he took for a part of his re- ligion. The old ignis lorobationis^ too, whose smoke had so lately been wafted over England from Smith- field and Tyburn — which, how^ever, he did not mean, I trust, to commend in its most literal and orthodox sense — is gone out forever the world over. And as to the "leopard-like" religion, just that w^hich compelled a separation of Church and State, has doubtless com- pelled a sufferance also of this, even in his own paro- chial Ipswich itself. Or if free opinion be a leopard, spotting over the Church, or dissolving it into so many motley groups of division, it will ere long be seen that this unruly leopard is fulfilling the prophecy, forgetting his instincts of prey and schism, and lying down wath the kids of love, in a catholic and perennial unity. It need scarcely be added, that our fathers had as little thought of a separation from the mother country and as little desire of founding an independent com- monwealth, as of the other distinctions just named. England w^as their home, they loved the monarchy. They would even have doubted their piety itself, had they found a single unloyal thought in their bosoms. And yet they were compelled to be jealous, even from the first, of any too close implication with the political affairs of the mother country, lest it should finally in- volve the security of their liberties. They formally * Cobbler of Agawam, p. ^. IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 147 declined, in this view, to connect themselves with Cromwell's Parliament by any application to it, and also to appear by deputies in the Westminster Assem- bly of Divines."^ It may be taken also as a singular and most ominous fact, that the Hartford Colony in ar- ranging the new constitution just alluded to, made no mention either of king or parliament. This constitu- tion required an oath of allegiance directly to itself, and even asserted a supreme power — ''In which Greneral Court shall consist the supreme power of the Common- wealth."f And this supreme power they, in fact, ex- ercised forever after; subject to no negative, under governors of their own choice, creating their own tribu- nals and holding them without appeal, and even openly resisting the royal levies as an infringement of their rights. Here was, in fact, a little, independent, uncon- scious republic, unfolding itself by the banks of the Connecticut, on its own basis, under its own laws ; so that when the war of independence came, instead of being dissolved by the state of revolution and required to reorganize itself, it stood ready in full form for ac- tion, and was able, in the first twenty-four hours after the outbreak, to set twenl^ thousand men upon the march, fully appointed with ofi&cers and arms. The people had never set up for independence. They were loyal — in their way. But they had been sheltered un- der the very singular privileges of their charter, as well as by their more retired position ; and had actually grown apart, unconsciously and by force of their own ■^- Bancroft, vol. i, pp, 450-L f Trnrabiill, i, p. 532. 148 THE FOUNDERS GREAT moral affinities, into a free republic. The condition of Ehode Island was similar ; and the same general pro- cess was going on also in the other colonies, only under many restraints from royal governors and the qualified privileges of their charters. Now there is a class of writers and critics in our country, who imagine it is quite clear that our fathers can not have been the proper founders of our American liberties, because it is in proof that they were so intol- erant and so clearly unrepublican often in their avowed sentiments. They suppose the world to be a kind of professor's chair, and expect events to transpire logi- cally in it. They see not that casual opinions, or con- ventional and traditional prejudices are one thing, and that principles and morally dynamic forces are often quite another ; that the former are the connectives only of history, the latter its springs of life ; and that if the former serve well enough, as providential guards and moderating weights, overlying the deep geologic fires and subterranean heavings of the new moral instincts below, these latter will assuredly burst up, at last, in strong mountains of rock, to crest the world. Unable to conceive such a truth, they cast about them, accord- ingly, to find the paternity of our American institutions in purely accidental causes. We are clear of aristo- cratic orders, they say, because there was no blood of which to make an aristocracy; independent of king and parliament, because we grew into independence under the natural effects of distance and the exercise of IX THEIR UXCONSCIOUSXESS. 149 a legislative power; republican, because our constitu- tions were cast in the moulds of British law ; a wonder of growth in riches, enterprise, and population, because of the hard necessities laid upon us, and our simple modes of life. And the concurrent action of these causes must not be denied ; we only must not take them as the true ac- count of our successes. As good accidents were en- joyed elsewhere as here. There is the little decayed town of St. Augustine, settled by a Spanish colony even earlier, by some years, than Boston, which, never- theless, we were just now called to rescue, by a mili- tary force, from the incursions of the savages ! There are Mexico and the South American states, colonized by Spain, even a hundred years prior to the settlement of Plymouth, — when Spain, too, was at the height of her glory, and even far in advance of England, as regards the state of wealth and civil order, — fellow-republics indeed in name, but ignorant still of what liberty is, thirty years after they have gotten the right to it; poor, unprogressive, demoralized by superstition, and the oldest and strongest of them all actually contend- ing, at this moment, with the aborigines, to save large towns and old and populous settlements from exterm- ination ! A glance in this direction is enough to show how much must be referred to the personal qualities and principles of the founders of a nation, how little to the mere accidents of circumstance and condition. Besides, there is yet another view of this question, 13- 150 THE FOUNDERS GKEAT that has a far higher significance. We do not under- stand, as it seems to me, the real greatness of our insti- tutions, when we look simply at the forms under which we hold our liberties. It consists not in these, but in the magnificent Possibilities that underlie these forms, as their fundamental supports and conditions. In these we have the true paternity and spring of our institu- tions, and these, beyond a question, are the gift of our founders. We see this, first of all, in the fixed relation between freedom and intelligence, and the remarkable care they had of popular education. It was not their plan to raise up a body of republicans. But they believed in mind as in God. Their religion was the choice of mind. The gospel they preached must have minds to hear it; and hence the solemn care they had, even ftom the first day of their settlement, of the education of every child. And, as God would have it, the chil- dren whom they trained up for j^iUars in the church, turned out also to be more than tools of power. They grew up into magistrates, leaders of the people, debat- ers of right and of law, statesmen, generals, and signers of declarations for liberty. Such a mass of capacity had never been seen before, in so small a body of men. And this is the first condition of liberty — the Condens- ation of Power. For liberty is not the license of an hour; it is not the butchery of a royal house, or the passion that rages behind a barricade, or the caps that are swung or the vivas shouted at the installing of a liberator. But it is the compact, impenetrable matter IK THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 151 of mucli manliood, the compressed energy of good sense and public reason, having power to see before and after, and measure action by counsel — this it is that walls about the strength and liberty of a people. To be free is not to fly abroad, as the owls of the night, when they take the freedom of the air, but it is to set- tle and build and be strong — a commonwealth as much better compacted in the terms of reason, as it casts off more of the restraints of force. Mutual confidence also is another and fundamental condition of free institutions. When a revolution breaks out in Mexico or in Paris, and the old magis- tracies are swept away, then immediately you shall see that a most painful question arises. Power must be deposited somewhere ; with whom can it safely be trust- ed ? Is it already in the hands of a committee ? then can this committee be trusted? Is a military com- mander set up to maintain order for a time with greater efficiency ? what shall restrain the commander ? Who- ever is in power, the signs are jealously watched and morbidly construed. Well is it if some faction does not spring up to usurp the sovereign power, by a new act of revolution, justified by the pretext of saving the public liberties. Here you have the whole history of Mexico for the last thirty years, and, with fewer and less frequent alternations, the history of France, for a longer period. There is a fatal want of mutual confi- dence which nothing can supply, for the simple reason that there is nothing in which to confide. Power is 152 THE FOUNDERS GREAT known only as power, not as the endowment of obliga- tion. We are distracted by no sucIl infirmity. We have never a tliougbt of danger in the immense powers we confide to our rulers, simply because we can trust one another. We know so well the good sense and the firm conscience of our people as to be sure that, if any magistrate lifts the flag of an usurper and throws off the terms of his trust, all power will instantly drop out of his hands, and nothing will be necessary but to send a constable after him, even though he be the head of the army itself! Now this matter of mutual confidence, fundamental as you see it to be to all strength in our institutions, or peace under them, has a very humble, unpretending look. Scarcely ever has it crept into the notice of his- tory. It has never been celebrated, I am sure, in any epic poem. No ! but it is the silent exploit of a great history. Let Mexico ask for it, and offer the mortgage of her mines to buy it ; let France question her savans, or lay it on the mitred priesthood at her altars to pro- vide the new republic with this most indispensable gift, and alas ! they can not all together guess where it is, or whence it shall come. It is the silent growth of centu- turies, and there is no seed but the seed of Puritan dis- cipline, out of which it was ever known to grow. It is another and most necessary condition of free in- stitutions, that the people should be trained to a special exercise of personal self-government. For it is the dis- IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 153 tinction of a republic that it governs less, and less vio- lently, substituting a moral in place of a public con- trol. It is an approach, towards no government, grounded, as a possibility, in the fact of a more com- plete government established in the personal habits of the subjects themselves. No republic could stand for a year, if it were compelled to govern as much, and with as much force as the English people are governed. Force must be nearly dispensed with. For, '' What are numbers knit By force or custom? Man who man would be, Must rule the emph'e of himself ; in it Must be supreme, establishing his throne Of vanquished will, quelling the anarchy Of hopes and fears, being himself alone." Under this high possibility or condition, punish- ments are mitigated, the laws are fewer and more sim- ple, the police are at their own private employments and com'e only when they are sent for, domestic fortres- ses and standing armies nowhere appear to annoy the sense of liberty. A foreigner passing through the re- public and hearing the sound of government in no beat of the drum, seeing the government in no parade of horse or foot, or badges of police, concludes that the people are put upon their good behavior to-day; but when he is told that they were so yesterday, and will be to-morrow, he imagines that a doom of anarchy is certainly close at hand. The fears of Washington and the most sober patriots of his time, that our govern- ment had not strength enough to stand, were justified by all human example, and were not to be blamed. 15-i THE FOUNDERS GREAT And yet the course of our legislation has, to this hour, been a course of discontinuance. We seem to be mak- ing an experiment, with how many laws it is possible to disj)ense. We are anxious many times for the re- sult, and yet we do not suffer. We have gone a length in this direction which to any European will appear in- credible. When I ponder, not without fears I confess, this sublime distinction of our country, holding in con- trast what has been heretofore, and forecasting what God may be intending to bring forth here in the future ages, I am swallowed up in admiration of that power by which our faithful fathers were able to set our his- tory on a footing so peculiar. They gave up their all to religion, knew no wisdom but simply to live for re- ligion, and were it not for the intermixture of so many foreign elements which at present disturb our condition, we might almost imagine that in some good future, when the moral regimen of self-government is complete in our people, the external government of force and constraint may be safely dis2Densed with, the civil state subside in the fullness of the spiritual, and God alone be left presiding over the grand republic of wills by the suf&cienc}^ of his own divine Spirit and principles. Closely allied with this great possibility of self-gov- ernment, as a ground of republican order, is another, if indeed it be another, which must needs be prepared also. I speak of the displacement of lo3^alty, and the substitution of law. Loyalty is a sentiment, law a con- viction or principle. One is the tribute yielded to a IX THEIR UXCOXSCIOUSXESS. 155 person, tlie other is the enthronement of an abstraction simply, or a formal statute. In the sentiment of loy- alty, taken as a tribute of homage to high-born persons, to the starred noble, or the reigning prince of a royal house, there is a certain beauty which naturally fasci- nates the mind. The sentiment partakes of chivalry. In such a distribution of the social state, there is a fine show of distinctions that sets off a romance, or a play, and even gives to society itself the courtly air of a drama. Government is here seen in the concrete, set off by dress and title and scales of precedence, and the loyal heart rejoices in the homage it yields to the gods of the eye. Such a government is better adapted to a people generally rude and uneducated, or low in moral culture, because it is a government of show and senti- ment, and not of reason. But, with all the captivating airs it has to the mere looker-on, it is, in fact, a govern- ment of authorized caprice, and obedience a state, too often, of disappointed fealty. If it is pleasant to look upon the fine livery of a noble, it is far less so to be imprisoned as a public malefactor for a slight breach of the game law. The splendor of nobility is too often corruption ; the protection, contempt and insult. More- over, it will be found that a merely personal and senti- mental homage is of a nature too inconstant or ca- pricious ever to be confidently trusted. It may pos- sibly hold a dog to his fidelity, but it never held a race of men. There, accordingly, has never been a govern- ment, standing on the basis of loyalty, that was not obliged to fortify loyalty by a display of steel and 156 THE FOUNDERS GREAT of military squadrons, more conspicuous than its noble orders. Now the problem is, in founding a republic, to pre- pare a social state without artificial distinctions, and govern it by abstractions and formal constitutions in place of persons. The ^'gay coat" of Eobinson, the royal pageants and the starred nobility are withdrawn from the eye, and the laws and constitutions — in one view nothing but invisible abstractions or terms of pub- lic reason — must be set in that inward homage which can never be shaken. The problem, though it be the most difficult ever attempted in the history of mankind, is yet, for once, accomplished. Consider the terrible surging of j^arty and passion, displayed in one of our Presidential elections. See a whole nation, vast enough for an empire, roused to the intensest pitch of strife and tearing, as it were in the coming out of a demon. The old Guelph and Grhibelline factions were scarcely more violent or implacable. But the day of election passes without so much as the report of an outbreak, and the day after the whole nation is as quiet as if there were but one mind in it — all by the power of Invisible Law ! Nay, we had a President at the head of our great repub- lic who had no party in the Congress, and few friends among the people. During four whole years he occu- pied the seat of power, dispensing a patronage greater than that of the Queen of England, with not a soldier visible to assert the majesty of order, and yet without even the symptom of a disturbance. Xever, in all the history of mankind, was displayed a spectacle of moral IN" THEIR UNCOXSGIOUSXESS. 157 sublimity comparable to these four years of American history — sublimity the more sublime, because we were wholly unconscious of it ourselves, and had not even a thought that it could be otherwise ! And the fundamental cause, if you seek it, is that law with us is the public right and reason. It is mine, it is yours, and being for all as public reason, it is God's. To rebel against it, therefore, is to rebel both against ourselves and God. And if you ask whence came this conviction, how was it so firmly established ? By the spirit, I answer, and the religion of our fathers. Whether true or false is not now the question — it had, at least, that kind of merit that belongs to a religion made up mostly of judgments and abstractions. For these hard, heavy ingots of truth they renounced com- fort, country, property, and home. These they preach- ed. On these they even fed their children. Honors and pageants of distinction were out of sight. No man thouofht to be saved in the easv drill of forms. Xo mi- tred order, no priesthood, came between the worshiper and his God to act the patron for him, and be the con- duit of heaven's grace to his soul. He must enter with boldness into the holiest himself. There was besides in Calvinism, as a religion, just that which would give ab- stractions the intensest power and the most awful reality to the mind. It took its berinnino^ at the sovereimtv of God. It saw all men lying in a common plane of equality below. The only princes it knew were God's elect. And this kind of knio-hthood it was no easv formality to gain. It was to believe and accurately 1-i 158 THE FOUNDERS GREAT hold and experimentally know the iron base-work of an abstractive theology. The mind was thrust into questions that compelled action — eternal decrees, abso- lute election, arbitrary grace, imputed sin, imputed righteousness. On these hard anvils of abstraction the blows of thought must needs be ever ringing, and when the points were said to be cordially received, it was meant also that they were dialectically bedded in the framework of the man. Hence the remarkable power of abstractions in the American mind. The Germans can live in them as their day-dreams, but we can live upon them and by them as our daily bread. Our enthusiasm is most en- thusiastic, our practical energy most energetic and practical just here — in what we do, or hope to do, un- der the application of great principles, whether of sci- ence, government, or religion. And thus it has come to pass that the gulf between loyalty and law is effectu- ally crossed over. The transition is made, and we are set by it on a new and, as time will show, a much high- er plane of history. In one view, there is something ungracious in our American spirit. We are nearly as ignorant of the loyal feeling as a tribe of wild animals — unrespectful often to worth and true precedence. And yet we have a feeling as truly national as any people in the world. If the traveler in England begins to count the pictured Oaks and Lions, the royal or princely names stuck upon all shows and shops of trade and chop-houses and even petty wares, down to soaps and razors — riding alwavs on "Royal" roads, sleeping at IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 159 ^'Eoyal" inns, and washing in the water of some ''Eoyal" aqueduct — if he is nauseated, for the time, by what appears to be the inexhaustible servility of that great people, he is sure to smile at his own impa- tience when he returns, and recall the sentence he had passed. He takes up the newspapers at his hotel, and finds hoAY many headed by cognomens ingeniously compounded with "People," "Democracy," "Eepub- hc," "Constitution," "Independence," and "Nation." He runs his eye down the advertising columns and along the signboards of the street, and it falls on how many titles to patriotic favor, ranging in all grades, from the "People's Line" of steamboats and the ship "Constitution," down to the "Jefferson Lunch" and the "New Democratic. Liniment." Li one view, these demonstrations have a most ludicrous air ; in another, they are signs of the deepest significance — showing that we, as truly as the most loyal of nations, have our pub- lic feeling; a feeling not the less universal and decided, because its objects are .mostly impersonal. And, by force of this public feeling, it is just now be- ginning to appear that the government of this vast and, as most persons would say, loosely compacted republic, is really the strongest government in the world. What can be stronger than a government that has no enemies, and the subjects of which do not desire and would not suffer a change? They have looked out from their fastnesses and the loop-holes of fortified order in Eu- rope, prophesjang our speedy lapse into anarchy ; they have said, how can a people be governed without a 160 ^ THE FOUNDERS GREAT personal embodiment of authority in princes and noble orders? but now, when their thrones are rocking on the underswell of popular movement, and their princes flying in fishermen's disguises from the splendid milli- nery that was to captivate the loyal eyes of their peo- ple, they begin to cast a look across the ocean, to the new republic, whose impalpable throne of law is every- where acknowledged by all as a friendly power — and is not this, they ask, the real strength and stability of or- der? Yes, and so I trust in God it shall prove itself to the coming ages. When twenty years hence, and twenty years after that, the successive waves of liberty roll high across the fields of EurojDC, and the old prescrip- tive orders and powers are drifted onward and away, till not even the wreck can be found, this better throne of law I trust shall stand, as the guardian to us and the promise to mankind of the freedom and the righteous peace they long for. Do I then afl&rm that our fathers foresaw these mag- nificent results, now revealed in our political history ? I have even made it a part of their greatness that they did not. They stood for God and religion alone. They asked for nothing, planned for nothing, hoped for nothing, save what should come of their religion. They believed in the Bible and in God's decrees, and they came over to profess the one and fulfill the other. They had not so much as thought of giving the uni- verse or the world a ^'Revised Constitution." They I^^ THEIR UNCONSCIOUSI^ESS. 161 did not believe in predestination by man — therefore had nothing in common with our modern prophets of ^^ science," who promise to reorganize society from a point without and by a scheme imposed, not by any remedial forces of faith and duty, acting from within and through its secret laws. They did not begin at the point zero in themselves, or in their own human wis- dom, but at duty; and they represent, at once, the infallible success and. the majestic firmness of duty. Compared with the class of ephemeral world-renovators just named, they stand as the firm, granitic, heaven- piercing Needles, by the mer de glace of human unbe- liefs and the unwisdoms of pretended science ; and while that is cracking below in the frosts by which it is crys- tallized, and grinding down its bed of destiny, to be melted in the heat of practical life and be seen no more, they rise serenely, as ever, lifting their heads above the storm-clouds of the world, and stand — still looking up! They will do below only what they seek above. They will give us only the reward of their lives, and what may be distilled from their prayers. And in these, they give us all. Ah ! the sour, impracticable race, who, by reason of their sinister conscience, could not kneel at the sacra- ments, and must needs stand up before God Himself, when kings and bishops kneeled ; barbarians of schism, who revolted to be rid of the Christian civility of priest- ly garments; who could not be in the spirit on the Lord's day under the excellent prayers of the Parlia- ment, and preferred to insult the king by dying, rather 14^ 162 THE FOUNDERS GREAT than to yield him an inch of Church reformation ! — so they are described, and I am not about to deny that they made as many sharp points in their religion as Christian charity and true reason required. When God prepares a hammer, it will not be made of silk. If our fathers were uncomfortable men, what great character ever lived that was not an uncomfortable man to his times ? If they cast off the decrees of Par- liament, and took in the decrees of God in their place, was it not to be expected, both from what they had cast off and from what they had taken, that there would be a little more of stiffness and punctilious rigor in the is- sue than was requisite ? Or, if they had found a true Pope in the Bible, what should follow, but a most lit- eral obeisance, even to the slipper of the book? As the world, too, of past ages had received their salvation, with tremulous awe, in a little sprinkling of holy water, or a wafer on the tongue, and they had now learned to look for salvation in what they believed, what should they do but stand for their mere letters of abstraction, as exact and scrupulous, as if the words of faith had even as great dignity, as ablutions of the finger or a paste in the mouth ? It could not be otherwise. That was no age for easy compliances and flowing lines of opinion. Whatever was done, must have the cutting edge of scruple and over-punctual severity. Only let our fathers be judged with that true historic sympathy, which is the due of all men, and I ask no more. Then it will even be confessed that, by the strictness which ex- ceeded reason, they only proved that close fidelity and IN THEIR unco:n'sciouskess. 163 sacred homage to reason, wticli is itself but a name for true spiritual honor and greatness. I have spoken thus at length of the successes of our political and social history, for it is chiefly in these that we have our prominence before the world, and seem also to ourselves to have achieved results of the greatest brilliancy and magnitude. But my subject requires me to believe, and I think the signs also indicate that re- sults are yet to come, far transcending these in their sublimity and their beneficent consequences to man- kind. Indeed, what now we call results of history, seem to me to be only stages in the preparation of a Great and Divine Future, that includes the spiritual good and glory and the comprehensive unity of the race — exactly that which most truly fulfills the grand religious ideal of Robinson and the New England fa- thers. Their "word was ^'Eeformation" — "the completion of the Eeformation;" not Luther's nor Calvin's, they expressly say; they can not themselves image it. Hitherto it is unconceived by men. God must reveal it in the light that breaks forth from Him. And this He will do, in His own good time. It is already clear to us that, in order to any farther progress in this di- rection, it was necessary for a new movement to begin, that should loosen the joints of despotism and emanci- pate the mind of the world. And in order to this a new republic must be planted and have time to grow. It must be seen rising up in the strong majesty of free- 164 THE FOUNDERS GREAT dom and youth, outstripping the old prescriptive world in enterprise and the race of power, covering the ocean with its commerce, spreading out in populous swarms of industry — planting, building, educating, framing constitutions, rushing to and fro in the smoke and thunder of travel along its mighty rivers, across its in- land seas, over its mountain-tops from one shore to the other, strong in order as in liberty, a savage continent become the field of a colossal republican empire, whose name is a name of respect and a mark of desire to the longing eyes of mankind. And then, as the fire of new ideas and hopes darts electrically along the nerves of feeling in the millions of the race, it will be seen that a new Christian movement also begins with it. Call it reformation, or formation, or by whatever name, it is irresistible because it is intangible. In one view it is only destruction. The State is loosened from the Church. The Church crumbles down into fragments. Superstition is eaten away by the strong acid of liberty, and spiritual despotism flies affrighted from the broken loyalty of its metropolis. • Protestantism also, divided and subdivided by its dialectic quarrels, falls into the finest, driest powder of disintegration. Be not afraid. The new order crystallizes only as the old is dissolved ; and no sooner is the old unity of orders and authorities effectually dissolved, than the reconstructive afiinities of a new and better unity begin to appear in the solu- tion. Eepugnances melt away. Thought grows catho- lic. Men look for good in each other, as well as evil. The crossings of opinion, by travel and books, and the IN THEIR UNCONSCIOUSNESS. 165 intermixture of races and religions, issue in freer, broader views of the Cliristian trutTi; and so the '^Church of the Future," as- it has been called, gravi- tates inwardly towards those terms of brotherhood in which it may coalesce and rest. I say not or believe, that Christendom will be Puritanized, or Protestant- ized ; but what is better than either, it w411 be Chris- tianized. It will settle thus into a unity, probably not of form, but of practical assent and love — a Common- wealth of the Spirit, as much stronger in its unity than the. old satrapy of priestly despotism, as our republic is stronger than any other government of the world. And this, I conceive, is the true issue of that ^' great hope and inward zeal " which impelled our fathers in the migration. Our political successes are but means to this magnificent end — instruments, all, and powers of religion, as we have seen them to be its natural effects and fruits. All kinds of progress, political and spiritual, coalesce and work together in our history ; and will do so in all the race, till finally it is raised to its true summit of greatness, felicity, and glory, in God and religion. And when that summit is reached, it will be found that, as Church and State must be parted in the crumbling and disintegrating processes of free- dom, so, in freedom attained, they w411 coalesce again, not as Church and State, but in such kind of unity as well-nigh removes the distinction — the peace and love and world-wide brotherhood, established under moral ideas, and the eternal truths of God's eternal kingdom. 166 THE FOUNDERS GREAT, ETC. Glory enough, then, is it for our sublime Fathers, to have filled an office so conspicuous in the preparation of results so magnificent. I am not unaware of the de- fects in their character. Nay, I would rather see and confess, than hide them ; for, since we can not be gods ourselves, it is better to be descended of a race of men than of 2:ods. But, w^hen I consider the unambitious sacrifice they made of their comforts and their country, how little they were moved by vagrant theories and projects of social revolution, how patient of hardships, how faithful to their convictions, how little they ex- pected of men, how confidently they trusted their un- known future to God, and, then, what honor God has put upon them, and what greater honor he is preparing for their name, before the good and the free of the blessed ages of the future, I confess that I seem even to have offended in attempting to speak their eulogy. Silence and a bare head are a more fit tribute than words. Or, if we will erect to them a more solid and yet worthier monument, there is none so appropriate as to learn from them, and for ourselves to receive, the principle they have so nobly proved, that — the way OF GREATNESS IS THE WAY OF DUTY. HISTORICAL ESTIMATE.* Friends and Fellow-Citizens : The occasion wliich has brought us together cele- brates another stage of advance in the cause of public education, in our commonwealth. When I accepted the call to address you on this occasion, I designed to prepare a theme immediately related to the subject of popular education itself But on more mature consid- eration, taking counsel also of others, I have concluded that, as the occasion belongs to the state, and as I am to speak to the Legislature of the state, I can not do better than to make the state itself — its character and wants and prospects — -the subject of my address. And I do it the more readily, because of the conviction I feel, and hope also to produce, that, if there be any state in the world, whose history itself is specially ap- propriate to a festival of popular education, that state is Connecticut, It is a fact often remarked by the students of history, that all the states or nations that have most impressed * A Speecli for Connecticut, delivered "before the Legislature of the State, at tlie inangnration of the Noriijal Scliool, Now Britain, June 4, 18")!. 168 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. the world, by their high civilization and their genius, have been small in territorial extent. If we ask for the reason, it is probably because society is sufficiently con- centrated only in small communities, to produce the in- tensest development of mind and character. Hence it is not in the ancient Eoman or Persian empires, but in little sterile Attica, territorially small in comparison even with Connecticut, that the chief lawgivers, philos- ophers, orators, poets of antiquity, have their spring; sending out their unarmed thoughts to subdue and oc- cupy the mind of the world, even in the far distant ages of time. So again, and probably for a similar rea- son, it is not in the great kingdoms or empires of West- ern Europe, that the quickening powers of modern his- tory have their birth ; but in the Florentine Eepublic, in Flanders and the free commercial cities, in Saxony, Holland and England. Here, in one, is the birthplace of modern art. Here it is, in another, that manufac- tures originate and flourish. Here, again, it is that, having no territory at home, commerce builds its ships and sends them out to claim the seas for a territory. Here is the cradle of the Eeformation. Here the free principles of government, that are running but not yet glorified, took their spring. In view of facts like these, it is a great excellence of our confederated form of government, that it combines the advantages both of great and small communities. We have a common country, and yet we have many small countries ; a vast republic that embosoms many small republics, each possessing a qualified sovereignty, HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 169 each to liave a character and make a history of its own. There is brought into play, in this manner, without in- fringing at all on the general unity of the republic, a more special and homelike feeling in the several states (sharpened by mutual comparison) which, as a tonic power in society, is necessary to the highest develop- ments of character and civilization. Spreading out, in a vast republican empire that spans a continent, we are thus to be condensed into small communities, each dis- tinctly and completely conscious of itself, and all acting as mutual stimulants to each other. Nor is anything more to be desired, in this view, than that we preserve our distinct position as states, and embody as much of a state feeling as possible, about our several centers of pubhc life and action. Let Virginia have her "cava- liers" and her "old dominion." Let Massachusetts be conscious always of Massachusetts, and let every man of her sons, in every grade and party, exult in the hon- ors that crown her history. Let the Vermonter speak of his "Grreen Mountain state," with the sturdy pride of a mountaineer. Let the sons of Rhode Island exult in the history and spirit of their little fiery republic. This state feeling has an immense value, and the want of it is a want much to be deplored. I would even prefer to have this feeling developed so strongly as to create some friction between the citizens of the differ- ent states, rather than to have it deficient. Pardon me if I suggest the conviction, that this feel- ing is not as decided and distinct, in our state, as it may be and ought to be. It is our misfortune that we In 170 HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. hold a position midway between two capital cities ; that of New England on one side, and that of the west- ern world itself on the other. To these we go as our market places. From these we get our fashions, our news, and too often our prejudices and opinions; or, what is worse, just that neutral state of both, which is created by the very incongruous mixture they produce. Meantime, it is a great misfortune that we have no cap- ital of our own, or if any, a migratory capital. For public sentiment, in order to get firmness and become distinctly conscious, must have fixed objects about which it may embody itself. A capital which is here and there is neither here nor there. It is no capital, but a symbol rather of vagrancy, and probably of what is worse, of local jealousies which are too contemptible to be inspiring. Besides we are too little aware of our own noble history as a state. The historical writers of Massachusetts have been more numerous and better qualified than ours, and they have naturally seen the events of New England history, with the eyes of metro, politans. We have, as yet, nothing that can be called a just and spirited history of our state, and the mass of our citizens seem to suppose that we have no history worthy attention. It is only a dry record, they fancy, of puritanical severities, destitute of incident and too unheroic to support any generous emotions. Our sense of it is expressed in the single epithet, ^^the blue laio statey Never were any people more miserably de- frauded. Meantime we are continually sinking in rela- tive power, as a member of the confederacy. Our pub- HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 171 lie men no longer represent the fourtli state in the Union, as in the Revolution, but the little, compara- tively declining state of Connecticut. And the danger is that, as we sink in the relative scale of numbers, the little enthusiasm left us will die out as a spark on our altars, and we shall become "as insignificant in the scale of moral, as of territorial, consequence. Accordingly it becomes a very interesting question to the people of our state, what shall we do to maintain our wonted position of respect and power ? — how shall we kindle and feed the true fire of public feeling neces- sary to our character and our standing in the republic? If there be a citizen present, of any sect or party, who can see no interest in such a problem, to him I have nothing to say. The man who does not wish to love and honor the state in which he and his children are born, has no heart in his bosom, and it is not in any words or aTguments of mine, certainly, to give him what the sterility of his nature denies. It will occur to you at once, in the problem raised, that what any people can be and ought to be, depends, in a principal degree, on what they have been. And so much is there in this principle, that scarcely any- thing is necessary, as it seems to me, to exalt our pub- lic consciousness and set us forward in the path of hon- or, but simply to receive the true idea of our history and be kindled with a genuine inspiration derived from a just recollection of the past. In this view it is, that I now propose to give you a 172 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. sketch, or outline of our history ; or perhaps I should rather say, an historic estimate of our standing as a member of the republic. In giving this outline, or es- timate, I must deal, of course, with facts that are famil- iar to many ; but we have a history of such transcend- ent beauty, freshened by so many inspiring and heroic incidents, that we should not easily tire under the re- cital, however familiar. Nothing should tire us but the mortifying fact, that as a people, we have not yet attained even to the sense of those public honors that are laid up for us in the history we inherit. Mr. Ban- croft, the historian, thoroughly acquainted with the rel- ative character and merit of the American States, not long ago said, — " There is no state in the Union, and I know not any in the world, in whose early history, if I were a citizen, I could find more of which to be proud, and less that I should wish to blot." My own convic- tion is, that this early historj^, though not the most prominent, is really the most beautiful that was ever permitted to an}^ state or people in the world. In tracing this outline, I shall be obliged to make some reference to that of other states, but I will en- deavor not to make the comparison odious. I must in- fringe, a little, in particular, on some of the claims of Massachusetts, and therefore I ought to say beforehand, that no one is more sensible than I to the historic merit, or rejoices more heartily in the proud eminence of that state, as a member of the republic, for it is a member without which, indeed, the republic would want a nec- essary support of its character and felicity. It can the HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. 178 better afford to yield us, therefore, what is our own ; or rather can the less afford to diminish our just honors, by claiming to itself what is quite unnecessary to its true pre-eminence of name, and its metropolitan posi tion as a state. It may well be a subject of pride to our state that the original settlement of the Connecticut and New Haven colonies, afterwards called Connecticut, comprised an amount of character and talent so very remarkable. There was Ludlow, said to have been the first law- yer of the colonies, assisting at the construction of the first written constitution originated in the new world ; one that was the type of all that came after, even that of the Eepublic itself. Whether it was that he was too much of a lawyer to be a hearty Puritan, or had too much of the unhappy and refractory element in his temper to be comfortable anywhere, it is somewhat difficult to judge. But he became dissatisfied, removed from Hartford to the Fairfield settlement, and after- wards to Virginia. The casual hints and traditions left us of his character, impress the feeling that he was a very remarkable man, and excite in us the wish that a more adequate account of his somewhat irregular his- tory had been preserved to us. ' There was Haynes, also, the first Governor, a man of higher moral qualities, and different, though not per- haps inferior, accomplishments. He was a gentleman of fortune, holding an elegant seat in Essex. But the American wilderness, with a right to his own religious 15-- iT-i HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. convictions, he could easily prefer to the charms of affluence and refinement. Turning his back upon these, he came over to Boston. And it is a sufficient proof of his character and ability that, during his short stay there, he ^as elected Governor of the Massachu- setts colony. In the new colony that came out after- wards to settle on the banks of the Connecticut, he was leader and father from the beginning. He was a man of great practical wisdom and personal address ; liberal in his opinions, firm in his piety, a man every way fit to lay republican foundations. Governor Hopkins, a rich Turkey merchant of Lon- don, was another of the founders ; a man of less grav- ity, though not inferior in the qualities of fortune, or personal excellence, and superior to all in his great mu- nificence. By his bequest the Grammar schools of Hartford and New Haven, and the Professorship of Di- vinity in Harvard College, were founded. His talents are sufficiently evinced by the fact that, returning on a visit to his estate and his friends in England, he was detained there by an unexpected promotion from Cromwell to be Commissioner of the Navy and Admi- ralty. Governor Winthrop, or as he is commonly called, the younger TTinthrop, was the most accomphshed scholar and gentleman of New England. Educated to society, liberalized in his views by foreign travel, which in that day was a more remarkable distinction than it is at present, he was qualified by his manners and ad- dress thus cultivated, to shine as a courtier in the high- HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 175 est circles of influence. A sufficient proof of his power in this way, may be found in the fact that the Connec- ticut charter was obtained by him ; an instrument so republican, so singularly liberal in its terms, that it has greatly puzzled the historians to guess by what means any king could have been induced to give it, and es- pecially to give it to a Puritan. John Mason, the soldier, I will speak of in another place, only observing here that he was trained to arms under Lord Fairfax in Holland, and gave so high a proof of his valor and capacity, both there and here, that he was solicited by Cromwell to return to England, and occupy the high post of Major Greneral in his army. Thomas Hooker, another of the founders, and first minister of the Hartford colony, was distinguished as a graduate and fellow of Cambridge University, and more as a minister and preacher of the established church. He was called the Luther of New England, for the reason, I suppose, that the sturdy emphasis and thunder tone of his style resembled him to the gTcat Eeformer. Whenever he visited Boston, after his re- moval to Connecticut, crowds rushed to hear him as the great preacher of the colonies. As a specimen of physical humanitj^, if we may trust the descriptions given of his person, he was one of the most remarkable of men; uniting the greatest beauty of countenance with a height and breadth of frame almost gigantic. The works he has left, more voluminous and various than those of any other of the New England founders, Jire his monument. 176 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. John Davenport, of the New Haven colony, was a different, though by no means inferior, man. He was a son of the mayor of Coventry, a student, and after- wards Bachelor of Divinity, at Oxford University. Settled as the incumbent of St. Stephen's Church, in London, he exerted great influence and power among the clergy of the metropolis. His effect lay more ex- clusively than Hooker's, in the rigid, argumentative vigor of his opinions. Probably no other, unless per- haps we except John Cotton, impressed himself more deeply on the churches of New England. Governor Eaton, of the New Haven colony, had be- come rich, by his great and judicious operations as a merchant in the trade of the Baltic. Attracting, in this way, the attention of the court, he was honored as the King's Ambassador at the court of Denmark ; evidence sufficiently clear of the high estimation in which he was held, and also of his talents and character — a character not diminished by the noble virtues and the high ca- pacities, revealed in his long and beautifully paternal administration as a Christian ruler here. Desborough, the New Haven colony soldier, after- wards returned to England and held the office of Major General in Cromwell's army, a fact which sufficiently exhibits him. Such were nine of the original founders of Connecti- cut. What one of them has left a blot on his char- acter, or that of the state? What one of them ever failed to fill his place? And that, if I am right, is the truest evidence of merit ; not the renown which place HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 177 and circumstance may give to a far inferior merit, or whicli vain ambition, rioting for place, may be able to achieve. Is it not a most singular felicity, that onr lit- tle state, planted in a remote wilderness, should have had, among its founders, nine master spirits and leaders, so highly accomplished, so worthy to be reverenced for their talents and their virtues ? I have spoken of the civil constitution of the Hart- ford or Connecticut colony. Virginia began her exper- iment under martial law. The emigrants in the May- flower are sometimes spoken of as having adopted a civil constitution before the landing at Plymouth ; but it will be found that the brief document called by that name, is only a '^covenant to be a body politic," not a proper constitution. The Massachusetts or Boston col- ony had the charter of a trading company, under cover of which, transferred to the emigrants, they maintained a civil organization. It was reserved to the infant col- ony on the Connecticut, only three years after the set- tlement, to model the first properly American constitu- tion — a work in which the framers were permitted to give body and shape, for the first time, to the genuine republican idea, that dwelt as an actuating force, or in- most sense, in all the ISTew England colonies. The trading-company governor and assistants of the Massa- chusetts colony, having emigrated bodily, and brought over the company charter with them, had been con- strained to allow some modifications, by which their re- lation, as directors of a stock subscription, were trans- 178 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. formed into a more properly civil and popular relation. In this manner, the government vras gradually becom- ing a genuine elective republic, according to our sense of the term. The progress made was wholly in the di- rection taken by the framers of the Connecticut consti- tution ; though, as yet, they had matured no such re- sult. xVt the very time when our constitution was framed, they were endeavoring, in Massachusetts, to comfort the *' hereditary gentlemen" by erecting them into a kind of American House of Lords, called the ^* Standing Council for Life.'' The deputies might be chosen from the colony at large, and were not required to be inhabitants of the town by which they were chosen. The freemen were required to be members of the church, and all the officers stood on the theocratic, or church basis, in the same way. They were also de- bating, at this time, the civil admissibility or propriety of dropping one governor and choosing another ; Cot- ton and many of the principal men insisting that the office was a virtual freehold, or vested right ! Holding these points in view, how evident is the distinctness and the projDcr originality of the Connecticut constitu- tion. It organizes a government elective, annually, in all the departments. It ordains that no person shall be chosen governor for two successive yeai^s. It requires the deputies to be inhabitants and representatives of the towns where they are chosen. The elective fran- chise is not limited to members of the church, but con- ditioned simply on admission to the rights of an elector by a major vote of the town. In short, this constitu- HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 179 tion, the first one written out, as a complete frame of civil order, in the new world, embodies all the essential features of the constitutions of our states, and of the Eepublic itself, as they exist at the present day. It is the free representative plan, which now distinguishes our country in the eyes of the world. ^'Nearly two centuries have elapsed," says Mr. Ban- croft, ^Hhe world has been made wiser by various ex- perience, political institutions have become the theme on which the most powerful and cultivated minds have been employed, dynasties of kings have been dethroned, re- called, dethroned again, and so many constitutions have been framed or reformed, stifled or subverted, that memory may despair of a complete catalogue ; but the people of Connecticut have found no reason to deviate essentially from the government established by their ' fathers. History has ever celebrated the commanders of armies, on which victory has been entailed, the he- roes who have won laurels in scenes of carnage and ra- pine. Has it no place for the founders of states — the wise legislators who struck the rock in the wilderness, and the waters of libertj^ gushed forth in copious and perennial fountains ? They who judge of men, by their influence on public happiness, and by the services they render to the human race, will never cease to honor the memory of Hooker and Haynes.'' Had Mr. Bancroft included, with the names of Hook- er and Haynes, that also of Ludlow, placing it first in the list, I suspect that his ver}^ handsome and just tribute of honor would have found its mark more 180 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE exactly.^ We know that Mr. Ludlow on two several occasions after this, was appointed by the Legislature to draft a code of laws for the state, and there is much reason, in that fact, to suppose that he drew the Consti- tution itself. His impracticable, refractory temper set him on farther, as many suppose, in the direction of de- mocracy, than any other of the distinguished men of the emigration; and they very naturally imagine, for this reason, that they see his hand, in particular, in the new Constitution framed. I must not omit to mention, what is specially re- markable in this document, that no mention whatever is made in it, either of king or Parliament, or the least intimation given of allegiance to the mother country. On the contrary, an oath of allegiance is required di- rectly to the state. And it is expressly declared that in the "General Court," as organized, shall exist "the Supreme Power of the Commonwealth." The precedence we had thus gained in the matter of constitutional history, I am happy to add, was honora- bly maintained afterwards, in the formation of the Con- stitution of the Eepublic itself; for it is a fact, which those who are wont to sneer at the blueness and legisla- tive incapacity of our state may be challenged also to * Since this discourse was delivered, the short-hand report of a Sermon by Hooker has been discovered, and, by the great ingenuity of J. Ham- mond Trumbull, Esq., deciphered, in which it is clearly made out, or shown, that Hooker was the mover of this Constitution ; that its princi- pal provisions were shaped by his suggestion; and, since this was the first of all the civil Constitutions of America, that they all have a lineal derivation which connects them, more or less distinctly, with the pulpit- even the pulpit of the Hartford pastor. HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 181 remember, that Connecticut took tlie lead in proposing and, by the high abilities and the strenuous exertions of Ellsworth and Sherman, finally carried that distinc- tion of the Constitution of the United States, which is most fundamental and peculiar to it as a frame of civil government, and which now is just beginning, as never before, to fix the attention and attract the admiration of the world. I speak here of the federative element, by which so many sovereign states are kept in distinct activity, while included under a higher sovereignty. When the Convention were assembled that framed the Constitution of the Eepublic, they were met, at the threshold, by a very important question, viz., — Wheth- er the Constitution to be framed should be the Consti- tution of a *' Nation," or of a ^'Confederacy of states." Mr. Calhoun gave the true history of the struggle, in his speech before the Senate of the United States, Feb. 12th, 1847. ''The three states, Massachusetts, Penn- sylvania, and Virginia," he said, "were the largest and were actively and strenuously in favor of a ' National ' government. The two leading spirits were Mr. Hamil- ton of New York, probably the author of the resolu- tion, and Mr. Madison of Virginia. In the early stages of the Convention, there was a majority in favor of a ' National ' government. But in this stage there were but eleven states in the Convention. In process of time New Hampshire came in, a very great addition to the federal side, which now became predominant. It is owing mainly to the states of Connecticut and New Jersey that we have a ' Federal ' instead of a ' National ' 16 182 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. government — the best government instead of the worst and most intolerable on earth. Who are the men of these states to whom we are indebted for this admirable government? I will name them — their names ought to be engraven on brass and live forever. They were Chief Justice Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, and Judge Patterson of New Jersey, The other states farther South were blind — they did not see the future. But to the coolness and sagacity of these three men, aided by a few others, not so prominent, we owe the present Constitution." Such is the tribute paid to Connecticut by this very distinguished statesman of South Carolina. To have claimed this honor to ourselves might have been offens- ive. To receive it, when it is tendered, is no more than a duty. Here then we are in 1851, thirty-one states, skirting two oceans, still one republic, under one tribu- nal of justice, under one federal Constitution which we boast as a frame of order that will sometime shelter the rights and accommodate the manifold interests of two hundi^ed millions of people — the greatest achievement of legislative wisdom in the modern history of the world — and for Connecticut, who came as near being the author of these noble appointments as she could, and do it by the votes of other states — for her the prin- cipal honor and reward of many is a shiiig of derision, and the sneer that calls her the blue law state ! Since I am speaking here of our agency in the matter of laws and constitutions, let me go a little farther, and HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 183 show you with what justice our laws can be made, as they so commonly are, a subject of derision. The de- risive epithet, by which we are so often distinguished, was given us by the tory renegade, Peters, who, while better men were fighting the battles of their country, was skulking in London, and getting his bread there, by the stories he could fabricate about Connecticut. The mendacity of his character and writings has been a thousand times exposed, and the very laws that he published as the ^'blue," shown to be forgeries invent- ed by himself; and yet there are many, I am sorry to say, not soberly believing that wooden nutmegs were ever manufactured in Connecticut, who nevertheless accept the blue law fiction as the real fact of history. They do not understand, as they properly might, that the two greatest dishonors that ever befell Connec- ticut, are the giving birth to Benedict Arnold and the Reverend Samuel Peters — unless it be a third, that she has given birth to so many who, denouncing the treason of one, are . none the less ready to believe and reiterate the equally perfidious and shameful lies of the other. There is no state in the civilized world whose laws, headed by the noble CoDstitution of the Hartford Colony, are more simple and righteous ; none where the redress of wrongs is less expensive, or less cumbered by tedious and useless technicalities. It is even doubtful whether the new code tof practice in New York, which is just now attracting so much attention abroad, requires to be named as an exception. The first law Reports, publish- 184 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. ed in the United States, were Kirby's Connecticut Ee- ports. The first law school of the nation was the cele- brated school of Judge Eeeve. at Litchfield, a school which gave the first impulse to law as a science in our country. Chief Justice Ellsworth, Judges Smith, Gould, Kent, AValworth, and I know not how many others most distinguished in legal science in our country, were sons of Connecticut. Judge Ellsworth was chairman of the committee of Congress that prepared the Judici- ary Act, by which the Supreme Court of the Xation was organized ; and it will be found that some of the pro^'isions of that Act that are most peculiar, are copied verbatim from the statutes of Connecticut. The prac- tice of the Supreme Court is often said to resemble the practice of Connecticut more than that of any" other state. And, what is more, the form of the Supreme Court itself, as a tribunal of law, chancery, admiralty, and criminal jurisdiction, comprised in one, is copied from the laws of Massachusetts and Connecticut. It is true, indeed, reverting to the earlier laws of the commonwealth, that we find severities enacted against the Baptists and Quakei^, precisely as in Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. How far these laws were executed in Connecticut, or under what conditions, I will not undertake to say; but they seem to have been aimed only at a class of fanatics, who made it a point of duty to violate the religious convictions of ev- ery body else ; bringing their logs of wood to chop on the church steps on Sunday, and their spinning-wheels to spin by the door, and walking the streets in the HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 185 questionable grace of nudity, to testify against the sins of the people. In 1708, the English Quakers petition- ed the government against these laws, when Governor Saltonstall wrote over in reply, to Sir Henry Ashurst, as follows, — *'I may observe, from the matter of their objections, that they have a further reach than to ob- tain liberty for their own persuasion, as they pretend ; (for many of the laws they object against concern them no more than if they were Turks or Jews,) for as there never was, that I know of, for this twent}^ years that I have resided in this government, any one Quaker, oi other person, that suffered upon the account of his dif- ferent persuasion in religious matters from the body of this people, so neither is there any of the society of Quakers anywhere in this government, unless one fam- ily or two, on the line between us and Xew York; which yet I am not certain of." Episcopacy was tolerated here by a public act, when, as yet, there were not seventy families in the state of that denomination — at the very time, too, when there were two Presbyterian clergymen lying in prison, at New York, for the crime of preaching a sermon and baptiz- ing a child. After several months they obtained their release, by paying a fine of £500 sterling. Forty years later, Dr. Eogers, a Presbyterian clergyman, was de- terred, by threats of a similar penalty, from preaching in Virginia. The whole system of tithes was there in force, as stiff as in Ireland now. Fees for marrying, churching, and burying were established by law. In 1618, a law was passed in Virginia, requiring every 16- 186 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. person to attend church on Sundays and church holi- days, on penalty of '4ying neck and heels," as it was called, for one night, and being held to labor as a slave, by the colony, for the week following. Eleven years after, this penalty was changed, to a fine of one pound of tobacco, '* to be paid to the minister/^ These facts I cite, not to bring reproach on other states, but simply to show that religious intolerance was the manner of the times. If, in the Xew Haven colony, it is a re- proach that only members of the church were permitted to vote, the same was true, under the English constitu- tion, even down to within our memory. There is no suf&cient evidence that any person was ever executed for witchcraft in this state, though there were several trials, and one or two convictions ; which the Governor and Council contrived, I believe, in one way or anoth- er, to release.^ Governor Winthrop professed sincere scruples about the crime itself. How it was in Massa- chusetts is sufficiently known to us all. An execution for this crime took place in Switzerland, in 1760 ; at Wurtzberg in Germany, in 1749; also in Scotland, in 1722. And, as late as 1716, a poor woman, and her daughter only nine years old, were publicly hanged in England, for selling their souls to the devil, and for raising a storm by the conjuration of pulling oflF their stockings. The English statute against witchcraft stood unrepealed, even down to 1736. I confess I was never able to see why so hea\^ a * See Kingsley's Historical discourse (p. 101) where a different opinion is held. HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 187 share of the odium of this kind of legislation should fall on the state of Connecticut ; whose only reproach, in the matter is, that she was not farther in advance of the civilized world, by another half century. If the citi- zens of other states are able sometimes to amuse them- selves at our expense, we certainly are not required to add to their amusement by an over-sensitive resentment. But if any son or citizen of Connecticut is willing to ac- cept and appropriate, as characteristic of its history, the slang epithet which perpetuates a tory lie and forgery, then I have only to say that we have just so much rea- son to be ashamed of the state — on his account. He is either raw enough to be taken by a very low impos- ture, or base enough in feeling to enjoy a sneer at his mother's honor. We have some right, I think, to another kind of dis- tinction, which we have never asserted; that, namely, of being the colony most distinctively independent in our character and proceedings, in the times of the co- lonial history, previous to the revolution. We were able to be so, in part, from our more retired and shel- tered position, and partly, also, because of the very pe- culiar terms of our charter. Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, all the other states, with the exception of Rhode Island, were obliged by their char- ters, or the vacation of their charters, to accept a chief executive, or governor, appointed by the crown. These royal governors had a negative upon the laws. They personated the king, maintaining a kind of court pomp 188 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. and majesty, overawing the people, thwarting their legislation, wielding a legal control, in right of the king, over the whole military force, much as at the present day in Canada. But the charter obtained for Connecticut, by the singular address of Winthrop, al- lowed us to choose our own governor and exercise all * the functions of civil order. And so we grew up, as a people, unawed by the pageants of royalty, a race of simple, self-governing republicans. For three little towns, on the Connecticut, to declare independence of the mother country, we can easily see, would have been the part of madness — probably they had not so much as a thought of it — and yet they had a spmething, a wish, an instinct, call it what you will, which could write itself properly out, in their constitu- tion, only in the words, •' Supreme Power." And I see not how these words, formally asserting the sovereignty of their General Court, escaped chastisement ; unless it was that they found a shelter for the crime, in their re- moteness and the obscurity of their position. In this view, there was a kind of sublimity in the sturdy growth of their sheltered and silent state. They had no theories of democracy to assert. They put on no brave airs for liberty. But they loved their conscience and their religion, and in just the same degree, loved not to be meddled with. In this habit their children grew up. Their very intelligence became an eye of jealousy, and they acknowledged the right of the king, much as when we acknowledge the lightning, in lifting a rod to carrv it — off! But when the kinsr came down HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 189 upon theirij in some act of authority or royal interfer- ence that touched the security of their principles or their position, then it was as if the Great Being, who had ^'ordained whatsoever comes to pass," had ordained that some things should not come to pass. On as many as four several occasions, during the co- lonial history, they set themselves in open conflict with the king's authority, and triumphed by their determin- ation. First in the case of the regicide Judges, secreted at New Haven ; when Davenport took for his text — ^' Make thy shadow as night in the midst of noon, hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth." The king's officers were active in the search ; but, for some reason, the noon was as the night, and their victims could not be found. Massachusetts expostulated with the refractory people of iSTew Haven, representing how much they would endanger all the colonies, if the}" did not hasten to address His Majesty in some proper ex- cuse, to which they replied that they were ignorant of the form ! Again, by rallying a force at Saybrook, when Sir Edmund Andross landed there, to proclaim the new patent of the Duke of York, and take possession of the town — -silencing him in the act, and compelling him to return to his ships. A third time, when this same officer came on to Hartford, to vacate the charter — a passage of history commemorated by the noble oak, whose gnarled trunk and limbs still remain, to represent the crabbed inde- pendence of the men, who would not yield their rights 190 * HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. to the royal mandate. May the old oak live for- ever ! And yet a fourth time, by asserting and vindicating, what is the essential attribute of political independence, viz., the control and sovereignty of their own military force. Governor Fletcher came on to Hartford, from New York, to demand the control of the militia in the king's name; and when he insisted on reading the proclamation, he was drummed into silence by com- mand of Wadsworth, the chief officer. When the drummer slacked, the word was, ^'Drum, I say;" and to the Governor, ^' Stop, Sir, or I will make the sun shine through you in an instant." He withdrew, the point was carried, and the control of the military was retained. After that, when Pitt at the height of his power wanted troops from Connecticut, he sent the re- quest of a levy to the Legislature, not a military order. It is not my design, as you have seen, to rejDresent, in these facts of history, that we had consciously and purposely set up for independence ; but only that we had so much of the self-governing spirit in us, nourish- ed by the scope of our charter, and sheltered by our more retired position, that we took our independence before we knew it, and had the reality before we made the claim. In Massachusetts, the metropolitan colony, which had a more open relation to the mother country, the spirit of independence was checked continually by considera- tions of prudence, and, at Boston especially, by tlie presence of the king and a kind of court influence HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 191 maintained by the royal governors. Accordingly tlie Eey. Daniel Barber, who went on with the Connecticut troops to Boston, at the first outbreak of the Eevolu- tion, says, — "In our march through Connecticut, the inhabitants seemed to view us with joy and gladness, but when we came into Massachusetts and advanced nearer to Boston, the inhabitants, where we stopped, seemed to have no better opinion of us than if we had been a banditti of rogues and thieves ; which mortified our feelings, and drew from us expressions of angry re- sentment " — a fact in which we see, what could not be otherwise, that the people nearest to the court influence in the metropolis, were many of them infected with a spirit opposite to the ^ause of the colonies. But here in the rear ground, and a little removed from observa- tion, it was far otherwise. Here the sturdy spirit found room to grow and embody itself, unrestrained by au- thority, uncorrupted by mixtures of opposing influence. How necessary this sound rear- work of independence and homogeneous feeling in Connecticut may have been to the confidence, and the finally decisive action, of the men who immediately confronted the royal supremacy in Massachusetts, we mav never know. Suf&ce it to say that the causes of public events most prominent, are not always the most real and effective. It is noticeable, also, that we went into the revolution under peculiar advantages. We were not obliged to fall into civil disorganization by ejecting a royal gover- nor, in the manner of other colonies. Our state was full organized, under a chief magistracy of her own, having 192 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. command of her own military force, ready to move, without loosing a pin in her political fabric. One of the royal governors ejected was even sent to Connecti- cut for safe keeping. AYe had kept up our fire in the rear, making every hamlet and village ring with defi- ance, and erecting our poles of liberty on every hill, during the very important interval between the passage of the Boston port bill and the stamp act. And so fierce and universal was the spirit of resistance here, that, while the stamps were carried into all the other states, no officer of the crown dared undertake the sale of them in Connecticut. The forwardness of our state in the matter of inde- pendence, is sufficiently evinced by the fact that our Legislature passed a bill, on the 14th of June previous to the memorable 4th of July, instructing her delegates to urge an immediate declaration of independence. Nor did she sign that declaration by the hands only of her own delegates. Two of her descendents in New Jersey and one in Georgia, are among the names en- rolled in that honored instrument. Georgia withheld herself, at first, from the Revolution. But there was a little Puritan settlement at Midway in that state, in which, as a physician and a man of public influence, resided Doctor Hall, a native of Wallingford, and a graduate of Yale College. These Midway Puritans were resolved to have their part in the Revolution, at all hazards. They made choice of Doctor Hall and sent him on to the Congress as their delegate. He signed the declaration and, the next year, Georgia came HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 193 forward and took her place, led into the Revolution by the hand of Connecticut. Is it then too much to affirm, in view of all these facts, that if any state in the Union deserves to be called the Independent State, Connecti- cut may safely challenge that honor. I must also speak of the military honors of our his- tory. Martial distinctions are not the highest, and yet there is a kind of military glory that can never fade ; that, I mean, which is gained in the defense of justice and liberty, as distinguished from the idle bravery of chivalry, and the rapacious violence of conquest. It is abundantly clear, as a fact of history, that our two colonies meant, in their public relations with the Indian tribes, to fulfill the exactest terms of justice and good neighborhood. Still it happened, doubtless, as it always will in such cases, that individuals, instigated by a spirit of insolence, or by the cupidity of gain, fre- quently trespassed on their rights, in acts of bitter out- rage. Such wrongs could not be absolutely prevented, and, by reason of a diversity of language and the sepa- rate, wild habit of the Indians, could not be effectually investigated or redressed. Exasperated, in this man- ner, they of course would take their revenge in acts of violence and blood ; and then it would be necessary to arm the public force against them, for the public pro- tection. It is very easy to theorize in this matter, and say how it should be, but this issue, much as we de- plore it, could not well be avoided. It is affirmed and, by many, believed, that the Pe- 17 194 IIISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. quods had been instigated in this manner, to the thirty murders perpetrated in their incursions on the rivei settlements, during the winter and spring of 1637. Be it so, the colony must still be defended. Every settle- ment is filled with consternation. They set their watch by night, and tend their signal flag by day, to give no- tice of enemies. The Pequods have been described to them as one of the most numerous and powerful of the Indian tribes. They imagine them dwelling in the deep woods, guessing how powerful they may be, and at what hour the foe may burst upon their settlement, here or there, in the fury of savage war. What they so long and wearily dread, in the power of their enemy, they, of course, magnify. It is no time now for such points of casuistry as entertain us, at our distance of time. The hour has come, a decisive blow must be struck; for the danger and the dread are no longer supportable. It had also been ascertained that the Pequods were endeavoring to enlist all the other tribes, in a common cause against the colonies. Massachusetts, accordingly, had agreed to join the expedition against them, but at what point the junction would be made could not be settled beforehand. With his ninety men, a full half the able bodied men of the colony, Capt. Mason de- scended the river to Saybrook, passed round to the Narragansett Bay, and, falling in there with a small party of Massachusetts men returning from Block Isl- and, made his landing. His inferior officers, when he opened his plan, proposing to march directly into the HlSTOItlCAL ESTIMATE. 195 Pequod country, waiting for no junction with the Mas- sachusetts troops, strenuously opposed him. They were going into an unknown country to meet an unknown enemy. What could assure this little hand of men against extermination, fighting in the woods with a fiei-ce nation of savages? But the chaplain led them to God for direction, and they yielded their dissent. And here, in the stand of Mason, is, in fact, the battle and the victory ; for they came upon the great fort of the enemy, after a rapid march, and tr^ok it so completely by surprise, that what was to be a battle became only a conflagration and a massacre. The glory is not here, but in the celerity of movement and the peremptory military decision of the leadership. They are too few in number to make prisoners of their enemy, and another body of the tribe, whose number is un- known, are near at hand. Accordingly their work must be short and decisive — a work they make it of (extermination. We look on the scene with sadness and with mixtures of revolted feeling; but we are none the less able to see, in this exploit of Mason, with his ninety men, why Cromwell w^anted him for a Major General in his army. He understands, we perceive, as thoroughly as Napoleon, that celerity and decision are sometimes necessary elements of success, and even of safety. This kind of generalship, too, requires a great deal more of nerve and military courage often, than the fighting of a hard contested battle, after it is once begun. This reduction of the Pequods is remarkable as being 196 HISTORICAL ESTIMATK. the first proper military expedition, or trial of arms in New England. If they had been wronged, we pity them. If not, still we pity them. In any ^-iew, the colony has done what it could not avoid, and the long agony of their fear is over. Their wives and children can sleep in peace. Mason returned with his little Puritan legion to Hartford, having lost in the encounter but a single man ; the guns of the fort at Saybrook booming out through the forests, in a salute of victory, as he passed. He was immediately complimented, by the Legislature, in the appointment of general-in-chief to the colony, and Hooker was designated to deliver him his commis- sion, in presence of the assembled people. Here is a scene for the painter of some future day — I see it even now before me. In the distance and behind the huts of Hartford, waves the signal flag by which the town watch is to give notice of enemies. In the foresrround, stands the tall, swart form of the soldier in his armor; and before him, in sacred apostolic majesty, the manly Hooker. Haynes and Hopkins, with the Legislature and the hardy, toil-worn settlers and their wives and daughters, are gathered round them in close order, gazing with moistened eyes at the hand which lifts the open commission to God, and listening to the fervent prayer that the God of Israel will endue his ser- vant, as heretofore, with courage and counsel to lead them in the days of their future peril. True there is nothinor classic in this scene. This is no crown be- stowed at the Olympic games, or at a Roman triumph, HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 197 and yet there is a severe, primitive sublimity in the picture, that will sometime be invested with feelings of the deepest reverence. Has not the time already come, w^heri the people of Connecticut will gladly testify that reverence, bv a monument that shall make the beautiful valley of the Yantic, where Mason sleeps, as beautifully historic, and be a mark to the eye, from one of the most ancient and loveliest, as well as most populous, towns of our ancient commonwealth? The conduct of our state, in two other chapters of history of a later date, displays a moral dignity, as well as military firmness, of which we have the highest rea- son to be proud. The Dutch governor of New York, it was ascertained, had entered into an alliance with the savages, to make war upon the English colonies. The Commissioners of these colonies, already united in a federal compact with each other, had voted a levy of troops for the defense, and assessed the number to be raised by each. The Hartford and New Haven colo- nies were prompt and indefatigable in their exertions, as their own more immediate exposure required. Plym- outh was ready and kept her faith, but Massachusetts, tempted, for once, to an act of perfidy most sadly con- trasted with her noble history, refused ; leaving the Con- necticut colonies cruelly exposed to the whole force of the enemy. The condition of our peoj^le was one of distressing excitement. Every hour, for a whole half year, it was expected that the invasion would begin. Forts were erected, a small frigate was manned, night and day were spent in watching; till, at length, the 17- 198 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. victory of the English over the Dutch fleet at sea put an end to the danger; only leaving the two colonies of Connecticut overwhelmed by enormous expenses incur- red for their defense. The indignation was universal. And when the commissioners were assembled again, at their annual meeting, our Commissioners magnanimous- ly refused to sit with those from Massachusetts, without some atonement for their ignominious breach of faith and duty. Then came the turn of Massachusetts. King Philip, as he was called, had rallied all the savage tribes of New England, for a last, desperate effort to expel and exterminate the colonies. The havoc was dreadful — whole towns swept away by the nightly incursions of the savages, wives and children massacred, com- panies of troops surprised and butchered, all the fi^on- tier settlements of Massachusetts smoking in blood and conflagration. It was the dark day of the colonies, and, for a time, it really seemed that they must be ex- terminated. Then it was that Connecticut proved her fidelity, sending out five companies of troops to the aid of Massachusetts. And the combined troops marched together, in a cold snowy day, fifteen miles through the forests, fought in the deep snow one of the bloodiest battles on record, and then marched back, carrying their wounded with them, to encamp in the open air. The attack was upon the great fort of the Narragan- setts, and was led by the Massachusetts troops, in a spirit of valor worthy of success. Unable, however, to force the entrance, they were obliged, after suffering HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 199 greatly from tlie enemy, to fall back. The Connecticut troops were then brought up, and we may judge of their determination by the fact, that nearly one-third of their number fell in the assault, and that, out of their five captains, three were killed on the spot, and a fourth died of his wounds afterwards. The assault was car- ried. The second winter, four companies of rangers, raised in New London county, were sent out, by turns, to scour the Narragansett country, and harrass the en- emy by a continual desultory warfare. Finally, the tide was turned, and the capture of Philip ended the struggle. Thus nobly did Connecticut repay the in- justice and wrong of her sister colony. We can hardly imagine it, but there was seldom a rear in the early history of our state, now so quiet and lemote from the turmoils of war, when she was not aarching her troops, one way or another, to defend her OYn, or more commonly some neighboring settlement — to Albany, to Brookfield, to Springfield, to the Narra- g&nsett country, to Schenectady, to Crown Point, to Louisburg, to Canada — issuing bills of credit, levying, all the while, enormous taxes, and maintaining a war- like activity scarcely surpassed by Lacedemon itself. There was never a spark of chivalry in her leaders, and yet there was never a coward among them. Their courage had the Christian stamp ; it was practical and related to duty ; always exerted for some object of de- fense and safety. They knew nothing of fighting with- ou*: an object, and when they had one, they went to the work bravely, simply because it was sound economy to 200 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. fight well ! We are accustomed to speak of the wars of the revolution, but these earlier wars, so little re- membered, were far more adventurous and required a much stouter endurance. When combined with the British forces, our troops were, of course, commanded in chief by British leaders, and these were generally incompetent to the kind of warfare necessary in this country. Scarcely ever did they lose a battle or suffer a defeat in these wars, in which our provincial captains did not first protest against their plan. Sometimes the Parliament were constrained to compliment our troops, but more gener- ally, if some exploit w^as carried by the prowess of a colonial captain, as in the case of Lyman, the hero of Crown Point, his superior was knighted and he forgot- ten. In the last French war, under Pitt, when a large part of her little territory was yet a wilderness, Conneo ticut raised and kept in the field, at her own expense, for three successive years, 5,000 men ; so great was her endurance and her zeal against the common enemy. It was here that Putnam and Worcester took their lessoQS of exercise in the military art, and practiced their cour- age for a more serious and eventful struggle. This eventful struggle came ; finding no state readier to act a worthy and heroic part in it. As early as September, 1774, the false rumor of an outbreak in Boston had set the whole military force of the colonv in motion — a sign, before the time, of what was to l>e done when the time arrived. In April of 1775, before the battle of Lexington and before the Eevolution could HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 201 be generally regarded as an ascertained fact, a circle of sagacious, patriotic men assembled in Hartford, per- ceiving the immense advantage that would accrue to the cause, from the capture and possession of the Northern fortresses that commanded Lake Champlain — Ticonder- oga and Crown Point — embarked in a scheme, to seize them, by a surprise of the British garrisons. They had a secret understanding with Grovernor Trumbull, and drew their funds from the public treasury, by a note under the joint signature of their names, eleven in num- ber. The enterprise was committed to Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, natives, one of Litchfield, and the other of Eoxbury, now residing in Vermont. A few men were sent on from Connecticut, forty or fifty more were collected in Berkshire county, in Massachusetts, and the remainder were enlisted in Vermont. The en- terprise was successful. More than two hundred can- non were captured — the same that were afterwards dragged across the mountains to Boston, and employed by Washington in the siege and final expulsion of Lord Howe. When the commander, of Ticonderoga, in- quired by what authority the surrender was demanded, Allen's reply was — ''Li the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." That he had no au- thority from the Continental Congress, save what had come to him through the Great Jehovah, is certain- ly very clear; hence, I suppose, the form of his an- swer. It appears that Benedict Arnold of Norwich went on to Boston about this time and obtained a commission 202 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. from the Committee of Safety there, authorizing him to conduct, in their behalf, a similar undertaking. But finding himself anticipated, when he reached Vermont, he was obliged to waive his right of command and took jiis place, as a volunteer, under Allen. Some of the Massachusetts historians, who have claimed the credit of this exploit, in behalf of their state, are clearly seen, therefore, to have trespassed on the honors of Connecti- cut. Connecticut projected and executed the move- ment. The treasury of Connecticut footed the bills. The prisoners were brought to Connecticut and quar- tered at AVest Hartford. The surrender of these fortresses took place on the 10th of May. And before the capture was consum- mated, the news of the battles of Concord and Lexing- ton had arrived, showing that resistance to the mother country was openly begun. But the campaign was or- ganized and set on foot, it will be observed, long before these battles, and was, in fact, a volunteering, by the Connecticut leaders, of the state of war itself Mean- time, Putnam, waiting to catch the first note of out- break, left his plow in the furrow, when the news ar- rived, not remaining, it is even said, to unyoke his oxen, and flew to the field of action. The troops of the state poured after him, to be gathered under his command. The battle of Bunker Hill soon followed. It is remarkable that the question, who commanded m this very celebrated battle, has never yet been set- tled. The Massachusetts historians have generally maintained that Prescott was the commander; and HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 203 some of them have even gone so far as not to recognize the presence of Putnam in it. The more candid and moderate have generally admitted his presence in the field and the valuable service rendered, by his inspirit- ing and heroic conduct. Prescott, they say, command- ed in the trenches, and Putnam was engaged outside of the trenches, in the open field and about the other hill by which the redoubt was overlooked or commanded ; doing what he could for the success of the day, but only in virtue of the commission he had from his own personal enthusiasm. As regards any chief command over the whole field of operations, they suppose there probably was none, alleging that the army was really not organized, and no scale of proper military prece- dence established. . As respects this latter point, which at first view might seem to be true, they are certainly in a mistake. For Putnam had been expressly ordered, by our Legis- lature, to put himself under the chief command of Mas- sachusetts ; as the conditions of the case evidently re- quired. He was serving, therefore, as an integral part of the military force of Massachusetts. Neither was he, or Prescott, or Ward the general-in-chief of the army, so raw in the practice of arms as not to know that, be- ing on the ground as a general of brigade, the scale of military precedence made him, ipso factOj principal in command over the colonel of a regiment. To the same conclusion we are brought, by a careful review of all the facts pertaining to the battle itself. There appears to be sufficient evidence that General 204 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. Putnam, after liis successful encounter sometimes called the battle of Chelsea, which took place on the 27th of May previous, and by which he had produced some stir of sensation in the army, became more impatient of a state of inaction than ever, and proposed himself, in the council of war, that they should take up this advanced position on Bunker Hill. Prescott was in favor of the movement, but General Ward and others, including even Gen. Warren, a member of the Council of Safety, were opposed ; regarding the attempt as being too haz- ardous in itself, and one that would endanger the main position at Cambridge. Besides, what probably had quite as much influence, they distrusted the spirit of the troops, still raw in discipline; doubting whether they would come to the point of an open, pitched battle with the king and stand their ground. They had the same feeling that Washington had, when he enquired, after the battle — ^^ Could they stand fire?" and w^hen the answer was given, replied — 'Hhe cause is safe!" Putnam believed they would stand fire beforehand, urging the necessity of action to bring out the spirit that was in them and confirm it. Give them a good breastwork on the hill, he said, and they will hold it. *' They are not afraid of their heads, though very much afraid of their legs ; if you cover these they will fight forever." Warren, who was pacing the room, paused over a chair, and said, ''Almost thou persuadest me, Putnam. Still, I think the project rash ; but if joii undertake it, [^you,^ observe,] you will not be surprised to find me nt your side." Finally, ascertaining that HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 205 Gen. Gage was about to seize and occupy the same ground, their hesitation was brought to an end. It was supposed, in the council, that ^^two thousand men" would be required to effect and maintain the proposed occupation. Accordingly we are to under- stand that, when only a thousand were detailed, under Col. Prescott, to occupy the hill and open the entrench- ments on the night of the 16th, it was expected that other troops were to be sent forward under a more gen- eral command, when they were wanted. And beyond a question this command was to be in Putnam, the chief mover of the enterprise. Accordingly we see that Putnam went over with the detachment under Prescott, and assisted in directing where the entrench- ment should be opened, viz., on the lower summit, or part of Bunker Hill, nearest to the city, afterwards called Breed's Hill; in the understanding that the higher eminence should be taken afterwards, when re- quired, and entrenchments opened there. Putnam re- turned that night, to Cambridge, and was back in the early dawn of the morning, as a responsible officer should be, to see the condition of the works. At ten o'clock he was in the field again. And as soon as it became evident that there was to be an assault upon the works, he ordered on the Connecticut troops, by the consent of General Ward, and was there, on the field, at the beginning of the engagement. Leaving Prescott, of course, to his position, which he had sim- ply to maintain, we see him beginning entrenchments on the other summit; directing the detachments to 18 206 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. their places; present everywhere rebuking and rally- ing the timid; watching every turn, rushing to every point of danger; seizing on a cannon, which it was said, could not be loaded, and even loading and firing it himself; maintaining thus, with desperate energy, the left wing which Lord Howe was constantly endeav- oring to carry, and the yielding of which would, at any moment, have ended the struggle of Prescott on the hill; saving also, by his firmness here, the retreat of Prescott from being only a slaughter or a capture ; last in the retreat himself, trying to rally for a stand upon the other hill, and onlv not endeavorino; to maintain the post in his own person ; then withdrawing and, of his own counsel, mounting Prospect Hill with the Con- necticut forces, opening his entrenchments there in the night, and holding it as a position between the enemy and Cambridge; a movement by which he probably saved the town and the public stores of the army ; for when the enemj^ saw his works there the next morning, they had no courage left to try a second day, against a position so admirably chosen — a position in which he was afterwards installed, by Washington, to maintain the honors of the center of the army. There was little reason, as we have seen, for Putnam to be multiplying orders to Prescott ; the only thing to be done was to enable Prescott, if possible, to hold his position. But it is in evidence that he did order away the entrenching tools, against the judgment of Prescott ; also that, when Warren came upon the ground, he went to Putnam, as the officer of direction, to ask vrhere he HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 207 should go to serve as a volunteer, and that Putnam sent him to the redoubt, to the aid of Prescott ; also that the same order, in regard to firing, occasioned by the shortness of their ammunition, ^^as given every- where on the field, as well out of the redoubt as in it, and that Putnam said himself that he gave the order. It is very easy to see, regarding this statement of facts, how Prescott should often have been spoken of as being the chief in command in this battle, and even how he should have thought himself to be ; for he had the redoubt in charge at the beginning, and maintained the internal command of it. He came under a higher command, only by silent rules of military precedence, when other forces were upon the ground ; of which he w^ould hardly take note himself, so little was he inter- fered with. Putnam had work enough without, in the open field, and was very sure that Prescott would do his part within. It is only a little remarkable that Col. Prescott, when questioned by Mr. Adams, at Philadel- phia, in regard to the battle, does not even name Gen. Putnam, as having been upon the ground at all ; and apparently had not ascertained, two months after the battle, whether the Connecticut militia, sent out by himself, under Knowlton, to hold a position against the enemy's right, had obeyed his orders or had run away ! And it is even the more remarkable, that this bodv of men, assisted by the brave Capt. Chester of Wethers- field, and others whom Putnam was rallying to their support during the whole engagement, had been able, by raising an extempore breastwork of fence and new- 208 HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. mown grass, and defending it with Spartan fidelity, to save liim all the while from being flanked and cut to pieces ! For upon just this point Lord Howe was roll- ing his columns, with the greatest emphasis of assault, resting his main hope of success on turning the position so gallantly defended, and gaining, in this manner, the other summit of the hill, which, if he had been able to do, Prescott and his regiment would have been, from that moment, prisoners of war. In this view, it is a total mistake to look upon the defense of the redoubt, brilliant as it was and prominent to the eye, as the bat- tle of Bunker Hill. The place of extempore counsel and varying fortune, the hinge of the day, was really not there, but in the open field ; and especially in mov- ing, there, raw bodies of troops, with any such eftect as to maintain the critical point of the engagement. The testimony of authorities, in respect to the ques- tion of the chief command, you will understand, is vari- ous and contradictory, as it naturally would be. And yet the contradiction is rather verbal than real ; for as Prescott held the redoubt, in the manner described, it would be very natural, taking a more restricted view of the field, to speak of him as chief in command ; though the facts already recited, show most clearly, that Col. Swett gave the true testimony, when he said that Col. Prescott *^ was ordered to proceed to Charles- town, Gen. Putnam having the principal direction and superintendence of the expedition concerning it.'' This too was the testimony of Putnam himself, as the Eev. Josiah Whitnev testifies, in a note to the funeral ser- HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 209 mon preaclied at Putuam's death. He says, ''The de- tachment was first put under the command of Gen. Putnam. With it he took possession of the hill, and ordered the battle from the beginning to the end." Does any one imagine that Gen. Putnam was a man to assert claims of honor that belonged to others? Far more likely was he, in the generosity of his nature, to give up such as were properly his own. The testimony of the old Courant, commenting on the battle, shortly after, corresponds. "In the list of heroes it is needless to expatiate on the character and bravery of Major Gen. Putnam, whose capacity to form and execute great designs, is known through Europe, and whose undaunted courage and martial abilities have raised him to an incredible height, in the esteem and friendship of his American brethren ; it is sufficient to say, that he seems to be inspired by God Almighty with a military genius." Col. Humphrey, writing his Life of Putnam, at Mount Vernon, under the eye of "Washington, and the historian Botta, who also derives his facts from original sources, agree in representing Putnam as the chief in command. Moreover, Washington, when he came upon the field only a few days after the battle, with commissions from the Congress appointing four Major Generals, immedi- ately delivered Putnam his commission, placing him second in command to himself, and reserved the three others for the further consideration of Congress ; though Putnam's commission, placing him above two very tal- ented of&cers of the state, superior in rank to himself, 18- 210 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. had created more complaint than either of the others. Why this remarkable deference to Putnam, unless he has been the chief actuating spirit in some great suc- cess? Why is this signal honor conferred on Gen. Putnam, when, if Col. Prescott commanded in the bat- tle, the eyes of the army and of the public at large are centered on him ? — who, I believe, was never afterwards promoted at all. I have seen, too, within a very few days, an original engraving of Gen. Putnam, published in England three months after the battle, which has at the foot these words, — "Major Gen. Putnam, of the Connecticut for- ces, and Commander in chief of the engagement on Buncker's Hill, near Boston. Published, as the Act directs, by C. Shepherd, 9th Sept., 1775." That he had the chief command here assigned him I firmly be- lieve ; which if he has lost, it has been at least three months subsequent to the battle ; and by means that often discolor the truth of history. No! the occupa- tion of the hill was emphatically Putnam's measure; one that truly represents the man. See him, as he is represented, in the council, the march, the beginning of the entrenchment, the fight itself; present every- where, directing, cheering on the men, rallying all the force he can to liecp the difficult point of the field ; last in the retreat, issuing grimmed with smoke and gunpow- der, and seizing, with his force, another hill, there to entrench again and wait the fortune of another day — do this, I say, and there is but one conclusion for us to re- ceive, viz., that Gen. Putnam was the chief in command, HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 211 the animating spirit of the battle. This mnst be our claim and we must make it understood. If the monu- ment on Bunker Hill is a worthy testimony for Massa- chusetts, we must show that it testifies as much also for Connecticut ; and I hope our Connecticut eyes will be pardoned, if we see it tapering off into a top-stone, that represents the little town of Pomfret ! I have dwelt the more at length on this question, be- cause we seem to have lost our rights here, in a trans- action that in one view stands at the head of our American history ; and yet more because of the good it will do us to reclaim our rights. I suppose it may well enough be doubted whether Putnam was the ablest of all great commanders; whether, in fact, he was the general to head what would be called, in history, a great military campaign. He was a man of action, in- spiration, adventure, and he made men feel as he felt. "You seem to have the faculty. Sir," said Washington, "of infusing your own spirit." Nothing was more tru- ly distinctive of the man. His value lay in the im- mense volume of impulse or martial enthusiasm there was in him, and in the fact that his time was always novx The country wanted impulse to break silence, and he was the man, above all others in the colonies, to give that impulse. A more cautious man, probably, would not have advised to such an attempt ; possibly a wise man would not; but Putnam, whose impetuous soul had only a feeble connection with prudence, or with mere science, was the man to say, let us have the fight first, and settle the wisdom of it afterwards. Pos- 212 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. sibly there is a higher kind of generalship ; but, 1 kno\r not how it is, when I see how much depended for oui country, at that time, on a real beginning of action, I am ready for once, to accept impulse as the truest coun- sel, and the fire of martial passion as being only the in- spired form of prudence. I can not rive you the details of our military transac- tions in the Ee volution. I can only name a few facts, that will suffice to indicate the spirit and devotion of our peojDle. Connecticut was the second state in the Union, as regards the amount of military force contrib- uted to the common cause. She had twenty-five regi- ments of militia and of these, it is said, that twenty-two full regiments were in actual ser\dce, out of the stat^, at one and the same time, and that the most busy and pressing season of the j'ear; leaving the women at home to hoe their fields and assist the bovs and old men in gathering the hai' vests. And such a class of material has seldom been gathered into an army. When Trumbull sent on fourteen regiments to Wash- ington, at Xew York, he described them as ''regiments of substantial farmers." And General Eoot, as a friend of mine remembers, declared that, in his brigade alone, there came out seven ministers, as captains of their own congregations. Among our leaders was Colonel Knowl- ton, than whom there was not a more gallant officer, or one more respected by the commander-in-chief in the arm}' of the Revolution. And when he fell, in the dis- astrous day at Harlaem, with so many hundreds of the sons of Connecticut, Washington evinced his affliction HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 213 for the loss of this favorite ofl&cer, as being the loss most deplorable of all that befell the cause, on that los- ing da}^ Among the leaders, too, were Parsons, and Spencer, and Wooster, and Wolcott, and Ledyard, and, last of all, but not least worthy to be named, though to name him should never be necessary before a Connecti- cut audience, that mournful flower of patriotism, the young scholar of Coventry; he whom no service could' daunt that Washington desired, and who, when he was called to die an ignominious death, nobly said to his enemies and executioners, that ^^his only regret was, that he had but one life to give for his country." But I must not omit to speak of our venerable Gov- / ernor, the patriotic Trumbull, under whom we acted our part in this eventful struggle. He was one of those patient, true-minded men, that hold an even hand of authority in stormy times, and suffer nothing to fall out of place, either by excess or defect of service ; to whom Washington could say, ^^I can not sufficiently express my thanks, not only for your constant and ready com- pliance with every request of mine, but for your pru- dent forecast, in ordering matters, so that your force has been collected and put in motion as soon as it has been demanded." And yet there like to have been a fatal breach between them, at the beginning of the war. The British ships in the Sound were threatening to land on our coast, and Trumbull requested that a part of the troops he was raising might remain to guard our own soil. No request, apparently, could be more reasona- ble. Washington refused and ordered them all to 214 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. Boston. Trumbull wrote him a most pungev.c letter; adding, however, like a true patriot, who sees che ne- cessity of subordination to all power and effect, that he will comply; ''for it is plain that such jealousies in- dulged, however just, will destroy the cause." Noble answer ! worth}^ to be recorded, as a rebuke to faction, as long as the republic lasts ! Washington immediate- ly explained, the misunderstanding was healed, and from that time forth he leaned upon Trumbull as one of his chief supports ; confident always of this, that he could calculate on marching the whole state bodily just where he pleased. Neither let us forget, in this connection, what ap- pears to be sufficiently authenticated, that our Trum- bull is no other than the world-renowned Brother Jon- athan, accepted as the soubriquet of the United States of America. Our Connecticut Jonathan was to Wash- ington what the scripture Jonathan was to David, a true friend, a counselor and stay of confidence — Wash- ington's brother. When he wanted honest counsel and w^ise, he would say, ''let us consult brother Jonathan ;" and then afterwards, partly from habit and. partly in playfulness of phrase, he would say the same when re- ferring any matter to the Congress, — "let us consult Brother Jonathan." And so it fell out rightly, that as Washington was called the Father of his Country, so he named the fine boy, the nation, after his brother Jonathan — a good, solid, scripture name, which, as our sons and daughters of the coming time may speak it, anywhere between the two oceans, let them remember HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 215 honest old Connecticut and the faithful and true brother she gave to Washington ! Considering the very intimate historic connection of our Eevolution with the influence of the clergy, theii active instigation to it and their constant, powerful co- operation in it, the transition we make in passing from our military history to that of the pulpit is by no means violent. Only in speaking of our great men here and our theologic standing generally, I must speak in the briefest manner. No mean distinction is it to say, that the renowned theologian, preacher and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, was a native of Con- necticut, and a graduate of Yale College. And though the more active part of his life was spent in Massachu- setts, he retained his afl&nities, more especially, with the churches and ministers of Connecticut. I need not say, that there is no American name of higher repute, not onl}^ among the divines, but also among the meta- physicians both of this country and of Europe. Dr. Dwight was born in Massachusetts but educated here, and here was the scene of his life. Besides these, hav- ing our Hooker, and Davenport, and Bellamy, and Smalley, and by a less exclusive property, our Hop- kins, and Emmons, and Griffin, all sons of Connecticut, we have abundant reason, I think, to be satisfied with our high eminence in the department of theological lit- erature and pulpit effect. As regards our poets I will only detain you to say 216 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. that, while I am far from thinkmg that everything which beats time in verse is poetry, it is yet something that we have our Trumbull, and Hillhouse, and Brain- ard, and Percival, and Pierpont, and Halleck, who, not to speak of others closer to our acquaintance, have written what can never perish, while wit may enliven men's hearts, or music and the sense of beauty remain.. Including, next, in our inventory, mechanical inven- tions, I may say that the great improvements in cotton machinery, by Gilbert Brewster, justify the title some- times given him of the Arkwright of our country. The cotton gin of Whitney is a machine that, by it- self, has doubled the productive power, and so the val- ue, of the Southern half of our countrv. If the invent- or had been paid for his invention, and not defrauded of his rights by a conspiracy too strong for the laws, the interest of his money would redeem all the fugi- tives that cross the line of free labor, as long as there is such a line to cross. The first two printing presses patented in the United States were from Hartford. John Fitch of Connecticut has the distinguished hon- or of producing the first steamboat that ever moved upon the waters of the world. He was unfortunate in his character, though a man of genius and high enthu- siasm. Failing of the means necessary to complete his experiments, and universally derided by the public, he persisted in the confidence that steam was to be the great agent of river navigation in the world, and gave HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 217 it, as a last request, that "his body might be buried on the banks of the Ohio, where his rest would be soothed by the blowing of the steam and the splash of the waters." It is not as generally known, I believe, that the first steam locomotive, ever constructed, was run in the streets of Hartford. The inventor was Doctor Kinsley, a man whose history was strikingly similar to that of Fitch. The late Theodore Dwight, known to many in this audience, lent him the money with w^hich he made his experiments. He succeeded in part, but fell through into bankruptcy, at the end, still persisting that steam was to be the agent of the land travel of the world. His experiments were made between the years '97 and '9, previous to the introduction of rails as the guides and supports of motion. It now remains to speak of the rank we have held, in the matter of education, and the power we have ex- erted by that means, in the republic. It is remarkable that a very large share of the colleges in our nation draw their lineage, not from Harvard, most distinguish- ed in the fruits of elegant literature, but from Yale. This is true of Dartmouth, Princeton, Williams, Mid- dlebur^, Hamilton, "Western Eeserve, Jacksonville, and Athens University in Georgia. These institutions were some of them planned in Connecticut, others of them moved, or in some principal degree manned, by the graduates of Yale College and sons of Connecticut. Dr. Johnson of Stratford, a graduate of Yale and after- wards of Oxford, was the principal originator and first 19 218 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. President also of Columbia College, Xew York. I find in tlie office of our Secretary of State a petition to our Legislature from the Trustees of Princeton College, ask- ing leave to draw a lottery here for the benefit of their institution, such leave being denied them by their own state. They aver in their petition, that '^ it would be a happy means of establishing and perpetuating a desira- ble harmony between the two institutions, Yale and Princeton, which it will be the care of your petitioners to promote and preserve." Leave was granted ; for it was the manner of our state to seize every opportunity, in every place, for the assistance of learning. I may also add, that Mr. Crary, to whose active exertions in behalf of education the school system and the State University of Michigan are mainly due, is a son of Connecticut and a graduate of Trinity College. Our system of common schools, originated by a pub- lic statute which is one of the very first statutes passed by the colonial Legislature, and faithfully maintained down to within the past twenty years, was, till then, acknowledged to be far in advance of that of any other state. The founding of our school fund, too, is an act that used to be regarded and spoken of with admiration everywhere, as characteristic of the state. And now, if you will see what force there is in edu- cation, what precedence it gives and preponderance of weight, even to a small and otherwise insignificant state, you have only to see what Connecticut has effect- ed through the medium of her older college and her once comparatively vigorous system of common schools. HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 219 I have spoken of the numerous colleges dotting the map of the republic, which are seen to be more or less directly off-shoots of Yale. If you ask what parts of the republic were settled principally by emigrations from Connecticut, they are the Eastern part of Long- Island, the Northern half of New Jersey, the Western sections of Massachusetts and Vermont, Middle and Western New York, the Susquehanna valley in Penn- sylvania, and the Western Eeserve territory in Ohio — just those portions of our country, more recently set- tled, as you will perceive, that are most distinguished for industry, thrift, intelligence, good morals and char- acter. Again, if you enter into the legislative bodies of other states west of us, and ask who are the members, you will find the sons of Connecticut among them, in a large proportion of numbers compared with those of any other state. In the convention, for example, that revised the Constitution of New York in 1821, it was found that, out of -one hundred and twenty -six mem- bers, thirty-two were natives of Connecticut, not in- cluding those who were born of a Connecticut par- entage in that state. Of the sons of Massachusetts which, according to the ratio of population, ought to have had about seventy, there w^ere only nine. If you add to the thirty-two natives of Connecticut, in that body, her descendants born in New York, and those who came in through Vermont, New Jersey, and other states, it is altogether probable that they would be found to compose a majority of the body; presenting 220 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. the very interesting fact that Connecticut is found sit ting there, to make a Constitution for the great state of Xew York. I found, on inquiry, four or five winters ago, that the Xew York Legislature contained fifteen natives of Connecticut, while of Massachusetts there were only nine ; though, according to her ratio of num- bers, there should have been about forty. So also in the Ohio Legislature of 1838-9, there were found in the lower house of seventy-four members, twelve from Connecticut, two from Massachusetts, two from Ver- mont. If we repair to the Halls of the American Congress, we shall there discover what Connecticut is doing on a still larger scale of comparison. The late Hon. James Hillhouse, when he was in -Congress, ascertained that forty-seven of the members, or about one-fifth of the whole number in both Houses, were native born sons of Connecticut. Mr. Calhoun assured one of our Eep- resentatives, when upon the floor of the House with him, that he had seen the time when the natives of Connecticut, together with all the graduates of Yale College there collected, wanted only five of being a ma- jority of that body. I took some pains in the winter, I think, of '43, to ascertain how the composition of the Congress stood at that time. There could not, of course, be as many native citizens of Connecticut among the members, as in the days of Mr. Hillhouse ; but including native citizens and descendants born out of the state, I found exactly his number, forty-seven. Of the New York representation, sixteen, or two fifths, HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 221 were sons or descendantSj in the male line, of Connec- ticut. Saying nothing of descendants born out of the state, there were, at that time, eighteen native born sons of Connecticut in the Congress. According to the Blue Book, Massachusetts had seventeen ; when taken in the proportion of numbers she should have had forty-two. New Hampshire should have had eighteen also, but had only seven ; Vermont eighteen, but had only four ; Louisiana eighteen, but had only two; New Jersey twenty-one, but had only nine. I see no way to ac- count for these facts, especially when the comparison is taken between Connecticut and Massachusetts, unless it be that, prior to a time quite recent, our school system was farther advanced and the education imparted to our youth more universal and more perfect. How beautiful is the attitude of our little state, when seen through the medium of facts like these. Unable to carry weight b}^ numbers, she is seen marching out her sons to conquer other posts of influence and repre- sent her honor in other fields of action. AVhich, if she continues to do, if she takes the past simply as a begin- ning, and returns to that beginning with a fixed de- termination to make it simply the germ of a higher and more perfect culture, there need scarcely be a limit to the power she may exert, as a member of the republic. The smallness of our territory is an advantage even, as regards the highest form of social development and the most abundant fruits of genius. Our state, imder a skillful and sufficient agriculture, witb a proper im- 19^ 222 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE provement of our waterfalls, is capable of sustaining a million of people, in a condition of competence and social ornament ; and that is a number as large as any state government can manage witli the highest effect. No part of our country between the two oceans is sus- ceptible of greater external beauty. What now looks rough and forbidding in our jagged hill-sides and our raw beginnings of culture, will be softened, in the fu- ture landscape, to an ornamental rock-work, skirted by fertility, pressing out in the cheeks of the green dells where the farm-houses are nested, bursting up through the waving slopes of the meadows, and walling the horizon about with wooded hills of rock and pastured summits. We have pure, transparent waters, a clear, bell-toned atmosphere, and, withal, a robust, healthy- minded stock of people, uncorrupted by luxury, un- humiliated by superstition, sharpened by good necessi- ties, industrious in their habits, simple in their manners and tastes, rigid in their morals and principles ; com- bining, in short, all the higher possibilities of character and genius, in a degree that will seldom be exceeded in any people of the world. These are the mines, the golden placers of Connecticut. Turning now to these as our principal hope for the future, let us endeavor, with a fixed and resolute concentration of our public aim, to keep the creative school-house in action, and raise our institutions of learning to the highest pitch of excellence. I am far from thinking that our schools have ever been as low, or riiefficient, as many have su]3posed ; the HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 223 facts I have recited clearly show the contrary. And yet they certainly are not worthy of our high advan- tages, or the age of improvement in which we live. Therefore I rejoice that our lethargy is now finally broken, and that we are fairly embarked in an organ- ized plan for the raising of our schools to a pitch of cul- ture and perfection, worthy of our former precedence. To exhibit the kind of expectation we are to set be- fore Connecticut as a state, let me give you the picture of a little obscure parish in Litchfield county; and I hope you will pardon me if I do it, as I must, with a degree of personal satisfaction ; for it is not any very bad vice in a son to be satisfied with his parentage. This little parish is made up of the corners of three towns, and the ragged ends and corners of twice as many mountains and stony-sided hills. But this rough, wild region, bears a race, of healthy-minded, healthy- bodied, industrious and religious people. They love to educate their sons and God gives them their reward. Out of this little, obscure nook among the mountains, have come forth two presidents of colleges, the two that a few years ago presided, at the same time, over the two institutions, Yale and Washington. Besides these they have furnished a Secretary of State for the com- monwealth, during a quarter of a century or more. Also a Solicitor, commonly known as the Cato of the United States treasui:y. Also a member of Congress. Also a distinguished professor. And besides these a greater number of lawyers, physicians, preachers and teachers, both male and female, than I am now able to 22-i HISTOKICAL ESTIMATE. enumerate. Probably some of you have never so much as heard the name of this little bye-place on the map of Connecticut, generally it is not on the maps at all, but how manv cities are there of 20,000 inhabitants in our country, that have not exerted one-half the influence on mankind. The power of this little parish, it is not too much to say, is felt in every part of our. great nation. Eecognized, of course, it is not ; but still it is felt. This, now, is the kind of power in which Connecticut is to have her name and greatness. This, in small, is what Connecticut should be. She is to find her first and noblest interest, apart from religion, in the full and perfect education of her sons and daughters. And so she is to be sending out her youth, empowered in ca- pacity and fortified by virtue, to take their posts of honor and influence in the other states ; in her behalf to be their physicians and ministers of religion, their professors and laAvyers, their wise senators, their great orators and incorruptible judges, bulwarks of virtue, truth and order to the republic, in all coming time. And then, when the vast area of our country between the two oceans is filled with a teeming population, when the delegates of sixty or a hundred states, from the granite shores of the East, and the alluvial plains of the South, and the srolden mountains of the West, are assembled in the Halls of our Congress, and little Connecticut is there represented, in her own behalf, by her one delegate, it will still and always be found that she is numerously represented also by her sons from other states, and her one delegate shall be himself re HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. 225 garded, in his person, as the symbol of that true Brother Jonathan, whose name still designates the great republic of the world. Meantime, if any son of Connecticut will indulge in the degraded sneer, by which ignorant and malicious custom has learned to insult her name, let him be looked upon as the man who is able to please himself in defiling the ashes of his mother. Let me testify my hearty joy too, in the presence of this assembly, that a citizen of Connecticut has at last been heard in the Senate of this great nation, doing honor to its noble history, by a fit chastisement of the insult, which a vol- unteer malice, emboldened by former impunity, was tempted again to offer to our commonwealth. Fellow-citizens, I have endeavored, this evening, to show you Connecticut — what she has been, and so what she is and ought to be. I undertook this subject, simply because of the chilling and depressing influence I have so often experienced from the want of any suf- ficient public feeling in our state. I am not a historian, and I may have fallen into some mistakes, which a critic in American history will detect. I knew but im- perfectly, when I began, how great a wealth of char- acter and incident our history contains. I supposed it might be more defective than I could wish, as regards the kind of material most fitted to inspire a public en- thusiasm. But, as I proceeded patiently in my ques- tions, gathering, stage by stage, this inventor}^, which I have condensed even to dryness, I began to be morti- fied by the discovery that the age of Connecticut his- 226 HISTORICAL ESTIMATE. tory most defective and least worthy of respect is the present— that we are most to be honored in that which we have forgot, and least because we have forgotten it. Such, I sa}^, is Connecticut! There is no outburst of splendor in her history, no glaring or obtrusive prominence to attract the applause of the multitude. Her true merit and position are discovered only by search, she is seen only through the sacred veil of mod- esty — great, only, in the silent energy of worth and be- neficence. But when she is brought forth out of her retirement, instead of the little, declining, undistin- guished, scarcely distinguishable State of Connecticut, jon behold, rising to view, a history of practical great- ness and true honor; illustrious in its beginning; se- rious and faithful in its progress; dispensing intelli- gence, without the rewards of fame; heroic for the right, instigated by no hope of applause ; independent, as not knowing how to be otherwise; adorned with names of wisdom and greatness, fit to be revered as long as true excellence may have a place in the rever- ence of mankind. VI. AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST.* Gentlemen of the Society: You have thrown it upon me, at a late hour, to pre- pare your Annual Address. Exhausted in strength and spirits, by the pressure of manifold duties, and de- siring rather to be eased of my burdens, than to suffer the accumulation of new ones, I should scarcely have listened to your call, had it not suggested early scenes, which it is a kind of recreation to remember. It re- minded me of the country and the simple life of the j&elds, the plow and the team, the digging of rocks and the piling of stone walls, the green thickets of maize and the scented hay, the sounding flail of winter and the ringing of the ax in the frosty woods, — days of vic- toriou-s health, sound digestion, peaceful sleep, and youthful spirits buoyant as the wing of the bird and fresh as their morning song. Thus I was tempted to look upon the preparation of your Address as a kind of excursion into the country. In which hope, if I am disappointed, I shall, at least, have endeavored to ^' Delivered as an Address before the Hartford County Agricultural So- ciety, Oct. 2, 1846. 228 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. repay, in what manner I was able, some of the pleasant obligations I owe to the country ; the lessons of cheer- ful industry there received; the sense there acquired, amid the small detail of rural economy, of what it is to live^* the acquaintance made with nature, by a thor- ough contact with her in all her moods and objects; and, more than all, the worth of enjoyments that spring from the ingenuous performance of life's simple duties. I shall not undertake, on the present occasion, to in- struct you, either in the science or in the practical methods of agriculture. I rather jorefer to occupy you with a subject which is more within my compass — a more general subject, though one that is intimately connected with our agricultural prosperity, and one which, through that, deeply concerns the common in- terest of us all. The agriculture of our State, though improving, is still very crude and imperfect. An impression prevails among us that agriculture can not here become a hope- ful and profitable interest. Land is thought to be dear^ in proportion to its value ; the soil is much of it poor and untractable ; and the sky is harsh and repulsive. Hence our young men, together with many enterpiising families in middle life, are tempted to relinquish the ties that bind them here and go out to seek their for- tune in the new world of the west. To stay here and delve among the snows and rocks and worn-out, sour, old fields of Connecticut, is supposed to indicate a de- gree of verdancy, or, at least, a want of manly determ- ination, not altogether worthy of respect. Accordingly, AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 229 we find tliat our population scarcely increases, and the census roll of 1840 shows that, in some parts of the State, it has even begun to diminish. The tone of public spirit droops accordingly, the prices of property are depressed, and all the substantial interests of society are held in check. We seem even to have it in ques- tion in our hearts, whether, at some future day, when the Paradise of the west is beginning to be set in order, the people of old Connecticut will not adjourn bodily and go clear, leaving its bleak hills and flinty fields to themselves. In what I may say on this subject, I wish not to be understood as desiring utterly to stop the emigration of our people. If they are a loss to us, they are yet a gain to other parts of our great nation, which needs them quite as much as we. In just this way has our State already bestowed upon the rising States of the west some of the best blessings they have received — men of industry, order, education and piety, who have assisted in laying the foundations of all that is good and hopeful in their newlv constructed institutions. We can not regret these, our kindred, as lost ; they are our pride rather, and we hope that others of our sons and daugh- ters will go forth to do us honor in the same way. At the same time, it is my earnest conviction that the west- ward tendency of our population is extravagant, so ex- travagant as even to amount to a serious delusion. There are commonly no such advantages to be gained by removal as are anticipated. Meantime we are pre- vented, by the same delusion, from realizing here that 20 230 AGRICULTURE AT. THE EAST. spectacle of social beauty and maturity which is needed, above all things, to serve as an ideal to the nation at large, and thus as a stimulant to its moral and physical advancement. What I propose, therefore, is to enter into the ques- tion of agriculture as a New England interest. My conviction is, and I hope to produce the same in you, that in ordinary cases you may much better stay here and retain your families about you, multiplying your farms in number as the hands and mouths are multi- plied, reducing them in size as ihej are multiplied in number, and enriching their qualit}^ as they are di- minished in size. In other words, emigration to the west, as it now prevails, is bad economy. You will incur greater hardships, enjoy fewer comforts, and ad- vance in property with more difficulty and greater un- certainty there than here. In presenting the merits of this question, something requires to be said concerning the comparative natural advantages of agriculture here and at the west, those especially which belong to the climate and the soil. Our climate is more sharp and rugged, but not less healthy, and health is the first article of physical pros- perity, as well as of physical enjoyment. If our changes are abrupt, if our extremes of heat and cold are severe, our air is pure and vigorous beyond that of almost any other country in the world. A softer cli- mate, too, makes softer men, men of a lower physical tone and a less triumphant energy. So a moister cli- mate, like that of England, makes a rounder and more AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 231 full-blooded race, but fullness of moisture and a fair skin are no signs of muscular spring, and clear, elastic, temperament. A New England farmer, swinging his scythe under a July sun, and foddering bis cattle on a snow-bank, has a good climate enough for him, because he has a body and mind that are tough enough for all weather. What matter is it to him how the thermom- eter ranges, when he has a spring thermometer in his body, which tempers all extremes and keeps up the equilibrium of his physical enjoyment. He belongs to a fire-king, snow-king race, and brought up in fire and snow, he is at home in both elements, happy in the royal vigor of his bodily prerogative. Some, I know, are falling into the habit of railing at our sour and changeful climate.. But from what I have seen of the temperament of milder countries and the milder vigor of their people, I have come to the conclusion that we have about the most respectable climate in the world. It is true that we all die, and some are ready to con- clude that, as one disease or another is certainly de- termined to kill us and will not let us be excused, that there must be some intolerable fault in the climate. Whereas, if they are willing to look at reasonable evi- dence, there is no part of the world where the people appear to have such a spring of elasticity, such capacity of endurance, such power of execution, and live, on the average, to so great an age. If any person or family has reason to dread the development of hereditary con- sumption, they may find their advantage, perhaps, in emigrating to the western States. Otherwise, they are 232 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. far more likely to prolong their days, retain their health unshaken, and multiply their physical enjoyments, by remaining in New England. The soil of the west is certainly richer, more feasible and more fruitful, naturally, than ours. But this ad- vantage, which I freely admit, is offset by three or four others, which more than counterbalance it in the reck- oning. Our country abounds in rapid streams and waterfalls, and is therefore destined by nature to be a great manufacturing region — greater even than we, as yet, begin to conceive. It will be more populous than any purely agricultural region can be. It will abound in large towns and cities, preparing markets for those kinds of produce which can not be transported over long distances, copious enough to consume all that our soil will yield, — apples and all kinds of fruits, pota^es and other esculent roots, veal, lamb, poultry, and fresh meat generally, milk, butter, eggs, hay, wood, — in all such articles we shall have a market close at hand, and have it to ourselves, clear of competition. Our country, too, is on the sea-board, and must, therefore, be the market country of the nation, as long as it exists. For about half the year, too, the vast inland regions of the west are very much excluded from this market. Mean- time we, always near at hand, can watch the fluctua- tions of the market and turn in our products, at short notice, so as to take advantage of prices. Doubtless it sounds very imposingly to us, when we learn that a friend in Illinois has raised so man}^ bushels of wheat to the acre, and has had a hundred or five hundred i AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 233 acres in cultivation ; but when it is added that he sold it for fifty or eighty cents per bushel, carting it off a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, to some lake or river, at an expense of twenty -five cents a bushel ; re- alizing, in clear profit, even less than a quarter of the income, per acre, which he would have realized here, on land only moderately productive, the fascination seems a little diminished. Then you understand why he continues to live in a log-house, writes few letters, postpones the visit to his friends which he long ago spoke of, and why, if you visit him, which is more likely, he looks rougher than he used to look, has a want of service in the house, and a half wild race of children round him waiting to be educated. To offset the productiveness of the soil at the west, we have, too, another advantage, which no considerate man will despise. I mean pure water — a plentiful sup- ply, on almost every ten acres of ground, of good pure water. So many limpid brooks thread our valleys, so many crystal springs break out of our hills, a well of moderate depth commands a fountain so clear and abundant, that we scarcely think of water, as a thing of any value, least of all, as a necessary convenience to agriculture. But you remove to the west and the first thing you discover, probably, is, that you are to spend your life in taking medicine. The rich fields on which you locate, and out of which your waving harvests are to grow, are probably underlaid with lime juice. You sink a well some twenty or sixty feet, and the bucket, dipping into this liquid medicine, draws it up to be the 20- 234 AGPwICUJ.TURE AT THE EAST. drink of jour days. Your tea and coflfee are steeped in medicine. Your face and clotlies are washed in the same. And when you die, it will probably be a fair verdict that you died of taking medicine. Then having probably no streams or springs in your fields, which are not dvj in the summer, you must sink another well and set up a pump for your cattle. If you are sick or leave home, and trust them in the charge of a careless boy, or a faithless man, they are likely to be lowing in dismal agony for your return. So if you are unexpectedly de- tained from home yourself. And as a part of your or- dinary labor, you must drive your cattle, at least twice in the day, to the watering-place, and spend a full hour in pumping for them a hogshead of the medicinal liquid just described; having it for your comfort that when the poor herd look up from the trough at which they drink, they will seem to have it in their faces to tell you how much better it is to be in a land of rocks and snow-banks, than to dwell in a thirsty land where no water is. Meantime if, in the dry season of summer and autumn, you descend to the lower grounds that skirt the sluggish streams, which, we suppose, you will have had the discretion to avoid in fixing j'our location, there you come upon a stagnant, inky-looking ditch, winding round among the decayed trees and piles of drift-wood, no ripple of motion stirring the surface, no sign of life appearing to disturb the dismal, deathlike silence of the pool. The very frogs have gone ashore and sit drooping among the reeds, afraid to leap into the poisonous element, and the fishes lie sick below. AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. 235 The most decisive sign of life you discover thereabouts is in the ague shake of the men, women and children, who have dared to pitch upon the rich bottoms adja- cent, and whose harvest, you perceive, is rotting down in their fields unreaped. We have also another compensation for the deficient richness and the intractable stubbornness of our soil, in the superior beauty of which it is capable. Nor to any thoughtful, cultivated man is this a mean advantage. The western country, though fertile as a garden by na- ture, and capable of excelling, perhaps, in productive- ness, any other portion of the world's surface, is yet, for the most part, a dull, monotonous region, and never can be otherwise. No possible ornament or cultivation can ever give it a picturesque effect. Without hills and waterfalls, without foaming streams, rocks, green dells and sheltered valleys, art can never supply the defi- ciency of nature. Traveling through a cleared region of miles in extent, you can see nothing but a rampart of forest trees, which close you in and forbid you to see farther. No mountain ranges lift their blue heads, marking a distant horizon round you. Indeed you are continually haunted by the feeling that there is no horizon, that it has sunk, gone down with the sun, some thousands of years ago, never to rise. In the vast prairie regions, where no woods impede the view, the case is even worse. There being no elevated objects or summits to impart, by changes of color, a sense of distances, there are no distances, and the sky shuts down about you so close that you suspend your 236 AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. breath instinctively, as one thinking of suffocation. And thus, instead of the Great Valley, of which you heard so much, and which you fancied would spread its ample bosom round you, vast and magnificent be- yond the compass of all thought, you find that jou are, in fact, living under a bowl of sky scarcely bigger than your farm. Such is not New England. We have here a country of varied outline, composed of brooks, lakes, cliffs of rock, green dells bosomed among the hills and girt about by distant mountains, a country naturally wild and rough, but capable of the highest physical beauty. And this beauty it will one day re- veal. I have not one doubt that the present feeling of the nation, that which is now turning all eyes west- ward, is, before many generations have passed away, to be wholly reversed. The great west, which is now the Paradise of cheap land, will be known as a Paradise no longer, but rather as the great American corn-field, the Poland of the United States. New England, mean- time, will be sprinkled over with beautiful seats and bloom as a cultivated garden. The wooded hills, the rocky cliffs, the green slopes and waterfalls, will be wrought into a picture of grace and -loveliness; the longing heart of the nation will be turning hither, and men of resources and cultivated tastes will be pressing eastward to seek a residence of comfort and ornament. In short, there is not the smallest room to doubt that, taken in the long run of time. New England will be found, in its simple cajoacity of physical beauty, to be AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 237 far more richly gifted by nature than the richest re- gions of fertile monotony in the west. I have spoken, thus far, simply of the general natural advantages of our country, as regards agriculture, com- pared with the new countries west of us. On which side the balance lies I see no room to doubt. But gen- eral considerations of this nature, though entitled to great weight, are not decisive in themselves. Still, it will be said, that agriculture is not here a profitable in- terest, and that, with every man seeking a livelihood, is the first thing. But I am always curious to know who it is, what kind of farmer, on what kind of farm, hj what kind of cultivation, that has ascertained the un- profitableness of agriculture here. It makes all the dif- ference possible who it is that has ascertained such a fact. For it may be, after all, that it is the unprofita- bleness of the man that is proved, not the unprofitable- ness of agriculture. And if I mistake not, there are unprofitable men at the west as well as here. The probability is, moreover, that an unprofitable man, crossing the mountains, will be able also to prove, both there and everywhere, that agriculture is not a profita- ble interest. However there is a current impression or opinion that agriculture, in New England, is not and can not be profitable. And some respect is due to current opin- ions, though there are many such, that are mere saws of the day, and worth about as much as the new saws that prevail, every successive year, in regard to medi- cine. Our farmers scour over three or four times the 238 AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. amount of surface which they are really able to culti- vate, wearing down land, teams, bones and patience, to get a bare subsistence, and then declare, with a sigh, that agricultut*e here is not profitable ; they must sell and go to the west. Then springs up a dilettante, or gentleman farmer, who declares that it is not so, as he will shortly prove. He buys a small farm, for he has some right notions, and proceeds to bring it under cul- tivation, on scientific principles. He gives orders to the men to make heaps of compost, that will cost him, be- fore he gets through, at least five dollars a load ; lays in a stock of patent utensils ; plants orchards that are certainly to pay all his expenses in five years; pur- chases a herd of cows that are each to give half a barrel of milk a day; sheep that will yield a fleece of ten pounds every year, besides being mutton themselves, and a choice breed of swine that will almost fatten themselves on their own reputation, and thus he begins. Then he comes out of his scientific library, in his gloves, to see how the men get on, and how the old worn-out farm rejoices under his new scientific dispen- sation. Or perhaps he is a professional man, and only goes out occasionally to observe the working of his ex- periment. By and by he begins to think that his bills come in too fast, much faster than his money. He goes into a reckoning, and finds, to his great surprise, that his farm has cost him about a thousand dollars a year. Now he also concludes that agriculture in New England is certainly an unprofitable business, and the fact is proved. The old style farmer thought so; the new AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 239 style farmer has made it certain. Henceforth it is an established fact. Now I have the greatest respect for science. There is no doubt that it has added very great assistance ' to agriculture already, and will, in future times, add a great deal more than it has done. Still it can do nothing, separated from practical economy, personal in- dustry, inspection and experience. Botany, by itself, will not raise potatoes ; vegetable physiology will not keep them from rotting after they are raised ; a knowl- edge of manures will not enrich a farm ; a knowledge of soils, and the relations of soil and climate to the several kinds of product, will not maintain good econ- omy, or make good bargains. The true farmer must be neither a mere . theorist, nor a dull-minded drudge, following in the rut made by his father's wheels. While he takes off his coat and wipes the sweat from his brow, he must have his wits at work too. He must dig ditches and make figures. He must throw out rocks, and what is quite as hard, must loosen the dull ideas that habit has bedded in his brain. He must be alive all over, in body and mind, in mind and body. There is no business so complex, requiring so much of steady, well digested economy, so great sharpness of judgment, so nice- a balancing between theory and practice. Ten thousand chances are at work about him, and he must have his eyes open to them all, — frosts, droughts, excess of water, good and bad seeds, insects, diseases, good successions of crops, good divisions of fields, ap- propriate and cheap manures, the relative yield of har- 240 AGRICULTURE AT -THE EAST. vests, the markets, — all these and a thousand other dis- tinct matters he must have in view, and it requires a mind full of intelligence and wide awake to observation, to choose his way. The time is passing away when farming at hap-hazard, raising any thing, any how, any where, can be profitable. The farmer of the coming age must be a different style of man, or he will come to naught. The future owners of the United States, and that at no very distant day, are likely to be a class of men who understand agriculture as an art ; for just as the wealth of manufactures is passing into the hands of the great practical operators, so the lands will pass, ere long, by the same law, into the hands of a class who have skill to manage them profitably; while the mere drudges, who are now scrubbing over their old dilapidated farms, among rocks and brakes and bogs and daisies, will descend, as they ought, to the mere rank of day laborers. If there be any class of farmers among us, who can not awake to the neces- sit}^ of improvement, can not understand that any thing is needed but to keep plowing and planting and raising weeds, as their fathers did, I am not sure that they had not better remove to the west. The new scenes and hard trials of western life, and perhaps a good shake of ague, will wake them up. If not, if they still adliere to their old vegetable habit, that is certainly a better place for the spontaneous vegetable growths of all sorts than this, and will be for at least two or three genera- tions to come. But the young man who has a mind awake, a sound AGRICULTUKK AT THK EAST. 241 practical judgment in a sound practical body, can do better. K lie lias slender means to begin with, it does not follow that he must go where land is cheapest ; cer- tainl}^ not if that is the hardest, most uncertain way to increase his means, as in many cases it unquestionably is. Let him select for purchase some small farm, of only twenty or thirty acres, worth perhaps thirty or forty dollars an acre, favorably situated for improve- ment, and of such a description that it is capable of being easily raised in value. On this let him make his beginning. There are many such farms in the market, which, in five years, can be made worth eighty or one hundred dollars per acre, repaying, meantime, by what they produce, every expense incurred. I do not say that this can generally be done ; for some kinds of land are more intractable as regards improvement than others. I only say, that a man of sharp-sighted judg- ment, assisted by science, will select many such. For the first year or two, the land will not pay the expenses of labor and manure. But the farther you go, and the more expense you make, if wisely made, the better the return becomes, till at length, when the soil is brought up into the very highest tone possible, the income yielded is enhanced in a geometrical ratio; for the taxes, the expenses of cultivation, harvesting and fencing, are scarcely greater than before, the new manure falls into a soil that is already coming into hearty and vigorous action, and the growths take their spring from a higher level. I doubt whether there is any method of increasing in property so certain and 21 2-i2 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. easy as this, or any that is more within the bounds of rigid computation. So also facts most abundantly prove. Thus an English gentleman, who, fifty years ago, received from one of his estates £5,000 a year, has so increased its productiveness, by an improved agricul- ture, that he is now receiving £40,000. That is, he has so managed the estate, as to make it eight-fold its own former value, yielding him, all the time, a large and increasing revenue for his own expenditure. Such examples are frequent in England. The whole island, taken as a single estate, has nearly three-folded its power of production, within the last fifty years. To an American, passing through, it appears to be a vast cul- tivated garden, clean of weeds, covered with luxuriant growths, every hedge and field in the nicest keeping, and the highest state of production, and yet I heard them complaining in Parliament of their wretched and slovenly agriculture, and declaring, without scruple, and I have no doubt, with truth, that the island is ca- pable of being made to yield more than double its present product. A similar process is going on in Prussia. Vast sterile plains of sand, that were considered worthless a few years ago, are now producing luxuriant crops of wheat. A school-farm that cost two thousand dollars, was raised, in twelve years, to the value of twelve thousand dollars, by nothing but an improved method of agriculture. Similar facts are furnished in our own country. AGKICULTURE AT THE EAST. 243 Two gentlemen, in the State of Delaware, bought a farm, at the rate of thirty dollars per acre. In a few years, the farm had paid all their expenditure, and was found producing a clear annual income, equal to the interest of $500 per acre. A worn-out farm, near Geneva, in the State of New York, was bought for ten dollars per acre. At the end of fifteen years, it was found to have supported a family, paid its own expenses, and was yielding, for the whole four hundred acres, the interest money of one hundred and fifty dollars per acre. More conclusive still, because it is proof on a larger scale, the current price of lands in Dutchess county. New York, was, twenty years ago, only twenty or twenty- five dollars per acre. They are now selling currently at one hundred and one hundred and fifty dollars per acre. Meantime, the lands of George Washington, for- merly valued at forty dollars per acre, are now selling at seven dollars. And if you desire proofs closer at hand, there is a farmer in our own state, who will tell you that he and his father used to sow a himdred acres of rje, to get one thousand bushels of the grain, which they sold, one year, as he recollects, for six hundred and twenty-five dollars. The last year, he sold, from six acres of the same land, products to the amount of eight hundred dollars; a sum equal to the interest on two thousand two hundred dollars per acre. This gentleman began with a farm of five hundred acres. Convinced that it was too large, he commenced selling it off, and wisely reduced it to one hundred and seventj^-five acres, which 244 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. now, with a much smaller amount of labor, produce a much larger income than the whole five hundred, and are also worth more in the market. He lately refused two hundred dollars per acre, for several acres of land, which, twenty years ago, he valued at forty dollars. Nor is the experience of this gentleman at all singular. Others have realized to a greater or less extent, the same general results, by a similar process. I see no reason why agriculture may not be prosecuted to ad- vantage, on a large scale, as well as any other kind of business. But the care, labor and expenditure must be proportionate, in order to carry forward the desired im- provement. For the same treatment, which will enrich twenty acres, will enrich a thousand At the same time, twenty acres, well wrought, are better and more profitable, than five hundred shiftlessly managed, or merely run over to catch what they will yield, of their own accord, or under half cultivation. This hitherto has been the folly of our agricultural methods. There probably is no farm in Connecticut, however large, the whole amount of labor and expeniture on which might not be more profitably employed on fifty or seventy- five acres. In view of facts like these, let the young man who would emigrate, consider whether it is not better to begin with a small farm here, and expect, hj bringing it into the very highest cultivation, thus to extend or enlarge his property. In ordinary cases, I am quite certain, provided he goes to work skillfull}^, that he will advance in property more rapidly than he will to AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 245 emigTate. Suppose lie were to remove to the west, say to Illinois, and there taking up one hundred and sixty acres of new land, at one and a half dollars an acre, raise it, during his lifetime, to the value of ten dollars an acre, which is quite as much as, in ordinary cases, and leaving buildings out of the account, he will do. Then he advances on the property invested one thou- sand two hundred and seventy -five dollars. If he buys forty acres of land here, at thirty dollars an acre, and raises its value to one hundred dollars, then he makes a clear increase of two thousand eight hundred dollars. In the former case, he will be worth, adding the pur- chase money to the increased value, fifteen hundred dollars. In the other, he vnll be worth four thousand dollars. But the purchase money, at the west, is, by the supposition, two hundred and twenty-five dollars, and here it is twelve hundred dollars. It will cost him, however, two hundred dollars, or more, to remove his family to the west, leaving a difference of seven hundred and seventy -five dollars, which probably will be fully compensated by the buildings and fences that he finds on his premises ; which makes the original expenditure as nearly even as it may be. And thus, with an even expenditure, he obtains a property of fifteen hundred dollars in one case, and four thousand in the other. At the same time, it is far more easv for him to raise money here, over and above what is necessary to sup- port life, than it is at the west. A farm of forty acres, in good cultivation, will yield more of clear income, than one of one hundred and fifty at the west, allowing 21- 246 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. for the low price of products there, the expense, often grea% of transporting them to a market, and the en- hanced price of all the commodities necessary to the comfort of a family. I am well aware that these computations do not agree with current opinion. But there is a good reason why they do not : for the truth is, that no man or family thinks of living here, as the emigrant is compelled to live. K you will make up your mind to live here for ten or twenty years, in a log-house, with one room and perhaps no floor, to sit on stools instead of chairs, to have but one suit of clothes, and these of the coarsest and cheapest kind possible, to use sugar only as a deli- cacy and live on the coarsest fare, to ride in a box wagon or cart, to pick your way through forests by marks on the trees, and swim rivers for want of bridges, to bring up your children without education, foregoing, in life, the guidance, and in death, the comforts of re- ligion — in a word, if you will sacrifice everything here above the range of raw physical necessity, and consent to become a barbarian as regards all the refinements of life, you will see how it is that the emigrant is able to get a start, and why he is supposed to do it so much more easily at the west His life is a life of untold hardships. He consents to be no more a man but a tool, offers up his flesh and his bones to the wear of a comfortless, homeless drudgery, that he may prepare something for his family. The first generation can hardly be said to live. They let go life, throw it away, for the benefit of the generation to come after them. AGEICULTUEE AT THE EAST. 247 And these will be found, in most cases, to have grown ap in such rudeness and barbarity, that it will require one or two generations more to civilize their habit. I would not draw a darker picture of the emigrant's life than truth requires. Sometimes he is fortunate enough, in the place and circumstances of his settle- ment, to command a condition of comfort, within a short time; but how often does he suffer a lot more severe than what I have described. The fever enters his dismal hut, and there, away from friends and re- mote from sympathy, he closes, with his own hands, the eyes of his wife, or, one after another, the eyes of his children, for whose sake he emigrated. Or he lies shivering with disease himself, while his crops are rotting down in the field, and when he has worn out his year or two of fever, finds that his constitution is fatally broken by it and the other hardships he has encountered, leaving him only the wi^eck of his powers, and the infirmities of a premature decay. Or the prairie fire burns up his cattle, or the late spring frost, or the smut, or the rust, or the weevil, or the fly, destroys his wheat, while the mortgage, or the bills of his physician, hang over him, waiting for the proceeds of the crop which has perished. A winter, a whole year of desti- tution, is before him and his family; and possibly a second year of unrewarded industry. "Well is it if the want they suffer and the dismal forebodings which haunt them, do not shake their courage, and bring in some disease or infirmity that will quite complete their misery. Such trials are not extraordinary or singular. 243 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. Thev are so common as to be considered among tlie proper chances of emigration, where it is not fortified by abundant means to support such adversities. Thus lar I have spoken to the question, as one of mere physical economy, or profit and loss. I have shown you, I think, that agriculture in Xew England is and always may be a profitable interest. There is, in fact, no interest in which, at this moment, money and industry can be employed to so great profit. So far from finding his advantage in emigration to the new States of the west, the young farmer, there is scarcely room to doubt, may advance in property here, with much greater certainty and rapidity, with a sacrifice of fewer comforts and an endurance of fewer hardships. It only requires more of skill and address and a more thorough knowledge of agriculture as an art. Perhaps I ought to admit that a man whose only power is in his two arms may well enough go where his two arms are all that is demanded, but the man who has invention and a head to plan out schemes of improvement, had much better remain here, where his higher gifts may be employed to assist his advances. But it would be wrong and even degrading to sus- pend the question here. The highest and best interests of life, those which add most to its comfort, dignity and happiness, are the interests of society and character. Whatever man or family removes to any new country should understand that he makes a large remove also towards barbarism ; for this necessary incident belongs to emigration, or a newly colonized state. He leaves AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 249 the laud of scliools and polite education behind him. If he settles where land is cheapest, which is the main temptation to removal, he goes utterly beyond the reach of schools of any sort, there to see his children grow up in wildness and ignorance of the world. Or if, by much expense, which he is little able to bear, he gets up a school, it is kept in some log-hut, by a teacher as rude as the place. Not unlikely he will find himself in a region where reading and book knowledge are de- spised and condemned as among the black arts, and he will be mortified to find that his children are more ready to make a pride of ignorance than to learn. Seeing them grow up a coarse, undisciplined herd around him, he will begin to ask what is the advantage of growing fine ' wheat out of doors, when he can not grow sons and daughters within, fit to comfort his life and satisfy his better hopes and more honorable feelings ; or why he should care to hunt the wild beasts and exterminate the vermin that infest his fields, when his children are as wild as they. I speak here discriminately and not of western so- ciety generally. ISTo man estimates more highly than I do the many noble traits in western character. The faults it has are most of them only the necessary inci- dents of a new social state, and time, it is to be hoped, will remove them, as it has been gradually removing a similar class of barbarisms in ISTew England. But time is requisite. Meanwhile all the inconveniences and privations of a new social state must be endured. He finds, too, not seldom, that he has gone beyond 250 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. the pale of society. There is no common character, therefore little society, in the people round him. Per- haps, which is quite as well, he is totally remote from all living beings. He goes forth to his labors, and the bark of his dog and the ringing of his ax in the woods are the only sounds that break the silence of his retire- ment for whole weeks, unless perhaps a straggling family of Irish or poor Germans come that way to make trial of his hospitality. Better this than the so- ciety of some raw upstart village, where adventurers of all sorts chanced last year to pitch their tents, hoping to build a citv and make their fortune out of each other; where the diversions, jokes, frolics and amuse- ments have all an outlaw^ character of indecency and violence. Here to live, here to bring up sons and marry daughters, is a sad inheritance to compensate for the single benefit of cheap land and a wide range of acres. Doubtless you are little conscious of any such thing as society here at home ; for there is much less of it in our agricultural towns, than there should be. But it is something to live upon a traveled road, to look on comfortable houses and churches sprinkled in the dis- tance round you, to know the men and families, whose farms border upon yours, and to have known their fathers before them; something to talk with them across the fence, and meet them, every Sunday, at church, in their best attire ; something to be in a state that is under law and reduced to established order, where a homogeneous people feel the common bond of social institutions and interests. If there be too little AGRICULTUKE AT THE EAST. 251 society in this, there is yet societ}^, and a humanizing, softening power, the loss of which will soon be visible in the character and comfort of your families. You will most likely find, too, in removing to a new country, that you have left behind you all that is valu- able in the sacred blessings of religion. And what is a Xew England man who is separated from his religion, the power that sweetens his family, fortifies his indus- try, makes him a king in his little heritage of rocks and snows, and, when he has done with these, lord and pos- sessor of worlds as durable as the unbending and confi- dent principles which support his life? ITot that our new countries are destitute of religion, but they have so many varieties of religion and false religion and irre- ligion mixed together, the confusion is so distracting and the medley so barbarous, that an intelligent mind, wishing to worship God in some way of intelligence and order, can seldom be accommodated. One preacher follows another, by such kind of accident as governs wandering stars. Often they can not read, sometimes they are vagabonds in character, worthier of a prison than to be at large, but they have all one qualification ; they can hold forth as noisily and hold on as manfully as any one may desire. If you have a house of wor- ship, it must belong to the public in general, and every man must bring in whatsoever teacher or impostor he wishes to hear. Ten times in a year, possibly, there will come along an educated and qualified preacher, one who is able to communicate instruction and con- duct a religious service with propriety. You bring out 252 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. the young barbarians growing up in your family, hoping that they will receive some benefit. But they are so unused to any intelligent views of religion, that they can see no meaning in a manner without phrensy and uproar. The best that can be hoped for your family is that one will grow up a Presbyterian, another a Methodist, another a Baptist, and as many more will be Campbelites or Mormons or Infidels. It is well if you do not even lose all sense of religious obligation yourself, only to have the memory of its hallowed scenes and duties return with bitterness unspeakable in your dying hours. Or if you retain your sense of religion, as the best blessing of life, how often will you regret the quiet and hallowed scenes of a New England Sabbath, now lost to be seen no more. Your nearest approach to such a Sabbath is to sit down alone, upon some log in the deep still woods, and let your memory of blessings left behind water your eyes with tears of sorrow and self-accusation. Making all these sacrifices, you will have done it at the expense of another, which, if you do not feel it, will be even the greater loss to you. You will have sacri- ficed home, old localities, old friends and acquaintances, the hearth at which fathers and kindred are gathered, or the graves where they sleep. This, I know, it may be a duty oftentimes to do, and when it is a dut}^, it is even a weakness to shrink from it. But we have at tained, as a people, to a degree of facility in this kind of merit, which is much to be deprecated. I can not look upon it as less than a veiy great dishonor, in any AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 253 man or people, to make every tiling of money and nothing of affections. The life of man is in his heart-, and, if he does not live there, I care not what other success may befall him, he does not live. The roots that nourish a man's life are in his love — local love, family love, love of old friends and familiar scenes, and he who has no roots of locality, is not a living man. The activity and stir of new scenes and new adventures may do something for him, but his activity is dry, wearing out life by its friction, only expelling regret, never watering the soul with quiet dews of feeling and enjoyment. Tearing yourself thus away from old scenes and going forth as an emigrant, you become a public adventurer and fortune-hunter .among the gen- eral herd of adventurers, your views perhaps become enlarged by the new scenes in which you mingle, you are all enterprise and activity, but it seems to be the activity of negation; you want something to give a relish to life, perhaps you will never guess what it is that you want, but the truth is that you want roots and moisture, the feeling of locality and home and custom- ary love. A large farm and a fine crop of wheat do not, for some reason, yield that genial and mellow sat- isfaction which you long for. Possibly you think of the old rocky pasture and the white birch wood, and the little field of beans and the five loads of potatoes and the three milch cows and the old father scowling in the meadow, when his scythe hooks round a stone, and you wonder why this Eastern imagery keeps thrusting itself into your mind, and why, despite of all 22 254 . AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. reason, it persists in wearing such a taking look. Ah, there is a meaning in this ! it is the effort of your na- ture to realize a local love; a sigh never vented in words, for that wealth of the heart, wliich possibly you relinquished with no thought of its importance, but which no measure of good fortune can ever wholly compensate. Such are some of the thoughts which I have wished, on this occasion, to suggest. I can not deny that I am instigated to some degree, in these suggestions, by a feeling of domestic interest, or the interest of society here ; though I have desired not to be, to any such ex- tent as can not be justified. I can not be ignorant, I do not wish to be ignorant, that the state of Connecti- cut has a deep concern in this subject. If the lands of this state were brought into that high cultivation of which they are capable, it could easily sustain a million of people subsisting by agriculture alone. Sustain them in greater thrift and happiness, than they will ever realize by removal. Our hills and valleys would become a scene of beauty for the e3"e to rest upon, such as can with difficulty be produced in any other part of the national domain. No ornamental rock-work will be needed to set off our gardens and landscapes. Na- ture's rock-w^ork will stand, and it will be confessed, when every cliff is footed with green meadows and waving harvests, that we have not one too many. Meantime the toil that is necessary to clear our soil of what is movable, is just what is requisite to sharpen the vigor of our people ; for whetstones are needed to AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 2oO sharpen a race of men, as truly as to sharpen to a cutting edge any other kind of instruments. The necessities of a rough country and an intractable soil are good ne- cessities. To live easily is dangerous, and, for just this reason, there is cause to apprehend that the future gen- erations of our western country will become a sluggish, inefl&cient race, exactly opposite to their present char- acter. You will observe, also, that when our population be- gins to be considerably enlarged, every kind of public charge or expense will be more easily supported. We shall have schools of a high order in all our towns and villages, stone bridges durable and safe, macadamized roads spanning our hills and threading our valleys, such as now spread over the map of England, weaving all the hamlets together, in a network of easy corres- pondence, indicating and also promoting the advanced wealth and civilization of the people. The institutions of religion, too, will be easily sustained. It will not be necessary, as now, in the thinly peopled towns, where two or three different sects are struggling ineffectually to sustain their feeble churches, to hold them up by disbursements of public charity from year to year. There will be room for all to prosper together, gather- ing ample and efficient congregations, erecting elegant churches and commanding the service of a talented ministry. And in this view, I have often felt that the improvement of our agriculture is connected with con- sequences, that even make it a fit subject of religious appeal. Sitting in a Board of Missions for the aid 256 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. of our feeble churches ; hearing their annual tale of dis- couragement, the low rate of their taxable property, the losses and diminutions they suffer, by emigration, and the little hope they offer of ever being able to up- hold the institutions, long ago planted by their fathers, except as they remain a perpetual charitable incum- brance, I have often felt that it were quite as well to be sitting in a Board of Agriculture. The first hope of these drooping churches is in the improved methods of agriculture. Charity may relieve their want, this only can change their want to plenty and power. This con\"iction it is which has moved me, as a minister of religion, to step out of what many will consider my appropriate sphere, on the present occasion. I feel that I was never more truly within my sphere than here. I see the best interests of religion, for all future time, depending on the subject which I here present, and, if I am so happy as to start new impressions on this subject of agriculture, as a New England interest, I shall not only add to the comfort and prosperity of our state, in other respects, but shall advance the better interests of society and character, and do up the work of at least one Missionary Board. And with this I shall be satisfied. To realize this picture of physical and moral im- provement, ought, meantime, to be an attractive hope to our sons and daughters, detaining them here among us, stimulating their inquiries after scientific principles, and promoting their invention of new modes of im- provement, such as will enrich both them and the great AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 257 and respectable class to whicli they belong. Nor is it only they who have an interest in the agricultural im- provement of the State. Our cities are dependent for their growth and prosperity on the same causes. Let them not forget, while seeking, by railroads and other expensive methods, to command a back country for their trade, that it is possible to make one close at hand. As large a back country can be made between Hartford and Litchfield, as now we should have, com- manding the trade of all who occupy the region be- tween* us and Albany. There can be as many people, as much wealth, as many wants to supply, as many products to sell and to purchase, as much to foster the wealth and future growth of our city. In the fortunes of agriculture we are all alike interested and we are all united, men of the city, men of the country, politicians, tradesmen, householders, landholders, friends of relig- ion and friends of the state, to join hands in the promo- tion of agriculture as our common cause. The reviv- ing of this interest will give a spring to public spirit among us, set us forward in social refinement, impart courage and strength to every good interest. Mean- time, could we make our country and its people such a spectacle as it should be, attracting the eyes of the na- tion, and showing to the younger and wilder portions what scenes of comfort, character and ornament may be prepared, on this rugged soil and under these frowning skies, it is fairly impossible to overestimate the impulse such a spectacle would give to all the better interests of our great and rising nation. 22^ 258 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. Siififer me now, gentlemen, in closing, to suggest a few things, that demand your attention. Agricultural societies are useful, but they do not exhaust your duty. Do not overlook those expedients which dignify agTi- culture. A great deal more of attention to domestic and rural architecture is demanded. A house can as well be thrown into a form pleasing to a cultivated eye, as into any other. Study situation, material, plan, form, color, everything that ' belongs to picturesque effect. And if your country joiners will not know any thing better than to build you an oblong clapbdarded box, with a gable to the street, either become your own architect, or go to one who has taste and experience to draft a plan and elevation for you. Put your stye and your barns where they belong. Try your hand at high ornamental cultivation upon, at least, a small space of ground before and about your residences. Let it appear to the passer-by, when he looks upon your neat combinations of architecture, shades, flowers and smoothly shaven turf, that a man lives here, who is something above a mere drudge and sloven ; a man who has tastes and cultivated opinions, not a servant of barns and cornfields, who only grazes with his cattle, and is capable of no other enjoyment. Let your sons and daughters also have the benefit of these tasteful ar- rangements; for it will do more for their standing, character, and future happiness, than may at once ap- I^ear. Have a special care also of j^our schools. One great reason why agriculture droops is, that the intellectual AGEICULTURE AT THE EAST. 259 force, the ideas of the youth, are not awakened. Be dissatisfied with your schools and your children if you do not see their enthusiasm kindled. Some text-book ought also to be introduced into every school, which teaches the first principles of agriculture, including the rudiments of botany, vegetable physiology and chem- istry, all as related to each other ; the laws of growth, the science of budding and grafting, the modes of in- vigorating soils, the modes and uses of drainage, not omitting the economy of raising weeds. A few first principles of scienjoe, once wrought into the mind, will have a wondrous power. You are to understand also, that the old class of drudges, who have lived out two- thirds of their life, without a thought of improvement, must die as they have lived. There is no hope in grafting upon old stocks. You can never make them understand what improvement means. There is even a want of orthodoxy in it ; they despise it as a boyish folly. The young and fertile mind is your only hope. At the same time cultivate society among yourselves. Our agricultural classes make too little of society. There is a humanizing power in good manners, and a quickening power to the mind in social intercourse, which no people can afford to spare. It creates a sense of character superior to gossip, which is the bane of the country, fertilizes good feeling, prepares personal confi- dence and self-respect, and redeems labor from a dull and brutish habit. Separated from society, man rusts into a shy, low-minded, selfish being, and becomes as mean and contracted in his prejudices, as he is in his 260 AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. sphere of life. Having the greatest resj)ect for agricul- ture, I can not flatter it with vain compliments. Let not the impression, that agriculture makes a more intel- ligent and elevated class of men than manufacturers, be too confidently adopted. It does, undoubtedly, pro- duce a better and more healthy staple to make men of But in manufactories, certain great laws of mechanical and chemical science are always called into application ; these are a kind of leaven to ingenuit}^, a spur to cu- rious inquiry and speculation ; and the people,- being thrown together, at their work, in a kind of perpetual society, also spur and stimulate each other. Hence, with less of native volume, there is apt, truth obliges me to say, to be more of mental activity among the man- ufacturing classes. Science and society are the great wants of agriculture. Men grow up in the retirement of the fields with grand native capacities, but they want some quickening stimulus to keep their minds alive, something to awaken curiosity, set them on in- quiry and speculation, and bring their rivalries and sensibilities into active play. Having this, and being men of independence in their station, they will de- velop a proportionate dignity and power of character. "Withou.t it they sink into the most deplorable dullness, and become a backward, rude-minded class. There- fore, I say, look to your schools, cultivate society. The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul. There is yet one prospect opened in this subject of agricultural improvement, which must be suggested, and with that T close. I have already intimated the AGRICULTURE AT THE EAST. 261 conviction, that nothing but this can save us from an entirely new distribution of property. If the small farmers do not awake to scientific improvement, and prepare to realize their profit, and support the comfort of their families on yet smaller estates, great landhold- ers will come in to buy up the impoverished farms, in the view, at first, perhaps, of converting them into pas- tures, as now ihej are doing in Vermont. Then, after- wards, these great estates will be brought into improve- ment, and the sons of our small owners, who have too little character to perceive their true interest, will be- come a class of operative workers, or serfs, under the great landlords, and we shall have all the miseries of European society reproduced here. But if our people can take up new thoughts of improvement, and go to work as men of intelligence and skill to enrich and fer- tilize their small estates, then we shall see our soil, in all future time, covered with a thrifty, independent race, living in comfort and surrounded with ornament, every estate a manor, every house occupied by a lord, society an element of republican virtue and moderation, and all together a symbol to mankind of the great and beneficent truth, that the soil w^as made for man, and equal industry the title, under God, to equal and uni- versal happiness. VII. LIFE, OR THE LIVES.^ The distinction between objects alive and objects without life was one of tlie first things apprehended by mankind. The progenitors of the race saw it just as we do now. Only it is a somewhat curious fact that, when their imagination began to be a little exercised about causes, their tendency was rather to resolve the lifeless objects by the living, than the living by the lifeless; a tendency, which, under modern science, is completely reversed. Thus Pan, playing on his pipe, they took for a symbol of the All, as his name will in- dicate ; conceiving that, in nature, there must be some living soul of harmonj^, discoursing ever tunefully with itself, and moving mystic dances in the seasons and the skies. Afterwards, under a method a little closer to philosophy, they began to refer the motions of the heavenly bodies to some Soul of the Universe, which they supposed to be operating, consciously or uncon- sciously, in all such stellar changes. Astrology and alchemy appear to have originated in a similar impres- * Delivered, in part, as a Lecture, in Hartford and elsewhere, at various times LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 263 sion; as if there were some spirit to be conjured with, in the junctions of the stars and the atoms. Even Kepler himself, last of the old school of science and first of the new, was so thoroughly possessed by the soul-myths of science in the former ages, that he looked upon the Earth as being, probably, a huge living mon- ster, whose breathing caused the tides of the sea, and whose gills were the volcanoes. Now, as already intimated, the tendency is to resolve the mystery of lives themselves, by the causes and forces of dead matter. For the prodigious successes we have had in the investigation of dead matter, that is in astronomy, chemistry, geology, and kindred sciences, scarcely allow us to look for success any where, except under laws and methods so egregiously magnified by the discoveries we have made. Nature figures in our thoughts mainly as a vast wheel-movement, steam- engine, laboratory, world, so that when we turn our thoughts upon a living body, that of man for example, and find the heart in it working as a pump, the lungs as a fireplace, the eye as a telescope, the ear as a drum, we are so much taken with these mechanical discover- ies, that we accept them for just what they are not ; viz., as a complete solution, an end of all inquiry. Could we suffer the question, what keeps the pump in play, what works the bellows of the lungs, what makes the eye to see, the ear to hear, as telescopes and drums can not, we should find that nothing really is solved, but that we have quite as many and difl&cult mysteries on hand as we had at the beginning. Thus far, even our 264 LIFE, OR THE LIVES.* physiologists themselves appear to have generally had their minds holden, by the overpowering laws and analogies of dead matter, those of mechanics and chem- istry. They talk of life, and raise the true question concerning it, but commonly end in some solution that quite dispenses with it. Life is a nature too nearly metaphysical to hold any determinate figure in their in- vestigations. What can they do with lives, taken as dynamic forces, not of matter, but sovereign over it? These innumerable and mysterious workers that in- habit earth and air and sea, filling all things with beauty fragrance and motion, compelling brute matter to assume millions of definite shapes, to weave and blossom and palpitate and rejoice; these soul-like creatures, next below us, types of what we are, looking up to us in their half-intelligent endeavor and claim- ing, as it were, afl&nity with us — what recognition do they get from the scientific investigators even of the bodies they build and actuate? What need has sci- ence of these very questionable entities ? They are too thin, too spirit-like, virtual nonentities — let them be dismissed. Euled out in this manner. Life becomes a virtually dead word, wanting even some kind of intel- lectual resurrection to give it a meaning. Having this, now, for our object, let us try to freshen it a little from a distance, before we enter into the deeper subtleties of the question. Suppose that some celestial traveler like Voltaire's Micromegas, on a visit from the Dog Star to Saturn, should turn his journey hitherward to our lower world. Let it be true LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 265 that, in his native planet, the Dog Star, there is nothing but mineral substance; no soil enriched by vegetable deposites, no plants, no trees, no animals, the inhabitants being fitted with bodies of flint, or feldspar, or iron, which want no feeding, because they have no process of nutrition or expenditure. The stranger, lighting on our orb, finds it covered all over with grasses, plants, trees, animals, the waters full of fishes, the air itself with birds. What these living creatures are and what they are made of he does not know, but he will be greatly pleased with the wondrously fresh beauty of the landscape, compared with the dry -faced, earth-brown, mineral world he came from. His atten- tion chances to be fixed on the ground, at a spot where he sees a new-looking, tender-colored something, prick- ing out, as if coming up to see the light. Sitting down to watch the strange creature, and pondering it thought- fully in his sluggish, dry brain of asbestos, our little, quick- whirling planet reels off a whole century of years, which to him are. only minutes, and behold the strange thing greening in the sun, gets bulk and adds on length upon length, drawing in the charmed atoms from the air and lifting up others from the ground, till finally a massive, full-grown tree — trunk, limbs, leaves, and flowers — stands built up as a living won- der, and hangs its wide-spreading parasol of many tons weight over his head ! Now he had been a great professor of chemistry, we may suppose, for some hun- dreds of years, in one of the Dog Star universities, watching, all that time, how the metals, and earths, and 23 266 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. acids, and water solutions, and gases, operate in their combinations, and what strange figures they will some- times make, but he has seen nothing like this. True it is only wood — this huge-grown shape — but what is wood ? He tries to think it, imagining it is more in the nature of limestone or more in the nature of gyp- sum, or how the fresh green covering may be an efflor- escence of verdigris, or an incrustation of malachite, and yet he feels himself to be utterly at fault. And then he asks, in his confusion, by what strange spell is this new creature conjured up? who is the artist, or magician ? what has wrought the miracle ? True phi- losopher that he is, he must know the secret of this wonder, and, tearing aside the bark and hewing into the woody trunk, he lays open to view thousands of water-sluices beautifully cut, sees the rivers running up, and the rivers running down, but can not guess by what engine, worked by what power, the perpendicular rivers are made to run. Out of the flowers and the fresh growths, perfumes steal upon the sense of his stony olfactories, but he asks, in vain, where is the cell or chamber in which the odors are distilled ? where is the apothecary hid ? Sure there is some spirit within, if he could be found, some invisible chemist, hydraul- ist, builder,— by what name shall he be called ?* Now this Dryad of the tree, this hidden chemist, wood-builder, leaf^painter, is Life. All the living creatures are fashioned by the life that is in them, and about this it is that we now undertake to inquire. What is Life, or what are the Lives?— this is to be our LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 267 question. And the definition I hope to establish is this — Tliat Lives are wimaterial, soul-lihe powers^ organizing and conserving the bodies they inhabit. With this definition corresponds, more or less nearly, the opinion of Hippocrates, and that of Aristotle among the ancients, and that of Yan Helmont, Stahl, Hunter, Blumenbach, and Miiller among the moderns ; some of them calhng Life the archeusj or governing- type and architect of bodies, some the nisus formativits, or form-endeavoring power, and all conceiving it, under one name or another, as being that unseen force which shapes and impels the growth of bodies. The opinions of the side opposite I will not stay to detail. I will only cite as a qualified representation of them, at their latest point of maturity, the statement of Dr. Car- penter, in his very thorough and able treatise on the '' Principles of Human Physiology." ^'It is now al- most universally admitted," he says, ''by intelligent physiologists, that we gain nothing by the assumption of some general, controlling agency, or vital Principle, distinct from the organized structure itself; and that the Laws of Life are nothing else than general expres- sions of the conditions, under which vital operations take place — expressions analogous to those which con- stitute the Laws of Physics, or Chemistrj^ — and to be arrived at in the same manner, namely, by the collec- tion and comparison of phenomena." "The collection and comparison of phenomena — " "classification of phe- 268 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. nomena/' is the common phrase of the doctrine, and it is a little relief to have a change, if it be only in the form. Where will be the end of this most incompetent, only half-intelligent version of the Baconian philoso- phy ? As if the Laws of nature were only collections, classifications, of facts ! As if gravity were nothing but the fact that stones fall and bodies somehow go to- wards one another! As if chemical attraction were nothing but the fact that atoms go towards each other, as many times repeated as there are atoms! No! gravity is the intellectual or idealized conception of a power by which bodies go towards each other, Chemi- cal Attraction the conception of another kind of power by which atoms go towards each other. And just so Life is the conception of another and third kind of power — a conception which no mind, being a mind, can help forming — by which organic bodies are organ- ized and conserved. And yet we are told that the "Laws of Life" are nothing but classifications of facts, as the ''Laws of Physics or Chemistry" are nothing but such classifications. And so it is made to appear that "nothing is gained by the assumption of some general, controlling agency, or vital Principle, distinct from the organized structure itself;" that living beings can be just as well understood without considering them to be alive — understood, that is, by their mere structure! Why then does this learned professor go on to speak of "Life," and "Vital operations," and "Functions of Life?" What are vital operations, which suppose no vital principle? What are functions LIFE, OK THE LIVES. 269 of life, when life itself is nothing but a name for the functions of dead matter ? Are the functions of intelli- gence nothing but functions without intelligence? or do they suppose some intelligent power, whose func- tions they are ? The professor is confirmed in his mistake, by another, which appears and reappears at many points in his very scientific and talented book. Thus he in- forms us in the very next section, (§ 258,) that -'AH vital phenomena are dependent on, at least, two sets of conditions ; an organized structure possessed of pecul- iar properties, and certain stimuli, by which these properties are called into action." Take for example the seed of a plant, instanced by him in another place. It is a nucleus of organized matter. The Life ascribed to it means nothing but that, as a grain of matter, it is thus and thus organized. But it will not grow simply because it is so organized. It must have the stimuli of water, air, heat, soil and the like, and these, acting on the tissues of the seed, cause it to grow. Now it is very true that these are ^'conditions" necessary to its growth, but the mistake is in assuming, that the condi- tions are causes. Heat is a condition of digestion, does it therefore digest ? Breathing is a condition of writing poetry, does it follow that the air breathed writes the poetry? We are dependent on ten thousand condi- tions, in all that we do, but these conditions are not causes of what we do. No more do the conditions re- ferred to cause the activity of growth in a seed. It grows because it is alive, and has found the conditions 23^ 270 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. necessary to growth. And when these conditions are called stimuli^ it is only assuming, by a word, that they are the causes, when the real causation is in the Life it- self. The stimuli would have a hard time with the seed, I think, if it was dead. Stimuli for the dead are not efficacious. But the physiologists get a further bent in this direc- tion, by what they suppose to be a more definite kind of knowledge. They distinguish, in the animal and vegetable economj^, certain infinitesimal creatures of life, which they call "cells.'' They float in the blood and the sap and elsewhere, elaborating the nutritive matter, and constituting, as in the egg, or the seed, germs of nourishment and reproduction. For these cells of nutrition, they conceive, and cells of reproduc- tion, are what feeds the growth, and molds the organ- ism, and keeps in a way of development all the species and generations of the living bodies. But the cells themselves are just as much alive, it is agreed, as bodies are, and the question, whether it is the life of the body by which they are organized, or they which organize the body ? is just as far from settle- ment as ever. There is much reason here to suspect an imposition. It has required such wonderful acute- ness to hunt down these infinitesimal creatures, distin- guishing whence they come and whither they go, that the investigator imagines he must now have gotten hold of nature's last secret, even the secret of life! Were these organized specks as big as peas, or walnuts, they would find the question still on hand, whether LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 271 tliey were organized by the life, or by the mere struc- tures they nourish and propagate? But these are so very small that they can not hunt them any farther. Meantime, there is one great fact which raises a strong presumption of their relation to the Life princi- ple as mere secondaries ; viz., that the animal races cer- tainly were not created originally as germs, but as full- grown bodies ; for how could the races of birds, for ex- ample, begin at the condition of eggs, with no parent bird to hatch them ? and how could the young of other animals be kept alive, without their dams to feed them? In all which it is clear, beyond a question, that lives and full-formed living bodies were created first, and had the priority of all the sperm-cell and germ-cell operations. The mere mineral world, unin- habited as yet by living creatures, could not compose the germs of any thing, and as the animal races cer- tainly did not come out of germs originally, we natu- rally believe that all creatures of life, animal and vege- table, began, as creatures, in the full activity or on- going of life. At this point much discussion was raised a few years ago, by Cross, an English experimenter, who claimed that, by passing a current of galvanism, for some months, through the liquor of flints, he produced living insects. But his experiment found little credit. His supposed insects were accounted for, by the fact that the water and the air are filled with innumerable seeds of plants and eggs of insects, some of which he was able to hatch, and nothing more. When such an ex- 272 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. periment really succeeds, physiology itself will be down, and we shall be obliged to go back to the mineral world and its chemistry for the germinal spring of all organized bodies. Propagation by structure is just as truly superseded as propagation by the vital force. Thus far, we have been occupied controversially. Let us go back now to our definition, and verify it, by a more positive exhibition of Life in its effects and inci- dents. My definition supposes that Lives are, in some sense, immaterial and have a soul-like nature. This impres- sion will be more and more distinctly verified as we proceed with the illustrations now to be given ; for I shall conduct you, if you follow me, into a marvelous world, back of our material, corpuscular philosophy, where creatures busy as angels and like them invisi- ble save by their works, are ever employed in building, repairing, actuating, and reproducing their multiform bodies; with a power over matter and all chemical af&nities, as affinities of matter, which is only the more sublime, that it appears to be a sovereignty from with- out, superior to all forces within. Observe then, first of all, the mysterious sovereignty of the vital forces over the forms of living bodies al- ready existent. Every man, for example, changes the whole matter of his body many times during his life. We look upon it as remaining the same, recognize it by its color and form as being the identical body we looked upon years ago. The man himself has a fixed LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 273 impression of this identity. And yet his body is more like a river running by, than like a body remaining constant in the constancy of its material. It is not like a crystal where the form is cast by the law of the matter itself, and remains because the matter remains. On the contrary, a living body takes up new matter, and throws off old matter, and the matter it takes up for one year is different, even in kind, from the matter it took up the year previous, and yet the body remains the same; keeps up all its angles colors and looks, showing no perceptible shade of difference. The river of its matter keeps every dimple and eddy of the sur- face just as it was whole years ago. In all which we perceive, as plainly as possible, that there is some force, sovereign over the matter, which stays by, more con- stant than the matter, to give it a shape of its own, and keep it in the outward show of constancy. And this hidden power must be immaterial ; for it is not any law of the matter, but a j)Ower coming down upon matter to configure it always to itself. It is therefore called the nisus formativus by Blumenbach and others, and pertains, if not to the matter, to the Life-Principle it- self. But the Physiologists of the school just referred to, have it for their answer, that the structure is kept up by the structure, the form by the form. It begins, they say, with a germ having all the rudimental ducts and tissues of the future body, which ducts and tissues guide all the accruing matter of growth or nutrition to its place, and so perpetuate themselves and the shapes 274 LIFE, OR THE LIVES of the body. All which is so far true as that they are the media, or means, by which the result is accom- plished. But media, or means are not powers, but only that by which some power acts ; which power is, in this case, the life. Ducts and tissues, taken as mere matter thus and thus posited, are, by the supposition, only mechanical textures and arrangements — able, in themselves, to do nothing, least of all, any thing by which they may reproduce themselves. Or if we take them as chemical arrangements, like the plates of a bat- tery, they can have no action but a chemical action de- structive to themselves. If they might possibly de- compose the food given them to act upon, they could only turn it into its chemical products, or equivalents ; they could not make one fibre of flesh out of it, or even so much as a grain of genuine bone. Still less, having varieties of food to act upon, could they manage to be always recomposing the same body. A seed, for ex- ample, contains a grain of matter, mechanically and chemically adjusted. How can that grain of matter — carbon, potash, hydrogen, water, and the like — manip- ulate whole tons of other carbon, potash, hydrogen, and water, as in the growth of a tree? shaping that growth, from year to year, and when it is broken by storms, or felled upon the ground, reconstruct the house it was building, ducts, tissues, and all, so as to compose a new shape different from the first ? Mech- anism and the chemistry of dead matter can do no such thing. Put in the life and you have a power that is adequate. LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 275 Or, we may take a different illustration. Cut off the head of a snail, and the body will grow out another head. Cut in two a little water animal called the hy- dra, and the head part will grow out a tail, and the tail part a head. Do the ducts and tissues then of the head contain the future ducts and tissues of a tail, and those of the tail contain those of a head ? How little does it signify to say that structure and form, in such cases, keep good structure and form! How can head-struc- ture make tail-structure, and tail, head ? The solution gets no show of reason, till we conceive some vital force invisible, dwelling equally in both the head and the tail, which wants a complete body and formatively endeavors after such a body. And this soul-like force, called the Life, formless in itself because immaterial, has yet a formative instinct natural to its activity, which, as it inhabits and works in matter, weaves eyerj tissue of its body, animal or vegetable, directs every particle of matter where it shall go, only using the structural order for its means, shapes every limb, colors every hair, or feather, or leaf, and presides in all the living forms, as the conserving principle of con- stancy and kind. The bees in their hive are not more sovereign over the wax, than are these wonderful life- powers over the structures they build. And it might as well be imagined that the cells themselves account for the honey, and also for the cells of the next year, as that the form of a plant, or of a human body, is nourished and kept good by its mere structural func- tions. 276 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. I assume it then, without further debate, that all liv- ing bodies are organized and conserved by lives, opera- ting in and through the structural machinery of their parts, or of their germs. Every life has a kind pecul- iar to itself, and wants a form to live in, which it has power given it, under certain conditions, to construct and maintain — the life of a man a man's body, the life of a tree a tree's body, the life of a bird a bird's body. We look about us in the populous domain of air and earth and water, and see the matter whirling, so to speak, in eddies of vital activity, taken up and given out, growing and decaying, assisting now in the struc- ture of a man's brain, a short time ago breathing in the leaves of forests and blossoming in the flowers of prai- ries, and, a short time before that, slumbering in the vegetable mold of soils made fertile by its contributions. A year hence, liberated, or getting a respite from the fearfully hard work it is put to, in carrying on the thinking of a brain, it will speed away as a gas let forth to have a holiday in the grand circulation of uni- versal nature, and will next be taken up by all the lives of all the elements, and w^ill go darting in the fishes, roaring in the lions' throats, and buzzing in the wings of insect life all round the world. The lives themselves endure but for a time, but are a great deal more constant than the clay they vitalize, and wield their sovereignty oyer it, as long as they stay, by the commission they hold from Him who rejoices in their beautiful and beauty-making activity. We come now to a class of illustrations where the LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 277 distinctness of lives from all mere qualities and powers of matter will be more easily seen, and will be as much more clearly indisputable. I speak of the points in which they triumph over, and subordinate to their uses, all the known laws of inorganic matter. Thus it is a known law of matter, and of all ma- chines, however nicelv constructed out of matter, that they are under a law of inertia, or that being at rest they will remain so, unless put in motion by some force or cause that is not in themselves. Matter and mech- anism have no j)ower to begin, or carry on a course of activity themselves. Take the seed once more for an illustration. Call it a mere structure, mechanically and chemically formed. Place it in the ground, and there it will lie, as quiet a lump as Prospero's island, sown in the sea "to bring forth more islands." The water of the ground will soak it, and the heat will warm it, but it will only be a lump of matter, a structural machine, soaked and warmed, and the motions of a growing pro- cess will no more be started in it, by so much water and heat, than if it were a watch planted in the same manner. We do indeed say, in common familiar lan- guage, that the seed will be started. But we mean, if we understand ourselves, not that so much water and heat break the inertia by their impulsion — that is in- conceivable, for they have no impulsion more than the seed-matter itself — we only mean that the Life, before inert, takes occasion from its favoring conditions and commences the circulating, growing, motion from itself We regard the seed, in other words, not as a mere com- 24 278 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. pounded lump, or structure, but as having Life, a power not under conditions of inertia at all, a power which, does not move simply as being moved, but as being self-active in its own nature. And just so it is with all the going on of a living body, after the activities of its living state are begun. By its frictions and other expenditures it would soon exhaust its powers of activit}^, and drop into the state of inertia, like a spent rocket falling to the ground, if it were not for the continuing forces of the life, by which its activities are renewed. No, say the advo- cates of mere structure and chemistry, the body only takes in new matter, by its feeding and breathing, by receiving more light, and heat, and electricity, and the chemical forces thus contributed keep the machine still agoing. I hardly know how to speak with due respect of a theory that makes a very little, almost tiny, amount of science go so far, and solve a problem of such won- derful complexity. Take a human body, fibered, vas- culated, innerved, articulated, digesting, secreting, ab- sorbing, breathing, circulating, carrying on even thou- sands of distinct operations, at hundreds of thousands of distinct points, all necessary to each other, so that when some tiny process, never perceived by man, slips its duty and the proportionate working is but a little changed, the equilibrium called health is overset — con- ceive all this, then conceive that this multifarious world of operative powers plays on, still on, asleep and awake, for sixt}^ or a hundred years, mastering heat, and cold, and breakage, in a thousand forms; whereupon the LIFE, OK THE LIVES. 279 cliemist, who has gotten hold of a few simple laws of inorganic matter, tells you that he can solve it; that we take in food and the food put into the structure, as a machine, makes force and carries on the play and re- places the waste, and that so the machine keeps every- thing, even the machine itself, in order, proportion, and prolonged operation! The body is, in this view, nothing but a laboratory, gotten up with just so many parts as there are functions, and they all play together, making it a body. Carry out the figure, now, and see what is in it. The chemist has a laboratory, full of vials, bottles, acids, alkalies, all manner of simples, and all manner of salts, with combustibles, and fires, and galvanic batteries, and force-pumps, and gasometers, in short, a little universe of chemical substances and ma- chineries. JSTow his doctrine of the body is just as if, connecting all these vessels, and substances, into a chemical circle, by pipes, and pumps, and sponges, and wire-conductors, and going to his digester, he were to put in there three times a day a loaf of bread, which has in it such a wonderfully wise-acting set of forces, that, passing into the grand circuit of the laboratory, he imagines it to keep all the parts in play and sound con- dition — the vials just as full as they were and of the same substance, the galvanic batteries eaten up by the acids still sound and good as before, the combustibles going off in gases replaced by new combustibles, the ices dissolved replaced by freezing, and the vapors thrown ofi^, by condensing, and even the iron digester itself renewed in the wear, by the nourishing force of 280 LIFE, OR THE LIVES the bread that is dissolved by it. What a magnifi- cently preposterous solution is this to be offered in the name of science ! And vet the same kind of solution put upon the body, vrith such easy complacency, is at least a hundred times more preposterous, as the body- laboratory is at least a hundred times more complex. Xow it is very true that living bodies require food — food is the material on which thev work ; it is also true that a man wants a little more food when he is in a gi^eat stress of labor, than when he is doing nothing, but it certainly is not true that men have their capaci- ties, bodily or mental, graduated by their consumption of nutriment. Steam-boilers are graduated in their force exactly in that way, but not living bodies. Xo, we get no real conception of a living body, till we see a chemist in it, a power of life that, like a reigning in- stinct, dominates in every part as a revivifying princi- ple, sending into every member and function just the matter wanted to keep it good, and vitalizing all by the play of its own self-active nature. Xow the body is no more a mere machine, no lono'er under the law of iner- tia, because it has an architect, preserver and impeller, operating all its fimctions, and making it a living creature. Call it wheels, if you please, call it this, or that, or all instruments of machinery, still you under- stand it not, till you see the spirit of the living creature in the wheels. We pass now to another point that is less difficult ; viz., the triumph of the life-power over the force of gravity. Here we have it as a great law of matter LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 281 that every particle tends towards every other, and thus all surface particles towards the earth's center. But a bird, beating on the air, lifts its body against gravity. An elephant, resting on the ground, wills to rise, and forthwith his enormous bulk is seen lifting it- self upward more speedily even than a small steam- engine could do it, with all needful ropes and pulleys. True, he does it by his will contracting his muscles, and so far mechanically. But how were the muscles contracted? By a single thought of his living brain, running out as a fiat into his massive body. And that fiat of the vital force has the sovereignty, thus far, over gravity. Take also a case where the function of will is less apparent — the case of a seed erecting itself into a tree, one of the great trees of California, for ex- ample, twenty-five feet in diameter, and four hundred and fifty feet high. A part of the matter, it is true, is not lifted from the ground, but is gathered from the air itself. As regards the part carried up in the sap of the tree, possibly the body of the tree, consisting of a bundle of capillary tubes, may be imagined to carry up such quantities of water and food, by the mechanical force called capillary attraction. But a dead tree has the same capillary tubes as a living, why then does not the sap ascend in a dead tree? Besides it has been found by an experiment that is fatal to this conjecture, that a grape-vine, cut off" in the spring, will force up a column of sap against a superincumbent column of water forty-three feet high. This prodigious pressure upward, exceeding, by one-third, the pressure of our at- 24- 282 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. mosphere, has little resemblance, it must be agreed, to capillary attraction. Dismissing this solution, we are left in a degree to conjecture. Perhaps the result is ac- comphshed by alternate contractions and dilatations, too delicate to be perceptible, in the veins of the wood ; or it may be accomplished by similar contractions and dilatations in the little sponges at the ends of the roots. In either case, the machinery is played by the life- power of the tree, as the heart by the life-power of the human body. Be the solution what it may, this at least is clear, that gravity has been somehow mastered, and that no mere laws of matter can account for it. ' Again the laws, or conducting forces of heat, are mastered in the same way. Every living creature tries to keep its equilibrium in respect to heat. Thus Hun- ter found that the heart of a living tree, when the at- mosphere was below 66^, was higher than the atmos- phere, and as much lower, when it was below 56^. A dead tree meantime conforms to the temperature of the atmosphere. I transplanted a cherry-tree in my grounds, some years ago, doing it too late in the season. About the beginning of August it rallied and put forth its leaves, and having now a whole sum- mer's work to do to get its buddings ready for the next year, the poor thing still kept on, tugging patiently against the frosts of autumn, holding every leaf in its green, long after all other trees around it were bared as in winter. Dismissing any conceit of poetic sympathy which might try to endow it with a will, it is certainly not incredible that having its acme of life-power, late in LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 283 tte season, it asserted itself against the frosts longer than the other trees could. Enough that it lives to boast its victory. One of the most inert forms of life is the egg. Still it is found that a dead egg, or one that has been killed by freezing, will freeze in a much shorter time than a live one exposed to the same cold. Now the chemists are much pleased with the sup- posed discovery that the equilibrium of heat, main- tained by animal bodies, may be accounted for by the mere chemical laws of matter. Passing by other subordinate causes alleged, they show, first, that in breathing, we take in oxygen into the lungs, where it unites with the carbon principle of the blood, and then that, by the outgoing breath, we throw it off as car- bonic acid gas — exactly what takes place in the com- bustion of wood, or coal ; where the fire is carbon uniting with oxygen, and the smoke is principally car- bonic acid gas. The lungs, in this view, are a real fire- place in the body and by that central fire the body is kept warm. But it happens that we sometimes want to be cooled, in order to have our equilibrium ; as when the fireplace heat of the lungs, added to the summer heat without, would make us uncomfortable. And here the body forthwith dews itself all over with perspiration, which liquid moisture, passing into vapor, takes up a thousand degrees of latent heat from the body, and car- ries it off*, leaving the body cooled and comforted by the change. Yes, gentlemen, your fireplace and evap- orator do belong to the body, and they operate in the precise way alleged. But there are one or two ques- 284 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. tions that remain, where your philosophy quite breaks down. In this fireplace of the lungs, you have a fire that burns at 96^ of heat, will you explain how that is done ? what is it here that puts oxygen to combining with carbon, at the temperature of 96°? You have oxygen and carbon at your command, will you show us how their chemical union, making carbonic acid gas, can be accomplished by the laws of the two sub- stances, at this low temperature ? This you say is a fire, can you make such a fire chemically in your labo- ratory? No, the life-principle is the magician, or priest, that marries these two elements, and does it by its own sovereignty — ^you can not do it by any laws of matter that you know. You come back thus, after all, to the life and that it is, you will see, that makes the fire. That also it is, you will perceive, that operates your cooling process. The water perspired and then evapo- rated is the means employed, just as your solution sup- poses, but the question still remains, why does the per- spiration, or exudation of moisture, come out when it is wanted ? Taking one of our familiar expressions for a literal truth, you may imagine that the heat itself brings it out. But that is impossible. Heat will bring out steam from a moist body but never water to be evaporated afterwards. The question for you is, what power brings forth the water as water? for on that everything depends. A log of moist wood will not perspire, neither will a dead body. Why then does a living? Because the Life-Power, superintending the LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 285 gates of the skin, sends the moisture out when it is wanted, acting as it were by some wise instinct, or un- conscious reason, for the comfort and conservation of the body. We come now to a wider field of wonders, where the Lives are seen to be triumphing, at all points, over the chemical aflS.nities of matter ; acting each as a chemist in his own right, and constructing, in this manner, sub- stances that, under the mere laws of inorganic matter, could never exist. All the animal and vegetable sub- stances have thus an imposed chemistry, a chemistry not in the matter as such, but put upon the matter, by the lives working in it. Each Life, in fact, has a chemistry of its own, and, coming down thus upon mat- ter, it composes substances of its own. The vegetable lives begin, soiling over the otherwise mineral-faced world with the rich black mold they contribute by ages of growth and decay ; the animals follow, living on the vegetables and upon each other ; and all go on together, making, each, their own kind of substance — such as no chemist can make; such as by the mere laws of inorganic chemistry can not begin to exist; such, in fact, as God himself never made, save in the first. living creatures organized by His power. The article sugar, for example, is a vegetable pro- duct, and is constituted by the union of carbon, oxy- gen, and hydrogen. But no chemist can unite these three elements, and produce the substance called sugar. He can decompose sugar, and show what elements are in it, but he can not invert the process; for the ele- 286 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. ments have no law of union in themselves, of which he can avail himself. He can unite hydrogen and oxygen, and produce water ; he can unite oxygen, nitrogen, and potash, and produce saltpetre. But no one of all the vegetable and mineral substances can he produce. Lig- nin, tannin, acids, oils, perfumes, poisons, nutritive and healing products — not one of these can he compose by his utmost art. The Life-power of the beet, the maple, the sugar-cane, coming down upon the refractory atoms, imposes a chemistry upon them they have not in them- selves, and so contributes to our comfort this article of sugar. And just so it is that, by a kind of sorcery in Lives, all the immense products necessary to our build- ing, clothing, and feeding processes, are prepared. The poor chemist follows after, and, trying his hand upon matter, is able to produce no one of them. It is as if there were some spell upon things, which he can not understand ; or as if the lives had power to set matter whirling by their magic touch, and were showing him their freaks of skill to mock his perplexity. Colors blush out that he can not make, odors fly whose secret he can not guess. Substances are grown w^hich he could as easily create a world as make. All his ex- periments show him that the science he delights in makes him master only of the chemistry of death, and he gives up in despair. The lives that swarm about him are all so many chemists, wiser, every one, and mightier, in a sense, than he. I must not omit, in this connection, to name one sin- gular attribute of lives, in this field of chemistry, which LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 287 reveals a prerogative scarcely credible; viz., tliis, the power to make different, widely different, substances, out of exactly the same material in exactly the same proportions. Thus it is laid down even by Liebig, that animal fibrin, and animal gelatin, and animal casein, and vegetable fibre, albumen, casein, and gluten, have all exactly the same analysis. In the same way starch, gum, and cane-sugar, have precisely the same elements, in precisely the same proportions, different, as they cer- tainly are, in their tastes and properties. Almost any man, I think, would say that this is impossible; and yet the best chemists are obliged to agree that so it is. What can be more distinct to the taste and in the prop- erties of use, than starch and sugar ? It is as if some immaterial property went over to the product, giving it a quality from the life, that stays by and makes it different, while the matter is the same. But we hardly know what we mean, when we make the suggestion. It signifies principally that we are utterly confused and lost in the chemical mysteries of life. Having shown, by these illustrations, on how large a scale the lives are found subordinating the properties and laws of inorganic matter, we will look at them finally in a little more direct aspect, considering what they are in themselves. It is one of the grand distinctions of man, as a free being, that he acts from himself and not as a being caused to act. On this account, or in virtue of this prerogative, he is responsible. ?fow the lives are all types of man in this highest point of his nature ; for 288 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. they all act from themselves, as truly as man, only they do it instinctively and not by will. The human heart, for example, does not go because physical impulsions of any kind are on it, for there are no such impulsions ; but it goes because the life is a causative nature in it- self, and plays the machinery of the pulse by its own spontaneous sovereignty. So, when a seed quickens in the ground, it is not, as we have seen, because stimuli begin to play upon it there, mechanically or chemically, that it quickens, puts its pumps in motion and prepares to raise a tree. There is no mechanical force in the ground, and no chemical, that can start a growth- motion of any kind. All we can say is, that the life- power of the seed, having found the fit conditions, be- gins to act from its own instinctive force, and puts agoing all the circulations of growth from itself. It takes hold of matter, thus, as a dynamic outside of matter and its laws, and, acting from itself all its life long, dominates over the chemistries, composes and goes on composing the forms of matter it w^ants for its uses, never yielding to the causations of matter till it dies. Here then we have, in the lives, a striking re- semblance to souls. They have no intelligence, no wall, no consciousness, and yet they are all powers out- side of matter, acting upon it from a causative nature in themselves. They have also another point of relationship to souls, in what may be called their perceptive and ad- justive instinct. We speak of the 'instinct of animals, that bv which the crow builds its nest, that by which LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 289 the bees construct their comb, anticipating, as it were, in the six-sided figure of their cells, the mathematical problem, which shows that six-sided prisms are the figure that has the largest containing power, with the least surface, yet packing in a solid body. Just so there is in the lives an instinct, answering to intelli- gence, though not intelligent. They construct tissues and textures that, put in the microscope, are more won- derful in their order, a thousand times, than the order of the hive. Let any one but look through the plates of a late treatise on phj^siology, and he will be aston- ished by the revelations of the lives there exhibited. When a living body, animal, or vegetable, is wounded, there is seen, at once, to be a wondrous instinct, a hid- den nurse, of self-preservation in it. A battered rock, or broken crystal, stays broken, unable to think of repair. But the life, in such a case, begins forthwith to nurse its violated body, tends and cleanses the wound suf- fered, casts off the dead matter, deposites new growths on all sides of the breach, knits together the lacerated fibres and tissues by a process that no human surgery can even trace, and thus restores the original soundness. We have, in our salt waters, a little animal called the horer. He lies in the mud and lets down a long pro- boscis with a file on it, till, by various trials, he finds a small round clam which is to be his prey. He selects the thinnest part of the shell and commences there a process of filing, to make his way through. A friend of mine once showed me a shell thus attacked by the borer, in which the inhabitant inside, taking note of the 290 LIFE, OK THE LIVES. filing on the outside, began, at once, to secrete, or de- posite, a new thickness of shell to keep his enemy ofi; And here it was, a newly completed counterscarp, drawn across the breach two or three lines inward, which the borer had also to break, before he could reach his prey! Here j^ou see the instinct of self- preservation acting even prophetically, and preparing to repel future injury. And this again must be taken as an instinct of the life ; for the animal concerned is an animal without a head, and therefore, if phrenology be true, not very well off for intelligence. It is only another form of the same general fact, that the lives appear to have instincts of perception and of measurement. Thus a tree which is fond of water, when planted near some brook, will set off all its prin- cipal roots in that direction. How does it know the water to be there ? And how does it know that it will be able to reach the border of it ? To say, in popular phrase, that the water attracts the roots in that direc- tion, is to invent a new and very remarkable sort of attraction. An attraction that pulls at roots in the ground, and turns them at the point of starting, is a something created to account for the fact in question, which is even more difl&cult than the fact itself Mr. Madison, for example, had an aqueduct of logs which, in reaching his house, passed by a tree specially fond of water, at a considerable distance from it. Abreast of the tree there was an auger-hole in the log that had been filled with a plug of soft wood. Exactly thither- ward the tree sent off a lono; stretch of roots, which LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 291 forced their way tlirougli the plug, choking up the passage, and were found there drinking like so many thirsty animals. Was it then the soft wood plug that attracted these roots? It certainly should be on the attraction principle; for the water was just as near at other points as here. It is said that a strawberry planted in sand, with good earth a little way off, will turn its runners all in the latter direction, and that if the good earth is too far off to be reached, the plant will make no effort on that side more than on the other, which is equivalent to saying that the plant has, in its life-principle, an in- stinct of measurement. It does not measure the ground and then itself, and then compare the two, but it has an adaptive power by which, without compari- son, it graduates its action by its possibilities. Pass now to another point, where the relationship of lives to souls is presented in a still higher form of inter- est. I speak here of the probability that they are all enjoying creatures. As regards the animal races which people the air, and the earth, and the waters of the sea, there appears to be no room for doubt — their perpetual^ hum, and chirp, and song, and gambol, and feeding, are themselves the tokens of enjoyment. The vegetable creatures are not commonly supposed to have any such capacity, and the physiologists add, as a reason, that they have no nerve or nervous center to make them conscious of joy. But the argument is good, if at all, only as regards the consciousness of joy, not as regards the joy itself. The little child is a jo3^ous being, tin- 292 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. gling even witli joy, we may say, as witli fullness of life; but he is not conscious to himself of his joj. Health itself is joy, and yet it is a kind of joy so nearly unconscious, that one of our best writers lays it down as a maxim, that no man is in perfect health who even knows that he is well. Indeed there is strong reason to believe that life itself, clear of all hindrance and dis- ease, is an essentially joyous power, though of course unconscious. Besides, applying all this to the account of vegetable life, there are a good many plants that are called sensitive, because they give tokens of sensation, and others that keep up a constant oscillating, or vi- brating motion. And yet again what human sensi- bility can resist the impression, beholding the fresh greening of the landscapes, the bright, gay pencilings of the flowers, and visited by the odors they distill in their lives, that they are creatures, all, essentially joy- ous; fair as in the form, fragrant as in the exhalation, of joy. Hence the profound sympathy we have with their beauty — they give us joy, as being in the sense of their feeling. What a computation have we then of joy in the lives of the world. The navigator, for example, sails through a red brown sea, even for a week, and this colored element gets its dye, as he may learn, from a reddish insect tenanting such regions of space, at the rate of piobably a hundred millions to the cubic foot. The coral islands and reefs, extending in the sea for thousands of miles, are only vast cities of life, built up in the water, forts compared with which the Sumpters LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 293 and all others built by man are only pebbles. Tlie very earth, too, as Ehrenberg discovered, is in whole provinces of the world, composed of little flint shells. These shells were before supposed to be only grains of sand, but he found them to be tenanted by lives, which are still going on at their work of sand-making as busy as ever. Then in the vegetable growths by which the world itself is carpeted and studded with forest shades, every plant, every spear of grass, every hair of mold, is a life, and the air even of the planet is scented with their breath. The seeds of life, such as those for ex- ample of the mold, are flying everywhere in it, invisi- ble, so that every darkest cave or cavern is a city more popuious even than London or Thebes, and waiting only for the fit occasion to spring into natural activity. Now this boundless wave of Life that covers the world, we have little room to doubt, is in some high sense a wave of joy. We look upon the creatures of life as they breathe, and feed, and grow, as they climb, or leap, or fly, or sing, and take them all together as the children, conscious or unconscious, in either case, the happy children, of Him who hath Life in Himself, and runs out the pulses of His joy to throb in them all. The green carpeted earth, the air scented by their odors, the very sky filled with their gambols and the ring of their music, — these are their carnival. A stately joy waves in the giant wood. The ebbing and flowing sea pants with the joys of life that are heaving in its depths. Even the sands of the old continents tingle with the touch of joy. . 25* 294 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. Having now gone over the field prescribed, it only remains to speak, as briefly as possible, of the ends or objects for wliich the subject has been undertaken. , In asserting the immaterial quality of lives, I, of course, do not assert any thing positive, or any thing to hang a conclusion upon, respecting .any thing else, I only mean that they are un-material, as regards all the known properties and laws of matter. But if we add to this the fact of their self-active natu.re and their power to subordinate, on a large scale, the chemical and mechanical forces to their sovereignty, we bring into thought an element powerful enough to affect even radically the bent of the world's mind, and so to oper- ate important results, not only in the department of natural science, but also in metaphysics and the philos- ophy of religion, as well as in the faith and imagin- ative literature of the world. We need only note how gravity, chemical attraction, electricity, the laws of heat and vapor, have entered the domain of thought, altering even the method of speculation, to see what life would do, coming into full recognition, to qualify the prepossessions and change the modes of human opinion. It makes the world, in fact, another world, filling it with other and more quickening analogies. How it would affect physiology, in all its branches, has been obvious in the general course of these illustra- tions. Indeed, if some physicians were to only get hold of the true idea of life as a power distinct from the laws of inorganic matter, they would be as much less likely to make inorganic matter of their patients. LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 295 And the supposed science of phrenology, conceiving life as a power organizing and conserving the bodies it inhabits, would begin to suspect that, not the head only, but the whole body, down to the very foot and heel, expresses the volume and spirit and quality of the man. Conceiving it too as a self-active power, having causations of its own upon the body, more than the body reactions npon it, the boasted science would begin to look out some place or possibility for a will, free will, better than to represent all human actions as the resultants of compound forces in the brain, or de- coctions of some forty brain-vessels simmering out a joint product. The greatest fact of humanity, the in- nate sense of responsibility, would possibly get some room thus in the science and some right to exist, better than it has in the apothecaries' kettles and crucibles. In the same way a great theologian, like Jonathan Edwards, writing a treatise on the will, might be able, under ike analogies of the self-active, originally causa- tive powers of life, to make a little more adequate ac- count of it, than he does under the analogies of weights and scale-beams. His magnificent puzzle might never have been contrived ; but the chances of human respon- sibility might have been as much greater in the world, as the chances of this kind of sophistry were less. It has been the great misery of theology, in fact, that it has always been trying to solve the relations of God and man as relations of cause and effect, not perceiving that, while this might be a very good way of accounting for the changes of a dead body, it never is for the 296 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. clianges of a living body, least of all for the actions of a living, choosing man. The school of Scotch metaphy- sicians and theologians, coming in with and after the wondrous revelations of chemical analysis, were still farther diverted firom the right modes of inquiry, by the analogies of the chemical method. They could think of nothing but analysis : to raise distinctions, to divide, to atomize the soul by distinctions, was now to be the better way of knowledge. And the result of their better method was just what it must be ; for it is the grand distinction of a soul, as of all life, that it makes, not a summation of parts like a rock, but a whole, in which all the parts condition each the others, in such a sense that one can not be without the others. Their analvsis therefore was a kind of analvtic murder, and the man it showed was a dead, dissected, man, not a living. It gave us for the real Caesar the ashes of Caesar's urn ; or better still it gave us a manikin for a man. The refinements were disappointments, and the new knowledge opened was a waste of sands. The same atomizing method, passing into theology, made a like dry waste of that. It reduced the man to pieces and the truth to pieces, contriving then to show how the pieces of the truth act on those of the man, and how the pieces of the man act on those of the truth ; how the causes produce effects, and the hea^-ier weights preponderate, and which is before and which is after — in which it fell out, as it must that the man died of his treatment, and the truth died also, and the operations of both were nowhere. It will be impossible for any LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 297 metaphysical, or religious tliinker, to stay in this desert long, after he has once got insight of the lives, and drawn himself to their sympathy. Passing into broth- erhood with these, a finer and wholly different class of influences will be upon him. Trying no more to think the soul by its parts, under laws of causation, he will think it as a whole, a self-active, glorious, living whole, recognizing its deep mystery, interpreting it by its wants and feelings and responsible choices, swayed by reasons and not by forces, akin by its nature to all truth and beauty and God, perfectible only in a perfect liberty. Under this kind of method, or influence, the ten- dency to all sorts of radicalism and religious unbelief will be removed; for all these varieties of mischief come of the endeavor to solve, by the laws of inorganic matter, subjects that are not inorganic matter, but dif- ferent as possible from it. The civil state, for example, what is it, as many reason, but an after-thought and artificial contrivance of mankind, — a contract, or compact, in which the members, in a computa.tion of advantage, agree to sur- render some of their individual rights, and accept the will of the majority, so far, as law! This, therefore, is the fundamental conception of liberty and all rightful government. No, far from that as possible ; the whole scheme is a string of misconceptions. Individuals had never any civil functions to surrender. Majorities had never any natural right of authority. The true concep- tion is that civil society is a gens^ or nation^ under the 298 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. analogies of growth ; a form of nascent order, having, under God, its own historic life, by which, as a nisus formativus^ it will be conserved and governed. This, too, is its constitution; and it makes no difference whether it is written, or unwritten ; for if it be written, it is only a transcript of the regulative instincts and elements previously developed by its life and history. It may be hereditary, or elective, parliamentary, or im- perial ; it has a divine right in one form as truly as in another, if only it rules historically, and not mechani- cally. It is like the coral banks of the sea, which are representations, at once, of vital freedom and historic life. And as the coral insects make no complaint, when finding how their personal liberty is taken away by the framework of their rocky casement, or constitution, but rather feel that if they were thrust out of it to live, each one by itself, in the open sea, they would lose both their liberties and their bodies, so it may as well be with man, under the frame of civil order constructed by the organic life of their history — protected, thus, and made more free, instead of surrendering half their natural liberties to save the remainder, as some of our crude, atomizing theories of social compact are wont to assume. And so again of reforms. They contemplate the fact that organic society is somehow diseased. If then a body grows a rheum, or a carbuncle, does the physician hew it to pieces and get up another, or does he make applications, and administer alteratives, apj^ealing to the life it still has, and contriving, in that manner, to LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 299 work the desired amendment? So, then, if the rights of labor fare badly, under the selfish and diseased ac- tion of society and capital, that radicalism which pro- poses to crush out society and build up a new civil or- der, trusting nothing to the mitigations of law, and the infusions of social justice, or Christian brotherhood, is a wisdom that works in the molds only of force and me- chanical repair, not in those conservative methods that belong to the vis medicatrix of life. All such radicals get their logic from the laws of inorganic matter ; and falling to work at society, as if it were dead, they take the surest means to make it so. But we pass to the matter of religious unbelief, and the immense difierence it makes, in all the tendencies of religious opinion, whether it is tempered by the analogies of life, or wholly dominated by the modes of inorganic matter. Taking matter and its laws for na- ture, and asserting the absolute uniformity of cause and effect under these laws, Christianity is no longer credi- ble ; there is no place left for miracle, or for any suj)er- natural visitation of God. But when the lives are dis- covered as beings that are, in no sense, properties of matter ; when we see them proved by their effects to be profoundly real — real as gravity and not a whit more mysterious as regards their substantial nature — when we see inertia, heat, chemical aflBinity, gravity it- self, all the laws of dead matter submitted, on a large scale, to their sovereignty, we are set in a mood that is wholly different. We are ready to believe in forces outside of matter and superior to it, for indeed we do 300 LIFE, OR THE LIVES already. There is thus a kind of spirit-world to us in nature itself, preparing, as it were, beginnings of faith, bj the sublime mastery it wields. The transition to a faith in supernatural beings and events is thus made easy. For, if the vegetable lives can sway the mineral properties, if the animal can sway the vegetable, if the intelligent personal minds can master both, then how far from being incredible is it, that a being, coming into the world from without and above, can make all things bend to his diviner will and sovereignty, and yet in such a way as to involve no subversion of order. In this manner, too, we are prepared to a steadier and more confident opinion of the immortality of souls. How real the soul-powers are in their self-activity we have seen by worlds-full of examples — real enough in their humblest, tiniest, forms, to do what all the chem- ists can not, aided by all the known powers of matter and its laws. Is it then assumed that what we call the soul in man is really one and the same with his life principle ? It has been common to raise a distinction between the body-soul or life, and the spirit-soul, and there certainly is a distinction of functional activity correspondent with these terms ; a distinction which, indeed, appears in the scriptures. But the distinction referred to may be regarded as pertaining to one and the same sub- stance, or as requiring two different substances. On this point Baxter and other Christian teachers of different schools have not been forward to decide. I will only suggest that multiplying substances and LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 301 causes where tliere is no need of it, is iinpliilosopliicaL And tliere is the less reason for it here, that the lives of the world appear in so many grades. First we have the unconscious, next the conscious, then the voluntary and locomotive, then the half-intelligent and contriving, then the responsible and free ; so that if we make a sep- ation of soul and spirit, as being distinct substances, we shall certainly be found to include under spirit some things, at least, which belong to mere animate natures under their life principle. On the whole, it seems better to regard the body-soul or life, in man, as being- one and the same substance as the spirit or religious principle; only having lower functions, by which it lays hold of matter, fashioning a body, and functions more transcendent, by which it knows and appropriates God. But the Lives all die, why not then the soul-principle of man, which we are agreeing to regard as being one and the same as his life ? To this I answer, in the first place, that the reality of the soul is, in this view, greatly augmented. It is no longer any ghostly affair, which may or may not be, but it is the very power that organizes and conserves the body, real as the body, whose growths and palpita- tions even are operated by it. Then, as regards the evidence of immortalitj^, a wide distinction is made between it and all other of the lives, that they are only servitors to it, existing plainly for its sake, and not for their own. They take the world as a world of mere mineral substance on which man 26 302 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. could not live, and have it given them as their office, to prepare and furnish it for his use. They carpet and color the landscapes for his eye ; they decompose the corrupted atmosphere, and give him the liberated oxy- gen for his br^thing. They fall to composing new substances for his uses and trades; spinning the fibres of flax, cotton, silk, and wool for his clothing ; growing forests for his fuels and timbers; composing gums, spices, fruits, grains, meats, and medicines, for his food and healing ; building stout, powerful bodies, and swift also, for his carriers and couriers; and, what is spe- cially significant, doing nothing for themselves, and all for him, as the lord-life, owner, planter, propagator of them all. And so the mineral earth, on which he would otherwise die, is prepared to a state of habitable order, and bounty, and beautjr, for his uses^ — not for the uses of his body only but quite as much of his mind ; for he could not even have a language based on min- eral roots alone, that would express his sentiments and the feelings and workings of his heart as a creature of religion. How little then does it signify, as regards the question of his immortality, that these inferior lives are mortal, when he, as a life, holds an order so visibly transcendent? As little does it signify that he dies himself, as respects his connection with a body, for we can see for ourselves, that the soul-force of his nature gathers volume and majesty, long after the body has culminated ; giving, in that fact, the sign that what we call his death is but the leave-taking and final gradua- tion of his immortality. LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 303 Besides, we have, in the instinctive working of these lower lives, the strongest of all external arguments for the immortality of man. Thus we have seen that roots which love the water have a kind of instinctive percep- tion, which turns them, even at whole rods of distance, to run in that direction; also that the humble straw- berry goes after the good earth near it, by a similar in- stinct of life ; both measuring, in a sense, the reach of their own faculty, and starting, or withholding, as they find themselves able, or not, to succeed. But of all these inferior lives there is not one that reaches after permanence, or gives any, the faintest, token that it measures itself, or its aims and aspirations, by immuta- ble ideas. This belongs to man alone. In his con- science he feels the touch of immutable right ; by his reason he is made akin to geometry, number, time, space, cause, and all necessary ideas ; his will is an au- tocratic force, superior to all conditions; his deepest wants of feeling and desire, are the hunger of his nature reaching after God, as the only sufficient food, the un- changing good and beauty of the world — all the cur- rents of his life pour on after eternity, as the rivers seek the sea! What then shall we conclude, but that, measured by the reach of his instincts, he is himself an eternal creature? Or, if the blind root can, by some wondrous method, discern the water through many feet of earth, how shall it surprise us, that the sublimer faith -instinct of man, can truly see those immortal waters, towards which the roots of his being do so man- ifestly run. 304 LIFE, OR THE LIVES. And then, beside all this, to shorten the argument down to its true point, every human soul is conscious of its immortality, knows it by an immediate knowl- edge, takes the permanent by its own inborn affinities, never lets go of it or loses out the fixed evidence of conviction, till it has blurred itself by the sottishness, or beguiled itself by the sophistries of sin. One thinor more remains to be susforested; viz.. the immense contribution that is made, both to relisrion, and the higher wants of genius, by the due understand- ing of lives. There is no such culture as this for the imagination ; for it is a kind of culture that disposes at once to faith, and to all purest exaltations of feeling arfd fancy. There is, I know, a contrary prejudice. In- deed, I have heard an American scholar turning that prejudice into an oration, in which he said, for sub- stance — *' why should the poor child's mind be drugged with facts and curiosities of science ? Let him hear the stories of elfs, sprites, fairies, goblins, and good fel- lows; let him read, for true history, if he will, the Arabian tales and weave them into his dreams ; teach him faith in this manner, and quicken his poetic fancy ; but above all do not begin with your primers of natural history and bring him up among the beasts." Now that a conceited, unbelieving, and therefore un- beautiful, soul, will be fashioned by the habit of ac- counting for all things, by the laws and calculable forces of dead matter, I most certainly agree. But the wisdom of the proposed remedy is not so obvious. The soul of a child thus fed on ^^gorgons and chimeras LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 805 dire " will be only a den of superstition if he believes them, or if he finally outgrows the opinion of their re- ality, they will only have done what was possible to make him a skeptic and Sadducee. The truth is that all hot-bed measures to force the imagination will only grow a green-house plant, that can not even live in the outdoor winds, and under the fires of the sun. The imagination is no genuine power, save when it is the flaming out in thought of fires that must be so vented, and would otherwise suffocate in the soul. Faith, too, is the sister of beauty, and the only real poetry is truth. Vain study is it, therefore, this endeavor to give wings to a soul, when it has not gotten life enough, in its thought, to want them. Let it be enough to educate the eye, and sharpen the appetite for a keen observa- tion — unfolding all the other powers, meantime, by a downright, solid, matter-of-fact training. And then as the soul gets force enough to grapple with the internal meanings and mysteries of things, let it look in here upon the lives, for these will do more to vitalize thought and give it wings, than all the mythologic fic- tions of the world. Here it will be entered into a realm of spirit-creatures, more delicate than fays and fairies, with the advantage that they are real — real enough to play their tricks, at will, on the stupid matter and its laws. These fantastic immaterialities it will find swarming in all grades and dimensions, between micro- scopic motes, and the giants of the forest and the levia- thans of the sea, reducing all substances between the stubborn flint and the fluid air, and working out their 26-^ 306 LIFE, OR THE LIVES magic spells, in ceaseless transformations that exceed even the fables of romantic story. Nature ceases, in this manner, to be a mere sand-bottom or platform of rock and becomes a circle of joyous life — a perpetual Midsummer's Mght Dream, without either dream or fiction in it. And these mute, unreasoning artists, fellow in a sense to mind, come into its feeling and marry it to nature, by such delicate ties of sympathy and brotherhood, as quicken it to insight, exalting, at once, the philosophical understanding, and refining the poetic life. Things above sense, the reverend mysteries of God and religion, now throng about the man, firing his im- agination and challenging a ready faith. Having passed within the rind of matter, and by its mechanical laws, and discovered, there, a more potent, multitudin- ous, self-active, world of life, his higher affinities are wakened, drawing him away to the common Father, whose life is in him, as in them, and to those meditations of the future otherwise faint and dim in their evidence. Of if, perchance, he remembers that all these creatures die and are no more, a feeling is by this time generated, which can no more be chilled, of his own self- asserting immortality. So that when the autumnal frosts have changed the world's green look, and the pale nations of the forest leaves, hang withering, or fly their stems, loosened by the windy blasts, he will call them with the poet — ^'pestilence stricken multitudes," and the sympathy yielded to the drooping spirits of creation will only have softened his own,- preparing that gentle- LIFE, OR THE LIVES. 807 ness in him which belongs both to faith and to genius. But the courage of his immortality stays firm, for well he knows, that when the green myrmidons of spring appear, to gladden again the earth, it will be to him as the opening of the gate ^'Beautiful" over all graves, and that, being now a life again among the lives of May, singing with them that sing, and rejoicing in the new-born joy of all, it will only be his impulse to say, what before he believed, — ''The resurrection and the Life." VIII. CITY PLANS * The topic assigned me, this evening, is the Planning of Cities. You will understand, of course, that I am not required, in the handling of my topic, to make out the plan of any particular city, or to model a general plan for all cities. There is no absolute plan for cities, and no city can be well planned, as the duplicate of another. Moreover it is seldom that any, except some paper city of speculation, is planned wholly beforehand. A very few have been, but, commonly, beginnings are made first, which grow into some more definite and more extended plan afterwards. And yet the begin- nings made and the growths or extensions that come after, would commonly be very different, if only there could be on hand a little better culture, in regard to the ideas and principles involved in the best and most taste- ful arrangement of cities. And here, exactly, is the object of our present in- quiry ; it is to set on, or promote, this kind of culture — * Prepared for tlie Public Improvement Society of Hartford, but for reasons of health postponed and not delivered. CITY PLANS. 309 to unfold the regulative ideas of the subject, to contrib- ute suggestions, state the ends and objects to be sought, sharpen the attention of criticism, and bring out, as far as possible, the laws of construction by which the com- pletest and most attractive city may be built. And the importance of a well-formed power of criticism, in this field, is much greater than many will, at once, perceive. Thus if some of you should ask what considerable interest vou can have, as citizens of an old established city or town, in such a subject as this, I answer that it is a matter of some consequence, or ought to be, that you should have impressions not absurd of your own city itself — its defects, advantages, and capabilities — ^for if it should happen that you live your time out here, complaining all your life-long of the best points in it, deploring to your last day the impossibility of remov- ing just the things which are its finest merits ; working, it may be, in the city council, to roll up bills of expense for alterations that were really better not to be made ; and finally dying a little before your time, because the city plan will not square itself to your false notions of taste and order ; it would seem that a more cultivated taste and a juster view of the subject and the laws by which it is governed were, at least, desirable. I will further add that exactly what I speak of here is a matter of common occurrence, and I could name at least a dozen points in the arrangement of our city, about which serious regret is even commonly expressed, which are yet, in reality, among the best points in it. Furthermore, the impressions you make of yourselves, 310 CITY PLANS. by the crudity, or sound maturity of your judgments in tliis particular matter, would seem to have a consid- erable degree of consequence. Thus, if you were called, some time, to show the city to a stranger of dis- tinction, in a ride about its localities, and he should find you pleased most often with what is a most certain deformity, and most ready to deplore what a little more culture would as certainly help you to approve, it will not be enough that you are unconscious of the rather weak and ludicrous figure you make. It may be that 3'ou do not know it, when he pities your crudity, or smiles at your expense ; still it is none the less true that he would think of you with more respect, if he could respect your opinions. Some of 3'ou too will be traveling in foreign cities, and all of you in other cities of your own country, and it will be -much to you that you carry with you tastes and ideals of art, so far matured as to enable you to en- joy what is really picturesque, or finely conceived ; or, if you must reject any thing as absurd, will allow you to do it with a rational confidence in your judgments. Besides, how many of you, after all, according to the common lot of Americans, will yet be sometime con- cerned in the shaping, extending, or founding of new cities. The very slender qualifications too that, for want of better and more competent, have heretofore been called to preside over this most critical work, in the newer portions of our country, and the thousand miserable abortions generated in consequence, to be the perpetual grief and torment of posterity, make it CITY PLANS. 311 even a kind of public duty for every American to put himself in training, in at least some partial degree, by a meditation of the points to be gained and the laws to be observed in the skillful and wise planting of such new foundations. We admit the importance of a good plan for hotises, and even fences and barns ; for schools, and churches, and fortifications, and constitutions ; and also that all such plans require much thought and per- sonal culture; but cities are the most incorrigible in their faults, as they are most immovable in their loca- tion and most nearly everlasting in their continuance, of all human creations, and therefore require to be never thrown upon a hap-hazard beginning, never to be extemporized in a crude, wild way, but always to be shaped by the wisest consideration rather, and the wisest understanding both of possibilities and princi- ples. The importance, in fact, of this kind of culture will never be underrated, by one who has taken the very sad lesson of a journey among our new cities of the west; where possibilities neglected, and principles defied, are so often put in eternal and eternally mortify- ing evidence, by the awkward, misbegotten, contriv- ances that have taken hold of the fee simple of nature, and become the torment of its beauty for all coming time. Further I think we need not go, to find the im- mense practical significance of the subject I am now called to discuss. Before we undertake the more specific matters in- cluded in the combinations of cities, I think it will help 312 CITY PLANS. US greatly, to raise a previous question, viz., what are the requisites of a good city plan? for the points we may bring up, in a canvassing of this question, will go far, it may be, to determine other questions of a less general nature, which, without some considerations pre- viously brought into view, it would even be difficult to settle at all. I answer then the question proposed, what are the requisites of a good city plan, by saying — 1. That it must make a city and not something else. This may seem, at first view, to be a mere truism, not having any very important significance ; but you will find, as you set your mind upon it more carefully, that it signifies much. The radical idea of a city appears in the old proverb — ^'God made the country and man made the town." A city then is man's world, a little world of life that he has built for himself; and accord- ingly it is to be perfected principally as a thing within itself. Thus, for example, it is no great point that it should be located so as to be a conspicuous object from a distance, no great point that it should have a com- manding outlook over the open countr3^ If there should happen to be some prominent cliff or acropolis which appears distinctly out at sea, or commands a fine view of the adjacent country, it is well — much better than it is in a cemetery or city of the dead ; for there the fine outlook, or distant prospect, is even a fault to be complained of; and when a granite tower is built to repair the imagined want of a prospect, as in one of our most noted cemeteries, what is it but a wretched offense to genuine sentiment, and a vulgarity that should even CITY PLANS. 313 be the subject of public mortification? In a city of the living, the conditions of boundary and self-limitation are less stringent. Where there is a point of conspicuity it may be taken, or taken advantage of; but if it should appear that the city was originally set upon the rounded summit of a hill for the mere sake of conspicuity, that simple fact would forever destroy the sense of a city character. It is a matter of far greater consequence that the parts of a city should look into one another, as when they look across a valley, than that they should have distant prospects looking away from one another into the country. There wants to be something in a city that produces a sense of its being a world in itself, and this is part of the charm felt in the old walled cities of Europe. There is a sense in such cases of being gathered into city life, or a life in man's world, that associates the feeling of art and community, and is therefore only agreeable. You may test this matter by supposing a city built on a vast plain, having the streets so laid that you may look straight through, in every direction, into the country and the green fields. We have only to con- ceive such an arrangement, to convince ourselves, at once, of the painful vacuity and the insupportable weariness it will inflict. There is no reactive object for the eye, no sense of limit or boundary, no gathering into city life. The row^s of houses and streets are like the rows of corn in an unfenced field on the prairies, and are scarcely more effective in the sense they beget of a man-world state. 27 314 CITY PLANS. On the same general principle, that a city is to be a city, and not a something to look from, or look at, the study should be, in locating a public building, or any public ornament, such as a statue, or an obelisk, that it is to be so placed as will show it best within ; that is, to the greatest number of eyes and from the greatest num- ber of avenues or streets. If a lighthouse is to be built, it must doubtless be set to look out upon the sea ; if a monument, a pillar, a commemoration tower, let it stand a mark for all eyes, if possible, within the city lines. The city, in short, will be most perfectly planned, other things being equal, when it makes a world for itself and reveals its ornaments most effectu- ally to itself. Like the inside of a house, it is to be planned for inside show, completeness and beanty. It may also be given as a requisite — 2. Of a good city plan, that it shall always unite, if possible, something historical. There needs, in or- der to the most pleasing and picturesque effect, to be an impression produced of growth, or extension. There should be an old-looking part, and a new-looking ; an irregular, perhaps, and a regular. As a house will be most pleasing when it looks as if it grew up with the family, by successive enlargements and room by room, as other rooms were wanted, not when it appears to have been, at the first, a complete and forever inexten- sible formality — a pagoda, an octagon, or a Greek temple, waiting for any body, or every body, or no- body, and the same to all — so a city will be most pleasing when the histor}' is told by the plan. If such CITY PLANS. 315 a city for example as Philadelpliia were to be extended by additional squares, till it was as large as Babylon, there would be no history in it. ISTew York, on the other hand, shows, in the contrast of old and irregular parts with the new, some traces of having had a history. The small city of New Haven too reveals a token of history which is really the very best point of the plan, though deplored, I have no doubt, every day of the year, by the majority of the citizens, as a defect that can never be repaired — I speak of the fact that all the outer portion of the city, which is much the larger por- tion, is seen to have virtually planned itself At the original planting, there were laid out a few blocks, or squares, composing what is now the core of the town, and was considered, at the time, to be the whole town of the future. Into this core of square- work came the public roads, each in its own natural line of direction, meeting it sometimes at the sides, oftener at the angles ; and then, afterwards, the city spread itself out upon these roads, divergently related to each other ; and so it resulted that no single street goes out of the city in a line parallel to the block- work lines of the center ; sec- ondly, that no one standing in the streets of the block- work center can look completely through into the open countr}^; and thirdly, that a story is written in the very lines of the streets, which saves the town from the eternal monotony of its levels, and of its otherwise reg- ular form. In the same manner, the boulevards of Paris are history, representing, for all future time, to the eye, the spaces covered by the ancient walls and fortifi- 316 CITY PLANS. cations, now cleared awa}^, and recalling tlie day when Paris was only a small fortified town. Frankfort on the Maine is an illustration still more to the purpose. It stands on a river, occupying a plain surface, much like Philadelphia. In the nucleus or core, is the an- cient town, the part that used to be contained within the walls. There, as the plan was to get as many people as possible into as little circuit as possible, in order to make the defense more easy, the structures are crowded, rear upon rear, and the blocks are cut up in all manner of zigzag lines, wherever a building can find room, and the streets themselves are often contracted so that a man may touch both sides with his hands. No space of open ground is any where left, save in w^hat is called the market-place — a paved acre, so to sj)eak, where the vegetables and meats might be offered for the provision- ing of the fortress otherwise called the cit}^ But the day of gunpowder, cannon-balls and bombs arrives, and, behold, the walls are worthless! Accordingly a new modern figure begins in the clearing away of the walls much as in New Haven, only for a different reason The wall and fortification circle becomes a public gar den, threaded by mazy walks among shades and flow ers ; and then, outside of this, round the whole circuit there spreads a new modern city, with broad, straight avenues and ample house-lots, fronted with trees, in the manner of a new American city. And so the modern Frankfort is old Frankfort converted into history. The people walk about in a history. It stands before their eyes, it touches their feet, they do their business, locate CITY PLAXS. 317 their houses, take their title-deeds and feel the winds themselves in the lines of old historic record. As then a city ought, if possible, to be in some way historic, it should not be planned in any such absolute, complete form, that the future lines will be determined by those laid down. If the people of New Haven had passed an order that all the roads coming into the town should coincide in direction with the streets in it, they would have very nearly ruined their present city, which is, on the whole, one of the best planned cities in the country. Something must be left to the liberty of the future, to produce that air of growth and historic life which is necessary to a really fine city. It is not enouo-h that there should be somethino- informal, or ir- regular in the plan.; that will not produce the historic air we speak of, when it still appears to be an irregu- larity originally planned. No city is less historic in its air than the city of "Washington, because it is so mani- festly set down at the first to be just what it is. In this point of view it is the worst planned city in the world; for, if it were to exist a thousand years, it would still wear the look of studv and never the look of growth. If it were a simple block- work or chess- board plan, it might possibly be a more natural exten- sion of some plan originally small, but the studied, foredoomed, regular, irregularity of Washington, never can appear to be any thing but an artificial and formal appointment, with which history and growth have had as little to do, as with a diagram of Euclid. Hence, notwithstanding some good points in the plan, there 27- 318 CITY PLAXS. must be an eternal dryness and constraint in it. No plan can be agreeable that excludes the sense of history, or wins the fact of antiquity, without any such tokens of the times and changes gone by, as may notch the stages of progress and make the antiquity visible. 3. A city must be so arranged, if it can be, as to an- swer the conditions of health. No city over which the pale angels of sickness are always hovering becomes or- namental or attractive. Heavy bills of mortality keep down the tonic enerofv of art. Not even the best com- mercial advantages brace the feeling up to improvement. Thrift itself takes on a scarcely thrifty look, because the men most forward in it are always finding how to with- draw and get a chance to live. Even the stone of ar- chitecture looks weak in its lines, and statuary droops in expression, where a funeral miasma loads the atmos- phere. The mere repute of unhealthiness is a heavy bar of disadvantage, as regards any kind of progress and culture. And yet a city must sometimes be located where the natural conditions are less favorable to health than would be desirable, because the trade, which is to be its life, can not be accommodated with a better site. There was probably no better choice for New Orleans than the choice that was made. If there was no other river mouth, or harbor, at the south end of Lake Mich- io-an, Chicao:o was obliored to settle into the vast mud- plain it occupies, just above the surface of the water, and contrive to get the necessary drainage for a great city in what manner it best could. Still a great deal CITY PLANS. 319 can be done for the liealtliiness of almost any location, if only the city plan is rightly adjusted and the true sanitary conditions are duly attended to afterwards. Thus it is one of the first and most important mat- ters in adjusting the plan of a city, to prepare a suffi- cient drainage or sewerage. And if the ground is too low, or too flat, to allow a sufficient drainage by grav- ity, the plan must be arranged so as to favor an arti- ficial and forced drainage, discharging at a point under water, and remote from the shore. More commonly there will be a sufficient natural drainage, if only it is taken due advantage of in the grade and location of streets. There will be some low sfround, or natural de- pression of surface, such that, if some avenue is laid along the depression, conforming, in a degree, to its sinuosities, there will be no difficulty in carrying off*, by a main sewer under it, all that is brought down by a multitude of side sewers into the main which nature has provided for. Whereas, if everything is sacrificed to regularity of lines and gradings, and the low grounds are fiUed up to even the grade across them, there will be, as there ought to be, no drainage left. Too great attention can not be given in the adjustment of a city plan to the easy and natural drainage of the parts. It is also a great question, as respects the health of a city, in what direction, or according to what points of the compass, the streets are to be laid. To most persons it will appear to be a kind of law, that the city shall .stand square with the cardinal points of the compass — north and south, east and west. And where this law 320 CITY PLANS. appears to have not been regarded, how many will de- plore so great an oversight, and even have it as the standing regret of their criticism. Whereas, in the true economy of health and comfort, no single house, or cit}', should ever stand thus, squared by the four cardi- nal points, if it can be avoided. On the contrary, it should have its lines of frontage northeast and south- west, northwest and southeast, where such a disposition can be made without injury in some other respect; that so the sun may strike every side of exposure every day in the year, to dry it when wet by storms, to keep off the mold and moss that are likely to collect on it, and remove the dank sepulchral smell that so often makes the tenements of cities both uncomfortable and poisonous to health. Eegard should also be had in the laying of streets to their ventilation ; that is, to the courses of the winds in the warmer and less healthy seasons of the year. Thus, in our particular climate, the coolest breeze of the sum- mer and the softest of the winter is the sea-breeze, which comes directly from the south. The wind therefore requires exactly the same quartering of the streets that is required by the sun ; for, in streets that run directly east and west, at right-angles to the course of the wind, the tenements will scarcely feel it on their south side, because the tenements opposite will keep it off, and will much less feel it on their north side, because they keep it off themselves. Meantime, on the streets that run directly north and south in the line of the wind itself, it will only brush the surfaces on either side, and will CITY PLANS. 321 scarcely press into the windows at all. Whereas, if the streets were laid diagonally in relation to the breeze, that is, in our particular case, northeast and southwest, and southeast and northwest, the current would press into all the streets and into and through all the houses open to its passage, making eddies and whirls at every crossing, and fanning, as it were, by its breath, the whole city. In a different case, where the prevailing breeze of summer requires the streets to quarter in one line of diagonal, and the sun in another, the conflict can be settled only by compromise, or b}' sacrificing one advantage to the other. 4. It is another requisite in the planning of a city that it be so arranged as to serve the purposes of con- venience. Eectangnilar blocks and structures have so great an advantage in this respect, that squares and parallelograms must and will predominate in all well planned cities. In this rectangular form architects and builders are best accommodated. The rectangular plan also furnishes most easily, and is well nigh indispensable to an elegant and attractive interior. The shops of trade require the same. Conceding then so much, in regard to the better convenience of the rectangular form, it be- comes a problem, requiring only to be the more care- fully studied, how, or by what means, it may be so far modified as to save it from the insufferable tameness and stupidity of a mere gingham city, of the Babylo- nian, or Philadelphian type. Not seldom will convenience itself require a devia- tion, as where there is some curvilinear sweep of low 322 - CITY PLANS. ground along which a principal avenue will most natu- rally trace itself, covering some principal sewer of drain- age. Sometimes there will be a steep-faced bluff, round the foot of which a quay, or general landing-place for merchandise may sweep, conforming to its lines. Some- times there will be round-sided hills in the background, rising, it may be, into rocky summits ; such as would command a fine outlook over the city and harbor, if only the ascent could be made easj' for the accommoda- tion of residences. To lay a covering of squares, on the faces of such bluffs and rounded hills, would even be absurd; for the ascent of their heights can be made only by straight lines that are very oblique and cut each other diamond-wise, or by a spiralling in curve lines that cut each other in acute ano^les. By the neglecting of this very ob^dous expedient, the noble background of the fine city of San Francisco is sacri- ficed and forever lost. Lying in a capacious bowl or concave between the hills and the bav, the citv is laid off, as it should be, in parallelograms, with only here and there a deviation from uniformity, and, as every- thing passing on the concave length of every street is visible of course in every part of it, there is a wonderful vivacity in the circulations. But as soon as the rect- angular form, pushing up the steep hill-sides, reaches a point where the ascent for carriages is no longer possi- ble, the whole space above, which ought to have been covered with residences of the highest character, loses value and is occupied only by cheap tenements, such as mules and footmen, climbing up as they best can, are CITY PLANS. 323 able to furnish with supplies. So far the rectangular plan is the enemy of all convenience. Nay it is even the final destruction of the finest possibilities of beauty. Had the engineers of San Francisco, when reaching a certain point, deflected their straight lines, running them into spirals that cut each other obliquely, the plan which now runs out, in the background, into a w^eak and crazy-looking conspicuity, would have crowned itself in a summit of ornament ascended by easy drives, and looking down from its terraces on all the activity of a populous and beautiful city. By the law of convenience the width also of the streets will, in general, be most properly determined. Primarily cities are for use — only for show and beauty afterward — and when we consider the matter of use, it is obvious enough that streets may be too narrow and also too wide for the convenience of use. A very nar- row street strangles the free circulation of business, a very wide one never can be made to have the air of business. In a very large city there ought to be a few great arteries of motion where it may flow unobstructed from one side to the other ; like the great central street of Antioch, for example, which was four miles long and some two hundred feet broad, flanked, on either side, by a lofty colonnade or archwork of stone, which cov- ered the promenade walks from one end to the other. But the ordinary streets of cities are more agreeable when they are from fifty to eighty feet wide. Neither is it a point to be greatly insisted on, that there shall be a large and spacious rear provided for in the cjenter 324 CITY PLANS. of a block or square ; for it spreads the business and the population over too large a surface, introducing magnificent distances where you want the sense of density and a crowding, rapid, all-to-do activity — which is one of the principal attractions of a city. Besides, when the population or the business begins to press for room in any quarter, it is sure to bui^t into the vacant centers and rear grounds, erecting there store-houses, stables, manufactories, and producing, at last, a more crowded state in the rear than if no such centers had been reserved; with the disadvantage that they are crowded often with unsiorhtlv and filthv nuisances, in place of the clean, close, rear, that would have been se- cured by a less roomy plan at the first. Thus far we have been occupied mainly with the re- quisites of a fine city ; considering what conditions it should answer, and what, in idea, it is or ought to be. In this inquiry we have touched incidentally a good many points and settled in advance many important questions. The next thing in order is the question of location, or site. This however is a question that is very often de- termined beforehand, and that not seldom by what ap- pears to be only an accident — a tent that was pitched by a spring, a landing made for the night upon the shore of some river or bay. A little hamlet is thus be- gun which insists on the right of growth, and when the thought of being sometime a city takes it, puts forth it- self in the adjustment of an embryo plan. In ancient CITY PLANS. 325 times, cities were located for mere safety, or ease of de- fense, and not for any particular purpose of convenience or beauty. Some precipitous cliff of rock was taken, some peninsular bluff in the bend of a river, some island in some lake or bay. The sides most exposed, or per- haps all the sides, were defended by a wall and then the problem was to crowd as many houses and people as possible, into a space as contracted as possible, that there might be many defenders and but a small extent of wall to defend. The result was rather a citadel than a city. The people went into it as into their den, to be kept in close quarters, and settle the balance between dying under the hand of enemies outside and by pesti- lential infections inside, as they best could. Thus we have Jerusalem, Tyre, Venice, Mantua, Berne, Geneva, Paris, Edinburgh, and a very considerable part of the ancient cities — they were located as for defense and grew into cities afterward. In modern times and especially in our own new country, it is a remarkable distinction that we have it given us so often to locate a city ; and not only this, but that we are allowed to consult, first of all, the con- veniences of use and ornament. The summit of rock, the fastness or natural fortification which can not be scaled, or mined, has no longer any thing to commend it — gunpowder has made its defenses worthless — and there is nothing left us but to spread our cities out where we want them to be, and the freedom of trade requires them to be. And yet it is remarkable that, having all this liberty, 28 326 CITY PLANS. Ave so often locate our cities in a manner that sacrifices even the convenience of business and the comfort of life. California, for example, has founded three important cities or marts of trade which, considering their new- ness, are well built and have a generally fine appear- ance — San Francisco, Sacramento, and Marysville. The two last are even set below high water mark! when, at the distance of scarcely more than a mile, they could both have secured a fine ample high ground never invaded by water, and equally convenient for the purposes of trade — one of them as much more conven- ient as a perpetual access by steam navigation is better than a mile of transportation by land for the whole dry season of the year ! The first, San Francisco, is bound to be a successful and really grand city, but, with all its fine natural advantages, it unites a remarkable com- bination of disadvantages that might all have been avoided by choosing another site. Occupying now the north end of a narrow, jagged, dike of mountains forty miles long, between the bay and the sea, the chance of a railroad connection inland is cut off as completely as if it were forty miles at sea, save in one particular di- rection. Meantime there is no place anywhere for the excavation of a dock, which the high tides of that coast render necessary for the convenience of trade, as truly as the tides of Liverpool and London — all the more necessary that the sands drifted up the western slopes, in the trade- wind season, from the sea-beach two miles back of the city, are continually spilling down into it, and finding their way thus into the wharfages to shallow CITY PLANS. 327 the water aud compel new extensions to serve the uses of shipping. The defenses of the harbor-gate are easy, and yet no defenses can ever make the city secure, for the reason that an enemy has only to make his landing ■on the beach, two miles back of thb town, and take it b}^ an assault in the rear. It can- even be bombarded from the open sea. Now, incredible as it may seem, for a stranger will hardly believe it, there was, just over the bay, and a few miles to the north, at a little hamlet called San Pablo, a grand natural city plat about five miles square, graded handsomely down to the bay, sup- plied on its upper edge with the very best water break- ing out of a gorge in the hills, having a straight path out to sea for ships, among islands of rock easily de- fended, and a fair open sweep for railroad connections, north, east, and south, with gradings half prepared al- ready, and, behind a rocky summit on its mid-front, a natural dock ground two miles long, partly covered by the tides even now, and open to the deep water at both ends — in short, there was never in the world such a site for a magnificent commercial city. But alas ! the site is fixed elsewhere, by the mere chance landing of ad- venture, and a change is forever impossible! What an illustration, of the immense, or even literally un- speakable importance of the results that are sometimes pending on the right location of a city ! Let me not be understood as deprecating, in this matter of location, a just, or even supreme reference to considerations of business. This, to the modern city, is what the stomach is to the body ; for as the body can 328 CITY PLANS. not grow, or build its fair proportions and lay on its colors, unless the rather un poetical matter of digestion is accommodated, so no city can live and become great, which is not grown or populated by the uses of busi- ness. The melancholy fact is that cities are so often lo- cated in a manner of accident as little opportune to the uses of business, as to the higher purposes of comfort, health, and ornament. Commonly they ask to be lo- cated at the foot of some valley, or at the conjunction of several vallevs where roads will naturallv center, and where rivers unite with one another, or with lakes or the sea, just because the natural confluences of business are there. And if the location is bad in many other re- spects, we have no reason to complain that trade drives the stake of location, saying *'Here.'' Accepting the decree, nothing is left us afterward, but to make the place all which it can be made, by a wise and well considered city plan. And how shall we proceed in framing it ? Obviously enough we can not so much as draw one line of it theoretically beforehand. The most we can do is to raise suggestions, and bring out elementary principles, leaving them to find such applications as they may, when the ground is fixed, and the real problem for that ground arrives. And here what I have already advanced, in showing the requisites of a fine city, will go far in determining the outlines of the plan to be made. Other suggestions of a more specific nature can also be made and, beyond that, everything must be left to the particular conditions of the particular case in hand. CITY PLAXS. 329 The first thing commonly is to consider the business frontages of the river, lake, or bay, and accept their lines as the fixed determinations of nature, requiring everything else in the plan to have some proper refer- ence to them. In the next place, it should be considered along what low grounds or depressions of surface the railroads will ask to come in ; for the railroads always seek the lines of depression. Here too they can be more easily bridged, so as to offer no obstruction to the circulations of the streets. Along these low grounds too, on one or possibly on both sides of the railroads, there will com- monly be laid, in lines partly conforming to them, great avenues of travel coming in from the country, under which also the principal sewers of drainage will find their place. Xext, if a little way back of the fi'ontages of business, there are blufts or precipitous slopes, the inquiry will be by what lines, spiral or oblique, they may best be ascended. So also if there are bluffs or hills at the back of the site to be occupied. Accepting, thus far, the lines of nature, which will commonly be curvilinear, and will make irregular an- gles with each other, the skeleton of the plan that is to be, is made out, and the filling up only remains. And this will be done to a considerable desfree, at least, bv a rectangular block-work, adjusted by some principal straight line, or lines, running up and along the natural summits, or ridges between the low grounds and their avenues. These principal, straight line streets, having 23" 830 CITY PLANS. the position of dignity, will be the Broadways of the plan. They will be flanked, on either side, of course, by parallels, and intersected by streets at right-angles, running down to the low" grounds. But if the ground of the central street, or Broadway, is high enough to give a considerable slope to the intersecting streets, they should never cross over, but should meet, on one side, the centers of blocks on the other; because the eye, looking up, will only look out into the open sky, if they cross over, and see nothing beside ; whereas, if it could meet some grand architectural frontage, looking down — some church, or college, or court-house, or bank, or exchange, or hotel — the aspect of elegance and beauty would be maintained, in a degree that is always im- posing. Indeed, it may be laid down as a rule, that no straight street should ever cross over the back of a summit, or considerable convexity, and should never fail to cross over a valley, or depression; for, when it crosses a convexity, the eye will only look through into vacancy, and when it crosses a hollow surface, everything moving in it, from one end to the other, will be visible at a glance, and a scene of perpet- ual, ever shifting, vivacity will be maintained. Besides, it is a great point in the planning of a city, to get as many good frontages for architecture as possi- ble ; so that, moving through it in every direction, the eye will be always meeting, in square front if possible, some grandly imposing or beautiful object. A city like Philadelphia has no frontages, and, if it were made up of palaces, the eye would only look by them, never CITY PLANS. 831 at ttiem, and they would make but a feeble, side-glance impression. On the other hand, a city planned like Edinburgh in the new part, or in the happy combina- tion of the old and the new, would so display its front- ages, at every turn, as to make everything fine even doubly impressive. Thus far we are able to say, with great positiveness, what should or should not be done. But there is a large field left, where the conditions must be variable, and where only a large, well trained discretion can suf- ficiently direct. It may be that the site to be occupied has no middle ground of elevation, but lies in a bowl of depression, ^irrounded by a rim of overhanging summits. In that very fortunate case, everything must be so ordered as to take the best advantage of the ground. The center now will be the chief point of show or impression ; for everything looks into it, and all the motion of the cen- tral crossings will be visible from the surrounding slopes, or summits. If the streets do not radiate from this center, or from some open ground reserved for the more imposing structures of the city, they should have their crossings arranged so as to show all the motion going on, and to make the frontages of architecture conspicuous. And then the summits, visible from the center on every side, should be kept for the occupancy of great institutions not wanted in the city itself — col- leges, armories, hospitals, asylums, and the like, ar- ranged to overlook and crown the amphitheater below. Sometimes the ground of a city site will be so far 332 CITY PLANS. broken by projecting bill-sides, tbat tbe streets, wbicb are generally straigbt and cross at rigbt-angles, will be most naturally deflected, or turned off into new lines; or tbey will require to be curved about tbe faces, bere and tbere, of projecting promontories. In sucb cases there sbould never be any attempt to force a line against nature ; for a curvilinear street is always agree- able and graceful where there is a natural reason for it, which the eye will at once distinguish. On a dead plane there can be no such reason, and a crooked street is never to be planned, because it will never be agreea- ble — the plan must be conformed to geometric lines; but, among hills and moving round their faces, nothing in fact is harder and more repulsive than dashes of deep excavation to cut a line straight through. The same law holds in respect to gradings, when the line of grade is cut by defiles to be crossed. No uniform grade should be forced in such cases by cutting and fill- ing, but the surrender to nature should be gracefully made, by only so far tempering the inequalities, as to produce a moderately waving surface. The rule to be followed in all such cases, whether of deflection, or of unequal grade, is to make the lines flow gracefully into each other by curves, and never allow the change to be notified by knee-joint angles. All angles greater than about forty-five degrees, w^hether in grade or direction, have a mean look, and the wider the angle, the meaner the look ; as if they were the notching of a surveyor's stations — indicating the work of a surveyor and not of an artist. In grades their vulgarity is even quite intolerable. CITY PLANS. 333 The beauty of a city depends, to a considerable de- gree, on the right arrangement and due multiplication of vacant spaces. Thus, where straight line streets meet those which are in curves, an irregular and small opening may be left with advantage, to be occupied by a watering-place, a fountain, or a statue. If there be some point from which many streets open by radiant lines, a fine effect will be secured, by drawing there an elipse, or circle, or irregular figure of open ground that will cut oft" the otherwise sharp ending blocks, and making room, at the center, for some column, or monu- mental tower, or equestrian statue, that will meet the eye looking in from every direction down the radiating streets. If there be some very large section of the city which is covered by rectangular block-work, the mo- notony should be relieved by here and there a vacant block, kept open for some kind of ornamental use. Or, since nothing placed in the center of such a block will be visible from the streets coming in, four blocks may be truncated at their corners, to make a vacant space or opening, at the center of which any imposing ornament will meet the eye from every point, however distant in the streets which make their angle of crossing at the center thus occupied. These vacant spaces, duly mul- tiplied, and rightly managed, will not only be so many breathing places, but will add immensely to the variety, vivacity, and impressive elegance of the city. The providing and right location of a sufficient park, or parks, is a matter of still greater consequence. For an overgrown city, like London, two or three are not 334 CITY PLANS. too many. A small city will require but one. This one too should be neither too large, nor too small, but sliould correspond with the wants and proper expendi- tures of the population. And as it can not be known, at the founding of a city, how large it is going to be, it would be well if a considerable section of ground were held in reserve, for a time, to be sold off finally, in part, if it shall appear that all of it will not be wanted. It should be as nearly central as it can without crowding into the spheres of business. The form or figure will be most pleasing if it is irregular, bounded partly by curve lines, partly by straight. It should never be hung like a saddle over the back of a hill. A mostly convex surface, .where every part is hidden, by the convex lines, from the sight of every other, can never be inter- esting. A level, or plane, is better, but even that should be avoided if possible. The life and vivacity of the park will be graduated hj the general show it makes of the multitudes walking, driving, or at play upon it, and of the multiplied colors they group in the picture. And, in order to this, the lines of the surface should be mostly concave lines, or convex only at fit intervals to give it variety. A scoop of ground, with a high rim of elevation on one or more sides, will be most advantageous and capable of the best effects. If, beside, there is a stream running through it, or pitching into it at some one of the angles, if it includes here and there a cliff of rock, if it faces mainly the south and not the north, and provides a good building ground on every side so as to allow, all round, a solid frontage of archi- CITY PLANS. 835 tecture, broken by no interval of swamp, or impassable jutting of rock, nature will have done what ske could to make it perfect, and the city plan will have also done what it could in selecting and providing the ground — art must do the rest. It would be a matter of no small interest now to go over the plan of our own city, showing, in the light of the general principles here advanced, how many excel- lences it has that are continually regretted as irreparable defects, and how many supposed excellences that are really deformities. But this you will easily do for yourselves and therefore I desist. Two things let me suggest in closing. First, the very great instruction regarding this subject that would be derived from a study of the best planned cities of the world, such as Edinburgh, Paris, ISTaples, and especially the ancient city of Antioch, which appears to me to have been as nearly perfect in the plan as any city ever can be. If Philadelphia could be a study, it might not be amiss to include also that — until, at least, the use of it longer as an American model is corrected. I will also suggest, secondly, that, considering the immense importance of a right location, and a right planning for cities, no step should ever be taken by the parties concerned, without employing some person, who is qualified by a special culture, to assist and direct. Our engineers are trained for a very different kind of service, and are partly disqualified for this, by the habit of a study more strictly linear, more rigidly scientific, and less artistic. The qualifications of surveyors are 336 CITY PLANS. commonly more meagre still — many of them could not even draw a spiral, if it was wanted, and would for that reason, if no other, march a line straight up a hill, even if it were impracticable. There is even wanted, in this field, a new profession specially prepared by studies that belong to the special subject matter. If a city, as a mere property concern, is to involve amounts of capi- tal greater than a dozen, or even a hundred railroads, why, as a mere question of interest, should it be left to the misbegotten planning of some operator totally dis- qualified ? Besides, if a railroad is badly located, the track can be altered, but here a mistake begun is for- ever irreparable. Most human errors are amended by repentance, but here there is no amendment — an ad- vantage lost can never be recovered, an error begun can never be repaired. Nothing is more to be regret- ted, in this view, than that our American nation, having a new world to make, and a clean map on which to place it, should be sacrificing our advantage so cheaply, in the extempore planning of our towns and cities. The peoples of the old world have their cities built for times gone by, when railroads and gun- powder were unknown. We can have cities for the new age that has come, adapted to its better conditions of use and ornament. So great an advantage ought not to be thrown away. We want therefore a city -planning profession, as trulj' as an architectural, house-planning profession. Every new village, town, city, ought to be contrived as a work of art, and prepared for the new age of ornament to come. IX. THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY.* To SETTLE the meaning of a word, having reference to great moral and political distinctions, is often a matter of much consequence. Never do men put themselves in the wrong so badly, or with so great seeming perversity, as when they have only confused, half-partisan ideas of the right. Thus it is enough, at such a time as this, to make thousands disloyal, that they have only random notions of loyalty, or such as come to them only in the smoke of a merely contentious use. The time has come, therefore, when this word, never till quite re- cently applied to American uses, should, if possible, have its meaning clearly made out and determinately settled. Heretofore we have looked upon this word, and, in fact, have even spoken of it, as a strictly old world's word, capable never of any fit application to the conditions of American society. It supposes, we have conceived, some kind of hereditary magistracy, such as belongs, in other nations, to royal and princely orders. Thus, * Undertaken as a Discourse, but not finished in time for the occasion. 29 338 THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. when Mr. Dana published, thirty or forty years ago, his rather famous Article on the need of Orders in the State, to impersonate, and connect with a personal sen- timent the otherwise vapid and dry abstractions of law, liis regret was, in fact, that we had no place for loj^alty, and that, on our footing of equal society, no such nec- essary homage to a natively personal magistracy is pos- sible. He had probably never heard the word loyal ap- plied to an American citizen, and had no conception that it ever could be. All the great sentiiAents that figure under this word he conceived as belonging to the poetry of a more poetic society, blessed with the pic- turesque figures and distinctions of noble orders. And 3^et we find ourselves using, now, the words loyal and loyalty^ as freely as they were ever used by Englishmen. AVe think, too, that we mean something by them, and, in fact, are having as great sentiments in them as ever swelled the bosom of any people in the world. And we are certainly so far right in this as a very badly con- fused use of the words allows us to be. We may even thank God in the fact that a public fire has broken out, finally, in our republican society, such as shows the ca- pacity of fire to be in it. "We have seen the consciously great sentiment of a great history bursting into flame, and we hope it may never cease to burn, till history it- self is ended. We are, just now, a kind of revelation to ourselves in this matter — surprised by the majestic figure now displayed of a self-devotion, that before slumbered and was hid in the recesses of our republican feeling and life. THE DOCTRIXE OF LOYALTY. 339 In this really grand waking of high sentiment, a stranger might sometimes be even ludicrously affected by the awkwardness displayed in our exaltations ; even as the blinded Cyclop plucks up, as he wakes, the pine-tree for his staff, stalking down the hill-sides, with unsteady feet, and bellowing after the enemies he can not see or seize. We lay charges of disloyalty, having really no clear sense of what it is. TTe glory in the character as being just what it is not. TTe claim a right to the name of* it, on grounds that wholly misconceive it. The gentlemen of the law assume a special right to be its expounders and patrons, as if it were a matter be- longing to their sole jurisdiction, when it is, in fact, no matter of legal significance whatever, and never be- longed to the jurisdiction of the law at all. In our endeavor, therefore, to settle the meaning and place of loyalty, we shall be obliged, first of all, to ex- amine its relations to law, or to show, as we easily may, that it is, in fact, no subject of the law. A somewhat ^conspicuous legal advocate of jSTew York, Mr. Curtis, undertook, a short time ago, to en- lighten the people of that city and of the nation gener- all}', by a discourse on this particular subject. His un- necessary tirade against ''the frantic declamations of the pulpit,'"' does not incline me to engage in a contro- versy with him. I only advert to his argument be- cause it is a convenience to have some presentation of the question on that side, which undertakes to be re- sponsible for itself. 3i0 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. As a general tiling, legal questions will be more ade- quately handled by the legal profession ; but when the question stated, or the subject matter discussed, does not belong to the law at all, the mere claim of a legal jurisdiction gives no special title to respect. I undertake, then, to say that the law has nothing whatever to do with loyalty, and that it is not, in any sense, a legal subject. It stands on the same footing with patriotism, honor, and bravery — the law has no definitions for it, and never had; takes no j itrisdiction of it. The subject is purely moral, lying in the field of right sentiment and religion ; just like other matters that are analogous in some of the other relations of life. Thus a man is honorable, when he is true to his own personal convictions ; filial, when he is faithful and du- tiful to parents ; pious, when he is obedient and true to God; and in just the same way he is loyal when he is devoted and true to his government. And the law has nothing more to do with him in one case than in the others. There is no legal definition of honor, none of filial virtue, none of piety, and there is no more any such definition of loyalty. The English common law makes a distinction be- tween what it rather paradoxically calls ''imperfect ob- ligations" and those which are perfect; meaning, by the imperfect, those which are too far-reaching, and deep, and subtle, and spiritual, in one word, perfect, to be administered by the clumsy faculty of human tribu- nals ; and, by the perfect, those which are single, and simple, and superficial enough to be maintained by the THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 841 short perception of human evidences and judgments. Ninety-nine one-liundredths of the duties of life, and probably a much larger proportion, belong to what are called, by the conceit of the law, imperfect obligations ; that is, to the class which are so perfect that God only can administer them, because only He can trace the motives, distinguish the evidences, and settle the judg- ments by which their violations will be fitly redressed. Honesty and dishonesty, for example, kindness and un- kindness, truth and untruth, patriotic and unpatriotic action, — the civil law can do nothing with these and a thousand other like obligations, save when the violation is by some outward act that is a personal or public wrong, and can be investigated by human testimony. Thus, if the dishonesty takes the shape of a fraud, if the unkindness takes the shape of cruelty to animals, or to one's children, if the untruth passes into slander or perjury, if the defect of patriotism runs to an act of conspiracy with the enemies of the country, then the civil law finds a case within its narrow jurisdiction, and is able to undertake the matter of redress — redressing, however, the fraud never as dishonesty, the cruelty never as unkindness, the perjury never as untruth, the conspiracy with enemies never as a breach of patriotism. Exactly so it is with loyalty. It belongs to the class of imperfect obligations, such as God only can adminis- ter, and the civil law has never any thing to do with it, till the disloyalty runs to some act of public treason. And then it punishes the disloyalty as treason, never as disloyalty. With that, as such, it has never any thing 29- 842 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. to do, more thaa with dishonor, envy, covetousuess, uncharitableness, anger, hatred, revenge, censorious- ness; for which it has no definitions, and concerning which it has neither principles nor penalties. So stands this matter of loyalty as before the law ; it is wholly outside of the law, recognized and recogniza- ble only by the law of God. Therefore when this gen- tleman of the law, annoyed by the suspicion, or sup- posed imputation, of disloyalty, comes into the field challenging any one to give him a definition of it — that is, a proper, legal definition — protesting that he will not have this epithet shot at him as a ^'missile," unless by some one who can tell him, in good legal definition, what he means by it ! the brave air of confidence he assumes is much less imposing than it might be. It is much as if some one "should charge him with being a liar, or a coward, and he should reply, what then is your legal definition of a liar? and what of a coward? expecting to be triumphantly acquitted till the said legal definition is given ! It will occur to almost any one that a great many very bad vices and wicked de- linquencies could be sheltered, as easily, in the same manner. But, happily enough for the truth, he is bold to make out the definition himself which he thus peremp- torily demands ; and for this it is that I am particularly indebted to him and to the assistance he contributes by a legal statement of the subject. It will be understood beforehand that the definition given depends, of course, in some way, on the Constitution ; for there is no so THE DOCTliIXE OF LOYALTY. 348 ready way of excusing the vice of disloyalty, or any otlier vice, as to hold the Constitution before it — are not all the ^T-ces Constitutional? He says, ''the true conditions of American loyalty are to be found in the law of the land, in the duties flowing from the Consti- tution of our country." Again, ''no duty of loyalty can possibly be predicated of any claim that is not founded in the supreme law of the land." He cites ac- cordingly from the Constitution what, in his view, con- cludes the argument — " This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." Any thing then is loyal which • is constitutional, or according to supreme law under the Constitution ; any thing disloj^al which is unconstitutional, or against the supreme law. What a conclusion this, to be set to the credit of the law, or to stand for the defense of society ! As if any citizen could not do the very worst, and wickedest, and most detestable, and really most mis- chievously disloyal things against the government, in a way that is perfectly constitutional, and ^dolates, in fact, no law whatever. Besides, if the Constitution and the supreme law are, in this manner, ''conditions of loy- alty," the conclusion appears to follow that whoever violates the Constitution, or the supreme law imder it, is iiJso facto disloyal ; that every one who takes a bribe, for example, or an extortions fee, or sails without a clearance, or smuggles a piece of goods, or does not 344 * THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. duly execute a legal process, or connives at a process whicli is fraudulent, is equally chargeable with disloy- alty on that account ! True he may be a very disor- derly person in these things, a great violator of the laws. But how many thousands have we that have been violating the laws of their country, in one way or another, every month and week, and perhaps day of their lives, who are yet offering even their bodies for their country on the field of battle? Doubtless they would be much better men and truer patriots, if they had been more conscientious subjects ; but there is no reason whatever to conclude against their loyalty, in the fa.ct that they sometimes break the supreme law. If they so far violate the law as to become traitors, every traitor is, of course, disloyal ; but not every dis- loyal person is a traitor, neither is any violation of the law, short of treason, a necessary proof of disloyalty. It may be such a proof, or it may not. Loyalty then is no subject of law or legal definition. It belongs entirely to the moral department of life. It is what a man thinks and feels and contrives, not as being commanded, but of his own accord, for his country and his country's honor — ^his great sentiment, his deep and high devotion, the fire of his habitual or inborn homage to his country's welfare. It goes before all constitutions, and by the letter of all statutes, to do and suffer, out of the spontaneous liberties of right feeling, what the petty constructions and laggard judgments of the State can not find how to compel. It does not measure itself by what the Constitution or the THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 345 laws prescribe. It has no art of contriving, for itself and others, how to hide from the country behind th6 Constitution. Loving the Constitution warmly enough to even die for it, what will it more certainly despise, for just that reason, than to plead the letter of it as the measure of its obligation? Doubtless it is something not to violate the Constitution or the statute laws. In ordinary times, one might naturally enough give it as the definition of a good citizen. But genuine loyalty is in a higher key, at such a time as this. One may even be a great stickler for the Constitution, at such a time, and be only one of the most pestilent movers of sedi- tion — more poisonously disloyal than he could be in the open renunciation of his allegiance. The loyal citi- zen, at such a time, do nothing but what the Constitu- tion or supreme law of the country requires of him ! Why the supreme law requires not one of the duties that are so genuinely great and true in loyalty; to vol- unteer body and life for the country; to stand fast when leaders are incompetent and armies reel away in panic before the foe ; to send off to the field, as bravely consenting women do, husbands, sons, and, brothers, the props and protectors of home ; to wrestle day and night in prayer, as Christian souls are wont, bearing the nation as their secret burden, when, for sex, or age, or infirmity, they can not do more ; to come forward as protectors and helpers of the children made fatherless ; to give money and work and prepare expeditions of love to mitigate the hardships of the wounded in their hospitals ; to vote with religious fidehty for what will 346 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY N. help and save the country, rising wholly above the mercenary motives and selfish trammels of party — why the supreme law requires not one of these, nor, in fact, any thing else that belongs to a loyal and great soul's devotion; how then is it the measure and bound of loyalty ? The mistake, at this point, of those gentlemen who come forward to instruct us in the leofal definitions of o loyalty, is that they conceive it to be the same thing as keeping allegiance; confounding, thus, the tamest and lowest of all modes of political virtue with the highest and noblest, the legal with the moral, compulsion with impulse. What can be a lower style of citizenship than that of a man who does not, or it may be dares not, break allegiance ? But if the loyal man does more than simply keep al- legiance, or simply hold fast the Constitution, he will, at least, do that, a certain class will urge, and here pre- cisely it is that we incur so many charges of disloyalty — our disloyalty consists in nothing but our fidelity to the Constitution. As the Constitution is dangerously violated by the executive magistracy of the nation, what is required of us but to thwart and, if possible, turn back that magistracy — does not lo3^alty itself re- quire it ? There could not be a greater mistake ; what is more frequent than a disagreement with some party or administration, about the constitutionality of this or that particular measure? Is the loyal subject, there- fore, justified in doing every thing he can against the government, or to cripple the success of the govern- THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 347 ment? By the supposition he is in the minority, and the Constitution itself expects him to suspend his judg- ment, and, for so long a time, defer to the superior right of the administration ; else there would never be any thing but anarchy under the Constitution. Is it not then, do you ask, his right and duty, in such a case, to raise a vote, if possible, against such an admin- istration, and bring in a better that shall rectify the abuse ? Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. If it happens at the time that there is a grand rebellion on foot, throwing off, by open proclamation, all the bonds of allegiance, and tearing the nation itself asunder for- ever, and if this rebellion waits to see dissensions raised and will even value more a defeat of the administration, than it would the greatest possible victory in the field — ^in such a case, any citizen of a large and steady loy- alty will be slow to redress some partial, or partly questionable, breach of the Constitution, by a course that jeopardizes plainly even the existence of the na- tion itself. Such kind of redress for the Constitution he will even declare to be a crime of faction against it, because of its untimely obtrusion. All the worse, if it is undertaken as a part^^ measure — he will then both disrespect the motive, and despise the recklessness and almost treasonable perversity of it. And if the en- deavor is maintained by appeals that indicate sympa- thy, or almost friendshij), or it may be even connivance with the flagrant treason of the times, he can not, as a loyal raan, be any thing less than profoundly disgusted. The instinct of a loyal heart is wonderful]}^ single. In 348 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. the hour of the nation's peril, it can not look after that and party together. It scorns the attempt at such a time to divide or carry double, jDrotesting — " Who can be temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral in a moment?" — let US fight our nation's enemies and destroyers till they are crushed everlastingly, and then, if we can, it will be time to amend the abuses of the laws. "While putting the case in this form, let me not be understood to allow, or at all believe, that the Constitu- tion has, in fact, been violated. It can not be main- tained that the Confiscation Act is any such violation, unless on the merely theoretic and speculative ground that, covering the slave property of rebel masters, it supposes the assumption, so far, of a possible ownership of such property by the government, at the moment of its lapse into freedom, — an objection that no one can very seriously feel. The Proclamation of the President is even less open to objection, because it is no civil act at all, but simply an act of war, formally based in the rights of war. As such it is an act wholly outside of the Constitution, having no civil character at all ; save that Congress and the courts of law must needs respect the emancipation executed by it, as far as it is de facto executed, or, at the cessation of the war, may be. They will only be so far obliged by it, that persons emancijoated and taken into the service and protection of the government, can not be remanded back to slavery, without a cruel violation of good faith. And if the war continues long enough, that is, till the whole THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 349 domain of slavery has been crossed and trampled by our armies, and a half million of the slaves have been put in the field, it will plainly enough be impossible for the institution of slavery to have any standing of existence allowed to it longer, except in the loyal states. Does any one ask what, in that case, becomes of the Constitution — what of the Article pledging the suppression of slave insurrections ? what of the Article requiring that persons held to service, or labor, shall be given up, when taken as fugitives in other states ? what of the Article giving to slavery a three-fifths right of representation ? The answer is, that every word and line of these Articles stands precisely as it stood before — the Constitution that is, is the Constitution that was, without any particle of abatement or change. It only happens that the slavery itself is gone to which the Constitution attached, gone by a power outside of all civil proceeding, just as if it had been swept away by a pestilence, gone just as ^^ Indians not taxed," in the ex- ception clause, are gone, or will be, when there are Indi- ans no longer. It is one thing for a Constitution to be cloven down and a very different thing that the subject matter to which it attached no longer exists. Every soldier of the rebellion, for example, who has fallen in this dreadful war, had his rights of life and property guaranteed by the Constitution, but the war has put him under ground ; the result being that the guarantee stands exactly where it stood, only, for so many as have thus fallen, it does not attach. So when slavery is dead, by the act of war, the faith of the Constitution 30 350 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. will Stand, only it does not find the matter existing any more to whicli it gave its pledges. Returning now, from this brief excursion, to the great principle that loyalty is a moral affair, gTaduated and measured by no mere terms of allegiance, or statu- tory obligation, some one may remind us that the word itself indicates, in its very composition, a close relation to law. It is literally and even etymologically law- alty ; how then comes it to be a purely moral word, having nothing at all to do with legal definitions and duties? The answer is two-fold; first, that it has nothing to do with the law, only in the sense that the law has nothing -to with it: for how can a purely moral, volunteer devotion be enforced bv legal meth- ods? Secondlv, that it is a kind of homage historic- ally older than statutes, having respect as to a law moral or primitive, which goes before all enactments. Thus it is a great mistake to suppose, as many have done, that English loyalty has respect, directly and dimply, to the persons of the king and his noble ordei-s. It pays them homage because there is felt to be a law primitive that makes them and creates for itself, by in- heritance, a magistracy in them. And that homage is law-alty, because it accepts them as the organs of a grand providential order, prior to all histor\', older than all statutes. Just so there was a Constitution here, if we may so speak, before the Constitution, a na- tion before the defined Articles of nationality. It re- quired, in fact, as good and high loyalty to fight the Providential nation out into independence, as it now THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 351 does to defend it. Nay, it required more loyalty to make the Constitution, tlian it ever can to keep it. It was tliat old providential Constitution, too, prior to the Constitution, prior even to the Confederacy, that gave the Convention itself a right to say by what kind of vote the Constitution should be binding; for, if the body had no right, stood in no providential order, then the vote prescribed never had or can have any binding force. Loyalty, in this view^, is even older than the Constitution; a moral bond created by Disposing Prov- idence, and sanctified to be the matrix of the coming nationality and the Constitution to be. It must also be added, as regards the relations of the Constitution and the laws to loyalty, that they may be so handled, by perverse construction, as even to make a genuine loyalty impossible. Just this was the effect of Mr. Calhoun's doctrine of state rights, and it could have no other. Loyalty, so far, is like chastity; the perpetual boasting of a right against it makes a full end of it shortly. - Further, as no husband and wife can once name the word divorce without making sure of the fact, so no people can so much as talk of retroces- sion from their government as a right, without having half accomplished the fact already. Government, like marriage, is either a finality, a state of supreme order that suffers no other even to be thought of, or else it is nothing. All the great sentiments that may gather to it and fortify its life depend on this. And, in this view, Mr. Calhoun, so often recognized as the great statesman, or political philosopher, has the very singu- 352 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. lar merit of having made up a theory of our govern- ment which does not even allow it to be government at all. It is only a congeries of little supremacies, that may stay together as long as they please, parting when they please; a general sovereignty by leasehold, till some one of a score of minor sovereignties may see fit to stop the lease! He is a philosopher, in fact, who never, in his life, conceived the foundations of a gov- ernment ; and it will even be one of the wonders of the coming ages that he believed, as he really appears to have done, the flimsy, traditional assumptions he takes for his first principles; another, that a great people, even in its green age of history, could have discovered any look of philosophy in the wooden platitudes of his argument. Indeed, it is one of the bitter mortifications of this dreadful rebellion, that it is the price we pay for shallow doctrine ; viz., such as gives us a government having no final authority — just that imbecile, mock majesty that Mr. Buchanan so fitly represented, when protesting, under his official oath to save the Constitu- tion, that he could not find any thing to do for it! a government challengeable every year and day by new threats; bidding always for impatience and defiance; impossible therefore to become a fixed center of hom- age and loyalty ; inevitably doomed, by its own weak- ness, to lose, at last, the scanty homage of allegiance. Dropping now all further reference to the Constitu- tion and the laws, as conditions of loyalty, let us pass to what is more simple and refreshing ; viz., to the THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 353 purely moral nature and quality of it, where, happily, we shall have less debate and be able to advance more rapidly. The first thing that occurs to us here, is the close affinity of the loyal sentiment, with that which attaches us to our native locality, or country. It is, in the same way, a kind of natural necessity, upon such as feel nat- urally, and is almost equally undiscriminating. Thus, we remember that, conversing once with a sailor at sea, we rallied him playfully on the hardship it must be to him to return to the rather dismal and forlorn country of his birth, and were handsomely, because touchingly, answered — ^^Why, sir, if I had been born upon some nakedest, most barren rock of the ocean, it would be dear to me." The woman of Sychar, in just the same way, could not bear so much as the hint of a more ^ living water" than the ancient father Jacob's well ; and if Jacob had left a government instead, she would have been as jealous for that with only better reason. Even Jesus, himself, the only true and grandly real cosmopolitan among men, because he is the world's incarnate Lord and Saviour, proves his proper humanity still, in the distinctly Jewish feeling of his humanly political nature ; calling it the heavenly felicity to be in Abraham's bosom, and exulting in ex- pectation of a day when many shall come from the Bast, and from the West, and from all remotest Grentile peoples, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Ja- cob, in the kingdom of God — using, fondly, this very exclusive image, to signify the grandeur and dignity of 30^ 354 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. liis most catholic, universal empire. Now, this natural sentiment of country, and race, and fatherhood, is but a very short remove distant from loyaltj^, running into it even by a kind of necessit}^ It inaugurates law in us before the law is written, or pronounced; passing through all codes, and polities, and constitutions, when they arrive, to shape them to itself and flavor them with sanctity. It takes hold of what is most generous in our nature, without and before our consent, and be- gets a kind of homage in us that makes us patient and brave in sacrifice for the state. Our very nature is po- litical, in short, just as it is domestic ; configured to the state as to the familv, craving after loyal emotion, even as after family love. Without this political equipment, we should not even be complete men. Being so nearly natural or close to nature, the loyal sentiment is free of course. Allegiance mav be com- pelled ; loyalty is a volunteer devotion, else it is nothing. One requires to be watched, the other keeps watch itself for the nation. To make sure of one may require a legal or court-martial investigation ; the other goes by hearts'-full, always out in its evidences, never ambiguous. A man stuck fast in the intrigues, and swayed by the clanship of party, will contrive to main- tain a dastardly and mean allegiance, arguing, it may be, for the Constitution, with only pretended concern, when he has no appetite, in fact, but for some party victory; deploring the wrongs of the magistrates in power, when really he is only feeding his appetite on them ; and asserting what he calls his sacred right of THE DOCTEIXE OF LOYALTY. 355 speech only to stir up faction, even in the critical hour of the nation's peril. But, where there is a true soul of loyalty, patience with the miscarriages and even the supposed wrongs of government, slowness to accuse, readiness to postpone accusations that might be too hast- ily made — any thing almost will be yielded to for the time, that may fortify the cause of the nation and give it victory. Conscious of party affinities, swayed by strong, possibly just, prejudices against the ruling ad- ministration, there will yet be such nobility of feeling in the true loyal citizen, as allows him never to bear a look of sympathy, or suffer a suspicion of connivance with disorder and rebeUion. How far the loyal sentiment reaches and how much it carries with it, or after it, must also be noted. It yields up willingly husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, consenting to the fearful chance of a home always desolate. It offers body, and blood, and life, on the al- tar of its devotion. It is, in fact, a political worship, offering to seal, itself by a martyrdom in the field. Wonderful, grandly honorable fact, that human nature can be lifted by an inspiration so high, even in the fallen state of wrong and evil ! It is also one of the noble incidents of loyalty that it is not easily discouraged. It has the most '^perdurable toughness " of all human sentiments. The burdens it will bear, the sacrifices it will make, the defeats it will suffer without surrender to them, the weary, long, long- years of hoj)e deferred and desolating war it will un- dergo, still fighting on ; the mistakes or imbecilities of 356 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. bad counsel and ineffective leadership it will excuse and go on to repair — these and such like are the proofs of loyalty, and history is full of the sublime examples it has given, from the heroic age of the Greeks down to the last modem records. Men will faint any where and evervwhere, sooner than they will in what thev do for their laws and liberties. It is onlv the doubtfullv loyal, such as offer weak and washy protestations of loyalty in the place of an earnest devotion, that see li- ons always in the way and begin to talk discourage- ment. The true, great heart of loyal men is rock to all waves of disaster. Possibilities left, discouragements are nothinsr. "Whoever then will talk to us of his lov- alty at such a time as this, let him see, first of all, that his heart is tough in it, and then we shall know that he is qualified to speak. It also requires to be noted that loyalty is a senti- ment close akin to honor. I speak not here of that mock honor which some men hold by their will, when the true is gone out in their character, but of that which is true, that in which a firm, great mind honors, first of all, itself. All great and true sentiments have this kind of honor in them, and hence it is that, in a great war, heroically maintained for ends of patriotic devotion, the public sentiment is raised to a grade of honor so much hieher than it can be, under the bland- ishments of peace and prosperous security. Every man feels that he is exalted, raised in honor before him- self, when he gives himself to his country. And this majestic honor of the mind to itself is the power that THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 357 makes a hero. There is even a kind of impassiveness in it. The soul is put in armor by it, as if the bosom were become a keep of iron. Even as the great poet says with true dramatic insight — " A jewel in a ten times barred up chest Is — a bold spirit in a loyal breast." All the romantic virtues move in the ranges of loyalty. Hence also it is that the class of men who are most doubtfully loyalj or positively disloyal, are commonly such as are wanting somewhere, in the great-heart principle. The brute masses that have never risen to a conception of honor, the hacks and expectant spoils- men of party, the wooden decoys and trimmers of the pulpit, the sophists and mere words-men of the bar, whoever wants the great-heart altogether, or has a low, mean side of a heart otherwise noble — such commonly, if not always, are the natures that run to disloyalty ; they make up a class, of whom it might generally be told beforehand. There is also,. we must not omit to say, a very per- ceptible and very close relation between loyalty and re- ligion. For what is religion but loyalty to God, and if there were no letting down of our great nature by sin, how grandly and heroically would it stand, taking sides eternally with God! The summit of our nature is capped by its homages, and they rise in dignity accord- ing to the height of their objects. What the man goes up to, thus, or after, in worship and devotion, is the measure of his noblest reach and capacity. Cleaving thus to God in worship, to parentage in filial piety, to 358 THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. great names in reverence, he also cleaves, in the same natural way, to the state. And the two homages in particular, that which goes after the state, and that which goes after God, are so clearly related that we may even speak of loyalty as the religion of our polit- ical nature. ISTor is it any mean token of our poor broken humanity that we have a political nature, mounting thus instinctively towards order, and justice, and complete society. Besides, the state itself, erected by eternal Providence, is felt to be a throne which He maintains and crowns even by His divine sanctions. We do not commonly speak of those who give up their lives on the battle-fields of their country, as dying by martyrdom. And yet it is the martyrdom of loyalty unto which they freely gave their bodies, and know- ingly consented to the sacrifice. The martyrs of re- ligion scarcely make a sacrifice more real, or total, though they suffer in a way more tr^nng to constanc}^ We believe too that there is a relation so deep between true loyalty and religion, that the loyal man will be in- clined towards religion by his public devotion, and the religious man raised in the temper of his loyalty to his country, by his religious devotion. The two fires will burn together and one will kindle the other. How often have we heard, in this war, of men who have ac- tually become religious on giving themselves to their country as soldiers ! The religious feeling also breaks out, we may see, unwontedly, as the great struggle goes on, in our speeches and public proceedings, our procla- mations and the dispatches of our victorious generals. THE DOCTRINj: OF LOYALTY. 859 Our recognitions of God are easy and natural, and we draw no small part of our strength from the confidence that God is with us and will not let ns fail in our cause. Much has been made by Englishmen, and occasion- ally by writers of our own country, of the supposed fact that loyalty, or the loyal sentiment, is the privilege only of states that are under the sway of princely fami- lies and orders of nobility. There is a very great practical mistake in such an impression. The assump- tion is that loyalty is a strictly personal sentiment, wanting, of necessity, some loyal or noble person to be the mark of its devotion. No vague, multitudinous, scarcely apprehensible object like a nation, or people, or even a constitution, will suffice, we are told ; it must have a person, or .throne, to embody all it clings to so fondly, in the native land, and native laws and liberties, and be the mark of its political worship — this to enjoy, or even as in fealty to serve. But the king, autocrat, monarch, or czar, is taken hold of thus by loyalty, be it observed, not . simply as being a person — little is known of him commonly in that regard — but he is ac- cepted simply as the symbol-person, in whom victorj^, and law, and state are embodied. Just as good a sjm.- bol, and, in some respects, better, we have, as republi- cans, in our flag; for it is no frothy and vapid excite- ment that stirs our headless passion, as many conceive, when we gather to our flag in vivas ^ and swear to main- tain it. Our flag represents every thing — the nation it- self, the history, the laws, the successes, the honors of the past, the promises of the great future unknown, all 360 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. that we have been, all that we can be. We make no idol of a poor rag in three colors, but we take it as the one all-sufficient symbol. No royal person could sig- nify as much with as little confusion. Most royal per- sons have bad passions, weaknesses, meannesses, vices, that awfully mar the symbol-force of their persons; flags have none. Loyalty puts nothing into them but honors, protections, principles of justice, promises of good, and then the flag it clings to with such homage and devotion is no more any such abstraction as many think of, when they sentimentally deplore the want of a personal objectivity in our institutions; it embraces all the good and great persons of the past, and all the blessed hopes of a good and great future. Therefore it is that we rush to the flag with so passionate fervor, and, with no particle of nonsense, vow to die for it. The symbol our loyalty has in it is only the more per- fect, that we are distracted by no personal imbecilities and vices, claiming homage, in part, to themselves. Loyalty, then, is seen to be no matter of legal juris- diction. It is a great moral sentiment that marks our political nature, and is next in dignity below the senti- ment of religion, which is loyalty to God. We are to judge it accordingly and all seeming defections from it, just as we do all other matters of a purely moral sig- nificance — such as truth, honor, honesty, charity. No man has a right to complain of being wronged, in the charge of disloyalty, just because he holds the Constitu- tion, or does not break out in some flagrant treason. THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. 361 He may even be more basely and miscliieyoiisly dis- loyal because he does not. By secret connivances, and factious words, and party cabals, he may even serve the enemies of his country more than he could by the open mustering of treason. Let no man whimper at the charge of disloyalty, then, just because he is too mucfe of a dastard in his crime to act himself boldly out and take the risk of a traitor's death. The meanest kind of disloyalty is that which keeps just within the law and only dares not perpetrate the treason it wants to have done ; which takes on airs of patriotic concern for the Constitution, when it really has none for all the wrong that can be done it by enemies openly fighting against it. Such persons must be judged morally, just as we judge all pretenders and hypocrites under false shows of virtue. We understand them well and read them, for the most part, truly, and it is too much to ask that we shall be fools for their sake. At the same time, there is a possibility of doing injus- tice in this charge of disloyalty. If we mean by it, as we often seem to do, that the persons charged in this man- ner have actually broken loose from their allegiance, or that they understand themselves to be really disloyal in their intent, it will often not be true. Moral defections more commonly cheat their victims at the beginning. They do not understand the immoralities in which they are being steeped, and, so far, do not intend them. In the same way it is possible for large masses of citizens to be fooled by the disloyalty they are in. Some of them are young and trust themselves to leaders who 31 362 THE DOCTKIXE OF LOYALTY. prey upon the green age of tlieir confidence. Some are ignorant and are taken artfully by catcli words of whictL they have really no understanding. And some, again, it must be admitted, have a mean, cold nature, in which all the great sentiments get a place of lodg- ment with difficulty. They can hardly mount high enough in feeling to conceive what loyalty is. •The sense of country, family, honor, the political or social sense, runs low in their sterile natures ; all the great io- spirations take them at an awful disadvantage. Mean- time, the crabbed, selfish impulses of clanship and party are a lean kine of poverty, devouring every thing noble or generous they might begin to feel. They think they are loyal, it may be, and then they will go to the Constitution or the court records to prove it! But the great heart — how can they have it when it is not in them? We will not deny the bare possibility of a tiny loyal sentiment in them. But who that knows them will ever expect more ? Who will even expect them to know that they are disloyal when they are ? Going after cabal more easily than after country, what will they do more naturally than give themselves to cabal and call it their country ? We see, in this manner, what multitudes there may be, in every community or country, who fall, as it were, by gravity, into the disloyal state, without in- tending it, or even knowing it. What, then, shall we say? Shall we class^ them as loyal? AVe can not do that. The best that we can do for them is to call them unloyal, or disloyal, and add the salvos of pity as THE DOCTKINE OF LOYALTY. 863 a partial qualification. They ouglit to be condemned, and they must also be pitied. None the less to be pitied are they that they are, some of them, persons who have come, or would hereafter come, into condi- tions of power and public honor; for the day is at hand, when conditions of power and public honor are forever gone by to them. When this rebellion is finally put down, as it most assuredly will be, then the day of their damnation is come. They can now return to their country, but they must do it soon. To come back into the range of its honor and love when the day of trial is over, is impossible. Then it is too late — the gate is shut ! At the same time, that I may not seem to speak with unnecessary harshness, there is, truth obliges me to say, another mode, different from those which I have named, in which some persons have been carried over to the verge of disloyalty, by motives that more nearly entitle them to sympathy. I speak of those who have taken part hastily against the government, from a false anxiety to save the government. "Who of us that kept our sobriety, did not cling, for a time, to the status in quo of the political order and law ? — the same which has been popularly phrased, "the Constitution as it is" — for how shall we ever get back into a state of settle- ment, we said, if the terms of settlement are themselves gone by ? We did not perceive that the status in quo may be entirely changed, and the " Constitution as it is " remain untouched in its integrity. We saw clearly enough that slavery is one of the most assailable points 364 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. of weakness on the side of the rebellion, and, if not as- sailed, that it is even an element of strength in the re- bellion. The right of war to assail this point of weak- ness and turn it on our side, we did not doubt ; for it is even a first principle of public law. As little did we doubt that it must finally be done, if the war be long protracted ; recoiling still, with instinctive dread, from the terrible necessity. First came the Confiscation Act, then at length, and probably not too soon, the Proclamation — so compre- hensively worded that the President seemed to assume the right of a general emancipation, by his own civil edict. Many of our most sober and thoughtful citizens were alarmed. The hold of law appeared to be loosened, and every thing to be drifting towards inex- tricable anarchy. They took ground hastily, coming, as they thought, to the rescue of the law. They even went so far, in their zeal, as to set upon the govern- ment, in a way that, considering the time, was really not loyal, and it drew them farther, even than they knew, towards the rebellion itself. It is impossible not to yield' all such a degree of sym- pathy, and we shall do it the more easily if we find them ready now, at the more advanced stage of affairs, to ad- vance also themselves, and modify their sentiments enough to meet our new conditions. Sticking fast in the letter, when eternal destiny has pushed us out of it, every man can see is bad. Under the doom of war, we were bound to just the crisis we have reached, proc- lamation or no proclamation. It was right, for a time. THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 365 to say, ''the Constitution as it is" — it still and always will be right, if we only understand how entirely the status in quo may be changed, without any breach upon the Constitution. This no statesman will forbid to change ; for the real statesman is no bigot, sticking fast in what he determined rightly, when it is a possibility forever gone by. When affairs move rapidly, he keeps up with affairs. Nothing is now left us, from the first nothing was finally to be left us, but to champion the liberty of the slave. We do not understand that the President meant any thing more, by his Proclamation, than to seize on the right of war, and to emancipate just as far and as fast as war could execute the fact. If he did, there is probably no court in the land that would execute his edict farther. In this understanding we can all be agreed, and also in the fact that the river of our destiny now runs where it must. We can not tie ourselves to the legalities longer, and reason upon the war as if it were only a sheriff's posse ou.t for the arrest of treason. We must take it as war, grim war, having all the rights of war, and must join ourselves heartily to it as the only chance of our future. The debates and misgivings are all over; nothing is now left us but loyalty to the cause. To some extent we have differed honestly, and in ways that do not exclude respect ; now there is no place for difference longer. It may not be amiss, in this connection, to suggest that constitutions are made to carry on government, not to carry back, rescue, redintegrate, government; and that, in this latter kind of endeavor, where, to simply 31* 366 THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. go by the letter, reasoning always from it, in the pro- fessional manner of the lawyers, would certainly sacri- fice both government and Constitution together, the real statesman will take a freer method for the salva- tion of both. According to the lawyers' method, the revolted states are just as truly under the Constitution now as ever; there is, of course, no legal right of blockade, no right of war, but only to send a sheriff and make service ; no right to distress and reduce the revolt by touching the security of slavery. But the statesman will reason differently. " These revolted states," he will say, ''are themselves parts of the docu- ment as truly as any of its articles. Tearing out these from the document, the sovereign order itself is so far broken up. If they can not be recovered, then, as the Constitution has another field, related to another neighborhood outside, with new dangers to encounter and diplomacies more critical and complex to manage, and a treaty of peace to arrange with successfully re- volting subjects, (which treaty itself must even be a breach of the Constitution,) I must, in true statesman- ship, assume a certain freedom under it, or the letter of it, that I n;ay save what I can of it, even though it be at the risk of some damage." Even as the skillful ship-master whom the storm is driving on a lee-shore off the gate of his harbor, will cut loose from his anchor and put himself bodly to sea, willing to save the ship without his anchor if he must, so, for the Constitution's sake, he will declare the blockade of rebel ports, inau- gurate a quasi war with the rebellion, permitting an THE DOCTRINE OF LOYALTY. 367 exchange of prisoners, and will even dare to revolu- tionize revolution that lie may bring it under ; — all this by no permission of the Constitution, or possibly even against the letter of it, bravely determined to save what he can when he can not save all. In this we con- ceive he is truly, grandly, because practically, loyal; when if he wanted courage or spirit to strike off thus from the letter and take the open sea, his timid, pusil- lanimous coasting, would be scarcely better than treason. I have only to add, in conclusion, that when our present struggle is over and triumphantly ended, as it must some time be, then it will be our thanksgiving and joy that we have constitutions and laws more sub- lime and sacred than we ever thought them to be ; a name and heritage more august; and, what is more than all, that we have more heart for our country and a more intensely moral devotion to its honor and per- petuity. We shall then have passed the ordeal of his- tory. Our great battle-fields will be hallowed by song. Our great leaders and patriots will be names conse- crated by historic reverence. We shall be no more a compact, or a confederation, or a composition made up by the temporary surrender of powers, but a nation — God's own nation. These throes of civil order are but the schooling of our loyalty, and our political na- ture itself will be raised, under the discipline, by the sense of a new public honor and morality. What loy- alty was we did not even know before ; now we shall know it, and the word, at once, and fact will be Ameri- can — not American only, but republican. X. THE AGE OF HOMESPUN.* It has often occurred to others, I presume, as to me, to wish, it were possible, for once, in some of our historic celebrations, to gather up the unwritten part also of the history celebrated ; thus to make some fit account of the private virtues and unrecorded struggles, in whose silent commonalty, we doilbt not, are included all the deepest possibilities of social advancement and historic distinction. On this account, since the Histor- ical Address of yesterday presented us, in a manner so complete and so impressive to the feeling of us all, the principal events and names of honor by which our County has been distinguished, I am the more willing to come after, as a gleaner, in the stubble-ground that is left ; nor any the less so if, in gathering up the fallen straws of grain, I may chance to catch, in my rake, some of those native violets that love so well to hide their blue in the grass, and shed their fragTance undis- covered. I think you will agree with me, also, that nothing is more appropriate to a sermon, which is the * A Secular Sermon delivered at the Centennial Celebration of Litch- field County, August 14, 1851. THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 369 form of my appointment, than to offer some fit remem- brance of that which heaven only keeps in charge, the nnhistoric deeds of common life and the silent, undis- tinguished good whose names are written only in heaven. In this view, I propose a discourse on the words of King Lemuel's mother : — Prov. 31 : 28. ^''Her children arise up and call her blessed J'' This Lemuel, who is called a king, is supposed by some to have been some Chaldee chief, or head of a clan ; a kind of Arcadian prince, like Job and Jethro. And this last chapter of the Proverbs is an Eastern poem called a ^^ prophecy," that versifies, in form, the advice which his honored and wise mother gave to her son. She dwells, in particular, on the ideal picture of a fine woman, such as he may fitly seek for his wife, or queen; drawing the picture, doubtless, in great part, from herself and her own practical character. ''She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff. She is - not afraid of the snow for her house- hold; for all her household are covered with scarlet. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. She openeth her mouth in wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness." Omitting other points of the picture, she is a frugal, faithful, pious housewife ; clothing her family in garments prepared by her industry, and the more beautiful honors of a well-kept, well-mannered house. She, therefore, it is, 370 THE AGE OF HOMESPUy. who makes the center of a happy domestic life, and be- comes a mark of reverence to her children: — "Her children arise np and call her blessed." A very homely and rather common picture, some of you may fancy, for a queen or chief woman ; but, as 3'ou view the subject more historically, it will become a picture even of dignity and polite culture. The rudest and most primitive stage of society has its most remark- able distinction in the dress of skins; as in ancient Scythia, and in many other parts of the world, even at the present day. The preparing of fabrics, by spinning and weaving, marks a great social transition, or ad- vance; one that was slowly made and is not even yet absolutely perfected. Accordingly, the art of spin- ning and weaving was, for long ages, looked upon as a kind of polite distinction ; much as needle-work is now. Thus when Moses directed in the preparation of cur- tains for the tabernacle, we are told that '^all the wo- men that were ivise-hearted did spin with their hands.'' That is, that the accomplished ladies who understood this fine art, (as few of the women did,) executed his order. Accordingly, it is represented that the most distinguished queens of the ancient time excelled in the art of spinning; and the poets sing of distaffs and looms as the choicest symbols of princely women. Thus Homer describes the present of Alcandra to Helen : '• Alcaudra, consort of his liigli command, A golden distaif gave to Helen's hand ; And that rich vase, with living sculpture wrought, Which, heaped with wool, the beauteous Philo brought, THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 371 The silken fleece, impurpled for the loom, Eecalled the hyacinth in vernal bloom." So also Theocritus, when he is going to give a present to his friend's bride, couples it with verse : — " distaff! friend to warp and woof, Minerva's gift in man's behoof, Whom careful housewives still retain, And gather to their household gain, Thee, ivory distaff! I provide, A present for his blooming bride, With her thou wilt sweet toil partake, And aid her various vestes to make." If I rightly remember, it is even reported of Augustus, himself, at the height of the Roman splendor, that he wore a robe which was made for him by Livia, his wife. You perceive, in this manner, that Lemuel's mother has any but rustic ideas of what a wife should be. She describes, in fact, a lady of the highest accomplish- ments ; whose harpsichord is the distaff, whose piano is the loom, and who is able thus, by the fine art she is mistress of, to make her husband conspicuous among the elders of the land. Still, you will understand that what we call the old spinning-wheel, a great machine in its day, was not known till long ages after this; being, in fact, a comparativel}^ modern, I believe a German or Saxon, invention. The distaff, in the times of my text, was held in one hand or under one arm, and the spindle, hanging by the thread, was occa- sionally hit and twirled by the other. The weaving process was equally rude and simple. These references to the domestic economy of the more 372 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. ancient times have started recollections, doubtless, in many of yon, that are characteristic, in a similar way, of our own primitive history. You have remembered the wheel and the loom. You have recalled the fact, that our Litchfield County people, down to a period comparatively recent, have been a people clothed in homespun fabrics — not wholly, or in all cases, but so generally that the exceptions may be fairly disregarded. In this fact I find my subject. As it is sometimes said that the history of iron is the history of the world, or the history of roads a true record always of commercial and social progress, so it has occurred to me that I may give the most effective and truest impression of Litch- field County, and especially of the unhistoric causes in- cluded in a true estimate of the century now past, under this article of homespun; describing this first century as the Homespun Age of our people. The subject is homely, as it should be; but I think we shall find enough of dignity in it, as we proceed, even to content our highest ambition — the more, that I do not propose to confine myself rigidly to the single matter of spinning and weaving, but to gather round this feature of domestic life, taken as a symbol, or cen- tral type of expression, whatever is most characteristic in the living picture of the times we commemorate, and the simple, godly virtues we delight to honor. What we call History, considered as giving a record of notable events, or transactions, under names and dates, and so a really just and true exhibition of the causes that construct a social state, I conceive to be THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 373 commonly very much of a fiction. True "worth is for the most part unhistoric, and so of all the beneficent causes and powers included in the lives of simply worthy men ; causes most fundamental and efficient, as regards the well-being and public name of communities. They are such as flow in silence, like the great powers of nature. Indeed, we say of history, and sa}^ rightly, that it is a record of e-vents — that is, of turnings out, points where the silence is broken by something appar- ently not in the regular flow of common life ; just as electricity, when still, goes through and masters the world, holding all atoms to their places and quickening even the life of our bodies, and becomes historic only when it thunders ; though it does nothing more, in its thunder, than simply to notify us, by so great a noise, of the breach of its connections and the disturbance of its silent "work. Besides, in our historic pictures, we are obliged to sink particulars in generals, and so to gather, under the name of a prominent few, what is really done by nameless multitudes. These, we say, led out the colonies, these raised up the states and communities, these fought the battles. And so w^e make a vicious inversion, not seldom, of the truth; representing as causes those who, after all, are not so much causes as effects, not so much powers as instruments, in the occa- sions signalized by their names — caps only of foam, that roll conspicuous in the sun, lifted, still, by the deep under-swell of waters hid from the eye. If then you ask who made this Litchfield County of ours, it will be no sufficient answer that you 32 374 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. get, however instructive and useful, when you have gathered up the names that appear in our |)^blic rec- ords, and recited the events that have found an honora- ble place in the history of the County, or the republic. You must not go into the burial places, and look about only for the tall monuments and the titled names. It is not the starred epitaphs of the Doctors of Divinity, the Generals, the Judges, the Honorables, the Gover- nors, or even of the village notables called Esquires, that mark the springs of our successes and the sources of our distinction. These are rather effects than causes; the spinning-wheels have done a great deal more than these. Around the honored few, here a Bellamy or a Day, sleeping in the midst of his flock, here a Wolcott or a Smith, an Allen or a Tracy, a Eeeve or a Gould, all names of honor — round about these few and others like them, are lying multitudes of worthy men and women, under their humbler monu- ments, or in graves that are hidden by the monumental green that loves to freshen over their forgotten resting place; and in these, the humble but good many, we are to find the deepest, truest causes of our happy history. Here lie the sturdy kings of Homespun, who climbed among these hills, with their axes, to cut away room for their cabins and for family prayers, and so for the good future to come. Here lie their sons, who fod- dered their cattle on the snows, and built stone-fence while the corn was sprouting in the hills, getting ready, in that way, to send a boy or two to college. Here lie the good housewives that made coats, every year, like THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 375 Hannali, for their children's bodies, and lined their memory with catechism. Here the millers that took honest toll of the rye ; the smiths and coopers that su- perintended two hands and got a little revenue of honest bread and schooling from their small joint stock of two- handed investment. Here the district committees and school-mistresses, the religions society founders and church deacons, and withal a great many sensible, wise-headed men, who read a weekly newspaper, loved George "Washington and their country, and had never a thought of going to the G'eneral Assembly ! These are the men and women that made Litchfield County. Who they are, by name, we can not tell — no matter who they are — we should be none the wiser if we could name them, they themselves none the more honorable. Enough that they are the king Lemuels and their queens, of the good old time gone by — kings and queens of Homespun, out of whom we draw our royal lineage. I have spoken of the great advance in human society, indicated by a transition from the dress of skins to that of cloth — an advance of so great dignity, that spinning and weaving were looked upon as a kind of fine art, or polite accomplishment. Another advance, and one that is equally remarkable, is indicated by the transi- tion from a dress of homespun to a dress of factory cloths, produced by machinery and obtained by the ex- changes of commerce, at home or abroad. This transi- tion we are now making, or rather, I should say, it is already so far made that the very termSj ^^ domestic 376 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. manufacture^''^ have quite lost their meaning; being applied to that which is neither domestic, as being- made in the house, nor manufacture, as being made by the hands. This transition from mother and daughter power to water and steam-power is a great one, greater by far than many have as yet begun to conceive — one that is to carry with it a complete revolution of domestic life and social manners. If, in this transition, there is something to regret, there is more, I trust, to desire. If it carries away the old simplicity, it must also open higher possibilities of culture and social ornament. The principal danger is, that, in removing the rough necessities of the homespun age, it may take away also the severe virtues and the homely but deep and true piety by which, in their blessed JEruits, as we are all here testifying, that age is so honorably distinguished. Be the issue what it may, good or bad, hopeful or unhope- ful, it has come; it is already a fact, and the conse- quences must follow. If our sons and daughters should assemble, a hund- red years hence, to hold another celebration like this, they will scarcely be able to imagine the Arcadian pic- tures now so fresh in the memory of many of us, though to the younger part already matters of hearsay more than of personal knowledge or remembrance. Every thing that was most distinctive of the old homespun mode of life will then have passed away. The spin- ning-wheels of wool and flax, that used to buzz so fa- miliarly in the childish ears of some of us, will be THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 377 heard no more forever ; seen no more, in fact, save in the halls of the Antiquarian Societies, where the deli- cate daughters will be asking, what these strange ma- chines are, and how they were made to go ? The huge, hewn-timber looms, that used to occupy a room by themselves in the farm-houses, will be gone, cut up for cord wood, and their heavy thwack, beating up the woof, will be heard no more by the passer by — not even the Antiquarian Halls will find room to harbor a specimen. The long strips of linen, bleaching on the grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden, sprinkhng them, each hour, from her water-can, under a broiling sun — thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers and her own wedding outfit, will have disappeared, save as they return to fill a picture in some novel or ballad of the old time. The tables will be spread with some cunning, water-power Silesia not jet invented, or per- chance with some meaner fabric from the cotton mills. The heavy Sunday coats that grew on sheep individu- ally remembered — more comfortably carried, in warm weather, on the arm — and the specially fine-striped blue and white pantaloons of linen just from the loom, will no longer be conspicuous in processions of footmen go- ing to their homespun worship, but will have given place to processions of broadcloth gentlemen lolling in the upholstery of their coaches, able to worship, it may be, in a more cultivated figure, but not with a finer sin- cerity. The churches, too, that used to be simple brown meeting-houses covered with rived clapboards of oak, will have come down, mostly, from the bleak 32'^ 378 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. hill-tops into the close villages and populous towns that crowd the waterfalls and the railroads; and the old burial places, where the fathers sleep, will be left to their lonely altitude — token, shall we say, of an age that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much less under the world. The change will be complete. Would that we might raise some worthy monument to a social state, then to be passed by, worthy, in all future time, to be held in the dearest reverence. It may have seemed extravagant or fantastic, to some of you, that I should think to give a character of the century now past, under the one article of home- spun. It certainly is not the only, or in itself the chief article of distinction ; and j^et we shall find it to be a distinction that runs through all others, and gives a color to the whole economy of life and character, in the times of which we speak. Thus, if the clothing is to be manufactured in the house, then flax will be grown in the plowed land, and sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the measure of the flax ground, and the number of the flock, will cor- respond with the measure of the house market — the number of the sons and daughters to be clothed — so that the agriculture out of doors will map the family in doors. Then as there is no thouo^ht of obtaininof the articles of clothing, or dress, by exchange ; as there is little passing of money, and the habit of exchange is feebly developed ; the family will be fed on home-grown products, buckwheat, maize, rye, or whatever the soil THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 379 will yield. And as carriages are a luxury introduced only with exchanges, the lads will be going back and forth to the mill on horseback, astride the fresh grists, to keep the mouths in supply. The meat market will be equally domestic, a kind of quarter-master slaughter and supply, laid up in the cellar, at fit times in the year. The daughters that, in factory days, would go abroad to join the female conscription of the cotton mill, will be kept in the home factory, or in that of some other family, and so in the retreats of domestic life. And so it will be seen, that a form of life which includes almost every point of economy, centers round the article of homespun dress, and is by that determ- ined. Given the fact that a people spin their own dress, you have in that fact a whole volume of characteristics. They may be shepherds dwelling in tents, or they may build them fixed habitations, but the distinction given will show them to be a people who are not in trade, whose life centers in the family, home- bred in their manners, primitive and simple in their character, inflexible in their piety, hospitable without show, intelligent without refinement. And so it will be seen that our homespun fathers and mothers made a Puritan Arcadia among these hills, answering to the picture which Polybius, himself an Arcadian, gave of his countrymen, when he said that they had, "through- out Grreece, a high and honorable reputation ; not only on account of their hospitality to strangers, and their benevolence towards all men, but especially on account of their piety towards the Divine Being." 380 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. Thus, if we speak of what, in the polite world, is called societj^, our homespun age had just none of it — and perhaps the more of society for that reason ; be- cause what they had was separate from all the polite fictions and showy conventionalities of the world. I speak not here of the rude and promiscuous gatherings connected so often with low and vulgar excesses ; the military trainings, the huskings, the raisings, commonly ended with a wrestling match. These were their dissi- pations, and perhaps they were about as good as any. The apple-paring and quilting frolics, you may set down, if you will, as the polka-dances and masquerades of homespun. If they undertook a formal entertain- ment of any kind, it was commonly stiff and quite un- successful. But when some two queens of the spindle, specially fond of each other, instead of calling back and forth with a card-case in their hand, agreed to "join works," as it was called, for a week or two, in spinning, enlivening their talk by the rival buzz of their wheels, and, when the two skeins were done, spending the rest of the day in such kind of recreation as pleased them, this to them was real society, and, so far, a good type of all the society they had. It was the society not of the Nominalists, but of the Eealists ; society in or after work; spontaneously gathered, for the most part, in terms of elective affinity — foot excursions of young people, or excursions on horseback, after the haying, to the tops of the neighboring mountains ; boatings on the river or the lake, by moonlight, filling the wooded shores and the recesses of the hills with lively echoes ; THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 381 evening schools of sacred music, in which the music is not so much sacred as preparing to be ; evening circles of young persons, falling together, as they imagine, by accident, round some village queen of song, and chasing away the time in ballads and glees so much faster than they wish, that just such another accident is like to happen soon ; neighbors called in to meet the minister and talk of both worlds together, and, if he is limber enough to suffer it, in such happy mixtures, that both are melted into one. But most of all to be remembered are those friendly circles, gathered so often round the winter's fire — not the stove, but the fire, the brightly blazing, hospitable fire. In the early dusk, the home circle is drawn more closely and quietly round it ; but a good neighbor and his wife drop in shortly, from over the way, and the circle begins to spread. Next, a few young folk from the other end of the village, entering in brisker mood, find as many more chairs set in as wedges into the pe- riphery to receive them also. And then a friendly sleigh-full of old and young, that have come down fi:*om the hill to spend an hour or two, spread the circle again, moving it still farther back from the fire; and the fire blazes just as much higher and more brightly, having a new stick added for every guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of style. They tell stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and gay by turns, 6r the young folks go on with some play, while the fathers and mothers are discussing some hard point of theology in the minister's last sermon ; or per- 382 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. haps the great danger coming to sound morals from the multiplication of turnpikes and newspapers! Mean- time the good housewife brings out her choice stock of home-grown exotics, gathered from three realms, doughnuts from the pantry, hickory-nuts from the chamber, and the nicest, smoothest apples from the cellar ; all which, including, I suppose I must add, the rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid smack to the ancient hospitality, are discussed as freely, with no fear of consequences. And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on majestically towards nine, the conversation takes, it may be, a little more se- rious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy even- ing may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the circle breaks up with a reverent, congratulative look on every face, which is itself the truest language of a social nature blessed in human fellowship. Such, in general, was the society of the homespun age. It was not that society that puts one in connec- tion with the great world of letters, or fashion, or power, raising as much the level of his consciousness and the scale and style of his action ; but it was society back of the world, in the sacred retreats of natural feel- ing, truth and piety. Descending from the topic of society in general to one more delicate, that of marriage and the tender pas- sion and the domestic felicities of the homespun age, the main distinction here to be noted is, that marriages were commonly contracted at a much earlier period in THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 383 life than now. Not because the habit of the time was more romantic or less prudential, but because a princi- ple more primitive and closer to the beautiful simplicity of nature is yet in vogue, viz., that women are given by the Almighty, not so much to help their husbands spend a living, as to help them get one. Accordingly, the ministers were always very emphatic, as I remem- ber, in their marriage ceremonies, on the ancient idea, that the woman was given to the man to be a help, meet for him. Had they supposed, on the contrary, what many appear in our day to assume, that the wo- man is given to the man to enjoy his living, I am not sure that a certain way they had of adhering always to the reason of things, would not have set them at feud with the custom that requires the fee of the man, insist- ing that it go to the charge of the other party, where, in such a case, it properly belongs. Now exactly this notion of theirs, I confess, appears to me to be the most sentimental and really the most romantic notion possi- ble of marriage. "What more beautiful embodiment is there on this earth, of true sentiment, than the young wife who has given herself to a man in his weakness, to make him strong ; to enter into the hard battle of his life and bear the brunt of it with him ; to go down with him in disaster, if he fails, and cling to him for what he is ; to rise with him, if he rises, and share a two-fold joy with him in the competence achieved ; re- membering, both of them, how it grew by little and little, and by what methods of frugal industry it was nourished; having it also, not as his, but theirs, the 384 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. reward of tlieir common perseverance, and the token of their consolidated love. And if this be the most heroic sentiment in the woman, it certainly was no fault in the man of homespun to look for it. And, in this view, the picture given of his suit, by a favorite poetess of our own, is as much deeper in poetry as it is closer to the simplicity of nature. "Behold, The ruddy damsel singeth at her wheel. While by her side the rustle lover sits, Perchance his shrewd eye secretly doth count The mass of skeins that, hanging on the wall, Increaseth day by day. Perchance his thought (For men have wiser minds than women, sure,) Is calculating what a thrifty wife The maid will make." Uo not accuse our rustic here too hastily, in the rather homely picture he makes; for sometimes it is the way of homely things, that their poetry is not seen, only because it is deepest. The main distinction between him and the more plausible romantic class of suitors is, that his passion has penetrated beyond the fancy, into the reason, and made the sober sense itself a captive. Do you say that a man has not a heart be- cause it is shut up in the casement of his body and is not seen, beating on the skin ? As little reason have you here to blame a fault of passion, because it throbs under the strong, defensive ribs of prudence. It is the froth of passion that makes a show so romantic on the soul's surfaces — the truth of it that pierces inmost re- alities. So, I suppose, our poetess would say that her young gentleman of homespun thinks of a wife, not of THE AGE OF HOMESPU^^ 385 a holiday partner who may come into his living in a contract of expenditure. He believes in woman ac- cording to God's own idea, looks to her as an angel of help, who may join herself to him, and go down the rough w^ay of life as it is, to strengthen him in it by her sympathy, and gild its darkness, if dark it must be, by che light of her patience and the constancy of her devotion. The main difference is, that the romance comes out at the end and was not all expended at the beginning. The close necessities of these more primitive days connected many homely incidents vnth marriage, which, however, rather heighten the picturesque sim- plicity than disparage the beauty of its attractions. The question of the outfit, the question of ways and means, the homely prudence pulling back the heroics of faith and passion, only to make them more heroic at last; all these you will readily imagine. I suppose many of my audience may have heard of the distinguished Christian minister, still living in the embers of extreme old age, who came to the point, not of a flight in the winter, but of marriage, and partly by reason of the Revolution then in progress, could find no way to obtain the necessary wedding suit. Where- upon, the young woman's benevolent mother had some of her sheep sheared and sewed up in blankets to keep them from perishing with cold, that the much required felicity might be consummated. But the schools, — we must not pass by these, if we 33 386 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. are to form a truthful and sufficient picture of the homespun days. The school-master did not exactly go round the district to fit out the children's minds with learnings as the shoemaker often did to fit their feet with shoes, or the tailors to measure and cut for their bodies ; but, to come as near it as possible, he boarded round, (a custom not yet gone by,) and the wood for the common fire was supplied in a way equally primi- tive, viz., by a contribution of loads from the several families, according to their several quantities of child- hood. The children were all clothed alike in home- spun, and the only signs of aristocracy were, that some were clean and some a degree less so, some in fine white and striped linen, some in brown tow crash ; and, in particular, as I remember with a certain feeling of quality I do not like to express, the good fathers of some testified the opinion they had of their children, by bringing fine round loads of hickory wood to warm them, while some others, I regret to say, brought only scanty, scraggy, ill-looking heaps of green oak, white birch, and hemlock. Indeed, about all the bickerings of quality among the children centered in the quality of the wood-pile. There was no complaint, in those days, of the want of ventilation ; for the large open fire- place held a considerable fraction of a cord of wood, and the windows took in just enough air to supply the combustion, Besides, the bigger lads were occasionally ventilated, by being sent out to cut wood enough to keep the fire in action. The seats were made of the outer slabs from the saw-mill, supported by slant legs on THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 88 driven into and a proper distance throngli augur lioles, and planed smooth on the top b}^ the rather tardy pro- cess of friction. But the spelling ^vent on bravely, and we ciphered away again and again, always till we got through Loss and Gain. The more advanced of ns, too, m.ade light work of Lindley Murray, and went on to the parsing, finally, of extracts from Shakspeare and Milton, till some of us began to think we had mastered their tough sentences in a more consequential sense of the term than was exactly true. 0, 1 remember, (about the remotest thing I can remember.) that low seat, too high, nevertheless, to allow the feet to touch the floor, and that friendly teacher who had the address to start a first feelins: of enthusiasm and awaken the first sense of power. He is living still, and whenever I think of him, he rises up to me in the far background of mem- ory, as bright as if he had worn the seven stars in his hair. (I said he is living ; jes^ he is here to-day, God bless him !) How many others of you that are here as- sembled, recall these little primitive universities of homespun, where your mind was born, with a similar feeling of reverence and homely satisfaction. Perhaps you remember, too, with a pleasure not less genuine, that you received the classic discipline of the university proper, under a dress of homespun, to be graduated, at the close, in the joint honors of broadcloth and the parchment. Passing from the school to the church, or rather I should say, to the meeting-house — -good translation. 388 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. whetlier meant or not, of what is older and more vener- able than churchy viz., synagogue — here, again, you meet the picture of a sturdy homespun worship. Prob- ably it stands on some hill, midwaj^ between three or four valleys, whither the tribes go up to worship, and, when the snow-drifts are deepest, go literally from strength to strength. There is no furnace or stove, save the foot-stoves that are filled from the fires of the neighboring houses, and brought in partly as a rather formal compliment to the delicacy of the tender sex, and sometimes because they are really wanted. The dress of the assembly is mostly homespun, indicating only slight distinctions of quality in the worshipers. Thev are seated accordinor to ag^e, the old kino- Lemuels and their queens in front, near the pulpit, and the younger Lemuels farther back, inclosed in pews, sitting back to back, impounded, all, for deep thought and spiritual digestion ; only the deacons, sitting close un- der the pulpit, by themselves, to receive, as their dis- tinctive honor, the more perpendicular droppings of the word. Clean round the front of the gallery is drawn a single row of choir, headed by the key-pipe, in the center. The pulpit is overhung by an august wooden canopy, called a sounding-board — study gen- eral, of course, and first lesson of mystery to the eyes of the children, until what time their ears are opened to understand the spoken mysteries. There is no affectation of seriousness in the assembly, no mannerism of worship ; some would say too little of the manner of worship. They think of nothing, in THE AGE OF HOMESPUK. 389 fact, save what meets their intelligence and enters into them by that method. They appear like men who have a digestion for strong meat, and have no concep- tion that trifles more delicate can be of any account to feed the system. Nothing is dull that has the matter in it, nothing long that has not exhausted the matter. If the minister speaks in his great coat and thick gloves or mittens, if the howling blasts of winter drive in across the assembly fresh streams of ventilation that move the hair upon their heads, they are none the less content, if only he gives them good strong exercise. Under their hard, and, as some would say, stolid faces, great thoughts are brewing, and these keep them warm. Free-will, fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute, trinity, redemption, special grace, eternity — give them any thing high enough, and the tough muscle of their in- ward man will be climbing sturdily into it ; and if they go away having something to think of, they have had a good day. A perceptible glow will kindle in their hard faces, only when some one of the chief apostles, a Day, a Smith, or a Bellamy, has come to lead them up some higher pinnacle of thought, or pile upon their sturdy mind some heavier w^eight of argument — faint- ing never under any weight, even that which, to the foreign critics of the discourses preached by them and others of their day, it seems impossible for any, the most cultivated audience in the world, to have sup- ported. These royal men of homespun — how great a thing to them was religion ! The district school was there, the great Bellamy is here among the highest 33* 890 THE AGE OF HOMESPUK. peaks and solitudes of divine government, and between is close living and hard work, but they are kings alike in all ! True there was a rigor in their piety, a want of gentle feeling; their Christian graces were cast-iron shapes, answering with a hard metallic ring. But they stood the rough wear of life none the less durably for the excessive hardness of their temperament, kept their families and communities none the less truly, though it may be less benignl}^, under the sense of God and re- ligion. If we find something to modify or soften, in their over-rigid notions of Christian living, it is yet something to know that what we are they have made us, and that, when we have done better for the ages that come after us, we shall have a more certain right to blame their austerities. View them as we may, there is yet, and always will be, something magnificent in their stern, practical fidel- ity to their principles. If they believed it to be more scriptural and Christian to begin their Sunday, not with the western, but with the Jewish and other east- ern nations, at the sunset on Saturday, their practice did not part company with their principles — it was sun- down at sundown, not somewhere between that time and the next morning. Thus, being dispatched, when a lad, one Saturday afternoon in the winter, to bring home a few bushels of apples engaged of a farmer a mile distant, I remember how the careful, exact man looked first at the clock, then out the w^indow at the sun, and turning to me said, ^^I can not measure out THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 391 the apples in time for yoii to get home before sundown, you must come again Monday;" then how I went home, venting my boyish impatience in words not ex- actly respectful, assisted by the sunlight playing still upon the eastern hills, and got for my comfort a very unaccountably small amount of specially silent sympa- thy. I have never yet ascertained whether that refusal was exactly justified by the patriarchal authorities appealed to, or not. Be that as it may, have what opinion of it you will, I confess to you, for one, that I recall the honest, faithful days of homespim represented in it, days when men's lives went by their consciences, as their clocks did by the sun, with a feeling of profound- est reverence. It is more than respectable — ^it is sub- lime. If we find a more liberal way, and think we are safe in it, or if we are actually so, we can never yet break loose from a willing respect to this inflexible, majestic paternity of truth and godliness. Eegarding, now, the homespun age as represented in these pictures of the social and religious life, we need, in order to a full understanding or conception of the powers and the possibilities of success embodied in it, to go a step farther; to descend into the practical struggle of common life, and see how the muscle of en- ergy and victory is developed, under its close necessities. The sons and daughters grew up, all, as you will perceive, in the closest habits of industry. The keen jocky way of whittling out a living by small bargains 892 THE AGE OF HOMESPUX. sharply turned, wiiicTi many suppose to be an essential characteristic of the Yankee race, is yet no proper in- bred distinction, but only a casual result, or incident, that pertains to the transition period between the small, stringent way of life in the previous times of home- production, and the new age of trade. In these olden times, these genuine days of homespun, they supposed, in their simplicity, that thrift represented work, and looked about seldom for any more delicate and sharper way of getting on. They did not call a man's property his fortune^ but they spoke of one or another as being worth so much ; conceiving that he had it laid up as the reward or fruit of his deservings. The house was a factory on the farm, the farm a grower and producer for the house. The exchanges went on briskly enough, but required neither money nor trade. No affectation of polite living, no languishing airs of delicacy and soft- ness in-doors, had begun to make the fathers and sons impatient of hard work out of doors, and set them at contriving some easier and more plausible way of liv- ing. Their very dress represented work, and they went out as men whom the wives and daughters had dressed for work ; facing all weather, cold and hot, wet and dry, wrestling with the plow on the stony-sided hills, digging out the rocks by hard lifting and a good many very practical experiments in mechanics, dressing the flax, threshing the rye, dragging home, in the deep snows, the great wood-pile of the 3^ear's consumption, and then, when the day is ended — having no loose money to spend in taverns — taking their recreation, all THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 393 together, in reading, or singing, or happy talk, or silent looking in the fire, and finally in sleep — to rise again, with the sun, and pray oyer the family Bible for just such another good day as the last. And so they liyed, working out, each year, a little adyance of thrift, just within the line of comfort. The picture still holds, in part, though greatly modi- fied by the softened manner of in-door life, and the multiplied agencies of emigration, trayel, trade and ma- chinery. It is, on the whole, a hard and oyer-seyere picture, and yet a picture that embodies the highest points of merit, connects the noblest results of character. Out of it, in one yiew, come all the successes we com- memorate on this festiye occasion. No mode of life was eyer more expensiye ; it was life at the expense of labor too stringent to allow the highest culture and the most proper enjoyment. Eyen the dress of it was more expensiye than we shall eyer see again. Still it was a life of honesty and simple con- tent and sturdy yictory. Immoralities, that rot down the yigor and humble the consciousness of families, were as much less frequent, as they had less thought of adyenture, less to do with trayel and trade and money, and were closer to nature and the simple life of home. K they were sometimes drudged by their oyer-intense labor, still they were kept by it in a generally rugged state, both of body and mind. They kept a good di- gestion, which is itself no small part of a character. The mothers spent their neryous impulse on their mus- cles, and had so much less need of keeping down the 394 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. excess, or calming the unspent lightning, by doses of anodyne. In the play of the wheel, they spun fibre too within, and in the weaving, wove it close and firm. They realized, to the full, the poet's picture of the maiden, who made a robust, happy life of peace, by the industry of her hands. "She never feels the spleen's imagined pains, Kor melancholy stagnates in her veins ; She never loses life in thoughtless ease, Nor on the velvet couch invites disease ; Her homespun dress, in simple neatness lies, And for no glaring equipage she sighs ; No midnight masquerade her beauty "v\'ears, And health, not paint, the foding bloom repairs." Be it true, as it may, that the mothers of the home- spun age had a severe limit on their culture and accom- plishments. Be it true that we demand a delicacy and elegance of manners impossible to them, under the rugged necessities they bore. Still there is, after all, something very respectable in good health, and a great many graces play in its look that we love to stud}', even if there be a little show of toughness in their charms. How much is there, too, in the sublime motherhood of health! Hence come, not always, I know, but oftenest, the heroes and the great minds gifted with volume and power and balanced for the manly virtues of truth, courage, persistency, and all sorts of victory. It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life, that it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt, a closely girded habit of economy. THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 895 Harnessed, all together, into the producing process, young and old, male and female, from the boy that rode the plow-horse, to the grandmother knitting under her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering lightly what they all had been at work, thread by thread, and grain by grain, to produce. They knew too ex- actly what every thing cost, even small things, not to husband them carefuUj^. Men of patrimony in the great world, therefore, noticing their small way in trade, or expenditure, are ready, as we often see, to charge them with meanness — simply because they knew things only in the small ; or, what is not far dif- ferent, because they were too simple and rustic to have any conception of the big operations by which other men are wont to get their money without earning it, and lavish the more freely because it was not earned. Still this knowing life only in the small, it will be found, is really any thing but meanness. Probably enough the man who is heard threshing in his bam of a winter evening, by the light of a lantern, (I knew such an example,) will be seen driving his team next day, the coldest day of the year, through the deep snow to a distant wood-lot, to draw a load for a present to his minister. So the housewife that higgles for a half hour with the merchant over some small trade, is yet one that will keep watch, not unlikelj^, when the school-master, boarding round the district, comes to some hard quarter, and commence asking him to dinner, then to tea, then to stay over night, and lit- erally boarding him, till the hard quarter is passed. 396 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. Who now, in the great world of money, will do, not to say the same, as much, proportionally as much, in any of the pure hospitalities of life? Besides, what sufficiently disproves any real mean- ness, it will be found that children brought up, in this way, to know things in the small — what they cost and what is their value — have, in just that fact, one of the best securities of character and most certain elements of power and success in life ; because they expect to get on by small advances followed up and saved by others, not by sudden leaps of fortune that despise the slow but surer methods of industry and merit. When the hard, wiry-looking patriarch of homespun, for example, sets off for Hartford, or Bridgeport, to exchange the little surplus of his year's production, carrjdng his provision with him and the fodder of his team, and taking his boy along to show him the great world, j'ou may laugh at the simplicity, or pity, if you will, the sordid look of the picture ; but, five or ten years hence, this boy will probably enough be found in College, digging out the cent's worths of his father's money in hard study ; and some twenty years later, he will be returning, in his hon- ors, as the celebrated Judge, or Governor, or Senator and public orator, from some one of the great States of the republic, to bless the sight once more of that venerated pair who shaped his beginnings, and planted the small seeds of his future success. Small seeds, you may have thought, of meanness; but now they have grown up and blossomed into a large-minded life, a generous pub- lic devotion, and a free benevolence to mankind. THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 397 And just here, I am persuaded, is the secret, in no small degree, of the very peculiar success that has dis- tinguished the sons of Connecticut, and, not least, those of Litchfield County, in their migration to other States. It is because they have gone out in the wise economy of a simple, homespun training, expecting to get on in the world by merit and patience, and by a careful hus- banding of small advances ; secured in their virtue, by just that which makes their perseverance successful. For the men who see the great in the small, and go on to build the great by small increments, will commonly have an exact conscience too that beholds great princi- ples in small things, and so form a character of integ- rity before both God and man, as solid and massive as the outward successes they conquer. The great men who think to be great in general, having yet nothing great in particular, are a much more windy affair. It is time now that I should draw my discourse, al- ready too far protracted, to a close. Some of you, I suppose, will hardly call it a sermon. I only think it very faithfully answers to the text, or rather to the whole chapter from which the text is taken ; and that sometimes we get the purest and most wholesome les- sons of Christian fidelity, by going a little way back from matters of s|)iritual experience, carrying the wise Proverbs with us, to look on the prudentials of the world of prudence, and watch the colors that play upon the outer surfaces of life and its common affairs. I have wished, in particular, to bring out an impres- 34 398 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN * sion of the unrecorded history of the times gone by. We must not think on such an occasion as this that the great men have made the history. Eather is it the his- tory that has made the men. It is the homespun many, the simple Christian men and women of the century gone by, who bore their life-struggle faithfully in these valleys and among these hills, and who now are sleep- ing in the untitled graves of Christian worth and piety. These are they whom we are most especially to honor, and it is good for us all to see and know, in their ex- ample, how nobly fruitful and beneficent that virtue may be, which is too common to be distinguished, and is thought of only as the worth of unhistoric men. Worth indeed it is, that worth which, being common, is the substructure and the prime condition of a happy, social state, and of all the honors that dignify its his- tory — worth, not of men only, but quite as much of women ; for you have seen, at every turn of my sub- ject, how the age gone by receives a distinctive char- acter from the queens of the distaff and the loom, and their princely motherhood. Let no woman imagine that she is without consequence, or motive to excel- lence, because she is not conspicuous. Oh, it is the greatness of woman that she is so much like the great powers of nature, back of the noise and clatter of the world's affairs, tempering all things mith her benign influence only the more certainly because of her si- lence, greatest in her beneficence because most remote from ambition, most forgetful of herself and fame; a better nature in the world that only waits to bless it, * THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 399 and refuses to be known save in the successes of others, whom she makes conspicuous; satisfied most, in the honors that come not to her — that ^'Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land." Assembled here, now, as we are, from all parts of this great country, most of us strangers heretofore to each other, it is yet our common joy and pride that so many of you return from stations of honor, which are the tokens of your success, appearing among us in names to which you have added weight and luster abroad, and so reflected praise on the home of your na- tivity and nurture. Our welcome to you is none the less hearty, none the less grateful I am sure to you, that we give not all the credit of your successes to you. We distinguish in you still the seeds you carried away. We congratulate you ; we honor those who made you what you are. Or if we say that we honor you, we bow our heads in reverence to those fathers and moth- ers less distinguished in name, it may be, and those vir- tues of common life and industry which have yielded both us and you, the social honors we rejoice in, on this festive occasion. In this latter sentiment I think you will join me, wishing, if possible, to escape the re- membrance of yourselves, and pay some fit honors to the majesty of worth, in a parentage ennobled in your- selves and sanctified by the silence of the places where they are resting from their labors. It will be strange, too, when your minds are softened by these tender re- membrances, if your thoughts do not recur instinctively, 400 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. ^ to what is the tenderest of all sentiments, that which remembers the lessons and the gentle cares of a faithful motherhood. Then let this voice of nature speak, and let the inward testimony of our hearts' feeling hail the witness of the concourse here assembled, as a welcome and sublime fulfillment of the word — ••Her children arise up and call her blessed." Or if we exult, as we must, in reviewing the honors that have crowned the one century of our simple history as a people, let our joy be a filial sentiment, saying still, in the triumphant words that close our song — '' Give her of the fruits of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates!" Men and women of Litchfield County, such has been the past ; a good and honorable past ! We give it over to you — the future is with you. It must, we know, be different, and it will be what vou make it. Be faithful to the sacred trust God is this day placing in your hands. One thing, at least, I hope; that, in these illustra- tions, I have made some just impression on you all of the dignitv of work. How orreat an honor it is for the times gone by, that when so many schemes are on foot, as now, to raise the weak ; when the friends of the dejected classes of the world are proposing even to reorganize society itself for their benefit, trying to hu- manize punishments, to kindle hope in disability, and nurse depravity into a condition of comfort — a distinc- tion how maomificent I that our fathers and mothers of the century past had, in truth, no dejected classes, no * THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. 401 disability, only here and there a drone of idleness, or a sporadic case of vice and poverty; excelling, in the picture of social comfort and well-being actually real- ized, the most romantic visions of our new seers. They want a reorganization of society! — something better than the Christian gospel and the Christian fam- ily state ! — some community in hollow-square, to pro- tect them and coax them up into a life of respect, and help them to be men ! No, they did not even so much as want the patronage of a bank of savings, to encour- age them and take the wardship of their cause. They knew how to make their money, and how to invest it, and take care of it, and make it productive ; how to build, and plant, and make sterility fruitful, and con- quer all the hard weather of life. Their producing pro- cess took every thing at a disadvantage ; for they had no capital, no machinery, no distribution of labor, nothing but wild forest and rock ; but they had mettle enough in their character to conquer their defects of outfit and advantage. They sucked honey ou-t of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. Nay, they even seemed to want something a little harder than nature in her softer moods could yield them. Their ideal of a Goshen they located, not in the rich alluvion of some fertile Nile, but upon the crest of the world, somewhere between the second and third heaven where Providence itself grows cold, and there, making warmth by their exer- cise and their prayers, they prepared a happier state of competence and wealth, than the Goshen of the sunny Nile ever saw. Your condition will hereafter be soft- 34--^ 402 THE AGE OF HOMESPUN. ened, and your comforts multiplied. Let your culture be as much advanced. But let no delicate spirit that despises work grow up in your sons and daughters. Make these rocky hills smooth their faces and smile under your industry. Let no absurd ambition tempt you to imitate the manners of the great world of fash- ion, and rob you thus of the respect and dignity that pertain to manners properly your own. Maintain, above all, your religious exactness. Think what is true, and then respect yourselves in living exactly what you think. Fear God and keep his commandments, as your godly fathers and mothers did before you, and found, as we have seen, to be the beginning of wisdom. As their graves are with you, so be that faith in God which ennobled their lives and glorified their death an inheritance in you, and a legacy transmitted by you to your children. XI. THE DAY OP ROADS* ** In the days of Shamgar tlie son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied and the travelers walked through by-ways." — Judges V. 6. I HOPE it will not be deemed a conceit, if I occupy you, to-day, with a discourse on Eoads. It certainly will not, if I am able to collect about the subject those illustrations which are necessary to its social and relig- ious import. The Eoad is that physical sign, or symbol, by which you will best understand any age or people. If they have no roads, they are savages ; for the Eoad is a cre- ation of man and a type of civilized society. If law is weak and society insecure, you will see men perched in castles, on the top of inaccessible rocks, or gathered into walled cities, spending all their strength, not in opening Eoads, but in fortifying themselves against the access of danger. The draw-bridge is up, the portcullis down, and sentinels are mounted on the ramparts, care- fully studying every footman or horseman that turns the corner of a wood, or gallops across the distant plain. * Delivered at the North Church, Hartford, on 'the Annual Thanks- giving, A. D. 1846. 404 THE DAT OF ROADS. Wheeled vehicles are seldom seen, and roads are rather obstructed than opened. Or if you inquire after com- merce, look at the Eoads ; for Eoads are the ducts of trade. If you wish to know whether society is stag- nant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formalitj^, you may learn something by going into universities and li- braries ; something also by the work that is doing on cathedrals and churches, or in them; but quite as much by looking at the Eoads. For if there is any mo- tion in society, the Eoad, which is the symbol of motion, will indicate the fact. When there is activity, or enlarge- ment, or a liberalizing spirit of any kind, then there is intercourse and travel, and these require Eoads. So if there is any kind of advancement going on, if new ideas are abroad and new hopes rising, then you will see it by the roads that are building. Nothing makes an inroad without making a Eoad. All-creative action, w^hether in government, industry, thought, or religion, creates Eoads. In the days of Shamgar and the Judges, there was no law or security. Every one did what was right in his own eyes, that is, what was wrong in the eyes of every body else. Gangs of robbers and marauders prowled over the country, stripping every passenger, and rush- ing into the gate of every walled town, if they could find it open. This middle age, continuing for two hundred years, was also the dark age of Israel, and was to that nation what the dark ages, so-called, have been to Christendom. As there was no securitj^, there was, of course, iro commerce or trade. The highways, THE DAY OF EOADS. 405 therefore, were ^* unoccupied," that is, unused ; the public roads, such as they had, were blocked up and made im- passable, and the bridges torn down, to prevent hostile incursions upon the towns. The ''travelers," therefore, or more literally, the "footers," for there was no travel save on foot, walked through by-ways or crooked and obscure trails — picking out their way across mountain passes, through glens and over the fields. What a pic- ture of society have we here — the whole book of Judges in a sentence ! So things continued till the reign of law began to be established under Samuel and David. This latter finally went so far as to open a commercial treaty with Hiram of Tyre ; and as the object of the treaty was to procure timber for the temple, we see that a commercial road was opened leading down to Tyre. Another must have been constructed, leading off to Lebanon. When Solomon came to the throne, a new age was dawning. He was, moreover, a liberal and cultivated man himself, acquainted with all the foreign courts about him, and he went into relations of active intercourse with them. He opened a lively and lucrative commerce with the East, with Egypt and the Eed Sea, and sent out his ships of commerce even to Spain. He had also four- teen hundred chariots of war, which are also an indica- tion that he had Eoads leading in eyerj direction. I do not say that this was an age of the highest civiliza- tion, or the greatest public happiness. Some mournful consequences were to be produced by this very activity of intercourse and travel*. Still it wa^ the splendid age 406 THE DAY OF ROADS. of Israel — the age of new hope, excitement, wealth and power. Therefore it was the age of Eoads ; and Eoads were the type of the age ; travel the spring of its activ- ity. Now it was that philosophy and learning of every kind most flourished, now that architecture began to be cultivated, now that religion displayed the greatest zeal for expense, built its chief monument, and enacted its most public and gorgeous solemnities. Could we restore the lost history of Egypt, we should find that the splendid age of that buried realm of splen- dor and power, the age of the pyramids, was an age of Eoads. The hundred gates, too, of Thebes would be seen pouring out their vehicles of commerce and travel, and their chariots of war rolling up the dust of the plain, till they are lost in the smoky horizon on every side. Now, Egypt is more like Israel in the days of Shamgar. The splendid age of the Eoman empire is known to have been an age of Eoads. The Appian Way, lead- ing off to Brundusium, on the southeastern coast of the peninsula, about four hundred' miles, paved with hexagonal blocks of stone laid in cement, was not the only one. This was built three hundred years before Christ. As the empire grew in power and splendor, Eoads multiplied ; till, in the age of the Antonines, one might stand in the forum between highways coming in from the north and the south, the east and the west, and see travel pouring in from Scotland on one side, and Antioch on the other. Mountains were perforated, rivers bridged, milestones set up, and the roads them- THE DAY OF ROADS. 407 selves were hardened to a floor, macadamized before the time of McAdam, by sand, gravel and cement. All the distant provinces and cities were united, in this manner, and regular posts established. Beginning at Scotland, the Eoman could travel on by post to Anti- och, a distance of nearly four thousand miles, inter- rupted only by the passage of the English Channel and the Hellespont. And it is actually related, as one of the memorabilia of the age, that one Csesarius went post from Antioch to Constantinople, six hundred and sixty-five miles, in less than six days. But the power of Eome was in its arms, and these Eoads were built rather as the bonds of conquest and means of military subjection, than for the benefit of industry or the social advancement of the empire. Still they represent activ- ity. When these Eoads are building, something is go- ing on — it is no stagnant age. It is also to be re- marked, that while the Eoads consolidated the empire, they also assisted the civilization and conversion of the nations through which they passed. Christianity w^ent forth on the Eoads, as a traveler and a soldier, to con- solidate her empire. Again, it is known that the crusades gave birth to modern commerce, and that commerce gave that spring to wealth and refinement which erected the cathedrals of Flanders, Germany, France and England. The ca- thedral age was an age of Eoads and of travel. And it would be well if those who boast the glory and relig- ious grandeur of this wonderful age, contrasting it with our shallow age of speed and trade and travel, would 408 THE DAY OF ROADS. remember that Koads built the cathedrals. Possibly we may have something to build, quite as admirable as these, though something certainly a little different from these. For, now, it is clear enough that a new age of Eoads has come, and the world is waking up to do something. The days of Shamgar the son of Anath are ended, and the people of the walled towns and castles are coming out to build Roads. Thej^ build not merely Roads of earth and stone, as of old, but thej^ build iron Roads. And not content with horses of flesh, they are building horses also of iron, such as never faint or lose their breath, and go, withal, somewhat faster even than the Roman post — not to speak of the immense loads they whirl over mountains and through them, from mart to mart and from one shore to another. We have in- vented, too, another kind of sail, which runs against the wind or away from it, stemming tides and climbing currents, making Roads through oceans, and changing the great inland sluices of the world into paths of com- merce and travel. And where we can not go bodily to speak ourselves, we send out newspapers as the posts of thought, setting every man to talking with every other, so that all which the great good men are doing and planning is known to every body, and all that op- pressors and knaves do, or would do, is exposed, exe- crated, and if anv shame is left, shamed out of the world. Nor is this all ; we have produced still another new kind of Road, which outstrips all the horses, whether of flesh or of iron — a Road for Thought; THE DAY OF ROADS. 409 which when we get complete, the world will become a vast sensorium, spinning out its nerves of cognition and feeling, and keeping the whole body apprised, in every limb and member, of what the electric organ meditates. Whatever else we may think, or hope, or fear, it is quite certain that this is an age of Eoads. If the Shamgars of conservatism, looking through the loop- holes of their walled towns and seeing so many people out whirling through the air, are frightened by the sight, fearing lest all the walls of stability and defense are going to break way, still the Eoads will be built and the motion will go on. Wise or unwise, the world has taken it into its head to have Eoads and there is a destiny in it, against which remonstrance is unavailable. Indeed, they need not go to their battlements or loop- holes to see it; for this destiny, good or bad, has al- ready broken through their walls. Many a time, within the last year, have I seen the Eailroad forcing the parapets and buttresses of walled cities and sending in the iron horse of travel, in thunder and smoke, to its very center. I never knew so well before w^hat that word destiny means ; for here I have seen the new age breaking through the old ; power reversing all its in- tents; and human society, by some fiat of God, com- pelled to unwrap the coil of its jealousies and fears, to seek, as a good, what it repelled as an evil; and the children moved to cast aAvay, for their life's sake, what their fathers erected to save their bodies. Acknowledging, then, that there is some destiny at work in this matter of Eoads and of travel, let us study 85 -ilO THE DAY OF ROADS. into it, a little, and see if Tve can gather wliat it means. It is not, as all history informs us, a social accident, a something existing by itself It has its causes and will have its consequences. It is the indication of some- thing existing, and of something to come. Some will say that it indicates a mechanical age ; an age of utility, destitute of great sentiments, without genius, or faith, or reverence to the past, hurrying on to a sordid, mea- ger end, in moral and political anarchy, and atheistic barbarism. Doubtless we are making abundance of cheap cotton cloth- and democracy, they will say, but where is that sense of authority and fine courtesy, which prevailed in the days of chivalry ? where, above all, that sublime reverence for religion, that genius con- secrated to religion, which casts its shadow on our de- generate heads, in the noble structures of the middle age? Xow the truth is, that these worshipers of au- thority, these gothic-mad moderns, who see nothing preparing, in our times, but money and democracy, would themselves have resisted all which gave birth to the very monuments they worship ; for, as I have al- ready intimated, it was a Eoad-making age that built them — an age of revived activity and commerce. And the very struggle of that day was to get the Roads ; for it was the want of Eoads that constituted the chief ob- stacle to commerce and delayed, so long, its appearance among the European nations. They knew no other state than a state of seclusion. Commerce was even a thing not yet conceived. Even the kings of England had their garments made by women on their farms. THE DAY OF ROADS. 411 And when a certain ambassador, at the court of Otho, boasted that the Lombard people had as fine clothes as the Greeks, and it was ascertained that the Lombards actually got them from their markets, through Venice and Amalfi, they were greatly exasperated that foreign- ers should presume to buy their clothes ! So little con- ception had they of trade, that purchase was an affront and sale a treason ! At length, the nations began to taste the benefits to be gained by commerce. But it was, at first, a stolen taste, and was gotten only hj ex- treme hazard. In England and Germany, for example, the nobles sallied out of their castles to rob every trav- eler and merchant who Avould cross their domain. These seats of chivalry were maintained by robbery, and it was impossible to transport merchandise, even for short distances, in safet}^ The Hanseatic League, comprising the four commercial cities of German}^, was organized for the very purpose of securing the mer- chants against these land pirates, and putting an end to the days of Shamgar. Although trade began to get a footing in England, and this kind of robbery ceased, still every noble barbarian who had a castle, being the owner of the Eoad on his domain, carried on a robbery in the shape of tolls, at his borders, his bridges and his market, which was nearly as bad as the more violent method. To secure an open Eoad, therefore, was still the problem of the age, and one of the first laws jDassed by the Parliament was a law to excuse the merchant from going out of his way to pa}^ toll, when he could cross, at a ford, or in some nearer way, to better advan- 412 THE DAY OF HOADS. tage. At length, the Eoads were opened, trade flowed in, wealth increased, the public mind was liberalized, and a spirit of taste and refinement grew up. And then, at last, the great cathedrals began to lift their tur- rets unto the sky. Meantime, how many of the fine conservatives of that age, do you suppose, were lament- ing over it as a degenerate, mercenary age, an age of merchandise and money, raising up a class of upstarts to rival the fine old nobility and destroy ancient pre- cedence. Besides, it was setting a strong current to- ward democracy, which was even worse. For, not only was Venice, at length, forbidden by the Holy See to kidnap Christian people and sell them as slaves to the Saracens, in which her trade begun ; not only did the Irish council determine to import no more English children, as slaves, which had been a regular trade be- fore, but the serf on every estate began to be looked upon as a man, labor rose to higher price than it com- mands even now, and sentiments began to work in the heart of the English nation, which did not stay their action, till every trace of serfdom was done awa}^ Xow in this former age of Eoads, (for I know not how to describe it by any better epithet,) there is some look- ing towards utility certainl}', and also toward democ- rac}' ; and yet even a better result than the cathedrals grew out of it, viz., an elevation of character and virtue — a religious elevation. There was more manhood, as there was more humanity; more piety, as there was less robbery ; barbarism drew back, as comfort, wealth and virtue multiplied; genius came forth to make a THE DAY OF ROADS. 41 D thank-offering for its freedom, sliot up its holy grati- tude into vaulted aisles and sky -piercing pinnacles, and left the cathedrals standing as so many monuments of thanksgiving for Eoads ! An age of Eoads, then, is not, of course, an age of moral decay and dissipation, even though it has some looking towards utility and equality. Possibly it may not always end in gothic architecture, possibly there may be other kinds of good, in the universe, beside gothic architecture. Pardon me, if I suggest the possi- bility, that God may have something better and nobler than this in store for the coming ages ; for though some persons, gifted with a dull imagination, are ever assum- ing that facts are the measure of God's possibilities, and that no good is to be hoped for, save the good that has been, it is yet remarkable that new kinds of good do appear in human history, and there may be some yet to appear, which have not been. I think, too, that we can detect several new elements at work, in our age of Eoads, which are not altogether evil, or destitute of promise. Travel and motion of every kind are signs of life, and life implies the quick- ening presence of new ideas ; for a dead body can as easily support a motion, as a dead idea. I shall be able too, I think, to show you, in a brief review, that, with all other kinds of travel in this age, new ideas are com- ing into action and traveling also. Physical improve- ment associates moral, and moral stimulates physical. There is a reciprocal action between commerce and thought, thought and society, society and religion. 35- 414 THE DAY OF KOADS. Improved Eoads connect beneficent inroads, and the subjugation of matter associates the subjugation of so- cial and political evil. Accordingly, new ideas, such as these which follow, are waking into life and pressing their way into the heart of the world — peace between nations and a reciprocal interest ; * religious and civil liberty; man as man, to be protected, educated, ele- vated by equal laws ; Christian light, unity and benefi- cence. An American sets off to travel, a few months, in Europe, and see what can be seen with his eyes. His mipressions will of course be superficial and, in many respects, erroneous. He lands, we will suppose, in England. The first thing he discovers is, that England is a land of Eoads, new Eoads, and that every body there, as here, is in motion. The whole map of the island is covered with a fine net- work of rails and mac- adamized Eoads, and jet Eoad-making is but just be- gun. And, among all the English whirling over these Eoads, he meets, every few hours, one of his own coun- trymen, till he begins to think that his countrymen are waging a crusade of travel. In the mail-coaches he travels ten or eleven miles an hour and upon the rail- road from thirty to sixty. He goes into Scotland, he pierces the Highlands ; and here he hears the rolling of the engine; sweeps through the lakes in steamboats; skirts along their shores, round the peaks and crags and across the glens, where Eob Eoy and the Campbells whistled their clansmen, on a broad, smooth, macadam- ized Eoad. He remembers that he is in the old world THE DAY OF ROADS. 415 and lie looks about for something old. Occasionally he sees a ruined abbey, or icastle, or enters some ancient cathedral. But he is surprised to find so general an as- pect of newness, in the objects he sees. Even old Chester, sufficiently marked by its antique air, is most irreverently disturbed by two or three railroads dig- ging into the walls and through the town. London shows, indeed, a little patch or two of the old city wall, as a curiosity, but, on the whole, it has the air of a fi'esh modern city. An immense work of creation is going on everywhere, and a young England is rising out of the old, fall of power, and visibly stimulated b}^ new thoughts. In the diplomatic quarrel that is going on with his country, about Oregon, he is compelled to ob- serve the dignified aud healthful desire of peace that sways the mind of the British people. England is doubtless under bonds, in her debt and the immense wealth at stake in her commerce, to keep the peace. But a very strong Christian feeling against war is also gaining strength every year. That insolent prejudice against other nations, which is the disagreeable distinc- tion of Englishmen, and rises, in part, from their insu- lar state, is yielding, at length, to the possibility that there may be something right and respectable out of England. The common people are moving ; some of them have been as far as to London, and many others have been out of the town in which they were born, and returned with enlarged ideas. And the fact that so many Eoads are prepared for their accommodation suggests, to many, that they are worth being accommo- 416 THE DAY OF ROADS. dated. In the corn-law struggle, the landed aristocracy, it is well understood, lost the last hope of supremacy and suffered a conclusive defeat. It is well understood, also, that an abatement of the laws of primogeniture and entail must ultimately follow, and then, as a conse- quence, a new distribution of property, which is the greatest social want of the English nation. Meantime, the same spirit of humanity, which overthrew slavery, is searching after some plan of common education for ^the people. The barbarous rigors of penal law are dis- appearing. Commissioners are raised, every year, to inquire into the miseries of the laboring classes and laws are passed to improve their comfort. The moun- tain loads of scorn and oppression, which have so long lain upon them, are beginning to heave. A more en- larged, indeed, I may say, a truly enlarged humanity and fellow-feeling actuates public men, in the high ofl&ces of state. In the great debate on the corn-law question, it was a kind of triumph, to an American, to observe that every speaker felt it necessary to be on the popular side, and that every thing was made, by the opposing parties, to hang on showing what was the in- terest of the people, the laboring people. Eeligion is a greater subject and closer to the English mind than it has been for centuries. Old ideas are returning as new, and new ideas are starting into life to assault and stran- gle the old. On one side, the establishment is yielding to apostasy. On the other, its existence, as an estab- lishment, is assaulted by a force, which is daily gather- ing vigor and assuming a more condensed form of THE DAY OF ROADS. 417 action. The clergy perceive that a change must sooner or later come. The government is inquiring, mean- time, whether it may not possibly strengthen the estab- lishment, by establishing also the Catholic Church of Ireland ? but fears to offend the known bio:otrv of its two established religions, by the equal recognition of a third. Some of the more judicious and pure-minded, in the Anglican establishment, are beginning to quest- ion whether its spiritual good would not be promoted, if it were separated from the state and from all connec- tion with state patronage. Others are the more exas- perated, the more they see of danger, and spare no act of insult or oppression against the dissenters, that will sufficiently vent the disturbance they feel. Every month repeats some instance of the kind and that adds fuel to the fire already kindled. The English mind moves slowlv, but the issue, thouo'h distant, is not doubtful. The new age must come. The law of truth, of equal right, and, above all, of Christian purity, must prevail. Or, if it be a question, as some will say, be- tween Eoads and Cathedrals, which, in one sense, it certainly is, what chance have the dead against the liv- ing? Arming himself now, with road-books, a convenience unknown to Herodotus in his Egyptian travels, and another evidence or indication of our Eoad-making habit — providing himself with these, which facilitate all the purposes of travel, as much as the Eoads do travel itself; conducting him to comfort, and opening all the gates of knowledge before him, so that he may pass 418 THE DAY OF KOADS. directly to that, which, coming as a stranger, it would take weeks or years to discover — the traveler sets off for the continent. He lands, we will say, in Belgium — at the terminus of a Eailroad, of course. He sees on the engine, quite likely, a name which indicates Amer- ican manufacture, and, in company with this and other Americans, for they are everywhere, he commences his journey towards the Ehine. Belgium is the ancient Flanders, the mother of English manufactures and com- merce, and the cock-pit, in all ages, of the European armies. The old towns throw up their cathedrals, at short distances, studding the sky, monuments all of an- cient commerce ; a commerce which the Eoads, sweep- ing by, have come, if possible, to resuscitate — not with- out some slight signs of effect. These Eoads, too, plough their way across the old battle-grounds, memo- rable in history — peace rushing over the fields of w^ar, with a glory as much brighter as her victories are no- bler. One monument towers above the plain where Napoleon bowed, at last, to the fortune of arms; a mound of earth two hundred feet or more in height, surmounted not by the British but the Belgic lion, boasting no victory, but standing to commemorate, in silence, the birth-time of peace. New ideas are at work in Belgium. The priests are jealous of commerce and commerce growls at the priests. The king, I believe, does what he can for his people, and the Eoads do more. Free sentiments are springing up and signs of quickening are visible, though the country is over- populated and the masses are greatly depressed by THE DAY OF ROADS. 419 superstition. When the traveler enters the great ca- thedral, at Ghent, and looks upon the elegant carved group which supports the pulpit — Truth holding her open volume to the dazzled eyes of Time, inscribed — '^ Awake thou that s'leepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light " — he thinks of the present degenerate Belgic race, before whom truth has shut her volume and the light of Christ is hid, not without hope that they will sometime find a prophecj^, in what their fathers left them. At all events, the Eoads are coming, and, without doubt, are bringing something of conse- quence with them — what that something will be, time will show. We come upon the Ehine, at Cologne, which is the Eome of the North. This old city, which, thirty years ago, was crumbling under a doom of decay, is now re- viving, as are most of the old cities of Germany, and showing signs of creative action. The mind of Ger- many, so long active within itself and in the universi- ties, has caught the spirit of the age and is turning to relieve itself in works of physical improvement, — build- ing Eoads, of course — sixty thousand men at work building Eoads — from Cologne in the west, to Berlin in the east ; from Hamburg and Bremen in the north, to Vienna in the south ; also to Frankfort, Dresden, Mu- nich, and I know not where beside. In a few years, probably less than five, the steam-car will rush from the English Channel, through Austria, to Trieste ; and, in less than fifty, to St. Petersburg and thence onward, through Tartary, to China and the Eastern Ocean ; by 420 THE DAY OF ROADS. whicli time, another will have crossed the Rocky Moun- tains to Oregon, opening a line of travel, by which the complete circuit of the globe may be made, in less than two months. The Black Sea will soon be connected with the Baltic, through Moscow and St. Petersburg; and the work that is begun will not stop till the vast plains of Eussia are spanned throughout wath rails of iron, and the whole empire rings under the rushing wheels of travel — rings, of course, with new ideas equally stirring and powerful. But we return to Ger- many. The spirit of thought and inquiry, which per- vades the Protestant half of Prussia, is already break- ing into the cities and universities of the Catholic por- tion, and thousands released from the superstitions of Rome, are withdrawing also from their allegiance. A still more rapid intercourse, produced by new facilities of travel, such as will bring all parts of the kingdom into sensible contact with each other, will either require a thorough reformation of the German Catholic church, or determine its extinction. Meantime, the govern- ment, as honest and w^ell-meaning, probably, as any in the world, though unaccustomed to the modern popular ideas of liberty, is proving its beneficence by a bold at- tempt to educate the people. Power is thus accumula- ting in them, and, as intelligence increases, so also does the free spirit. A constitutional form of government must follow, in wdiich the popular will shall, in some way, limit the throne. Engaged in political struggles and duties on one side, and in physical improvement on the other, the German mind will cease, at length, to THE DAY OF ROADS. 421 ferment in theories and become practical. Having emptied all the stores of learning, and tried all forms of thought, and uttered all the dreams and visions of which souls are capable; in a word, having opened Eoads into every corner of the kingdoms, both of truth and of error, it will begin to settle on some practical results, worthy of the magnificent preparations it has made. German theology is a great terror to many, and it has certainly made strange havoc with the scriptures and with all received opinions. But I think I detect a law in its eccentricities, by which it is seen, in them all, to be moving towards a certain final result — a result, in which Christ and the Christian Church have an interest as much greater than they had in the cathedrals of the former age, as truth is more divine than stone, and her temple more magnificent than any that is made with hands. Certain it is, that, if any thing can provide a menstruum which is able to dissolve the about equal bigotry of Protestantism and Eomanism, and bring them out into the open field of truth, to search after truth in its own evidence, and flow together, at last, into the unity of the truth, it is this German activity. Having done this, and nothing more, it will have ac- complished a good, sufficiently magnificent, to compen- sate for all its aberrations ; for, without this, somehow accomplished, it is manifest that the Christian Church can never make the attainment, or achieve the destin}^ for which she hopes. Eeturning from this wide excursion, our traveler as- scends the Khine — by steam, of course; for the steam- 36 422 THE DAY OF ROADS. boats are plying on this rapid stream, almost as indus- triously as on tlie Hudson. Every bend of the river opens a vista of deserted and ruined castles, crowning the summits of the mountains and the isolated peaks that overhang the river. The poetaster sighs over the decay of so much chivalry and grandeur, but the man of sense, knowing that these were all so many abodes of land pirates and toll-gatherers, who • subsisted on the prey of commerce, thanks God that finally a Eoad is opened for honest men to pass and do the honest busi- ness of their life. The grey old castles, crumbling un- der a curse, have a harmless, stupid look, over which Time grins in mockery — ^he laughs himself at the sorry figure they make. Or, if some of them were built for purposes of personal security, in a lawless and violent age, regarding them only with reverential pity, as mon- uments of the days of Shamgar, he glories not in them, but in the new age of law which has at length de- scended on the world; knowing that law is now the grand castle of man, a castle as much more magnificent, as it is more comprehensive ; as much firmer and no- bler, as justice and truth are more unassailable and of a nature more august than walls of stone. Our traveler breaks into Switzerland through the city wall of Basle, under the smoke of a locomotive ; for what else can open a path through the walls of for- tified cities? Here, in Switzerland, he finds also new Eoads, the best that can be made, but leaves Railroads, for the present, behind him. All the world are travel- ing in Switzerland, except the Swiss, and they are THE DAY OF ROADS. 423 beginning to climb over the Alps after loads of Ameri- can cotton, whicli they manufacture and carry back to the transalpine markets. The Swiss are a fine people ; honest, simple-minded republicans — only they do not understand what liberty is. They think it is liberty in the canton Yaud, to compel Christian ministers to read their state proclamations against themselves, and do the bidding of the state in all respects. But the ministers think otherwise, and having taken their stand, with the noble Yinet at their head, incurring silence, suspension, want, and even the fear of death, they are some of them learning, in their trials, what spiritual religion is — which they did not know before. Their persecutors, too, who are strangely enough called the radical party,- are now rioting against the Jesuits and for their expul- sion, which is just as bad in principle. But religion is reviving; the Swiss mind is at work; true liberty is feeling out its way. For long ages, this little nation of republicans lay locked within their mountain fastnesses, shut away from -the living world ; but now, the gates are open ; the living world has come, and they feel its quickening power. The valleys are threaded with fine, broad Eoads; the lakes fronted by palaces, built for hotels — the only palaces known to the Swiss; Eail- roads are projected; and some even think it possible that a steam-car may sometime be heard thundering through the Alps, and making its appearance in Italy, on the other side. But, for the present, we must go over and not through them. Here, again, we find four stupendous 424 THE DAY OF ROADS. Eoads, all virtually new, climbing over these everlast- ing hills ; spanning chasms, plunging through promon- tories of rock, skirting gulfs, shedded with stone arches, here and there, for the avalanches to slide over ; pass- ing, at the summit, between peaks of eternal ice; smooth, wide, easy of ascent and descent; northern Europe pouring over into southern. Protestantism into Popery, and Popery back into Protestantism; new ideas and old traveling back and forth, and passing on their way : and commerce, with its heavy loaded teams, rolling securely over these icy ramparts, in attempting which, a Hannibal lost three-fourths of his army. Climbing over one of these passes, that, we will say, of the Simplon, the traveler is made to feel, possibly, for the first time in his life, what is in a Eoad ; how much it means, what victories it sigrnifies: what mvrmidons of thought, more powerful than armies, are pouring over it, daily and nightly, from nation to nation. Meditating thus, a strange power rushes upon him, as if he had somehow fallen, for once, into the high-road of destiny itself Is it that Xapoleon, whom some have called the man of destiny, is represented in this work? Is it that a force is evervwere displaved, which mocks the sternest frowns of nature, and tramps across her wildest gulfs of terror? Or, is it, rather, that he pic- tures the fierce soldier, storming these icy solitudes, not, as he thought, to open a way for his armies, but a way, rather, wherein the new future of Italy shall descend upon her? Here it is, if never before, that he con- ceives the moral import of a Road. THE DAY OF ROADS. 425 He reaches Milan, and first of all he notices, -with a smile, that they are here also visibly thinking of mo- tion, having torn up the rough, old pavement of their streets, to lay down smooth lines of floor, in the tracks of the wheels, for easing and expediting their motion. Noting this, as a symptom, he is not surprised to see that this ancient and many times ruined city, is reviv- ing once more. He pursues his way towards Yenice, passing the once splendid cities of Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Vincenza, Padua, on a fine, broad, macadam- ized Eoad constructed by the Austrian viceroy. The signs of improvement are few and sometimes display the marks of a people only half awake. On this mag- nificent Eoad, for example, the diligence will have, for its outfit, a conductor and two postillions, one for each span of horses. But the postillions can not agree, whether to ride fast or slow ; they stop every mile or two ; the hindmost disconnects the horses of the fore- most, and he, in turn, wheels into the path, that the other may not proceed without him; they threaten and storm at each other, and the conductor swears at both, and thus the magnificent Eoad comes, at last, in the practical result, to a very sorry figure, not at all re- lieved by the liveries, which connect the official dignity of the government with such an exhibition of mock en- terprise. Such, now, is the beginning of life in Aus- tria. When Austria is covered with Eailroads, and quickened throughout by commerce, when private en- terprise has come into powerful action, then will a sin- gle man do the work of these three ; and doing it for 36* 428 THE DAY OF ROADS. the people are growling, with a half stifled voice, for something which they can not get. Why this ill- nature? What is it they want? Why, they want Eoads, and the Holy Father will not consent. And why do they want Eoads ? have they not all the Eoads they ever had, and these in good order, some of them newl}^ paved, for many miles, and almost as nicely as the Appian Way itself? Have they not a good new Eoad to Naples also? Assuredly something new, some dim hope of something better, has got into the heads of the people, which mars their content. At length, the Holy Father dies and immediately a soft smile relaxes their faces. Eegarding him as the very representative of God, their mourning over him takes on yet an involuntary smile ; — because now they will have Eoads ! But Eoads were not all thev wanted, it was only safer to speak of Eoads ; they had some Wvant of law, personal safety, freer marts of trade, tribunals clear of bribery. Well, the new Pope enters on his office, and he says, yes, let there be Eoads, Eailroads, one to Civita Vecchia, one to Ancona on the other shore, one to Florence in the north, one to meet the Naples Eoad in the south. He will endeavor, also, to do something for education ; he will secularize the tri- bunals of law, and the bureaus of state, and take off the enormous duties, which had thrown all commerce into the hands of smugglers. He may not be able to do all this ; for it is already clear that the priests are against him and they are legion, both in name and nature. But the Eoads will be built, the robbei's will lose their THE DAY OF ROADS. 429 occupation, trade will spring np, tlie Bnglisli travelers, who have created, at length, these new wants in the people, will pour in more copiously than ever, bringing new ideas still, and the very locomotives, rushing into the eternal city, and rolling their smoke over St. Pe- ter's, will come as new ideas and types of modern power. No man could well understand the age of Shamgar, without a visit to the Eoman States. It is soon to be over. The dark middle age of the Judges is coming to an end. Now, most assuredly, comes light, education, justice, and with all these, liberty, re- ligious and civil liberty. We return to France, where our excursion closes. France, as you well know, is also building Eoads. She had fine Eoads, many of them paved with squared stone before; these were not enough to satisfy her commercial and manufacturing activity ; for France, if I do not mistake, is improving more rapidlj^ than any country in Europe. The great estates of the nobles and the abbeys were broken up, in the violence of the Eevolution and under the reign of Napoleon, so that now the landed property of France is well distributed, compared with almost any country in Europe. Hope dawns on labor, and industry opens a new era in phys- ical advancement. Already a Eailroad penetrates the old city of Nismes, so mournfully distinguished in the history of the Huguenots. Another w^ill shortly con- nect Marseilles with Avignon, and the walls of the old inquisition, where the noble Eienzi perished a martyr to liberty, will shake at the sound of the engine and 428 THE DAY OF ROADS. the people are growling, with a half stifled voice, for something which they can not get. Why this ill- nature? What is it they want? Why, they want Eoacls, and the Holy Father will not consent. And why do they want Eoads ? have they not all the Eoads they ever had, and these in good order, some of them newl}^ paved, for many miles, and almost as nicely as the Appian Way itself? Have they not a good new Eoad to Naples also? Assuredly something new, some dim hope of something better, has got into the heads of the people, which mars their content. At length, the Holy Father dies and immediately a soft smile relaxes their faces. Eegarding him as the very representative of God, their mourning over him takes on yet an involuntary smile ; — because now they will have Eoads ! But Eoads were not all they wanted, it was only safer to speak of Eoads ; they had some want of law, personal safety, freer marts of trade, tribunals clear of bribery. Well, the new Pope enters on his office, and he says, yes, let there be Eoads, Eailroads, one to Civita Yecchia, one to Ancona on the other shore, one to Florence in the north, one to meet the Naples Eoad in the south. He will endeavor, also, to do something for education ; he will secularize the tri- bunals of law, and the bureaus of state, and take off the enormous duties, which had thrown all commerce into the hands of smugglers. He may not be able to do all this ; for it is already clear that the priests are against him and they are legion, both in name and nature. But the Eoads will be built, the robbers will lose their THE DAY OF ROADS. 429 occupation, trade will spring up, tlie English travelers, who have created, at length, these new wants in the people, will pour in more copiously than ever, bringing new ideas still, and the very locomotives, rushing into the eternal city, and rolling their smoke over St. Pe- ter's, will come as new ideas and types of modern power. No man could well understand the age of Shamgar, without a visit to the Eoman States. It is soon to be over. The dark middle age of the Judges is coming to an end. Now, most assuredly, comes light, education, justice, and wdth all these, liberty, re- ligious and civil liberty. We return to France, where our excursion closes. France, as you w^ell know, is also building Eoads. She had fine Eoads, many of them paved with squared stone before; these were not enough to satisfy her commercial and manufacturing activity ; for France, if I do not mistake, is improving more rapidly than any country in Europe. The great estates of the nobles and the abbeys were broken up, in the violence of the Eevolution and under the reign of Napoleon, so that now the landed property of France is well distributed, compared with almost any country in Europe. Hope dawns on labor, and industry opens a new era in phys- ical advancement. Already a Eailroad penetrates the old city of Nismes, so mournfully distinguished in the history of the Huguenots. Another will shortly con- nect Marseilles with Avignon, and the walls of the old inquisition, where the noble Eienzi perished a martyr to liberty, will shake at the sound of the engine and 430 THE DAY OF ROADS. the coming of a renovated age. So there are Raih-oads spinning out of Paris, in every direction, and enough, are already projected to cross nearly every department of the nation. France also desires peace ; for she well knows the import of war, and though she glories in Napoleon, she does not care to risk all her commerce and her growing prosperity, for the chance of seeing another. Meantime she talks, in her parliament, of a more equal and complete Christian liberty. And, what is better still, many hearts are beginning to yearn, in all parts of the nation, for some better light, some more spiritual religion, such as meets the wants of their being. Old superstitions are breaking down ; atheism, already old, is shaking with decrepitude. Philosophers talk of religion with such kind of wisdom as they can ; hamlets and villages, here and there, turn upon their priests as impostors, and many signs of a great religious renovation appear. SujQEicient proof have we here, that our age of utility and of Roads is not, of course, losing the sense of religion and not likely to end, in the mea- ger way, which many predict. Most of the facts included in this brief sketch or re- view, it is well understood were known to you before. But it has not been my object to instruct you in regard to facts, so much as to hold them before you, in their moral connections, as symbols of the age and of what Grod is working, in the age. In proposing a discourse on Roads, I did it in the hope that I should thus bo able to give you a more distinct apprehension, than in THE DAY OF ROADS. 431 any other way, of j^our age and its ctaracteristics — its relation to past ages, its future prospects, and tlie meth- ods by which it is reaching after results of use, of com- mon beneficence and common humanity. In no other way can you understand so well what is going on in the world, and what is preparing, and what kind of ideas are at work, whether new or old, malignant oi hopeful, as simply to note that this is a Eoad-building age. The dark age built castles, on the inaccessible peaks of mountains, to get away from enemies, we build cottages, on public Eoads, which we like to have as perfect as possible, to facilitate access and motion. The Egyptians built pyramids over the dead, we build Eoads to give life and swiftness to the living. The Chinese erect a wall to shut themselves in ; we open Eoads and ports and span the ocean itself with floating bridges, that we may go everywhere and behold the coming of all people. And what is specially remarkable, this Eoad-building movement is the first example, in the history of man- kind, where all the great nations of the world have moved together, and been actuated by a common aim. One has given itself to commerce, another to arms and conquest, another to art, another to the sea, another to agriculture. Now, all are for commerce, interchange, travel and motion together. And, what is yet more sublime and hopeful, they all are feeling the pressure of the same great moral ideas, peace, liberty, education, religious light and unity. The desire of physical im- provement holds a natural and philosophic connection 432 THE DAY OF ROADS. with all these great ideas, moral and religious. In our physical improvements we seek ends of beneficence such as the ease and cheapness of production, the con- venience of a market, the facility of intercourse between the masses of society, and thus we pass over to think of intellectual and moral results, peace, knowledge, lib- erty, holy virtue, heavenly unity — our ideal of benefi- CEXCE allows no limitation ; it associates every thing good, by virtue of its own goodness ; and accordingly, it will be found, much as we hear of the sordid spirit of this age of utility, that the very, thought which moves us, in our universal Road-building, is one that can not be satisfied, till every thing included in benefi- cence, as an ideal, is fulfilled. What is to come? That is a question opening visions of future good, which, though we can not prophecy, we can not but indulge. Undoubtedly a new era of wealth is at hand. Com- merce never has failed to bring wealth to any nation, and it can enrich all as easily as one. Nay, one the more easily, that it is permitted to enrich all. It fol- lows, of necessity, that the population of the world will be vastly increased. Wars, it will also be seen, can not, if they occur, be as long as they have been heretofore. Where it is possi- ble to transport an army, with all its supplies and mu- nitions, a thousand miles in three days, pouring one na- tion into the bosom of another, almost at will, it is evi- dent that wars must come to their issue, in the fall of THE DAY OF ROADS. 433 one party or the other, in a very short time. This will create an indisposition in the nations to engage in ^\'ar. The conviction, too, that nations have a natural interest in each other and are not natural enemies, as was once the current maxim of the world ; the advantages also of commerce and the noble triumphs of peace, wiH all conspire to create a common opinion, at length, against war. The absurdity of war, too, will have been abund- antly shown and its disagreement with the great princi- ples of Christianity. The appeal to arms, therefore, as a means of redress for inj uries, will be classed with the old method of trial by combat, and will disappear, we may hope, in the same manner. Prophecy will thus fulfill her holy vision— the nations will learn war no more. Another promise will follow in the train; for as many run to and fro, knowledge will be increased. I am fully sensible, as you know, to the dangers which beset an age of travel and motion. Every good brings its dangers with it. And did we not see a desire of universal education everywhere attending and keeping company with the extension of facilities for travel, we might w^ell fear, lest so much of running to and fro will end in a general destruction of all sober habits ; pro- ducing, at last, a state of society, which is made up only of surfaces, emptied of every solid principle. But the schools, we observe, are spreading, as the Roads are ex- tending; and the hope of attaining to a better social state is, in fact, the common stimulus of both. The goveniments of Christendom are everywhere consenting 37 •iS-i THE DAY OF ROADS. to the fact, that they exist for the good of all ^ho live under them. And this thought, shaping their policy, gives them an interest in the masses under them, makes them protectors of industry, and prepares them to assist and encourage industry, by favoring such a distribution of property, as will best effect an object so worthy. Having it for their problem, to make every man as valuable as possible to himself and to his country, and becoming more and more inspired, as we may hope, by an aim so lofty, every means will be used to diffuse education, to fortify morals, and favor the holy power of religion. This being done, there is no longer any danger from travel. On the contrary, the masses of society will, by this means, be set forward continually in character and intelligence. As they run, knowledge will be increased. The roads will themselves be schools ; for here they will see the great world moving and feel themselves to be a part of it. Their narrow, local prejudices will be worn off, their superstitions will be forgotten. Eveiy people will begin to understand and appreciate every other, and a common light will be kindled in all bosoms. The effects which are to result, in matters of religion, from the universal interchange of travel, in our age of Eoads, are a subject of yet graver import. Man lives for religion. Human society exists for religion. And it is remarkable how all the great movements of society, for the last fifty years, the wars, diplomacies, and even the public wrongs of the world, have tended, uni- versally and even visibly, to favor the extension of THE DAY OF BOADS. 435 Christian truth, and invigorate the efforts of Christian love. Observing a fact so palpable in all the external doings of the nations, who can withhold a suspicion that a correspondent aim penetrates the internal work of society, and, of course, that our age of Eoads has some holy purpose of God fulfilling, in its social revolu- tions, which connects with the coming reign of Christ on earth? Manifestly, freedom of thought and opinion is soon to be universal, and this will throw all truth upon the decision of evidence. Then, force being no longer em- ployed to constrain men's opinions, the false antagonism of fear and passion will no longer disturb the balance of the Christian mind, as now, and truth will rule by her own right, in her own field. Opinions, being de- termined only by argument and evidence, will naturally approximate. The Christian mind, liberalized by inter- course, will suffer a more enlarged charity, and the charity of forbearance will be followed by the charity of love. The boundaries of nations, spanned by bands of iron, crossed and recrossed, many times a day, as freely as the birds of the air fly over them and as swiftly, will cease at length to be felt. The Eoads of intercourse will create vital bonds of unity between nations, and a common circulation, like that of the ducts of the body, will make the members one, as by a common life. Meantime, there is an assimilating power in inter- course, which can not be over-estimated. So great is this power, that every new Road of travel, which expe- 436 THE DAY OF ROADS. dites intercourse between the older and newer portions of our country, is to be regarded as a great moral ben- efit. Let the North and the South, the East and the West, from Maine to Oregon, be connected with Eoads of iron, as soon as possible. The greatest danger, which threatens us now, is not Eomanism, but barba- rism; that wildness, lawlessness and violence, which result from distance and isolation. Let distance, if possible, be annihilated, let speed have a race with emigration, and every straggler of the woods be held in close proximity with civilization, law and religion; and then the assimilating power, which resides in the better forms of societj^, will pervade and shape the whole mass into itself. It seems also to be the mag- nificent purpose of God, in our age of Eoads, to set this same power of mutual assimilation at work, on a yet broader scale, and so as to include all the churches and nations of Christendom — so that one part may give to another what it wants, and every church and nation find its complement in every other. A feeling of ap- proximation, or a feeling after approximation, is al- ready evident. What was it, in fact, but a lively and free intercourse, which prompted a desire of union so remarkable as that which was manifested by the late convocation at London? In that fact, which, twenty years ago, was not in the conception of man, you may see the first fruits of Eoads. More and greater will ap- pear in due time ; for God, I am persuaded, is prepar- ing results of vaster compass than have yet appeared. In government, we have, as yet, nothing perfect, and THE DAY OF ROADS. 437 yet we have all something good to contribute. Thrown together, by perpetual intercourse, and having it for our ideal to advance society and man, we shall naturally be assimilated most, to that which most com- mands our respect; and thus we shall mutually con- tribute what we have, and receive what we want. In government, for example, England may contribute the element of prescriptive order and legal energy ; Prussia, that of system and complete, scientific distribution; Eome, that of divine authority, by which law becomes the ordinance of God — an element which, with us, is well-nigh lost; France, that of theoretic law; the United States, that of abstract equal right. Thus, all contributing and all receiving, all will be enriched. Nor let this pass for a mere fanc}^, or an unpractical dream. We are receiving from each other, by a silent influence, in just this manner, now; only not as con- sciously and with as much depth of impression, as we may hereafter, when livelier and more extensive inter- course has brought us into a closer sympathy, and travels and discussions have exhibited the points most worthy of respect, in the institutions of all. So in religion, the church of England may contribute impres- sions favorable to some kind of liturgical order. Ger- many may offer scripture learning and all possible views of Christian doctrine. Eome may come into the assimilating process, to infuse a solemn conviction of the need of catholic unity, in the Christian family. France, if she returns to religion, may contribute an exterior mold of social grace and Christian refinement. 37^ 438 THE DAY OF ROADS. The United States may pour in the element of spiritual simplicity and practical activity. God is wiser than we, and carries vaster purposes in His bosom, and broader truths, I am persuaded, than our childish thoughts have comprehended, or conceived. Therefore, doubtless, it would be much for us to gain, in this matter of religion, if we could yield the possibility that we are none of ns infalli- ble, or perfectly wise, in every thing, and suffer the hope that He is now pouring the nations together, in these last daj^s, that He may assimilate their views and fill out the glorious orb of Christian truth and beauty ; and thus unite all Christendom, in a common effort to fill this world of sin with the light of Emmanuel. Such, briefly, are the magnificent hopes that are now set before us, in the prospect of the coming ages. What forms of social beauty may be realized, what structures of art may be raised, what works of genius created, by the renovated wealth, intelligence, and piety of the world, I will not stop to conceive. Enough to know what transcends all such conjectures, and rises on the mind as the summit of all grandeur and sublimity, that Christ the Lord shall ascend into his throne and reign, in the moral majesty of peace and righteousness, over the admiring nations. Seeing, then, the nations movod, for the first time, by a common impulse, and preparing to embrace, in the waj^s described, we will not fear to view a fact so wonderful, as a forerunner of the Son of Man. AVe will reapply the fit words of prophecy, and say — THE DAY OF KOADS. 439 ^^ Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth, and — ALL FLESH SHALL see THE SALVATION OF GOD.'^ XII RELIGIOUS MUSIC* A QUARTER of a centup}^ since, in the year 1826, at whiciL time I was a member of this venerable university, the Beethoven Society was organized, having for its ob- ject the cultivation of music as an art, but more espe- cially of sacred music. It was designed to be perpetual, though I am obliged to acknowledge that we had, at the time, but a slender faith in its perpetuity. Still it has continued for so long a time, maintaining, I believe, a general advance in the noble art it was designed to fos- ter, till now, at last, having become able to furnish a better pledge of its continuance, in the erection of a fine, classic-toned organ from one of the best builders in the world, it has seemed fit that the occasion of its opening should be signalized in some public manner. In this view, and I suppose principally because I was connected with the society in its origin — certainly not because I have any special competence for the task — I have been requested to offer a discourse such as I may deem ap- propriate to the occasion. Accepting your invitation, I derive my subject from — * Delivered before the Beethoven Society of Yale College, at the open- ing of tlieir new organ, August, 1852. RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 441 1 Cor. 14: 7. ^^A7id even things ivithout life giviny soimd^ whether pipe or harp^ except they give a distinction in the sounds ^ how shall it be known what is piped or harped V Every thing for a use and every thing in its place, is a rule, the apostle is saying, that holds in spiritual gifts and exercises, as in every thing else. If you speak with tongues, let it not be as making only strange noises, but let some one interpret, that the tongues may edify and not be sounds without a meaning. It will not do for Christians to be more unmeaning and idle in spiritual gifts, than even things without life themselves, the pipes and harps and trumpets and drums of music ; for these, when they give a sound, give it with distinctions that have a meaning and a power, else they are nought to us. The war trumpet has so great significance and au- thority that, by the sounding of signals, it commands the squadrons of armies, right and left, front and rear, to advance or to retreat ; but if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound or a false signal, if instead of sounding the charge it sounds the giving of alms, who shall pre- pare himself for battle? Trumpets are not used in this way. Are voices and tongues to be less intelligent or significant than tubes of unconscious horn or metal ? This reference of the apostle to instruments of music, you perceive, is a reference simply of illustration ; he is discoursing of spiritual gifts, not of music. But he touches, in the way of illustration, two points of so great religious interest, that I propose, this evening, to make them topics of my discourse. They are these, viz., the 442 KELIGIOUS MUSIC. very wonderful fact that God has hidden powers of mitsic in things luithout life; and that when they are itsed^ in right distinctions^ or proprieties of sounds they discourse what ive know — what meets^ interprets and works our feel- ing^ as living and spiritual creatures. Of these I shall speak in their order, only endeavoring to confine the subject, in great part, to its religious import and appli- cations. This world of outward being has a fixed relation to all the five senses of man and especially to the two no- bler of these, the senses of sight and of sound ; the senses of touch, taste and smell being applicable only to small portions of the material world and having as much less to do with the spiritual economy of life, as an intel- lectual and religious experience. The senses of sight and sound are preeminently con- versable or social, therefore moral and religious in their connections. And then of these two, the sense of sight is more especially connected with the understand- ing or intellectual power, and the sense of sound with the feelings, emotions and affections. God has made the world to be a fit medium for both — to use the dri- est figure possible, a blackboard for the mind, and a sounding-board for the heart. In this manner, it results that we have two languages, the language of thought and reason formed in words, which are the names prin- cipally of visible objects ; and the language of feeling, which is made b}^ tones of sound different in time, pitch, quality, inflection — in a word, by music; which, for a RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 443 long time, was not a written language, but is now more exactly written than the other. In speech, or vocal ut- terance, both languages are blended ; words, which are mostly based in visible objects and spatial relationships, being, when spoken, gifted with additional meanings and powers from the qualities and inflections of the voice, instinctively toned or modulated by the feeling of those who speak ; for it is not the words only of speech that have so great power, but quite as much the living notes of music in which they are spoken ; notes that vary with the quantity and quality — the volume and depth and beauty, or the dearth, dullness, hoUowness, coarse- ness of feeling in the speaker. Hence, too, the amazing difference of power in speakers, who may speak, or read, or recite the same words. One does it without the true distinction of sounds, the other with ; even as our apostle himself observes, apart from any thought of becoming a critic or professor of elocntion : '^ There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in .the world and none of them is without signification." Hence, also, the very great difference you observe between the tones of utterance employed in a mere ar- gument to the understanding or judgment of men, and those which are used, for example, in prayer addressed to God. "We think nothing of it probably, but nature teaches us to make a distinction of sound imawares. Meantime, the musician who is able to catch and write down the tones we use in both cases, will show that we speak, in the former case, more in full-tone intervals, and these coarsely measured ; in the latter, more in half- 444 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. tones, and closer to the principle of musical notation. Just as we properly should, because we are not dealing here with mere notions of the understanding, but offer- ing to God sentiments of penitence and love and wor- ship. And yet, since preaching is so much a matter of address to the feelings or sentiments of our religious na- ture, this kind of speaking will have a distinction of sound, compared with other forms of public address in the senate, or at the bar. And so far has this distinc- tion prevailed in the Christian sense of some nations, as in Italy, and particularly in Wales, that preaching takes the form of a distinct, musical recitative. And on this account, it is said, that there is no tongue in the world, in which preaching has so great advantages, or exercises a power so resistless, as in the Welch ; because it speaks in the music of love and sorrow, and fitly interprets, in that manner, the divine passion of the cross. You perceive, in these suggestions, how closely our spiritual nature, as creatures of feeling, is related to the element of sound, wanting this in its distinctions for a language, as truly as it wants the language of words for intellectual discourse> Even as the poets, who are na- ture's best oracles, sing : '' Music ! how faint, how weak, Language fades before thy spell ; Why should feeling ever speak, When thou canst breathe her soul so well ?'' Accordins^lv, as we are wont to ar^ue the invisible things of God, even His eternal power and Godhead, from the things that are seen, finding them all images RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 445 of thought and vehicles of intelligence, so we have an argument for God more impressive, in one view, because the matter of it is so deep and mysterious, from the fact that a grand, harmonic, soul-interpreting law of music, pervades all the objects of the material creation, and that things without life, all metals and woods and val- leys and mountains and waters, are tempered with dis- tinctions of sound, and toned to be a language to the feeling of the heart. It is as if God had made the world about us to be a grand organ of music, so that our feel- ings might have play in it, as our understanding has in the light of the sun and the outward colors and forms of things. What is called the musical scale, or octave, is fixed in the original appointments of sound, just as absolutely and definitely as the colors of the rainbow or prism in the optical properties and laws of light. And the visible objects of the world are not more certainly shaped and colored to us, under the exact laws of light and the prism, than they are tempered and toned, as objects audible, to give distinctions, of sound by their vibrations, in the terms of the musical octave. It is not simply that we hear the sea roar and the floods clap their hands in anthems of joy ; it is not that we hear the low winds sigh, or the storms howl dolefully, or the ripples break peacefully on the shore, or the waters dripping sadly from the rock, or the thunders crashing in horrible majesty through the pavements of heaven; not only do all the natural sounds we hear come to us in tones of music as interpreters of feeling, but there is hid in the secret temper and substance of all matter a 33 446 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. silent music, that only waits to sound, and become a voice of utterance to the otherwise unutterable feeling of our heart — a voice, if we will have it, of love and worship to the God of all. First, there is a musical scale in the laws of the air it- self, exactly answering to the musical sense or law of the soul. Next, there is, in all substances, a tempera- ment of quality related to both ; so that whatever kind of feeling there may be in a soul, war and defiance, fes- tivity and joy, sad remembrance, remorse, pity, peni- tence, self-denial, love, adoration, may find some fit me- dium of sound in which to express itself. And, what is not less remarkable, connected with all these forms of substances, there are mathematical laws of length and breadth, or definite proportions of each, and reflective angles, that are every way as exact as those which reg- ulate the colors of the prism, the images of the mirror, or the telescopic light of astronomic worlds — mathemat- ics for the heart as truly as for the head. Accordingly, we find, so close is the hidden music of substances to the sympathy and feeling of man, that he begins, at once, instinctively, to try them by his voice and feeling, and learn what distinctions of sound they will make. And so instruments of music begin to be invented and used, even before the flood ; as early, in- deed, as the keeping of herds and cattle and the com- forts of the nomadic life are introduced. Jabal is the ''father'' of these, his brother Jubal of the other; that is, *• of the harp and the organ ;'' one a stringed instru- ment, and the other, not an orsran in our modern sense RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 447 of the term, but a pandean or shepherd's pipe, the prin- ciple of which is the same. From that time to the present, the silent music or musical property of things without life has been more and more fully opened to dis- covery, till at last we find that every known substance, wood, shell, horn, glass, copper, iron, steel, brass, silver, strings and skins and pasteboard and even India rub- ber, wait to be voices of feeling and sing the passions of the human spirit. Nay, even the very stones of the field have their notes, hid within them, and are ready to break out in song. For we hear that the stroke of flints upon each other has been actually managed so as to make an instrument of music and discourse in strains of living melody — suggesting the probable fact that the mysterious laws of crystallization have a secret affiance with the powers of music, and so with the passions of the human heart. " There's music in the si'ghing of a reed, There's music in the gushing of a rill, There's music in all things, if men had ears, Their earth is but an echo of the spheres." Neither can it be said that all these substances with- out life have simply a power to make sounds or aerial vibrations, taking advantage of which fact we ourselves arrange them so as to make sounds of a given pitch, and that so the music they yield is really of man alone. For though it be true that a given shape and arrange- ment is necessarj^ to the effect, the laws of that arrange- ment and of musical rhythm are first established in souls and in the air as related to souls, and then, MS RELIGIOUS MUSIC. besides, all these substances without life are so con- structed as to make distinctions of sound as to quality, wholly apart from distinctions of pitch, and it is the mysterious quality of sounds that makes them inter- preters of human feeling, quite as much as their varie- ties of pitch. Hence, it is found, that in instruments of wood, the different woods have all distinct qualities of sound, and that in some of them only a given kind of wood, carefully selected, will produce the quality of sound most desired in that particular instrument. Thus, down to the time of David, the harp had been made of the heros\ or cedar wood. But in Solomon's time, it was found that the almug or algum wood gave a better quality of sound, and all the harps of the choir were accordingly made of it. So it is affirmed that the Cremona viol has its rank of estimation, as a precious instrument, from the singular and musically soul-like quality of the wood selected for its construction. It is also found that the different woods, in friction upon each other, scream in distinct qualities of sound, and a key -board instrument has been constructed on this prin ciple of friction, that discourses in the woods, by vibra- tions that answer to the sentiments of souls. Even as that most wonderful organ, the human throat, is gifted wdth a power to utter all the feeling of a soul, by dis- tinctions of sound, so there is a throat of utterance in all created substance, voiced to serve its uses, and pre- pared by some mysterious quality of sound, to be its interpreter. It can not therefore be said that music is a human RELiaious MUSIC. 449 creation, and, as far as the substances of the world are concerned, a mere accident. As well can it be said that man creates the colors of the prism, and that they are not in the properties of the light, because he shapes the prism by his own mechanical art. Or if still we doubt, if it seems incredible that the soul of music is in the heart of all created being, then the laws of harmony themselves shall answer, one string vibrating to another, when it is not struck itself, and uttering its voice of concord simply because the concord is in it and it feels the pulses on the air, to which it can not be silent. Nay, the solid mountains and their giant masses of rock shall answer ; catching, as they will, the bray of horns, or the stunning blast of cannon, rolling it across from one top to another in re^^erberating pulses, till it falls into bars of musical rhythm and chimes and cadences of sil- ver melody. I have heard some fine music, as men are wont to speak, the play of orchestras, the anthems of choirs, the voices of song that moved admiring nations. But in the lofty passes of the Alps, I heard a music overhead from God's cloudy orchestra, the giant peaks of rock and ice, curtained in by the driving mist and only dimly visible athwart the sky through its folds, such as mocks all sounds our lower worlds of art can ever hope to raise. I stood (excuse the simplicity) call- ing to them, in the loudest shouts I could raise, even till my power was spent, and listening in compulsory trance to their reply. I heard them roll it up through their cloudy worlds of snow, sifting out the harsh quali- ties that were tearing in it as demon screams of sin, 38- 450 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. holding on npon it as if it were a hymn they were fining to the ear of th.e great Creator, and sending it round and round in long reduplications of sweetness, minute after minute, till finally receding and rising, it trembled, as it were, among the quick gratulations of angels, and fell into the silence of the pure empyrean. I had never any conception before of what is meant by quality in sound. There was more power upon the soul, in one of those simple notes, than I ever expect to feel from any tbing called music below, or ever can feel till I hear them again in the choirs of the angelic world. I had never sucb a sense of purity, or of what a simple sound may tell of purity, by its own pure quality ; and I could not but say, O my God teacb me this ! Be this in me forever ! And I can truly aflS.rm that tbe experi- ence of that hour has consciously made me better able to think of God ever since — better able to worship. All other sounds are gone, the sounds of yesterday, heard in the silence of enchanted multitudes, are gone ; but that is with, me still and I hope will never cease to ring in my spirit, till I go down to the slumber of si- lence itself. What I here say may probably enough seem extrav- agant. That such, a power of music dwells in the rag- ged rocks and granite masses of the world may be in- conceivable. And yet if this visible creation of matter is made for the habitation of souls, made for human hearts as well as for human understandings, why should not the language of the heart and the rhythm of the heart's feeling be in it ? RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 451 I am a little apprehensive that in these illustrations I may have seemed to some of you to be so much occu- pied with properties of matter, as to be leaving the do- main of religion. To such as think it nothing to relig- ion that God has made the world for it and hid a lan- guage in all fibres, grains and masses of substance, dis- coursing of love and pure feeling and adoring joy, it doubtless will. But to me there is nothing in any of the arguments for God from things visible, that seems to prove as much or have as deep a meaning as this from things audible. It transforms the. world itself into a temple of worship and fills it with voices waiting to utter and kindle a celestial love in all that live. This conviction, I.think^ will be strengthened as we go on to speak of the second topic proposed, viz., of those distinctions or properties of sound, by which it may be made to serve most effectively the purpose of God in its appointment as an instrument of religion. I say the purpose of God in its appointment, for we have it by a double appointment, that which fills the mate- rial creation with it as a residence or temple of religion, and that w^hich makes it, by express direction, an ordi- nance of worship to men. How carefully this part of the worship was ordered in the temple service of Israel, is known to every reader of the ancient scriptures; how exactly also the choirs of singers and of players on instruments were arranged, one to answer to another in the deep wail of grief or penitence, the soft response of love, the lively sweep of festive gladness, or all to flow 452 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. together in choral multitudes of praise, that might even shake the rock of Zion itself And this divine service of music was ordered by God Himself through His own prophet: ^'And he set the Levites in the house of God, with cymbals and psalter- ies and harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad, the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet ; for so was the commandment of God by His prophets. And the Levites and the priests praised the Lord, day by day, singing with loud instruments unto the Lord." And to this divine ordinance of song it is that David calls, when he says, offering to his nation the hymns he has written for their anthems of praise : "0 come let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation." ^Sing unto the Lord with a harp and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and sound of cornet, make a joyful noise before the Lord the king." Or perhaps you may hear him alone there in the temple, weeping out his shame and sorrow, in tears of sound, and crying to his harp, ''Have mercy upon me, O God! according to thy loving kindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions." And if any one wishes to know what power there may be in music, as an instrument of religion, let him ask what effect the songs of this one singer have had, melted into men's hearts, age after age, by music, and made in that manner to be their consecrated and cus- tomary expressions of worship. Suppose, instead, he had written a treatise of theology and given it to the RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 453 head of mankind ; what tenth part of power would he thus have exerted over the race? And you will re- member that these compositions of his have their life in the principles of music. Without this thej would not have been preserved, without this they could not have been set as they are in the depths of human feeling, and, what is more, they are in fact musical construc- tions ; for all poetry is deep in the rhythmic power of music. Indeed, you may see as you read these compo- sitions, line answering to line, the balancing and re- sponding of choirs, and hear their confluence in the repetitions of the chorus — nay, you may almost hear the ring of the cymbal, the blast of the cornet and the wail of the harp. Besides, it is a fact that the inspirations of prophets and seers, and probably those of David himself, were connected as improvisings with religious music. Thus Elisha said, bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him. So also w^e read that when Saul was seized wdth the spirit of prophecy, it was upon meeting a school of the prophets coming down a hill with a psaltery and a tabret and a pipe and a harp before them — -a fact in which we see that prophetic vision it- self, in the schools of the prophets, was a state of higher consciousness, opened and kindled by the elevations of religious music. Nor is this any thing remarkable, if we recognize the fact that God has made the substances of the world to crystallize and grow under laws of mu- sic ; so that strings and tubes of metal and wood and 454 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. voices opening in sound, shall speak a panharmonic language for whatever feeling struggles in the depths of the human bosom. Indeed what human being, I maj almost say, though it were better to say, what soul not closed against God by a life of sin, could hear the 24th Psalm properly delivered, in the grand choir of the temple service, without beginning to feel himself raised above himself, as if some power of prophecy were in him? So great, so mysteriously powerful, is the sway of music over the soul. TTe see this in things not religious. Many a song like the Marseilles Hymn has revolutionized an empire, or supported even for ages the nationality of a people. And what is it but the martial beat of music, acting on the yielding and thin element of common air, that lifts every foot of an army and rolls it onward with the precision of mechanism and the force of destiny through the fiery hail of death ? Or, what is it now that gives to a single person, a wo- man, greater power of impression over the feeling of mankind, power to sway more deeply the sense of whole nations, than any living man possesses, whether statesman or potentate, however distinguished by talent, however absolute in dominion ? It is in facts like these that we are to see what swav God desiorns to exert in human bosoms, throusrh the medium of this mvsterious force, this language of the heart, which he has appointed and set in a connection so immediate with our religious nature. But, in order to the hi eh result intended, the music of religion must be religious. There must be a distinc- RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 455 tion of sounds. As this language is given for the heart, it becomes a first principle that it must be of the heart, else it is an unknown tongue. And so true is this, that nothing can really fulfill the idea of religious music, which is not the breathing of true love and worship. Even instruments without life will not speak the true notes of power, unless the touch of faith is on them,) and the breath of holy feeling is in them — how much less the voice itself, whose very qualities of sound are inevitably toned by the secret feeling of the spirit. We speak of music as a science, which in one view it is. It is science in the arrangement, but in the exe- cution more. The imderstanding or head can utter no proper music, least of all religious music. The notes may be sounded in time and pitch and power, and yet the music will not be there. It might as well be im- agined that a man can be an eloquent speaker, because he has the science of speaking and gesture in his head, with all manner of facts, images and arguments at com- mand, as that one can pour out the true inspirations of worship before God, because he knows the gamut of music and the fingering of its instruments. A certain counterfeit may be made in this manner, but it will be a counterfeit — an uncertain sound that has not the true distinctions. You may say, it is well, it is beautiful music, but for some reason it will not find j^ou. Never will it be the proper language of feeling to the heart, till the spirit of adoration is in it. There will be a false quality in the sounds, something which says, "this is execution," some token of ambition, or affectation, or 456 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. eagerness of impression ; the solemnity will be hollow, the softness will be flat, the loudness a strain of the flesh. By one sign or another, what is done out of mere science will reveal its weakness and falsity. The true power of worship will be felt only as the true life of worship in the heart flows out through all notes and movements, and bathes the music in dews of heavenly moisture. When the soul is simple and God is templed in the inmost recesses of its feeling, then is there a quality in the voice and the touch, that reveals and communicates the inspired joy of the heart. And this is power. Even the most simple inartistic perform- ance, full of love to Grod and the unaffected devotion of worship, will carry a more profound impression, one of higher sublimity, than the highest feats of execution and the finest strains of amateur propriety, unkindled by the heavenly fire. There is great reason to suspect that the ofiice of a choir and of choral music is badly conceived in our modern assemblies of worship. The true idea of Chris- tian music involves what no mere drill or teaching can reach ; a choral consciousness, inward elevations, rhyth- mic sweeps of feeling, as if the music were using the choir and not they performing the music. Poetry can as w^ell be written w^ithout inspiration, as any song of the heart's faith or feeling sung by the will and the written concert of the book. It requires something back of the voice, which is higher in qualitj'-, a feeling chastened, softened, raised, purified, glorified, and this beating as a common pulse, a common inspiration, shall RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 467 I say, in the whole movement. To imagine that music of any kind can have its genuine power, without the feeling or above the feeling, is absurd. It supposes that music may be good as a lie — good as an expression when there is nothing to be expressed. Would that a choir could once be heard again on. earth, like that of the school of the prophets ; a choir that, with all the advantages of modern science, and the more perfect in- struments of modern invention, could improvise, in its feeling, the subject and sentiment of its song; pouring out a world's anthem — voices of life and things without life giving sound — to Him that made them all and hid in their mysterious mold powers of harmony to feel his touch and utter his praise. the deep senses of God and the soul and the soul's yearnings after God, that might be kindled thus and in awful joy expressed — kindled also as certainly as' they are expressed, in the listening multitudes who hear. This, at least, is the true idea of Christian music ; it is the music of the Spirit. It is not a something given secundem artem^ a touch of this and a flourish of that, or an indefinite piping and harping, which no one can tell whether it be this or that, but it is the voice of truth, love, duty, worship; a discoursing of heaven in the language of the heart. It streams into feeling as it streams out of feeling, and is to the spirit a holy bap- tism of sound. We read the singular history of David, when he takes his harp to comfort Saul and soothe his maddened brain, and perhaps we say it is impossible. But we do ^ S9 458 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. not conceive the truth. It would have been impossible, with so much wood and so many strings, if that were all, to accomplish any such result. The best overture, most artistically played, would have been powerless. But David is not here as an amateur player, he is here in a consciousness glorified by holy trust, playing forth his prayer of feeling, and his love is in the wood and the strings, and the spirit of God is sweeping as a gale through both him and them. Hence the power. In drawing this subject to a conclusion, I can not forbear to say a few words in regard to the very inti- mate connection of the sense of music and the cultiva- tion of that sense with the highest powers of genius and literary excellence. The talent of music, though in one view not intellectual, is yet in another even the more divinely intelligent. The language of the soul's feeling, we have seen, is in it, and nothing had ever yet any great power over man that was divorced from feeling. This divine principle of music breaks into the style of every good writer, every powerful speaker, and beats in rhythmic life in his periods. Even if he is rough and fierce, as he may be and as true genius often is, it will yet be the roughness of an inspired movement ; a wizard storm of sounds that rage in melody, not the dead jolting of cadences that have no inner life back of the wind-force that utters them. The talent of music is the possibility, in fact, of rhythm, of inspiration, and of all poetic life. A man may plod, plot, speculate and sneer, who has no fibred harp of music hid in • his RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 459 feeling; he may be a qualified atheist, usurer, dema- gogue, dogmatist or hangman ; but he can not be one that stirs men's blood divinely, whether in song or in speech, and is very little Hke to be much of a Christian. " Is there a heart that music can not melt? Alas ! how rugged is that heart forlorn. Is there who ne'er those mystic transports felt Of solitude and melancholy bom ? He needs not woo the muse, he is her scorn. The sophist robe of cobweb he shall twine, Mope o'er the schoolman's peevish page, or mourn And delve for life in mammon's dirty mine, Sneak with the scoundrel fox, or grunt with glutton swine." In these rather violent terms of the poet Beattie we have nevertheless a very certain truth, and one that, with proper allowance, may be said to hold generally. The finest fibre of soul and the highest inspiration of feeling can be formed only in some connection, more or less intimate, with a musical susceptibility and nurture. Hence, it is the more remarkable that our universities make so little of music. They labor at the rainbow and neglect the deeper mystery of the musical octave. They teach the laws of acoustics, but the laws of music, as related to what is deepest and finest in the soul's feeling, they do not attempt. They investigate the crystallization of a salt, but these wondrous and myste- rious crystallizations of the air, in the notes of music, they commonly pass by ; greatly to the loss, it seems to me, of those who are most concerned to receive what most pertains to the culture of the imagination and the heart. But I must not occupy too much time with points 460 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. that are separated from the religious interests of my subject. Some persons have a very decided prejudice against instruments of music, and even fancy that, on that account, they are more spiritual and more strictly Christian in their views of religion. Such a prejudice is greatly hurtful to themselves, because it takes them off in a kind of schism from this part of the worship, and a share in its benefits. Can they imagine that they are borne out in their prejudice by the Scripture? Or have they never read the Psalms of David ? What instrument was there which he did not bring into the temple and command to open its voice unto God? Even the trumpets, after a week's battle, must come and change their note to an anthem of victory. Imag- ine this great singer of Israel and the vast company of the Levites hearing, for the first time, in the temple of God, a newly invented organ, such as the instrument now perfected by modern art, such as the beautiful in- strument just now erected for your society. What emotions roll over his soul and the souls of his great choir of performers. No breath will blow ! No hand will strike the strings ! All the instruments and voices are dumb! He rises, when the experiment is over, and goes forth, saying in himself, ^'I will alter now my Psalms, I will say no more of trumpets and cornets, I will call no more for psalteries and instruments of ten strings. Profane all these and trivial ! But this is the instrument of God!" And so, in fact, it now is. The grandest of all instruments, it is, as it should be, the in- strument of religion. Profane uses can not handle it RELIGIOUS MUSIC. 461 It will not go to the battle, nor the dance, nor the sere- nade ; for it is the holy Nazarite and can not leave the courts of the Lord. What room is there for a reasona- ble prejudice against such an instrument? And if it be true, as I have been showing, that God has voiced the dead substances of the world to sing his praise, if he has made the round earth and all things in it to be an organ of sound about us, what should more delight us than to bring into concert with our voices an instru- ment that is the type of an appointment so sublime ? A true Christian feeling, it seems to me, wall ever turn thus to things without life giving sound, and hail their assistance in the praise of God ; finding half the sub- limity of praise, in the concert of the inanimate works of the Almighty Creator. It will even cry with David, to the fire and the hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind fulfilling His word, mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, to join their voice with his and praise the Lord. And what harm will it be if they join him in the shape of an organ? Let me also suggest, in this connection, the very great importance of the cultivation of religious music. Every family should be trained in it ; every Sunday or common school should have it as one of its exercises. The Moravians have it as a kind of ordinance of grace for the children ; not without reason, for the powers of feeling and imagination, and the sense of spiritual real- ities, are developed as much by a training of childhood in religious music, as by any other means. We com- plain that choirs and organs take the music to them- 39* 462 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. selves, in our churclies, and that nothing is left to the people, but to hear their undistinguishable piping, which no one else can join, or follow, or interpret. This must always be the complaint, till the congrega- tions themselves have exercise enough in singing to make the performance theirs. As soon as they are able to throw in masses of sound that are not barbarous but Christian, and have a right enjoyment of their feel- ing in it, they will have the tunes and the style of the exercise in their own way, not before. Entering, one day, the great church of Jesus, in Eome, when all the vast area of the pavement was covered with worshipers on their knees, chanting in full voice, led by the organ, their confession of penitence and praise to God, I was impressed, as never before, with the essential sublimity of this rite of worship, and I could not but wish that our people were trained to a similar exercise. The more sorrowful is it that, in our present defect of cul- ture, there are so many voices which are more incapa- ble of the right distinctions of sound, than things with- out life, and which, when they attempt to sing, contrib- ute more to the feeling of woe than of praise. I can not close without carrying your thoughts for- ward, a moment, to the scenes of the future life. It is sometimes made a question, how far the felicity of the blessed hereafter will consist in this particular exercise of worship. I allude not here to the low-minded and barbarous sneers of infidels, scoffing at the Christian heaven as a paradise of perpetual psalm, but to the se- rious doubts of Christian interpreters. It is not to be RELIGIOUS Mirsic. 463 denied, as many of them suggest, tliat our current rep- resentations of this subject are derived, in great part, if not wholly, from the Apocalypse or book of Eevela- tion. Neither can it be denied that the anthems of praise heard in heaven by the seer of Patmos, are vis- ional anthems, as the beasts and four and twenty elders are visional beings — representations above, that herald and connect with scenes of history to come on earth. And yet they encourage, it seems to me, the common impression, even if they do not reveal what is actually transacted in the world of the glorified. This, at least, we know, that souls are organs still of feeling, and if they have great feeling to express, it will be strange if they have not the language of feeling too. As to the sound that shall be, using the word in our present earthly sense, we of course know nothing, more than of the body that shall be. And yet there may be and is like to be a finer medium of sound, a more spiritual mu- sic, which the music of the earth only images or repre- sents, just as there is to be a finer organ of body, which our grosser body represents. And then, again, what have we in the fact that a law of music penetrates and fills this whole empire of being, making the known uni- verse itself an organ voiced for the expression of the heart, but a prophecy given, or a plain inference, that as hearts are eternal, so all realms of God to which the blessed go, are forever to thrill in ecstacies of sound. Besides, what is the joy of the glorified but a joy of so- ciety ; that is, of feeling expressed, society in pure and great feeling, immediate, spontaneous, universal ; propa- 464 RELIGIOUS MUSIC. ^-^