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JULIAN HAWTHORNE'S RECENT NOVELS. 
 
 Each in 1 vol. i2mo. $1.50. 
 
 Loye — or a Name. Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Fortune's Fool. 
 
 " Mr. Hawthorne has perhaps a more powerful imagination 
 than any contemporary writer of fiction. ... In ' Fortune's 
 Fool' this imagination shows best in his landscapes, in his 
 description of New England forests, and in the picture he gives 
 of the Sacramento Valley." — The Academy {London). 
 
 " Like most that he has written, there is a suggestion of depth 
 and intensity about it which is rare in modern fiction, and an 
 hereditary instinct for dealing with the lights and shadows of 
 the moral nature." — St. James's Gazette. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. 
 
 By Julian Hawthorne. With portraits newly engraved on 
 steel, and vignettes. 2 vols. i2mo. Cloth, $5; half mo- 
 rocco or half calf, $9. 
 
 " The fullest and most charming accounts of Hawthorne's an- 
 cestry and family; his boyhood and youth; his courtship and 
 marriage; his life at Salem, Lenox, and Concord; his travels 
 and residence in England and Italy; his later life in America; 
 and his chief works, and their motives and origins. An emi- 
 nent English author pronounces this ' the most important and 
 interesting biographical work since BosweWs Johnson? " 
 
 " The most charming biography of the year, pure and sweet 
 from beginning to end." — The Beacon {Boston). 
 
 Dr. Grimshawe's Secret. 
 
 By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Edited by Julian Haw- 
 thorne. 1 vol. i2mo. $1.50. Library edition with frontis- 
 piece and vignette. i6mo. Gilt top. $2.00. 
 
 " The marks of Hawthorne's genius are evident on every page. 
 The book is like a long-lost statue by the hand of Phidias." — 
 Philadelphia press. 
 
 For sale by Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of the 
 price, by the Publishers, 
 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY, Boston. 
 
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 ONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS 
 
 Ci 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIAN HAWTHORNE 
 
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 *£ 
 
 OCT 29 1886 
 
 V A 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
 
 1887 
 
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 ,v° x 
 
 Copyright, 1886, 
 By Ticknor and Company. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 tt'ZZVi 
 
 1 
 
 ELECTROTYPED BY 
 
 C. J. Peters & Son, Boston. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. A Preliminary Confession 9 
 
 II. Novels and Agnosticism 31 
 
 III. Americanism in Fiction 71 
 
 IY. Literature for Children 100 
 
 Y. The Moral Aim in Fiction 128 
 
 YI. The Maker of Many Books 140 
 
 YII. Mr. Mallock's Missing Science 163 
 
 YIII. Theodore Winthrop's Writings 172 
 
 IX. Emerson as an American 186 
 
 X. Modern Magic . 218 
 
 XI. American Wild Animals in Art ..... 248 
 
CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 
 
 In 1869, when I was about twenty-three years 
 old, I sent a couple of sonnets to the revived Put- 
 nam's Magazine. At that period I had no inten- 
 tion of becoming a professional writer : I was 
 studying civil engineering at the Polytechnic 
 School in Dresden, Saxony. Years before, I had 
 received parental warnings — unnecessary, as I 
 thought — against writing for a living. During 
 the next two years, however, when I was acting 
 as hydrographic engineer in the New York Dock 
 Department, I amused myself by writing a short 
 story, called "Love and Counter-Love," which was 
 published in Harper's Weekly, and for which I was 
 paid fifty dollars. "If fifty dollars can be so easily 
 earned," I thought, " why not go on adding to my 
 income in this way from time to time ? " I was 
 aided and abetted in the idea by the late Robert 
 
 9 
 
10 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 Carter, editor of Appletons* Journal; and the lat- 
 ter periodical and Harper's Magazine had the bur- 
 den, and I the benefit, of the result. When, in 
 1872, I was abruptly relieved from my duties in 
 the Dock Department, I had the alternative of 
 either taking my family down to Central America 
 to watch me dig a canal, or of attempting to live 
 by my pen. I bought twelve reams of large letter- 
 paper, and began my first work, — " Bressant." I 
 finished it in three weeks ; but prudent counsel- 
 lors advised me that it was too immoral to publish, 
 except in French : so I recast it, as the phrase is, 
 and, in its chastened state, sent it through the 
 post to a Boston publisher. It was lost on the 
 way, and has not yet been found. I was rather 
 pleased than otherwise at this catastrophe ; for I 
 had in those days a strange delight in rewriting 
 my productions: it was, perhaps, a more sensi- 
 ble practice than to print them. Accordingly, I 
 rewrote and enlarged " Bressant " in Dresden 
 (whither I returned with my family in 1872) ; but 
 — immorality aside — I think the first version was 
 the best of the three. On my way to Germany I 
 passed through London, and there made the ac- 
 quaintance of Henry S. King, the publisher, a 
 charming but imprudent man, for he paid me one 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 11 
 
 hundred pounds for the English copyright of my 
 novel: and the moderate edition he printed is, I 
 believe, still unexhausted. The book was received 
 in a kindly manner by the press ; but both in this 
 country and in England some surprise and indig- 
 nation were expressed that the son of his father 
 should presume to be a novelist. This sentiment, 
 whatever its bearing upon me, has undoubtedly 
 been of service to my critics : it gives them some- 
 thing to write about. A disquisition upon the man- 
 tle of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and an analysis of the 
 differences and similarities between him and his 
 successor, generally fill so much of a notice as to 
 enable the reviewer to dismiss the book itself very 
 briefly. I often used to wish, when, years after- 
 wards, I was myself a reviewer for the London 
 Spectator, that I could light upon some son of 
 his father who might similarly lighten my labors. 
 Meanwhile, I was agreeably astonished at what I 
 chose to consider the success of " Bressant," and 
 set to work to surpass it in another romance, called 
 (for some reason I have forgotten) "Idolatry." 
 This unknown book was actually rewritten, in 
 whole or in part, no less than seven times. Won 
 sum qualis eram. For seven or eight years past I 
 have seldom rewritten one of the many pages which 
 
12 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 circumstances have compelled me to inflict upon 
 the world. But the discipline of "Idolatry" prob- 
 ably taught me how to clothe an idea in words. 
 
 By the time " Idolatry " was published, the 
 year 1874 had come, and I was living in London. 
 From my note-books and recollections I compiled 
 a series of papers on life in Dresden, under the 
 general title of "Saxon Studies." Alexander 
 Strahan, then editor of the Contemporary Review, 
 printed them in that periodical as fast as I wrote 
 them, and they were reproduced in certain eclectic 
 magazines in this country, — until I asserted my 
 American copyright. Their publication in book 
 form was followed by the collapse of both the 
 English and the American firm engaging in that 
 enterprise. I draw no deductions from that fact : 
 I simply state it. The circulation of the " Studies " 
 was naturally small ; but one copy fell into the 
 hands of a Dresden critic, and the manner in which 
 he wrote of it and its author repaid me for the la- 
 bor of composition and satisfied me that I had not 
 done amiss. 
 
 After " Saxon Studies " I began another novel, 
 " Garth," instalments of which appeared from 
 month to month in Harper's Magazine. When it 
 had run for a year or more, with no signs of abate- 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 13 
 
 ment, the publishers felt obliged to intimate that 
 unless I put an end to their misery they would. 
 Accordingly, I promptly gave Garth his quietus. 
 The truth is, I was tired of him myself. With all 
 his qualities and virtues, he could not help being 
 a prig. He found some friends, however, and still 
 shows signs of vitality. I wrote no other novel for 
 nearly two years, but contributed some sketches 
 of English life to Appletons* Journal, and pro- 
 duced a couple of novelettes, — " Mrs. Gainsbor- 
 ough's Diamonds" and "Archibald Malmaison," 
 — which, by reason of their light draught, went 
 rather farther than usual. Other short tales, which 
 I hardly care to recall, belong to this period. I 
 had already ceased to take pleasure in writing for 
 its own sake, — partly, no doubt, because I was 
 obliged to write for the sake of something else. 
 Only those who have no reverence for literature 
 should venture to meddle with the making of it, — 
 unless, at all events, they can supply the demands 
 of the butcher and baker from an independent 
 source. 
 
 In 1879, " Sebastian Strome " was published as 
 a serial in All the Year Round. Charley Dickens, 
 the son of the great novelist, and editor of the 
 magazine, used to say to me while the story was 
 
14 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 in progress, " Keep that red-haired girl up to the 
 mark, and the story will do." I took a fancy to 
 Mary Dene myself. But I uniformly prefer my 
 heroines to my heroes ; perhaps because I invent 
 the former out of whole cloth, whereas the latter 
 are often formed of shreds and patches of men I 
 have met. And I never raised a character to the 
 position of hero without recognizing in him, be- 
 fore I had done with him, an egregious ass. Differ 
 as they may in other respects, they are all breth- 
 ren in that ; and yet I am by no means disposed 
 to take a Carlylese view of my actual fellow-crea- 
 tures. 
 
 I did some hard work at this time : I remember 
 once writing for twenty-six consecutive hours 
 without pausing or rising from my chair; and 
 when, lately, I re-read the story then produced, it 
 seemed quite as good as the average of my work 
 in that kind. I hasten to add that it has never 
 been printed in this country : for that matter, not 
 more than half my short tales have found an 
 American publisher. "Archibald Malmaison" 
 was offered seven years ago to all the leading pub- 
 lishers in New York and Boston, and was promptly 
 refused by all. Since its recent appearance here, 
 however, it has had a circulation larger perhaps 
 
A PEELIMINAKY C01STFESSI0N. 15 
 
 than that of all my other stories combined. But 
 that is one of the accidents that neither author nor 
 publisher can foresee. It was the horror of "Ar- 
 chibald MalmaisoD," not any literary merit, that 
 gave it vogue, — its horror, its strangeness, and its 
 brevity. 
 
 On Guy Fawkes's day, 1880, I began " Fortune's 
 Fool," — or " Luck," as it was first called, — and 
 wrote the first ten of the twelve numbers in three 
 months. I used to sit down to my table at eight 
 o'clock in the evening and write till sunrise. But 
 the two remaining instalments were not written 
 and published until 1883, and this delay and its 
 circumstances spoiled the. book. In the interval 
 between beginning and finishing it another long 
 novel — " Dust " — was written and published. I 
 returned to America in 1882, after an absence in 
 Europe far longer than I had anticipated or de- 
 sired. I trust I may never leave my native land 
 again for any other on this planet. 
 
 "Beatrix Randolph," "Noble Blood," and "Love 
 — or a Name," are the novels which I have writ- 
 ten since my return ; and I also published a biog- 
 raphy, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife." I 
 cannot conscientiously say that I have found the 
 literary profession — in and for itself — entirely 
 
16 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 agreeable. Almost everything that I have writ- 
 ten has been written from necessity ; and there is 
 very little of it that I shall not be glad to see for- 
 gotten. The true rewards of literature, for men of 
 limited calibre, are the incidental ones, — the val- 
 uable friendships and the charming associations 
 which it brings about. For the sake of these 
 I would willingly endure again many passages 
 of a life that has not been all roses ; not that I 
 would appear to belittle my own work : it does 
 not need it. But the present generation (in 
 America at least) does not strike me as containing 
 much literary genius. The number of undersized 
 persons is large and active, and we hardly believe 
 in the possibility of heroic stature. I cannot suffi- 
 ciently admire the pains we are at to make our 
 work — embodying the aims it does — immacu- 
 late in form. Form without idea is nothing, and 
 we have no ideas. If one of us were to get an 
 idea, it would create its own form, as easily as 
 does a flower or a planet. I think we take our- 
 selves too seriously : our posterity will not be 
 nearly so grave over us. For my part, I do not 
 write better than I do, because I have no ideas 
 worth better clothes than they can pick up for 
 themselves. " Whatever is worth doing at all is 
 
A PEELIMIKAEY CONFESSION. 17 
 
 worth doing with your best pains," is a saying 
 which has injured our literature more than any 
 other single thing. How many a lumber-closet 
 since the world began has been rilled by the re- 
 sults of this purblind and delusive theory ! But 
 this is not autobiographical, — save that to have 
 written it shows how little prudence my life has 
 taught me. 
 
 I remember wondering, in 1871, how anybody 
 could write novels. I had produced two or three 
 short stories ; but to expand such a thing until it 
 should cover two or three hundred pages seemed 
 an enterprise far beyond my capacity. Since then, 
 I have accomplished the feat only too often ; but 
 I doubt whether I have a much clearer idea than 
 before of the way it is done ; and I am certain of 
 never having done it twice in the same way. The 
 manner in which the plant arrives at maturity 
 varies according to the circumstances in which 
 the seed is planted and cultivated ; and the cul- 
 tivator, in this instance at least, is content to 
 adapt his action to whatever conditions happen 
 to exist. 
 
 While, therefore, it might be easy to formulate 
 a cut-and-dried method of procedure, which should 
 
18 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 be calculated to produce the best results by the 
 most efficient means, no such formula would truly 
 represent the present writer's actual practice. If I 
 ever attempted to map out my successive steps 
 beforehand, I never adhered to the forecast or 
 reached the anticipated goal. The characters de- 
 velop unexpected traits, and these traits become 
 the parents of incidents that had not been contem- 
 plated. The characters themselves, on the other 
 hand, cannot be kept to any preconceived charac- 
 teristics; they are, in their turn, modified by the 
 exigencies of the plot. 
 
 In two or three cases I have tried to make por- 
 traits of real persons whom I have known ; but 
 these persons have always been more lifeless than 
 the others, and most lifeless in precisely those fea- 
 tures that most nearly reproduced life. The best 
 results in this direction are realized by those char- 
 acters that come to their birth simultaneously with 
 the general scheme of the proposed events ; though 
 I remember that one of the most lifelike of my 
 personages (Madge, in the novel "Garth") was 
 not even thought of until the story of whicli she is 
 the heroine had been for some time under con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Speaking generally, I should suppose that the 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 19 
 
 best novels are apt to be those that have been long- 
 est in the novelist's mind before being committed 
 to paper; and the best materials to use, in the 
 way of character and scenery, are those that were 
 studied not less than seven or eight years previous 
 to their reproduction. Thereby is attained that 
 quality in a story known as atmosphere or tone, 
 perhaps the most valuable and telling quality of 
 all. Occasionally, however, in the rare case of a 
 story that suddenly seizes upon the writer's imagi- 
 nation and despotically "possesses" him, the at- 
 mosphere is created by the very strength of the 
 "possession." In the former instance, the writer 
 is thoroughly master of his subject ; in the latter, 
 the subject thoroughly masters him; and both 
 amount essentially to the same thing, harmony 
 between subject and writer. 
 
 With respect to style, there is little to be said. 
 Without a good style, no writer can do much ; but 
 it is impossible really to create a good style. A 
 writer's style was born at the same time and under 
 the same conditions that he himself was. The 
 only rule that can be given him is, to say what he 
 has to say in the clearest and most direct way, 
 using the most fitting and expressive words. But 
 often, of course, this advice is like that of the doc- 
 
20 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 tor who counsels his patient to free his mind from 
 all care and worry, to live luxuriously on the fat 
 of the land, and to make a voyage round the 
 world in a private yacht. The patient has not the 
 means of following the prescription. A writer 
 may improve a native talent for style; but the 
 talent itself he must either have by nature, or for- 
 ever go without. And the style that rises to the 
 height of genius is like the Phoenix; there is 
 hardly ever more than one example of it in an 
 age. 
 
 Upon the whole, I conceive that the best way 
 of telling how a novel may be written will be to 
 trace the steps by which some one novel of mine 
 came into existence, and let the reader draw his 
 own conclusions from the record. For this pur- 
 pose I will select one of the longest of my produc- 
 tions, " Fortune's Fool." 
 
 It is so long that, rather than be compelled to 
 read it over again, I would write another of equal 
 length ; though I hasten to add that neither con- 
 tingency is in the least probable. In very few 
 men is found the power of sustained conception 
 necessary to the successful composition of so pro- 
 lix a tale ; and certainly I have never betrayed 
 the ownership of such a qualification. The tale, 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 21 
 
 nevertheless, is an irrevocable fact ; and my pres- 
 ent business it is to be its biographer. 
 
 When, in the winter of 1879, the opportunity 
 came to write it, the central idea of it had been 
 for over a year cooking in my mind. It was orig- 
 inally derived from a dream. I saw a man who, 
 upon some occasion, caught a glimpse of a woman's 
 face. This face was, in his memory, the ideal of 
 beauty, purity, and goodness. Through many 
 years and vicissitudes he sought it ; it was his re- 
 ligion, a human incarnation of divine qualities. 
 
 At certain momentous epochs of his career, he 
 had glimpses of it again ; and the effect was al- 
 ways to turn him away from the wrong path and 
 into the right. At last, near the end of his life, 
 he has, for the first time, an opportunity of speak- 
 ing to this mortal angel and knowing her ; and 
 then he discovers that she is mortal indeed, and 
 chargeable with the worst frailties of mortality. 
 The moral was that any substitute for a purely 
 spiritual religion is fatal, and, sooner or later, re- 
 veals its rottenness. 
 
 This seemed good enough for a beginning ; but, 
 when I woke up, I was not long in perceiving that 
 it would require various modifications before be- 
 ing suitable for a novel ; and the first modifica- 
 
22 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 tions must be in the way of rendering the plot 
 plausible. What sort of a man, for example, must 
 the hero be to fall into and remain in such an 
 error regarding the character of the heroine ? He 
 must, I concluded, be a person of great simplicity 
 and honesty of character, with a strong tinge of 
 ideality and imagination, and with little or no 
 education. 
 
 These considerations indicated a person desti- 
 tute of known parentage, and growing up more 
 or less apart from civilization, but possessing by 
 nature an artistic or poetic temperament. Fore- 
 glimpses of the further development of the story 
 led me to make him the child of a wealthy English 
 nobleman, but born in a remote New England vil- 
 lage. His artistic proclivities must be inherited 
 from his father, who was, therefore, endowed with 
 a talent for amateur sketching in oils; which 
 talent, again, led him, during his minority, to 
 travel on the continent for purposes of artistic 
 study. While in Paris, this man, Floyd Vivian, 
 meets a young Frenchwoman, whom he secretly 
 marries, and with whom he elopes to America. 
 Then Vivian receives news of his fathers death, 
 compelling him to return to England; and he 
 leaves his wife behind him. 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 23 
 
 A child (Jack, the hero of the story) is born 
 during his absence, and the mother dies. Vivian, 
 now Lord Castleman, finds reason to believe that 
 his wife is dead, but knows nothing of the boy ; 
 and he marries again. The boy, therefore, is left 
 to grow up in the Maine woods, ignorant of his 
 parentage, but with one or two chances of finding 
 it out hereafter. So far, so good. 
 
 But now it was necessary to invent a heroine 
 for this hero. In order to make the construction 
 compact, I made her Jack's cousin, the daughter 
 of Lord Vivian's younger brother, who came into 
 being for that purpose. This brother (Murdock) 
 was a black sheep ; and his daughter, Madeleine, 
 was adopted by Lord Vivian, because I now per- 
 ceived that Lord Vivian's conscience was going to 
 trouble him with regard to his dead wife and her 
 possible child, and that he would make a pilgrim- 
 age to New England to settle his doubts, taking 
 Madeleine with him ; intending, if no child by the 
 first marriage were forthcoming, to make Made- 
 leine his heir ; for he had no issue by his second 
 marriage. This journey would enable Jack and 
 Madeleine to meet as children. But it was neces- 
 sary that they should have no suspicion of their 
 cousinship. Consequently, Lord Vivian, who alone 
 
24 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 could acquaint them with this fact, must die in the 
 very act of learning it himself. And what should 
 be the manner of his death ? 
 
 At first, I thought he should be murdered by 
 his younger brother; but I afterwards hit upon 
 another plan, that seemed less hackneyed and pro- 
 vided more interesting issues. Murdock should 
 arrive at the Maine village at the same time as 
 Lord Vivian, and upon the same errand, to get 
 hold of Lord Vivian's son, of whose existence he 
 had heard, and whom he wished to get out of the 
 way, in order that his own daughter, Madeleine, 
 might inherit the property. Murdock should find 
 Jack, and Jack, a mere boy, should kill him, 
 though not, of course, intentionally, or even con- 
 sciously (for which purpose the machinery of the 
 Witch's Head was introduced). 
 
 With Mur dock's death, the papers that he car- 
 ried, proving Jack's parentage, should disappear, 
 to be recovered long afterward, when they were 
 needed. Lord Vivian should quietly expire at the 
 same time, of heart disease (to which he was forth- 
 with made subject), and Madeleine should be left 
 temporarily to her own devices. Thus was brought 
 about her meeting with Jack in the cave. It was 
 their first meeting ; and Jack must remember her 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 25 
 
 face, so as to recognize her when they meet, years 
 later, in England. But, as it was beyond belief that 
 the girl's face should resemble the woman's enough 
 to make such a recognition possible, I devised the 
 miniature portrait of her mother, which Madeleine 
 gave to Jack for a keepsake, and which was the 
 image of what Madeleine herself should afterward 
 become. 
 
 Something more was needed, however, to com- 
 plete the situation ; and to meet this exigency, I 
 created M. Jacques Malgre*, the grandfather of 
 Jack, who had followed his daughter to America, 
 in the belief that she had been seduced by Vivian ; 
 who had brought up Jack, hating him for his 
 father's sake, and loving him for his mother's 
 sake ; and who dwelt year after year in the Maine 
 village, hoping some day to wreak his vengeance 
 upon the seducer. But when M. Malgre and 
 Vivian at last meet, this revenge is balked by the 
 removal of its supposed motive; Vivian having 
 actually married Malgre's daughter, and being 
 prepared to make Jack heir of Castlemere. Moral: 
 "'Vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord, 4 I will 
 repay.' " 
 
 The groundwork of the story was now suffi- 
 ciently defined. Madeleine and Jack were born 
 
26 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 and accounted for. They had met and made 
 friends with each other without either knowing 
 who the other was ; they were rival claimants for 
 the same property, and would hereafter contend 
 for it ; still, without identifying each other as the 
 little boy and girl that had met by chance in the 
 cave so long ago. In the meanwhile, there might 
 be personal meetings, in which they should recog- 
 nize each other as persons though not by name ; 
 and should thus be cementing their friendship as 
 man and woman, while, as Jack Vivian and 
 Madeleine, they were at open war in the courts 
 of law. 
 
 This arrangement would need careful handling 
 to render it plausible ; but it could be done. I am 
 now of opinion, however, that I should have done 
 well to have given up the whole fundamental idea 
 of the story, as suggested by the dream. The 
 dream had done its office when it had provided me 
 with characters and materials for a more probable 
 and less abstruse and difficult plot. All further 
 dependence upon it should then have been relin- 
 quished, and the story allowed to work out its 
 own natural and unforced conclusion. But it is 
 easy to be wise after the event ; and the event, at 
 this time, was still in the future. 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 27 
 
 As Madeleine was to be the opposite of the sin- 
 less, ideal woman that Jack was to imagine her to 
 be, it was necessary to subject her to some evil 
 influence ; and this influence was embodied in the 
 form of Bryan Sinclair, who, though an after- 
 thought, came to be the most powerful figure in 
 the story. But, before he would bring himself to 
 bear upon her, she must have reached womanhood; 
 and I also perceived that Jack must become a 
 man before the action of the story, as between him 
 and Madeleine, could continue. An interval of 
 ten or fifteen years must therefore occur ; and this 
 was arranged by sending Jack into the western 
 wilderness of California, and fixing the period as 
 just preceding the date of the California gold fever 
 of '49. 
 
 Jack and Bryan were to be rivals for Madeleine ; 
 but artistic considerations seemed to require that 
 they should first meet and become friends much 
 in the same way that Jack and Madeleine had 
 done. So I sent Bryan to California, and made 
 him the original discoverer of the precious 
 metal there ; brought him and Jack together ; 
 and finally sent them to England in each other's 
 company. Jack, of course, as yet knows nothing 
 of his origin, and appears in London society 
 
28 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 merely as a natural genius and a sculptor of wild 
 animals. 
 
 By this time, I had begun to make Madeleine's 
 acquaintance, and, in consequence, to doubt the 
 possibility of her becoming wholly evil, even under 
 the influence of Bryan Sinclair. There would be 
 a constant struggle between them ; she would love 
 him, but would not yield to him, though her life 
 and happiness would be compromised by his 
 means. He, on the other hand, would love her, 
 and he would make some effort to be worthy of 
 her ; but his other crimes would weigh him down, 
 until, at the moment when the battle cost her her 
 life, he should be destroyed by the incarnation of 
 his own wickedness, in the shape of Tom Berne. 
 
 This was not the issue that I had originally de- 
 signed, and, whether better or worse than that, 
 did not harmonize with what had gone before. 
 The story lacked wholeness and continuous vital- 
 ity. As a work of art, it was a failure. But I 
 did not realize this fact until it was too late, and 
 probably should not have known how to mend 
 matters had it been otherwise. One of the dan- 
 gers against which a writer has especially to guard 
 is that of losing his sense of proportion in the 
 conduct of a story. An episode that has little 
 
A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION. 29 
 
 relative importance maybe allowed undue weight, 
 because it seems interesting intrinsically, or be- 
 cause he has expended special pains upon it. It 
 is only long afterward, when he has become cool 
 and impartial, if not indifferent or disgusted, that 
 he can see clearly where the faults of construction 
 lie. 
 
 I need not go further into the details of the 
 story. Enough has been said to give a clew to 
 what might remain to say. I began to write it in 
 the winter of 1879-80, in London; and, in order to 
 avoid noise and interruption, it was my custom to 
 begin writing at eight in the evening, and con- 
 tinue at work until six or seven o'clock the next 
 morning. In three months I had written as far as 
 the 393d page, in the American edition. The re- 
 maining seventy pages were not completed, in 
 their published form, until about three years later, 
 an extraordinary delay, which did not escape cen- 
 sure at the time, and into the causes of which I 
 will not enter here. 
 
 The title of the story also underwent various 
 vicissitudes. The one first chosen was "Happy 
 Jack "; but that was objected to as suggesting, to 
 an English ear at least, a species of cheap Jack or 
 rambling peddler. The next title fixed upon was 
 
30 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 "Luck"; but before this could be copyrighted, 
 somebody published a story called "Luck, and 
 What Came of It," and thereby invalidated my 
 briefer version. For several weeks, I was at a loss 
 what to call it ; but one evening, at a representa- 
 tion of " Romeo and Juliet," I heard the exclama- 
 tion of Borneo, " Oh, I am fortune's fool ! " and 
 immediately appropriated it to my own needs. It 
 suited the book well enough, in more ways than 
 one. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 
 
 The novel of our times is susceptible of many 
 definitions. The American publishers of Railway- 
 libraries think that it is forty or fifty double- 
 column pages of pirated English fiction. Readers 
 of the "New York Ledger" suppose it to be a 
 romance of angelic virtue at last triumphant over 
 satanic villany. The aristocracy of culture de- 
 scribe it as a philosophic analysis of human char- 
 acter and motives, with an agnostic bias on the 
 analyst's part. Schoolboys are under the impres- 
 sion that it is a tale of Western chivalry and In- 
 dian outrage — price, ten cents. Most of us agree 
 in the belief that it should contain a brace or two 
 of lovers, a suspense, and a solution. 
 
 To investigate the nature of the novel in the 
 abstract would involve going back to the very 
 origin of things. It would imply the recognition 
 of a certain faculty of the mind, known as imagi- 
 nation ; and of a certain fact in history, called art. 
 
 31 
 
32 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Art and imagination are correlatives, — one im- 
 plies the other. Together, they may be said to 
 constitute the characteristic badge and vindication 
 of human nature; imagination is the badge, and 
 art is the vindication. Reason, which gets so much 
 vulgar glorification, is, after all, a secondary qual- 
 ity. It is posterior to imagination, — it is one of 
 the means by which imagination seeks to realize 
 its ends. Some animals reason, or seem to do so : 
 but the most cultivated ape or donkey has not yet 
 composed a sonnet, or a symphony, or "an ar- 
 rangement in green and yellow." Man still re- 
 tains a few prerogatives, although, like ^Esop's 
 stag, which despised the legs that bore it away 
 from the hounds, and extolled the antlers that 
 entangled it in the thicket, — so man often mag- 
 nifies those elements of his nature that least de- 
 serve it. 
 
 But, before celebrating art and imagination, we 
 should have a clear idea what those handsome 
 terms mean. In the broadest sense, imagination 
 is the cause of the effect we call progress. It 
 marks all forms of human effort towards a better 
 state of things. It embraces a perception of exist- 
 ing shortcomings, and an aspiration towards a 
 loftier ideal. It is, in fact, a truly divine force 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 33 
 
 in man, reminding him of his heavenly origin, and 
 stimulating him to rise again to the level whence 
 he fell. For it has glimpses of the divine Image 
 within or behind the material veil ; and its con- 
 stant impulse is to tear aside the veil and grasp 
 the image. The world, let us say, is a gross and 
 finite translation of an infinite and perfect Word; 
 and imagination is the intuition of that perfection, 
 born in the human heart, and destined forever to 
 draw mankind into closer harmony with it. 
 
 In common speech, however, imagination is de- 
 prived of this broader significance, and is restricted 
 to its relations with art. Art is not progress, 
 though progress implies art. It differs from pro- 
 gress chiefly in disclaiming the practical element. 
 You cannot apply a poem, a picture, or a strain of 
 music, to material necessities ; they are not food, 
 clothing, or shelter. Only after these physical 
 wants are assuaged, does art supervene. Its sphere 
 is exclusively mental and moral. But this defini- 
 tion is not adequate; a further distinction is 
 needed. For such things as mathematics, moral 
 philosophy, and political economy also belong to 
 the mental sphere, and yet they are not art. But 
 these, though not actually existing on the plane 
 of material necessities, yet do exist solely in order 
 
34 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 to relieve such necessities. Unlike beauty, they 
 are not their own excuse for being. Their em- 
 bodiment is utilitarian, that of art is aesthetic. 
 Political economy, for example, shows me how to 
 buy two drinks for the same price I used to pay 
 for one ; while art inspires me to transmute a 
 pewter mug into a Cellini goblet. My physical 
 nature, perhaps, prefers two drinks to one ; but, if 
 my taste be educated, and I be not too thirsty, I 
 would rather drink once from the Cellini goblet 
 than twice from the mug. Political economy 
 gravitates towards the material level; art seeks 
 incarnation only in order to stimulate anew the 
 same spiritual faculties that generated it. Art is 
 the production, by means of appearances, of the 
 illusion of a loftier reality ; and imagination is the 
 faculty which holds that loftier reality up for imi- 
 tation. 
 
 The disposition of these preliminaries brings us 
 once more in sight of the goal of our pilgrimage. 
 The novel, despite its name, is no new thing, but 
 an old friend in a modern dress. Ever since the 
 time of Cadmus, — ever since language began to 
 express thought as well as emotion, — men have 
 betrayed the impulse to utter in forms of literary 
 art, — in poetry and story, — their conceptions of 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 35 
 
 the world around them. According to many phil- 
 ologists, poetry was the original form of human 
 speech. Be that as it may, whatever flows into 
 the mind, from the spectacle of nature and of 
 mankind, that influx the mind tends instinctively 
 to reproduce, in a shape accordant with its pecul- 
 iar bias and genius. And those minds in which 
 imagination is predominant, impart to their repro- 
 ductions a balance and beauty which stamp them 
 as art. Art — and literary art especially — is 
 the only evidence we have that this universal 
 frame of things has relation to our minds, and is a 
 universe and not a poliverse. Outside revelation, 
 it is our best assurance of an intelligent purpose 
 in creation. 
 
 Novels, then, instead of being (as some persons 
 have supposed) a wilful and corrupt conspiracy 
 on the part of the evilly disposed, against the peace 
 and prosperity of the realm, may claim a most an- 
 cient and indefeasible right to existence. They, 
 with their ancestors and near relatives, constitute 
 Literature, — without which the human race would 
 be little better than savages. For the effect of 
 pure literature upon a receptive mind is some- 
 thing more than can be definitely stated. Like 
 sunshine upon a landscape, it is a kind of miracle. 
 
36 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 It demands from its disciple almost as much, as it 
 gives him, and is never revealed save to the disin- 
 terested and loving eye. In our best moments, it 
 touches us most deeply ; and when the sentiment 
 of human brotherhood kindles most warmly within 
 us, we discover in literature an exquisite answer- 
 ing ardor. "When everything that can be, has been 
 said about a true work of art, its finest charm re- 
 mains, — the charm derived from a source beyond 
 the conscious reach even of the artist. 
 
 The novel, then, must be pure literature; as 
 much so as the poem. But poetry — now that the 
 day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or tempo- 
 rarily eclipsed — appeals to a taste too exclusive 
 and abstracted for the demands of modern readers. 
 Its most accommodating metre fails to house our 
 endless variety of mood and movement; it exacts 
 from the student an exaltation above the custom- 
 ary level of thought and sentiment greater than he 
 can readily afford. The poet of old used to clothe 
 in the garb of verse his every observation on life 
 and nature ; but to-day he reserves for it only his 
 most ideal and abstract conceptions. The merit of 
 Cervantes is not so much that he laughed Spain's 
 chivalry away, as that he heralded the modern 
 novel of character and manners. It is the latest, 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 37 
 
 most pliable, most catholic solution of the old 
 problem, — how to unfold man to himself. It im- 
 proves on the old methods, while missing little of 
 their excellence. No one can read a great novel 
 without feeling that, from its outwardly prosaic 
 pages, strains of genuine poetry have ever and 
 anon reached his ears. It does not obtrude itself ; 
 it is not there for him who has not skill to listen 
 for it: but for him who has ears, it is like the 
 music of a bird, defining itself amidst the innu- 
 merable murmurs of the forest. 
 
 So, the ideal novel, conforming in every part to 
 the behests of the imagination, should produce, by 
 means of literary art, the illusion of a loftier real- 
 ity. This excludes the photographic method of 
 novel- writing. "That is a false effort in art," 
 says Goethe, towards the close of his long and 
 splendid career, "which, in giving reality to the 
 appearance, goes so far as to leave in it nothing 
 but the common, every-day actual." It is neither 
 the actual, nor Chinese copies of the actual, that 
 we demand of art. Were art merely the purveyor 
 of such things, she might yield her crown to the 
 camera and the stenographer ; and divine imagina- 
 tion would degenerate into vulgar inventiveness. 
 Imagination is incompatible with inventiveness, or 
 
38 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 imitation. Imitation is death, imagination is life. 
 Imitation is servitude, imagination is royalty. He 
 who claims the name of artist must rise to that 
 vision of a loftier reality — a more true because a 
 more beautiful world — which only imagination 
 can reveal. A truer world, — for the world of 
 facts is not and cannot be true. It is barren, in- 
 coherent, misleading. But behind every fact there 
 is a truth : and these truths are enlightening, uni- 
 fying, creative. Fasten your hold upon them, and 
 facts will become your servants instead of your 
 tyrants. No charm of detail will be lost, no home- 
 ly picturesque circumstance, no touch of human 
 pathos or humor; but all hardness, rigidity, and 
 finality will disappear, and your story will be not 
 yours alone,, but that of every one who feels and 
 thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; 
 but alas ! for this new gospel of the auctioneer's 
 catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a 
 pot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his 
 work of gradation and distinction. One fact, con- 
 sidered in itself, has no less importance than any 
 other ; a lump of charcoal is as valuable as a dia- 
 mond. But that is the philosophy of brute beasts 
 and Digger Indians. A child, digging on *the 
 beach, may shape a heap of sand into a similitude 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 39 
 
 of Vesuvius ; but is it nothing that Vesuvius tow- 
 ers above the clouds, and overwhelms Pompeii ? 
 
 In proceeding from the general to the particular, 
 — to the novel as it actually exists in England and 
 America, — attention will be confined strictly to 
 the contemporary outlook. The new generation 
 of novelists (by which is intended not those merely 
 living in this age, but those who actively belong 
 to it) differ in at least one fundamental respect 
 from the later representatives of the generation 
 preceding them. Thackeray and Dickens did not 
 deliberately concern themselves about a philoso- 
 phy of life. With more or less complacency, 
 more or less cynicism, they accepted the religious 
 and social canons which had grown to be the 
 commonplace of the first half of this century. 
 They pictured men and women, not as affected by 
 questions, but as affected by one another. The 
 morality and immorality of their personages were 
 of the old familiar Church-of-England sort ; there 
 was no speculation as to whether what had been 
 supposed to be wrong was really right, and vice 
 versd. Such speculations, in various forms and 
 degrees of energy, appear in the world periodi- 
 cally; but the public conscience during the last 
 
40 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 thirty or forty years had been gradually making 
 itself comfortable after the disturbances conse- 
 quent upon the French Revolution ; the theoretical 
 rights of man had been settled for the moment ; 
 and interest was directed no longer to the asser- 
 tion and support of these rights, but to the social 
 condition and character which were their out- 
 come. Good people were those who climbed 
 through reverses and sorrows towards the conven- 
 tional heaven; bad people were those who, in 
 spite of worldly and temporary successes and tri- 
 umphs, gravitated towards the conventional hell. 
 Novels designed on this basis in so far filled the 
 bill, as the phrase is : their greater or less excel- 
 lence depended solely on the veracity with which 
 the aspect, the temperament, and the conduct of 
 the dramatis personoe were reported, and upon the 
 amount of ingenuity wherewith the web of events 
 and circumstances was woven, and the conclusion 
 reached. Nothing more was expected, and, in gen- 
 eral, little or nothing more was attempted. Little 
 more, certainly, will be found in the writings 
 of Thackeray or of Balzac, who, it is commonly 
 admitted, approach nearest to perfection of any 
 novelists of their time. There was nothing gen- 
 uine or commanding in the metaphysical dilettan- 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 41 
 
 teisra of Bulwer : the philosophical speculations of 
 Georges Sand are the least permanently interest- 
 ing feature of her writings ; and the same might in 
 some measure be affirmed of George Eliot, whose 
 gloomy wisdom finally confesses its inability to do 
 more than advise us rather to bear those ills we 
 have than fly to others that we know not of. As 
 to Nathaniel Hawthorne, he cannot properly be in- 
 stanced in this connection ; for he analyzed chiefly 
 those parts of human nature which remain substan- 
 tially unaltered in the face of whatever changes of 
 opinion, civilization, and religion. The truth that 
 he brings to light is not the sensational fact of a 
 fashion or a period, but a verity of the human 
 heart, which may foretell, but can never be affected 
 by, anything which that heart may conceive. In 
 other words, Hawthorne belonged neither to this 
 nor to any other generation of writers further 
 than that his productions may be used as a test 
 of the inner veracity of all the rest. 
 
 But of late years a new order of things has been 
 coming into vogue, and the new novelists have 
 been among the first to reflect it ; and of these the 
 Americans have shown themselves among the 
 most susceptible. Science, or the investigation of 
 the phenomena of existence (in opposition to phil- 
 
42 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 osophy, the investigation of the phenomena of 
 being), has proved nature to be so orderly and 
 self-sufficient, and inquiry as to the origin of the 
 primordial atom so unproductive and quixotic, as 
 to make it convenient and indeed reasonable to 
 accept nature as a self-existing fact, and to let all 
 the rest — if rest there be — go. From this point 
 of view, God and a future life retire into the back- 
 ground; not as finally disproved, — because denial, 
 like affirmation, must, in order to be final, be logi- 
 cally supported ; and spirit is, if not illogical, at 
 any rate outside the domain of logic, — but as being 
 a hopelessly vague and untrustworthy hypothesis. 
 The Bible is a human book ; Christ was a gentle- 
 man, related to the Buddha and Plato families ; 
 Joseph was an ill-used man ; death, so far as we 
 have any reason to believe, is annihilation of per- 
 sonal existence ; life is — the predicament of the 
 body previous to death ; morality is the enlight- 
 ened selfishness of the greatest number ; civiliza- 
 tion is the compromises men make with one another 
 in order to get the most they can out of the world ; 
 wisdom is acknowledgment of these propositions ; 
 folly is to hanker after what may lie beyond the 
 sphere of sense. The supporter of these doctrines 
 by no means permits himself to be regarded as a 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 43 
 
 rampant and dogmatic atheist ; lie is simply the 
 modest and humble doubter of what he cannot 
 prove. He even recognizes the persistence of the 
 religious instinct in man, and caters to it by a 
 new religion suited to the times — the Religion of 
 Humanity. Thus he is secure at all points : for if 
 the religion of the Bible turn out to be true, his 
 disappointment will be an agreeable one ; and if it 
 turns out false, he will not be disappointed at all. 
 He is an agnostic — a person bound to be com- 
 placent whatever happens. He may indulge a 
 gentle regret, a musing sadness, a smiling pensive- 
 ness ; but he will never refuse a comfortable din- 
 ner, and always wear something soft next his skin, 
 nor can he altogether avoid the consciousness of 
 his intellectual superiority. 
 
 Agnosticism, which reaches forward into nihil- 
 ism on one side, and extends back into liberal 
 Christianity on the other, marks, at all events, a 
 definite turning-point from what has been to what 
 is to come. The human mind, in the course of 
 its long journey, is passing through a dark place, 
 and is, as it were, whistling to keep up its cour- 
 age. / It is a period of doubt : what it will result 
 in remains to be seen ; but analogy leads us to 
 infer that this doubt, like all others, will be sue- 
 
44 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 ceeded by a comparatively definite belief in some- 
 thing — no matter what. It is a transient state 
 — the interval between one creed and another. 
 The agnostic no longer holds to what is behind 
 him, nor knows what lies before, so he contents 
 himself with feeling the ground beneath his feet. 
 That, at least, though the heavens fall, is likely 
 to remain ; meanwhile, let the heavens take care 
 of themselves. It may be the part of valor to 
 champion divine revelation, but the better part 
 of valor is discretion, and if divine revelation 
 prove true, discretion will be none the worse off. 
 On the other hand, to champion a myth is to 
 make one's self ridiculous, and of being ridicu- 
 lous the agnostic has a consuming fear. From 
 the superhuman disinterestedness of the theory 
 of the Religion of Humanity, before which angels 
 might quail, he flinches not, but when it comes to 
 the risk of being laughed at by certain sagacious 
 persons he confesses that bravery has its limits. 
 He dares do all that may become an agnostic, — 
 who dares do more is none. 
 
 But, however open to criticism this phase of 
 thought may be, it is a genuine phase, and the 
 proof is the alarm and the shifts that it has 
 brought about in the opposite camp. "Estab- 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 45 
 
 lished" religion finds the foundation of her es- 
 tablishment undermined, and, like the lady in 
 Hamlet's play, she doth protest too much. In 
 another place, all manner of odd superstitions 
 and quasi-miracles are cropping up and gaining 
 credence, as if, since the immortality of the soul 
 cannot be proved by logic, it should be smuggled 
 into belief by fraud and violence — that is, by 
 the testimony of the bodily senses themselves. 
 Taking a comprehensive view of the whole field, 
 therefore, it seems to be divided between discreet 
 and supercilious skepticism on one side, and, on 
 the other, the clamorous jugglery of charlatanism. 
 The case is not really so bad as that : nihilists are 
 not discreet and even the Bishop of Eome is not 
 necessarily a charlatan. Nevertheless, the out- 
 look may fairly be described as confused and the 
 issue uncertain. And — to come without further 
 preface to the subject of this paper — it is with 
 this material that the modern novelist, so far as 
 he is a modern and not a future novelist, or a 
 novelist temporis acti, has to work. Unless a 
 man have the gift to forecast the years, or, at 
 least, to catch the first ray of the coming light, 
 he can hardly do better than attend to what is 
 under his nose. He may hesitate to identify him- 
 
46 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 self with agnosticism, but he can scarcely avoid 
 discussing it, either in itself or in its effects. He 
 must entertain its problems ; and the personages 
 of his story, if they do not directly advocate or 
 oppose agnostic views, must show in their lives 
 either confirmation or disproof of agnostic prin- 
 ciples. It is impossible, save at the cost of affec- 
 tation or of ignorance, to escape from the spirit 
 of the age. It is in the air we breathe, and, 
 whether we are fully conscious thereof or not, 
 our lives and thoughts must needs be tinctured 
 by it. 
 
 Now, art is creative; but Mephistopheles, the 
 spirit that denies, is destructive. A negative atti- 
 tude of mind is not favorable for the production 
 of works of art. The best periods of art have also 
 been periods of spiritual or philosophical convic- 
 tions. The more a man doubts, the more he disin- 
 tegrates and the less he constructs. He has in 
 him no central initial certainty round which all 
 other matters of knowledge or investigation may 
 group themselves in symmetrical relation. He may 
 analyze to his heart's content, but must be wary 
 of organizing. If creation is not of God, if nature 
 is not the expression of the contact between an 
 infinite and a finite being, then the universe and 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 47 
 
 everything in it are accidents, which might have 
 been otherwise or might have not been at all; 
 there is no design in them nor purpose, no divine 
 and eternal significance. This being conceded, 
 what meaning would there be in designing works 
 of art ? If art has not its prototype in creation, if 
 all that we see and do is chance, uninspired by a 
 controlling and forming intelligence behind or 
 within it, then to construct a work of art would 
 be to make something arbitrary and grotesque, 
 something unreal and fugitive, something out of 
 accord with the general sense (or nonsense) of 
 things, something with no further basis or warrant 
 than is supplied by the maker's idle and irrespon- 
 sible fancy. But since no man cares to expend 
 the trained energies of his mind upon the manu- 
 facture of toys, it will come to pass (upon the 
 accidental hypothesis of creation) that artists will 
 become shy of justifying their own title. They 
 will adopt the scientific method of merely collect- 
 ing and describing phenomena; but the phe- 
 nomena will no longer be arranged as parts or 
 developments of a central controlling idea, be- 
 cause such an arrangement would no longer seem 
 to be founded on the truth: the gratification 
 which it gives to the mind would be deemed illu- 
 
48 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 sory, the result of tradition and prejudice; or, in 
 other words, what is true being found no longer 
 consistent with what we have been accustomed to 
 call beauty, the latter would cease to be an object 
 of desire, though something widely alien to it 
 might usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of 
 independent right to be, and definable only as an 
 attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure 
 to-day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and 
 vice versd, according to our varying conception of 
 what truth is. 
 
 And, as a matter of fact, art already shows the 
 effects of the agnostic influence. Artists have be- 
 gun to doubt whether their old conceptions of 
 beauty be not fanciful and silly. They betray a 
 tendency to eschew the loftier flights of the imag- 
 ination, and confine themselves to what they call 
 facts. Critics deprecate idealism as something fit 
 only for children, and extol the courage of seeing 
 and representing things as they are. Sculpture is 
 either a stern student of modern trousers and 
 coat-tails or a vapid imitator of classic prototypes. 
 Painters try all manner of experiments, and shrink 
 from painting beneath the surface of their canvas. 
 Much of recent effort in the different branches of 
 art comes to us in the form of " studies," but the 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 49 
 
 complete work still delays to be born. We would 
 not so much mind having our old idols and crite- 
 rions done away with, were something new and 
 better, or as good, substituted for them. But ap- 
 parently nothing definite has yet been decided on. 
 Doubt still reigns, and, once more, doubt is not 
 creative. One of two things must presently hap- 
 pen. The time will come when we must stop 
 saying that we do not know whether or not God, 
 and all that God implies, exists, and affirm defi- 
 nitely and finally either that he does not exist or 
 that he does. That settled, we shall soon see 
 what will become of art. If there is a God, he 
 will be understood and worshipped, not super- 
 stitiously and literally as heretofore, but in a new 
 and enlightened spirit ; and an art will arise com- 
 mensurate with this new and loftier revelation. 
 If there is no God, it is difficult to see how art can 
 have the face to show herself any more. There is 
 no place for her in the Religion of Humanity ; to 
 be true and living she can be nothing which it has 
 thus far entered into the heart of man to call 
 beautiful ; and she could only serve to remind us 
 of certain vague longings and aspirations now 
 proved to be as false as they were vain. Art is 
 not an orchid : it cannot grow in the air. Unless 
 
50 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 its root can be traced as deep down as Yggdrasil, 
 it will wither and vanish, and be forgotten as it 
 ought to be ; and as for the cowslip by the river's 
 brim, a yellow cowslip it shall be, and nothing 
 more ; and the light that never was on sea or land 
 shall be permanently extinguished, in the interests 
 of common sense and economy, and (what is least 
 inviting of all to the unregenerate mind) we shall 
 speedily get rid of the notion that we have lost 
 anything worth preserving. 
 
 This, however, is only what may be, and our 
 concern at present is with things as they are. It 
 has been observed that American writers have 
 shown themselves more susceptible of the new in- 
 fluences than most others, partly no doubt from a 
 natural sensitiveness of organization, but in some 
 measure also because there are with us no ruts 
 and fetters of old tradition from which we must 
 emancipate ourselves before adopting anything 
 new. We have no past, in the European sense, 
 and so are ready for whatever the present or the 
 future may have to suggest. Nevertheless, the 
 novelist who, in a larger degree than any other, 
 seems to be the literary parent of our own best 
 men of fiction, is himself not an American, nor 
 even an Englishman, but a Russian — Turgue- 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 51 
 
 niefL His series of extraordinary novels, trans- 
 lated into English and French, is altogether the 
 most important fact in the literature of fiction of 
 the last twelve years. To read his books you 
 would scarcely imagine that their author could 
 have had any knowledge of the work of his prede- 
 cessors in the same field. Originality is a term 
 indiscriminately applied, and generally of trifling 
 significance, but so far as any writer may be orig- 
 inal, Turgue'nieff is so. He is no less original in 
 the general scheme and treatment of his stories 
 than in their details. Whatever he produces has 
 the air of being the outcome of his personal expe- 
 rience and observation. He even describes his 
 characters, their aspect, features, and ruling traits, 
 in a novel and memorable manner. He seizes on 
 them from a new point of vantage, and uses 
 scarcely any of the hackneyed and conventional 
 devices for bringing his portraits before our 
 minds ; yet no writer, not even Carlyle, has been 
 more vivid, graphic, and illuminating than he. 
 Here are eyes that owe nothing to other eyes, but 
 examine and record for themselves. Having once 
 taken up a character he never loses his grasp on 
 it : on the contrary, he masters it more and more, 
 and only lets go of it when the last recesses of its 
 
52 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 organism have been explored. In the quality and 
 conduct of his plots he is equally unprecedented. 
 His scenes are modern, and embody characteristic 
 events and problems in the recent history of Rus- 
 sia. There is in their arrangement no attempt at 
 symmetry, nor poetic justice. Temperament and 
 circumstances are made to rule, and against their 
 merciless fiat no appeal is allowed. Evil does evil 
 to the end; weakness never gathers strength; 
 even goodness never varies from its level : it suf- 
 fers, but is not corrupted ; it is the goodness of 
 instinct, not of struggle and aspiration; it hap- 
 pens to belong to this or that person, just as his 
 hair happens to be black or brown. Everything 
 in the surroundings and the action is to the last 
 degree matter-of-fact, commonplace, inevitable ; 
 there are no picturesque coincidences, no provi- 
 dential interferences, no desperate victories over 
 fate ; the tale, like the world of the materialist, 
 moves onward from a predetermined beginning to 
 a helpless and tragic close. And yet few books 
 have been written of deeper and more permanent 
 fascination than these. Their grim veracity ; the 
 creative sympathy and steady dispassionateness of 
 their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of 
 motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 53 
 
 surpassed by none. This earnestness is worth 
 dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness 
 to the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism 
 of the enthusiast. It is the concentration of a 
 broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its un- 
 stinted energies to depicting certain aspects of 
 society and civilization, which are powerfully rep- 
 resentative of the tendencies of the day. " Here 
 is the unvarnished fact — give heed to it! " is the 
 unwritten motto. .The author avoids betraying, 
 either explicitly or implicitly, the tendency of his 
 own sympathies ; not because he fears to have 
 them known, but because he holds it to be his 
 office simply to portray, and to leave judgment 
 thereupon where, in any case, it must ultimately 
 rest — with the world of his readers. He tells us 
 what is ; it is for us to consider whether it also 
 must be and shall be. Turguenieff is an artist by 
 nature, yet his books are not intentionally works 
 of art; they are fragments of history, differing 
 from real life only in presenting such persons and 
 events as are commandingly and exhaustively 
 typical, and excluding all others. This faculty of 
 selection is one of the highest artistic faculties, 
 and it appears as much in the minor as in the 
 major features of the narrative. It indicates that 
 
54 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Turguenieff might, if he chose, produce a story as 
 faultlessly symmetrical as was ever framed. Why, 
 then, does he not so choose? The reason can only 
 be that he deems the truth-seeming of his narra- 
 tive would thereby be impaired. " He is only 
 telling a story," the reader would say, "and he 
 shapes the events and persons so as to fit the 
 plot." But is this reason reasonable ? To those 
 who believe that God has no hand in the ordering 
 of human affairs, it undoubtedly is reasonable. 
 To those who believe the contrary, however, it 
 appears as if the story of no human life or com- 
 plex of lives could be otherwise than a rounded 
 and perfect work of art — provided only that the 
 spectator takes note, not merely of the superficial 
 accidents and appearances, but also of the under- 
 lying divine purpose and significance. The ab- 
 sence of this recognition in Turguenieff 's novels 
 is the explanation of them : holding the creed 
 their author does, he could not have written them 
 otherwise ; and, on the other hand, had his creed 
 been different, he very likely would not have writ- 
 ten novels at all. 
 
 The pioneer, in whatever field of thought or ac- 
 tivity, is apt to be also the most distinguished fig- 
 ure therein. The consciousness of being the first 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 55 
 
 augments the keenness of his impressions, and a 
 mind that can see and report in advance of others 
 a new order of things may claim a finer organiza- 
 tion than the ordinary. The vitality of nature 
 animates him who has insight to discern her at 
 first hand, whereas his followers miss the fresh- 
 ness of the morning, because, instead of discover- 
 ing, they must be content to illustrate and refine. 
 Those of our writers who betray Turguenieff's 
 influence are possibly his superiors in finish and 
 culture, but their faculty of convincing and pre- 
 senting is less. Their interest in their own work 
 seems less serious than his ; they may entertain 
 us more, but they do not move and magnetize so 
 much. The persons and events of their stories 
 are conscientiously studied, and are nothing if not 
 natural; but they lack distinction. In an epitome 
 of life so concise as the longest novel must needs 
 be, to use any but types is waste of time and 
 space. A typical character is one who combines 
 the traits or beliefs of a certain class to which he 
 is affiliated — who is, practically, all of them and 
 himself besides; and, when we know him, there 
 is nothing left worth knowing about the others. 
 In Shakespeare's Hamlet and Enobarbus, in 
 Fielding's Squire Western, in Walter Scott's 
 
56 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Edie Ochiltree and Meg Merrilies, in Balzac's 
 Pere Goriot and Madame Marneff, in Thackeray's 
 Colonel Newcome and Becky Sharp, in Turgue- 
 niefFs Bazarof and Dimitri Roudine, we meet 
 persons who exhaust for us the groups to which 
 they severally belong. Bazarof, the nihilist, for 
 instance, reveals to us the motives and influences 
 that have made nihilism, so that we feel that noth- 
 ing essential on that score remains to be learnt. 
 
 The ability to recognize and select types is a 
 test of a novelist's talent and experience. It 
 implies energy to rise above the blind walls of 
 one's private circle of acquaintance ; the power 
 to perceive what phases of thought and existence 
 are to be represented as well as who represents 
 them ; the sagacity to analyze the age or the 
 moment and reproduce its dominant features. 
 The feat is difficult, and, when done, by no means 
 blows its own trumpet. On ' the contrary, the 
 reader must open his eyes to be aware of it. 
 He finds the story clear and easy of comprehen- 
 sion ; the characters come home to him familiarly 
 and remain distinctly in his memory; he under- 
 stands something which was, till now, vague to 
 him: but he is as likely to ascribe this to an 
 exceptional lucidity in his own mental condition 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 57 
 
 as to any special merit in the author. Indeed, 
 it often happens that the author who puts out-of- 
 the-way personages into his stories — characters 
 that represent nothing but themselves, or pos- 
 sibly some eccentricity of invention on their 
 author's part, will gain the latter a reputation 
 for cleverness higher than his fellow's who por- 
 trays mankind in its masses as well as in its de- 
 tails. But the finest imagination is not that 
 which evolves strange images, but that which 
 explains seeming contradictions, and reveals the 
 unity within the difference and the harmony 
 beneath the discord. 
 
 Were we to compare our fictitious literature, 
 as a whole, with that of England, the balance 
 must be immeasurably on the English side. Even 
 confining ourselves to to-day, and to the prospect 
 of to-morrow, it must be conceded that, in settled 
 method, in guiding tradition, in training and 
 associations both personal and inherited, the aver- 
 age English novelist is better circumstanced than 
 the American. Nevertheless, the English novel- 
 ist is not at present writing better novels than 
 the American. The reason seems to be that he 
 uses no material which has not been in use for 
 hundreds of years ; and to say that such material 
 
58 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 begins to lose its freshness is not putting the case 
 too strongly. He has not been able to detach 
 himself from the paralyzing background of Eng- 
 lish conventionality. The vein was rich, but it 
 is worn out ; and the half-dozen pioneers had all 
 the luck. 
 
 There is no commanding individual imagination 
 in England — nor, to say the truth, does there 
 seem to be any in America. But we have what 
 they have not — a national imaginative tendency. 
 There are no fetters upon our fancy; and, how- 
 ever deeply our real estate may be mortgaged, 
 there is freedom for our ideas. England has not 
 yet appreciated the true inwardness of a favorite 
 phrase of ours, — a new deal. And yet she is 
 tired to death of her own stale stories ; and 
 when, by chance, any one of her writers happens 
 to chirp out a note a shade different from the 
 prevailing key, the whole nation pounces down 
 upon him, with a shriek of half-incredulous joy, 
 and buys him up, at the rate of a million copies 
 a year. Our own best writers are more read in 
 England, or, at any rate, more talked about, than 
 their native crop ; not so much, perhaps, because 
 they are different as because their difference is 
 felt to be of a significant and typical kind. It 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 59 
 
 has in it a gleam of the new day. They are 
 realistic ; but realism, so far as it involves a faith- 
 ful study of nature, is useful. The illusion of 
 a loftier reality, at which we should aim, must 
 be evolved from adequate knowledge of reality 
 itself. The spontaneous and assured faith, which 
 is the mainspring of sane imagination, must be 
 preceded by the doubt and rejection of what is 
 lifeless and insincere. We desire no resurrection 
 of the Ann RadclyfTe type of romance : but the 
 true alternative to this is not such a mixture of 
 the police gazette and the medical reporter as 
 Emile Zola offers us. So far as Zola is conscien- 
 tious, let him live ; but, in so far as he is revolt- 
 ing, let him die. Many things in the world seem 
 ugly and purposeless; but to a deeper intelli- 
 gence than* ours, they are a part of beauty and 
 design. What is ugly and irrelevant, can never 
 enter, as such, into a work of art; because the 
 artist is bound, by a sacred obligation, to show 
 us the complete curve only, — never the undevel- 
 oped fragments. 
 
 But were the firmament of England still illu- 
 minated with her Dickenses, her Thackerays, 
 and her Brontes, I should still hold our state to 
 be fuller of promise than hers. It may be ad- 
 
60 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 mitted that almost everything was against our 
 producing anything good in literature. Our men, 
 in the first place, had to write for nothing; be- 
 cause the publisher, who can steal a readable 
 English novel, will not pay for an American 
 novel, for the mere patriotic gratification of ena- 
 bling its American author to write it. In the 
 second place, they had nothing to write about, 
 for the national life was too crude and hetero- 
 geneous for ordinary artistic purposes. Thirdly, 
 they had no one to write for : because, although, 
 in one sense, there might be readers enough, in a 
 higher sense there wer*e scarcely any, — that is to 
 say, there was no organized critical body of liter- 
 ary opinion, from which an author could confi- 
 dently look to receive his just meed of encourage- 
 ment and praise. Yet, in spite of all this, and not 
 to mention honored names that have ceased or are 
 ceasing to cast their living weight into the scale, 
 we are contributing much that is fresh and orig- 
 inal, and something, it may be, that is of perma- 
 nent value, to literature. We have accepted the 
 situation ; and, since no straw has been vouch- 
 safed us to make our bricks with, we are trying 
 manfully to make them without. 
 
 It will not be necessary, however, to call 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 61 
 
 the roll of all the able and popular gentle- 
 men who are contending in the forlorn hope 
 against disheartening odds ; and as for the ladies 
 who have honored our literature by their con- 
 tributions, it will perhaps be well to adopt 
 regarding them a course analogous to that which 
 Napoleon is said to have pursued with the letters 
 sent to him while in Italy. He left them 
 unread until a certain time had elapsed, and 
 then found that most of them no longer needed 
 attention. We are thus brought face to face with 
 the two men with whom every critic of American 
 novelists has to reckon ; ' who represent what is 
 carefullest and newest in American fiction ; and 
 it remains to inquire how far their work has been 
 moulded by the skeptical or radical spirit of which 
 Turgue'nieff: is the chief exemplar. 
 
 The author of "Daisy Miller " had been writing 
 for several years before the bearings of his course 
 could be confidently calculated. Some of his 
 earlier tales, — as, for example, "The Madonna 
 of the Future," — while keeping near- reality on 
 one side, are on the other eminently fanciful and 
 ideal. He seemed to feel the attraction of fairy- 
 land, but to lack resolution to swallow it whole ; 
 so, instead of idealizing both persons and plot, as 
 
62 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Hawthorne had ventured to do, he tried to per- 
 suade real persons to work out an ideal destiny. 
 But the tact, delicacy, and reticence with which 
 these : attempts were made did not blind him to 
 the essential incongruity ; either realism or ideal- 
 ism had to go, and step by step he dismissed the 
 latter, until at length TurgueniefFs current 
 caught him. By this time, however, his culture 
 had become too wide, and his independent views 
 too confirmed, to admit of his yielding uncondi- 
 tionally to the great Russian. Especially his 
 critical familiarity with French literature opera- 
 ted to broaden, if at the same time to render less 
 trenchant, his method and expression. His char- 
 acters are drawn with fastidious care, and closely 
 follow the tones and fashions of real life. Each 
 utterance is so exactly like what it ought to be 
 that the reader feels the same sort of pleased sur- 
 prise as is afforded by a phonograph which re- 
 peats, with all the accidental pauses and inflec- 
 tions, the speech spoken into it. Yet the words 
 come through a medium ; they are not quite spon- 
 taneous ; these figures have not the sad, human 
 inevitableness of Turguenieffs people. The rea- 
 son seems to be (leaving the difference between 
 the genius of the two writers out of account) that 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 63 
 
 the American, unlike the Russian, recognizes no 
 tragic importance in the situation. To the latter, 
 the vision of life is so ominous that his voice 
 waxes sonorous and terrible ; his eyes, made keen 
 by foreboding, see the leading elements of the 
 conflict, and them only ; he is no idle singer of 
 an empty day, but he speaks because speech 
 springs out of him. To his mind, the foundations 
 of human welfare are in jeopardy, and it is full 
 time to decide what means may avert the danger. 
 But the American does not think any cataclysm 
 is impending, or if any there be, nobody can help 
 it. The subjects that best repay attention are 
 the minor ones of civilization, culture, behavior ; 
 how to avoid certain vulgarities and follies, how 
 to inculcate certain principles : and to illustrate 
 these points heroic types are not needed. In 
 other words, the situation being unheroic, so must 
 the actors be ; for, apart from the inspirations of 
 circumstances, Napoleon no more than John 
 Smith is recognizable as a hero. 
 
 Now, in adopting this view, a writer places him- 
 self under several manifest disadvantages. If 
 you are to be an agnostic, it is better (for novel- 
 writing purposes) not to be a complacent or re- 
 signed one. Otherwise your characters will find 
 
64 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 it difficult to show what is in them. A man re- 
 veals and classifies himself in proportion to the 
 severity of the condition or action required of 
 him , hence the American novelist's people are in 
 considerable straits to make themselves ade- 
 quately known to us. They cannot lay bare 
 their inmost soul over a cup of tea or a picture 
 by Cor8t ; so, in order to explain themselves, they 
 must not only submit to dissection at the author's 
 hands, but must also devote no little time and 
 ingenuity to dissecting themselves and one an- 
 other. But dissection is one thing, and the living 
 word rank from the heart and absolutely reeking 
 of the human creature that uttered it — the word 
 that Turguenieff's people are constantly uttering — 
 is another. Moreover, in the dearth of command- 
 ing traits and stirring events, there is a continual 
 temptation to magnify those which are petty and 
 insignificant. Instead of a telescope to sweep the 
 heavens, we are furnished with a microscope to 
 detect infusoria. We want a description of a 
 mountain; and, instead of receiving an outline, 
 naked and severe, perhaps, but true and impres- 
 sive, we are introduced to a tiny field on its 
 immeasurable side, and we go botanizing and 
 insect-hunting there. This is realism ; but it is 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 65 
 
 the realism of texture, not of form and relation. 
 It encourages our glance to be near-sighted in- 
 stead of comprehensive. Above all, there is a 
 misgiving that we do not touch the writer's true 
 quality, and that these scenes of his, so elabo- 
 rately and conscientiously prepared, have cost him 
 much thought and pains, but not one throb of 
 the heart or throe of the spirit. The experiences 
 that he depicts have not, one fancies, marked 
 wrinkles on his forehead or turned his hair gray. 
 There are two kinds of reserve — the reserve 
 which feels that its message is too mighty for it,. 
 and the reserve which feels that it is too mighty 
 for its message. Our new school of writers is 
 reserved, but its reserve does not strike one as 
 being of the former kind. It cannot be said 
 of any one of Mr. James's stories, u This is his 
 best," or " This is his worst," because no one of 
 them is all one way. They have their phases of 
 strength and veracity, and, also, phases that are 
 neither veracious nor strong. The cause may 
 either lie in a lack of experience in a cer- 
 tain direction on the writer's part ; or else in 
 his reluctance to write up to the experience he 
 has. The experience in question is not of the 
 ways of the world, — concerning which Mr. James 
 
66 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 lias every sign of being politely familiar, — nor 
 of men and women in their every-day aspect; 
 still less of literary ways and means, for of 
 these, in his own line, he is a master. The 
 experience referred to is experience of passion. 
 If Mr. James be not incapable of describing 
 passion, at all events he has still to show that he 
 is capable of it. He has introduced us to many 
 characters that seem to have in them capacity for 
 the highest passion, — as witness Christina Light, 
 — and yet he has never allowed them an oppor- 
 tunity to develop it. He seems to evade the situ- 
 ation ; but the evasion is managed with so much 
 plausibility that, although we may be disap- 
 pointed, or even irritated, and feel, more or less 
 vaguely, that we have been unfairly dealt with, 
 we .are unable to show exactly where or how the 
 unfairness comes in. Thus his novels might be 
 compared to a beautiful face, full of culture and 
 good breeding, but lacking that fire of the eye 
 and fashion of the lip that betray a living human 
 soul. 
 
 The other one of the two writers whose names 
 are so often mentioned together, seems to have 
 taken up the subject of our domestic and social 
 pathology ; and the minute care and conscientious 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 67 
 
 veracity which he has brought to bear u r on his 
 work has not been surpassed, even by Shake- 
 speare. But, if I could venture a criticism upon 
 his productions, it would be to the effect that 
 there is not enough fiction in them. They are 
 elaborate and amiable reports of what we see 
 around us. They are not exactly imaginative, — 
 in the sense in which I have attempted to define 
 the word. There are two ways of warning a man 
 against unwholesome life — one is, to show him a 
 picture of disease ; the other is, to show him a 
 picture of health. The former is the negative, 
 the latter the positive treatment. Both have 
 their merits ; but the latter is, perhaps, the better 
 adapted to novels, the former to essays. A novel- 
 ist should not only know what he has got ; he 
 should also know what he wants. His mind 
 should have an active, or theorizing, as well 
 as a passive, or contemplative, side. He should 
 have energy to discount the people he person- 
 ally knows ; the power to perceive what phases 
 of thought are to be represented, as well as 
 to describe the persons who happen to be their 
 least inadequate representatives ; the sagacity 
 to analyze the age or the moment, and to re- 
 veal its tendency and meaning. Mr. Ho wells 
 
68 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 has produced a great deal of finely wrought tapes- 
 try ; but does not seem, as yet, to have found a 
 hall fit to adorn it with. 
 
 And yet Mr. James and Mr. Howells have done 
 more than all the rest of us to make our literature 
 respectable during the last ten years. If texture 
 be the object, they have brought texture to a fine- 
 ness never surpassed anywhere. They have dis- 
 covered charm and grace in much that was only 
 blank before. They have detected and described 
 points of human nature hitherto unnoticed, which, 
 if not intrinsically important, will one day be 
 made auxiliary to the production of pictures of 
 broader as well as minuter veracity than have 
 heretofore been produced. All that seems want- 
 ing thus far is a direction, an aim, a belief. Ag- 
 nosticism has brought about a pause for a while, 
 and no doubt a pause is preferable to some kinds 
 of activity. It may enable us, when the time 
 comes to set forward again, to do so with better 
 equipment and more intelligent purpose. It will 
 not -do to be always at a prophetic heat of enthusi- 
 asm, sympathy, denunciation: the coolly critical 
 mood is also useful to prune extravagance and 
 promote a sense of responsibility. The novels of 
 Mr. James and of Mr. Howells have taught us that 
 
NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM. 69 
 
 men and women are creatures of infinitely compli- 
 cated structure, and that even the least of these 
 complications, if it is portrayed at all, is worth 
 portraying truthfully. But we cannot forget, on 
 the other hand, that honest emotion and hearty 
 action are necessary to the wholesomeness of soci- 
 ety, because in their absence society is afflicted 
 with a lamentable sameness and triviality ; the 
 old primitive impulses remain, but the food on 
 which they are compelled to feed is insipid and 
 unsustaining ; our eyes are turned inward instead 
 of outward, and each one of us becomes himself 
 the Rome towards which all his roads lead. Such 
 books as these authors have written are not the 
 Great American Novel, because they take life and 
 humanity not in their loftier, but in their lesser 
 manifestations. They are the side scenes and the 
 background of a story that has yet to be written. 
 That story will have the interest not only of the 
 collision of private passions and efforts, but of the 
 great ideas and principles which characterize and 
 animate a nation. It will discriminate between 
 what is accidental and what is permanent, be- 
 tween what is realistic and what is real, between 
 what is sentimental and what is sentiment. It 
 will show us not only what we are, but what we 
 
70 m CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 are to be ; not only what to avoid, but what to do. 
 It will rest neither in the tragic gloom of Turgue- 
 nieff, nor in the critical composure of James, nor 
 in the gentle deprecation of Howells, but will de- 
 monstrate that the weakness of man is the motive 
 and condition of his strength. It will not shrink 
 from romance, nor from ideality, nor from artistic 
 completeness, because it will know at what depths 
 and heights of life these elements are truly opera- 
 tive. It will be American, not because its scene 
 is laid or its characters born in the United States, 
 but because its burden will be reaction against old 
 tyrannies and exposure of new hypocrisies ; a ref- 
 utation of respectable falsehoods, and a procla- 
 mation of unsophisticated truths. Indeed, let us 
 take heed and diligently improve our native tal- 
 ent, lest a day come when the Great American 
 Novel make its appearance, but written in a for- 
 eign language, and by some author who — how- 
 ever purely American at heart — never set foot on 
 the shores of the Republic. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 
 
 Contemporary criticism will have it that, in 
 order to create an American Literature, we must 
 use American materials. The term " Literature " 
 has, no doubt, come to be employed in a loose 
 sense. The London Saturday Revieiu has (or 
 used to have until lately) a monthly two-column 
 article devoted to what it called "American Liter- 
 ature," three-fourths of- which were devoted to an 
 examination of volumes of State Histories, Statis- 
 cal Digests, Records of the Census, and other such 
 works as were never, before or since, suspected 
 of being literature ; while the remaining fourth 
 mentioned the titles (occasionally with a line of 
 comment) of whatever productions were at hand 
 in the way of essays, novels, and poetry. This 
 would seem to indicate that we may have — nay, 
 are already possessed of — an American Literature, 
 composed of American materials, provided only 
 that we consent to adopt the Saturday Review's 
 conception of what literature is. 
 
 71 
 
72 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Many of us believe, however, that the essays, 
 the novels, and the poetry, as well as the statistical 
 digests, ought to go to the making up of a national 
 literature. It has been discovered, however, that 
 the existence of the former does not depend, to 
 the same extent as that of the latter, upon the 
 employment of exclusively American material. A 
 book about the census, if it be not American, is 
 nothing ; but a poem or a romance, though writ- 
 ten by a native-born American, who, perhaps, has 
 never crossed the Atlantic, not only may, but fre- 
 quently does, have nothing in it that can be 
 called essentially American, except its English 
 and, occasionally, its ideas. And the question 
 arises whether such productions can justly be held 
 to form component parts of what shall hereafter 
 be recognized as the literature of America. 
 
 How was it with the makers of English litera- 
 ture ? Beginning with Chaucer, his " Canterbury 
 Pilgrims " is English, both in scene and character ; 
 it is even mentioned of the Abbess that " Frenche 
 of Paris was to her unknowe " ; but his " Legende 
 of Goode Women " might, so far as its subject- 
 matter is concerned, have been written by a 
 French, a Spanish, or an Italian Chaucer, just as 
 well as by the British Daniel. Spenser's " Faerie 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 73 
 
 Queene" numbers St. George and King Arthur 
 among its heroes ; but its scene is laid in Faerie 
 Lande, if it be laid anywhere, and it is a bare- 
 faced moral allegory throughout. Shakespeare 
 wrote thirty-seven plays, the elimination of which 
 from English literature would undeniably be a 
 serious loss to it ; yet, of these plays twenty-three 
 have entirely foreign scenes and characters. Mil- 
 ton, as a political writer, was English; but his 
 " Paradise Lost and Regained," his " Samson," his 
 " Ode on the Nativity," his " Comus," bear no 
 reference to the land of his birth. Dry den's best- 
 known work to-day is his "Alexander's Feast." 
 Pope has come down to us as the translator of 
 Homer. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and 
 Sterne are the great quartet of English novelists 
 of the last century ; but Smollett, in his preface 
 to " Roderick Random," after an admiring allusion 
 to the " Gil Bias " of Le Sage, goes on to say : 
 " The following sheets I have modelled on his 
 plan " ; and Sterne was always talking and think- 
 ing about Cervantes, and comparing himself to 
 the great Spaniard : " I think there is more laugh- 
 able humor, with an equal degree of Cervantic 
 satire, if not more, than in the last," he writes of 
 one of his chapters, to " my witty widow, Mrs. F." 
 
74 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Many even of Walter Scott's romances are un- 
 English in their elements ; and the fame of Shel- 
 ley, Keats, and Byron rests entirely upon their 
 "foreign" work. Coleridge's poetry and philoso- 
 phy bear no technical stamp of nationality ; and, 
 to come down to later times, Carlyle was pro- 
 foundly imbued with Germanism, while the 
 " Romola " of George Eliot and the " Cloister and 
 the Hearth " of Charles Reade are by many con- 
 sidered to be the best of their works. In the 
 above enumeration innumerable instances in 
 point are, of course, omitted; but enough have 
 been given, perhaps, to show that imaginative 
 writers have not generally been disowned by their 
 country on the ground that they have availed 
 themselves, in their writings, of other scenes and 
 characters than those of their own immediate 
 neighborhoods. 
 
 The statistics of the work of the foremost 
 American writers could easily be shown to be 
 much more strongly imbued with the specific 
 flavor of their environment. Benjamin Franklin, 
 though he was an author before the United States 
 existed, was American to the marrow. The 
 " Leather-Stocking Tales " of Cooper are the 
 American epic. Irving's " Knickerbocker " and 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 75 
 
 his " Woolfert's Roost " will long outlast his other 
 productions. Poe's most popular tale, "The Gold- 
 Bug," is American in its scene, and so is " The 
 Mystery of Marie Roget," in spite of its French 
 nomenclature ; and all that he wrote is strongly 
 tinged with the native hue of his strange genius. 
 Longfellow's " Evangeline " and " Hiawatha " and 
 " Miles Standish," and such poems as "The Skel- 
 eton in Armor " and " The Building of the Ship," 
 crowd out of sight his graceful translations and 
 adaptations. Emerson is the veritable American 
 eagle of our literature, so that to be Emersonian 
 is to be American. Whittier and Holmes have 
 never looked beyond their native boundaries, and 
 Hawthorne has brought the stern gloom of the 
 Puritan period and the uneasy theorizings of the 
 present day into harmony with the universal and 
 permanent elements of human nature. There was 
 certainly nothing European visible in the crude 
 but vigorous stories of Theodore Winthrop ; and 
 Bret Harte, the most brilliant figure among our 
 later men, is not only American, but Californian, 
 — as is, likewise, the Poet of the Sierras. It is 
 not necessary to go any further. Mr. Henry 
 James, having enjoyed early and singular oppor- 
 tunities of studying the effects of the recent an- 
 
76 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 nual influx of Americans, cultured and otherwise, 
 into England and the Continent, has very sensibly 
 and effectively, and with exquisite grace of style 
 and pleasantness of thought, made, the phenome- 
 non the theme of a remarkable series of stories. 
 Hereupon the cry of an "International School" 
 has been raised, and critics profess to be seriously 
 alarmed lest we should ignore the signal advan- 
 tages for mise-en-scene presented by this Western 
 half of the planet, and should enter into vain and 
 unpatriotic competition with foreign writers on 
 their own ground. The truth is, meanwhile, that 
 it would have been a much surer sign of affecta- 
 tion in us to have abstained from literary com- 
 ment upon the patent and notable fact of this 
 international rapprochement, — which is just as 
 characteristic an American trait as the episode of 
 the Argonauts of 1849, — and we have every 
 reason to be grateful to Mr. Henry James, and to 
 his school, if he has any, for having rescued us 
 from the opprobrium of so foolish a piece of know- 
 nothingism. The phase is, of course, merely tem- 
 porary ; its interest and significance will presently 
 be exhausted ; but, because we are American, are 
 we to import no French cakes and English ale ? 
 As a matter of fact, we are too timid and self- 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 77 
 
 conscious; and these infirmities imply a much 
 more serious obstacle to the formation of a char- 
 acteristic literature than does any amount of gad- 
 ding abroad. 
 
 That must be a very shallow literature which 
 depends for its national flavor and character upon 
 its topography and its dialect ; and the criticism 
 which can conceive of no deeper Americanism 
 than this is shallower still. What is an American 
 book? It is a book written by an American, 
 and by one who writes as an American ; that is, 
 unaffectedly. So an English book is a book writ- 
 ten by an unaffected Englishman. What differ- 
 ence can it make what the subject of the writing 
 is ? Mr. Henry James lately brought out a vol- 
 ume of essays on " French Poets and Novelists." 
 Mr. E. C. Stedman recently published a series of 
 monographs on "The Victorian Poets." Are 
 these books French and English, or are they non- 
 descript, or are they American ? Not only are 
 they American, but they are more essentially 
 American than if they had been disquisitions 
 upon American literature. And the reason is, of 
 course, that they subject the things of the old 
 world to the tests of the new, and thereby vindi- 
 cate and illustrate the characteristic mission of 
 
78 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 America to mankind. We are here to hold up 
 European conventionalisms and prejudices in the 
 light of the new day, and thus afford everybody 
 the opportunity, never heretofore enjoyed, of 
 judging them by other standards, and in other 
 surroundings than those amidst which they came 
 into existence. In the same way, Emerson's 
 " English Traits " is an American thing, and it 
 gives categorical reasons why American things 
 should be. And what is an American novel 
 except a novel treating of persons, places, and 
 ideas from an American point of view ? The 
 point of view is the point, not the thing seen 
 from it. 
 
 But it is said that "the great American novel," 
 in order fully to deserve its name, ought to have 
 American scenery. Some thousands of years ago, 
 the Greeks had a novelist — Homer — who evolved 
 the great novel of that epoch ; but the scenery of 
 that novel was Trojan, not Greek. The story is a 
 criticism, from a Greek standpoint, of foreign 
 affairs, illustrated with practical examples ; and, 
 as regards treatment, quite as much care is be- 
 stowed upon the delineation of Hector, Priam, 
 and Paris, as upon Agamemnon, Menelaus, and 
 Achilles. The same story, told by a Trojan 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 79 
 
 Homer, would doubtless have been very different; 
 but it is by no means certain that it would have 
 been any better told. It embodies, whether sym- 
 bolically or literally matters not, the triumph of 
 Greek ideas and civilization. But, even so, the 
 sympathies of the reader are not always, or per- 
 haps uniformly, on the conquering side. Homer 
 was doubtless a patriot, but he shows no signs of 
 having been a bigot. He described that great 
 international episode with singular impartiality; 
 what chiefly interested him was the play of human 
 nature. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that 
 the Greeks were backward in admitting his claims 
 as their national poet; and we may legitimately 
 conclude that were an American Homer — 
 whether in prose or poetry — to appear among 
 us, he might pitch his scene where he liked — 
 in Patagonia, or on the banks of the Zambezi — 
 and we should accept the situation with perfect 
 equanimity. Only let him be a native of New 
 York, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Mullenville, 
 and be inspired with the American idea, and we 
 ask no more. Whatever he writes will belong to 
 our literature, and add lustre to it. 
 
 One hears many complaints about the snobbish- 
 ness of running after things European. Go West, 
 
80 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 young man, these moralists say, or go down Fifth 
 Avenue, and investigate Chatham Street, and 
 learn that all the elements of romance, to him 
 who has the seeing eye, lie around your own front 
 doorstep and back yard. But let not these per- 
 sons forget that he who fears Europe is a less re- 
 spectable snob than he who studies it. Let us 
 welcome Europe in our books as freely as we do 
 at Castle Garden; we may do so safely. If our 
 digestion be not strong enough to assimilate her, 
 and work up whatever is valuable in her into our 
 own bone and sinew, then America is not the 
 thing we took her for. For what is America ? Is 
 it simply a reproduction of one of these Eastern 
 nationalities, which we are so fond of alluding to 
 as effete? Surely not. It is a new departure in 
 history ; it is a new door opened to the develop- 
 ment of the human race, or, as I should prefer to 
 say, of humanity. We are misled by the chatter 
 of politicians and the bombast of Congress. In 
 the course of ages, the time has at last arrived 
 when man, all over this planet, is entering upon a 
 new career of moral, intellectual, and political 
 emancipation; and America is the concrete ex- 
 pression and theatre of that great fact, as all 
 spiritual truths find their fitting and representa- 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 81 
 
 tive physical incarnation. But what would this 
 huge western continent be, if America — the real 
 America of the mind — had no existence? It 
 would be a body without a soul, and would bet- 
 ter, therefore, not be at all. If America is to be 
 a repetition of Europe on a larger scale, it is not 
 worth the pain of governing it. Europe has 
 shown what European ideas can accomplish ; and 
 whatever fresh thought or impulse comes to birth 
 in it can be nothing else than an American 
 thought and impulse, and must sooner or later 
 find its way here, and become naturalized with its 
 brethren. Buds and blossoms of America are 
 sprouting forth all over the Old World, and we 
 gather in the fruit. They do not find themselves 
 at home there, but they know where their home 
 is. The old country feels them like thorns in her 
 old flesh, and is gladly rid of them ; but such 
 prickings are the only wholesome and hopeful 
 symptoms she presents ; if they ceased to trouble 
 her, she would be dead indeed. She has an un- 
 easy experience before her, for a time ; but the 
 time will come when she, too, will understand 
 that her ease is her disease, and then Castle 
 Garden may close its doors, for America will be 
 everywhere. 
 
82 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 If, then, America is something vastly more 
 than has hitherto been understood by the word 
 nation, it is proper that we attach to that other 
 word, patriotism, a significance broader and 
 loftier than has been conceived till now. By so 
 much as the idea that we represent is great, by so 
 much are we, in comparison with it, inevitably 
 chargeable with littleness and short-comings. For 
 we are of the same flesh and blood as our neigh- 
 bors ; it is only our opportunities and our respon- 
 sibilities that are fairer and weightier than theirs. 
 Circumstances afford every excuse to them, but 
 none to us. " E Pluribus Unum " is a frivolous 
 motto ; our true one should be, "Noblesse oblige" 
 But, with a strange perversity, in all matters of 
 comparison between ourselves and others, we dis- 
 play what we are pleased to call our patriotism by 
 an absurd touchiness as to points wherein Europe, 
 with its settled and polished civilization, must 
 needs be our superior ; and are quite indifferent 
 about those things by which our real strength is 
 constituted. Can we not be content to learn from 
 Europe the graces, the refinements, the amenities 
 of life, so long as we are able to teach her life it- 
 self ? For my part, I never saw in England any 
 appurtenance of civilization, calculated to add to 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 83 
 
 the convenience and commodiousness of existence, 
 that did not seem to me to surpass anything of 
 the kind that we have in this country. Notwith- 
 standing which — and I am far, indeed, from hav- 
 ing any pretensions to asceticism — I would have 
 been fairly stifled at the idea of having to spend 
 my life there. No American can live in Europe, 
 unless he means to return home, or unless, at any 
 rate, he returns here in mind, in hope, in belief. 
 For an American to accept England, or any other 
 country, as both a mental and physical finality, 
 would, it seems to me, be tantamount to renounc- 
 ing his very life. To enjoy English comforts at 
 the cost of adopting English opinions, would be 
 about as pleasant as to have the privilege of re- 
 taining one's body on condition of surrendering 
 one's soul, and would, indeed, amount to just 
 about the same thing. 
 
 I fail, therefore, to feel any apprehension as to 
 our literature becoming Europeanized, because 
 whatever is American in it must lie deeper than 
 anything European can penetrate. More than 
 that, I believe and hope that our novelists will 
 deal with Europe a great deal more, and a great 
 deal more intelligently, than they have done yet. 
 It is a true and healthy artistic instinct that leads 
 
84 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 them to do so. Hawthorne — and no American 
 writer, had a better right than he to contradict 
 his own argument — says, in the preface to the 
 " Marble Faun," in a passage that has been often 
 quoted, but will bear repetition : — 
 
 " Italy, as the site of a romance, was chiefly valuable to him 
 as affording a sort of poetic or fairy precinct, where actualities 
 would not be so terribly insisted on as they are, and must needs 
 be, in America. No author, without a trial, can conceive of 
 the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there 
 is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and 
 gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in 
 broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my 
 dear native land. It will be very long, I trust, before ro- 
 mance writers may find congenial and easily handled themes, 
 either in the annals of our stalwart Eepublic, or in any 
 characteristic and probable events of our individual lives. 
 Eomance and poetry, ivy, lichens, and wall-flowers, need ruin 
 to make them grow." 
 
 Now, what is to be understood from this pas- 
 sage ? It assumes, in the first place, that a work 
 of art, in order to be effective, must contain pro- 
 found contrasts of light and shadow ; and then it 
 points out that the shadow, at least, is found ready 
 to the hand in Europe. There is no hint of patri- 
 otic scruples as to availing one's self of such a 
 " picturesque and gloomy " background ; if it is 
 to be had, then let it be taken ; the main object 
 to be considered is. the work of art. Europe, in 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 85 
 
 short, afforded an excellent quarry, from which, 
 in Hawthorne's opinion, the American novelist 
 might obtain materials which are conspicuously 
 deficient in his own country, and which that 
 country is all the better for not possessing. In 
 the " Marble Faun " the author had conceived a 
 certain idea, and he considered that he had been 
 not unsuccessful in realizing it. The subject was 
 new, and full of especial attractions to his genius, 
 and it would manifestly have been impossible to 
 adapt it to an American setting. There was one 
 drawback connected with it, and this Hawthorne 
 did not fail to recognize. He remarks in the pre- 
 face that he had " lived too long abroad not to be 
 aware that a foreigner seldom acquires that know- 
 ledge of a country at once flexible and profound, 
 which may justify him in endeavoring to idealize 
 its traits." But he was careful not to attempt "a 
 portraiture of Italian manners and character." 
 He made use of the Italian scenery and atmos- 
 phere just so far as was essential to the develop- 
 ment of his idea, and consistent with the extent of 
 his Italian knowledge; and, for the rest, fell back 
 upon American characters and principles. The 
 result has been long enough before the world to 
 have met with a proper appreciation. I have 
 
86 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 heard regret expressed that the power employed 
 by the author in working out this story had not 
 been applied to a romance dealing with a purely 
 American subject. But to analyze this objection 
 is to dispose of it. A man of genius is not, com- 
 monly, enfeebled by his own productions ; and, 
 physical accidents aside, Hawthorne was just as 
 capable of writing another " Scarlet Letter " after 
 the "Marble Faun" was published, as he had 
 been before. Meanwhile, few will deny that our 
 literature would be a loser had the "Marble 
 Faun " never been written. 
 
 The drawback above alluded to is, however, not 
 to be underrated. It may operate in two ways. 
 In the first place, the American's European obser- 
 vations may be inaccurate. As a child, looking at 
 a sphere, might suppose it to be a flat disc, shaded 
 at one side and lighted at the other, so a sight- 
 seer in Europe may ascribe to what he beholds 
 qualities and a character quite at variance with 
 what a more fundamental knowledge would have 
 enabled him to perceive. In the second place, the 
 stranger in a strange land, be he as accurate as he 
 may, will always tend to look at what is around 
 him objectively, instead of allowing it subjectively 
 — or, as it were, unconsciously — to color his nar- 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 87 
 
 rative. He will be more apt directly to describe 
 what he sees, than to convey the feeling or aroma 
 of it without description. It would doubtless, for 
 instance, be possible for Mr. Henry James to 
 write an " English " or even a " French " novel 
 without falling into a single technical error ; but 
 it is no less certain that a native writer, of equal 
 ability, would treat the same subject in a very 
 different manner. Mr. Jamess' version might con- 
 tain a great deal more of definite information ; 
 but the native work would insinuate an impres- 
 sion which both comes from and goes to a greater 
 depth of apprehension. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it is not contended that 
 any American should write an " English " or any- 
 thing but an " American " novel. The contention 
 is, simply, that he should not refrain from using 
 foreign material, when it happens to suit his exi- 
 gencies, merely because it is foreign. Objective 
 writing may be quite as good reading as subject- 
 ive writing, in its proper place and function. In 
 fiction, no more than elsewhere, may a writer pre- 
 tend to be what he is not, or to know what he 
 knows not. When he finds himself abroad, he 
 must frankly admit his situation ; and more will 
 not then be required of him than he is fairly 
 
88 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 competent to afford. It will seldom happen, as 
 Hawthorne intimates, that he can successfully 
 reproduce the inner workings and philosophy of 
 European social and political customs and peculi- 
 arities ; but he can give a picture of the scenery 
 as vivid as can the aborigine, or more so ; he can 
 make an accurate study of personal native charac- 
 ter; and, finally, and most important of all, he 
 can make use of the conditions of European civil- 
 ization in events, incidents, and situations which 
 would be impossible on this side of the water. 
 The restrictions, the traditions, the law, and the 
 license of those old countries are full of sug- 
 gestions to the student of character and circum- 
 stances, and supply him with colors and effects 
 that he would else search for in vain. For the 
 truth may as well be admitted ; we are at a distinct 
 disadvantage, in America, in respect of the mate- 
 rials of romance. Not that vigorous, pathetic, 
 striking stories may not be constructed here; and 
 there is humor enough, the humor of dialect, of 
 incongruity of character; but, so far as the story 
 depends for its effect, not upon psychical and per- 
 sonal, but upon physical and general events and 
 situations, we soon feel the limit of our resources. 
 An analysis of the human soul, such as may be 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 89 
 
 found in the " House of the Seven Gables," for 
 instance, is absolute in its interest, apart from 
 outward conditions. But such an analysis cannot 
 be carried on, so to say, in vacuo. You must have 
 solid ground to stand on ; you must have fitting 
 circumstances, background, and perspective. The 
 ruin of a soul, the tragedy of a heart, demand, as 
 a necessity of harmony and picturesque effect, a 
 corresponding and consj)iring environment and 
 stage — just as, in music, the air in the treble is 
 supported and reverberated by the bass accompa- 
 niment. The immediate, contemporary act or 
 predicament loses more than half its meaning and 
 impressiveness if it be re-echoed from no sounding- 
 board in the past — its notes, however sweetly 
 and truly touched, fall flatly on the ear. The 
 deeper we attempt to pitch the key of an Amer- 
 ican story, therefore, the more difficulty shall we 
 find in providing a congruous setting for it ; and 
 it is interesting to note how the masters of the 
 craft have met the difficulty. In the " Seven Ga- 
 bles" — and I take leave to say that if I draw 
 illustrations from this particular writer, it is for 
 no other reason than that he presents, more for- 
 cibly than most, a method of dealing with the 
 special problem we are considering — Hawthorne, 
 
90 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 with the intuitive skill of genius, evolves a back- 
 ground, and produces a reverberation, from ma- 
 terials which he may be said to have created 
 almost as much as discovered. The idea of a 
 house, founded two hundred years ago upon a 
 crime, remaining ever since in possession of its 
 original owners, and becoming the theatre, at last, 
 of the judgment upon that crime, is a thoroughly 
 picturesque idea, but it is thoroughly un-Ameri- 
 can. Such a thing might conceivably occur, but 
 nothing in this country could well be more un- 
 likely. No one before Hawthorne had ever 
 thought of attempting such a thing ; at all events, 
 no one else, before or since, has accomplished it. 
 The preface to the romance in question reveals 
 the principle upon which its author worked, and 
 incidentally gives a new definition of the term 
 "romance," — a definition of which, thus far, no 
 one but its propounder has known how to avail 
 himself. It amounts, in fact, to an acknowledg- 
 ment that it is impossible to write a " novel" of 
 American life that shall be at once artistic, real- 
 istic, and profound. A novel, he says, aims at a 
 "very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, 
 but to the probable and ordinary course of man's 
 experience." A romance, on the other hand, 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 91 
 
 " while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject 
 itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so 
 far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the 
 human heart, has fairly a right to present that 
 truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of 
 the writer's own choosing or creation. If he think 
 fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical me- 
 dium as to bring out and mellow the lights, and 
 deepen and enrich the shadows, of the picture." 
 This is good advice, no doubt, but not easy to 
 follow. We can all understand, however, that 
 the difficulties would be greatly lessened could 
 we but command backgrounds of the European 
 order. Thackeray, the Brontes, George Eliot, 
 and others have written great stories, which 
 did not have to be romances, because the 
 literal conditions of life in England have a 
 picturesque ness and a depth which correspond 
 well enough with whatever moral and men- 
 tal scenery we may project upon them. Haw- 
 thorne was forced to use the scenery and 
 capabilities of his native town of Salem. He 
 saw that he could not present these in a realistic 
 light, and his artistic instinct showed him that he 
 must modify or veil the realism of his figures in 
 the same degree and manner as that of his acces- 
 
92 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 sories. No doubt, his peculiar genius and temper- 
 ament eminently qualified him to produce this 
 magical change ; it was a remarkable instance of 
 the spontaneous marriage, so to speak, of the 
 means to the end ; and even when, in Italy, he 
 had an opportunity to write a story which should 
 be accurate in fact, as well as faithful to "the truth 
 of the human heart," he still preferred a subject 
 which bore to the Italian environment the same 
 relation that the " House of the Seven Gables " 
 and the "Scarlet Letter" do to the American one; 
 in other words, the conception of Donatello is re- 
 moved as much further than Clifford or Hester 
 Prynne from literal realism as the inherent ro- 
 mance of the Italian setting is above that of New 
 England. The whole thing is advanced a step 
 further towards pure idealism, the relative pro- 
 portions being maintained. 
 
 " The Blithedale Romance " is only another in- 
 stance in point, and here, as before, we find the 
 principle admirably stated in the preface. "In 
 the old countries," says Hawthorne, " a novelist's 
 work is not put exactly side by side with nature ; 
 and he is allowed a license with regard to every- 
 day probability, in view of the improved effects 
 he is bound to produce thereby. Among our- 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 93 
 
 selves, on the contrary, there is as yet no Faery 
 Land, so like the real world that, in a suitable re- 
 moteness, we cannot well tell the difference, but 
 with an atmosphere of strange enchantment, be- 
 held through which the inhabitants have a pro- 
 priety of their own. This atmosphere is what the 
 American romancer needs. In its absence, the 
 beings of his imagination are compelled to show 
 themselves in the same category as actually living 
 mortals; a necessity that renders the paint and 
 pasteboard of their composition but too painfully 
 discernible." Accordingly, Hawthorne selects the 
 Brook Farm episode (or a reflection of it) as af- 
 fording his drama "a theatre, a little removed 
 from the highway of ordinary travel, where the 
 creatures of his brain may play their phantasma- 
 gorical antics, without exposing them to too close 
 a comparison with the actual events of real lives." 
 In this case, therefore, an exceptional circumstance 
 is made to answer the same purpose that was 
 attained by different means in the other 
 romances. 
 
 But in what manner have our other writers of 
 fiction treated the difficulties that were thus dealt 
 with by Hawthorne? — Herman Melville cannot 
 be instanced here ; for his only novel or romance, 
 
94 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 whichever it be, was also the most impossible of 
 all his books, and really a terrible example of the 
 enormities which a man of genius may perpetrate 
 when working in a direction unsuited to him. I 
 refer, of course, to " Pierre, or the Ambiguities." 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes's two delightful stories 
 are as favorable examples of what can be done, in 
 the way of an American novel, by a wise, witty, 
 and learned gentleman, as we are likely to see. 
 Nevertheless, one cannot avoid the feeling that 
 they are the work of a man who has achieved suc- 
 cess and found recognition in other ways than by 
 stories, or even poems and essays. The interest, 
 in either book, centres round one of those physio- 
 logical phenomena which impinge so strangely 
 upon the domain of the soul ; for the rest, they 
 are simply accurate and humorous portraitures of 
 local dialects and peculiarities, and thus afford 
 little assistance in the search for a universally ap- 
 plicable rule of guidance. Doctor Holmes, I be- 
 lieve, objects to having the term "medicated" ap- 
 plied .to his tales ; but surely the adjective is not 
 reproachful ; it indicates one of the most charm- 
 ing and also, alas ! inimitable features of his work. 
 Bret Harte is probably as valuable a witness as 
 could be summoned in this case. His touch is 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 95 
 
 realistic, and yet his imagination is poetic and ro- 
 mantic. He has discovered something. He has 
 done something both new and good. Within the 
 space of some fifty pages, he has painted a .series 
 of pictures which will last as long as anything in 
 the fifty thousand pages of Dickens. Taking 
 "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" as perhaps the 
 most nearly perfect of the tales, as well as the 
 most truly representative of the writer's powers, 
 let us try to guess its secret. In the first place, it 
 is very short, — a single episode, succinctly and 
 eloquently told. The descriptions of scenery and 
 persons are masterly and memorable. The char- 
 acters of these persons, their actions, and the cir- 
 cumstances of their lives, are as rugged, as gro- 
 tesque, as terrible, and also as beautiful, as the 
 scenery. Thus an artistic harmony is established, 
 — the thing which is lacking in so much of our 
 literature. The story moves swiftly on, through 
 humor, pathos, and tragedy, to its dramatic close. 
 It is given with perfect literary taste, and naught 
 in its phases of human nature is either extenuated 
 or set down in malice. The little narrative can 
 be read in a few minutes, and can never be for- 
 gotten. But it is only an episode ; and it is an 
 episode of an episode, — that of the Californian 
 
96 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 gold-fever. The story of the Argonauts is only 
 one story, after all, and these tales of Harte's are 
 but so many facets of the same gem. They are 
 not, however, like chapters in a romance ; there is 
 no such vital connection between them as devel- 
 ops a cumulative force. We are no more im- 
 pressed after reading half a dozen of them than 
 after the first ; they are variations of the same 
 theme. They discover to us no new truth about 
 human nature ; they only show us certain human 
 beings so placed as to act out their naked selves, 
 — to be neither influenced nor protected by the 
 rewards and screens of conventional civilization. 
 The affectation and insincerity of our daily life 
 make such a spectacle fresh and pleasing to us. 
 But we enjoy it because of its unexpectedness, 
 its separateness, its unlikeness to the ordinary 
 course of existence. It is like a huge, strange, 
 gorgeous flower, an exaggeration and intensifica- 
 tion of such flowers as we know; but a flower 
 without roots, unique, never to be reproduced. 
 It is fitting that its portrait should be painted; 
 but, once done, it is done with ; we cannot fill 
 our picture-gallery with it. Carlyle wrote the 
 History of the French Revolution, and Bret Harte 
 has written the History of the Argonauts ; but it 
 
AMERICANISM IN FICTION. 97 
 
 is absurd to suppose that a national literature 
 could be founded on either episode. 
 
 But though Mr. Harte has not left his fellow- 
 craftsmen anything to gather from the lode which 
 he opened and exhausted, we may still learn 
 something from his method. He took things as 
 he found them, and he found them disinclined to 
 weave themselves into an elaborate and balanced 
 narrative. He recognized the deficiency of histor- 
 ical perspective, but he saw that what was lost in 
 slowly growing, culminating power was gained in 
 vivid, instant force. The deeds of his character 
 could not be represented as the final result of 
 long-inherited proclivities ; but they could appear 
 between their motive and their consequence, like 
 the draw — aim — fire ! of the Western desperado, — 
 as short, sharp, and conclusive. In other words, the 
 conditions of American life, as he saw it, justified 
 a short story, or any number of them, but not a 
 novel ; and the fact that he did afterwards at- 
 tempt a novel only served to confirm his original 
 position. I think that the limitation that he dis- 
 covered is of much wider application than we are 
 prone to realize. American life has been, as yet, 
 nothing but a series of episodes, of experiments. 
 There has been no such thing as a fixed and 
 
98 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 settled condition of society, not subject to change 
 itself, and therefore affording a foundation and 
 contrast to minor or individual vicissitudes. We 
 cannot write American-grown novels, because a 
 novel is not an episode, nor an aggregation of 
 episodes ; we cannot write romances in the Haw- 
 thorne sense, because, as yet, we do not seem to 
 be clever enough. Several courses are, however, 
 open to us, and we are pursuing them all. First, 
 we are writing "short stories," accounts of epi- 
 sodes needing no historical perspective, and not 
 caring for any; and, so far as one may judge, 
 we write the best short stories in the world. 
 Secondly, we may spin out our short stories into 
 long-short stories, just as we may imagine a baby 
 six feet high ; it takes up more room, but is just as 
 much a baby as one of twelve inches. Thirdly, 
 we may graft our flower of romance on a Euro- 
 pean stem, and enjoy ourselves as much as the 
 European novelists do, and with as clear a con- 
 science. We are stealing that which enriches us 
 and- does not impoverish them. It is silly and 
 childish to make the boundaries of the America of 
 the mind coincide with those of the United States. 
 We need not dispute about free trade and protec- 
 tion here ; literature is not commerce, nor is it 
 
AMEKICANISM IN FICTION. 99 
 
 politics. America is not a petty nationality, like 
 France, England, and Germany ; but whatever in 
 such nationalities tends toward enlightenment 
 and freedom is American. Let us not, therefore, 
 confirm ourselves in a false and ignoble concep- 
 tion of our meaning and mission in the world. 
 Let us not carry into the temple of the Muse the 
 jealousies, the prejudice, the ignorance, the selfish- 
 ness of our " Senate " and " Representatives," 
 strangely so called ! Let us not refuse to breathe 
 the air of Heaven, lest there be something Euro- 
 pean or Asian in it. If we cannot have a national 
 literature in the narrow, geographical sense of the 
 phrase, it is because our inheritance transcends all 
 geographical definitions. The great American 
 novel may not be written this year, or even in 
 this century. Meanwhile, let us not fear to ride, 
 and ride to death, whatever species of Pegasus we 
 can catch. It can do us no harm, and it may help 
 us to acquire a firmer seat against the time when 
 our own, our very own winged steed makes his 
 appearance. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 Literature is that quality in books which af- 
 fords delight and nourishment to the soul. But 
 this is a scientific and skeptical age, insomuch 
 that one hardly ventures to take for granted that 
 every reader will know what his soul is. It is not 
 the intellect, though it gives the intellect light; 
 nor the emotions, though they receive their 
 warmth from it. It is the most catholic and con- 
 stant element of human nature, yet it bears no di- 
 rect part in the practical affairs of life ; it does 
 not struggle, it does not even suffer ; but merely 
 emerges or retires, glows or congeals, according to 
 the company in which it finds itself. We might 
 say that the soul is a name for man's innate sym- 
 pathy with goodness and truth in the abstract; 
 for no man can have a bad soul, though his heart 
 may be evil, or his mind depraved, because the 
 soul's access to the mind or heart has been so 
 obstructed as to leave the moral consciousness 
 
 100 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 101 
 
 cold and dark. The soul, in other words, is the 
 only conservative and peacemaker ; it affords the 
 only unalterable ground upon which all men can 
 always meet; it unselfishly indentifies or unites 
 us with our fellows, in contradistinction to the 
 selfish intellect, which individualizes us and sets 
 each man against every other. Doubtless, then, 
 the soul is an amiable and desirable possession, 
 and it would be a pity to deprive it of so much 
 encouragement as may be compatible with due at- 
 tention to the serious business of life. For there 
 are moments, even in the most active careers, 
 when it seems agreeable to forget competition, 
 rivalry, jealousy ; when it is a rest to think of one's 
 self as a man rather than a person; — moments 
 when time and place appear impertinent, and that 
 most profitable which affords least palpable profit. 
 At such seasons, a man looks inward, or, as the 
 American poet puts it, he loafs and invites his 
 soul, and then he is at a disadvantage if his soul, 
 in consequence of too persistent previous neglect, 
 declines to respond to the invitation, and remains 
 immured in that secret place which, as years pass by, 
 becomes less and less accessible to so many of us. 
 
 When I say that literature nourishes the soul, I 
 implicitly refuse the title of literature to anything 
 
102 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 in books that either directly or indirectly promotes 
 any worldly or practical use. Of course, what is 
 literature to one man may be anything but litera- 
 ture to another, or to the same man under dif- 
 ferent circumstances; Virgil to the schoolboy, 
 for instance, is a very different thing from the 
 Virgil of the scholar. But whatever you read 
 with the design of improving yourself in some 
 profession, or of acquiring information likely to 
 be of advantage to you in any pursuit or contin- 
 gency, or of enabling yourself to hold your own 
 with other readers, or even of rendering yourself 
 that enviable nondescript, a person of culture, — 
 whatever, in short, is read with any assignable 
 purpose whatever, is in so far not literature. The 
 Bible may be literature to Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 because he reads it for fun ; but to Luther, Cal- 
 vin, or the pupils of a Sunday-school, it is essen- 
 tially something else. Literature is the written 
 communications of the soul of mankind with it- 
 self; it is liable to appear in the most unexpected 
 places, and in the oddest company ; it vanishes 
 when we would grasp it, and appears when we 
 look not for it. Chairs of literature are estab- 
 lished in the great universities, and it is liter- 
 ature, no doubt, that the professor discourses ; but 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 103 
 
 it ceases to be literature before it reaches the 
 student's ear; though, again, when the same 
 students stumble across it in the recesses of their 
 memory ten or twenty years later, it may have be- 
 come literature once more. Finally, literature 
 may, upon occasion, avail a man more than the 
 most thorough technical information ; but it will 
 not be because it supplements or supplants that 
 information, but because it has so tempered and 
 exalted his general faculty that whatever he may 
 do is done more clearly and comprehensively than 
 might otherwise be the case. 
 
 Having thus, in some measure, considered what 
 is literature and what the soul, let us note, 
 further, that the literature proper to manhood is 
 not proper to childhood, though the reverse is not 
 — or, at least, never ought to be — true. In 
 childhood, the soul and the mind act in harmony ; 
 the mind has not become preoccupied or sophisti- 
 cated by so-called useful knowledge ; it responds 
 obediently to the soul's impulses and intuitions. 
 Children have no morality; they have not yet 
 descended to the level where morality suggests it- 
 self to them. For morality is the outcome of 
 spiritual pride, the most stubborn and insidious of 
 all sins ; the pride which prompts each of us to 
 
104 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 declare himself holier than his fellows, and to 
 support that claim by parading his docility to the 
 Decalogue. Docility to any set of rules, no mat- 
 ter of how divine authority, so long as it is 
 inspired by hope of future good or present advan- 
 tage, is rather worse than useless : except our 
 righteousness exceed that of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees, — that is, except it be spontaneous 
 righteousness or morality, and, therefore, not 
 morality, but unconscious goodness, — we shall in 
 no wise have benefited either ourselves or others. 
 Children, when left to themselves, artlessly and 
 innocently act out the nature that is common 
 to saint and sinner alike ; they are selfish, angry, 
 and foolish, because their state is human ; and 
 they are loving, truthful, and sincere, because 
 their origin is divine. All that pleases or agrees 
 with them is good ; all that opposes or offends 
 them is evil, and this, without any reference what- 
 ever to the moral code in vogue among their 
 elders. But, on the other hand, children cannot 
 be tempted as we are, because they suppose that 
 everything is free and possible, and because 
 they are as yet uncontaminated by the artifi- 
 cial cravings which the artificial prohibitions in- 
 cident to our civilization create. Life is to them 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 105 
 
 a constantly widening circle of things to be had 
 and enjoyed ; nor does it ever occur to them that 
 their desires can conflict with those of others, or 
 with the laws of the universe. They cannot 
 consciously do wrong, nor understand that any 
 one else can do so ; untoward accidents may hap- 
 pen, but inanimate nature is just as liable to be 
 objectionable in this respect as human beings : 
 the stone that trips them up, the thorn that 
 scratches them, the snow that makes their flesh 
 tingle, is an object of their resentment in just the 
 same kind and degree as are the men and women 
 who thwart or injure them. But of duty — that 
 dreary device to secure future reward by present 
 suffering; of conscientiousness — that fear of pres- 
 ent good for the sake of future punishment ; of 
 remorse — that disavowal of past pleasure for fear 
 of the sting in its tail; of ambition — that be- 
 grudging of all honorable results that are not ef- 
 fected by one's self ; of these, and all similar politic 
 and arbitrary masks of self-love and pusillanimity, 
 these poor children know and suspect nothing. 
 Yet their eyes are much keener than ours, for 
 they see through the surface of nature and per- 
 ceive its symbolism ; they see the living reality, 
 of which nature is the veil, and are continually at 
 
106 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 fault because this veil is not, after all, the reality, 
 — because it is fixed and unplastic. The "deep 
 mind of dauntless infancy " is, in fact, the only 
 revelation we have, except divine revelation it- 
 self, of that pure and natural life of man which 
 we dream of, and liken to heaven; but we, 
 nevertheless, in our penny-wise, pound-foolish 
 way, insist upon regarding it as ignorance, and do 
 our best, from the earliest possible moment, to 
 disenchant and dispel it. We call the outrage 
 education, understanding thereby the process of ex- 
 terminating in the child the higher order of facul- 
 ties and the intuitions, and substituting for them 
 the external memory, timidity, self-esteem, and all 
 that armament of petty weapons and defences 
 which may enable us to get the better of our 
 fellow-creatures in this world, and receive the re- 
 ward of our sagacity in the next. The success of 
 our efforts is pitiably complete ; for though the 
 child, if fairly engaged in single combat, might 
 make a formidable resistance against the infliction 
 of " lessons," it cannot long withstand our crafty 
 device of sending it to a place where it sees a 
 score or a hundred of little victims like itself, all 
 being driven to the same Siberia. The spirit of 
 emulation is aroused, and lo ! away they all 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 107 
 
 scamper, each straining its utmost to reach the 
 barren goal ahead of all competitors. So do we 
 make the most ignoble passions of our children 
 our allies in the unholy task of divesting them of 
 their childhood. And yet, who is not aware that 
 the best men the world has seen have been those 
 who, throughout their lives, retained the aroma of 
 childlike simplicity which they brought with them 
 into existence? Learning — the acquisition of 
 specific facts — is not wisdom; it is almost incom- 
 patible with wisdom ; indeed, unless the mind be 
 powerful enough not only to fuse its facts, but to 
 vaporize them, — to sublimate them into an impal- 
 pable atmosphere, — they will stand in wisdom's 
 way. Wisdom comes from the pondering and the 
 application to life of certain truths quite above 
 the sphere of facts, and of infinitely more moment 
 and less complexity, — truths which are often 
 found to be in accordance with the spiritual in- 
 stinct called intuition, which children possess 
 more fully than grown persons. The wisdom of 
 our children would often astonish us, if we would 
 only forbear the attempt to make them knowing, 
 and submissively accept instruction from them. 
 Through all the imperfection of their inherited in- 
 firmity, we shall ever and anon be conscious of 
 
108 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 the radiance of a beautiful, unconscious intelli- 
 gence, worth more than the smartness of schools 
 and the cleverness of colleges. But no ; we abhor 
 the very notion of it, and generally succeed in ex- 
 tinguishing it long before the Three R's are done 
 with. 
 
 And yet, by wisely directing the child's use of 
 the first of the Three, much of the ill effects of the 
 trio and their offspring might be counteracted. If 
 we believed — if the great mass of people known 
 as the civilized world did actually and livingly be- 
 lieve — that there was really anything beyond or 
 above the physical order of nature, our children's 
 literature, wrongly so called, would not be what it 
 is. We believe what we can see and touch; we 
 teach them to believe the same, and, not satisfied 
 with that, we sedulously warn them not to believe 
 anything else. The child, let us suppose, has heard 
 from some unauthorized person that there are 
 fairies — little magical creatures an inch high, up 
 to all manner of delightful feats. He compre- 
 hends the whole matter at half a word, feels that 
 he had known it already, and half thinks that he 
 sees one or two on his way home. He runs up to 
 his mother and tells her about it; and has she 
 ever seen fairies ? Alas ! His mother tells him 
 
LITER ATURE FOR CHILDREN. 109 
 
 that the existence of such a being as a fairy is 
 impossible. In old times, when the world was 
 very ignorant and superstitious, they used to 
 ascribe everything that happened to supernatural 
 agency ; even the trifling daily accidents of one's 
 life, such as tumbling down stairs, or putting the 
 right shoe on the left foot, were thought or fan- 
 cied to be the work of some mysterious power; 
 and since ignorant people are very apt to imagine 
 they see what they believe [proceeds this mother] 
 instead of only believing what they see; and 
 since, furthermore, ignorance disposes to exag- 
 geration and thus to untruth, these people ended 
 by asserting that they saw fairies. "Now, my 
 child," continues the parent, "it would grieve me 
 to see you the victim of such folly. Do not read 
 fairy stories. They are not true to life ; they fill 
 your mind with idle notions ; they cannot form 
 your understanding, or aid you to do your work in 
 the world. If you should happen to fall in with 
 such fables, be careful as you read to bear in mind 
 that they are pure inventions — pretty, sometimes, 
 perhaps, but essentially frivolous, if not immoral. 
 You have, however, thanks to the enlightened 
 enterprise of writers and publishers, an endless as- 
 sortment of juvenile books and periodicals which 
 
110 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 combine legitimate amusement with sound and 
 trustworthy instruction. Here are stories about 
 little children, just like yourself, who talk and act 
 just as you do, and to whom nothing supernatural 
 or outlandish ever happens ; and whose adven- 
 tures, when you have read them, convey to you 
 some salutary moral lesson. What more can you 
 want? Yes, very likely 'Grimm's Tales' and 
 1 The Arabian Nights ' may seem more attractive ; 
 but in this world many harmful things put on an 
 inviting guise, which deceives the inexperienced 
 eye. May my child remember that all is not gold 
 that glitters, and desire, not what is diverting 
 merely, but what is useful and . . . and con- 
 ventional ! " 
 
 Let us admit that, things being as they are, it 
 is necessary to develop the practical side of the 
 child's nature, to ground him in moral principles, 
 and to make him comprehend and fear — nomi- 
 nally God, but really — society. But why, in 
 addition to doing this, should we strangle the 
 unpractical side of his nature, — the ideal, imag- 
 inative, spiritual side, — the side which alone can 
 determine his value or worthlessness in eternity? 
 If our minds were visible as our bodies are, we 
 should behold on every side of us, and in our own 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. Ill 
 
 private looking-glasses, such abortions, cripples, 
 and monstrosities as all the slums of Europe and 
 the East could not parallel. We pretend to make 
 little men and women out of our children, and we 
 make little dwarfs and hobgoblins out of them. 
 Moreover, we should not diminish even the prac- 
 tical efficiency of the coming generation by reject- 
 ing their unpractical side. Whether this boy's 
 worldly destination be to clean a stable or to rep- 
 resent his country at a foreign court, he will do 
 his work all the better, instead of worse, for hav- 
 ing been allowed freedom of expansion on the 
 ideal plane. He will do it comprehensively, or 
 as from above downward, instead of blindly, or as 
 from below upward. To a certain extent, this 
 position is very generally admitted by instructors 
 nowadays; but the admission bears little or no 
 fruit. The ideality and imagination which they 
 have in mind are but a partial and feeble imitation 
 of what is really signified by those terms. Ideality 
 and imagination are themselves merely the symp- 
 tom or expression of the faculty and habit of 
 spiritual or subjective intuition — a faculty of par- 
 amount value in life, though of late years, in the 
 rush of rational knowledge and discovery, it has 
 fallen into neglect. But it is by means of this 
 
112 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 faculty alone that the great religion of India was 
 constructed — the most elaborate and seductive 
 of all systems; and although as a faith Buddhism 
 is also the most treacherous and dangerous attack 
 ever made upon the immortal welfare of mankind, 
 that circumstance certainly does not discredit or 
 invalidate the claim to importance of spiritual 
 intuition itself. It may be objected that spiritual 
 intuition is a vague term. It undoubtedly be- 
 longs to an abstruse region of psychology ; but its 
 meaning for our present purpose is simply the act 
 of testing questions of the moral consciousness by 
 an inward touchstone of. truth, instead of by ex- 
 ternal experience or information. That the exist- 
 ence of such a touchstone should be ridiculed by 
 those who are accustomed to depend for their be- 
 lief upon palpable or logical evidence, goes with- 
 out saying ; but, on the other hand, there need be 
 no collision or argument on the point, since no 
 question with which intuition is concerned can 
 ever present itself to persons who pin their faith 
 to the other sort of demonstration. The reverse 
 of this statement is by no means true ; but it 
 would lead us out of our present path to discuss 
 the matter. 
 
 Assuming, however, that intuition is possible, 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 113 
 
 it is evident that it should exist in children in an 
 extremely pure, if not in its most potent state ; 
 and to deny it opportunity of development might 
 fairly be called a barbarity. It will hardly be 
 disputed that children are an important element 
 in society. Without them we should lose the 
 memory of our youth, and all opportunity for the 
 exercise of unselfish and disinterested affection. 
 Life would become arid and mechanical to a de- 
 gree now scarcely conceivable ; chastity and all 
 the human virtues would cease to exist ; marriage 
 would be an aimless and absurd transaction ; and 
 the brotherhood of man, even in the nominal 
 sense that it now exists, would speedily be ab- 
 jured. Political economy and sociology neglect 
 to make children an element in their arguments 
 and deductions, and no small part of their error is 
 attributable to that circumstance. But although 
 children still are born, and all the world acknowl- 
 edges their paramount moral and social value, the 
 general tendency of what we are forced to call 
 education at the present day is to shorten as 
 much as possible the period of childhood. In 
 America and Germany especially — but more in 
 America than in Germany — children are urged 
 and stimulated to " grow up " almost before they 
 
114 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 have been short-coated. That conceptions of 
 order and discipline should be early instilled into 
 them is proper enough ; but no other order and 
 discipline seems to be contemplated by educators 
 than the forcing them to stand and be stuffed full 
 of indigestible and incongruous knowledge, than 
 which proceeding nothing more disorderly could 
 be devised. It looks as if we felt the. innocence 
 and naturalness of our children to be a rebuke to 
 us, and wished to do away with it in short order. 
 There is something in the New Testament about 
 offending the little ones, and the preferred alter- 
 native thereto ; and really we are outraging not 
 only the objective child, but the subjective one 
 also — that in ourselves, namely, which is inno- 
 cent and pure, and without which we had better 
 not be at all. Now I do not mean to say that the 
 only medicine that can cure this malady is legiti- 
 mate children's literature ; wise parents are also 
 very useful, though not perhaps so generally avail- 
 able. My present contention is that the right 
 sort of literature is an agent of great efficiency, 
 and may be very easily come by. Children derive 
 more genuine enjoyment and profit from a good 
 book than most grown people are susceptible of: 
 they see what is described, and themselves enact 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 115 
 
 and perfect the characters of the story as it goes 
 along. 
 
 Nor is it indispensable that literature of the 
 kind required should forthwith be produced; a 
 great deal, of admirable quality, is already on 
 hand. There are a few great poems — Spenser's 
 " Faerie Queene " is one — which no well regu- 
 lated child should be without; but poetry in 
 general is not exactly what we want. Children 
 — healthy children — never have the poetic ge- 
 nius ; but they are born mystics, and they have 
 the sense of humor. The best way to speak to 
 them is in prose, and the best kind of prose is the 
 symbolic. The hermetic philosophers of the Mid- 
 dle Ages are probably the authors of some of the 
 best children's stories extant. In these tales, dis- 
 guised beneath what is apparently the simplest 
 and most artless flow of narrative, profound truths 
 are discussed and explained. The child reads the 
 narrative, and certainly cannot be accused of com- 
 prehending the hidden philosophical problem ; yet 
 that also has its share in charming him. The 
 reason is partly that true symbolic or figurative 
 writing is the simplest form known to literature. 
 The simplest, that is to say, in outward form, — it 
 may be indefinitely abstruse as to its inward con- 
 
116 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 tents. Indeed, the very cause of its formal sim- 
 plicity is its interior profundity. The principle of 
 hermetic writing was, as we know, to disguise 
 philosophical propositions and results under a 
 form of words which should ostensibly signify 
 some very ordinary and trivial thing. It was a 
 secret language, in the vocabulary of which mate- 
 rial facts are used to represent spiritual truths. 
 But it differed from ordinary secret language in 
 this, that not only were the truths represented in 
 the symbols, but the philosophical development 
 of the truth, in its ramifications, was completely 
 evolved under the cover of a logically consistent 
 tale. This, evidently, is a far higher achievement 
 of ingenuity than merely to string together a 
 series of unrelated parts of speech, which, on 
 being tested by the " key," shall discover the mes- 
 sage or information really intended. It is, in fact, 
 a practical application of the philosophical discov- 
 ery, made by or communicated to the hermetic 
 philosophers, that every material object in nature 
 answers to or corresponds with a certain one or 
 group of philosophical truths. Viewed in this 
 light, the science of symbols or of correspondences 
 ceases to be an arbitrary device, susceptible of 
 alteration according to fancy, and avouches itself 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 117 
 
 an essential and consistent relation between the 
 things of the mind and the things of the senses. 
 There is a complete mental creation, answering 
 to the material creation, not continuously evolved 
 from it, but on a different or detached plane. 
 The sun, — to take an example, — the source of 
 light and heat, and thereby of physical nature, 
 is in these fables always the symbol of God, of 
 love and wisdom, by which the spirit of man 
 is created. Light, then, answers to wisdom, 
 and heat to love. And since all physical sub- 
 stances are the result of the combined action 
 of light and heat, we may easily perceive how 
 these hermetic sages were enabled to use every 
 physical object as a cloak of its corresponding 
 philosophical truth, — with no other liability to 
 error than might result from the imperfect condi- 
 tion of their knowledge of physical laws. 
 
 To return, however, to the children, I need 
 scarcely remark that the cause of children's taking 
 so kindly to hermetic writing is that it is actually 
 a living writing ; it is alive in precisely the same 
 way that nature, or man himself, is alive. Matter 
 is dead ; life organizes and animates it. And all 
 writing is essentially dead which is a mere trans- 
 cript of fact, and is not inwardly organized and 
 
118 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 vivified by a spiritual significance. Children do 
 not know what it is that makes a human being 
 smile, move, and talk ; but they know that such a 
 phenomenon is infinitely more interesting than a 
 doll ; and they prove it by themselves supplying 
 the doll with speech and motions out of their own 
 minds, so as to make it as much like a real person 
 as possible. In the same way, they do not per- 
 ceive the philosophical truth which is the cause of 
 existence of the hermetic fable ; but they find that 
 fable far more juicy and substantial than the or- 
 dinary narrative of e very-day facts, because, how- 
 ever fine the surface of the latter may be, it has, 
 after all, nothing but its surface to recommend it. 
 It has no soul ; it is not alive ; and, though they can- 
 not explain why, they feel the difference between 
 that thin, fixed grimace and the changing smile of 
 the living countenance. 
 
 It would scarcely be practicable, however, to 
 confine the children's reading to hermetic litera- 
 ture; for not much of it is extant in its pure 
 state. But it is hardly too much to say that all 
 fairy stories, and derivations from these, trace 
 their descent from an hermetic ancestry. They 
 are often unaware of their genealogy; but the 
 sparks of that primal vitality are in them. The 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 119 
 
 fairy is itself a symbol for the expression of a 
 more complex and abstract idea ; but, once having 
 come into existence, and being, not a pure symbol, 
 but a hybrid between the symbol and that for 
 which it stands, it presently began an independ- 
 ent career of its own. The mediaeval imagina- 
 tion went to work with it, found it singularly and 
 delightfully plastic to its touch and requirements, 
 and soon made it the centre of a new and charm- 
 ing world, in which a whole army of graceful and 
 romantic fancies, which are always in quest of an 
 arena in which to disport themselves before the 
 mind, found abundant accommodation and 
 nourishment. The fairy land of mediaeval Chris- 
 tianity seems to us the most satisfactory of all 
 fairy lands, probably because it is more in accord 
 with our genius and prejudices than those of the 
 East ; and it fitted in so aptly with the popular 
 mediaeval ignorance on the subject of natural 
 phenomena, that it became actually an article of 
 belief with the mass of men, who trembled at it 
 while they invented it, in the most delicious im- 
 aginable state of enchanted alarm. All this is 
 prime reading for children; because, though it 
 does not carry an orderly spiritual meaning within 
 it, it is more spiritual than material, and is con- 
 
120 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 structed entirely according to the dictates of an 
 exuberant and richly colored, but, nevertheless, in 
 its own sphere, legitimate imagination. Indeed, 
 fairy land, though as it were accidentally created, 
 has the same permanent right to be that Beauty 
 has; it agrees with a genuine aspect of human 
 nature, albeit one much discountenanced just at 
 present. The sequel to it, in which romantic 
 human personages are accredited with fairy-like 
 attributes, as in the " Faerie Queene," already al» 
 luded to, is a step in the wrong direction, but not 
 a step long enough to carry us altogether outside 
 of the charmed circle. The child's instinct of 
 selection being vast and cordial, — he will make a 
 grain of true imagination suffuse and glorify a 
 whole acre of twaddle, — we may with security 
 leave him in that fantastic society. Moreover, 
 some children being less imaginative than others, 
 and all children being less imaginative in some 
 moods and conditions than at other seasons, the 
 elaborate compositions of Tasso, Cervantes, and 
 the others, though on the boundary line between 
 what is meat for babes and the other sort of 
 meat, have also their abiding use. 
 
 The " Arabian Nights " introduced us to the 
 domain of the Oriental imagination, and has done 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 121 
 
 more than all the books of travel in the East to 
 make us acquainted with the Asiatic character 
 and its differences from our own. From what has 
 already been said on the subject of spiritual intui- 
 tion in relation to these races, one is prepared to 
 find that all the Eastern literature that has any 
 value is hermetic writing, and therefore, in so far, 
 proper for children. But the incorrigible subtlety 
 of the Oriental intellect has vitiated much of 
 their symbology, and the sentiment of sheer 
 wonder is stimulated rather than that of orderly 
 imagination. To read the " Arabian Nights " or 
 the " Bhagavad-Gita " is a sort of dissipation ; 
 upon the unhackneyed mind of the child it leaves 
 a reactionary sense of depression. The life which 
 it embodies is distorted, over-colored, and excit- 
 ing ; it has not the serene and balanced power of 
 the Western productions. Moreover, these books 
 were not written with the grave philosophic pur- 
 pose that animated our own hermetic school ; it is 
 rather a sort of jugglery practised with the sub- 
 ject — an exercise of ingenuity and invention for 
 their own sake. It indicates a lack of the feeling 
 of responsibility on the writers' part, — a result, 
 doubtless, of the prevailing fatalism that under- 
 lies all their thought. It is not essentially whole- 
 
122 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 some, in short ; but it is immeasurably superior to 
 the best of the productions called forth by our 
 modern notions of what should be given to chil- 
 dren to read. 
 
 But I can do no more than touch upon this 
 branch of the subject ; nor will it be possible to 
 linger long over the department of our own liter- 
 ature which came into being with "Robinson 
 Crusoe." No theory as to children's books would 
 be worth much attention which found itself 
 obliged to exclude that memorable work. Al- 
 though it submits in a certain measure to classi- 
 fication, it is almost sui generis; no book of its 
 kind, approaching it in merit, has ever been writ- 
 ten. In what, then, does its fascination consist ? 
 There is certainly nothing hermetic about it ; it is 
 the simplest and most studiously matter-of-fact 
 narrative of events, comprehensible without the 
 slightest effort, and having no meaning that is not 
 apparent on the face of it. And yet children, and 
 grown people also, read it again and again, and 
 cannot find it uninteresting. I think the phenom- 
 enon may largely be due to the nature of the 
 subject, which is really of primary and universal 
 interest to mankind. It is the story of the strug- 
 gle of man with wild and hostile nature, — in the 
 
LITERATURE EOR CHILDREN. 123 
 
 larger sense an elementary theme, — his shifts, his 
 failures, his perils, his fears, his hopes, his suc- 
 cesses. The character of Robinson is so artfully 
 generalized or universalized, and sympathy for 
 him is so powerfully aroused and maintained, that 
 the reader, especially the child reader, inevitably 
 identifies himself with him, and feels his emotions 
 and struggles as his own. The ingredient of sus- 
 pense is never absent from the story, and the ab- 
 sence of any plot prevents us from perceiving its 
 artificiality. It is, in fact, a type of the history of 
 the human race, not on the higher plane, but on 
 the physical one ; the history of man's contest 
 with and final victory over physical nature. The 
 very simplicity and obviousness of the details 
 give them grandeur and comprehensiveness : no 
 part of man's character which his contact with 
 nature can affect or develop is left untried in 
 Robinson. He manifests in little all historical 
 earthly experiences of the race ; such is the 
 scheme of the book ; and its permanence in litera- 
 ture is due to the sobriety and veracity with 
 which that scheme is carried out. To speak suc- 
 cinctly, it does for the body what the hermetic 
 and cognate literature does for the soul ; and for 
 the healthy man, the body is not less important 
 
124 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 than the soul in its own place and degree. It is 
 not the work of the Creator, but it is contingent 
 upon creation. 
 
 But poor Robinson has been most unfortunate 
 in his progeny, which at this day overrun the 
 whole earth, and render it a worse wilderness 
 than ever was the immortal Crusoe Island. Miss 
 Edgeworth, indeed, might fairly pose as the most 
 persistently malignant of all sources of error in 
 the design of children's literature ; but it is to be 
 feared that it was Defoe who first made her aware 
 of the availability of her own venom. She foisted 
 her prim and narrow moral code upon the com- 
 monplace adventures of a priggish little boy and 
 his companions ; and straightway the whole dreary 
 and disastrous army of sectarians and dogmatists 
 took up the cry, and have been ringing the lugu- 
 brious changes on it ever since. There is really 
 no estimating the mortal wrong that has been 
 done to childhood by Maria Edgeworth's "Frank " 
 and " The Parent's Assistant "; and, for my part, 
 I derive a melancholy joy in availing myself of 
 this opportunity to express my sense of my per- 
 sonal share in the injury. I believe that my 
 affection for the human race is as genuine 
 as the average ; but I am sure it would have 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 125 
 
 been greater had Miss Eclgeworth never been 
 born; and were I to come across any philo- 
 sophical system whereby I could persuade my- 
 self that she belonged to some other order 
 of beings than the human, I should be strongly 
 tempted to embrace that system on that ground 
 alone. 
 
 After what has been advanced in the preceding 
 pages, it does not need that I should state how 
 earnestly I deprecate the kind of literary food 
 which we are now furnishing to the coming gen- 
 eration in such sinister abundance. I am sure it 
 is written and published with good and honorable 
 motives ; but at the very best it can only do no 
 harm. Moreover, however well intentioned, it is 
 bad as literature ; it is poorly conceived and writ- 
 ten, and, what is worse, it is saturated with affec- 
 tation. For an impression prevails that one needs 
 to talk down to children; — to keep them con- 
 stantly reminded that they are innocent, ignorant 
 little things, whose consuming wish it is to be 
 good and go to Sunday-school, and who will be 
 all gratitude and docility to whomsoever provides 
 them with the latest fashion of moral sugar- 
 plums ; whereas, so far as my experience and in- 
 formation goes, children are the most formidable 
 
126 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 literary critics in the world. Matthew Arnold 
 himself has not so sure an instinct for what is 
 sound and good in a book as any intelligent little 
 boy or girl of eight years old. They judge abso- 
 lutely ; they are hampered by no comparisons or 
 relative considerations. They cannot give chapter 
 and verse for their opinion ; but about the opinion 
 itself there is no doubt. They have no theories ; 
 they judge in a white light. They have no prej- 
 udices nor traditions; they come straight from 
 the simple source of life. But, on the other hand, 
 they are readily hocussed and made morbid by 
 improper drugs, and presently, no doubt, lose 
 their appetite for what is wholesome. Now, we 
 cannot hope that an army of hermetic philos- 
 ophers or Mother-Gooses will arise at need 
 and remedy all abuses; but at least we might 
 refrain from moralizing and instruction, and, 
 if we can do nothing more, confine ourselves 
 to plain stories of adventure, say, with no ulte- 
 rior object whatever. There still remains the 
 genuine literature of the past to draw upon; 
 but let us beware, as we would of forgery and 
 perjury, of serving it up, as has been done too 
 often, medicated and modified to suit the foolish 
 dogmatism of the moment. Hans Christian 
 
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN. 127 
 
 Andersen was the last writer of children's 
 stories, properly so called; though, considering 
 how well married to his muse he was, it is a 
 wonder as well as a calamity that he left no 
 descendants. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MOEAL AIM IN FICTION". 
 
 The producers of modern fiction, who have ac- 
 quiesced more or less completely in the theory of 
 art for art's sake, are not, perhaps, aware that a 
 large class of persons still exist who hold fiction 
 to be unjustifiable, save in so far as the author has 
 it at heart not only (or chiefly) to adorn the tale, 
 but also (and first of all) to point the moral. The 
 novelist, in other words, should so mould the 
 characters and shape the plot of his imaginary 
 drama as to vindicate the wisdom and integrity of 
 the Decalogue : if he fail to do this, or if he do 
 the opposite of this, he deserves not the counte- 
 nance of virtuous and God-fearing persons. 
 
 Doubtless it should be evident to every sane and 
 impartial mind, whether orthodox or agnostic, that 
 an art which runs counter to the designs of God 
 toward the human race, or to the growth of the 
 sentiment of universal human brotherhood, must 
 sooner or later topple down from its fantastic and 
 
 128 
 
THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 129 
 
 hollow foundation. " Hitch your wagon to a star," 
 says Emerson ; " do not lie and steal : no god will 
 help." And although, for the sake of his own 
 private interests of the moment, a man will oc- 
 casionally violate the moral law, yet, with man- 
 kind at large, the necessity of vindicating the 
 superior advantages of right over wrong is ac- 
 knowledged not only in the interests of civilized 
 society, but because we feel that, however hostile 
 " goodness " may seem to be to my or your per- 
 sonal and temporary aims, it still remains the only 
 wholesome and handsome choice for the race at 
 large : and therefore do we, as a race, refuse to 
 tolerate — on no matter how plausible an artistic 
 plea — any view of human life which either pro- 
 fesses indifference to this universal sentiment, or 
 perversely challenges it. 
 
 The true ground of dispute, then, does not lie 
 here. The art which can stoop to be " procuress 
 to the lords of hell," is art no longer. But, on the 
 other hand, it would be difficult to point to any 
 great work of art, generally acknowledged to be 
 such, which explicitly concerns itself with the vin- 
 dication of any specific moral doctrine. The story 
 in which the virtuous are rewarded for their vir- 
 tue, and the evil punished for their wickedness, 
 
130 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 fails, somehow, to enlist our full sympathy; it 
 falls flatly on the ear of the mind ; it does not 
 stimulate thought. It does not satisfy ; we fancy 
 that something still remains to be said, or, if this 
 be all, then it was hardly worth saying. The real 
 record of life — its terror, its beauty, its pathos, 
 its depth — seems to have been missed. We may 
 admit that the tale is in harmony with what we 
 have been taught ought to happen; but the les- 
 sons of our private experience have not authenti- 
 cated our moral formulas ; we have seen the evil 
 exalted and the good brought low; and we inevi- 
 tably desire that our " fiction " shall tell us, not 
 what ought to happen, but what, as a matter of 
 fact, does happen. To put this a little differently: 
 we feel that the God of the orthodox moralist is 
 not the God of human nature. He is nothing but 
 the moralist himself in a highly sublimated state, 
 but betraying, in spite of that sublimation, a fatal 
 savor of human personality. The conviction that 
 any man — George Washington, let us say — is a 
 morally unexceptionable man, does not in the 
 least reconcile us to the idea of God being an in- 
 definitely exalted counterpart of Washington. 
 Such a God would be " most tolerable, and not to 
 be endured"; and the more exalted he was, the 
 
THE MOKAL AIM IN FICTION. 131 
 
 less endurable would he be. In short, man in- 
 stinctively refuses to regard the literal inculcation 
 of the Decalogue as the final word of God to the 
 human race, and much less to the individuals of 
 that race; and when he finds a story-teller proceed- 
 ing upon the contrary assumption, he is apt to put 
 that story-teller down as either an ass or a hum- 
 bug. As for art — if the reader happen to be 
 competent to form an opinion on that phase of 
 the matter — he will generally find that the art 
 dwindles in direct proportion as the moralized 
 deity expatiates; in fact, that they are incom- 
 patible. And he will also confess (if he have the 
 courage of his opinions) that, as between moral- 
 ized deity and true .art, his choice is heartily and 
 unreservedly for the latter. 
 
 I do not apprehend that the above remarks, 
 fairly interpreted, will encounter serious opposi- 
 tion from either party to the discussion ; and yet, so 
 far as I am aware, neither party has as yet availed 
 himself of the light which the conclusion throws 
 upon the nature of art itself. It should be ob- 
 vious, however, that upon a true definition of art 
 the whole argument must ultimately hinge : for 
 we can neither deny that art exists, nor affirm 
 that it can exist inconsistently with a recognition 
 
132 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 of a divinely beneficent purpose in creation. It 
 •must, therefore, in some way be an expression or 
 reflection of that purpose. But in what does the 
 purpose in question essentially consist ? 
 
 Broadly speaking — for it would be impossible 
 within the present limits to attempt a full analysis 
 of the subject — it may be considered as a gradual 
 and progressive Purification, not of this or that 
 particular individual in contradistinction to his 
 fellows, but of human nature as an entirety. The 
 evil into which all men are born, and of which the 
 Decalogue, or conscience, makes us aware, is not 
 an evil voluntarily contracted on our part, but is 
 inevitable to us as the creation of a truly 
 infinite love and wisdom. It is, in fact, our 
 characteristic nature as animals : and it is only 
 because we are not only animal, but also and 
 above all human, that we are enabled to recog- 
 nize it as evil instead of good. We absolve 
 the cat, the dog, the wolf, and the lion from 
 any moral responsibility for their deeds, because 
 we feel them to be deficient in conscience, which, 
 is our own divinely bestowed gift and privilege, 
 and which has been defined as the spirit of 
 God in the created nature, seeking to become the 
 creature's own spirit. Now, the power to correct 
 
THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 133 
 
 this evil does not abide in us as individuals, nor 
 will a literal adherence to the moral law avail 
 to purify any mother's son of us. Conscience 
 always says " Do not," — never " Do " ; and 
 obedience to it neither can give us a personal 
 claim on God's favor nor was it intended to do 
 so: its true function is to keep us innocent, so 
 that we may not individually obstruct the accom- 
 plishment of the divine ends toward us as a race. 
 Our nature not being the private possession of any 
 one of us, but the impersonal substratum of us all, 
 it follows that it cannot be redeemed piecemeal, but 
 only as a whole ; and, manifestly, the only Being 
 capable of effecting such redemption is not Peter^ 
 or Paul, or George Washington, or any other atom- 
 ic exponent of that nature, be he who he may; 
 but He alone whose infinitude is the complement 
 of our finiteness, and whose gradual descent into 
 human nature (figured in Scripture under the 
 symbol of the Incarnation) is even now being ac- 
 complished — as any one may perceive who reads 
 aright the progressive enlightenment of con- 
 science and intellect which history, through many 
 vicissitudes, displays. We find, therefore, that art 
 is, essentially, the imaginative expression of a 
 divine life in man. Art depends for its worth 
 
134 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 and veracity, not upon its adherence to literal 
 fact, but upon its perception and portrayal of the 
 underlying truth, of which fact is but the phenom- 
 enal and imperfect shadow. And it can have 
 nothing to do with personal vice or virtue, in the 
 way either of condemning the one or vindicating 
 the other ; it can only treat them as elements in 
 its picture — as factors in human destiny. For 
 the notion commonly entertained that the 
 practice of virtue gives us a claim upon the 
 Divine Exchequer (so to speak), and the habit of 
 acting virtuously for the sake of maintaining our 
 credit in society, and ensuring our prosperity in 
 the next world, — in so thinking and acting we 
 misapprehend the true inwardness of the matter. 
 To cultivate virtue because its pays, no matter 
 what the sort of coin in which payment is looked 
 for, is to be the victims of a lamentable delusion. 
 For such virtue makes each man jealous of his 
 neighbor ; whereas the aim of Providence is to 
 bring about the broadest human fellowship. A 
 man's physical body separates him from other 
 men ; and this fact disposes him to the error that 
 his nature is also a separate possession, and that 
 he can only be " good " by denying himself. But 
 the only goodness that is really good is a spon- 
 
THE MOEAL AIM IN FICTION. 135 
 
 taneous and impersonal evolution, and this occurs, 
 not where self-denial has been practised, but 
 only where a man feels himself to be absolutely 
 on the same level of desert or non-desert as are 
 the mass of his fellow-creatures. There is no use 
 in obeying the commandments, unless it be done, 
 not to make one's self more deserving than 
 another of God's approbation, but out of love for 
 goodness and truth in themselves, apart from any 
 personal considerations. The difference between 
 true religion and formal religion is that the first 
 leads us to abandon all personal claims to sal- 
 vation, and to care only for the salvation of 
 humanity as a whole ; whereas the latter stim- 
 ulates us to practise outward self-denial, in order 
 that our real self may be exalted. Such self- 
 denial results not in humility, but in spiritual 
 pride. 
 
 In no other way than this, it seems to me, can 
 art and morality be brought into harmony. 
 Art bears witness to the presence in us of some- 
 thing purer and loftier than anything of which we 
 can be individually conscious. Its complete ex- 
 pression we call inspiration; and he who is the 
 subject of the inspiration can account no better 
 than any one else for the result which art accom- 
 
136 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 plishes through him. The perfect poem is found, 
 not made ; the mind which utters it did not in- 
 vent it. Art takes all nature and all knowledge 
 for her province ; but she does not leave it as she 
 found it; by the divine necessity that is upon her, 
 she breathes a soul into herfmaterials, and organ- 
 izes chaos into form. But never, under any cir- 
 cumstances, does she deign to minister to our 
 selfish personal hope or greed. She shows us how 
 to love our neighbor, never ourselves. Shak- 
 speare, Homer, Phidias, Raphael, were no Phar- 
 isees — at least in so far as they were artists ; nor 
 did any one ever find in their works any coun- 
 tenance for that inhuman assumption — "I am ho- 
 lier than thou ! " In the world's darkest hours, 
 art has sometimes stood as the sole witness of the 
 nobler life that was in eclipse. Civilizations arise 
 and vanish ; forms of religion hold sway and are 
 forgotten; learning and science advance and gather 
 strength ; but true art was as great and as beau- 
 tiful three thousand years ago as it is to-day. We 
 are prone to confound the man with the artist, 
 and to suppose that he is artistic by possession 
 and inheritance, instead of exclusively by dint 
 of what he does. No artist worthy the name ever 
 dreams of putting himself into his work, but 
 
THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 137 
 
 only what is infinitely distinct from and other 
 than himself. It is not the poet who brings forth 
 the poem, but the poem that begets the poet ; it 
 makes him, educates him, creates in him the 
 poetic faculty. Those whom we call great men, 
 the heroes of history, are but the organs of great 
 crises and opportunities: as Emerson has said, 
 they are the most indebted men. In themselves 
 they are not great ; there is no ratio between their 
 achievements and them. Our judgment is mis- 
 led; we do not discriminate between the divine 
 purpose and the human instrument. When we 
 listen to Napoleon fretting his soul away at Elba, 
 or to Carlyle wrangling with his wife at Chelsea, 
 we are shocked at the discrepancy between the 
 lofty public performance and the petty domestic 
 shortcoming. Yet we do wrong to blame them ; 
 the nature of which they are examples is the same 
 nature that is shared also by the publican and 
 the sinner. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of saying that art should be 
 moral, we should rather say that all true morality 
 is art — that art is the test of morality. To at- 
 tempt to make this heavenly Pegasus draw the 
 sordid plough of our selfish moralistic prejudices 
 is a grotesque subversion of true order. Why 
 
138 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 should the novelist make believe that the wicked 
 are punished and the good are rewarded in this 
 world? Does he not know, on the contrary, that 
 whatsoever is basest in our common life tends 
 irresistibly to the highest places, and that the 
 selfish element in our nature is on the side of 
 public order ? Evil is at present a more efficient 
 instrument of order (because an interested one) 
 than good ; and the novelist who makes this appear 
 will do a far greater and more lasting benefit 
 to humanity than he who follows the cut-and- 
 dried artificial programme of bestowing crowns 
 on the saint and whips of scorpions on the 
 sinner. 
 
 As a matter of fact, I repeat, the best influences 
 of the best literature have never been didactic, 
 and there is no reason to believe they ever will 
 be. The only semblance of didacticism which 
 can enter into literature is that which conveys 
 such lessons as may be learned from sea* and sky, 
 mountain and valley, wood and stream, bird and 
 beast; and from the broad human life of races, 
 nations, and firesides ; a lesson that is not obvious 
 and superficial, but so profoundly hidden in the 
 creative depths as to emerge only to an appre- 
 hension equally profound. For the chatter and 
 
THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION. 139 
 
 affectation of sense disturb and offend that inward 
 spiritual ear which, in the silent recesses of 
 meditation, hears the prophetic murmur of the 
 vast ocean of human nature that flows within us 
 and around us all. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 
 
 During the winter of 1879, when I was in 
 London, it was my fortune to attend a social 
 meeting of literary men at the rooms of a certain 
 eminent publisher. The rooms were full of to- 
 bacco-smoke and talk, amid which were discerni- 
 ble, on all sides, the figures and faces of men more 
 or less renowned in the world of books. Most 
 noticeable among these personages was a broad- 
 shouldered, sturdy man, of middle height, with a 
 ruddy countenance, and snow-white tempestuous 
 beard and hair. He wore large, gold-rimmed 
 spectacles, but his eyes were black and brilliant, 
 and looked at his interlocutor with a certain 
 genial fury of inspection. He seemed to be in 
 a state of some excitement ; he spoke volubly 
 and almost boisterously, and his voice was full- 
 toned and powerful, though pleasant to the ear. 
 He turned himself, as he spoke, with a burly 
 briskness, from one side to another, addressing 
 
 140 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 141 
 
 himself first to this auditor and then to that, his 
 words bursting forth from beneath his white 
 moustache with such an impetus of hearty breath 
 that it seemed as if all opposing arguments must 
 be blown quite away. Meanwhile he flourished in 
 the air an ebony walking-stick, with much vigor 
 of gesticulation, and narrowly missing, as it ap- 
 peared, the pates of his listeners. He was clad in 
 evening dress, though the rest of the company 
 was, for the most part, in mufti ; and he was an 
 exceedingly fine-looking old gentleman. At the 
 first glance, you would have taken him to be some 
 civilized and modernized Squire Western, nour- 
 ished with beef and ale, and roughly hewn out of 
 the most robust and least refined variety of human 
 clay. Looking at him more narrowly, however, 
 you would have reconsidered this judgment. 
 Though his general contour and aspect were 
 massive and sturdy, the lines of his features were 
 delicately cut; his complexion was remarkably 
 pure and fine, and his face was susceptible of very 
 subtle and sensitive changes of expression. Here 
 was a man of abundant physical strength and 
 vigor, no doubt, but carrying within him a nature 
 more than commonly alert and impressible. His 
 organization, though thoroughly healthy, was both 
 
142 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 complex and high-wrought ; his character was sim- 
 ple and straightforward to a fault, but he was ab- 
 normally conscientious, and keenly alive to others' 
 opinion concerning him. It might be thought 
 that he was overburdened with self-esteem, and 
 unduly opinionated ; but, in fact, he was but over- 
 anxious to secure the good-will and agreement of 
 all with whom he came in contact. There was 
 some peculiarity in him — some element or bias 
 in his composition that made him different from 
 other men ; but, on the other hand, there was an 
 ardent solicitude to annul or reconcile this differ- 
 ence, and to prove himself to be, in fact, of abso- 
 lutely the same cut and quality as all the rest of 
 the world. Hence he was in a demonstrative, ex- 
 pository, or argumentative mood ; he could not sit 
 quiet in the face of a divergence between himself 
 and his associates ; he was incorrigibly strenuous 
 to obliterate or harmonize the irreconcilable points 
 between him and others ; and since these points 
 remained irreconcilable, he remained in a constant 
 state of storm and stress on the subject. 
 
 It was impossible to help liking such a man at 
 first sight ; and I believe that no man in London 
 society was more generally liked than Anthony 
 Trollope. There was something pathetic in his 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 143 
 
 attitude as above indicated; and a fresh and boy- 
 ish quality always invested him. His artlessness 
 was boyish, and so were his acuteness and his 
 transparent but somewhat belated good-sense. 
 He was one of those rare persons who not only 
 have no reserves, but who can afford to dispense 
 with them. After he had shown you all he had in 
 him, you would have seen nothing that was not 
 gentlemanly, honest, and clean. He was a quick- 
 tempered man, and the ardor and hurry of his tem- 
 perament made him seem more so than he really 
 was; but he was never more angry than he was 
 forgiving and generous. He was hurt by little 
 things, and little things pleased him ; he was sus- 
 picious and perverse, but in a manner that rather 
 endeared him to you than otherwise. Altogether, 
 to a casual acquaintance, who knew nothing of 
 his personal history, he was something of a para- 
 dox — an entertaining contradiction. The publi- 
 cation of his autobiography explained many things 
 in his character that were open to speculation; 
 and, indeed, the book is not only the most inter- 
 esting and amusing that its author has ever writ- 
 ten, but it places its subject before the reader 
 more completely and comprehensively than most 
 autobiographies do. This, however, is due much 
 
144 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 less to any direct effort or intention on the writer's 
 part, than to the unconscious self-revelation which 
 meets the reader on every page. No narrative 
 could be simpler, less artificial; and yet, every- 
 where, we read between the lines, and, so to 
 speak, discover Anthony Trollope in spite of his 
 efforts to discover himself to us. 
 
 The truth appears to be that the youthful Trol- 
 lope, like a more famous fellow-novelist, began 
 the world with more kicks than half-pence. His 
 boyhood, he affirms, was as unhappy as that of a 
 young gentleman could well be, owing to a mix- 
 ture of poverty and gentle standing on his father's 
 part, and, on his own, to " an utter lack of juve- 
 nile manhood" — whatever that may be. His 
 father was a lawyer, who frightened away all his 
 clients by his outrageous temper, and who encoun- 
 tered one mischance after another until he landed 
 himself and his family in open bankruptcy ; from 
 which they were rescued, partly by death, which 
 carried away four of them (including the old gen- 
 tleman), and partly by Mrs. Trollope, who, at fifty 
 years of age, brought out her famous book on 
 America, and continued to make a fair income by 
 literature (as she called it) until 1856, when, 
 being seventy-six years old, and having produced 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 145 
 
 one hundred and fourteen volumes, she permitted 
 herself to retire. This extraordinary lady, in her 
 youth, cherished what her son calls "an emotional 
 dislike to tyrants " ; but when her American ex- 
 perience had made her acquainted with some of 
 the seamy aspects of democracy, and especially 
 after the aristocracy of her own country had be- 
 gun to patronize her, she confessed the error of her 
 early way, "and thought that archduchesses were 
 sweet." But she was certainly a valiant and inde- 
 fatigable woman, — " of all the people I have ever 
 known," says her son, "the most joyous, or, at any 
 rate, the most capable of joy " ; and he adds that 
 her, best novels were written in 1834-35, when 
 her husband and four of her six children were 
 dying upstairs of consumption, and she had to di- 
 vide her time between nursing them and writing. 
 Assuredly, no son of hers need apprehend the 
 reproach — "Tydides melior matre" ; though An- 
 thony, and his brother Thomas Adolphus, must, 
 together, have run her pretty hard. The former 
 remarks, with that terrible complacency in an aw- 
 ful fact which is one of his most noticeable and 
 astounding traits, that the three of them " wrote 
 more books than were probably ever before pro- 
 duced by a single family." The existence of a 
 
146 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 few more such families could be consistent only 
 with a generous enlargement of the British Mu- 
 seum. 
 
 The elder Trollope was a scholar, and to make 
 scholars of his sons was one of his ruling ideas. 
 Poor little Anthony endured no less than twelve 
 mortal years of schooling — from the time he was 
 seven until he was nineteen — and declares that, 
 in all that time, he does not remember that he 
 ever knew a lesson. " I have been flogged," he 
 says, "oftener than any other human being." 
 Nay, his troubles began before his school-days ; 
 for his father used to make him recite his infantile 
 tasks to him while he was shaving, and obliged 
 him to sit with his head inclined in such a manner 
 " that he could pull my hair without stopping his 
 razor or dropping his shaving-brush." This is a 
 depressing picture ; and there are plenty more like 
 it. Dr. Butler, the master of Harrow, meeting 
 the poor little draggletail urchin in the yard, de- 
 sired to know, in awful accents, how so dirty a 
 boy dared to show himself near the school ! "He 
 must have known me, had he seen me as he was 
 wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging 
 me constantly. Perhaps," adds his victim, " he 
 did not recognize me by my face ! " But it is 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 147 
 
 comforting to leam, in another place, that justice 
 overtook the oppressor. " Dr. Butler only lived 
 to be Dean of Peterborough ; but his successor 
 (Dr. Longley) became Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury." There is a great deal of Trollopian moral- 
 ity in the fate of these two men, the latter of 
 whom " could not have said anything ill-natured 
 if he had tried." 
 
 Black care, however, continued to sit behind 
 the horseman with harrowing persistence. A cer- 
 tain Dr. Drury (another schoolmaster) punished 
 him on suspicion of "some nameless horror," of 
 which the unfortunate youngster happened to be 
 innocent. When, afterward, the latter fact began 
 to be obvious, " he whispered to me half a word 
 that perhaps he had been wrong. But, with a 
 boy's stupid slowness, I said nothing, and he had 
 not the courage to carry reparation farther." 
 The poverty of Anthony's father deprived the 
 boy of all the external advantages that might 
 have enabled him to take rank with his fellows : 
 and his native awkwardness and sensitiveness 
 widened the breach. " I had no friend to whom 
 I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, awk- 
 ward and ugly, and, I have no doubt, skulked 
 about in a most unattractive manner. Something 
 
148 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 of the disgrace of my school-da}^ has clung to me 
 all through life. When I. have been claimed as 
 school-fellow by some of those many hundreds 
 who were with me either at Harrow or at Win- 
 chester, I have felt that I had no right to talk of 
 things from most of which I was kept in estrange- 
 ment. I was never a coward, but to make a 
 stand against three hundred tyrants required a 
 moral courage which I did not possess." Once, 
 however, they pushed him too far, and he was 
 driven to rebellion. " And then came a great 
 fight — at the end of which my opponent had to 
 be taken home to be cured." And then he utters 
 the characteristic wish that some one, of the many 
 who witnessed this combat, may still be left alive 
 " who will be able to say that, in claiming this 
 solitary glory of my school-days, I am making 
 no false boast." The lonely, lugubrious little 
 champion ! One would almost have been willing 
 to have received from him a black eye and a 
 bloody nose, only to comfort his sad heart. It is 
 delightful to imagine the terrific earnestness of 
 that solitary victory : and I would like to know 
 what boy it was (if any) who lent the unpopular 
 warrior a knee and wiped his face. 
 
 After he got through his school-days, his family 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 149 
 
 being then abroad, he had an offer of a commis- 
 sion in an Austrian cavalry regiment; and he 
 might have been a major-general or field-marshal 
 at this day had his schooling made him acquaint- 
 ed with the French and German languages. Be- 
 ing, however, entirely ignorant of these, he was 
 obliged to study them in order to his admission ; 
 and while he was thus employed, he received 
 news of a vacant clerkship in the General Post- 
 Office, with the dazzling salary of £90 a year. 
 Needless to say that he jumped at such an open- 
 ing, seeing before him a vision of a splendid civil 
 and social career, at something over twenty 
 pounds a quarter. But London, even fifty years 
 ago, was a more expensive place than Anthony 
 imagined. Moreover, the boy was alone in the 
 wilderness of the city, with no one to advise or 
 guide him. The consequence was that these lat- 
 ter days of his youth were as bad or worse than 
 the beginning. In reviewing his plight at this 
 period, he observes : " I had passed my life where 
 I had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed 
 them. There was no house in which I could ha- 
 bitually see a lady's face or hear a lady's voice. 
 At the Post-Office I got credit for nothing, and 
 was reckless. I hated my work, and, more than 
 
150 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 all, I hated my idleness. Borrowings of money, 
 sometimes absolute want, and almost constant 
 misery, followed as a matter of course. I had a 
 full conviction that my life was taking me down 
 to the lowest pits — a feeling that I had been 
 looked upon as an evil, an encumbrance, a useless 
 thing, a creature of whom those connected with 
 me had to be ashamed. Even my few friends 
 were half-ashamed of me. I acknowledge the 
 weakness of a great desire to be loved — a strong 
 wish to be popular. No one had ever been less 
 so." Under these circumstances, he remarks 
 that, although, no doubt, if the mind be strong 
 enough, the temptation will not prevail, yet he 
 is fain to admit that the temptation prevailed 
 with him. He did not sit at home, after his re- 
 turn from the office, in the evening, to drink tea 
 and read, but tramped out in the streets, and 
 tried to see life and be jolly on X90 a year. He 
 borrowed four pounds of a money-lender, to aug- 
 ment his resources, and found, after a few years, 
 that he had paid him two hundred pounds for the 
 accommodation. He met with every variety of 
 absurd and disastrous adventure. The mother of 
 a young woman with whom he had had an 
 innocent flirtation in the country appeared one 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 151 
 
 day at his desk in the office, and called ont 
 before all the clerks, " Anthony Trollope, 
 when are you going to marry my daughter?" 
 On another occasion a sum of money was mis- 
 sing from the table of the director. Anthony 
 was summoned. The director informed him of 
 the loss — " and, by G — ! " he continued, 
 thundering his fist down on the table, " no one 
 has been in the room but you and I." " Then, 
 by G — ! " cried Anthony, thundering his fist 
 down upon something, "you have taken it!" 
 This was very well ; but the thing which An- 
 thony had thumped happened to be, not a table, 
 but a movable desk with an inkstand on it, and 
 the ink flew up and deluged the face and shirt- 
 front of the enraged director. Still another ad- 
 venture was that of the Queen of Saxony and the 
 Half-Crown ; but the reader must investigate 
 these matters for himself. 
 
 So far there has been nothing looking toward 
 the novel-writer. But now we learn that from 
 the age of fifteen to twenty-six Anthony kept a 
 journal, which, he says, " convicted me of folly, 
 ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, and conceit, but 
 habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, 
 and taught me how to express myself with facil- 
 
152 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICISMS. 
 
 itv." In addition to this, and more to the pur- 
 pose, he had formed an odd habit. Living, as he 
 was forced to do, so much to himself, if not by 
 himself, he had to play, not with other boys, but 
 with himself; and his favorite play was to con- 
 ceive a tale, or series of fictitious events, and to 
 carry it on, day after day, for months together, in 
 his mind. "Nothing impossible was ever in- 
 troduced, or violently improbable. I was my own 
 hero, but I never became a king or a duke, still 
 less an Antinoiis, or six feet high. But I was a 
 very clever person, and beautiful young women 
 used to be very fond of me. I learned in this 
 way to live in a world outside the world of my 
 own material life." This is pointedly, even touch- 
 ingly, characteristic. Never, to the day of his 
 death, did Mr. Trollope either see or imagine any- 
 thing impossible, or violently improbable, in the 
 world. This mortal plane of things never dis- 
 solved before his gaze and revealed the mysteries 
 of absolute Being ; his heavens were never rolled 
 up as a scroll, and his earth had no bubbles as the 
 water hath. He took things as he found them ; 
 and he never found them out. But if the light 
 that never was on sea or land does not illuminate 
 the writings of Mr. Trollope, there is generally 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY* BOOKS. 153 
 
 plenty of that other kind of light with which, 
 after all, the average reader is more familiar, and 
 which not a few, perhaps, prefer to the transcen- 
 dental lustre. There is no modern novelist who 
 has more clearly than Trollope defined to his own 
 apprehension his own literary capabilities and limi- 
 tations. He is thoroughly acquainted with both his 
 fortes and his foibles ; and so sound is his good sense, 
 that he is seldom beguiled into toiling with futile 
 ambition after effects that are beyond him. His 
 proper domain is a sufficiently wide one ; he is 
 inimitably at home here ; and when he invites 
 us there to visit him, we may be sure of getting 
 good and wholesome entertainment. The writer's 
 familiarity with his characters communicates itself 
 imperceptibly to the reader; there are no difficult 
 or awkward introductions ; the toning of the pict- 
 ure (to use the painter's phrase) is unexception- 
 able ; and if it be rather tinted than colored, the 
 tints are handled in a workmanlike manner. 
 Again, few English novelists seem to possess so 
 sane a comprehension of the modes of life and 
 thought of the British aristocracy as Trollope. 
 He has not only made a study of them from the 
 observer's point of view, but he has reasoned them 
 out intellectually. The figures are not vividly de- 
 
154 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 fined ; the realism is applied to events rather than 
 to personages: we have the scene described for 
 us but we do not look upon it. We should 
 not recognize his characters if we saw them ; 
 but if we were told who they were, we should 
 know, from their author's testimony, what were 
 their characteristic traits and how they would 
 act under given circumstances. The logical 
 sequence of events is carefully maintained; 
 nothing happens, either for good or for evil, 
 other than might befall under the dispen- 
 sations of a Providence no more unjust, and 
 no more far-sighted, than Trollope himself. 
 There is a good deal of the a priori principle in 
 his method ; he has made up his mind as to cer- 
 tain fundamental data, and thence develops or 
 explains whatever complication comes up for set- 
 tlement. But to range about unhampered by any 
 theories, concerned only to examine all phenom- 
 ena, and to report thereupon, careless of any con- 
 siderations save those of artistic propriety, would 
 have been vanity and striving after wind to Trol- 
 lope, and derivatively so, doubtless, to his readers. 
 Considered in the abstract, it is a curious ques- 
 tion what makes his novels interesting. The 
 reader knows, in a sense, just what is in store for 
 
THE MAKEE OF MANY BOOKS. 155 
 
 him, — or, rather, what is not. There will be no 
 astonishment, no curdling horror, no consuming 
 suspense. There may be, perhaps, as many 
 murders, forgeries, foundlings, abductions, and 
 missing wills, in Trollope's novels as in any 
 others ; but they are not told about in a manner to 
 alarm us ; we accept them philosophically ; there 
 are paragraphs in our morning paper that excite 
 us more. And yet they are narrated with art, 
 and with dramatic effect. They are interesting, 
 but not uncourteously — not exasperatingly so; 
 and the strangest part of it is that the introduc- 
 tory and intermediate passages are no less inter- 
 esting, under Trollope's treatment, than are the 
 murders and forgeries. Not only does he never 
 offend the modesty of nature, — he encourages her 
 to be prudish, and trains her to such evenness and 
 severity of demeanor that we never know when 
 we have had enough of her. His touch is emi- 
 nently civilizing ; everything, from the episodes to 
 the sentences, moves without hitch or creak : we 
 never have to read a paragraph twice, and we are 
 seldom sorry to have read it once. 
 
 Amusingly characteristic of Trollope is his 
 treatment of his villains. His attitude toward 
 them betrays no personal uncharitableness or 
 
156 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 animosity, but the villain has a bad time of it just 
 the same. Trollope places upon him a large, benev- 
 olent, but unyielding forefinger, and says to us : 
 " Remark, if you please, how this inferior reptile 
 squirms when pressure is applied to him. I will 
 now augment the pressure. You observe that the 
 squirmings increase in energy and complexity. 
 Now, if you please, I will bear down yet a 
 little harder. Do not be alarmed, madam ; the 
 reptile undoubtedly suffers, but the spectacle 
 may do us some good, and you may trust 
 me not to let him do you any harm. There ! — 
 Yes, evisceration by means of pressure is be- 
 yond question painful ; but every one must have 
 observed the benevolence of my forefinger during 
 the operation ; and I fancy even the subject of the 
 experiment (were he in a condition to express his 
 sentiments) would have admitted as much. 
 Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I shall have 
 the pleasure of meeting you again very shortly. 
 John, another reptile, please ! " Upon the whole, 
 it is much to Trollope's credit that he wrote 
 somewhere about fifty long novels ; and to the ' 
 credit of the English people that they paid him 
 three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for these 
 novels — and read them ! 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 157 
 
 But his success as a man of letters was still 
 many years in the future. After seven years in 
 the London office, he went to Ireland as assistant 
 surveyor, and thenceforward he began to enjoy 
 his business, and to get on in it. He was paid 
 sixpence a mile, and he would ride forty miles a 
 day. He rode to hounds, incidentally, whenever 
 he got a chance, and he kept up the practice, with 
 enthusiasm, to within a few years of his death. 
 " It will, I think, be accorded to me," he says, 
 " that I have ridden hard. I know very little 
 about hunting ; I am blind, very heavy, and I am 
 now old ; but I ride with a boy's energy, hating 
 the roads, and despising young men who ride 
 them ; and I feel that life cannot give me any- 
 thing better than when I have gone through a 
 long run to the finish, keeping a place, not of glory, 
 but of credit, among my juniors." Riding, work- 
 ing, having a jolly time, and gradually increasing 
 his income, he lived until 1842, when he became 
 engaged ; and he was married on June 11, 1844. 
 " I ought to name that happy day," he declares, 
 " as the commencement of my better life." It 
 was at about this date, also, that he began and 
 finished, not without delay and procrastination, 
 his first novel. Curiously enough, he affirms that 
 
158 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 lie did not doubt his own intellectual sufficiency 
 to write a readable novel: "What I did doubt 
 was my own industry, and the chances of a 
 market." Never, surely, was self-distrust more 
 unfounded. As for the first novel, he sent it to 
 his mother, to dispose of as best she could ; and it 
 never brought him anything, except a perception 
 that it was considered by his friends to be "an 
 unfortunate aggravation of the family disease." 
 During the ensuing ten years, this view seemed 
 to be not unreasonable, for, in all that time, 
 though he worked hard, he earned by literature 
 no more than £55. But, between 1857 and 1860, 
 he received for various novels, from £100 to 
 £1000 each; and thereafter, £3000 or more was 
 his regular price for a story in three volumes. 
 As he maintained his connection with the post- 
 office until 1867, he was in receipt of an income 
 of £4500, "of which I spent two-thirds and put 
 by one." We should be doing an injustice to 
 Mr. Trollope to omit these details, which he gives 
 so frankly; for, as he early informs us, "my first 
 object in taking to literature was to make an 
 income on which I and those belonging to me 
 might live in comfort." Nor will he let us forget 
 that novel-writing, to him, was not so much an 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 159 
 
 art, or even a profession, as a trade, in which all 
 that can be ashed of a man is that he shall be 
 honest and punctual, turning out good average 
 work, and the more the better. " The great 
 secret consists in " — in what ? — wiry, " in ac- 
 knowledging myself to be bound to rules of labor 
 similar to those which an artisan or mechanic is 
 forced to obey." There may be, however, other 
 incidental considerations. " I have ever thought 
 of myself as a preacher of sermons, and my pulpit 
 as one I could make both salutary and agreeable 
 to my audience " ; and he tells us that he has 
 used some of his novels for the expression of his 
 political and social convictions. Again — " The 
 novelist must please, and he must teach ; a good 
 novel should be both realistic and sensational in 
 the highest degree." He says that he sees no 
 reason why two or three good novels should not 
 be written at the same time ; and that, for his own 
 part, he was accustomed to write two hundred 
 and fifty words every fifteen minutes, by the 
 watch, during his working hours. Nor does he 
 mind letting us know that when he sits down to 
 write a novel, he neither knows nor cares how it 
 is to end. And finally, one is a little startled to 
 hear him say, epigrammatically, that a writer 
 
160 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 should not have to tell a story, but should have a 
 story to tell. Beyond a doubt, Anthony Trollope 
 is something of a paradox. 
 
 The world has long ago passed its judgment 
 on his stories, but it is interesting, all the same, 
 to note his own opinion of them; and though 
 never arrogant, he is generally tolerant, if not 
 genial. "A novel should be a picture of com- 
 mon life, enlivened by humor and sweetened by 
 pathos. I have never fancied myself to be a man 
 of genius," he says ; but again, with strange im- 
 perviousness, " A small daily task, if it be daily, 
 will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules." 
 Beat them, how ? Why, in quantity. But how 
 about quality? Is the travail of a work of art 
 the same thing as the making of a pair of shoes ? 
 Emerson tells us that — 
 
 " Ever the words of the gods resound, 
 But the porches of man's ear 
 Seldom, in this low life's round, 
 Are unsealed, that he may hear." 
 
 No one disputes, however, that you may hear the 
 tapping of the cobbler's hammer at any time. 
 
 To the view of the present writer, how much 
 good soever Mr. Trollope may have done as a 
 preacher and moralist, he has done great harm to 
 
THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS. 161 
 
 English fictitious literature by his novels ; and it 
 need only be added, in this connection, that his 
 methods and results in novel-writing seem best to 
 be explained by that peculiar mixture of separate- 
 ness and commonplaceness which we began by re- 
 marking in him. The separateness has given him 
 the standpoint whence he has been able to observe 
 and describe the commonplaceness with which (in 
 spite of his separateness) he is in vital sympathy. 
 But Trollope the man is the abundant and con- 
 soling compensation for Trollope the novelist; 
 and one wishes that his books might have died, 
 and he lived on indefinitely. It is charming to 
 read of his life in London after his success in the 
 Cornhill Magazine. " Up to that time I had lived 
 very little among men. It was a festival to me to 
 dine at the ' Garrick.' I think I became popular 
 among those with whom I associated. I have 
 ever wished to be liked by those around me — a 
 wish that during the first half of my life was 
 never gratified." And, again, in summing up his 
 life, he says : " I have betrayed no woman. 
 Wine has brought to me no sorrow. It has been 
 the companionship, rather than the habit of 
 smoking that I loved. I have never desired to 
 win money, and I have lost none. To enjoy 
 
162 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 the excitement of pleasure, but to be free from 
 its vices and ill-effects — to have the sweet, and 
 to leave the bitter untasted — that has been my 
 study. I will not say that I have never scorched 
 a finger; but I carry no ugly wounds." 
 
 A man who, at the end of his career, could 
 make such a profession as this — who felt the need 
 of no further self-vindication than this — such a 
 man, whatever may have been his accountability 
 to the muse of Fiction, is a credit to England and 
 to human nature, and deserves to be numbered 
 among the darlings of mankind. It was an honor 
 to be called his friend ; and what his idea of 
 friendship was, may be learned from the passage 
 in which he speaks of his friend Millais — with 
 the quotation of which this paper may fitly be 
 concluded : — 
 
 " To see him has always been a pleasure ; his 
 voice has always been a sweet sound in my ears. 
 Behind his back I have never heard him praised 
 without joining the eulogist ; I have never heard 
 a word spoken against him without opposing the 
 censurer. These words, should he ever see them, 
 will come to him from the grave, and will tell 
 him of my regard — as one living man never tells 
 another." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 
 
 Before criticising Mr. Mallock's little essay, 
 let us summarize its contents. The author be- 
 gins with an analysis of the aims, the principles, 
 and the " pseudo-science " of modern Democracy. 
 Having established the evil and destructive char- 
 acter of these things, he sets himself to show by 
 logical argument that the present state of social 
 inequality, which Democrats wish to disturb, is a 
 natural and wholesome state ; that the continu- 
 ance of civilization is dependent upon it ; and 
 that it could only be overturned by effecting a 
 radical change — not in human institutions, but 
 in human character. The desire for inequality 
 is inherent in the human character ; and in order 
 to prove this statement, Mr. Mallock proceeds to 
 affirm that there is such a thing as a science 
 of human character; that of this science he is 
 the discoverer; and that the application of this 
 
 163 
 
164 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 science to the question at issue will demonstrate 
 the integrity of Mr. Mallock's views, and the in- 
 firmity of all others. In the ensuing chapters 
 the application is made, and at the end the truth 
 of the proposition is declared established. 
 
 This is the outline ; but let us note some of the 
 details. Mr. Mallock asserts (Chap. I.) that the 
 aim of modern Democracy is to overturn " all that 
 has hitherto been connected with high-breeding 
 or with personal culture " ; and that " to call the 
 Democrats a set of thieves and confiscators is 
 merely to apply names to them which they have 
 no wish to repudiate." He maintains (Chap. II.) 
 that the first and foremost of the Democratic 
 principles is "that the perfection of society in- 
 volves social equality " ; and that " the luxury of 
 one man means the deprivation of another." He 
 credits the Democrats with arguing that "the 
 means of producing equality are a series of 
 changes in existing institutions " ; that " by 
 changing the institutions of a society we are able 
 to change its structure " ; that " the cause of the 
 distribution of wealth" is "laws and forms of 
 government " ; and that " the wealthy classes, as 
 such, are connected with wealth in no other way 
 but as the accidental appropriates of it." In 
 
MB. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 165 
 
 his third chapter he tells us that " the entire 
 theory of modern Democracy . . . depends 
 on the doctrine that the cause of wealth is labor " ; 
 that Democrats believe we " may count on a man 
 to labor, just as surely as we may count on a man 
 to eat " ; that " the man who does not labor is 
 supported by the man who does " ; and that the 
 pseudo-science of modern Democracy " starts with 
 the conception of man as containing in himself 
 a natural tendency to labor." And here Mr. 
 Mallock's statement of his opponent's position 
 ends. 
 
 In the fourth chapter we are brought within 
 sight of u The Missing Substitute." "A man's 
 character," we are told, " divides into his desires 
 on the one hand, and his capacities on the other " ; 
 and it is observed that "various as are men's de- 
 sires and capacities, yet if talent and ambition 
 commanded no more than idleness and stupidity, 
 all men practically would be idle and stupid." 
 " Men's capacities," we are reminded, " are prac- 
 tically unequal, because they develop their own 
 potential inequalities ; they do this because they 
 desire to place themselves in unequal external 
 circumstances, — which result the condition of 
 society renders possible." 
 
166 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Coming now to the Science of Human Charac- 
 ter itself, we find that it "asserts a permanent 
 relationship to exist between human character 
 and social inequality " ; and the author then pro- 
 ceeds at some length to show how near Herbert 
 Spencer, Buckle, and other social and economic 
 philosophers, came to stumbling over his missing 
 science, and yet avoided doing so. Nevertheless, 
 argues Mr. Mallock, "if there be such a thing as 
 a social science, or a science of history, there 
 must be also a science of biography " ; and this 
 science, though it "cannot show us how any 
 special man will act in the future," yet, if " any 
 special action be given us, it can show us that it 
 was produced by a special motive ; and conversely, 
 that if the special motive be wanting, the special 
 action is sure to be wanting also." As an exam- 
 ple how to distinguish between those traits of 
 human character which are available for scientific 
 purposes, and those which are not, Mr. Mallock 
 instances a mob, which temporarily acts together 
 for some given purpose : the individual differences 
 of character then " cancel out," and only points 
 of agreement are left. Proceeding to the sixth 
 chapter, he applies himself to setting to rest the 
 scruples of those who find something cynical in 
 
ME. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 167 
 
 the idea that the desire for Inequality is compat- 
 ible with a respectable form of human character. 
 It is true, he says, that man does not live by" 
 bread alone ; but he denies that he means to say 
 " that all human activity is motived by the desire 
 for inequality " ; he would assert that only " of all 
 productive labor, except the lowest." The only 
 actions independent of the desire for inequality, 
 however, are those performed in the name of art, 
 science, philanthropy, and religion; and even in 
 these cases, so far as the actions are not motived 
 by a desire for inequality, they are not of product- 
 ive use ; and vice versd. In the remaining chap- 
 ters, which we must dismiss briefly, we meet with 
 such statements as " labor has been produced by 
 an artificial creation of want of food, and by then 
 supplying the want on certain conditions " ; that 
 "civilization has always been begun by an op- 
 pressive minority"; that "progress depends on 
 certain gifted individuals," and therefore social 
 equality would destroy progress ; that inequality 
 influences production by existing as an object of 
 desire and as a means of pressure ; that the evils 
 of poverty are caused by want, not by inequality ; 
 and that, finally, equality is not the goal of pro- 
 gress, but of retrogression ; that inequality is not 
 
168 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICISMS. 
 
 an accidental evil of civilization, but the cause of 
 its development; the distance of the poor from 
 the rich is not the cause of the former's poverty as 
 distinct from riches, but of their civilized compe- 
 tence as distinct from barbarism; and that the 
 apparent changes in the direction of equality re- 
 corded in history, have been, in reality, none 
 other than "a more efficient arrangement of in- 
 equalities." 
 
 Now, let us inquire what all this ingenious 
 prattle about Inequality and the Science of Hu- 
 man Character amounts to. What does Mr. Mal- 
 lock expect ? His book has been out six months, 
 and still Democracy exists. But does any such 
 Democracy as he combats exist, or could it con- 
 ceivably exist? Have his investigations of the 
 human character failed to inform him that one of 
 the strongest uatural instincts of man's nature is 
 immovably opposed to anything like an equal dis- 
 tribution of existing wealth? — because whoever 
 owns anything, if it be only a coat, wishes to keep 
 it ; and that wish makes him aware that his fellow- 
 man will wish to keep, and will keep at all haz- 
 ards, whatever things belong to him. What Dem- 
 ocrats really desire is to enable all men to have 
 
MR. mallock's MISSING SCIENCE. 169 
 
 an equal chance to obtain wealth, instead of 
 being, as is largely the case now, hampered and 
 kept down by all manner of legal and arbitrary 
 restrictions. As for the " desire for Inequality," 
 it seems to exist chiefly in Mr. Mallock's imagi- 
 nation. Who does desire it? Does the man 'who 
 " strikes " for higher wages desire it ? Let us see. 
 A strike, to be successful, must be not an individ- 
 ual act, but the act of a large body of men, all 
 demanding the same thing — an increase in wages. 
 If they gain their end, no difference has taken 
 place in their mutual position ; and their position 
 in regard to their employers is altered only in 
 that an aj)proach has been made toward greater 
 equality with the latter. And so in other depart- 
 ments of human effort : the aim, which the man 
 who wishes to better his position sets before him- 
 self, is not to rise head and shoulders above his 
 equals, but to equal his superiors. And as to the 
 Socialist schemes for the reorganization of society, 
 they imply, at most, a wish to see all men start 
 fair in the race of life, the only advantages allowed 
 being not those of rank or station, but solely of 
 innate capacity. And the reason the Socialist 
 desires this is, because he believes, rightly or 
 wrongly, that rnai^ inefficient men are, at pres- 
 
170 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 ent, only artificially protected from betraying 
 their inefficiency; and that many efficient men 
 are only artificially prevented from showing their 
 efficiency; and that the fair start he proposes 
 would not result in keeping all men on a dead 
 level, but would simply put those in command 
 who had a genuine right to be there. 
 
 But this is taxing Mr. Mallock too seriously : 
 he has not written in earnest. But, as his uncle, 
 Mr. Froude, said, when reading "The New Re- 
 public," — "The rogue is clever!" He has read 
 a good deal, he has an active mind, a smooth re- 
 dundancy of expression, a talent for caricature, a 
 fondness for epigram and paradox, a useful shal- 
 lowness, and an amusing impudence. He has no 
 practical knowledge of mankind, no experience 
 of life, no commanding point of view, and no 
 depth of insight. He has no conception of the 
 meaning and quality of the problems with whose 
 exterior aspects he so prettily trifles. He has 
 constructed a Science of Human Character with- 
 out for one moment being aware that, for instance, 
 human character and human nature are two dis- 
 tinct things ; and that, furthermore, the one is 
 everything that the other is not. -As little is he 
 
MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE. 171 
 
 conscious of the significance of the words "so- 
 ciety" and "civilization"; nor can he explain 
 whether, or why, either of them is desirable or 
 undesirable, good or bad. He has never done, 
 and (judging from his published works) we do 
 not believe him capable of doing, any analytical 
 or constructive thinking ; at most, as in the pres- 
 ent volume, he turns a few familiar objects upside 
 down, and airily invites his audience to believe 
 that he has thereby earned the name of Dis- 
 coverer, if not of Creator. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 
 
 On an accessible book-shelf in my library, stand 
 side by side four volumes whose contents I once 
 knew by heart, and which, after the lapse of 
 twenty years, are yet tolerably distinct in my 
 memory. These are stoutly bound in purple 
 muslin, with a stamp, of Persian design appar- 
 ently, on the centre of each cover. They are 
 stained and worn, and the backs have faded to a 
 brownish hue, from exposure to the light, and a 
 leaf in one of the volumes has been torn across; 
 but the paper and the sewing and the clear bold 
 type are still as serviceable as ever. The books 
 seem to have been made to last, — to stand a great 
 deal of reading. Contrasted with the aesthet- 
 ically designed covers one sees nowadays, they 
 would be considered inexcusably ugly, and the 
 least popular novelist of our time would protest 
 against having his lucubrations presented to the 
 public in such plain attire. Nevertheless, on 
 
 172 
 
THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 173 
 
 turning to the title-pages, you may see imprinted, 
 on the first, "Fourteenth Edition"; on the sec- 
 ond, " Twelfth Edition " ; and on the others, 
 indications somewhat less magnificent, but still 
 evidence of very exceptional circulation. The 
 date they bear is that of the first years of our 
 civil war; and the first published of them is 
 prefaced by a biographical memoir of the author, 
 written by his friend George William Curtis. 
 This memoir was originally printed in the Atlantic 
 Monthly, two or three months after the death of 
 its subject, Theodore Winthrop. 
 
 For these books, — three novels, and one volume 
 of records of travel, — came from his hand, though 
 they did not see the light until after he had 
 passed beyond the sphere of authors and pub- 
 lishers. At that time, the country was in an 
 exalted and heroic mood, and the men who went 
 to fight its battles were regarded with a personal 
 affection by no means restricted to their personal 
 acquaintances. Their names were on all lips, and 
 those of them who fell were mourned by multi- 
 tudes instead of by individuals. Winthrop's his- 
 toric name, and the influential position of some 
 of his nearest friends, would have sufficed to 
 bring into unusual prominence his brief career 
 
174 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 and his fate as a soldier, even had his in- 
 trinsic qualities and character been less honor- 
 able and winning than they were. But he was a 
 type of a young American such as America is 
 proud to own. He was high-minded, refined, 
 gifted, handsome. I recollect a portrait of him 
 published soon after his death, — a photograph, I 
 think, from a crayon drawing; an eloquent, sen- 
 sitive, rather melancholy, but manly and cour- 
 ageous face, with grave eyes, the mouth veiled 
 by a long moustache. It was the kind of coun- 
 tenance one would wish our young heroes to 
 have. When, after the catastrophe at Great 
 Bethel, it became known that Winthrop had 
 left writings behind him, it would have been 
 strange indeed had not every one felt a desire 
 to read them. 
 
 Moreover, he had already begun to be known 
 as a writer. It was during 1860, I believe, that 
 a story of his, in two instalments, entitled " Love 
 on Skates," appeared in the "Atlantic." It was 
 a brilliant and graphic celebration of the art of 
 skating, engrafted on a love-tale as full of romance 
 and movement as could be desired. Admirably 
 told it was, as I recollect it ; crisp with the healthy 
 vigor of American wintry atmosphere, with bright 
 
THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 175 
 
 touches of humor, and, here and there, passages 
 of sentiment, half tender, half playful. It was 
 something new in our literature, and gave promise 
 of valuable work to come. But the writer was 
 not destined to fulfil the promise. In the next 
 year, from the camp of his regiment, he wrote one 
 or two admirable descriptive sketches, touching 
 upon the characteristic points of the campaigning 
 life which had just begun ; but, before the last of 
 these had become familiar to the " Atlantic's " 
 readers, it was known that it would be the last. 
 Theodore Winthrop had been killed. 
 
 He was only in his thirty-third year. He was 
 born in New Haven, and had entered Yale Col- 
 lege with the class of '48. The A KE Fraternity 
 was, I believe, founded in the year of his ad- 
 mission, and he must, therefore, have been among 
 its earliest members. He was distinguished as 
 a scholar, and the traces of his classic and philo- 
 sophical acquirements are everywhere visible in 
 his books. During the five or six years following 
 his graduation, he travelled abroad, and in the 
 South and West; a wild frontier life had great 
 attractions for him, as he who reads " John Brent " 
 and " The Canoe and the Saddle " need not be 
 told. He tried his hand at various things, but 
 
176 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 could settle himself to no profession, — an in- 
 ability which would have excited no remark in 
 England, which has had time to recognize the 
 value of men of leisure, as such ; but which seems 
 to have perplexed some of his friends in this 
 country. Be that as it may, no one had reason to 
 complain of lack of energy and promptness on his 
 part when patriotism revealed a path to Win- 
 throp. He knew that the time for him had 
 come ; but he had also known that the world is 
 not yet so large that all men, at all times, can lay 
 their hands upon the work that is suitable for 
 them to do. 
 
 Let us, however, return to the novels. They 
 appear to have been written about 1856 and 1857, 
 when their author was twenty-eight or nine years 
 old. Of the order in which they were composed 
 I have no record; but, judging from internal evi- 
 dence, I should say that " Edwin Brothertoft " 
 came first, then " Cecil Dreeme," and then " John 
 Brent." The style, and the quality of thought, 
 in the latter is more mature than in the others, 
 and its tone is more fresh and wholesome. In the 
 order of publication, " Cecil Dreeme " was first, 
 and seems also to have been most widely read ; 
 then "John Brent," and then "Edwin Brother- 
 
17T 
 
 toft," the scene of which was laid in the last cen- 
 tury. I remember seeing, at the house of James 
 T. Fields, their publisher, the manuscripts of 
 these books, carefully bound and preserved. They 
 were written on large ruled letter-paper, and the 
 handwriting was very large, and had a consid- 
 erable slope. There were scarcely any correc- 
 tions or erasures; but it is possible that Win- 
 throp made clean copies of his stories after 
 composing them. Much of the dialogue, espec- 
 ially, bears evidence of having been revised, and 
 of the author's having perhaps sacrificed ease and 
 naturalness, here and there, to the craving for con- 
 ciseness which has been one of the chief stum- 
 bling-blocks in the way of our young writers. He 
 wished to avoid heaviness and "padding," and 
 went to the other extreme. He wanted to cut 
 loose from the old, stale traditions of composition, 
 and to produce something which should be new, 
 not only in character and significance, but in 
 manner of presentation. He had the ambition of 
 the young Hafiz, who professed a longing to "tear 
 down this tiresome old sky." But the old sky 
 has good reasons for being what and where it is, 
 and young radicals finally come to perceive that, 
 regarded from the proper point of view, and in 
 
178 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 the right spirit, it is not so tiresome after all. 
 Divine Revelation itself can be expressed in very 
 moderate and commonplace language ; and if 
 one's thoughts are worth thinking, they are worth 
 clothing in adequate and serene attire. 
 
 But " culture," and literature with it, have 
 made such surprising advances of late, that we 
 are apt to forget how really primitive and unen- 
 lightened the generation was in which Winthrop 
 wrote. Imagine a time when Mr. Henry James, 
 Jr., and Mr. W. D. Howells had not been heard 
 of ; when Bret Harte was still hidden below the 
 horizon of the far West; when no one suspected 
 that a poet named Aldrich would ever write a 
 story called "Marjorie Daw"; when, in England, 
 " Adam Bede " and his successors were unborn ; 
 — a time of antiquity so remote, in short, that the 
 mere possibility of a discussion upon the relative 
 merit of the ideal and the realistic methods of fic- 
 tion was undreamt of ! What had an unfortu- 
 nate novelist of those days to fall back upon? 
 Unless he wished to expatriate himself, and follow 
 submissively in the well worn steps of Dickens, 
 Thackeray, and Trollope, the only models he 
 could look to were Washington Irving, Edgar 
 Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathan- 
 
THEODOEE WINTHKOP'S WEITINGS. 179 
 
 iel Hawthorne. "Elsie Venner " had scarcely 
 made its appearance at that date. Irving and 
 Cooper were, on the other hand, somewhat anti- 
 quated. Poe and Hawthorne were men of very- 
 peculiar genius, and, however deep the impression 
 they have produced on our literature, they have 
 never had, because they never can have, imitators. 
 As for the author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," she was 
 a woman in the first place, and, in the second place, 
 she sufficiently filled the field she had selected. A 
 would-be novelist, therefore, possessed of ambi- 
 tion, and conscious of not being his own father or 
 grandfather, saw an untrodden space before him, 
 into which he must plunge without support and' 
 without guide. No wonder if, at the outset, he 
 was a trifle awkward and ill-at-ease, and, like a 
 raw recruit under fire, appeared affected from the 
 very desire he felt to look unconcerned. It is 
 much to his credit that he essayed the venture at 
 all ; and it is plain to be seen that, with each for- 
 ward step he took, his self-possession and sim- 
 plicity increased. If time had been given him, 
 there is no reason to doubt that he might have 
 been standing at the head of our champions of 
 fiction to-day. 
 
 But time was not given him, and his work, like 
 
180 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 all other work, if it is to be judged at all, must 
 be judged on its merits. He excelled most in 
 passages descriptive of action ; and the more vigor- 
 ous and momentous the action, the better, invaria- 
 bly, was the description ; he rose to the occasion, 
 and was not defeated by it. Partly for this rea- 
 son, "Cecil Dreeme," the most popular of his 
 books, seems to me the least meritorious of them 
 all. The story has little movement ; it stagnates 
 round Chrysalis College. The love intrigue is 
 morbid and unwholesome, and the characters 
 (which are seldom Winthrop's strong point) are 
 more than usually artificial and unnatural. The 
 dramatis personal are, indeed, little more than 
 moral or immoral principles incarnate. There is 
 no growth in them, no human variableness or 
 complexity; it is "Every Man in his Humor" 
 over again, with the humor left out. Densdeth 
 is an impossible rascal ; Churm, a scarcely more 
 possible Rhadamanthine saint. Cecil Dreeme her- 
 self never fully recovers from the ambiguity forced 
 upon her by her masculine attire; and Emma 
 Denman could never have been both what we are 
 told she was, and what she is described as being. 
 As for Robert Byng, the supposed narrator of the 
 tale, his name seems to have been given him in 
 
THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 181 
 
 order wantonly to increase the confusion caused 
 by the contradictory traits with which he is ac- 
 credited. The whole atmosphere of the story is 
 unreal, fantastic, obscure. An attempt is made 
 to endow our poor, raw New York with some- 
 thing of the stormy and ominous mystery of the 
 immemorial cities of Europe. The best feature of 
 the book (morbidness aside) is the construction of 
 the plot, which shows ingenuity and an artistic 
 perception of the value of mystery and moral 
 compensation. It recalls, in some respects, the 
 design of Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance," — 
 that is, had the latter never been written, the 
 former would probably have been written dif- 
 ferently. In spite of its faults, it is an interest- 
 ing book, and, to the critical eye, there are in 
 almost every chapter signs that indicate the pos- 
 session of no ordinary gifts on the author's part. 
 But it may be doubted whether the special cir- 
 cumstances under which it was published had 
 not something to do with its wide popularity. 
 I imagine "John Brent" to have been really 
 much more popular, in the better sense; it was 
 read and liked by a higher class of readers. It 
 is young ladies and school-girls who swell the 
 numbers of an " edition," and hence the difficulty 
 
182 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 in arguing from this as to the literary merit of 
 the book itself. 
 
 "Edwin Brothertoft," though somewhat dis- 
 jointed in construction, and jerky in style, is yet 
 a picturesque and striking story ; and the gallop 
 of the hero across country and through the night 
 to rescue from the burning house the woman who 
 had been false to him, is vigorously described, and 
 gives us some foretaste of the thrill of suspense 
 ^and excitement we feel in reading the story of the 
 famous " Gallop of three " in " John Brent." The 
 writer's acquaintance with the history of the pe- 
 riod is adequate, and a romantic and chivalrous 
 tone is preserved throughout the volume. It is 
 worth noting that, in all three of Winthrop's 
 novels, a horse bears a part in the crisis of the tale. 
 In " Cecil Dreeme " it is Churm's pair of trotters 
 that convey the party of rescuers to the private 
 Insane Asylum in which Densdeth had confined 
 the heroine. In "Edwin Brothertoft," it is one of 
 Edwin's renowned breed of white horses that car- 
 ries him through almost insuperable obstacles to 
 his goal. In "John Brent," the black stallion, Don 
 Fulano, who is throughout the chief figure in the 
 book, reaches his apogee in the tremendous race 
 across the plains and down the rocky gorge of the 
 
THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS. 183 
 
 mountains, to where the abductors of the heroine 
 are just about to pitch their camp at the end of 
 their day's journey. The motive is fine and ar- 
 tistic, and, in each of the books, these incidents 
 are as good as, or better then, anything else in 
 the narrative. 
 
 " John Brent " is, in fact, full enough of merit 
 to more than redeem its defects. The self-con- 
 sciousness of the writer is less noticeable than in 
 the other works, and the effort to be epigram- 
 matic, short, sharp, and "telling" in style, is 
 considerably modified. The interest is lively, 
 continuous, and cumulative ; and there is just 
 enough tragedy in the story to make the happy 
 ending all the happier. It was a novel and adven- 
 turous idea to make a horse the hero of a tale, 
 and the manner in which the idea is carried out 
 more than justifies the hazard. Winthrop, as we 
 know, was an ideal horseman, and knows what he 
 is writing about. He contrives to realize Don 
 Fulano for us, in spite of the almost supernatural 
 powers and intelligence that he ascribes to the 
 gallant animal. One is willing to stretch a point 
 of probability when such a dashing and inspiring 
 end is in view. In the present day we are getting 
 a little tired of being brought to account, at every 
 
184 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 turn, by Old Prob., who tyrannizes over literature 
 quite as much as over the weather. Theodore 
 Winthrop's inspiration, in this instance at least, 
 was strong and genuine enough to enable him to 
 feel what he was telling as the truth, and there- 
 fore it produces an effect of truth upon the reader. 
 How distinctly every incident of that ride remains 
 stamped on the memory, even after so long an 
 interval as has elapsed since it was written ! And 
 I recollect that one of the youthful devourers of 
 this book, who was of an artistic turn, was moved 
 to paint three little water-color pictures of the 
 Gallop; the first showing the three horses, — the 
 White, the Gray, and the Black, scouring across 
 the prairie, towards the barrier of mountains 
 behind which the sun was setting ; the second 
 depicting Don Fulano, with Dick Wade and John 
 Brent on his back, plunging down the gorge upon 
 the abductors, one of whom had just pulled the 
 trigger of his rifle ; while the third gives the scene 
 in which the heroic horse receives his death- 
 wound in carrying the fugitive across the creek 
 away from his pursuers. At this distance of time, 
 I am unable to bear any testimony as to the tech- 
 nical value of the little pictures ; I am inclined to 
 fancy that they would have to be taken cumgrano 
 
THEODORE WINTHROP's WRITINGS. 185 
 
 amoris, as they certainly were executed con amove. 
 But, however that may be, the instance (which 
 was doubtless only one of many analogous to it) 
 shows that Winthrop possessed the faculty of stim- 
 ulating and electrifying the imagination of his 
 readers, which all our recent improvements in the 
 art and artifice of composition have not made too 
 common, and for which, if for nothing else, we 
 might well feel indebted to him. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 
 
 It is not with Americans as with other peoples. 
 Our position is more vague and difficult, because 
 it is not primarily related to the senses. I can 
 easily find out where England or Prussia is, and 
 recognize an Englishman or German when we 
 meet; but we Americans are not, to the same ex- 
 tent as these, limited by geographical and physi- 
 cal boundaries. The origin of America was not 
 like that of the European nations ; the latter were 
 born after the flesh, but we after the spirit. It is 
 of the first consequence to them that their fron- 
 tiers should be defended, and their nationality 
 kept distinct. But, though I esteem highly all 
 our innumerable square miles of East and West, 
 North and South, and our Pacific and Atlantic 
 coasts, I cannot help deeming them quite a 
 secondary consideration. If America is not a 
 great deal more than these United States, then 
 the United States are no better than a penal 
 
 186 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 187 
 
 colony. It is convenient, no doubt, for a great 
 idea to find a great embodiment — a suitable in- 
 carnation and stage ; but the idea does not de- 
 pend upon these things. It is an accidental — or, 
 I would rather say, a Providential — matter that 
 the Puritans came to New England, or that 
 Columbus discovered the continent in time for 
 them ; but it has always happened that when a 
 soul is born it finds a body ready fitted to it. 
 The body, however, is an instrument merely ; it 
 enables the spirit to take hold of its mortal life, 
 just as the hilt enables us to grasp the sword. If 
 the Puritans had not come to New England, 
 still the spirit that animated them would have 
 lived, and made itself a place somehow. And, in 
 fact, how many Puritans, for how many ages pre- 
 vious, had been trying to find standing-room in 
 the world, and failed ! They called themselves 
 by many names ; their voices were heard in many 
 countries ; the time had not yet come for them to 
 be born — to touch their earthly inheritance ; but, 
 meantime, the latent impetus was accumulating, 
 and the Mayflower was driven across the Atlantic 
 by it at last. Nor is this all — the Mayflower is 
 sailing still between the old world and the new. 
 Every day it brings new settlers, if not to our 
 
188 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 material harbors — to our Boston Bay, our Castle 
 Garden, our Golden Gate — at any rate, to our 
 mental ports and wharves. We cannot take up a 
 European newspaper without rinding an Ameri- 
 can idea in it. It is said that a great many of 
 our countrymen take the steamer to England 
 every summer. But they come back again ; and 
 they bring with them many who come to stay. I 
 do not refer specially to the occupants of the 
 steerage — the literal emigrants. One cannot say 
 much about them — they may be Americans or 
 not, as it turns out. But England and the conti- 
 nent are full of Americans who were born there, 
 and many of whom will die there. Sometimes 
 they are better Americans than the New Yorker 
 or the Bostonian who lives in Beacon Street or 
 the Bowery and votes in the elections. They 
 may be born and reside where they please, but 
 they belong to us, and, in the better sense, they 
 are among us. Broadway and Washington 
 Street, Vermont and Colorado extend all over 
 Europe. Russia is covered with them ; she tries 
 to shove them away to Siberia, but in vain. We 
 call mountains and prairies solid facts ; but the 
 geography of the mind is infinitely more stub- 
 born. I dare say there are a great many oblique- 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 189 
 
 eyed, pig-tailed New Englanders in the Celestial 
 Empire. They may never have visited these 
 shores, or even heard of them ; but what of that ? 
 They think our thought — they have apprehended 
 our idea, and, by and by, they or their heirs will 
 cause it to prevail. 
 
 It is useless for us to hide our heads in the 
 grass and refuse to rise to the height of our occa- 
 sion. We are here as the realization of a truth — 
 the fulfilment of a prophecy; we must attest a 
 new departure in the moral and intellectual de- 
 velopment of the human race ; for whichever of 
 us does not, must suffer annihilation. If I deny 
 my birthright as an American, I shall disappear 
 and not be missed, for an American will take my 
 place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to 
 find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold 
 your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant 
 things are expected of you, which you neglect at 
 your peril. It is like the old fable of the mer- 
 maid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order 
 that she might win his affection, she prayed that 
 she might have the limbs and feet of a human 
 maiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met 
 her prince ; but every step she took was as if she 
 trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit in your 
 
190 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 chair and reflect on being an American ; but 
 when you have to rise up and do an American's 
 duty before the world — how sharp the razors 
 are ! 
 
 Of course, we do not always endure the test ; 
 the flesh and blood on this side of the planet is 
 not, so far as I have observed, of a quality essen- 
 tially different from that on the other. Possibly 
 our population is too many for us. Out of fifty 
 million people it would be strange if here and 
 there one appeared who was not at all points a 
 hero. Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to think 
 that that little band of original Mayflower Pil- 
 grims has not greatly multiplied since their disem- 
 barkation. However it may be with their bodily 
 offspring, their spiritual progeny are not invaria- 
 bly found in the chair of the Governor or on the 
 floor of the Senate. What are these Irish fellow- 
 creatures doing here? Well, Bridget serves us 
 in the kitchen ; but Patrick is more helpful yet ; 
 he goes to the legislature, and is the servant of. 
 the people at large. It is very obliging of him ; 
 but turn and turn about is fair play ; and it would 
 be no more than justice were we, once in a while, 
 to take off our coat and serve Patrick in the 
 same way. 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 191 
 
 When we get into a tight place we are apt to 
 try to slip out of it under some plea of a Eu- 
 ropean precedent. But it used to be supposed 
 that it was precisely European precedents that 
 we came over here to avoid. I am not profoundly 
 versed in political economy, nor is this the time 
 or place to discuss its principles ; but, as regards 
 protection, for example, I can conceive that 
 there may be arguments against it as well as for 
 it. Emerson used to say that the way to conquer 
 the foreign artisan was not to kill him but to beat 
 his work. He also pointed out that the money 
 we made out of the European wars, at the be- 
 ginning of this century, had the result of bring- 
 ing the impoverished population of those 
 countries down upon us in the shape of emi- 
 grants. They shared our crops and went on the 
 poor-rates, and so we did not gain so much after 
 all. One cannot . help wishing that America 
 would assume the loftiest possible ground in her 
 political and commercial relations. With all due 
 respect to the sagacity and ability of our ruling 
 demagogues, I should not wish them to be quoted 
 as typical Americans. The domination of such 
 persons has an effect which is by no means measu- 
 rable by their personal acts. What they can do 
 
192 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 is of infinitesimal importance. But the mischief 
 is that they incline every one of us to believe, as 
 Emerson puts it, in two gods. They make the 
 morality of Wall Street and the White House 
 seem to be a different thing from that of our 
 parlors and nurseries. " He may be a little shady 
 on 'change," we say, " but he is a capital fellow 
 when you know him." But if he is a capital fel- 
 low when I know him, then I shall never find 
 much fault with his professional operations, and 
 shall end, perhaps, by allowing him to make 
 some investments for me. Why should not I be 
 a capital fellow too — and a fellow of capital, to 
 boot! I can endure public opprobrium with 
 tolerable equanimity so long as it remains public. 
 It is the private cold looks that trouble me. 
 
 In short, we may speak of America in two 
 senses — either meaning the America that actually 
 meets us at the street corners and in the news- 
 papers, or the ideal America — America as it 
 ought to be. They are not the same thing ; and, 
 at present, there seems to be a good deal more of 
 the former than of the latter. And yet, there is 
 a connection between them ; the latter has made 
 the former possible. We sometimes see a great 
 crowd drawn together by proclamation, for some 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 193 
 
 noble purpose — to decide upon a righteous war, 
 or to pass a just decree. But the people on the 
 outskirts of the crowd, finding themselves unable 
 to hear the orators, and their time hanging idle 
 on their hands, take to throwing stones, knocking 
 off hats, or, perhaps, picking pockets. They may 
 have come to the meeting with as patriotic or vir- 
 tuous intentions as the promoters themselves; 
 nay, under more favorable circumstances, they 
 might themselves have become promoters. Virtue 
 and patriotism are not private property; at cer- 
 tain times any one may possess them. And, on 
 the other hand, we have seen examples enough, of 
 late, of persons of the highest respectability and 
 trust turning out, all at once, to be very sorry 
 scoundrels. A man changes according to the per- 
 son with whom he converses ; and though the 
 outlook is rather sordid to-day, we have not for- 
 gotten that during the Civil War the air seemed 
 full of heroism. So that these two Americas — 
 the real and the ideal — far apart though they 
 may be in one sense, may, in another sense, be as 
 near together as our right hand to our left. In a 
 greater or less degree, they exist side by side in 
 each one of us. But civil wars do not come every 
 day ; nor can we wish them to, even to show us 
 
194 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 once more that we are worthy of our destiny. 
 We must find some less expensive and quieter 
 method of reminding ourselves of that. And of 
 such methods, none, perhaps, is better than to 
 review the lives of Americans who were truly 
 great ; to ask what their country meant to them ; 
 what they wished her to become; what virtues 
 and what vices they detected in her. Passion 
 may be generous, but passion cannot last; and 
 when it is over, we are cold and indifferent again. 
 But reason and example reach us when we are 
 calm and passive ; and what they inculcate is 
 more likely to abide. At least, it will be only 
 evil passion that can cast it out. 
 
 I have said that many a true American is 
 doubtless born, and lives, abroad; but that does 
 not prevent Emerson from having been born here. 
 So far as the outward accidents of generation and 
 descent go, he could not have been more Amer- 
 ican than he was. Of course, one prefers that it 
 should be so. A rare gem should be fitly set. 
 A. noble poem should be printed with the fairest 
 type of the Riverside Press, and upon fine paper 
 with wide margins. It helps us to believe in our- 
 selves to be told that Emerson's ancestry was not 
 only Puritan, but clerical; that the central and 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 195 
 
 vital thread of the idea that created us, ran 
 through his heart. The nation, and even New 
 England, Massachusetts, Boston, have many traits 
 that are not found in him ; but there is nothing 
 in him that is not a refinement, a sublimation and 
 concentration of what is good in them; and the 
 selection and grouping of the elements are such 
 that he is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type ; 
 which is the same as saying that there is nobody 
 like him. And, mentally, he produces the im- 
 pression of being all force ; in his writings, his 
 mind seems to have acted immediately, without 
 natural impediment or friction ; as if a machine 
 should be run that was not hindered by the con- 
 tact of its parts. As he was physically lean and 
 narrow of figure, and his face nothing but so 
 ■many features welded together, so there was no 
 adipose tissue in his thought. It is pure, clear, 
 and accurate, and has the fault of dryness ; but 
 often moves in forms of exquisite beauty. It is 
 not adhesive ; it sticks to nothing, nor anything 
 to it ; after ranging through all the various philos- 
 ophies of the world, it comes out as clean and 
 characteristic as ever. It has numberless affin- 
 ities, but no adhesion ; it does not even adhere to 
 itself. There are many separate statements in 
 
196 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 any one of his essays which present no logical 
 continuity; but although this fact has caused 
 great anxiety to many disciples of Emerson, it 
 never troubled him. It was the inevitable result 
 of his method of thought. Wandering at will in 
 the flower-garden of religious and moral philos- 
 ophy, it was his part to pluck such blossoms as he 
 saw were beautiful; not to find out their botanical 
 interconnection. He would afterward arrange 
 them, for art or harmony's sake, according to 
 their color or their fragrance ; but it was not his 
 affair to go any farther in their classification. 
 
 This intuitive method of his, however little it 
 may satisfy those who wish to have all their 
 thinking done for them, who desire not only to 
 have given to them all the cities of the earth, 
 but also to have straight roads built for them 
 from one to the other, carries with it its own 
 justification. " There is but one reason," is Emer- 
 son's saying ; and again and again does he prove 
 without proving it. We confess, over and over, 
 that the truth which he asserts is indeed a truth. 
 Even his own variations from the truth, when he 
 is betrayed into them, serve to confirm the rule. 
 For these are seldom or never intuitions at first 
 hand — pure intuitions ; but, as it were, intuitions 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 197 
 
 from previous intuitions — deductions. The form 
 of statement is the same, but the source is dif- 
 ferent; they are from Emerson, instead of from 
 the Absolute ; tinted, not colorless. They show 
 a mental bias, very slight, but redeeming him 
 back to humanity. We love him the more for 
 them, because they indicate that for him, too, 
 there was a choice of ways, and that he must 
 struggle and watch to choose the right. 
 
 We are so much wedded to systems, and so 
 accustomed to connect a system with a man, that 
 the absence of system, either explicit or implicit, 
 in Emerson, strikes us as a defect. And yet 
 truth has no system, nor the human mind. This 
 philosopher maintains one, that another thesis. 
 Both are true essentially, and yet .there seems a 
 contradiction between them. We cannot bear to 
 be illogical, and so we enlist some under this 
 banner, some under that. By so doing we sac- 
 rifice to consistency at least the half of truth. 
 Thence we come to examine our intuitions, and 
 ask them, not whether they are true in them- 
 selves, but what are their tendencies. If it turn 
 out that they will lead us to stultify some past 
 conclusion to which we stand committed, we drop 
 them like hot coals. To Emerson, this behavior 
 
198 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICISMS. 
 
 appeared the nakedest personal vanity. Recog- 
 nizing that he was finite, he could not desire to be 
 consistent. If he saw to-day that one thing was 
 true, and to-morrow that its opposite was true, 
 was it for him to elect which of the two truths 
 should have his preference ? No ; to reject either 
 would be to reject all ; it belonged to God alone 
 to reconcile these contradictions. Between in- 
 finite and finite can be no ratio : and the consis- 
 tency of the Creator implies the inconsistency of 
 the creature. 
 
 Emerson's Americanism, therefore, was Amer- 
 icanism in its last and purest analysis, which is 
 giving him high praise, and to America great 
 hope. But I do not mean to pay him, who was 
 so full of modesty and humility, the ungrateful 
 compliment of holding him up as the permanent 
 American ideal. It is his tendencies, his quality, 
 that are valuable, and only in a minor, incipient 
 degree his actual results. All human results 
 must be strictly limited, and according to the 
 epoch and outlook. Emerson does not solve for 
 all time the problem of the universe ; he solves 
 nothing; but he does what is far more useful — 
 he gives a direction and an impetus to lofty 
 human endeavor. He does not anticipate the les- 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 199 
 
 sons and the discipline of the ages, but he shows us 
 how to deal with circumstances in such a manner 
 as to secure the good instead of the evil influence. 
 New conditions, fresh discoveries, unexpected 
 horizons opening before us, will, no doubt, soon 
 carry us beyond the scope of Emerson's surmise ; 
 but we shall not so easily improve upon his aim 
 and attitude. In the spaces beyond the stars 
 there may be marvels such as it has not entered 
 into the mind of man to conceive ; but there, as 
 here, the right way to look will still be upward, 
 and the right aspiration be still toward humble- 
 ness and charity. 
 
 I have just spoken of Emerson's absence of 
 system ; but his writings have nevertheless a 
 singular coherence, by virtue of the single-hearted 
 motive that has inspired them. Many will, doubt- 
 less, have noticed, as I have done, how the whole 
 of Emerson illustrates every aspect of him. 
 
 Whether your discourse be of his religion, of 
 his ethics, of his relation to society, or what not, 
 the picture that you draw will have gained color 
 and form from every page that he has written. 
 He does not lie in strata ; all that he is permeates 
 all that he has done. His books cannot be in- 
 dexed, unless you would refer every subject to 
 
200 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 each paragraph. And so he cannot treat, no 
 matter what subject, without incorporating in his 
 statement the germs at least of all that he has 
 thought and believed. In this respect he is like 
 light — the presence of the general at the partic- 
 ular. And, to confess the truth, I find myself 
 somewhat loath to diffract this pure ray to the 
 arbitrary end of my special topic. Why should I 
 speak of him as an American? That is not his 
 definition. He was an American because he was 
 himself. America, however, gives less limitation 
 than any other nationality to a generous and 
 serene personality. 
 
 I am sometimes disposed to think that Emer- 
 son's " English Traits " reveal his American traits 
 more than anything else he has written. We are 
 described by our own criticisms of others, and 
 especially by our criticisms of another nation ; 
 the exceptions we take are the mould of our own 
 figures. So we have valuable glimpses of Emer- 
 son's contours throughout this volume. And it is 
 in all respects a fortunate work ; as remarkable a 
 one almost for him to write as a volume of his es- 
 says for any one else. Comparatively to his other 
 books, it is as flesh and blood to spirit ; Emerso- 
 nian flesh and blood, it is true, and semi-trans- 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 201 
 
 lucent ; but still it completes the man for us : tie 
 would have remained too problematical without 
 it. Those who have never personally known him 
 may finish and solidify their impressions of him 
 here. He likes England and the English, too ; 
 and that sympathy is beyond our expectation of 
 the mind that evolved " Nature " and " The Over- 
 Soul." The grasp of his hand, I remember, was 
 firm and stout, and we perceive those qualities in 
 the descriptions and cordiality of "English 
 Traits." Then, it is an objective book ; the eye 
 looks outward, not inward ; these pages afford a 
 basis not elsewhere obtainable of comparing his 
 general human faculty with that of other men. 
 Here he descends from the airy heights he treads 
 so easily and, standing foot to foot with his peers, 
 measures himself against them. He intends only 
 to report their stature, and to leave himself out of 
 the story ; but their answers to his questions show 
 what the Questions were, and what the ques- 
 tioner. And we cannot help suspecting, though 
 he did not, that the Englishmen were not a little 
 put to it to keep pace with their clear-faced, 
 penetrating, attentive visitor. 
 
 He has never said of his own countrymen the 
 comfortable things that he tells of the English; 
 
202 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 but we need not grumble at that. The father 
 who is severe with his own children will freely 
 admire those of others, for whom he is not respon- 
 sible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and 
 arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought 
 to be. He intimates that we are not quite worthy 
 of our continent ; that we have not as yet lived 
 up to our blue china. " In America the geogra- 
 phy is sublime, but the men are not." And he 
 adds that even our more presentable public acts 
 are due to a money-making spirit : " The bene- 
 faction derived in Illinois and the great West 
 from railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceed- 
 ing any intentional philanthropy on record." He 
 does not think very respectfully of the designs or 
 the doings of the people who went to California 
 in 1849, though he admits that " California gets 
 civilized in this immoral way," and is fain to sup- 
 pose that, " as there is use in the world for poi- 
 sons, so the world cannot move without rogues," 
 and that, in respect of America, "the huge ani- 
 mals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of the 
 disease attests the strength of the constitution." 
 He ridicules our unsuspecting provincialism: 
 "Have you seen the dozen great men of New 
 York and Boston ? Then you may as well die ! " 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 203 
 
 He does not spare our tendency to spread-eagle- 
 ism and declamation, and having quoted a shrewd 
 foreigner as saying of Americans that, "What- 
 ever they say has a little the air of a speech," he 
 proceeds to speculate whether "the American 
 forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish 
 barbarism just ready to die out ? " He finds the 
 foible especially of American youth to be — pre- 
 tension ; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk 
 much about the key of the age, but " the key to 
 all ages is imbecility ! " He cannot reconcile him- 
 self to the mania for going abroad. " There is 
 a restlessness in our people that argues want of 
 character. . . . Can we never extract this tape- 
 worm of Europe from the brain of our country- 
 men?" He finds, however, this involuntary 
 compensation in the practice — that, practically 
 " we go to Europe to be Americanized," and 
 has faith that one day we shall cast out the 
 passion for Europe by the passion for Amer- 
 ica." As to our political doings, he can 
 never regard them with complacency. " Politics 
 is an afterword," he declares — "a poor patching. 
 We shall one day learn to supersede politics by 
 education." He sympathizes with Lovelace's 
 theory as to iron bars and stone walls, and holds 
 
204 CONFESSIONS AND CKITICTSMS. 
 
 that freedom' and slavery are inward, not out- 
 ward conditions. Slavery is not in circumstance, 
 but in feeling ; you cannot eradicate the irons by 
 external restrictions ; and the truest way to eman- 
 cipate the slave would be to educate him to a 
 comprehension of his inviolable dignity and free- 
 dom as a human being. Amelioration of outward 
 circumstances will be the effect, but can never be 
 the means of mental and moral improvement. 
 " Nothing is more disgusting," he affirms, general- 
 izing the theme, " than the crowing about liberty 
 by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant 
 mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble 
 like a 4 Declaration of Independence ' or the stat- 
 ute right to vote." But, " Our America has a 
 bad name for superficialness. Great men, great 
 nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but 
 perceivers of the terrors of life, and have nerved 
 themselves to face it." He will not be deceived 
 by the clamor of blatant reformers. " If an angry 
 bigot assumes the bountiful cause of abolition, 
 and comes to me with his last news from Barba- 
 does, why should I not say to him : ' Go love thy 
 infant ; love thy wood-chopper ; be good-natured 
 and modest ; have that grace, and never varnish 
 your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incred- 
 
EMEESON AS AN AMERICAN. 205 
 
 ible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles 
 off!'" 
 
 He does not shrink from questioning the valid- 
 ity of some of our pet institutions, as, for in- 
 stance, universal suffrage. He reminds us that in 
 old Egypt the vote of a prophet was reckoned 
 equal to one hundred hands, and records his 
 opinion that it was much underestimated. "Shall 
 we, then," he asks, "judge a country by the 
 majority or by the minority ? By the minority, 
 surely ! 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the 
 census, or by square miles of land, or other than 
 by their importance to the mind of the time." 
 The majority are unripe, and do not yet know 
 their own opinion. He would not, however, 
 counsel an organic alteration in this respect, be- 
 lieving that, with the progress of enlightenment, 
 such coarse constructions of human rights will ad- 
 just themselves. He concedes the sagacity of the 
 Fultons and Watts of politics, who, noticing that 
 the opinion of the million was the terror of the 
 world, grouped it on a level, instead of piling it 
 into a mountain, and so contrived to make of this 
 terror the most harmless and energetic form of a 
 State. But, again, he would not have us regard 
 the State as a finality, or as relieving any man of 
 
206 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 his individual responsibility for his actions and 
 purposes. We are to confide in God — and not 
 in our money, and in the State because it is guard 
 of it. The Union itself has no basis but the good 
 pleasure of the majority to be united. The wise 
 and just men impart strength to the State, not re- 
 ceive it; and, if all went down, they and their 
 like would soon combine in a new and better 
 constitution. Yet he will not have us forget that 
 only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing 
 so weak as an egotist. We are mighty only as 
 vehicles of a truth before which State and individ- 
 ual are alike ephemeral. In this sense we, like 
 other nations, shall have our kings and nobles — 
 the leading and inspiration of the best; and he 
 who would become a member of that nobility 
 must obey his heart. 
 
 Government, he observes, has been a fossil — it 
 should be a plant ; statute law should express, not 
 impede, the mind of mankind. In tracing the 
 course of human political institutions, he finds 
 feudalism succeeding monarchy, and this again 
 followed by trade, the good and evil of which is 
 that it would put everything in the market, 
 talent, beauty, virtue, and man himself. By this 
 means it has done its work ; it has faults and will 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 207 
 
 end as the others. Its aristocracy need not be 
 feared, for it can have no permanence, it is not 
 entailed. In the time to come, he hopes to see us 
 less anxious to be governed, in the technical 
 sense ; each man shall govern himself in the in- 
 terests of all ; government without any governor 
 will be, for the first time, adamantine. Is not 
 every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men 
 are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or 
 when they are most luxurious ; conservatism 
 stands on man's limitations, reform on his infini- 
 tude. The age of the quadruped is to go out; 
 the age of the brain and the heart is to come in. 
 We are too pettifogging and imitative in our 
 legislative conceptions; the Legislature of this 
 country should become more catholic and cosmo- 
 politan than any other. Let us be brave and 
 strong enough to trust in humanity; strong 
 natures are inevitable patriots. The time, the 
 age, what is that, but a few prominent persons 
 and a few active persons who epitomize the 
 times? There is a bribe possible for any finite 
 will ; but the pure sympathy with universal ends 
 is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. 
 The world wants saviors and religions ; society is 
 servile from want of will ; but there is a Destiny 
 
208 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 by which the human race is guided, the race 
 never dying, the individual never spared ; its law- 
 is, you shall have everything as a member, noth- 
 ing to yourself. Referring to the communities of 
 various kinds, which were so much in vogue some 
 years ago, he holds such to be valuable, not for 
 what they have done, but for the indication they 
 give of the revolution that is on the way. They 
 place great faith in mutual support, but it is only 
 as a man puts off from himself all external sup- 
 port and stands alone, that he is strong and will 
 prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his 
 banner. A man ought to compare advantageously 
 with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He must 
 not shun whatever comes to him in the way of 
 duty; the only path of escape is — performance. 
 He must rely on Providence, but not in a timid 
 or ecclesiastical spirit ; it is no use to dress up 
 that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white 
 neckcloth of a student of divinity. We shall 
 come out well, whatever personal or political 
 disasters may intervene. For here in America is 
 the home of man. After deducting our pitiful 
 politics — shall John or Jonathan sit in the chair 
 and hold the purse ? — and making due allowance 
 for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 209 
 
 an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it 
 loses its balance, redresses itself presently, and 
 which offers to the human mind opportunities not 
 known elsewhere. 
 
 Whenever he touches upon the fundamental 
 elements of social and rational life, it is always to 
 enlarge and illuminate our conception of them. 
 We are not wont to question the propriety of the 
 sentiment of patriotism, for instance. We are to 
 swear by our own lares and penates, and stand 
 up for the American eagle, right or wrong. But 
 Emerson instantly goes beneath this interpretation 
 and exposes its crudity. The true sense of pa- 
 triotism, according to him, is almost the reverse of 
 its popular sense. He has no sympathy with that 
 boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for our side, 
 for our State, for our town ; the right patriotism 
 consists in the delight which springs from contrib- 
 uting our peculiar and legitimate advantages to 
 the benefit of humanity. Every foot of soil has 
 its proper quality ; the grape on two sides of the 
 fence has new flavors ; and so every acre on the 
 globe, every family of men, every point of 
 climate, has its distinguishing virtues. This be- 
 ing admitted, however, Emerson will yield in 
 patriotism to no one ; his only concern is that the 
 
210 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 advantages we contribute shall be the most 
 instead of the least possible. " This country," he 
 says, " does not lie here in the sun causeless, and 
 though it may not be easy to define its influence, 
 men feel already its emancipating quality in the 
 careless self-reliance of the manners, in the free- 
 dom of thought, in the direct roads by which 
 grievances are reached and redressed, and even in 
 the reckless and sinister politics, not less than in 
 purer expressions. Bad as it is, this freedom 
 leads onward and upward to a Columbia of 
 thought and art, which is the last and endless end 
 of Columbus's adventure." Nor is this poet of 
 virtue and philosophy ever more truly patriotic, 
 from his spiritual standpoint, than when he 
 throws scorn and indignation upon his country's 
 sins and frailties. " But who is he that prates of 
 the culture of mankind, of better arts and life ? 
 Go, blind worm, go — behold the famous States 
 harrying Mexico with rifle and with knife ! Or 
 who, with accent bolder, dare praise the freedom- 
 loving mountaineer ? I found by thee, O rushing 
 Contoocook ! and in thy valleys, Agiochook ! the 
 jackals of the negro-holder. . . . What boots thy 
 zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignant rend 
 the northland from the South ? Wherefore ? To 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 211 
 
 what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill 
 would serve things still — things are of the snake. 
 The horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd 
 serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, 
 the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the 
 chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind ; things 
 are in the saddle, and ride mankind ! " 
 
 But I must not begin to quote Emerson's 
 poetry; only it is worth noting that he, whose 
 verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectually 
 beautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme 
 is of America. The loftiest patriotism never 
 found more ardent and eloquent expression than 
 in the hymn sung at the completion of the Con- 
 cord monument, on the 19th of April, 1836. 
 There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; 
 "the foe long since in silence slept"; but through- 
 out there resounds a note of pure and deep re- 
 joicing at the victory of justice over oppression, 
 which Concord fight so aptly symbolized. In 
 "Hamatreya" and u The Earth Song," another 
 chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we 
 too, he asks, we Yankee farmers, descendants of 
 the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to 
 the creed outworn of mediaeval feudalism and 
 aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us 
 
212 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my 
 name's " ? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish 
 boastfulness, and asks " How am I theirs if they 
 cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I 
 heard ' The Earth Song,' I was no longer brave ; 
 my avarice cooled, like lust in the child of the 
 grave." Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the 
 insight and the power with which the significance 
 and worth of the great facts of nature are inter- 
 preted and stated. " Complement of human kind, 
 having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indi- 
 gence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We 
 fool and prate ; thou art silent and sedate. To 
 myriad kinds and times one sense the constant 
 mountain doth dispense ; shedding on all its snows 
 and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. 
 Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and 
 races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good 
 for which we all our lifetime grope ; and though 
 the substance us elude, we in thee the shadow 
 find." . . . "Thou dost supply the shortness of 
 our days, and promise, on thy Founder's truth, 
 long morrow to this mortal youth ! " I have ig- 
 nored the versified form in these extracts, in order 
 to bring them into more direct contrast with the 
 writer's prose, and show that the poetry is inher- 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 213 
 
 ent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, 
 has caused the very spirit of a land, the mother of 
 men, to express itself so adequately as Emerson 
 has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short of 
 them, it seems to me, though his effort is greater. 
 
 Emerson is continually urging us to give heed 
 to this grand voice of hills and streams, and to 
 mould ourselves upon its suggestions. The diffi- 
 culty and the anomaly are that we are not native ; 
 that England is our mother, quite as much as 
 Monadnoc; that we are heirs of memories and 
 traditions reaching far beyond the times and the 
 confines of the Republic. We cannot assume the 
 splendid childlikeness of the great primitive races, 
 and exhibit the hairy strength and unconscious 
 genius that the poet longs to find in us. He re- 
 marks somewhere that the culminating period of 
 good in nature and the world is in just that mo- 
 ment of transition, when the swarthy juices still 
 flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency 
 or acidity is got out by ethics and humanity. 
 
 It was at such a period that Greece attained her 
 apogee ; but our experience, it seems to me, must 
 needs be different. Our story is not of birth, but 
 of regeneration, a far more subtle and less obvious 
 transaction. The Homeric California of which 
 
214 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Bret Harte is the reporter does not seem to me in 
 the closest sense American. It is a comparatively 
 superficial matter — this savage freedom and raw 
 poetry; it belongs to all pioneering life, where 
 every man must stand for himself, and Judge 
 Lynch strings up the defaulter to the nearest tree. 
 But we are only incidentally pioneers in this 
 sense ; and the characteristics thus impressed upon 
 us will leave no traces in the completed American. 
 " A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont," 
 says Emerson, " who in turn tries all the profes- 
 sions — who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a 
 school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Con- 
 gress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive 
 years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet — is 
 worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks 
 abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 
 studying a ' profession,' for he does not postpone 
 his life, but lives already." That is stirringly 
 said : but, as a matter of fact, most of the Ameri- 
 cans whom we recognize as great did not have 
 such a history ; nor, if they had it, would they be 
 on that account more American. On the other 
 hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Com- 
 modore Vanderbilt might serve very well as illus- 
 trations of the above sketch. If we must wait for 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 215 
 
 our character until our geographical advantages 
 and the absence of social distinctions manufacture 
 it for us, we are likely to remain a long while in 
 suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to 
 evince a more poignant interest in Concord and 
 Fifth Avenue than in the Mississippi and the Yel- 
 lowstone, it may be an indication to us that we 
 are assuming our proper position relative to our 
 physical environment. " The land" says Emerson, 
 " is a sanative and Americanizing influence which 
 promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come." 
 Well, when we are virtuous, we may, perhaps, 
 spare our own blushes by allowing our topogra- 
 phy, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our 
 admirers would worship the purity of our inten- 
 tions, refer them to Walden Pond ; or to Mount 
 Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty 
 generosity. It is, perhaps, true, meanwhile, that 
 the chances of a man's leading a decent life are 
 greater in a palace than in a pigsty. 
 
 But this is holding our author too strictly to 
 the letter of his message. And, at any rate, the 
 Americanism of Emerson is better than anything 
 that he has said in vindication of it. He is the 
 champion of this commonwealth ; he is our future, 
 living in our present, and showing the world, by 
 
216 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 anticipation, as it were, what sort of excellence 
 we are capable of attaining. A nation that has 
 produced Emerson, and can recognize in him bone 
 of her bone and flesh of her flesh — and, still more, 
 spirit of her spirit — that nation may look toward 
 the coming age with security. But he has done 
 more than thus to prophesy of his country ; he is 
 electric and stimulates us to fulfil our destiny. 
 To use a phrase of his own, we " cannot hear of 
 personal vigor of any kind, great power of per- 
 formance, without fresh resolution." Emerson 
 helps us most in provoking us to help ourselves. 
 The pleasantest revenge is that which we can 
 sometimes take upon our great men in quoting of 
 themselves what they have said of others. 
 
 It is easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, be- 
 cause he, more than most persons of such eminence, 
 has been generous and cordial in his appreciation 
 of all human worth. " If there should appear in 
 the company," he observes, "some gentle soul who 
 knows little of persons and parties, of Carolina or 
 Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these 
 particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which 
 checkmates every false player, bankrupts every 
 self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence 
 on any conditions of country, or time, or human 
 
EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN. 217 
 
 body, that man liberates me. ... I am made 
 immortal by apprehending my possession of incor- 
 ruptible goods." Who can state the mission and 
 effect of Emerson more tersely and aptly than 
 those words do it? 
 
 But, once more, he does not desire eulogiums, 
 and it seems half ungenerous to force them upon 
 him now that he can no longer defend himself. I 
 prefer to conclude by repeating a passage charac- 
 teristic of him both as a man and. as an American, 
 and which, perhaps, conveys a sounder and health- 
 ier criticism, both for us and for him, than any 
 mere abject and nerveless admiration; for great 
 men are great only in so far as they liberate us, 
 and we undo their work in courting their tyranny. 
 The passage runs thus : — 
 
 " Let me remind the reader that I am only an 
 experimenter. Do not set the least value on what 
 I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if 
 I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I 
 unsettle all things. No facts to me are sacred ; 
 none are profane. I simply experiment — an end- 
 less seeker, with no Past at my back ! " 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MODERN MAGIC. 
 
 Human nature enjoys nothing better than to 
 wonder — to be mystified ; and it thanks and re- 
 members those who have the skill to gratify 
 this craving. The magicians of old knew that 
 truth and conducted themselves accordingly. 
 But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due 
 influence, because, not content to perform their 
 marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and 
 Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors 
 than Morse and Edison. Man is — and he always 
 has been and will be — something else besides a 
 pure intelligence : and science, in order to become 
 really popular, must contrive to touch man some- 
 where else besides on the purely intellectual side : 
 it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, 
 all fear, and all foolishness, quite as much as he is 
 all brains. Otherwise, science can never expect 
 to take the place of superstition, much less of re- 
 ligion, in mankind's affection. In order to be a 
 
 218 
 
MODEEN MAGIC. 219 
 
 really successful man of science, it is first of all 
 indispensable to make one's self master of every- 
 thing in nature and in human nature that science 
 is not. 
 
 What must one do, in short, in order to become 
 a magician ? I use the term, here, in its weight- 
 iest sense. How to make myself visible and in- 
 visible at will ? How to present myself in two or 
 more places at once ? How answer your question 
 before you ask it, and describe to you your most 
 secret thoughts and actions? How shall I call 
 spirits from the vasty deep, and make you see 
 and hear and feel them? How paralyze your 
 strength with a look, heal your wound with a 
 touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless 
 from my unprotected flesh ? How shall I walk on 
 the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone 
 walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean ? 
 How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump 
 through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers 
 in Sirius? There are persons now living who 
 profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to re- 
 gard them as incidental merely to achievements 
 far more important. A school of hierophants or 
 adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter 
 of daily routine, quite transcend everything that 
 
220 c:yrz^s::y? a>~d c?.:nc:s:-;s. 
 
 ~~r hare been accustomed to consider natural 
 possibility. What is the course of study, what 
 are the ways and means whereby such persons 
 a : : : mj li&h such resoltB 1 
 
 The conventional attitude towards such matters 
 is, of course, that of unconditional scepticism. 
 But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an airing 
 beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own 
 part, it is true, I must confess my inabilir :: 
 believe in anything positively supernatural. The 
 supernatural and the illusory are to my mind con- 
 vertible terms: they cannot really exist or take 
 place. Let us be sure, however, that we are 
 agreed as to what supernatural means. If a ma- 
 gician, before my eyes, transformed an old man 
 into a little girl, I should call that supernatural ; 
 and nothing should convince me that my senses 
 had not been grossly deceived. But were the ma- 
 gician to leave the room by passing through the 
 solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap- 
 bubble. — I might think what I please, but I 
 should not venture to dogmatically pronounce 
 the thing supernatural ; because :Lr phenomenon 
 known as "matter '' is scientifically unknown, and 
 therefore no one can tell what modifications it 
 may not be susceptible ::: — no one. that is bo 
 
MODEEN MAGIC. 221 
 
 say, except the person who, like the magician of 
 our illustration, professes to possess, and (for aught 
 I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possess 
 a knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. 
 The transformation of an old man into a little 
 girl, on the other hand, would be a transaction 
 involving the immaterial soul as well as the ma- 
 terial body ; and if I do not know that that can- 
 not take place, I am forever incapable of knowing 
 anything. These are extreme examples, but they 
 serve to emphasize an important distinction. 
 
 The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies 
 that anomalous neutral ground that intervenes 
 between the facts of our senses and the truths of 
 our intuitions. Fact and truth are not convert- 
 ible terms ; they abide in two distinct planes, like 
 thought and speech, or soul and body ; one may 
 imply or involve the other, but can never demon- 
 strate it. Experience and intuition together com- 
 prehend the entire realm of actual and con- 
 ceivable knowledge. Whatever contradicts both 
 experience and intuition may, therefore, be pro- 
 nounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the 
 home of phenomena which intuition does not 
 deny, and which experience has not confirmed. 
 It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it 
 
222 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 was a hundred years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It 
 narrows every day, as science, or the classification 
 of experience, expands. Are we, then, to look 
 for a time when the zone shall have dwindled to 
 a mathematical line, and magic confess itself to 
 have been nothing but the science of an advanced 
 school of investigators? Will the human intel- 
 lect acquire a power before which all mysteries 
 shall become transparent? Let us dwell upon 
 this question a little longer. 
 
 A mystery that is a mystery can never, hu- 
 manly speaking, become anything else. Instances 
 of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The 
 universe itself is built upon them and is the 
 greatest of them. They lie before the threshold 
 and at the basis of all existence. For example : — 
 here is a lump of compact, whitish, cheese-like sub- 
 stance, about as much as would go into a thimble. 
 From this I profess to be able to produce a 
 gigantic, intricate structure, sixty feet in height 
 and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which 
 shall furthermore possess the power of extending 
 and multiplying itself until it covers the whole 
 earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if 
 it could reach them. Is such a profession as this 
 credible ? It is entirely credible, as soon as I 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 223 
 
 paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an 
 acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which 
 is so wonderful as this universal mystery of 
 growth : and the only reason we are not lost in 
 amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the 
 time, and perfects itself under uniform conditions. 
 But let me eliminate from the phenomenon the 
 one element of time — which is logically the least 
 essential factor in the product, unreal and arbi- 
 trary, based on the revolution of the earth, and 
 conceivably variable to any extent — grant me 
 this, and the world would come to see me do the 
 miracle. But, with time or without it, the mys- 
 tery is just as mysterious. 
 
 Natural mysteries, then, — the mysteries of life, 
 death, creation, growth, — do not fall under our 
 present consideration : they are beyond the legiti- 
 mate domain of magic: and no intellectual devel- 
 opment to which we may hereafter attain will 
 bring us a step nearer their solution. But with the 
 problems proper to magic, the case is different. 
 Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human : a 
 finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If 
 there has ever been a magician since the world 
 began, then all mankind may become magicians, 
 if they will give the necessary time and trouble. 
 
224 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region 
 of the path which science is pursuing. Science is 
 concerned with results, — with material phenom- 
 ena; whereas magic is, primarily, the study of 
 causes, or of spiritual phenomena ; or, to use 
 another definition, — of phenomena which the 
 senses perceive, not in themselves, but only in 
 their results. So long as we restrict ourselves to 
 results, our activity is confined to analysis ; but 
 when we begin to investigate causes, we are on 
 the road not only to comprehend results, but 
 (within limits) to modify or produce them. 
 
 Science, however, blocks our advance in this 
 direction by denying, or at least refusing to admit, 
 the existence of the spiritual world, or world of 
 causes : because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, 
 or cognizable in sense. Science admits only ma- 
 terial causes, or the changes wrought in matter by 
 itself. If we ask what is the cause of a material 
 cause, we are answered that it is a supposed entity 
 called Force, concerning which there is nothing 
 further to be known. 
 
 At this point, then, argument (on the material 
 plane) comes to an end, and speculation or as- 
 sumption begins. Science answers its own ques- 
 tions, but neither can nor will answer any others. 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 225 
 
 And upon what pretence do we ask any others ? 
 We ask them upon two grounds. The first is 
 that some people, — we might even say, most 
 people, — would be glad to believe in supersen- 
 suous existence, and are always on the alert to 
 examine any plausible hypothesis pointing in 
 that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast 
 amount of testimony (we need not call it evi- 
 dence) tending to show that the supersensuous 
 world has been discovered, and that it endows its 
 discoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of 
 course, we are not obliged to credit this testi- 
 mony, unless we want to : and — for some reason, 
 never fully explained — a great many people who 
 accept natural mysteries quite amiably become 
 indignant when requested to examine mysteries 
 of a much milder order. But it is not my inten- 
 tion to discuss the limits of the probable ; but to 
 swallow as much as possible first, and endeavor to 
 account for it afterwards. 
 
 There is, as every reader knows, a class of phe- 
 nomena — such as hypnotism, trance, animal mag- 
 netism, and so forth — the occurrence of which 
 science has conceded, though failing as yet to 
 offer any intelligent explanation of them. It is 
 suggested that they are peculiar states of the 
 
226 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 brain and nerve-centres, physical in their nature 
 and origin, though evading our present physical 
 tests. Be that as it may, they afford a capital in- 
 troduction to the study of magic ; if, indeed, they, 
 and a few allied phenomena, do not comprise the 
 germs of the whole matter. Apropos of this 
 subject, a society has lately been organized in 
 London, with branches on the Continent and in 
 this country, composed of scientific men, Fellows 
 of the Royal Society, members of Parliament, pro- 
 fessors, and literary men, calling themselves the 
 " Psychical Research Society," and making it their 
 business to test and investigate these very mar- 
 vels, under the most stringent scientific condi- 
 tions. But the capacity to be deceived of the 
 bodily senses is almost unlimited; in fact, we 
 know that they are incapable of telling us the 
 ultimate truth on any subject; and we are able to 
 get along with them only because we have found 
 their misinformation to be sufficiently uniform 
 for most practical purposes. But once admit that 
 the- origin of these phenomena is not on the 
 physical plane, and then, if we are to give any 
 weight at all to them, it can be only from a spirit- 
 ual standpoint. In other words, unless we can 
 approach such questions by an a priori route, we 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 227 
 
 might as well let them alone. We can reason 
 from spirit to body — from mind to matter — but 
 we can never reverse that process, and from mat- 
 ter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is 
 not found to contain mind, but is only acted 
 upon by it, as inferior by superior ; and we can- 
 not get out of the bag more than has been put 
 into it. The acorn (to use our former figure) can 
 never explain the oak; but the oak readily ac- 
 counts for the acorn. It may be doubted, there- 
 fore, whether the Psychical Research Society can 
 succeed in doing more than to give a respectable 
 endorsement to a perplexing possibility, — so long 
 as they adhere to the inductive method. Should 
 they, however, abandon the inductive method for 
 the deductive, they will forfeit the allegiance of 
 all consistently scientific minds ; and they may, 
 perhaps, make some curious contributions to phil- 
 osophy. At present, they appear to be astride 
 the fence between philosophy and science, as if 
 they hoped in some way to make the former sat- 
 isfy the hitter's demands. But the difference be- 
 tween the evidence that demonstrates a fact and 
 the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more, a 
 difference less of degree than of kind. We can 
 never obtain sensible verification of a proposition 
 
228 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 that transcends sense. We must accept it without 
 material proof, or not at all. "We may believe, for 
 instance, that Creation is the work of an intel- 
 ligent Divine Being ; or we may disbelieve it ; 
 but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, 
 innumerable confirmations of it meet us at every 
 turn : but no such confirmations, and no multipli- 
 cation of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For 
 belief is ever incommunicable from without; it 
 can be generated only from within. The term 
 " belief " cannot be applied to our recognition of 
 a physical fact : we do not believe in that — we 
 are only sensible of it. 
 
 In this connection, a few words will be in order 
 concerning what is called Spiritism, — a subject 
 which has of late years been exciting a good deal 
 of remark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of 
 a new and positive revelation, — a revelation to 
 sense of spiritual being. Now, the entire universe 
 may be described as a revelation to sense of spirit- 
 ual being — for those who happen to believe a 
 priori, or from spontaneous inward conviction, in 
 spiritual being. We may believe a man's body, 
 for example, to be the effect of which his soul is 
 the cause ; but no one can reach that conviction 
 by the most refined dissection of the bodily tis- 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 229 
 
 sues. How, then, does the spiritists' Positive 
 Revelation help the matter? Their answer is 
 that the physical universe is a permanent and 
 orderly phenomenon which (setting aside the 
 problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for 
 itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such 
 as rapping, table-tipping, materializing, and so 
 forth, are, if not supernatural, at any rate extra- 
 natural. They occur in consequence of a con- 
 scious effort to bring them about; they cease 
 when that effort is discontinued ; they abound in 
 indications of being produced by independent in- 
 telligencies ; they are inexplicable upon any recog- 
 nized theory of physics ; and, therefore, there is 
 nothing for it but to regard them as spiritual. 
 And what then ? Then, of course, there must be 
 spirits, and a life after the death of the body; 
 and the great question of Immortality is answered 
 in the affirmative ! 
 
 Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that 
 the manifestations upon which the Spiritists 
 found their claims are genuine : that they are or 
 can be produced without fraud ; and let us then 
 enquire in what respect our means for the conver- 
 sion of the sceptic are improved. In the first 
 place we find that all the manifestations — be their 
 
230 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 cause what it may — can occur only on the physi- 
 cal plane. However much the origin of the 
 phenomena may perplex us, the phenomena 
 themselves must be purely material, in so far as 
 they are perceptible at all. "Raps" are audible 
 according to the same laws of vibration as other 
 sounds : the tilting table is simply a material body 
 displaced by an adequate agency; the materialized 
 hand or face is nothing but physical substance 
 assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as 
 much right to ascribe a spiritual source to such 
 phenomena as we have to ascribe a spiritual 
 source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such 
 as a tree or a man's body, — just as much right — 
 and no more ! Consequently, we are no nearer 
 converting our sceptic than we were at the out- 
 set. He admits the physical manifestation : there 
 is no intrinsic novelty about that : but when we 
 proceed to argue that the manifestations are 
 wrought by spirits, he points out to us that this is 
 sheer assumption on our part. " I have not seen 
 a spirit," he says : " I have not heard one ; I have 
 not felt one ; nor is it possible that my bodily 
 senses' should perceive anything that is not at 
 least as physical as they are. I have witnessed 
 certain transactions effected by means unknown 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 231 
 
 to me — possibly by the action of a natural law not 
 yet fully expounded by science. If there was any- 
 thing spiritual in the affair, it has not been mani- 
 fest to my apprehension : and I must decline to 
 lend my countenance to any such pretensions." 
 
 That would be the reply of the sceptic who was 
 equal to the emergency. But let us suppose that 
 he is not equal to it : that he is a weak-kneed, 
 impressionable person, with a tendency to jump 
 at conclusions ; and that he is scared or mystified 
 into believing that " spirits " may be at the bot- 
 tom of it. What, then, will be the character of 
 the faith which the Positive Revelation has 
 furnished him ? He has discovered that existence 
 continues, in some fashion, after the death of the 
 body. He has learned that there may be such a 
 thing as — not immortality exactly, but — post- 
 mortem consciousness. He has been saddled with 
 the conviction that the other world is full of rest- 
 less ghosts, who come shuddering back from their 
 cold emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the 
 borrowed flesh and blood, and with the purblind 
 selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain 
 here. " Have faith : be not impatient : the con- 
 ditions are unfavorable : but we are working for 
 you! " — such is the constant burden of the com- 
 
232 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 munications. But, if there be a God, why must 
 our relations with him be complicated by the in- 
 terference of such forlorn prevaricators and 
 amateur Paracletes as these ? we do not wish to 
 be " worked for," — to be carried heavenward on 
 some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither 
 by God's help and our own will, or to stay were 
 we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we 
 test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of 
 this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what 
 they say, because they have lost their bodies? If 
 life teaches us anything, it is that God does above 
 all things respect the spiritual freedom of his 
 creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into 
 acknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in 
 darkened rooms, and by vapid exhibitions ad- 
 dressed to our outward senses. He approaches 
 each man in the innermost sacred audience-cham- 
 ber of his heart, and there shows him good and 
 evil, truth and falsehood, and bids him choose. 
 And that choice, if made aright, becomes a genu- 
 ine and undying belief, because it was made in 
 freedom, unbiassed by external threats and cajo- 
 leries. Such belief is, itself, immortal^, — some- 
 thing as distinct from post-mortem consciousness 
 as wisdom is distinct from mere animal intelli- 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 233 
 
 gence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to 
 belittle real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it 
 at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields 
 the soul is too meagre ; and — save on that one 
 bare point of life beyond the grave, which might 
 just as easily prove an infinite curse as an infinite 
 blessing — it affords no trustworthy news whatever. 
 
 But these objections do not apply to magic 
 proper. Magic seems to consist mainly in the 
 control which mind may exceptionally exercise 
 over matter. In hypnotism, the subject abjectly 
 believes and obeys the operator. If he be told 
 that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the 
 floor, he cannot step across it. He dissolves in 
 tears or explodes with laughter, according as the 
 operator tells him he has cause for merriment or 
 tears : and if he be assured that the water he 
 drinks is Madeira wine or Java coffee, he has no 
 misgiving that such is not the case. 
 
 To say that this state of things is brought 
 about by the- exercise of the operator's will, is not 
 to explain the phenomenon, but to put it in dif- 
 ferent terms. What is the will, and how does it 
 produce such a result ? Here is a man who be- 
 lieves, at the word of command, that the thing 
 which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a 
 
234 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 horse. How is such misapprehension on his part 
 possible ? our senses are our sole means of know- 
 ing external objects : and this man's senses seem 
 to confirm — at least they by no means correct — 
 his persuasion that a given object is something 
 very different. Could we solve this puzzle, we 
 should have done something towards gaining an 
 insight into the philosophy of magic. 
 
 We observe, in the first place, that the rationale 
 of hypnotism, and of trance in general, is distinct 
 from that of memory and of imagination, and 
 even from that of dreams. It resembles these 
 only in so far as it involves a quasi-perception of 
 something not actually present or existent. But 
 memory and imagination never mislead us into 
 mistaking their suggestions for realities : while in 
 dreams, the dreamer's fancy alone is active ; the 
 bodily faculties are not in action. In trance, 
 however, the subject may appear to be, to all 
 intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, un- 
 like the others, is abnormal. The brain seems to 
 be in a passive, or, at any rate, in a detached con- 
 dition ; it cannot carry out or originate ideas, nor 
 can it examine an idea as to its truth or falsehood. 
 Furthermore, it cannot receive or interpret the 
 reports of its own bodily senses. In short, its 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 235 
 
 relations with the external world are suspended : 
 and since the body is a part of the external 
 world, the brain can no longer control the body's 
 movements. 
 
 Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, 
 automatic. Given a certain stimulus in the brain 
 or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding mus- 
 cular contractions follow: and this whether or 
 not the stimulus be applied in a normal manner. 
 Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannot 
 spontaneously control the body, yet if we can 
 apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will 
 make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. 
 The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious 
 pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by 
 dropping into an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, 
 could we drop into the passive brain of an en- 
 tranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for 
 instance, — the person would give every sensible 
 indication of having adopted that figment as a 
 fact. 
 
 But how (since he can no longer communicate 
 with the world by means of his senses) is this idea 
 to be insinuated? The man is magnetized — that 
 is to say, insulated ; how can we have intercourse 
 with him ? 
 
236 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Experiments show that this can be effected only 
 through the magnetizer. Asleep towards the rest 
 of the world, towards him the entranced person is 
 awake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily- 
 senses; neither the magnetizer nor any one else 
 can approach by that route. It is true that, 
 if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is 
 said: but he does not hear physically; because 
 he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. 
 But since whatever does not belong to his body 
 must belong to his soul (or mind, if that term be 
 preferable), it follows that the magnetizer must 
 communicate with the magnetized on the mental 
 or spiritual plane ; that is, immediately, or with- 
 out the intervention of the body. 
 
 Let us review the position we have reached : — 
 We have an entranced or magnetized person, — a 
 person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certain 
 process, been so far withdrawn from conscious 
 communion with his own bodily senses as to dis- 
 able him from receiving through them any tidings 
 from the external world. He is not, however, 
 wholly withdrawn from his body, for, in that case, 
 the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its 
 organic or animal life continues almost unim- 
 paired. He is therefore neither out of the body 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 237 
 
 nor in it, but in an anomalous region midway 
 between the two, — a state in which he can receive 
 no sensuous impressions from the physical world, 
 nor be put in conscious communication with the 
 spiritual world through any channel — save odc 
 
 This one exception is, as we have seen, the 
 person who magnetized him. The magnetizer is, 
 then, the one and only medium through which 
 the person magnetized can obtain impressions: 
 and these impressions are conveyed directly from 
 the mind, or spirit, of the magnetizer to that of the 
 magnetized. Let us note, further, that the former 
 is not, like the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, 
 but is in the normal exercise of his bodily func- 
 tions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, 
 his normal ability to originate ideas and to impart 
 them: and whatever ideas he chooses to impart 
 to the magnetized person, the latter is fain pas- 
 sively and implicitly to accept. And having so 
 received them, they descend naturally into the 
 automatic mechanism of the body, and are by it 
 mechanically interpreted or enacted. 
 
 So far, the theory is good : but something seems 
 amiss in the working. We find that a certain 
 process frequently issues in a certain effect : but 
 we do not yet know why this should be the case. 
 
238 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 Some fundamental link is wanting ; and this link 
 is manifestly a knowledge of the true relations 
 between mind and matter : of the laws to which 
 the mental or spiritual world is subject: of what 
 nature itself is : and of what Creation means. 
 Let us cast a glance at these fundamental sub- 
 jects ; for they are the key without which the 
 secrets of magic must remain locked and hidden. 
 
 In common speech we call the realm of the 
 material universe, Creation ; but philosophy 
 denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Cre- 
 ation : everything else is appearance. The uni- 
 verse appears, because man exists : he implies the 
 universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist 
 our metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. 
 Take a glass prism and hold in the sunlight be- 
 fore a white surface. Let the prism represent 
 man : the sun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued 
 ray cast by the prism, nature, or the material 
 universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray 
 vanishes : it vanishes, also, if we take away the 
 prism : but so long as the sun and the prism — 
 God and man — remain in their mutual relation, 
 so long must the rainbow nature appear. Nature, 
 in short, is not God ; neither is it man ; but it is 
 the inevitable concomitant or expression of the 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 239 
 
 creative attitude of God towards man. It is the 
 shadow of the elements of which humanity or 
 human nature is composed : or, shall we say, it is 
 the apparition in sense of the spiritual being of 
 mankind, — not, be it observed, of the being of 
 any individual or of any aggregation of indi- 
 viduals; but of humanity as a whole. For this 
 reason, also, is nature orderly, complete, and per- 
 manent, — that it is conditioned not upon our frail 
 and faulty personalities, but upon our impersonal, 
 universal human nature, in which is transacted 
 the miracle of God's incarnation, and through 
 which He forever shines. 
 
 Besides Creator and creature, nothing else can 
 be ; and whatever else seems to be, must be only 
 a seeming. Nature, therefore, is the shadow of a 
 shade, but it serves an indispensable use. For 
 since there can be no direct communication be- 
 tween finite and Infinite — God and man — a 
 medium or common ground is needed, where they 
 may meet ; and nature, the shadow which the 
 Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that 
 medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mis- 
 takes it for real substance, serving him for foot- 
 hold and background, and assisting him to attain 
 self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds 
 
240 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 in nature the means of revealing Himself to His 
 creature without compromising the creature's free- 
 dom. Man supposes the universe to be a physi- 
 cal structure made by God in space and time, and 
 in some region of which He resides, at a safe dis- 
 tance from us His creatures : whereas, in truth, 
 God is distant from us only so far as we remove 
 ourselves from our own inmost intuitions of truth 
 and good. 
 
 But what is that substance or quality which 
 underlies and gives homogeneity to the varying 
 forms of nature, so that they seem to us to own a 
 common origin? — what is that logical abstrac- 
 tion upon which we have bestowed the name of 
 matter? scientific analysis finds matter only as 
 forms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents 
 an atomic theory, and lets it go at that. But if, 
 discarding the scientific method, we question 
 matter from the philosophical standpoint, we shall 
 find it less obdurate. 
 
 Man, considered as a mind or spirit, consists of 
 volition and intelligence ; or, what is the same, 
 of emotion or affection, and of the thoughts which 
 are created by this affection. Nothing can be 
 affirmed of man as a spirit which does not fall un- 
 der one or other of these two parts. Now, a crea- 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 241 
 
 ture consisting solely of affections and thoughts 
 must, of course, have something to love and to 
 think about. Man's final destiny is no doubt to 
 love and consider his Creator ; but that can only 
 be after a reactionary or regenerative process has 
 begun in him. Meanwhile, he must love and 
 consider the only other available object — that is, 
 himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow 
 this attention upon himself, he must first be made 
 aware of his own existence. In order to effect 
 this, something must be added to man as spirit, 
 enabling him to discriminate between the subject 
 thinking and loving, and the object loved and 
 thought of. This additional something, again, in 
 order to fulful its purpose, must be so devised as 
 not to appear an addition: it must seem even 
 more truly the man than the man himself. It 
 must, therefore, perfectly represent or correspond 
 to the spiritual form and constitution ; so that the 
 thoughts and affections of the spirit may enter in- 
 to it as into their natural home and continent. 
 
 This continent or vehicle of the mind is the 
 human body. The body has two aspects, — sub- 
 stance and form, answering to the two aspects of 
 the mind, — affection and thought: and affection 
 finds its incarnation or correspondence in sub- 
 
242 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 stance ; and thought, in form. The mind, in short, 
 realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the 
 body, much as the body realizes itself in terms 
 of its reflection in the looking-glass : but it does 
 more than this, for it identifies itself with this 
 its image. And how is this identification made 
 possible ? 
 
 It is brought about by the deception of sense, 
 which is the medium of communication between 
 the spiritual and the material man. Until this 
 miraculous medium is put in action, there can be 
 no conscious relation between these two planes, 
 admirably as they are adapted to each other. 
 Sense is spiritual on one side and material on 
 the other : but it is only on the material side that 
 it gathers its reports : on the spiritual side it only 
 delivers them. Every one of the five messengers 
 whereby we are apprised of external existence 
 brings us an earthly message only. And since 
 these messengers act spontaneously, and since the 
 mind's only other source of knowledge is intui- 
 tion, which cannot be sensuously confirmed, — it 
 is little wonder if man has inclined to the persua- 
 sion that what is highest in him is but an attri- 
 bute of what is lowest, and that when the body 
 dies, the soul must follow it into nothingness. 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 243 
 
 Creative energy, being infinite, passes through 
 the world of causes to the world of effects — 
 through the spiritual to the physical plane. Mat- 
 ter is therefore the symbol of the ultimate of crea- 
 tive activity ; it is the negative of God. As God 
 is infinite, matter is finite ; as He is life, it is 
 death; as He is real, it is unreal; as He reveals, 
 matter veils. And as the relation of God to 
 man's spirit is constant and eternal, so is the 
 physical quality of matter fixed and perma- 
 nent. 
 
 Now, in order to arrive at a comprehension of 
 what matter is in itself, let us descend from the 
 general to the specific, and investigate the philo- 
 sophical elements of a pebble, for instance. A 
 pebble is two things : it is a mineral : and it is a 
 particular concrete example of mineral. In its 
 mineral aspect, it is out of space and time, and is 
 — not a fact, but — a truth; a perception of the 
 mind. In so far as it is mineral, therefore, it has 
 no relation to sense, but only to thought : and on 
 the other hand, in so far as it is a particular con- 
 crete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by 
 thought ; for what is in sense is out of thought : 
 the one supersedes the other. But if sense thus 
 absorbs matter, so as to be philosophically indis- 
 
244 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 tinguishable from it, we are constrained to iden- 
 tify matter with our sensuous perception of it : 
 and if our exemplary pebble had nothing but its 
 material quality to depend upon, it would cease 
 to exist not only to thought, but to sense like- 
 wise. Its metaphysical aspect, in short, is the 
 only reality appertaining to it. Matter, then, 
 may be defined as the impact upon sense of that 
 prismatic ray which we have called nature. 
 
 To apply this discussion to the subject in hand : 
 Magic is a sort of parody of reality. And when 
 we recognize that Creation proceeds from within 
 outwards, or endogenously ; and that matter is not 
 the objective but the subjective side of the uni- 
 verse, we are in a position to perceive that in 
 order magically to control matter, we must apply 
 our efforts not to matter itself, but to our own 
 minds. The natural world affects us from with- 
 out inwards: the magical world affects us from 
 within outwards : instead of objects suggesting 
 ideas, ideas are made to suggest objects. And as, 
 in the former case, when the object is removed 
 the idea vanishes ; so in the latter case, when 
 the idea is removed, the object vanishes. Both 
 objects are illusions ; but the illusion in the first 
 instance is the normal illusion of sense, whereas 
 
MODEEK MAGIC. 245 
 
 in the second instance it is the abnormal illusion 
 of mind. 
 
 The above argument can at best serve only as a 
 hint to such as incline seriously to investigate the 
 subject, and perhaps as a touchstone for testing 
 the validity of a large and noisy mass of preten- 
 sions which engage the student at the outset 
 of his enquiry. Many of these pretensions are 
 the result of ignorance ; many of deliberate intent 
 to deceive ; some, again, of erroneous philosophi- 
 cal theories. The Tibetan adepts seem to belong 
 either to the second or to the last of these catego- 
 ries, — or, perhaps, to an impartial mingling of 
 all three. They import a cumbrous machinery of 
 auras, astral bodies, and elemental spirits; they 
 divide man into seven principles, nature into 
 seven kingdoms; they regard spirit as a refined 
 form of matter, and matter as the one absolute 
 fact of the universe, — the alpha and omega of all 
 things. They deny a supreme Deity, but hold 
 out hopes of a practical deityship for the majority 
 of the human race. In short, their philosophy 
 appeals to the most evil instincts of the soul, and 
 has the air of being ex-post-facto ; whenever they 
 run foul of a prodigy, they invent abitrarily a 
 fanciful explanation of it. But it will be found, 
 
246 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 I think, that the various phases of hypnotism, 
 and a systematized use of spiritism, will amply 
 account for every miracle they actually bring to 
 pass. 
 
 Upon the whole, a certain vulgarity is insepara- 
 ble from even the most respectable forms of 
 magic, — an atmosphere of tinsel, of ostentation, of 
 big cry and little wool. A child might have told 
 us that matter is not almighty, that minds are 
 sometimes transparent to one another, that love 
 and faith can work wonders. And we also know 
 that, in this mortal life, our means are exquisitely 
 adapted to our ends ; and that we can gain no 
 solid comfort or advantage by striving to elbow 
 our way a few inches further into the region of 
 the occult and abnormal. Magic, however spe- 
 cious its achievements, is only a mockery of the 
 Creative power, and exposes its unlikeness to 
 it. "It is the attribute of natural existence," a 
 profound writer has said, " to be a form of use to 
 something higher than itself, so that whatever 
 does not, either potentially or actually, possess 
 within it this soul of use, does not honestly be- 
 long to nature, but is a sensational effect pro- 
 duced upon the individual intelligence." * 
 
 * Henry James, in " Society the Redeemed Form of Man." 
 
MODERN MAGIC. 247 
 
 No one can overstep the order and modesty of 
 general existence without bringing himself into 
 perilous proximity to subjects more profound and 
 sacred than the occasion warrants. Life need not 
 be barren of mystery and miracle to any one of 
 us ; but they shall be such tender mysteries and 
 instructive miracles as the devotion of mother- 
 hood, and the blooming of spring. We are too 
 close to Infinite love and wisdom to play pranks 
 before it, and provoke comparison between our 
 paltry juggleries and its omnipotence and maj- 
 esty. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN" ART. 
 
 The hunter and the sportsman are two very 
 different persons. The hunter pursues animals 
 because he loves them and sympathizes with 
 them, and kills them as the champions of chivalry 
 used to slay one another — courteously, fairly, 
 and with admiration and respect. To stalk and 
 shoot the elk and the grizzly bear is to him what 
 wooing and winning a beloved maiden would be 
 to another man. Far from being the foe or 
 exterminator of the game he follows, he, more 
 than any one else, is their friend, vindicator, and 
 confidant. A strange mutual ardor and under- 
 standing unites him with his quarry. He loves 
 the mountain sheep and the antelope, because 
 they can escape him ; the panther and the bear, 
 because they can destroy him. His relations 
 with them are clean, generous, and manly. And 
 on the other hand, the wild animals whose wild- 
 ness can never be tamed, whose inmost principle 
 
 248 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 249 
 
 of existence it is to be apart and unapproachable, 
 
 — those creatures who may be said to cease to be 
 when they cease to be intractable, — seem, after 
 they have eluded their pursuer to the utmost, or 
 fought him to the death, to yield themselves to 
 him with a sort of wild contentment — as if they 
 were glad to admit the sovereignty of man, though 
 death come with the admission. The hunter, in 
 short, asks for his happiness only to be alone with 
 what he hunts ; the sportsman, after his day's 
 sport, must needs hasten home to publish the size 
 of the "bag," and to wring from his fellow-men 
 the glory and applause which he has not the 
 strength and simplicity to find in the game itself. 
 
 But if the true hunter is rare, the union of the 
 hunter and the artist is rarer still. It demands not 
 only the close familiarity, the loving observation, 
 and the sympathy, but also the faculty of creation 
 
 — the eye which selects what is constructive and 
 beautiful, and passes over what is superfluous and 
 inharmonious, and the hand skilful to carry out 
 what the imagination conceives. In the man whose 
 work I am about to consider, these qualities are 
 developed in a remarkable degree, though it was 
 not until he was a man grown, and had fought 
 with distinction through the civil war, that he 
 
250 CONFESSIONS AND CEITICISMS. 
 
 himself became aware of the artistic power that 
 was in him. The events of his life, could they be 
 rehearsed here, would form a tale of adventure and 
 vicissitude more varied and stirring than is often 
 found in fiction. He has spent by himself days 
 and weeks in the vast solitudes of our western 
 prairies and southern morasses. He has been the 
 companion of trappers and frontiersmen, the 
 friend and comrade of Indians, sleeping side by 
 side with them in their wigwams, running the 
 rapids in their canoes, and riding with them in 
 the hunt. He has met and overcome the panther 
 and the grizzly single-handed, and has pursued 
 the flying cimmaron to the snowy summits of the 
 Rocky Mountains, and brought back its crescent 
 horns as a trophy. He has fought and slain the 
 gray wolf with no other weapons than his hands 
 and teeth ; and at night he has lain concealed by 
 lonely tarns, where the wild coyote came to 
 patter and bark and howl at the midnight moon. 
 His name and achievements are familiar to the 
 dwellers in those savage regions, whose estimate 
 of a man is based, not upon his social and finan- 
 cial advantages, but upon what he is and can do. 
 Yet he is not one who wears his merit out- 
 wardly. His appearance, indeed, is striking; 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 251 
 
 tall and athletic, broad-shouldered and stout- 
 limbed, with the long, elastic step of the 
 moccasined Indian, and something of the Indian's 
 reticence and simplicity. But he can with diffi- 
 culty be brought to allude to his adventures, and 
 is reserved almost to the point of ingenuity on all 
 that concerns himself or redounds to his credit. 
 It is only in familiar converse with friends that 
 the humor, the cultivation, the knowledge, and 
 the social charm of the man appear, and his 
 marvellous gift of vivid and picturesque narration 
 discloses itself. But, in addition to all this, or 
 above it all, he is the only great animal sculptor 
 of his time, the successor of the French Barye, 
 and (as any one may satisfy himself who will take 
 the trouble to compare their works) the equal of 
 that famous artist in scope and treatment of ani- 
 mal subjects, and his superior in knowledge and 
 in truth and power of conception. It would be 
 a poor compliment to call Edward Kemeys the 
 American Barye ; but Barye is the only man whose 
 animal sculptures can bear comparison with Mr. 
 Kemeys's. 
 
 Of Mr. Kemeys's productions, a few are to be 
 seen at his studio, 133 West Fifty-third Street, 
 New York city. These are the models, in clay 
 
252 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 or plaster, as they came fresh from the artist's 
 hand. From this condition they can either be 
 enlarged to life or colossal size, for parks or pub- 
 lic buildings, or cast in bronze in their present 
 dimensions for the enrichment of private houses. 
 Though this collection includes scarce a tithe of 
 what the artist has produced, it forms a series of 
 groups and figures which, for truth to nature, 
 artistic excellence, and originality, are actually 
 unique. So unique are they, indeed, that the 
 uneducated eye does not at first realize their 
 really immense value. Nothing; like this little 
 sculpture gallery has been seen before, and it is 
 very improbable that there will ever again be a 
 meeting of conditions and qualities adequate to 
 reproducing such an exhibition. For we see 
 here not merely, nor chiefly, the accurate rep- 
 resentation of the animal's external aspect, but — 
 what is vastly more difficult to seize and por- 
 tray — the essential animal character or temper- 
 ament which controls and actuates the animal's 
 movements and behavior. Each one of Mr. 
 Kemeys's figures gives not only the form and 
 proportions of the animal, according to the nicest 
 anatomical studies and measurements, but it is 
 the speaking embodiment of profound insight into 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 253 
 
 that animal's nature and knowledge of its habits. 
 The spectator cannot long examine it without 
 feeling that he has learned much more of its char- 
 acteristics and genius than if he had been stand- 
 ing in front of the same animal's cage at the 
 Zoological Gardens; for here is an artist who 
 understands how to translate pose into meaning, 
 and action into utterance, and to select those 
 poses and actions which convey the broadest and 
 most comprehensive idea of the subject's pre- 
 vailing traits. He not only knows what posture 
 or movement the anatomical structure of the 
 animal renders possible, but he knows precisely 
 in what degree such posture or movement is 
 modified by the animal's physical needs and in- 
 stincts. In other words, he always respects the 
 modesty of nature, and never yields to the temp- 
 tation to be dramatic and impressive at the 
 expense of truth. Here is none of Barye's ex- 
 aggeration, or of Landseer's sentimental effort to 
 humanize animal nature. Mr. Kemeys has rightly 
 perceived that animal nature is not a mere con- 
 traction of human nature ; but that each animal, 
 so far as it owns any relation to man at all, rep- 
 resents the unimpeded development of some par- 
 ticular element of man's nature. Accordingly, 
 
254 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 animals must be studied and portrayed solely 
 upon their own basis and within their own limits ; 
 and he who approaches them with this under- 
 standing will find, possibly to his surprise, that 
 the theatre thus afforded is wide and varied 
 enough for the exercise of his best ingenuity and 
 capacities. At first, no doubt, the simple animal 
 appears too simple to be made artistically in- 
 teresting, apart from this or that conventional or 
 imaginative addition. The lion must be pre- 
 sented, not as he is, but as vulgar anticipation 
 expects him to be ; not with the savageness and 
 terror which are native to him, but with the 
 savageness and terror which those who have 
 trembled and fled at the echo of his roar invest 
 him with, — which are quite another matter. Zoo- 
 logical gardens and museums have their uses, but 
 they cannot introduce us to wild animals as they 
 really are ; and the reports of those who have 
 caught terrified or ignorant glimpses of them in 
 their native regions will mislead us no less in 
 another direction. Nature reveals her secrets 
 only to those who have faithfully and rigorously 
 submitted to the initiation; but to them she 
 shows herself marvellous and inexhaustible. The 
 " simple animal " avouches his ability to transcend 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN AET. 255 
 
 any imaginative conception of him. The stern 
 economy of his structure and character, the sure- 
 ness and sufficiency of his every manifestation, 
 the instinct and capacity which inform all his 
 proceedings, — these are things which are con- 
 cealed from a hasty glance by the very perfection 
 of their state. Once seen and comprehended, 
 however, they work upon the mind of the observer 
 with an ever increasing power; they lead him 
 into a new, strange, and fascinating world, and 
 generously recompense him for any effort he may 
 have made to penetrate thither. Of that strange 
 and fascinating world Mr. Kemeys is the true and 
 worthy interpreter, and, so far as appears, the 
 only one. Through difficulty and discouragement 
 of all kinds, he has kept to the simple truth, and 
 the truth has rewarded him. He has done a ser- 
 vice of incalculable value to his county, not only 
 in vindicating American art, but in preserving to 
 us, in a permanent and beautiful form, the vivid 
 and veracious figures of a wild fauna which, in 
 the inevitable progress of colonization and civil- 
 ization, is destined within a few years to vanish 
 altogether. The American bear and bison, the 
 cimmaron and the elk, the wolf and the 'coon — 
 where will they be a generation hence? No- 
 
256 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 where, save in the possession of those persons who 
 have to-day the opportunity and the intelligence 
 to decorate their rooms and parks with Mr. 
 Kemeys's inimitable bronzes. The opportunity is 
 great — much greater, I should think, than the 
 intelligence necessary for availing ourselves of it ; 
 and it is a unique opportunity. In other words, 
 it lies within the power of every cultivated family 
 in the United States to enrich itself with a work 
 of art which is entirely American ; which, as art, 
 fulfils every requirement ; which is of permanent 
 and increasing interest and value from an orna- 
 mental point of view; and which is embodied in 
 the most enduring of artistic materials. 
 
 The studio in which Mr. Kemeys works — a 
 spacious apartment — is, in appearance, a cross 
 between a barn-loft and a wigwam. Round the 
 walls are suspended the hides, the heads, and 
 the horns of the animals which the hunter has 
 shot; and below are groups, single figures, and 
 busts, modelled by the artist, in plaster, terra- 
 cotta, or clay. The colossal design of the "Still 
 Hunt" — an American panther crouching before 
 its spring — was modelled here, before being cast 
 in bronze and removed to its present site in Cen- 
 tral Park. It is a monument of which New York 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS LN ART. 257 
 
 and America may be proud ; for no such powerful 
 and veracious conception of a wild animal lias 
 ever before found artistic embodiment. The 
 great cat crouches with head low, extended 
 throat, and ears erect. The shoulders are drawn 
 far back, the fore paws huddled beneath the 
 jaws. The long, lithe back rises in an arch in 
 the middle, sinking thence to the haunches, 
 while the angry tail makes a strong curve along 
 the ground to the right. The whole figure is 
 tense and compact with restrained and waiting 
 power; the expression is stealthy, pitiless, and 
 terrible ; it at once fascinates and astounds the 
 beholder. While Mr. Kemeys was modelling 
 this animal, an incident occurred which he has 
 told me in something like the following words. 
 The artist does not encourage the intrusion of 
 idle persons while he is at work, though no 
 one welcomes intelligent inspection and criti- 
 cism more cordially than he. On this occasion 
 he was alone in the studio with his Irish facto- 
 tum, Tom, and the outer door, owing to the heat 
 of the weather, had been left ajar. All of a 
 sudden the artist was aware of the presence of a 
 stranger in the room. "He was a tall, hulking 
 fellow, shabbily dressed, like a tramp, and looked 
 
258 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 as if he might make trouble if he had a mind to. 
 However, he stood quite still in front of the 
 statue, staring at it, and not saying anything. 
 So I let him alone for a while ; I thought it would 
 be time enough to attend to him when he began 
 to beg or make a row. But after some time, as 
 he still hadn't stirred, Tom came to the conclu- 
 sion that a hint had better be given him to move 
 on ; so he took a broom and began sweeping the 
 floor, and the dust went all over the fellow ; 
 but he didn't pay the least attention. I began 
 to think there would probably be a fight ; but I 
 thought I'd wait a little longer before doing 
 anything. At last I said to him, 'Will you 
 move aside, please? You're in my way.' He 
 stepped over a little to the right, but still didn't 
 open his mouth, and kept his eyes fixed on the 
 panther. Presently I said to Tom, ' Well, Tom, 
 the cheek of some people passes belief!' Tom 
 replied with more clouds of dust; but the 
 stranger never made a sign. At last I got tired, 
 so I stepped up to the fellow and said to him : 
 * Look here, my friend, when I asked you to move 
 aside, I meant you should move the other side of 
 the door.' He roused up then, and gave himself 
 a shake, and took a last look at the panther, and 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 259 
 
 said he, 4 That's all right, boss ; I know all about 
 the door; but — what a spring she's going to 
 make ! ' Then," added Kemeys, self-reproach- 
 f ully, " I could have wept ! " 
 
 But although this superb figure no longer dom- 
 inates the studio, there is no lack of models as 
 valuable and as interesting, though not of heroic 
 size. Most interesting of all to the general ob- 
 server are, perhaps, the two figures of the grizzly 
 bear. These were designed from a grizzly which 
 Mr. Kemeys fought and killed in the autumn of 
 1881 in the Rocky Mountains, and the mounted 
 head of which grins upon the wall overhead, a 
 grisly trophy indeed. The impression of enor- 
 mous strength, massive yet elastic, ponderous yet 
 alert, impregnable for defence as irresistible in 
 attack ; a strength which knows no obstacles, and 
 which never meets its match, — this impression is 
 as fully conveyed in these figures, which are not 
 over a foot in height, as if the animal were before 
 us in its natural size. You see the vast limbs, 
 crooked with power, bound about with huge ropes 
 and plates of muscle, and clothed in shaggy 
 depths of fur ; the vast breadth of the head, with 
 its thick, low ears, dull, small eyes, and long up- 
 curving snout ; the roll and lunge of the gait, like 
 
260 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 the motion of a vessel plunging forward before 
 the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, 
 and the huge bluntness of the posteriors ; and all 
 these features are combined with such masterly 
 unity of conception and plastic vigor, that the 
 diminutive model insensibly grows mighty be- 
 neath your gaze, until you realize the monster as 
 if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In 
 the first of the figures the bear has paused in his 
 great stride to paw over and snuff at the horned 
 head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil. 
 The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the 
 burly slouch of the arrested stride, are of them- 
 selves worth a gallery of pseudo-classic Venuses 
 and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling 
 back on his haunches, with all four paws in the 
 air, munching some grapes from a vine which he 
 has torn from its support. The contrast between 
 the savage character of the beast and his absurdly 
 peaceful employment gives a touch of terrific 
 comedy to this design. After studying these 
 figures, one cannot help thinking what a noble 
 embellishment either of them would be, put in 
 bronze, of colossal size, in the public grounds of 
 one of our great Western cities. And inasmuch 
 as the rich citizens of the West not only know 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 261 
 
 what a grizzly bear is, but are more fearless and 
 independent, and therefore often more correct in 
 their artistic opinion than the somewhat sophis- 
 ticated critics of the East, there is some cause for 
 hoping that this thing may be brought to pass. 
 
 Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, 
 or cimmaron, the most difficult to capture of all 
 four-footed animals, whose gigantic curved horns 
 are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a 
 hunter can bring home with him. The sculptor 
 has here caught him in one of his most character- 
 istic attitudes — just alighted from some dizzy 
 leap on the headlong slope of a rocky mountain- 
 side. On such a spot nothing but the cimmaron 
 could retain its footing ; yet there he stands, 
 firm and secure as the rock itself, his fore feet 
 planted close together, the fore legs rigid and 
 straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind 
 legs pose easily in attendance upon them. " The 
 cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he 
 never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic 
 comment ; and we can recognize the truth of the 
 observation in this image. Perfectly at home 
 and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, 
 the cimmaron curves its great neck and turns its 
 head upward, gazing aloft toward the height 
 
262 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 whence it has descended. " It's the golden eagle 
 he hears," says the sculptor ; " they give him 
 warning of danger." It is a magnificent animal, 
 a model of tireless vigor in all its parts ; a creature 
 made to hurl itself head-foremost down appalling 
 gulfs of space, and poise itself at the bottom as 
 jauntily as if gravitation were but a bugbear of 
 timid imaginations. I find myself unconsciously 
 speaking about these plaster models as if they 
 were the living animals which they represent; 
 but the more one studies Mr. Kemeys's works, the 
 more instinct with redundant and breathing life 
 do they appear. 
 
 It would be impossible even to catalogue the 
 contents of this studio, the greater part of which is 
 as well worth describing as those examples which 
 have already been touched upon ; nor could a more 
 graphic pen than mine convey an adequate impres- 
 sion of their excellence. But there is here a figure 
 of the 'coon, which, as it is the only one ever 
 modelled, ought not to be passed over in silence* 
 In appearance this animal is a curious medley of 
 the fox, the wolf, and the bear, besides I-know-not- 
 what (as the lady in "Punch" would say) that 
 belongs to none of those beasts. As may be im- 
 agined, therefore, its right portrayal involves 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 263 
 
 peculiar difficulties, and Mr. Kemeys's genius is 
 nowhere better shown than in the manner in 
 which these have been surmounted. Compact, 
 plump, and active in figure, quick and subtle in 
 its movements, the 'coon crouches in a flattened 
 position along the limb of a tree, its broad, shal- 
 low head and pointed snout a little lifted, as it 
 gazes alertly outward and downward. It sustains 
 itself by the clutch of its slender-clawed toes on 
 the branch, the fore legs being spread apart, while 
 the left hind leg is withdrawn inward, and enters 
 smoothly into the contour of the furred side ; 
 the bushy, fox-like tail, ringed with dark and 
 light bands, curving to the left. Thus posed and 
 modelled in high relief on a tile-shaped plaque, 
 Mr. Kemeys's coon forms a most desirable orna- 
 ment for some wise man's sideboard or mantle- 
 piece, where it may one day be pointed out as 
 the only surviving representative of its species. 
 
 The two most elaborate groups here have 
 already attained some measure of publicity; the 
 " Bison and Wolves " having been exhibited in 
 the Paris Salon in 1878, and the " Deer and Pan- 
 ther" having been purchased in bronze by Mr. 
 Winans during the sculptor's sojourn in England. 
 Each group represents one of those deadly com- 
 
264 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 bats between wild beasts which are among the 
 most terrific and at the same time most natural 
 incidents of animal existence; and they are of 
 especial interest as showing the artist's power of 
 concentrated and graphic composition. A com- 
 plicated story is told in both these instances with 
 a masterly economy of material and balance of 
 proportion ; so that the spectator's eye takes in 
 the whole subject at a glance, and yet finds in- 
 exhaustible interest in the examination of details, 
 all of which contribute to the central effect with- f 
 out distracting the attention. A companion 
 piece to the " Deer and Panther " shows the same 
 animals as they have fallen, locked together in 
 death after the combat is over. In the former 
 group, the panther, in springing upon the deer, 
 had impaled its neck on the deer's right antler, 
 and had then swung round under the latter's 
 body, burying the claws of its right fore foot in 
 the ruminant's throat. In order truthfully to 
 represent the second stage of the encounter, 
 therefore, it was necessary not merely to model 
 a second group, but to retain the elements and 
 construction of the first group under totally 
 changed conditions. This is a feat of such 
 peculiar difficulty that I think few artists in any 
 
AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART. 265 
 
 branch of art would venture to attempt it ; never- 
 theless, Mr. Kemeys has accomplished it; and 
 the more the two groups are studied in connec- 
 tion with each other, the more complete will his 
 success be found to have been. The man who 
 can do this may surely be admitted a master, 
 whose works are open only to affirmative criti- 
 cism. For his works the most trying of all tests 
 is their comparison with one another; and the 
 result of such comparison is not merely to con- 
 firm their merit, but to illustrate and enhance it. 
 
 For my own part, my introduction to Mr. 
 Kerne j^s's studio was the opening to me of a new 
 world, where it has been my good fortune to 
 spend many days of delightful and enlightening 
 study. How far the subject of this writing may 
 have been already familiar to the readers of it, I 
 have no means of knowing ; but I conceive it to 
 be no less than my duty, as a countryman of Mr. 
 Kemeys's and a lover of all that is true and 
 original in art, to pay the tribute of my appreci- 
 ation to what he has done. There is no danger of 
 his getting more recognition than he deserves, 
 and he is not one whom recognition can injure. 
 He reverences his art too highly to magnify his 
 own exposition of it; and when he reads what I 
 
266 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. 
 
 have set down here, he will smile and shake his 
 head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect 
 idea in the imperfect embodiment. Unless I 
 greatly err, however, no one but himself is 
 competent to take that exception. The genuine 
 artist is never satisfied with his work ; he per- 
 ceives where it falls short of his conception. 
 But to others it will not be incomplete ; for the 
 achievements of real art are always invested with 
 an atmosphere and aroma — a spiritual quality 
 perhaps — proceeding from the artist's mind and 
 affecting that of the beholder. And thus it 
 happens that the story or the poem, the picture 
 or the sculpture, receives even in its material 
 form that last indefinable grace, that magic light 
 that never was on sea or land, which no pen or 
 brush or graving-tool has skill to seize. Matter 
 can never rise to the height of spirit ; but spirit 
 informs it when it has done its best, and ennobles 
 it with the charm that the artist sought and the 
 world desired. 
 
 *** Since the above was written, Mr. Kemeys has removed 
 his studio to Perth Amboy, N. J. 
 
Benjamin H. Ticknor. 
 
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14 A List of Boohs Published by 
 
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Tichnor and Company. 15 
 
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Tichnor and Company. 17 
 
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TICKNOR AND COMPANY'S 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENTS OF 
 
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 TO BE PUBLISHED DURING THE AUTUMN 
 AND WINTER OF 
 
 1886. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 The Prices named below are subject to Revision on Publication. 
 
 JUST PUBLISHED. 
 A ROMANTIC YOUNG LADY. By Robert Grant, author of 
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20 A List of Books Published by 
 
 THE HOLIDAY BOOK OF THE SEASON. 
 
 SCOTT'S THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL. An entirely 
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 MURAL PAINTING. By Frederic Crowninshield. 1vol. Square 
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 SONGS AND SATIRES. A volume of poems. By James Jeffrey 
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 GENIUS IN SUNSHINE AND IN SHADOW. By M. M. Ballou, 
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Ticknor and Company^ 21 
 
 IN OCTOBER. 
 
 A WONDERFUL WORK OF ART. 
 
 Mrs. Browning's !Love Sonnets. 
 
 SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE. By Elizabeth Bar- 
 rett Browning. Illustrated by Ludvig San doe Ipsen. 1 vol. 
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 RECOLLECTIONS OF EMINENT MEN, and Other Papers. 
 
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 STORIES OF ART AND ARTISTS. By Clara Erskine Clem- 
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 PERSIA AND THE PERSIANS. By Hon. S. G. W. Benjamin, late 
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22 A List of Books Published by 
 
 STEADFAST. A Novel. By Rose Terry Cooke, author of "Some- 
 body's Neighbors." 1 vol. 12mo. $1.50. 
 
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 lished, the fear of ' X ' seems somewhat needless." 
 
 CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS. By Julian Hawthorne. 
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 THE HOUSE AT HICH BRIDGE. By Edgar Fawcett. 1 vol. 
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 serially. 
 
 FOR X ATE B, ISSUE. 
 
 YE OLDEN TIME SERIES. The following are forthcoming vol- 
 umes: — 
 
 " Literary Curiosities." 
 " New-England Music in the 18th and in the beginning of the 19th 
 
 Century." 
 "Travel in Old Times, with Some Account of Stages, Taverns," etc. 
 " Curiosities of Politics, among the Old Federalists and Republicans." 
 
 NORA PERRY'S POEMS. 
 
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 liant and piquant writer. 
 
 A new edition of "Her Lover's Friend" and "After the Ball "(two 
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 RANKELL'S REMAINS. A Novel. By Barrett Wendell, author 
 of " The Duchess Emilia." 1 vol. 12mo. 
 
 The remarkable success of Barrett Wendell's " The Duchess Emilia," a 
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 one who has read Wendell's previous story can for a moment doubt. 
 
Tichior and Company. 23 
 
 A MURAMASA BLADE, A Story of Feudalism in Old Japan. By 
 Louis Wertheimber. 1vol. 8vo. Beautifully illustrated by Jap- 
 anese artists. 83.00. 
 
 Mr. Wertheimber, of a scholarly Austrian family, went to Japan about 
 the year 1870, and spent many years there, in the service of the Japanese 
 Government. He was an extensive traveller among the inland districts and 
 villages ; and contributed many articles and series to the Japan Mill, and 
 other publications. The present book is a romance of the sword, full of 
 charming local color, true to lite as it is in Japan, and full of deep and en- 
 chaining interest. Its mechanical make-up is sumptuous in every respect. 
 
 ACNES SURRIAGE. A Novel. By Edwix Lassetter Byxxer 
 author of '• Damen's Ghost," " Penelope's Suitors," etc. 81.50. 
 
 This new novel by the author of " Tritons " and " ^'import " will have a 
 large constituenc of readers and admirers. 
 
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF NOTED PERSONS. By Hon. J. S. 
 
 Mo R RILL. $150. 
 
 The well-known and erudite Senator from Vermont has, in this work, 
 condensed the fruits of years of curious research in a strantreand unfamiliar 
 field. Tlie result is a rarely entertaining volum- of great value to all 
 scholars and public men, and interesting to all readers. A small edition 
 was privately printed some time since, and met with such praise and appre- 
 ciation that Senator Morrill has since carefully revised and materially 
 augmented it for publication. 
 
 THE MINISTER'S CHARGE. By W. D. Ho wells, author of "The 
 Rise of Silas Lapham," " Indian Summer," etc. 81-50. 
 
 "In this great novel of the people Henry James finds that Mr. Howells 
 touches high-water mark ; and sees an important and valuable work in this 
 minute and subtle registering of the heav\ -witred countryman's slow de- 
 velopment under city conditions. However that may be. Howells's pure, 
 inimitable fun is enough to carry any story he may write. Like all true 
 fun, this has a most searching pathos all the time just at hand; and never 
 is the real dignity of character of this actual Yankee forgotten or trifled 
 with." — Bos toil Transcript. 
 
 STORIES AND SKETCHES. By John Boyle O'Rftlly, editor 
 of the Pilot, author of '• Moondyne," etc. 12rao. 81.50. 
 
 The great popularity of the author, and the intrinsic merit and interest 
 of his wrinngs, will insure a warm reception to this collection of his latest 
 and best works. 
 
 SAFE BUILDING. By Louis De Coppet Bekg. 1vol. Square 8vo. 
 85.00. 
 
24 A List of Books Published by Tichnor fy Co. 
 
 THE 
 
 MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, 
 
 In Four Volumes. Quarto. 
 
 With more than 500 Illustrations by famous artists and engravers, all 
 made for this work. 
 
 Edited by JUSTIN WINSOR, Librarian of Harvard University. 
 
 Among the contributors are : — 
 
 Got. John D. Long, Dr. 0. W. Holmes, 
 
 Hon. Charles Francis Adams, John G. Whittieb, 
 
 Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., Rev. J F. Clarke, D.D., 
 
 Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D., Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., 
 
 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, Col. T. W, Higginson, 
 
 Hon. J. Hammond Trumbull, Professor Asa Gray, 
 
 Admiral G. H. Preble, Gen. F. W. Palfrey, 
 Henry Cabot Lodge. 
 
 Volume I. treats of the Geology, Fauna, and Flora ; the Voyages and Maps of 
 the Northmen, Italians, Captain John Smith, and the Plymouth Settlers ; 
 the Massachusetts Company, Puritanism, and the Aborigines ; the Lit- 
 erature, Life, and Chief Families of the Colonial Period. 
 
 Vol. II. treats of the Royal Governors ; French and Indian Wars ; Witches 
 and Pirates ; The Religion, Literature, Customs, and Chief Families of the 
 Provincial Period. 
 
 Vol. III. treats of the Revolutionary Period and the Conflict around Boston ; 
 and the Statesmen, Sailors, and Soldiers, the Topography, Literature, and 
 Life of Boston during that time ; and also of the Last Hundred Years' 
 History, the War of 1812, Abolitionism, and the Press. 
 
 Vol. IV. treats of the Social Life, Topography, and Landmarks, Industries, 
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 ■with Monographic Chapters on Boston's Libraries, Women, Science, Art, 
 Music, Philosophy, Architecture, Charities, etc. 
 — « 
 
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 Sold by subscription only. Send for a Prospectus to the 
 
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LIFE OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Edited by Rev. Samuel Longfellow. 2 vols. i2mo. With 
 5 new steel-engraved portraits and many wood engravings and 
 fac-similes. In cloth, $6.00 ; in half calf, with marble edges, $11.00; 
 in half morocco, with gilt top and rough edges, $11.00. 
 
 " Altogether the most fascinating book that has been published for months. It 
 is full of the most interesting and picturesque and poetic things." — Boston Record. 
 
 " One thinks of the gentle scholar as a man who can never have made an 
 enemy, or lost a friend; and we lay down his autobiography (for such the book 
 can fairly be called) with a feeling that in these posthumous pages he has opened 
 a view of his own soul as beautiful as the creations of his fancy." — New York 
 Tribune. 
 
 " It is an admirable piece of biographical work, and the story of the poet's 
 career gives a view of the growth of American literature that is full of instruction 
 and interest. It is a book that is sure to become a classic both in this country 
 and England, and, indeed, in cultivated circles throughout the world." — Boston 
 Budget. 
 
 " It is needless to add that the publication of these noble volumes is the literary 
 event of the day, that all continents will greet it with delight, and that coming 
 ages will quote it affectionately in recalling that Longfellow was not only a pure 
 and great poet, which is much, but also a pure and great man, which is more." — 
 The Beacon (Boston). 
 
 " These volumes tell the story of his life with exquisite taste ; they also unfold 
 a panorama of the literary history of America, and are among the rare and monu- 
 mental books of the present century." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE. 
 
 By Julian Hawthorne. With portraits newly engraved on 
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 $12.00. 
 
 The fullest and most charming accounts of Hawthorne's ancestry and family ; 
 his boyhood and youth ; his courtship and marriage ; his life at Salem, Lenox, 
 and Concord ; his travels and residence in England and Italy ; his later life in 
 America ; and his chief works and their motives and origins. 
 
 u It increases my admiration for the character of Hawthorne and my respect 
 for his genius as an author." — R. H. Stoddard, in The Critic. 
 
 " The most charming biography of the year, pure and sweet from beginning to 
 end." — The Beacon (Boston). 
 
 " Colored with the very hues of life, and bearing the signature of truth. The 
 reader will close the book with a new admiration for the pure-minded and honest 
 gentleman who was the greatest original writer our country has produced." — New 
 York Tribune. 
 
 "And so the inspiration left behind by this biography is that of increase of 
 happy faith in the power of high, disinterested love to transmute the prose of daily 
 life into poetry, to give beauty for ashes, the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness." — Boston Herald. 
 
 " Leaves on the mind of the reader a clear perception of Hawthorne's moral 
 and intellectual character, a vivid impression of his personal traits, disposition, 
 and habits, as manifested in the alternations of work and play, in the study, in 
 the family, and in society, and a singularly distinct and life-like image of his 
 person." — George William Curtis, in Harper's Magazine. 
 
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THE STORY 
 
 OF 
 
 Margaret Kent. 
 
 By HENRY HAYES. 
 $1.50. 
 
 The Springfield " Republican " says : — 
 
 " In this we have the American novel pure and simple. The style is fascinat- 
 ing, the conversation witty and natural." 
 
 And the " Literary World " says : — 
 
 " The author is at work with aims and impulses that are lofty. The book is 
 uplifting. It is admirably written, interesting, strong, impressive, helpful." 
 
 And the " Critic " says : — 
 
 " It is a dainty story, full of grace and tenderness and color. We feel her 
 bewitching beauty to our finger tips." 
 
 And the Boston " Journal " says : — 
 
 "The novel is thrilling with strong, healthy feeling, unusually marked with 
 spontaneity and naturalness." 
 
 And the " Christian Register" says: — 
 
 " Margaret Kent is so beautiful that one dreams of her after only reading about 
 her." 
 
 And the Boston " Advertiser " says : — 
 
 " In ' The Story of Margaret Kent ' we have that rare thing in current litera- 
 ture, — a really good novel." 
 
 And the " Transcript " says : — 
 
 " There is in the social setting a human life, deep and stirring, beautiful and 
 real, which holds our interest, sympathy, and admiration." 
 
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 " In its brilliancy of touch, vivid delineation of character, and realistic truth, 
 * The Story of Margaret Kent ' is one of the greatest novels of the day." 
 
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MR. HOWELLS'S LATEST NOVEL. 
 
 Sixth Edition Now Ready. 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER. 
 
 I VOL I2H10. $1.50. 
 
 The " Christian Register " says that it has more of sweetness than all Howells's 
 previous works, that its local color is exquisite, and that " the situation could 
 not be more attractive than it is." 
 
 The London "Saturday Review" says: "Around and beneath it all is the 
 exquisite Italian atmosphere, in which no one knows better than Mr. Howells how 
 to steep his pictures/' 
 
 The Chicago " Tribune " also finds this subtle characterization : " The city to 
 which Mr. Howells leads his readers is not the revelling, brilliant Florence of 
 Ouida. It is rather the Florence of Hawthorne, — quaint and dreamful. The 
 story reminds one of a plant which grows in Old-World gardens, — so unobtrusive 
 it is, and yet so rich in suggestion, so subtle-scented." 
 
 The last " Lippincott's Magazine " says : " It will rank with the most charming 
 of the author's work. ... It is almost his first spiritual work. Not only has Mr. 
 Howells thus risen above his own standards in this latest work, but he has risen 
 above the standard of other novelists in one unique respect." 
 
 Twelfth Thousand now ready. 
 
 THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM. 
 
 By W. D. Howells. $1.50. 
 
 " ' The Rise of Silas Lapham ' invited more discussion than any serial since 
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 " The dust of his writings is fine gold. Delightful in its perfection."— Phila- 
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 thorne's time." — The Critic. 
 
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JAPANESE HOMES 
 
 And Their Surroundings. By Edward S. Morse, Ph.D., 
 Director of the Peabody Academy of Science, late Professor of 
 Tokio University, Japan, Member National Academy of Science, 
 Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences, etc. With 300 
 illustrations. 8vo. Richly bound. $5.00. 
 
 " It is a satisfactory and valuable work, and in its way unique." — New York 
 Tribune. 
 
 " It is one of the most important of works ever written about one of the most 
 fascinating of countries." — Boston Herald. 
 
 " The time is ripest now for the very charming acquaintance we get from Mr. 
 Morse's book with these homes. The book will be read by all Americans with 
 great profit." —New York Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 CHOSON: 
 
 The Land of the Morning Calm. A Sketch of Korea. 
 By Percival Lowell, Foreign Secretary to the Korean Embassy, 
 Member Asiatic Society of Japan, etc. Richly illustrated after 
 photographs taken in Korea. 8vo. $5.00. 
 
 " A great deal more than a mere narrative of residence in Korea. It goes to 
 the bottom of the whole question of the main characteristics of the three far- 
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 of the scientist. These serve as torches that light up with a picturesque 
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 of the illustrations." — The Japan Gazette (Yokohama). 
 
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 A dvertiser. 
 
 "A most readable book, sumptuously got up." — New York Commercial 
 A dvertiser. 
 
 " We could not spare one of these four hundred pages." — New York Sun. 
 
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A WONDERFUL ROMAN ROMANCE. 
 
 THE PRELATE. 
 
 By Isaac Henderson. With covers richly adorned with em- 
 blematic designs by Elihu Vedder. $1.50. 
 
 "A work of singular force and power." — A Ibany Union. 
 
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 Chronicle. 
 
 " Henderson is the most promising novelist who, for many a long day, has en- 
 tered the field of fiction. . . . It is an unusually good novel." — Detroit News. 
 
 " One of the most brilliant and fascinating romances that has been published in 
 many a day. The story is dramatic, powerful, irresistible in its interest as a love 
 story alone. The greatest work of the day in imaginative art." — Boston 
 Traveller. 
 
 " The Churchman " says : -' We soon found that we had a very powerfully 
 written and fascinating story to enjoy. ' The Prelate ' is a novel of modern Italian 
 life, involving the Old Catholic movement and the Jesuit intrigues to suppress the 
 spread of reform in the papal communion. We think it one of the best, if not 
 the best, novels we have met with upon such topics. It is thoroughly well writ- 
 ten, not exaggerated, not melodramatic, and the characters admirably drawn and 
 finely discriminated. . . . Apart from its great interest and exceptional cleverness 
 as a novel, this book is well worth reading." 
 
 The " Christian Union " says : " Here the insight into character, the delicacy 
 and fineness of touch, the keenness of analysis, and the firmness of the literary 
 method, remind one of Mr. Henry James, but are unaccompanied with prolixity." 
 
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 THE GOLDEN SPIKE. 
 
 By Edward King. i2mo. $1.50. 
 
 11 One of the brightest and freshest works of fiction of the season. It is breezy 
 and inspiring, and the author's vigorous and graceful style was never displayed to 
 better advantage. It takes the reader from London to America, through the mar- 
 vellous Northwest, and describes scenery and customs with a picturesqueness and 
 truthfulness that will thoroughly absorb the attention of even the most blasi 
 novel reader." —Boston Budget. 
 
 " Whoever begins to read it will, under its charm, find it difficult to do anything 
 else until it is finished. The author, in fact, takes us through wonderland at a pace 
 something like that of the railway described. Minnesota, Dakota, Idaho, Mon- 
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 us in most graphic descriptions. In conclusion, we may state that Mr. King's 
 book is exceedingly attractive." — GalignanVs Messenger (Paris). 
 
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 NEXT DOOR. 
 
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 it will make itself an especial favorite among the summer novels." — Boston 
 Traveller. 
 
 TWO COLLEGE GIRLS. 
 
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 literary art." — Boston Traveller. 
 
 THE SPHINX'S CHILDREN. 
 
 By Rose Terry Cooke. i2mo. $1.50. 
 
 Delightful stories of hill-country life in the quaintest and most 
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 realism of a Parisian feuilletonist. 
 
 " In spite of a style which is carefully clear and elegant, in spite of a tone that 
 is wonderfully pure and healthy, what one remembers longest in Mrs. Cooke's 
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 men, and even forgetting the bit of moral usually concealed in each story." — 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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