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" BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS " 
 
 FROM 
 
 BULWER-LYTTON 
 
4197G 
 
 jl_ibr»iiry of Congress 
 
 i"*\AL Copies R€ce««/eo 
 SEP 1 1900 
 
 Ctfvrtirht entry 
 
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 OKOtK DIVISION, 
 
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 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY 
 JAMES POTT & CO 
 
 74^41 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 Of all the great classical writers of 
 the century not one has given utter- 
 ance to so many lofty thoughts and 
 ennobling ideas as the first Lord Lyt- 
 ton, still so familiarly known to us by 
 his family name of Bulwer-Lytton. 
 Witty, epigrams, sententious sayings, 
 flashes of keenest insight into the 
 workings of the human heart, are 
 found so abundantly in every work of 
 his that the difficulty has been one of 
 selection rather than of search. 
 
 The message of Bulwer-Lytton to his 
 age was a strong protest against pessi- 
 mism, cynicism, cant and every form 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 of materialism, that true greatness in 
 life could only come through nobility 
 of purpose and that great aims digni- 
 fied even little men. The Ideal can 
 never be reached in this Avorld, but 
 nevertheless men and women are ever 
 the better for striving after it. The 
 temptations of life are its true trials, 
 life is a battlefield Avliere all may 
 acquit themselves and where no death 
 is ignoble save to him who turns his 
 back on the conflict. 
 
JANUARY. 
 
 
Jcmuary 1st. 
 Though Hope be a small child, she 
 
 can carry a great anchor ! 
 
 Harold. 
 
 Jcmuary ^d. 
 If a woman has once really loved, 
 the beloved object makes an impene- 
 trable barrier between her and other 
 men ; their advances terrify and revolt 
 — she would rather die than be unfaith- 
 ful even to a memory. Though man 
 loves the sex, woman loves only the 
 individual. 
 
 Ernest Maltravera, 
 
 January 3d. 
 However august be the object we 
 propose to ourselves, every less worthy 
 
BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 path we take to insure it distorts the 
 
 mental sight of our ambition ; and the 
 
 means, by degrees, abase the end to 
 
 their own standard. This is the true 
 
 misfortune of a man nobler than his 
 
 age — that the instruments he must 
 
 use soil himself: half he reforms his 
 
 times; but half, too, the times will 
 
 corrupt the reformer. 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 January J^th. 
 Out, then, upon that vulgar craving 
 of those who comprehend neither the 
 vast truths of life, nor the grandeur of 
 ideal art, and who ask from poet or 
 narrator the poor and petty morality 
 of " Poetical Justice " — a justice exist- 
 ing not in our work -day world — a jus- 
 tice existing not in the sombre page of 
 
FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 
 
 history — a justice existing not in the 
 loftier conceptions of men whose genius 
 has grappled with the enigmas which 
 art and poetry only can foreshadow and 
 divine : — unknown to us in the street 
 and the market — unknown to us on 
 the scaffold of the patriot, or amidst 
 the flames of the martyr — unknown to 
 us in the Lear and the Hamlet — in the 
 Agamemnon and the Prometheus. 
 Millions upon millions, ages upon ages, 
 are entered but as items in the vast 
 account in which the recording angel 
 sums up the unerring justice of God to 
 man. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 Jamtary 6th. 
 But the final greatness of a fortu- 
 nate man is rarely made by any vio- 
 
BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 lent effort of his own. He has sown 
 
 the seeds in the time foregone, and 
 
 the ripe time brings up the harvest. 
 
 His fate seems taken out of his own 
 
 control; greatness seems thrust upon 
 
 him. He has made himself, as it were, 
 
 a ioa7it to the nation, a thing necessary 
 
 to it ; he has identified himself with 
 
 his age, and in the wreath or the crown 
 
 on his brow the age itself seems to put 
 
 forth its flower. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 January 6th. 
 And, in truth, it is a divine pleasure 
 to admire ! admiration seems in some 
 measure to appropriate to ourselves 
 the qualities it honors in others. "We 
 wed, — we root ourselves to the na- 
 tures we so love to contemplate, 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 
 
 and their life groAvs a part of our 
 
 own. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 January 7th. 
 
 There is not, perhaps, a stronger 
 
 feeling in the world than pity, when 
 
 united with admiration. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Jamtary 8th. 
 In every emergency, in every temp- 
 tation, there rose to his eyes the fate 
 of him so gifted, so noble in much, so 
 formed for greatness in all things, 
 blasted by one crime — self-sought, but 
 self -denied; a crime, the offspring of 
 bewildered reasonings — all the while 
 speculating upon virtue. 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 January 9th. 
 "Know thj^'self," said the old phi- 
 losophy. " Improve thyself," saith the 
 new. The great object of the So- 
 journer in Time is not to waste all his 
 passions and gifts on the things ex- 
 ternal, that he must leave behind — 
 that which he cultivates within is all 
 that he can carry into the Eternal 
 
 Progress. 
 
 The Caxtons, 
 
 January 10th. 
 AYhen in his fresh youth and his 
 calm lofty manhood, Harold saw ac- 
 tion, how adventurous soever, limited 
 to the barriers of noble duty ; when 
 he lived but for his country, all spread 
 clear before his vision in the sunlight 
 of day ; but as the barriers receded, 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 
 
 while the horizon extended, his eye left 
 the Certain to rest on the Yague. As 
 self, though still half concealed from 
 his conscience, gradually assumed the 
 wide space love of country had filled, 
 the maze of delusion commenced : he 
 was to shape fate out of circumstance, 
 — no longer defy fate through virtue. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 January 11th. 
 It is an excellent thing to have an 
 ear, and a voice, and a heart for music. 
 
 Eryiest Maltravera. 
 
 January 12th. 
 
 "Follies seem these thoughts to 
 
 others, and to philosophy, in truth, they 
 
 are so," said Rienzi ; " but all my life 
 
 long, omen and type and shadow have 
 
10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 linked themselves to action and event : 
 and the atmosphere of other men hath 
 not been mine. Life itself a riddle, 
 why should riddles amaze us ? The 
 Future ! — what mystery in the very 
 word ! Had we lived all through the 
 Past, since Time was, our prof oundest 
 experience of a thousand ages could 
 not give us a guess of the events that 
 wait the very moment we are about to 
 enter ! Thus deserted by Keason, what 
 wonder that we recur to the Imagina- 
 tion, on which, by dream and symbol, 
 God sometimes paints the likeness of 
 things to come ? " 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 January 13th. 
 Who can endure to leave the Future 
 all unguessed, and sit tamely down to 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON, 11 
 
 groan under the fardel of the Present ? 
 
 ITo, no! that which the foolish- wise 
 
 call Fanaticism, belongs to the same 
 
 part of us as Hope. Each but carries 
 
 us onward— from a barren strand to a 
 
 glorious, if unbounded sea. Each is 
 
 the yearning for the Great Beyond, 
 
 which attests our immortality. Each 
 
 has its visions and chimeras— some 
 
 false, but some true ! Yerily, a man 
 
 who becomes great is often but made 
 
 so by a kind of sorcery in his own soul 
 
 — a Pythia which prophesies that he 
 
 shall be great— and so renders the life 
 
 one effort to fulfil the warning! Is 
 
 this folly?— it were so, if all things 
 
 stopped at the grave! But perhaps 
 
 the very sharpening, and exercising, 
 
 and elevating the faculties here— 
 
12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 though but for a bootless end on earth 
 
 — may be designed to fit the soul, thus 
 
 quickened and ennobled, to some high 
 
 destiny heyond the earth 1 Who can 
 
 tell ? not I ! — Let us pray I 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 January llfth. 
 As Providence bestows upon fishes 
 the instrument of fins, whereby they 
 balance and direct their movements, 
 however rapid and erratic, through 
 the pathless deeps ; so to the cold- 
 blooded creatures of our own species — 
 that may be classed under the genus 
 MONEY-MAKERS — the samc protective 
 power accords the fin-like properties 
 of prudence and caution, wherewith 
 your true money-getter buoys and 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 13 
 
 guides himself majestically through 
 the great seas of speculation. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Jamiary 15th. 
 Error is sometimes sweet ; but there 
 is no anguish like an error of which 
 we feel ashamed. I cannot submit to 
 blush for myself. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 January 16 th. 
 Our nature is ever grander in the 
 individual than the mass. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 January 17th. 
 In resting so solely on man's per- 
 ceptions of the right, he lost one attri- 
 bute of the true hero— faith. We do 
 not mean that word in the religious 
 sense alone, but in the more compre- 
 
14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 hensive. He did not rely on the Ce- 
 lestial Something pervading all na- 
 ture, never seen, only felt when duly 
 courted, stronger and lovelier than 
 what eye could behold and mere rea- 
 son could embrace. Believing, it is 
 true, in God, he lost those fine links 
 that unite God to man's secret heart, 
 and which are woven alike from the 
 simplicity of the child and the wisdom 
 of the poet. To use a modern illustra- 
 tion, his large mind was a '* cupola 
 
 lighted from below." 
 
 Harold. 
 
 January 18th. 
 
 In fact, before we can dispense with 
 
 the world, w^e must, by a long and 
 
 severe novitiate — by the probation of 
 
 much thought, and much sorrow — by 
 
FB03I BULWEB LYTTON 15 
 
 deep and sad conviction of the vanity 
 of all that the world can give us, have 
 raised ourselves — not in the fervor of 
 an hour, but habitually — above the 
 world; an abstraction — an idealism — 
 which, in our wiser age, how few even 
 of the wisest can attain ! Yet, till we 
 are thus fortunate, we know not the 
 true divinity of contemplation, nor the 
 all-sufficing mightiness of conscience : 
 nor can we retreat with solemn foot- 
 steps into that Holy of Holies in our 
 own souls, wherein we know, and feel, 
 how much our nature is capable of the 
 self -existence of a God ! 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 January 19th. 
 I tell thee, that if all the priests in 
 Christendom, and all the barons in 
 
16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 France, stood between me and my 
 bride, I would hew my way through 
 the midst. Foes invade my realm — 
 let them ; princes conspire against me 
 — I smile in scorn ; subjects mutiny — 
 this strong hand can punish, or this 
 large heart can forgive. All these are 
 the dangers which He who governs 
 men should be prepared to meet ; but 
 a man has a right to His love, as the 
 stag to his hind. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 Jamiav]! Wth. 
 The husbandman accuses not fate, 
 when, having sown thistles, he reaps 
 not corn. Thou hast sown crime, 
 accuse not fate if thou reapest not the 
 harvest of virtue. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON, 17 
 
 January ^Ist. 
 Virtue is my lover, my pride, my 
 comfort, my life of life. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 January ^2d. 
 The objects of the great world are 
 to be pursued only by the excitement 
 of the passions. The passions are at 
 once our masters and our deceivers ; — 
 they urge us onward, yet present no 
 limit to our progress. The farther we 
 proceed, the more dim and shadowy 
 grows the goal. It is impossible for a 
 man who leads the life of the world, 
 the life of the passions, ever to expe- 
 rience content. For the life of the 
 passions is that of a perpetual desire ; 
 but a state of content is the absence of 
 all desire. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 January ^3d. 
 It is marvellous with what liberality 
 Providence atones for the partial dis- 
 pensations of Fortune. Independence, 
 or the vigorous pursuit of it ; affection, 
 with its hopes and its rewards ; a life 
 , only rendered by Art more susceptible 
 to Nature — in which the physical en- 
 joyments are pure and healthful — in 
 which the moral faculties expand har- 
 moniously with the intellectual — and 
 the heart is at peace with the mind ; 
 is this a mean lot for ambition to de- 
 sire — and is it so far out of human 
 reach ? 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 January 24^th. 
 To a degenerate and embruted peo- 
 ple, liberty seems too plain a thing, if 
 
PROM BULWEB LYTTON. 19 
 
 unadorned by the pomp of the very 
 despotism they would dethrone. Ke- 
 venge is their desire, rather than Ke- 
 lease ; and the greater the new power 
 they create, the greater seems their re- 
 venge against the old. 
 
 Bietizi. 
 
 January '25th. 
 Now my mother, true woman as 
 she was, had a womanly love of show 
 in her own quiet way — of making '' a 
 genteel figure" in the eyes of the 
 neighborhood — of seeing that sixpence 
 not only went as far as sixpence ought 
 to go, but that, in the going, it should 
 emit a mild but imposing splendor, — 
 not, indeed, a gaudy flash — a startling 
 Borealian coruscation, which is scarcely 
 within the modest and placid idiosyn- 
 
20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 crasies of sixpence — but a gleam of 
 gentle and benign light, just to show 
 where a sixpence had been, and allow 
 you time to say " Behold ! " before 
 
 "The jaws of darkness did devour it up." 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 January 26th, 
 And when you look not on the 
 heaven alone but in all space — on all 
 the illimitable creation, you will 
 know that I am there ! For the home 
 of a spirit is wherever spreads the 
 IJniversal Presence of God. And to 
 what numerous stages of beings, what 
 paths, what duties, what active and 
 glorious tasks in other worlds may we 
 not be reserved — perhaps to know and 
 share them together, and mount age 
 
FI103I BULWEB LYTTON. 21 
 
 after age higher in the scale of being. 
 For surely in heaven there is no pause 
 or torpor — we do not lie down in 
 calm and unimprovable repose. Move- 
 ment and progress will remain the law 
 and condition of existence. And there 
 will be efforts and duties for us above 
 as there have been below. 
 
 Ernest ^laltravers. 
 
 January ^7th. 
 Like most other friends, the Imagi- 
 nation is capricious, and forsakes us 
 often at the moment in which we 
 most need its aid. As we grow older, 
 we begin to learn that, of the two, 
 our more faithful and steadfast com- 
 forter is — Custom. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 January ^8th. 
 As you see the wind only agitate 
 the green leaf upon the bough, while 
 the leaf which has lain withered and 
 seared on the ground, bruised and 
 trampled upon till the sap and life are 
 gone, is suddenly whirled aloft — now 
 here — now there — without stay and 
 without rest ; so the love which visits 
 the happy and the hopeful hath but 
 freshness on its wings ! its violence is 
 but sportive. But the heart that hath 
 fallen from the green things of life, 
 that is without hope, that hath no 
 summer in its fibres, is torn and 
 whirled by the same wind that but 
 caresses its brethren ; — it hath no 
 bough to cling to — it is dashed from 
 path to path — till the winds fall, 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 23 
 
 and it is crushed into the mire for- 
 ever. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 January '29th. 
 Is there no nobler ambition than 
 that of the vanity ? Is there no am- 
 bition of the heart? — an ambition to 
 console, to cheer the griefs of those 
 who love and trust us ? — an ambition 
 to build a happiness out of the reach 
 of fate ? — an ambition to soothe some 
 high soul, in its strife with a mean 
 world — to lull to sleep its pain, to 
 smile to serenity its cares? Oh, me- 
 thinks a woman's true ambition would 
 rise the bravest when, in the very 
 sight of death itself, the voice of him 
 in whom her glory had dwelt through 
 life should say, " Thou fearest not to 
 
24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 walk to the grave and to heaven by 
 my side ! " 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 tlanuary 30th. 
 Love, what earthly love should be, 
 — a thing pure as light, and peaceful 
 as immortality, watching over the 
 stormy world, that it shall survive, 
 and high above the clouds and vapors 
 that roll below. Let little minds in- 
 troduce into the holiest of affections 
 all the bitterness and tumult of com- 
 mon life ! Let us love as beings who 
 will one day be inhabitants of the 
 stars ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravers, 
 
 January 31st. 
 In politics, and in a highly artifi- 
 cial state, what doubts beset us ! what 
 
FEOM BULWEE LYTTON. 25 
 
 darkness surrounds 1 If we connive at 
 abuses, we juggle with our own reason 
 and integrity— if we attack them, how 
 much, how fatally we may derange 
 that solemn and conventional order 
 which is the mainspring of the vast 
 machine! How little, too, can one 
 man, whose talents may not be in 
 that coarse road— in that mephitic at- 
 mosphere, be enabled to effect ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
FEBRUARY. 
 
February 1st. 
 Peide had served to console him in 
 sorrow, and, therefore, it was a friend 
 — it had supported him when disgusted 
 with fraud, or in resistance to vio- 
 lence ; and, therefore, it was a cham- 
 pion and a fortress. It was a pride of 
 a peculiar sort — it attached itself to no 
 one point in especial — not to talent, 
 knowledge, mental gifts — still less to 
 the vulgar commonplaces of birth and 
 fortune; — it rather resulted from a 
 supreme and wholesale contempt of 
 all other men, and all their objects 
 — of ambition — of glory — of the hard 
 business of life. His favorite virtue 
 was fortitude — it was on this that he 
 
30 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 now mainly valued himself. He was 
 
 proud of his struggles against others — 
 
 prouder still of conquests over his own 
 
 passions. He looked upon fate as the 
 
 arch-enemy against whose attacks we 
 
 should ever prepare. He fancied that 
 
 against fate he had thoroughly schooled 
 
 himself. In the arrogance of his heart, 
 
 he said, " I can defy the future." He 
 
 believed in the boast of the vain old 
 
 sage — " I am a world to myself ! " 
 
 Alice, 
 
 February ^d. 
 We all form to ourselves some heau 
 ideal of the " fair spirit " we desire as 
 our earthly " minister," and somewhat 
 capriciously gauge and proportion our 
 admiration of living shapes according 
 as the lean ideal is more or less em- 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 31 
 
 bodied or approached. Beauty, of a 
 stamp that is not familiar to the 
 dreams of our fancy, may win the 
 cold homage of our judgment, while a 
 look, a feature, a something that real- 
 izes and calls up a boyish vision, and 
 assimilates even distinctly to the pic- 
 ture we wear within us, has a loveli- 
 ness peculiar to our eyes, and kindles 
 an emotion that almost seems to be- 
 long to memory. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 February 3d. 
 She endured the bitterest curse of 
 noble natures — hiimiliation ! 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 February J^th. 
 What a noble heart dares least is to 
 belie the plighted word, and what the 
 
32 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 kind heart shuns most is to wrong the 
 confiding friend. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 FebruaTy 5th. 
 "Wise men may always make their 
 own future, and seize their own fates. 
 Prudence, patience, labor, valor ; these 
 are the stars that rule the career of 
 mortals. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 February 6th. 
 " Fate ! " cried Eienzi ; " there is no 
 fate ! Between the thought and the 
 success, God is the only agent; and 
 (he added with a voice of deep solem- 
 nity) I shall not be deserted. Yisions 
 by night, even while thine arms are 
 around me : omens and impulses, stir- 
 ring and divine, by day, even in the 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 33 
 
 midst of the living crowd — encourage 
 my path, and point my goal. Now, 
 even now, a voice seems to whisper 
 in my ear — * Pause not : tremble not ; 
 waver not : — for the eye of the All-See- 
 ing is upon thee, and the hand of the 
 
 All-Powerful shall protect ! ' " 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 February 7th. 
 Neither is it just to man, nor wisely 
 submissive to the Disposer of all events, 
 to suppose that war is wholly and wan- 
 tonly produced by human crimes and 
 follies — that it conduces only to ill, 
 and does not as often arise from the 
 necessities interwoven in the frame- 
 work of society, and speed the great 
 ends of the human race, conformably 
 with the designs of the Omniscient. 
 
34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 JSTot one great war has ever desolated 
 the earth, but has left behind it seeds 
 that have ripened into blessings in- 
 calculable ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 February 8th. 
 If later wars yet perplex us as to 
 the good that the All-wise One draws 
 from their evils, our posterity may 
 read their uses as clearly as we now 
 read the finger of Providence resting 
 on the barrows of Marathon, or guid- 
 ing Peter the Hermit to the battle- 
 fields of Palestine. JSTor, while we 
 admit the evil to the passing genera- 
 tion, can we deny that many of the 
 virtues that make the ornament and 
 vitality of peace sprung up first in the 
 convulsion of war ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 35 
 
 February 9th. 
 "Pauperism, in contradistinction to 
 poverty," he was wont to say, " is the 
 dependence upon other people for ex- 
 istence, not on our own exertions; 
 there is a moral pauperism in the man 
 who is dependent on others for that 
 support of moral life— self-respect." 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 February 10th. 
 
 Belief cometh as the wind. Can 
 
 the tree say to the wind, "Kest thou 
 
 on my boughs"? or Man to Belief, 
 
 " Fold thy wings on my heart ! " 
 
 Harold. 
 
 Fehruo/ry 11th. 
 Isis is a fable— start not !— that for 
 which Isis is a type is a reality, an im- 
 mortal being; Isis is nothing. Nature, 
 
36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 which she represents, is the mother of 
 all things — dark, ancient, inscrutable, 
 save to the gifted few. " None among 
 mortals hath ever lifted up my veil," 
 so saith the Isis that you adore; but 
 to the wise that veil hath been re- 
 moved, and we have stood face to 
 face with the solemn loveliness of 
 Nature. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 February 12th. 
 Few men throughout life are the 
 servants to one desire. When we 
 gain the middle of the bridge of our 
 mortality, different objects from those 
 which attracted us upward almost 
 invariably lure us to the descent. 
 Happy they who exhaust in the for- 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 37 
 
 mer part of the journey all the foibles 
 of existence ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 February 13th. 
 "That serene heaven, those lovely 
 stars," said Maltravers at last, "do 
 they not preach to us the Philosophy 
 of Peace? Do they not tell us how 
 much calm belongs to the dignity of 
 man, and the sublime essence of the 
 soul? Petty distractions and self- 
 wrought cares are not congenial to 
 our real nature ; their very disturb- 
 ance is a proof that they are at war 
 with our natures." 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 February Hth. — St. Valentine's Day. 
 
 Miserable animals are bachelors in 
 
 all countries ; but most miserable in 
 
38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Bushland. A man does not know 
 what a helpmate of the soft sex is 
 in the Old World, where women seem 
 a matter of course. But in the Bush 
 a wife is literally bone of your bone, 
 flesh of your flesh — your better half, 
 your ministering angel, your Eve of 
 the Eden — in short, all that poets 
 have sung, or young orators say at 
 public dinners, when called upon to 
 give the toast of " The Ladies." 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 February 15th. 
 There is an eloquence in Memory, 
 because it is the nurse of Hope. There 
 is a sanctity in the Past, but only be- 
 cause of the chronicles it retains, — 
 chronicles of the progress of mankind, 
 — stepping-stones in civilization, in lib- 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 39 
 
 erty, and in knowledge. Our fathers 
 forbid us to recede, — they teach us 
 what is our rightful heritage, they bid 
 us reclaim, they bid us augment that 
 heritage, — preserve their virtues, and 
 avoid their errors. These are the true 
 uses of the Past. Like the sacred edi- 
 fice in which we are, — it is a tomb 
 
 upon which to rear a temple. 
 
 Eienzi. 
 
 February 16th. 
 It is a deadening thought to mental 
 ambition, that the circle of happiness 
 we can create is formed more by our 
 moral than our mental qualities. A 
 warm heart, though accompanied but 
 by a mediocre understanding, is even 
 more likely to promote the happiness 
 of those around, than are the absorbed 
 
40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and abstract, though kindly, powers of 
 a more elevated genius. 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
 February 17th. 
 "There," said Adam, quietly, and 
 pointing to the feudal roofs, "there 
 seems to rise power — and yonder 
 (glancing to the river), yonder seems 
 to flow Genius ! A century or so 
 hence, the walls shall vanish, but the 
 river shall roll on. Man makes the 
 castle, and founds the power — God 
 forms the river and creates the Genius." 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 February 18th. 
 There is a beautiful and singular pas- 
 sage in Dante (which has not perhaps 
 attracted the attention it deserves), 
 wherein the stern Florentine defends 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 41 
 
 Fortune from the popular accusations 
 against her. According to him, she is 
 an angelic power appointed by the 
 Supreme Being to direct and order the 
 course of human splendors ; she obeys 
 the will of God; she is blessed, and, 
 hearing not those who blaspheme her, 
 calm and aloft amongst the other an- 
 gelic powers, revolves her spheral 
 course, and rejoices in her beatitude. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 FebTuary 19th. 
 "Christian, believest thou, among 
 the doctrines of thy creed, that the 
 dead live again — that they who have 
 loved here are united hereafter — that 
 beyond the grave our good name shines 
 pure from the mortal mists that un- 
 justly dim it in the gross-eyed world — 
 
42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and that the streams which are divided 
 by the desert and the rock meet in the 
 solemn Hades, and flow once more into 
 one ? " 
 
 " Believe I that, O Athenian ? No, 
 I do not believe — I hiow ! " 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeiu 
 
 February Wth. 
 Up, Truth, whose strength is in 
 purity, whose image is woman, and aid 
 the soul of the brave ! 
 
 Harold. 
 
 February ^Ist 
 I think we have tampered Love to 
 too great a preponderance over the 
 other excitements of life. As children, 
 we are taught to dream of it ; in youth, 
 our books, our conversation, our plays, 
 are filled with it. We are trained to 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON, 43 
 
 consider it the essential of life; and 
 yet, the moment we come to actual 
 experience, the moment we indulge 
 this inculcated and stimulated craving, 
 nine times out of ten we find ourselves 
 wretched and undone. Ah, believe 
 me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world 
 in which we should preach up, too far, 
 the philosophy of Love ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravers, 
 
 February '22 d. — Washington'' s Birth- 
 day. 
 Pluck the scales from the hand of 
 Fraud ! — the sword from the hand of 
 Violence ! — the balance and the sword 
 are the ancient attributes of Justice ! — 
 restore them to her again ! This be 
 your high task, — these be your great 
 
44 BEAUTIFUL TITOUOnTS 
 
 ends! Doom any man who opposes 
 thorn 11 traitor to his country. Gain a 
 victory greater than those of the Ciosars 
 — a victory over yourselves I 
 
 Kicnzi. 
 
 Oh, mother niinol that the boy had 
 stood by thy Unoo, and heard from thy 
 li[)s why lii'e was ^iven us, in what life 
 shall end, and how heaven stands o})on 
 to us night and day ! Oh, falhor mine ; 
 that thou luidst been his preceptor, not 
 in book learning, but the heart's sim])lo 
 wisdom ! ()h, tiiat ho had learned from 
 thee, in parables closed with practice, 
 the ha[>pinoss of self-sacrifice, and 
 how "good deeds sliould repair the 
 bad!" 
 
 The Caxtom. 
 
FRODI lillLUim LYTTON. 
 
 February 'JJ,th. 
 Awful is lJi(i (liK^I botwoon man and 
 TiiK A(iK in wliich Im livosl 
 
 The Lant of the Jiarotm. 
 
 February 'J.^/jtL 
 TIio l(3SSons of julvorsity aro not al- 
 ways salutary soniotiuios tlicy soltou 
 and amend, but as often they indur-ate 
 and pervert. 11" vv(^ (M)!isi(l(ir oursiilviis 
 more liarshly trciJitiHl by I'ate tluui 
 those around us, and do not acknowl- 
 edge in our own deeds the justice oT 
 the severity, we become too a])t to 
 (hnim 1\h) world our (^ruMny to (5a,se 
 ourselves in (U^lia.nco, to wrestle against 
 our softer t<elf, and to indiij^ci tlie 
 darker passions which a,i'e so (easily fer- 
 mented by the sense of injustice. 
 
 The IaihI Ddi/H of rompeii. 
 
46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 February 26th. 
 As Napoleon wept over one wounded 
 soldier in the field of battle, yet or- 
 dered without emotion thousands to a 
 certain death; so Aram would have 
 sacrificed himself for an individual, but 
 would not have sacrificed a momentary 
 gratification for his race. 
 
 Eugenie Aram. 
 
 February 27th. 
 " Man renews the fibre and material 
 of his body every seven years," said 
 my father ; " in three times seven years 
 he has time to renew the inner man. 
 Can two passengers in yonder street 
 be more unlike each other than the soul 
 is to the soul after an interval of twenty 
 years ? Brother, the plough does not 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 47 
 
 pass over the soul in vain, nor care 
 
 over the human heart. ISTew crops 
 
 change the character of the land ; and 
 
 the plough must go deep indeed before 
 
 it stirs up the mother stone." 
 
 The Caxtom, 
 
 February ^8th. 
 You may think it strange that I — a 
 plain, steadfast, trading, working, care- 
 ful ,man — should have all these feel- 
 ings; but I will tell you wherefore 
 such as I sometimes have them, nurse 
 them, brood on them, more than you 
 lords and gentlemen, with all your 
 graceful arts in pleasing. We know no 
 light loves ! no brief distractions to the 
 one arch passion ! "We sober sons of 
 the stall and the ware are no general 
 
48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 gallants — we love plainly, we love but 
 
 once, and we love heartily. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 February 29th, 
 There are sometimes event and sea- 
 son in the life of man the hardest and 
 most rational, when he is driven per- 
 force to faith the most implicit and 
 submissive; as the storm drives the 
 wings of the petrel over a measureless 
 sea, till it falls tame, and rejoicing at 
 refuge, on the sails of some lonely ship. 
 Seasons when difficulties, against which 
 reason seems stricken into palsy, leave 
 him bewildered in dismay — when dark- 
 ness, which experience cannot pierce, 
 wraps the conscience, as sudden night 
 wraps the traveller in the desert — 
 when error entangles his feet in its in- 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 
 
 extricable web — when, still desirous of 
 the right, he sees before him but a 
 choice of evil ; and the Angel of the 
 Past, with a flaming sword, closes on 
 him the gates of the Future. Then, 
 Faith flashes on him, with a light from 
 the cloud. Then, he clings to Prayer 
 as a drowning wretch to the plank. 
 Then, that solemn authority which 
 clothes the Priest, as the interpreter 
 between the soul and the Divinity, 
 seizes on the heart that trembles with 
 terror and joy ; then, that mysterious 
 recognition of Atonement, of sacrifice 
 of purifying lustration (mystery which 
 lies hid in the core of all religions), 
 smooths the frown on the Past, removes 
 the flaming sword from the Future. 
 
 Harold. 
 
MARCH. 
 
March 1st. 
 And, if the beauty of that face were 
 not of the loftiest or the most dazzling 
 order, if its soft and quiet character 
 might be outshone by many, of loveli- 
 ness less really perfect, yet never was 
 there a countenance that, to some 
 eyes, would have seemed more charm- 
 ing, and never one in which more elo- 
 quently was wrought that ineffable 
 and virgin expression which Italian 
 art seeks for in its models — in which 
 modesty is the outward, and tenderness 
 the latent, expression; the bloom of 
 youth, both of form and heart, ere the 
 first frail and delicate freshness of 
 
54 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 either is brushed away : and when 
 even love itself, the only unquiet vis- 
 itant that should be known at such an 
 age, is but a sentiment, and not a 
 passion ! 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 March '2d. 
 I agree with Helvetius, the child 
 should be educated from its birth ; but 
 how ? — there is the rub : send him to 
 school forthwith ! Certainly, he is at 
 school already with the two great 
 teachers, IN'ature and Love. Observe, 
 that childhood and genius have the 
 same master-organ in common — in- 
 quisitiveness. Let childhood have its 
 way, and as it began where genius be- 
 gins, it may find what genius finds. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 55 
 
 March 3d. 
 Charity and compassion are virtues 
 taught with difficulty to ordinary 
 men ; to true Genius they are but the 
 instincts which direct it to the Destiny 
 it is born to fulfil — viz, the discovery 
 and redemption of new tracts in our 
 common nature. Genius — the Sublime 
 Missionary — goes forth from the serene 
 Intellect of the Author to live in the 
 wants, the griefs, the infirmities of 
 others, in order that it may learn their 
 language; and as its highest achieve- 
 ment is Pathos, so its most absolute 
 requisite is Pity ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 March lith. — Inauguration Day. 
 There is more glory in laying these 
 rough foundations of a mighty state, 
 
56 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 though no trumpets resound with 
 your victory — though no laurels shall 
 shadow your tomb — than in forcing 
 the onward progress of your race over 
 burning cities and hecatombs of men ! 
 
 The Caxtons, 
 
 March 5tli. 
 So wonderful in equalizing all states 
 and all times in the varying tide of 
 life are these two rulers yet levellers 
 of mankind, Hope and Custom, that 
 the very idea of an eternal punishment 
 includes that of an utter alteration of 
 the whole mechanism of the soul in its 
 human state, and no effort of an im- 
 agination, assisted by past experience, 
 can conceive a state of torture which 
 Custom can never blunt, and from 
 which the chainless and immaterial 
 
FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 57 
 
 spirit can never be beguiled into even 
 a momentary escape. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 March 6th. 
 IN"©, whatever the sin of my oath, 
 never will I believe that heaven can 
 punish millions for the error of one 
 man. Let the bones of the dead war 
 against us ; in life, they were men like 
 ourselves, and no saints in the calendar 
 so holy as the freemen who fight for 
 their hearths and their altars. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 March 7th. 
 That trust in an all-directing Provi- 
 dence, to which he had schooled him- 
 self, had (if we may so say with rever- 
 ence) driven his beautiful soul into the 
 opposite error, so fatal to the affairs of 
 
58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 life ; the error that deadens and be- 
 numbs the energy of free will and the 
 noble alertness of active duty. Why 
 strain and strive for the things of this 
 world ? God would order all for the 
 best. Alas ! God hath placed us in 
 this world, each, from king to peasant, 
 with nerves, and hearts, and blood, 
 and passions, to struggle with our 
 kind ; and, no matter how heavenly 
 the goal, to labor with the million in 
 the race ! 
 
 Tlie Last of the Barons. 
 
 March 8th. 
 There are times when the arrow 
 quivers within us — in which all space 
 seems too confined. Like the wounded 
 hart, we could fly on forever; there 
 is a vague desire of escape — a yearn- 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 59 
 
 ing, almost insane, to get out from our 
 own selves ; the soul struggles to flee 
 away, and take the wings of the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 March 9th. 
 One last, last glance from the soft 
 eyes of Fanny, and then Solitude 
 rushed upon me — rushed, as something 
 visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt 
 it in the glare of the sunbeam — I 
 heard it in the breath of the air ! like 
 a ghost it rose there — where she had 
 filled the space with her presence but a 
 moment before. A something seemed 
 gone from the universe forever; a 
 change like that of death passed 
 through my being ; and when I woke 
 to feel that my being lived again, I 
 
60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 knew that it was my youth and its 
 poet-land that were no more, and that 
 I had passed, with an unconscious step, 
 which never could retrace its way, into 
 the hard world of laborious man ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 March 10th. 
 I am hard-hearted enough to believe 
 that work never fails to those who 
 seek it in good earnest. It was said of 
 some man, famous for keeping his 
 word, that, "if he had promised you 
 an acorn, and all the oaks in England 
 failed to produce one, he would have 
 sent to Norway for an acorn." If I 
 wanted work, and there was none to 
 be had in the Old World, I would find 
 my way to the New. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 61 
 
 March 11th. 
 Though a scholar is often a fool, he 
 is never a fool so supreme, so superla- 
 tive, as when he is defacing the first 
 unsullied page of the human history, by 
 entering into it the commonplaces of 
 his own pedantry. A scholar, sir — at 
 least one like me — is of all persons the 
 most unfit to teach young children. A 
 mother, sir — a simple, natural, loving 
 mother — is the infant's true guide to 
 knowledge. 
 
 The Caxtons, 
 
 March IMh. 
 Men dupe, deceive our sex — and 
 for selfish purposes ; they are pardoned 
 — even by their victims. Did I de- 
 ceive you with a false hope ? Well — 
 what my object ? — what my excuse ? — 
 
62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 my husband's liberty — my land's sal- 
 vation I Woman, — my Lord, alas, your 
 SOX too rarely understand her weak- 
 ness or her greatness I Erring — all 
 human as she is to others — God gifts 
 her with a thousand virtues to the one 
 she loves ! It is from that love that 
 she alone drinks her nobler nature. 
 For the hero of her worship she has 
 the meekness of the dove — the devo- 
 tion of the saint ; for his safety in 
 peril, for his rescue in misfortune, her 
 vain sense imbibes the sagacity of the 
 serpent — her weak heart, the courage 
 of the lioness ! 
 
 Eienzi. 
 
 March 13th, 
 Think you it is the man, the emperor, 
 that thus sways ? — no, it is the pomp, 
 
FROM BVLWEB LYTTON. 63 
 
 the awe, the majesty that surround 
 him — these are his impostures, his de- 
 lusions ; our oracles and our divinations, 
 our rites and our ceremonies, are the 
 means of our sovereignty and the 
 engines of our power. They are the 
 same means to the same end, the wel- 
 fare and harmony of mankind. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 March nth. 
 Life is so uncertain and so short, 
 that we cannot too soon bring the lit- 
 tle it can yield into the great common- 
 wealth of the Beautiful or the Honest ; 
 and both belong to and make up the 
 Useftd. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 March 15th. 
 " But," answered the Nazarene, " ask 
 
64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 thy reason, can that religion be sound 
 which outrages all morality ? You are 
 told to worship your gods. What are 
 those gods, even according to your- 
 selves ? What their actions, what their 
 attributes? Are they not all repre- 
 sented to you as the blackest of crimi- 
 nals ? yet you are asked to serve them 
 as the holiest of divinities. Jupiter 
 himself is a parricide and an adulterer. 
 What are the meaner deities but imi- 
 tators of his vices ? You are told not 
 to murder, but you worship murderers ; 
 you are told not to commit adultery, 
 and you make your prayers to an 
 adulterer. Oh ! what is this but a 
 mockery of the holiest part of man's 
 nature, which is faith ? " 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 66 
 
 March 16th. 
 Genius, in an age where it is not ap- 
 preciated, is the greatest curse the iron 
 
 Fates can inflict on man. 
 
 The Last of the Barona. 
 
 March 17th. 
 
 The philosophy limited to the reason 
 
 puts into motion the automata of the 
 
 closet— but to those who have the 
 
 world for a stage, and who find their 
 
 hearts are the great actors, experience 
 
 and wisdom must be wrought from the 
 
 Philosophy of the Passion. 
 
 Ernest Maltra/vera. 
 
 March 18th. 
 Ought we not to make something 
 great out of a youth under twenty, 
 who has, in the highest degree, quick- 
 
BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ness to conceive and courage to exe- 
 cute ? On the other hand, all faculties 
 that can make greatness, contain those 
 that can attain goodness. In the 
 savage Scandinavian, or the ruthless 
 Frank, lay the germs of a Sydney or a 
 Bayard. What would the best of us 
 be, if he were suddenly placed at war 
 with the whole world ! 
 
 The Caxtons, 
 
 March 19th. 
 My Lord I my Lord ! there is but 
 one way to restore the greatness of a 
 people — it is an appeal to the people 
 themselves. It is not in the power of 
 princes and barons to make a state 
 permanently glorious ; they raise them- 
 selves, but they raise not the people 
 with them. All great regenerations 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 67 
 
 are the universal movement of the 
 mass. 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 March Wth. 
 Yet, on the outskirt of the forest, 
 dusk and shapeless, that witch without 
 a name stood in the shadow, pointing 
 toward them, with outstretched arm, 
 in vague and denouncing menace; — 
 as if, come what may, all change of 
 creed, — be the faith ever so simple, the 
 truth ever so bright and clear, — there 
 is a SUPERSTITION native to that 
 Border-land between the Visible and 
 the Unseen, which will find its priest 
 and its votaries, till the full and crown- 
 ing splendor of Heaven shall melt 
 every shadow from the world ! 
 
 Harold. 
 
68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 March '21st. 
 Happy the man who hath never 
 known what it is to taste of Fame — 
 to have it is a purgatory, to want it is 
 a hell! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 March 22d. 
 Great was the folly and great the 
 error of indulging imagination that 
 had no basis — of linking the whole use- 
 fulness of my life to the will of a 
 human creature like myself. Heaven 
 did not design the passion of love to 
 be this tyrant, nor is it so with the 
 mass and multitude of human life. 
 We dreamers, solitary students like 
 me, or half poets like poor Koland, 
 
 make our own disease. 
 
 The Caxtwiis, 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 69 
 
 March 23d. 
 A man ought not to attempt any of 
 the highest walks of Mind and Art, as 
 the mere provision of daily bread ; not 
 literature alone, but everything else of 
 the same degree. He ought not to be 
 a statesman, or an orator, or a philos- 
 opher, as a thing of pence and shill- 
 ings : and usually all men, save the 
 poor poet, feel this truth insensibly. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 March 2Ji.th. 
 The hero weeps less at the reverses 
 of his enemy than at the fortitude 
 
 with which he bears them. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 March 25th. 
 And he, indeed, who first arouses in 
 the bondsman the sense and soul of 
 
70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 freedom, comes as near as is permitted 
 to man, nearer than the philosopher, 
 nearer even than the poet, to the great 
 creative attribute of God ! — But, if the 
 breast be uneducated, the gift may 
 curse the giver ; and he who passes at 
 once from the slave to the freeman 
 nuiy pass as rapidly from the freeman 
 to the rullian. 
 
 Rienzi. 
 
 Mivrh ^26th. 
 But capital, where was that to come 
 from ? Nature gives us all except the 
 means to turn her into marketable ac- 
 count. As old Plautus saith so wittily, 
 " l^ay, night, water, sun and moon are 
 to be had gratis ; for everything else 
 — down with your dust I " 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 71 
 
 March ^7th. 
 There is one very peculiar pleasure 
 that we feel as we grow older, — it is 
 to see embodied in another and a more 
 lovely shape the thoughts and senti- 
 ments we once nursed ourselves ; it is 
 as if we viewed before us the incarna- 
 tion of our own youth; and it is no 
 wonder that we are warmed toward 
 the object that thus seems the living 
 apparition of all that was brightest in 
 ourselves ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 March ^8th. 
 It is in our power to make the life 
 within us all soul ; so that the heart is 
 not, or is felt not; so that grief and 
 joy have no power over us ; so that we 
 look tranquil on the stormy earth. 
 
 Harold, 
 
72 BEAUTIFUL THOUQHTS 
 
 March ^9th. 
 
 Tell mo if there over, even in the 
 
 ages most favorable to glory, could be 
 
 a triumph more exalted and elating 
 
 than the conquest of one noble heai-t ? 
 
 The Last Days of rom^ycii, 
 
 March oOth. 
 Strange that people should weary 
 so much of themselves that the}^ can- 
 not brave the prospect of a few min- 
 utes passed in reflection — that a shower 
 and the resources of their own thoughts 
 are evils so galling — very strange in- 
 deed. 
 
 Ernest Malt ravers. 
 
 March SJst. 
 Mind, understanding, genius — fine 
 things ! But, to educate the whole 
 man, you must educate something 
 
FliOnr BULWKR LYTTON. 73 
 
 luoro llia-M tlio,S(i. Not for want of 
 
 mind, understanding, gonius, liavo 
 
 Borgias and Ncros loft Uioir ii;un(\s 
 
 as nionunients of horror to mankind. 
 
 Whoro, in all this toaching, was ono 
 
 iosson to warm the heart, and guide 
 
 the soul ? 
 
 The (hxtona. 
 
APRIL. 
 
April 1st. — " April FooVs Day.''^ 
 One does not have gumption till 
 one has been properly cheated — one 
 must be made a fool very often in 
 order not to be fooled at last ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 April 2d. 
 All the kings since Saul, it may be, 
 are not worth one scholar's life ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 April 3d. 
 In the battle of life the arrows we 
 neglect to pick up, Fate, our foe, will 
 store in her quiver. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 April Jfth. 
 If there be a vile thing in the world. 
 
78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 it is a plebeian, advanced by patricians, 
 not for the purpose of righting his own 
 order, but for pkiying the pander to 
 the worst interests of theirs. He who 
 is of the people but makes himself a 
 traitor to his birth, if he furnishes the 
 excuse for these tyrant hypocrites to 
 lift up their hands and cry : " See 
 what liberty exists in Eome, when we, 
 the patricians, thus elevate a ple- 
 beian ! " Did they ever elevate a 
 plebeian if he sympathized with ple- 
 beians? No, brother; should I be 
 lifted above our condition, I will be 
 raised by the arms of my countrymen, 
 and not upon their necks." 
 
 Rienzi. 
 
 April 5th. 
 " The desire of distinction," said he, 
 
FR03I lilJLWKR LYTTON. 79 
 
 after a pause, " grows upon us till 
 excitement becomes disease. The 
 child who is born with tlie mariner's 
 instinct laughs with glee when his 
 paper bark skims the wave of a pool. 
 By and by, nothing will content him 
 but the ship and the ocean. Like the 
 child is the author." 
 
 ErnvM MaltravcvH. 
 
 April Gill. 
 Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, 
 and, at certain ])eriods of my life, a 
 bookman myself, though of k)vvly 
 grade in that venerable class — wonder 
 not that 1 shouhl thus, in that tran- 
 sition stage between youtii and man- 
 hood, have turned impatiently from 
 books. — Most students, at one time or 
 other in their existence, have felt the 
 
80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 imperious demand of that restless 
 
 principle) in man's nature, which calls 
 
 upon each son of Adam to contribute 
 
 his share to the vast treasury of human 
 
 deeds. 
 
 jfTie Caxtons, 
 
 April 7th. 
 Gold is the great magician of earth 
 — it realizes our dreams — it gives them 
 the power of a god — there is a grand- 
 eur, a sublimity, in its possession ; it is 
 the mightiest, yet the most obedient of 
 our slaves. 
 
 'Tlie Last Days of Fompeii. 
 
 April Sth. 
 
 We do indeed cleave the vast heaven 
 
 of Truth with a weak and crippled 
 
 wing: and often we are appalled in 
 
 our Avay by a dread sense of the im- 
 
Fli03I BULWEB LYTTON. 81 
 
 mensity around us, and of the in- 
 adequacy of our own strength. But 
 there is a rapture in the breath of the 
 pure and difficult air, and in the prog- 
 ress by which we compass earth, the 
 while we draw nearer to the stars, — 
 that again exalts us beyond ourselves, 
 and reconciles the true student unto 
 all things, — even to the hardest of 
 them all, — the conviction how feebly 
 our performance can ever imitate the 
 
 grandeur of our ambition ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 April 9th. 
 If it be a sin, as the priests say, to 
 pierce the dark walls which surround 
 us here, and read the future in the dim 
 world beyond, why gavest thou, O 
 Heaven, the reason, never resting. 
 
82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 save when it explores? Why hast 
 thou set in the heart the mystic Law 
 of Desire, ever toiling to the High, 
 ever grasping at the L\ir ? 
 
 Harold. 
 
 April 10th. 
 Nothing kindles the fire of love like 
 a sprinkling of the anxieties of jeal- 
 ousy ; it takes then a wilder, a more 
 resistless liame ; it forgets its softness ; 
 it ceases to be tender : it assumes some- 
 thing of the intensity — of the ferocity 
 — of hate. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 April nth. 
 It is not vanity alone that makes a 
 man of the Tnode invent a new bit, or 
 give his name to a new kind of car- 
 riage ; it is the influence of that mystic 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON, 83 
 
 yearning after utility, which is one of 
 the master-ties between the individual 
 and the species. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 April mh. 
 God is kinder to us all than man can 
 know; for man looks only to the 
 sorrow on the surface, and sees not the 
 consolation in the deeps of the unwit- 
 nessed soul. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 April 13th. 
 "So say all tyrants," rejoined the 
 smith hardily, as he leaned his hammer 
 against a fragment of stone — some rem- 
 nant of ancient Eome — " they never 
 fight against each other but it is for 
 our good. One Colonna cuts me the 
 throat of Orsini's baker — it is for our 
 
84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 good ! another Colonna seizes on the 
 daughter of Orsini's tailor — it is for 
 our good ! our good — yes, for the good 
 of the people ! the good of the bakers 
 and tailors, eh ? " 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 Ajpril IJfth. 
 When I compare the Saxon of our 
 land and day, all enervated and de- 
 crepit by priestly superstition, with his 
 forefathers in the first Christian era, 
 yielding to the religion they adopted 
 in its simple truths, but not to that rot 
 of social happiness and free manhood 
 which this cold and lifeless monachism 
 — making virtue the absence of human 
 ties — spreads around — which the great 
 Bede, though himself a monk, vainly 
 but bitterly denounced; yea, verily, 
 
FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 85 
 
 when I see the Saxon already the the- 
 owe of the priest, I shudder to ask 
 how long he will be folk-free of the 
 tyrant. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 April 15th. 
 Like the rainbow, Peace rests upon 
 the earth, but its arch is lost in 
 heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of 
 light — it springs up amidst tears and 
 clouds,— it is a reflection of the Eternal 
 Sun, — it is an assurance of calm — it is 
 the sign of a great covenant between 
 Man and God. Such peace, O young 
 man! is the smile of the soul; it is 
 an emanation from the distant orb 
 of immortal light. Peace be with 
 you! 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Ajyril 16th. 
 Long is tlio vvjiy that leads tlio vo- 
 luptuary to the severities of life ; but 
 it is only one step from pleasant sin to 
 
 sheltering liypocrisy. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 April 17th. 
 As we grow older, and sometimes a 
 hope, sometimes a friend, is shivered 
 from our path, the thought of an im- 
 mortality loill press itself foi'cibly 
 upon us ! and there, by little and 
 little, as the ant piles grain after 
 grain, the garners of a future suste- 
 nance, we learn to carry our hopes, 
 and harvest, as it were, our wishes. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 April 18th. 
 
 Tt is sti'ango to imagine that war, 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 87 
 
 which of all things appears the most 
 savage, should be the passion of the 
 most heroic spirits. But 'tis in war 
 that the knot of fellowship is closest 
 drawn ; 'tis in war that mutual succor 
 is most given — mutual danger run, 
 and common affection most exerted 
 and employed ; for heroism and philan- 
 thropy are almost one and the same ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 April 19th. 
 What a new step in the philosophy 
 of life does a young man of genius 
 make, when he first compares his 
 theories and experience with the intel- 
 lect of a clever woman of the world ! 
 Perhaps it does not elevate him, but 
 how it enlightens and refines ! — what 
 numberless minute yet important mys- 
 
88 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 teries in human character and prac- 
 tical wisdom does he drink uncon- 
 sciously from the sparkling pe/s/Jlage 
 of such a companion ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravet-a. 
 
 April 20th. 
 He knew henceforth that even the 
 criminal is not all evil; the angel 
 within us is not easily expelled ; it 
 survives sin, ay, and many sins, and 
 leaves us sometimes in amaze and 
 marvel at the good that lingers I'ound 
 the heart even of the hardiest of- 
 fender. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 April 21st. 
 The evil was simply this : here was 
 the intelligence of a man in all that is 
 evil — and the ignorance of an infant 
 
FEOM BULWER LYTTON. 
 
 in all that is good. In matters merely 
 worldly, what wonderful acumen! in 
 the plain principles of right and 
 wrong, what gross and stolid obtuse- 
 ness ! At one time, I am straining all 
 my poor wit to grapple in an encoun- 
 ter on the knottiest mysteries of social 
 life; at another, I am guiding re- 
 luctant fingers over the horn-book of 
 the most obvious morals. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 April S^d, — A French Novel. 
 The true artist, whether in Eomance 
 or the Drama, will often necessarily 
 interest us in a vicious or criminal 
 character — but he does not the less 
 leave clear to our reprobation the vice 
 or the crime. But here I found my- 
 self called upon not only to feel inter- 
 
90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 est in the villain (which would be per- 
 fectly allowable — I am very much 
 interested .in Macbeth and Lovelace) — 
 but to admire and sympathize with 
 the villainy itself. Nor was it the 
 confusion of all wrong and right in 
 individual character that shocked me 
 the most — but rather the view of so- 
 ciety altogether, painted in colors so 
 hideous that, if true, instead of a revo- 
 lution, it would draw down a deluge. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 April 3Sd. 
 
 It was thus that the same fervor 
 
 which made the Churchman of the 
 
 middle age a bigot without mercy, 
 
 made the Christian of the early days a 
 
 hero without fear. 
 
 T/ie Last Days of Pompeii, 
 
FR03I BULWER LYTTON. 91 
 
 April ^4,th. 
 
 Fly from a load upon the heart, on 
 the genius, the energy, the pride, and 
 the spirit, which not one man in ten 
 thousand can bear ; ily from the curse 
 of owing everything to a wife ! — it is 
 a reversal of all natural position, it is 
 a blow to all the manhood within us. 
 You know not what it is ; I do ! My 
 wife's fortune came not till after 
 marriage — so far, so well; it saved 
 my reputation from the charge of 
 fortune-hunting. But, I tell you fairly, 
 that if it never came at all, I should 
 be a prouder, and a greater, and a 
 happier man than I have ever been, or 
 ever can bo, with all its advantages ; 
 it has a millstone round my neck. 
 
 Tlie Caxtons. 
 
92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 April ^6th. 
 The world, the world ! — Everything 
 gentle, everything pure, everything 
 noble, high-wrought and holy — is to 
 be squared, and cribbed, and maimed 
 to the rule and measure of the world ! 
 The world — are you too its slave? 
 Do you not despise its hollow cant — 
 its methodical hypocrisy ? 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 April 36th. 
 The soul really grand is only tested 
 in its errors. As we know the true 
 might of the intellect by the rich re- 
 sources and patient strength with 
 which it redeems a failure, so do we 
 prove the elevation of the soul by its 
 courageous return into light, its in- 
 stinctive rebound into higher air, after 
 
FROM BULWKR LYTTON. 9:i 
 
 some error that has darkened its vision 
 and soiled its plumes. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 A2)ril 27th. 
 A spirit loss noble and pure than 
 Harold's, once entering on the dismal 
 world of enchanted superstition, had 
 habituated itself to that nether atmos- 
 phere ; once misled from hardy truth 
 and healthful reason, it had plunged 
 deeper and deeper into the maze. 
 But, unlike his contemporary, Mac- 
 beth, the Man escaped from the lures 
 of the Fiend. Not as Flocate in hell, 
 but as Dian in heaven, did he confront 
 the pale (} odd ess of Kight. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 April 28th. 
 Before that hour in which he had 
 
94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 deserted the human judgment for the 
 ghostly delusion: before that day in 
 which the brave heart, in its sudden 
 desertion, had humbled his pride — the 
 man, in his nature, was more strong 
 than the god. Now, purified by the 
 flame that had scorched, and more 
 nerved from the fall that had stunned, 
 — that great soul rose sublime through 
 the wrecks of the Past, serene through 
 the clouds of the future, concentring 
 in its solitude the destinies of Man- 
 kind, and strong with instinctive 
 Eternity amidst all the terrors of 
 Time. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 April '29tli. 
 "No sound ever went to the heart," 
 said Adrian, "whose arrow was not 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 95 
 
 feathered by sadness. True senti- 
 ment, Montreal, is twin with melan- 
 choly, though not with gloom." 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 April 30th. 
 But what the impulse of genius is to 
 the great, the instinct of vocation is to 
 the mediocre. In every man there is 
 a magnet; in that thing which the 
 man can do best there is a loadstone. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
MAY. 
 
Mwy hi. — Early Mondng. 
 TiHH wjm llio [lour wliori Kv(>\yn 
 iiiohI- fir,n,'iil)ly icll, how lil.Uo our nial 
 liln in (•lironic-lrd hy nxhirruil o-vmils — 
 how riiuch wr, livo n. H<i('oiMl jiimI n 
 higher lil'n jti our iiMMlilxitiorm and 
 dnmrriH. Ii»<»u/.'hl> u|), uol, nioni l>y 
 |)r(HM)))i, Ui;ui oxn.tii|)h\ in Uio Ui\\\\ 
 whi<*h uiii(/OH (;n«il,uro nnd (/rnaior, 
 UiJH Willi Um'< liour in wliicJi l.hou^hl, it, 
 Heir had HoinoLhin^- oi' Uir, holinoHH of 
 prayrr; ;uid if (luruin/^ Iroui dniarrm 
 diviiH) l.ooiU'Uilio.r vinioriH) MiinnJHo waH 
 Um'> hour* ill whi<-h Uin iiciul. painted 
 ii,n<l |)r,o|)l4Ml il,M own liiiry h'liid hnh>w 
 — of Mm- Uvo i(hjal worJdH thai ntretch 
 hnyoiid tlin iiK'Ji of tiino on whJcJi wo 
 
100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 stand, Imagination is perhaps holier 
 than Memory. 
 
 Alice. 
 
 Ma/y 2d. — The Spirit of the Age. 
 
 I would make every man's conduct 
 more or less mechanical ; for system is 
 the triumph of mind over matter ; the 
 just equilibrium of all the powers and 
 passions may seem like machinery. 
 Be it so. Nature meant the world — 
 the creation — man himself, for ma- 
 chines. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 May 3d. 
 The seas of human life are wide. 
 Wisdom may suggest the voyage, but 
 it must first look to the condition of 
 the ship, and the nature of the mer- 
 chandise to exchange. Not every 
 
FliOM BULWER LYTTON. 101 
 
 vessel that sails from Tarshish can 
 bring back the gold of Ophir ; but 
 shall it therefore rot in tlie harbor? 
 No ; give its sails to the wind ! 
 
 Tlie Caxtons. 
 
 May Jf^th. 
 In the tale of human passion, in past 
 ages, there is something of interest 
 even in the remoteness of the time. 
 We love to feel within us the bond 
 which unites the most distant eras — 
 men, nations, customs perish ; the 
 
 AFFECTIONS AKE IMMOKTAL ! — they 
 
 are the sympathies which unite the 
 ceaseless generations. The past lives 
 again, when we look upon its emotions 
 — it lives in our own ! That which 
 was, ever is ! The magician's gift, 
 that revives the dead — that animates 
 
102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the dust of forgotten graves, is not in 
 the author's skill — it is in the heart of 
 the reader ! 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 May 6th. 
 You never deceived man — the wide 
 world says it — do not deceive woman ! 
 Deeds kill men — words women ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 May 6th. 
 Oh, Madeline! methinks there is 
 nothing under heaven like the feeling 
 which puts us apart from all that agi- 
 tates, and fevers, and degrades the 
 herd of men ; which grants us to con- 
 trol the tenor of our future life, be- 
 cause it annihilates our dependence 
 upon others, and, while the rest of the 
 earth are hurried on, blind and uncon- 
 
FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 103 
 
 scious, by the hand of Fate, leaves us 
 the sole lords of our destiny, and able, 
 from the Past, which we have gov- 
 erned, to become the prophets of our 
 Future ! 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
 MoA/ 7th, 
 Even the most unearthly love is 
 selfish in the rapture of being loved ! 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 May 8th, 
 IN'either man nor wood comes to the 
 uses of life till the green leaves are 
 stripped and the sap gone. And then 
 the uses of life transform us into 
 strange things with other names ; the 
 tree is a tree no more — it is a gate or 
 a ship ; the youth is a youth no more, 
 but a one-legged soldier; a hollow- 
 
104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 eyed statesman ; a scholar spectacled 
 
 and slippered ! 
 
 The Caxtona, 
 
 May 9th. 
 Had the early Christians been more 
 controlled by " the solemn plausibili- 
 ties of custom " — less of democrats in 
 the pure and lofty acceptation of that 
 perverted word, — Christianity would 
 have perished in its cradle ! 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 Mmj 10th. 
 " It is an excitement," said Yalerie, 
 "to climb a mountain, though it fa- 
 tigues ; and though the clouds may even 
 deny us a prospect from its summit — 
 it is an excitement that gives a very 
 universal pleasure, and that seems al- 
 most as if it were the result of a com- 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 105 
 
 mon human instinct, which makes us 
 desire to rise — to get above the ordi- 
 nary thoroughfares and level of life. 
 Some such pleasure you must have in 
 intellectual ambition, in which the 
 mind is the upward traveller." 
 
 Ernest Maltravera, 
 
 May 11th. 
 Nothing is strong on earth but the 
 Will; and hate to the will is as the 
 iron in the hands of the war-man. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 May mil. 
 Is there not distinction enough at 
 the best ? Does not one wear purple, 
 and the other rags? Ilath not one 
 ease and the other toil ? Doth not the 
 one banquet while the other starves ? 
 Do I nourish any mad scheme to level 
 
106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the ranks which society renders a nec- 
 essary evil ? No. I war no more 
 with Dives than with Lazarus. l>iit 
 before man's judgment-scat, as before 
 God's, Lazarus and Dives are made 
 equaL JNo more. 
 
 The Last ])tx(/s of Povipcii. 
 
 May loth. 
 I have never yet found in life one 
 man who made happiness his end and 
 aim. One wants to gain a fortune, 
 another to s}>ond it — one to get a 
 phice, another to buikl a name ; but 
 they all know very well that it is not 
 happiness thoy search for. ]\o Utili- 
 tarian was ever actuated by self-in- 
 terest, poor man, when he sat down to 
 scribble Ids unpopular crotchets to 
 
FKCm nULWER LYTTON. 107 
 
 prove solf-interest universal. And as 
 to tliJit iiolalxlo distinction — between 
 seli'-in teres t vulgar and self-interest 
 enliglitene(J — the more the self-interest 
 is enliglitened, the less we are inllu- 
 enced by it. If you tell the young 
 man who has just written a line book 
 or made a fine speech, that he will not 
 be any hapjiier if he attain to the fame 
 of Milton or the power of Pitt, and 
 that, for the sake of his own happiness, 
 he Jiad mucii better cultivate a farm, 
 live in the country, and posti)one to 
 the last the days of dyspepsia and 
 gout, he will answer you fairJy: "I 
 am quite as sensible of that as you are. 
 But I am not thinking whether or not 
 I shall be happy. I have made up my 
 mind to be, if 1 can, a great author, or 
 
108 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 a prime minister." So it is with all 
 
 the active sons of the world. To push 
 
 on is the law of nature. And you can 
 
 no more say to men and to nations 
 
 than to children : "Sit still, and don't 
 
 wear out your shoes." 
 
 The Caxtom, 
 
 May nth. 
 It is an awful state of being, this 
 human life ! — What is wisdom — virtue 
 — faith to men — piety to Heaven — all 
 the nurture we bestow on ourselves — 
 all our desire to win a loftier sphere, 
 when we are thus the tools of the 
 merest chance — the victims of the 
 pettiest villainy; and our very exist- 
 ence — our very senses almost, at the 
 mercy of every traitor and every fool ? 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
FB03I BULWER LYTTON. 109 
 
 May 15th, 
 These vain prophecies of human wit 
 guard the soul from no danger. They 
 mislead us by riddles which our hot 
 hearts interpret according to their own 
 desires. Keep thou fast to youth's 
 simple wisdom, and trust only to the 
 pure spirit and the watchful God. 
 
 Harold, 
 
 May 16th. 
 The crime — the discovery — the irre- 
 mediable despair — hear me, as the 
 voice of a man who is on the brink of 
 a world, the awful nature of which 
 reason cannot pierce — hear me ! when 
 your heart tempts to some wandering 
 from the line allotted to the rest of 
 men, and whispers "This may be 
 crime in others, but is not so in thee " 
 
110 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 — tremble ; cling fast, fast to the path 
 you are lured to leave. Eemember 
 me! 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
 May 17th. 
 Alas I is it only to be among men 
 that freedom and virtue are to be 
 deemed united? Why should the 
 slavery that destroys you be consid- 
 ered the only method to preserve us ? 
 Ah ! believe me, it has been the great 
 error of men — and one that has 
 worked bitterly on their destinies — to 
 imagine that the nature of women is 
 (I will not say inferior, that may be 
 so, but) so different from their own, 
 in making laws unfavorable to the in- 
 tellectual advancement of women. 
 Have they not, in so doing, made laws 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. Ill 
 
 against their children, whom women 
 
 are to rear ? — against the husbands, of 
 
 whom women are to be the friends, 
 
 nay, sometimes the advisers ? 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii, 
 
 May 18th. 
 
 " Everybody who is in earnest to be 
 
 good carries two fairies about with 
 
 him — one here," and he touched my 
 
 heart, " and one here," and he touched 
 
 my forehead. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 May 19th. 
 " It is not the ambition that pleases," 
 replied Maltravers, " it is the following 
 a path congenial to our tastes, and 
 made dear to us in a short time by 
 habit. The moments in which we 
 look beyond our work, and fancy our- 
 
112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 selves seated beneath the Everlasting 
 Laurel, are few. It is the work itself, 
 whether of action or literature, that 
 interests and excites us. And at 
 length the dryness of toil takes the 
 familiar sweetness of custom. But in 
 intellectual labor there is another 
 charm — we become more intimate with 
 our own nature. The heart and the 
 soul grow friends, as it were, and the 
 affections and aspirations unite. Thus, 
 we are never without society — we are 
 never alone; all that we have read, 
 learned, and discovered, is company to 
 us." 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 MOA/ Wth. 
 
 What love has most to dread in the 
 wild heart of aspiring man, is not per- 
 
FE03I: BULWER LYTTON. 113 
 
 sons, but tilings, — is not things, but 
 their symbols. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 May ^Ist 
 I see him before me, as he stood 
 then — his form erect, his dark eyes 
 solemn in their light, a serenity in his 
 smile, a grandeur on his brow, that 
 I had never marked till then! Was 
 that the same man I had recoiled from 
 as the sneering cynic, shuddered at as 
 the audacious traitor, or wept over as 
 the cowering outcast ? How little the 
 nobleness of aspect depends on sym- 
 metry of feature, or the mere propor- 
 tions of form! What dignity robes 
 the man who is filled with a lofty 
 thought ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
114 BEAUTIFUL TBOUGHTS 
 
 May 2M. 
 But the illness of the body usually 
 brings out a latent power and philoso- 
 phy of the soul, which health never 
 knows; and God has mercifully or- 
 dained it as the customary lot of na- 
 ture, that in proportion as we decline 
 into the grave, the sloping path is 
 made smooth and easy to our feet; 
 and every day, as the films of clay are 
 removed from our eyes. Death loses 
 the false aspect of the spectre, and we 
 fall at last into its arms as a wearied 
 child upon the bosom of its mother. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 May 2Sd. 
 I love not the trader spirit, man — 
 the spirit that cheats, and cringes, and 
 haggles, and splits straws for pence. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 115 
 
 and roasts eggs by other men^s blazing 
 rafters. 
 
 The Last of the Barons, 
 
 May ^Ifih. 
 For oh ! what a terrible devil creeps 
 into that man's soul who sees famine 
 at his door ! One tender act, and how 
 many black designs, struggling into 
 life within, you may crush forever! 
 He who deems the world his foe, con- 
 vince him that he has one friend, and 
 it is like snatching a dagger from his 
 hand ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 May ^5th. — Westminster Bridge. 
 
 Oh, God ! how many wild and 
 stormy hearts have stilled themselves 
 on that spot, for one dread instant of 
 thought — of calculation — of resolve — 
 
116 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 one instant, the last of life ! Look at 
 night along the course of that stately 
 river, how gloriously it seems to mock 
 the passions of them that dwell be- 
 side it. Unchanged — unchanging — all 
 around it quick death, and troubled 
 life ; itself smiling up to the grey stars, 
 and singing from its deep heart as it 
 bounds along. Beside it is the Senate, 
 proud of its solemn triflers, and there 
 the cloistered tomb, in which, as the 
 loftiest honor, some handful of the 
 fiercest of the strugglers may gain 
 f orgetf ulness and a grave ! There is 
 no moral to a great city like the river 
 that washes its walls. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 May '26tli. 
 Say to the busiest man whom thou 
 
FEOM BULWER LYTTQN. 117 
 
 seest in mart, camp, or senate, who 
 
 seems to thee all intent upon his 
 
 worldly schemes, "Thy home is reft 
 
 from thee — thy household gods are 
 
 shattered — that sweet noiseless content 
 
 in the regular mechanism of the springs 
 
 which set the large wheels of thy soul 
 
 into movement is thine nevermore ! " 
 
 — and straightway all exertion seems 
 
 robbed of its object — all aim of its 
 
 alluring charm. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 May 27th. 
 What are all the rewards to my la- 
 bor, now thou hast robbed me of re- 
 pose? How little are all the gains 
 wrung from strife, in a world of rivals 
 and foes, compared to the smile whose 
 sweetness I knew not till it was lost, 
 
118 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and the sense of security from mortal 
 ill which I took from the trust and 
 sympathy of love ? 
 
 Harold. 
 
 May ^8th. 
 The burning desires I have known — 
 the resplendent visions I have nursed 
 — the sublime aspirings that have 
 lifted me so often from sense and clay 
 — these tell me, that, whether for good 
 or ill — I am the thing of an Immortal- 
 ity, and the creature of a God ! 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
 May S9th. 
 Nor is he whom, for high purposes, 
 Heaven hath raised from the cottage 
 to the popular throne, without invisi- 
 ble aid and spiritual protection. If 
 hereditary monarchs are deemed sa- 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 119 
 
 cred, how much more one in whose 
 power the divine hand hath writ its 
 witness ! Yes, over him who lives but 
 for his country, whose greatness is his 
 country's gift, whose life is his coun- 
 try's liberty, watch the souls of the 
 just, and the unsleeping eyes of the 
 
 s worded seraphim ! 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 May 30th. — Memorial Bay. 
 To be free, you must sacrifice some- 
 thing ; for freedom, what sacrifice too 
 great ? 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 May Slst. 
 Yery near are two hearts that have 
 no guile between them. 
 
 The Caxtom. 
 
JUNE. 
 
June Ist. 
 Our own yoath is like that of the 
 earth itself, when it peopled the woods 
 and waters with divinities ; when life 
 ran riot, and yet only gave birth to 
 beauty ; — all its shapes of poetry, — all 
 its airs, the melodies of Arcady and 
 Olympus ! The Golden Age never 
 leaves the world; it exists still, and 
 shall exist, till love, health, poetry, are 
 no more ; but only for the young ! 
 
 Eienzi, 
 
 June 2d. 
 Not in such jaded bosoms can Na- 
 ture awaken that enthusiasm which 
 alone draws from her chaste reserve 
 all her unspeakable beauty : she de- 
 
124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 mands from you, not the exhaustion of 
 passion, but all that fervor, from 
 which you onl}^ seek, in adoring her, a 
 release. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii, 
 
 June 3d. 
 Was it the perversity of human na- 
 ture, that makes the things of morality 
 dearer to us in proportion as they 
 fade from our hopes, like birds whoso 
 hues are only unfolded when they 
 take wing and vanish amidst the skies ; 
 or was it that he had ever doted more 
 on loveliness of mind than that of 
 form, and the first bloomed out the 
 more, the more the last decayed ? 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 June Jt-th. 
 He who is ambitious of things afar 
 
FR03T BULWEB LYTTON. 125 
 
 and uncertain, passes at once into the 
 Poet-Land of Imagination; to aspire 
 and to imagine are yearnings twin- 
 born. _ ,^ 
 
 Harold. 
 
 June 6th. 
 Mankind are not instantaneously 
 corrupted. Villainy is always pro- 
 gressive. We decline from right— not 
 
 suddenly, but step after step. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 June 6th. 
 In a word, dear sir and friend, in 
 this crowded Old World, there is not 
 the same room that our bold fore- 
 fathers found for men to walk about 
 and jostle their neighbors. No ; they 
 must sit down like boys at their form, 
 
126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and work out their tasks, with rounded 
 shoulders and aching fingers. There 
 has been a pastoral age, and a hunting 
 age, and a fighting age. Now we have 
 arrived at the age sedentary. Men 
 who sit longest carry all before them : 
 puny, delicate fellows, with hands just 
 strong enough to wield a pen, eyes so 
 bleared by the midnight lamp that they 
 see no joy in that buxom sun (which 
 draws me forth into the fields, as life 
 draws the living), and digestive organs 
 worn and macerated by the relentless 
 flagellation of the brain. 
 
 The Caxtom. 
 
 June 7th. 
 Wise is ever the counsel of him 
 whose book is the human heart. 
 
 Harold. 
 
FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 127 
 
 June 8th. 
 From LITEKATUEE he imagined had 
 come all that makes nations enlight- 
 ened and men humane. And he 
 loved Literature the more, because 
 her distinctions were not those of 
 the world — because she had neither 
 ribands, nor stars, nor high places at 
 her command. A name in the deep 
 gratitude and hereditary delight of 
 men — this was the title she bestowed. 
 Hers was the Great Primitive Church 
 of the world, without Popes or 
 Muftis — sinecures, pluralities, and 
 hierarchies. Her servants spoke to 
 the earth as the prophets of old, 
 anxious only to be heard and be- 
 lieved. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
128 BEAUTIFUL TEOUOHTS 
 
 June 9th. 
 He who awaits death, dies twice. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii . 
 
 June 10 th. 
 lu all these solemn riddles of the 
 Jove world and the Christ's is involved 
 the imperious necessity that man hath 
 of repentance and atonement : through 
 their clouds, as a rainbow, shines the 
 covenant that reconciles the God and 
 the man. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 June 11th. 
 Observe, that, throughout the whole 
 world, a great revolution has begun. 
 The barbaric darkness of centuries has 
 been broken; the knowledge which 
 made men as demigods in the past 
 time has been called from her urn ; a 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 129 
 
 Power, subtler tliiiii brute force, and 
 mightier than armed men, is at work I 
 we have begun once more to do hom- 
 age to the Jioyalty of Mind. 
 
 Riejizi. 
 
 June 12th. 
 We may talk of the fidelity of books, 
 but no man ever wrote even his own 
 biography, without being com[)elled to 
 omit at least nine- tent I is of the most 
 important materials. What are three 
 — what six volumes? We live six 
 volumes in a day ! Thought, emotion, 
 joy, sorrow, hope, fear, how prolix 
 would they be, if they might each tell 
 their hourly tale I But man's life itself 
 is a brief epitome of that which is in- 
 finite and everlasting ; and his most ac- 
 curate confessions are a miserable 
 
130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 abridgment of a hurried and confused 
 compendium ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravera. 
 
 June 13th. 
 New laws are declared to him who 
 has ears — a heaven, a true Olympus, is 
 revealed to him who has eyes — heed 
 then, and listen. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 June nth. 
 Ass indeed is he who pretends to 
 warn others, nor sees an inch before 
 his eyes what his own fate will be ! 
 
 Harold. 
 
 June 15th. 
 I say, then, that books, taken indis- 
 criminately, are no cure to the diseases 
 and afflictions of the mind. There is a 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 131 
 
 world of science necessary in the tak- 
 ing them. I have known some people 
 in great sorrow fly to a novel, or the 
 last light book in fashion. One might 
 as well take a rose-draught for the 
 plague! Light reading does not do 
 when the heart is really heavy. I am 
 told that Goethe, when he lost his son, 
 took to study a science that was new 
 to him. Ah ! Goethe was a physician 
 who knew what he was about. In a 
 great grief like that you cannot tickle 
 and divert the mind ; you must wrench 
 it away, abstract, absorb — bury it in 
 an abyss, hurry it into a labyrinth. 
 Therefore, for the irremediable sor- 
 rows of middle life and old age, I 
 recommend a strict chronic course of 
 science and hard reasoning — Counter- 
 
132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 irritation. Bring the brain to act upon 
 the heart ! 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
 June 16th. 
 I fear that as yet Ernest Mal- 
 travers had gained little from Experi- 
 ence, except a few current coins of 
 worldly wisdom (and not very valu- 
 able those ! ), while he had lost much 
 of that nobler wealth with which 
 youthful enthusiasm sets out on the 
 journey of life. Experience is an open 
 giver, but a stealthy thief. There is, 
 however, this to be said in her favor, 
 that we retain her gifts; and if ever 
 we demand restitution in earnest, 'tis 
 ten to one but what we recover her 
 thefts. 
 
 Ernest Maltravera. 
 
FEOM BULWER LYTTON. 133 
 
 June 17 th. 
 " He died," said the Norman, sooth- 
 ingly ; " but shriven and absolved ; and 
 my cousin says, calm and hopeful, as 
 they die ever who have knelt at the 
 Saviour's tomb ! " 
 
 Harold. 
 
 June 18th. 
 "How little a man's virtues profit 
 him in the eyes of men ! " thought he. 
 " The subject saves the crown, and the 
 crown's wearer never pardons the pre- 
 sumption ! " 
 
 The Last of the Barona. 
 
 June 19th. 
 " God never made Genius to be 
 envied ! " interrupted Yillani, with an 
 energy that overcame his respect. 
 
134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 " We envy not the sun, but rather the 
 valleys that ripen beneath his beams." 
 " Yerily, if I be the sun," said Kienzi 
 with a bitter and melancholy smile, " I 
 long for night, — and come it will, to 
 the human as to the celestial Pilgrim ! 
 — Thank Heaven at least, that our am- 
 bition cannot make us immortal ! " 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 June 20th. 
 The tench, no doubt, considers the 
 pond in which he lives as the Great 
 World. There is no place, however 
 stagnant, which is not the great world 
 to the creatures that move about in it. 
 People who have lived all their lives 
 in a village still talk of the world as if 
 they had ever seen it ! An old woman 
 in a hovel does not put her nose out of 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 135 
 
 her door on a Sunday without think- 
 ing she is going amongst the pomps 
 and vanities of the great world. Ergo, 
 the great world is to all of us the little 
 circle in which we live. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 June '21st. 
 Sir, a religious man does not want 
 to reason about his religion — religion 
 is not mathematics. Keligion is to be 
 felt, not proved. There are a great 
 many things in the religion of a good 
 man which are not in the catechism. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
 June 22d. 
 
 He was the more original because 
 
 he sought rather after the True than 
 
 the New. ]^o two minds are ever the 
 
 same; and therefore any man who 
 
136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 will give us fairly and frankly the re- 
 sults of his own impressions, uninflu- 
 enced by the servilities of imitation, 
 w^ill be original. 
 
 Ernest Maliravers. 
 
 June ^3d. 
 A man is a poor creature who is not 
 in a passion sometimes; but a very 
 unjust, or a very foolish one, if he be 
 in a passion with the wrong person, 
 and in the wrong place and time. 
 
 Ernest Maliravers. 
 
 J\ine 24th. 
 And as gold, the adorner of the 
 world, springs from the sordid bosom 
 of earth, so chastity, the image of 
 gold, rose bright and unsullied from 
 the clay of human desire. 
 
 Harold. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 137 
 
 June 25th. 
 In that era of passionate and poet- 
 ical romance, which Petrarch repre- 
 sented rather than created, Love had 
 already begun to assume a more tender 
 and sacred character than it had hith- 
 erto known, it had gradually imbibed 
 the divine spirit which it derives from 
 Christianity, and which associates its 
 sorrows on earth with the visions and 
 hopes of heaven. To him who relies 
 upon immortality, fidelity to the dead 
 is easy; because death cannot extin- 
 guish hope, and the soul of the 
 mourner is already half in the world 
 to come. It is an age that desponds 
 of a future life — representing death as 
 an eternal separation — in which, if 
 men grieve awhile for the dead, they 
 
138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 hasten to reconcile themselves to the 
 living. For true is the old aphorism, 
 that love exists not without hope. 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 June Mth. 
 It is in sorrow or sickness that we 
 learn why Faith was given as a 
 soother to man — Faith, which is Hope 
 with a holier name — hope that knows 
 neither deceit nor death. Ah, how 
 wisely do you speak of the philosophy 
 of belief ! It is, indeed, the telescope 
 through which the stars grow large 
 upon our gaze. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 June 27th. 
 Man is never wrong while he lives 
 for others. The philosopher who con- 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 139 
 
 templates from the rock is a less noble 
 image than the sailor who struggles 
 with the storm. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 June ^8th.—A Lover's Farting. 
 I know not, in the broken words 
 that passed between us, in the sorrow- 
 ful hearts which those words revealed 
 — I know not if there were that which 
 they who own, in human passion, but 
 the storm and the whirlwind, would 
 call the love of maturer years — the 
 love that gives fire to the song, and 
 tragedy to the stage ; but I know that 
 there was neither a word nor a 
 thought which made the sorrow of the 
 children a rebellion to the heavenly 
 Father. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
140 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Janr '29th. 
 Thero is in a sound and correct in- 
 tellect, with all its gilts fairly bal- 
 anced, a calm consciousness of power, 
 a cm'tainty tliaX when its strength is 
 fairly put out, it must be to realize the 
 usual result of strength. Men of sec- 
 ond-rate faculties, on the contrar}'', are 
 fretful and nervous, lidgeting after a 
 celebrity wliicli tl u^y do not estimate 
 by Muur own talents, but by the tal- 
 ents of some one else. They see a 
 tower, but are occupied only with 
 uujasuring its shadow, and think their 
 own height (which they never calcu- 
 late) is to cast as Inroad a, one over the 
 earth. It is tln^ short man who is al- 
 ways throwing up his (^hin, and is as 
 erect as a dart. The tall man stoops. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 141 
 
 and the strong man is not always 
 using the dumb-bells. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 June 30th. 
 The eye that would guard the living 
 should not be dimmed by the vapors 
 that encircle the dead. 
 
 Harold. 
 
JULY. 
 
July 1st. 
 Oh, what a crushing sense of impo- 
 tence comes over us, when we feel that 
 our frame cannot support our mind — 
 when the hand can no longer execute 
 what the soul, actively as ever, con- 
 ceives and desires ! — the quick life tied 
 to the dead form — the ideas fresh as 
 immortality, gushing forth rich and 
 golden, and the broken nerves, and the 
 aching frame, and the weary eyes ! — 
 the spirit athirst for liberty and heaven 
 — and the damning, choking conscious- 
 ness that we are walled up and prisoned 
 in a dungeon that must be our burial- 
 place ! Talk not of freedom — there is 
 no such thing as freedom to a man 
 
146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 whose body is the jail, whose infirmi- 
 ties are the racks, of his genius ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 July 2d. 
 Only by the candle held in the skel- 
 eton hand of Poverty can man read his 
 own dark heart. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 July 3d. 
 I value Gold, for Gold is the Archi- 
 tect of Power ! It fills the camp — it 
 storms the city — it buys the market- 
 place — it raises the palace — it founds 
 the throne. I value Gold, — it is the 
 means necessary to my end ! 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 July Jith. — Independence Day. 
 Depend on it, the New "World will 
 be friendly or hostile to the Old, not in 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 147 
 
 jprojportion to the hinshij^ of race^ hut in 
 j^roportion to the similarity of ^manners 
 and institxLtions — a mighty truth to 
 which we colonizers have been blind. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
 July 6th. 
 A man is a rude, coarse, sensual ani- 
 mal, and requires all manner of associa- 
 tions to dignify and refine him, women 
 are so naturally susceptible of every- 
 thing beautiful in sentiment and gen- 
 erous in purpose, that she who is a 
 
 true woman is a fit peer for a king. 
 
 Tlie Caxtona, 
 
 July 6th. 
 
 No man ever so scorned its false 
 
 gods, and its miserable creeds — its war 
 
 upon the weak — its fawning upon the 
 
 great — its ingratitude to benefactors — 
 
148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 its sordid league with mediocrity 
 against excellence. Yes, in proportion 
 as I love mankind, I despise and detest 
 that worse than Venetian oligarchy 
 which mankind set over them and call 
 
 " THE WOELD." 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 July 7th. 
 While the mind alone is occupied, 
 you may be contented with the pride 
 of stoicism: but there are moments 
 when the heart wakens as from a sleep 
 — wakens like a frightened child — to 
 feel itself alone and in the dark. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers, 
 
 July 8th. 
 I tell thee that I renounce henceforth 
 all faith save in Him whose ways are 
 concealed from our eyes. Thy seid 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 149 
 
 and thy galdra have not guarded me 
 against peril, nor armed me against 
 sin. Nay, perchance — but peace: I 
 will no more tempt the dark art, I will 
 no more seek to disentangle the awful 
 truth from the juggling lie. All so 
 foretold me I will seek to forget, — hope 
 from no prophecy, fear from no warn- 
 ing. Let the soul go to the future un- 
 der the shadow of God ! 
 
 Harold. 
 
 July 9th. 
 When — when will these hideous dis- 
 parities be banished from the world ? 
 How many noble natures — how many 
 glorious hopes — how much of the ser- 
 aph's intellect, have been crushed into 
 the mire, or blasted into guilt, by the 
 mere force of physical want? "What 
 
150 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 are the temptations of the rich to those 
 of the poor ? Yet see how lenient we 
 are to the crimes of the one, — how re- 
 lentless to those of the other I 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 July 10th. 
 There is a stern truth which is 
 stronger than all Spartan lessons — 
 Poverty ^6" the master-ill of the Avorld. 
 Look round. Does poverty leave its 
 signs over the graves ? Look at that 
 large tomb fenced round ; read that 
 long inscription : " Virtue " — " best of 
 husbands " — '' affectionate father " — 
 "inconsolable grief" — "sleeps in the 
 joyful hope,'' etc., etc. Do you sup- 
 pose these stoneless mounds hide no 
 dust of what were men just as good ? 
 But no epitaph tells their virtues, be- 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 151 
 
 speaks thoir wives' grief, or promises 
 
 joyful hope to them I 
 
 Does it matter ? Does God care for 
 
 the epitaph and tombstone ? 
 
 Tlie Caxtons. 
 
 July 11th. 
 Their talk now was only of their 
 love. Over the rapture of the present 
 the hopes of the future glowed like the 
 heaven above the gardens of spring. 
 They went in their trustful thoughts 
 far down the stream of time : they laid 
 out the chart of their destiny to come ; 
 they sulFercd the light of to-day to 
 suffuse the morrow. In the youth of 
 their hearts it seemed as if care, and 
 change, and death, were as things un- 
 known. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July mil. 
 " Ye mystic lights," said he, solilo- 
 quizing ; " worlds upon worlds — infinite 
 — incalculable. Bright defiers of rest 
 and change, rolling forever above our 
 petty sea of mortality, as, wave after 
 wave, we fret forth our little life, and 
 sink into the black abyss ; — can we look 
 upon you, note your appointed order, 
 and your unvarying course, and not 
 feel that we are indeed the poorest 
 puppets of an all-pervading and resist- 
 less destiny ? 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 July 13th. 
 Is that too masculine a spirit for 
 some ? Let each please himself. Give 
 me the woman who can echo all 
 thoughts that are noblest in men ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 153 
 
 July Htli. 
 When we have commenced a career, 
 what stop is there till the grave? — 
 where is the definite barrier of that am- 
 bition which, like the eastern bird, 
 seems ever on the wing, and never 
 rests upon the earth. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 July 15th. 
 
 Man is arrogant in proportion to his 
 
 ignorance. 
 
 Zanoni. 
 
 July 16th. 
 
 The man who hath served me wrongs 
 
 me till I have served him again ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 17th. 
 Conduct — conduct — conduct — there 
 lies my talent ; and what is conduct but 
 a steady walk from a design to its exe- 
 cution I 
 
 Ernest Maltravers, 
 
 July 18th. 
 
 Poor is the strength of body — a web 
 
 of law can entangle it, and a word from 
 
 a priest's mouth can palsy. 
 
 Harold, 
 
 July 19th. 
 HoAV a man past thirty foils a man 
 scarcely twenty ! — what superiority the 
 mere fact of living-on gives to the dull- 
 est dog I 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 July Wth. 
 It is a fearful thing to see men weep I 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 155 
 
 Jtoly ^Ist 
 There seems something intuitive in 
 the science wliich teaches us the 
 knowledge of our race. Some men 
 emerge from their seclusion, and find, 
 all at once, a power to dart into the 
 minds and drag forth the motives of 
 those they see ; it is a sort of second 
 sight, born with them, not acquired. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 July nd. 
 Had I lived more with men, and 
 less with dreams and books, I should 
 have made my nature large enough 
 to bear the loss of a single passion. 
 But in solitude we shrink up. Ko 
 plant so much as man needs the sun 
 and the air. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 23d. 
 Love should have implicit oonfu 
 dence as its bond and nature — and 
 jealousy is doubt, and doubt is the 
 death of love. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 July ^ith. 
 As ashes cannot be rekindled — as 
 love once dead can never revive, so 
 freedom departed from a people is 
 never regained. 
 
 The Lost Days of Pompeii, 
 
 July 25th. 
 Of all the conditions to which the 
 heart is subject, suspense is the one 
 that most gnaws and cankers into the 
 frame. One little month of that sus- 
 pense, when it involves death, we are 
 told, in a ver}^ remarkable work lately 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 157 
 
 published by an eyewitness, is suffi- 
 cient to plough fixed lines and fur- 
 rows in the face of a convict of five- 
 and-twenty — sufficient to dash the 
 brown hair with grey, and to bleach 
 the grey to white. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Jtdy ^6th. 
 Is it a crime to murder man? — a 
 greater crime to murder thought, 
 which is the life of all men. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 July 27th. 
 It is not study alone that produces 
 a writer ; it is intensity. In the mind, 
 as in yonder chimney, to make the fire 
 burn hot and quick, you must narrow 
 the draft. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 July 28th. 
 The moment we lose forethought, 
 we lose sight of a duty ; and though 
 it seems like a paradox, we can sel- 
 dom be careless without being selfish. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 July 29th. 
 'Tis a winning thing, sir, a garden ! 
 — It brings us an object every day; 
 and that's what I think a man ought 
 to have if he wishes to lead a happy 
 life. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 July 30th. 
 The great struggles in life are 
 limited moments. In the drooping 
 of the head upon the bosom, in the 
 pressure of the hand upon the brow, 
 we may scarcely consume a second 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 159 
 
 in our threescore years and ten; but 
 what revolutions of our whole being 
 may pass within us while that single 
 sand drops noiseless down to the bot- 
 tom of the hour-glass ! 
 
 The Caxtom. 
 
 July 31st. 
 Thou art wise in the lore of the 
 heart and love hath been thy study 
 from youth to grey hairs. Is it love, 
 is it hate, that prefers death for the 
 loved one, to the thought of her life 
 as another's ? 
 
 Harold. 
 
AUGUST. 
 
August 1st. 
 The situation of a Patrician who 
 honestly loves the people is, in those 
 evil times, when power oppresses and 
 freedom struggles, — when the two 
 divisions of men are wrestling against 
 each other, — the most irksome and 
 perplexing their destiny can possibly 
 contrive ! Shall he take part with the 
 nobles? — he betrays his conscience! 
 "With the people ? — he deserts his 
 friends ! 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 August '2d. 
 A baker is not to be called venal if 
 he sells his loaves — he is venal if he 
 sells himself. 
 
 Tht Caxtons. 
 
164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August 3d. 
 However we may darken and puzzle 
 ourselves with fancies and visions, and 
 the ingenuities of fanatical mysticism, 
 no man can mathematically or syllo- 
 gistically contend that the world 
 which a God made, and a Saviour 
 visited, was designed to be damned ! 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 August ith. 
 I shudder not at the creed of others. 
 I dare not curse them — I pray the 
 
 Great Father to convert. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 August 5th. 
 One thing, however, is quite clear — 
 that, whether Fortune be more like 
 Plutus or an angel, it is no use abusing 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 165 
 
 her — one may as well throw stones at 
 a star. And I think, if one looked 
 narrowly at her operations, one might 
 perceive that she gives every man a 
 chance, at least once in his life ; if he 
 take and make the best of it, she will 
 renew her visits, if not, itur ad astra ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Aitgust 6th. 
 But they were both alike in one 
 thing — they were not with the Future, 
 they were sensible of the Present — the 
 sense of the actual life, the enjoyment 
 of the breathing time, was strong 
 within them. Such is the privilege of 
 the extremes of our existence — Youth 
 and Age. Middle life is never with 
 to-day, its home is in to-morrow . . . 
 anxious, and scheming, and desiring, 
 
166 BEAUTIFUL TBOUQHTS 
 
 and wishing this plot ripened and that 
 hope fulfilled, while every wave of the 
 forgotten Time brings it nearer and 
 nearer to the end of all things. Half 
 our life is consumed in longing to be 
 nearer death. 
 
 Ernest MaUravns. 
 
 Augitst 7th. 
 For we should be as old men before 
 we engage, and as youths when we wish 
 to perform. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 August 8th. 
 Too mean I — go to ! — there is noth- 
 ing mean before God, unless it bo a 
 base soul under high titles. With me, 
 boy, there is but one nobility, and 
 Nature signs its charter. 
 
 Riemi. 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 167 
 
 August 0th. 
 Kill me! — not my thought ! 
 
 The Last of the Baro7i8. 
 
 August 10 th. 
 What an incalculable field of dread 
 and sombre contemplation is opened to 
 every man who, with his heart disen- 
 gaged from himself, and his eyes 
 accustomed to the sharp observance 
 of his tribe, walks through the streets 
 of a great city ! What a world of 
 dark and troublous secrets in the 
 breast of every one who hurries by 
 you! Goethe has said somewhere, 
 that each of us, the best as the worst, 
 hides within him something — some 
 feeling, some remembrance that, if 
 known, would make you hate him. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
168 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August 11th. 
 I advanced, and beheld a spectacle 
 of such agony, as can only be con- 
 ceived by those who have looked on 
 tlie grief which takes no fortitude 
 from reason, no consolation from con- 
 science — the grief which tells us what 
 would be the earth were man aban- 
 doned to his passions, and the chance 
 of the atheist reigned alone in the 
 merciless heavens. Pride humbled to 
 the dust ; ambition shivered into frag- 
 ments; love (or the passion mis- 
 taken for it) blasted into ashes; life, 
 at the first onset, bereaved of its 
 holiest ties, forsaken by its truest 
 guide! shame that writhed for re- 
 venge, and remorse that knew not 
 prayer— all, all blended, yet distinct. 
 
FROM JiULWKR LYTTON. 169 
 
 were in that avvlul spectaclo of tlio 
 
 guilty son. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
 August l^th. 
 Night, to tho earnest soul, opens the 
 bil)h3 of tho universe, and on the Uiaves 
 of Heaven is written — *' God is every- 
 where I " 
 
 The Last of the liaronn. 
 
 A m/uH mh. 
 Tell a man, in the full tide of his 
 triumphs, that he bears death within 
 him ; and what crisis of thought can 
 be more startling and more terrible ! 
 
 ErncM MnltraverH. 
 
 A uquHt 1J,th. 
 The good pilot wins his way through 
 all winds, and the brave heart fastens 
 fate to its flag. 
 
 Harold. 
 
170 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Augicst 15tli. 
 Human life is compared to the circle 
 — Is the simile just? — All lines that are 
 drawn from the centre to touch the 
 circumference, by the law of the circle, 
 are equal. But the lines that are 
 drawn from the heart of the man to 
 the verge of his destiny — do they equal 
 each other ? — Alas ! some seem so 
 brief, and some lengthen on as for- 
 ever. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 August 16th. 
 There is but one philosophy (though 
 there are a thousand schools), and its 
 name is Fortitude. 
 "to bear is to conquer our fate ! " 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 171 
 
 August 17 th. 
 So is it ever in life : mortal things 
 fade; immortal things spring more 
 freshly with every step to the tomb. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 August 18th. 
 He who himself betrays, cannot call 
 vengeance treason ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 August 19th. 
 Humph! — when nobles are hated, 
 and soldiers are bought, a mob may, 
 in any hour, become the master. An 
 honest people and a weak mob, — a 
 corrupt people and a strong mob. 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 August 20th. 
 The end of a scientific morality is 
 not to serve others only, but also to 
 
172 BEAUTIFUL THOUOETS 
 
 perfect and accomplish our individual 
 
 selves; our own souls are a solemn 
 
 trust to our own lives. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 August ^Ist. 
 
 Master books, but do not let them 
 
 master you. Eead to live, not live to 
 
 read. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 August 22d. 
 Whoever strives to know learns 
 that no human lore is despicable. 
 Despicable only you — ye fat and 
 bloated things — slaves of luxury — 
 sluggards in thought — who, cultivating 
 nothing but the barren sense, dream 
 that its poor soil can produce alike the 
 myrtle and the laurel. InTo, the wise 
 only can enjoy — to us only true luxury 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 173 
 
 is given, when mind, brain, invention, 
 experience, thought, learning, imagi- 
 nation, all contribute like rivers to 
 swell the seas of sense ! 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 August 23 d. 
 What royal robe so invests with im- 
 perial majesty the form of man as the 
 grave sense of power responsible, in an 
 earnest soul ? 
 
 Harold. 
 
 August ^Jpth. 
 It is the Senior, of from two to ten 
 years, that most seduces and enthrals 
 us. He has the same pursuits — views, 
 objects, pleasures, but more art and 
 experience in them all. He goes with 
 us in the path we are ordained to 
 
174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 tread, but from which the elder gener- 
 ation desires to warn us off. There is 
 very little influence where there is not 
 great sympathy. 
 
 Ernest Maltr avers. 
 
 August 25th. 
 Who shall describe those awful and 
 mysterious moments, when man, with 
 all his fiery passions, turbulent 
 thoughts, wild hopes, and despondent 
 fears, demands the solitary audience 
 of his Maker ? 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 August 26th. 
 When Fate selects her human 
 agents, her dark and mysterious spirit 
 is at work within them ; she moulds 
 their hearts, she exalts their energies, 
 she shapes them to the part she has 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 175 
 
 allotted them, and renders the mortal 
 
 instrument worthy of the solemn end. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 August 27th. 
 We should begin life with books; 
 they multiply the sources of employ- 
 ment ; so does capital ; — but capital is 
 of no use, unless we live on the inter- 
 est, — books are waste paper, unless we 
 spend in action the wisdom we get 
 
 from thought. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 August 28th. 
 All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, 
 if innocent — all that pleases the fancy 
 now, turns hereafter to love or to 
 knowledge. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 August Wth. 
 Mne times out of ten it is over the 
 Bridge of Sighs that we pass the nar- 
 row gulf from Youth to Manhood. 
 That interval is usually occupied by 
 an ill-placed or disappointed affection. 
 We recover, and we find ourselves a 
 new being. The intellect has become 
 hardened by the fire through which 
 it has passed. The mind profits by the 
 wrecks of every passion, and we may 
 measure our road to wisdom by the 
 sorrows we have undergone. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 August 30th. 
 
 As the moon plays upon the waves, 
 
 and seems to our eyes to favor with a 
 
 peculiar beam one long track amidst 
 
 the waters, leaving the rest in com- 
 
FliOM BULWEB LYTTON. 177 
 
 parative obscurity ; yet all the while, 
 she is no niggard in her lustre— for 
 though the rays that meet not our 
 eyes seem to us as though they were 
 not, yet she with an equal and unf avor- 
 ing loveliness, mirrors herself on every 
 wave: even so, perhaps. Happiness falls 
 with the same brightness and power 
 over the whole expanse of life, though 
 to our limited eyes she seems only to 
 rest on those billows from which the 
 ray is reflected back upon our sight. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 August 31st. 
 For few, alas! are they, whose 
 names may outlive the grave ; but the 
 thoughts of every man who writes, are 
 made undying ;— others appropriate, 
 advance, exalt them ; and millions of 
 
178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 minds unknown, uiulri^anied of, are re- 
 quired to pi-oduco the immortality of 
 one I 
 
 Eienzi. 
 
SEr^TEMBER. 
 
September 1st. 
 I WAS always an early riser. 
 Happy the man who is! Every 
 morning day comes to him with a 
 virgin's love, full of bloom, and 
 purity, and freshness. The youth of 
 ITature is contagious, like the gladness 
 of a happy child. I doubt if any man 
 can be called "old " so long as he is an 
 early riser and an early walker. And, 
 oh Youth — take my word of it — youth 
 in dressing-gown and slippers, dawd- 
 ling over breakfast at noon, is a very 
 decrepit, ghastly image of that youth 
 which sees the sun blush over the 
 mountains, and the dews sparkle upon 
 blossoming hedgerows. 
 
 TAe Caxtons. 
 
182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 SepteTriber 2d. 
 Custom surely blunts us to every 
 chance, every danger, that may happen 
 to us hourly, were the avalanche over 
 you for a day, — I grant your state of 
 torture, — but had an avalanche rested 
 over you for years, and not yet fallen, 
 you would forget that it could ever 
 fall; you would eat, sleep, and make 
 love, as if it were not ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 September 3d. 
 The biographies of Authors, those 
 ghostlike beings who seem to have had 
 no life but in the shadow of their own 
 haunting and imperishable thoughts, 
 dimmed the inspiration he might have 
 caught from their pages. Those Slaves 
 of the Lamp, those Silk-worms of the 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 183 
 
 Closet, how little had they enjoyed, 
 how little had they lived ! Condemned 
 to a mysterious fate by the wholesale 
 destinies of the world, they seemed 
 born but to toil and to spin thoughts 
 for the common crowd — and, their 
 task performed in drudgery and in 
 darkness, to die when no further serv- 
 ice could be wrung from their exhaus- 
 tion, l^ames had they been in life, 
 and as names they lived forever, in 
 life as in death, airy and unsubstantial 
 phantoms. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 September J^th. 
 There is something, Lester, hum- 
 bling to human pride in a rustic's life. 
 It grates against the heart to think of 
 the tone in which we unconsciously 
 
184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 permit ourselves to address him. We 
 see in him humanity in its simple 
 gtate ; it is a sad thought to feel that 
 we despise it ; that all we respect in 
 our species is what has been created 
 by art ; the gaud}^ dress, the glittering 
 equipage, or even the cultivated intel- 
 lect ; the mere and naked material of 
 Nature we eye with indifference or 
 trample on with disdain. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Se-ptemher 6th. 
 Poor child of toil, from the grey 
 dawn to the setting sun, one long 
 task! — no idea elicited — no thought 
 awakened beyond those that suffice to 
 make him the machine of others — the 
 serf of the hard soil ! And then, too, 
 mark how we scowl upon his scanty 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 185 
 
 holidays, how we hedge in his mirth 
 with laws, and turn his hilarity into 
 crime ! We make the whole of the 
 gay world, wherein we walk and take 
 our pleasure, to him a place of snares 
 and perils. If he leave his labor for 
 an instant, in that instant how many 
 temptations spring up to him ! And 
 yet we have no mercy for his errors ; 
 the jail — the transport-ship — the gal- 
 lows ; those are our sole lecture-books, 
 and our only methods of expostulation. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 September 6th. 
 Fie on the disparities of the world ! 
 They cripple the heart, they blind the 
 sense, they concentrate the thousand 
 links between man and man into the 
 two basest of earthly ties — servility 
 
186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and pride. Methinks the devils laugh 
 out when they hear us tell the boor 
 that his soul is as glorious and eternal 
 as our own; and yet when in the 
 grinding drudgery of his life, not a 
 spark of that soul can be called forth ; 
 when it sleeps, walled around in its 
 lumpish clay, from the cradle to the 
 grave, without a dream to stir the 
 deadness of its torpor. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 September' 7th. 
 Action, Maltravers, action; that is 
 the life for us. At our age we have 
 passion, fancy, sentiment; we can't 
 read them away, nor scribble them 
 away ; we must live upon them gener- 
 ously, but economically. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 187 
 
 September 8th, 
 When one man is resolved to know 
 another, it is almost impossible to pre- 
 vent him : we see daily the most re- 
 markable instances of perseverance on 
 one side conquering distaste on the 
 other. 
 
 September 9th. 
 No ; I don't say that it is an inevi- 
 table law that man should not be 
 happy ; but it is an inevitable law that 
 a man, in spite of himself, should live 
 for something higher than his own 
 happiness. He cannot live in himself 
 or for himself, however egotistical he 
 may try to be. Every desire he has 
 links him with others. Man is not a 
 machine — he is a part of one. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
188 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September 10th. 
 Three things are ever silent: 
 Thought, Destiny, and the Grave. 
 
 Harold, 
 
 September 11th. 
 We are here but as schoolboys, 
 whose life begins where school ends ; 
 and the battles we fought with our 
 rivals, and the toys that we shared 
 with our playmates, and the names 
 that we carved, high or low, on the 
 wall, above our desks — will they so 
 much bestead us hereafter? As new 
 fates crowd upon us, can they more 
 than pass through the memory with a 
 smile or a sigh? Look back to thy 
 school-days, and answer. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 189 
 
 September l^tli. 
 A vulgar boy requires Heaven 
 knows what assiduity to move three 
 steps — I do not say like a gentleman, 
 but like a body that has a soul in it ; 
 but give the least advantage of society 
 or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hun- 
 dred to one but she will glide into re- 
 finement before the boy can make a 
 bow without upsetting the table. 
 
 Ernest Maltravera. 
 
 /September ISth. 
 O literal ratiocinator, and dull to the 
 true logic of Attic irony ! can't you 
 comprehend that an affection may be 
 genuine as felt by the man, yet its 
 nature be spurious in relation to 
 others ? A man may genuinely be- 
 
190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 lieve he loves his fellow-creatures, 
 when he roasts them like Torquemada, 
 or guillotines them like St. Just ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 September l^th. 
 Every cheek was flushed — every 
 tongue spoke: the animation of the 
 orator had passed, like a living spirit, 
 into the breasts of the audience. He 
 had thundered against the disorders of 
 the patricians, yet, by a word, he had 
 disarmed the anger of the plebeians — 
 he had preached freedom, yet he had 
 opposed license. lie had calmed the 
 present, by a promise of the future. 
 He had chid their quarrels, yet had 
 supported their cause. He had mas- 
 tered the revenge of to-day by a sol- 
 emn assurance that there should come 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTOK 191 
 
 justice for the morrow. So great may 
 be the power, so mighty the eloquence, 
 so formidable the genius, of one man 
 — without arms, without rank, without 
 sword or ermine, who addresses him- 
 self to a people that is oppressed ! 
 
 liienzi. 
 
 September ISth. 
 All great knavery is madness ! The 
 world could not get on if truth and 
 goodness were not the natural tenden- 
 cies of sane minds. 
 
 27ie Caxtons. 
 
 September 16th. 
 
 Oh, my dear brother, what minds 
 
 like yours should guard against the 
 
 most is not the meanness of evil — it is 
 
 the evil that takes false nobility, by 
 
192 BEAUTIFUL TJff OUGHTS 
 
 garbing itself in the royal magnifi- 
 cence of good. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Septemher 17th. 
 The great secret of eloquence, is to 
 be in earnest ; the great secret of 
 Kienzi's eloquence was in the mighti- 
 ness of his enthusiasm. He never 
 spoke as one who doubted of success. 
 Perhaps, like most men who undertake 
 high and great actions, he himself was 
 never thoroughly aware of the ob- 
 stacles in his way. He saw the end, 
 bright and clear, and overleaped, in 
 the vision of his soul, the crosses and 
 the length of the path ; thus the deep 
 convictions of his own mind stamped 
 themselves irresistibly upon others. 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 193 
 
 He seemed less to promise than to 
 prophesy. 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 September 18th. 
 In our estimate of the ills of life, we 
 never suificiently take into our consid- 
 eration the wonderful elasticity of our 
 moral frame, the unlooked for, the 
 startling facility with which the hu- 
 man mind accommodates itself to all 
 change of circumstance, making an ob- 
 ject and even a joy from the hardest 
 and seemingly the least redeemed con- 
 ditions of fate. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 September 19th. 
 Let any man look over his past life, 
 let him recall not moments, not hours 
 of agony, for to them Custom lends 
 
194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 not her blessed magic; but let him 
 single out some lengthened period of 
 physical or moral endurance ; in has- 
 tily reverting to it, it may seem at 
 first, I grant, altogether wretched ; a 
 series of days marked with the black 
 stone, — the clouds without a star; — 
 but let him look more closely, it was 
 not so during the time of suffering ; a 
 thousand little things, in the bustle of 
 life, dormant and unheeded, then 
 started forth into notice, and became 
 to him objects of interest or diversion ; 
 the dreary present, once made familiar, 
 glided away from him, not less than if 
 it had been all happiness; his mind 
 dwelt not on the dull intervals, but 
 the stepping-stone it had created and 
 placed at each ; and, by that moral 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 195 
 
 dreaming which forever goes on within 
 man's secret heart, he lived as little in 
 the immediate world before him, as in 
 the most sanguine period of his youth, 
 or the most scheming of his maturity. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Septemher Wth. 
 " Good sense," said he one day to 
 Maltravers, ''is not a merely intellec- 
 tual attribute. It is rather the result 
 of a just equilibrium of all our facul- 
 ties, spiritual and moral. The dishon- 
 est, or the toys of their own passions, 
 may have genius ; but they rarely, if 
 ever, have good sense in the conduct 
 of life. They may often win large 
 prizes, but it is by a game of chance, 
 not skill. But the man whom I per- 
 ceive walking an honorable and up- 
 
196 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 right career — just to others, and also 
 to himself (for we owe justice to our- 
 selves — to the care of our fortunes, our 
 character — to the management of our 
 passions) — is a more dignified repre- 
 sentative of his Maker than the mere 
 child of genius. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 jSeptemher 21st. 
 Of such a man, we say, he has good 
 SENSE ; yes, but he has also integrity, 
 self-respect, and self-denial. A thou- 
 sand trials which his sense braves and 
 conquers, are temptations also to his 
 probity — his temper — in a word, to all 
 the many sides of his complicated na- 
 ture. ]^ow, I do not think he will 
 have this good se7ise any more than a 
 drunkard will have strong nerves, un- 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 197 
 
 less he be in the constant habit of 
 keeping his mind clear from the intox- 
 ication of envy, vanity, and the various 
 emotions that dupe and mislead us. 
 Good sense is not, therefore, an ab- 
 stract quality or a solitary talent ; but 
 it is the natural result of the habit of 
 thinking justly, and therefore seeing 
 clearly, and is as different from the 
 sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist 
 or attorney, as the philosophy of Soc- 
 rates differed from the rhetoric of 
 Gorgias. As a mass of individual ex- 
 cellencies make up this attribute in a 
 man, so a mass of such men thus char- 
 acterized give a character to a nation. 
 
 Ernest Maltravera. 
 
 jSeptemher 22d. 
 And out from all these speculations, 
 
198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 to which I do such hurried and scanty 
 justice, he drew the blessed truth, that 
 carries hope to the land of the Caffre, 
 the hut of the Bushman — that there is 
 nothing in the flattened skull and the 
 ebon aspect that rejects God's law — 
 improvement ; that by the same prin- 
 ciple which raises the dog, the lowest 
 of animals in its savage state, to the 
 highest after man — viz, admixture of 
 race — you can elevate into nations of 
 majesty and power the outcasts of hu- 
 manity, now your compassion or your 
 
 scorn. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
 /Septemher 23d. 
 The worst fatigue is that which 
 comes without exercise. 
 
 Ernest Maliravers. 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 199 
 
 Bejptember ^Iith. 
 But he who admits Ambition to the 
 companionship of Love, admits a giant 
 that outstrides the gentler footsteps of 
 its comrade. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 SejptembeT ^5th. 
 " Forget ! " said Aram, stopping ab- 
 ruptly; "ay, forget — it is a strange 
 truth ! we do forget ! the summer 
 passes over the furrow, and the corn 
 springs up ; the sod forgets the flower 
 of the past year; the battlefield for- 
 gets the blood that has been spilt upon 
 its turf ; the sky forgets the storm ; 
 and the water the noonday sun that 
 slept upon its bosom. All ISTature 
 preaches forgetfulness. Its very order 
 is the progress of oblivion. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 September 26th. 
 He who never despairs seldom com- 
 pletely fails. 
 
 Kenelm Chillingly. 
 
 September 27th. 
 Do you ever see a man in any soci- 
 ety sitting mute for hours, and not 
 feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate 
 the wall he thus builds up between 
 others and himself ? Does he not in- 
 terest you far more than the brilliant 
 talker at your left — the airy wit at 
 your right, whose shafts fall in vain 
 on the sullen barrier of the silent 
 man ! Silence, dark sister of Nox and 
 Erebus, how, layer upon layer, shadow 
 upon shadow, blackness upon black- 
 ness, thou stretchest thyself from hell 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 201 
 
 to heaven, over thy two chosen haunts 
 —man's heart and the grave ! 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Septemher 28th. 
 Ah! do not fancy that in lovers' 
 quarrels there is any sweetness that 
 compensates the sting. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 Septemler 29th. 
 God made us, not to indulge only in 
 crystal pictures, weave idle fancies, 
 pine alone, and mourn over what we 
 cannot help— but to be alert and ac- 
 tive — givers of happiness. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Septem.her 20th. 
 The pen is mightier than the sword. 
 
 Richelieu, 
 
OCTOBER. 
 
October 1st, 
 Theee is something so unselfish in 
 tempers reluctant to despond. You 
 see that such persons are not occupied 
 with their own existence ; they are not 
 fretting the calm of the present life 
 with the egotisms of care, and con- 
 jecture, and calculation ; if they learn 
 anxiety, it is for another ; but in the 
 heart of that other, how entire is their 
 
 trust ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 October M. 
 
 Less terrible is it to find the body 
 
 wasted, the features sharp with the 
 
 great life-struggle, than to look on the 
 
 face from which the mind is gone— 
 
206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 the eyes in which there is no recogni- 
 tion. Such a sight is a startling shock 
 to that unconscious habitual material- 
 ism with which we are apt familiarly 
 to regard those we love ; for in thus 
 missing the mind, the heart, the affec- 
 tion that sprang to ours, we are sud- 
 denly made aware that it was the 
 something within the form, and not 
 the form itself, that was so dear to us. 
 The form itself is still, perhaps, little 
 altered ; but that lip which smiles no 
 welcome, that eye which wanders over 
 us as strangers, that ear which distin- 
 guishes no more our voices — the friend 
 we sought is not there ! Even our 
 own love is chilled back — grows a kind 
 of vague superstitious terror. Yes, it 
 was not the matter, still present to us. 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 207 
 
 which had conciliated all those subtle 
 nameless sentiments which are classed 
 and fused in the word " affection^'' it 
 was the airy, intangible, electric some- 
 thing^ the absence of which now ap- 
 pals us. 
 
 Tlie Caxtons. 
 
 October 3d. 
 The influence of fate seems so small 
 on the man who, in erring, but errs as 
 the egoist, and shapes out of ill some 
 use that can profit himself. But Fate 
 hangs a shadow so vast on the heart 
 that errs but in venturing abroad, and 
 knows only in others the sources of 
 sorrow and joy. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 October liili. 
 Shame is not in the loss of other 
 
208 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 men's esteem, — it is in the loss of our 
 own. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 October 5th. 
 In the pure heart of a girl loving for 
 the first time — love is far more ecstatic 
 than in man, inasmuch as it is un- 
 fevered by desire — love then and there 
 makes the only state of human exist- 
 ence which is at once capable of calm- 
 ness and transport. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 October 6th. 
 Things seem to approximate to God 
 in proportion to their vitality and 
 movement. Of all things, least inert 
 and sullen should be the soul of man. 
 How the grass grows up over the very 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 209 
 
 graves — quickly it grows and greenly 
 — but neither so quick nor so green, 
 my Blanche, as hope and comfort from 
 human sorrows. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 October 7th. 
 It is in small states that glory is 
 most active and pure, — the more con- 
 fined the limits of the circle, the more 
 ardent the patriotism. In small states, 
 opinion is concentrated and strong, — 
 every eye reads your actions — your 
 public motives are blended with your 
 private ties, — every spot in your nar- 
 row sphere is crowded with forms 
 familiar since your childhood, — the 
 applause of your citizens is like the 
 caresses of your friends. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
210 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 8th. 
 The haughty woman who can stand 
 alone and requires no leaning-place in 
 our heart, loses the spell of her sex. 
 
 Ernest MaUravers. 
 
 October 9th. 
 Genius is essentially honest. 
 
 Ernest MaUravers, 
 
 October 10th. 
 For, despite Helvetius, a common 
 experience teaches us that though 
 education and circumstances may 
 mould the mass, Nature herself some- 
 times forms the individual, and throws 
 into the clay, or its spirit, so much of 
 beauty or deformity, that nothing can 
 utterly subdue the original elements of 
 character. 
 
 Ernest MaUravers, 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 211 
 
 October 11th. 
 
 No son of fortune, no man placing 
 
 himself and the world in antagonism, 
 
 can ever escape from some belief in the 
 
 invisible. Caesar could ridicule and 
 
 profane the mystic rights of Koman 
 
 mythology, but he must still believe in 
 
 \A^ fortune. 
 
 Harold. 
 
 Octoler 12th. — Discovery of America. 
 Thou beautiful land ! Canaan of 
 the exiles, and Ararat to many a shat- 
 tered Ark ! Fair cradle of a race for 
 whom the unbounded heritage of a 
 future, that no sage can conjecture, no 
 prophet divine, lies afar in the golden 
 promise-light of Time ! — destined, per- 
 chance, from the sins and sorrows of a 
 civilization struggling with its own 
 
212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 elements of decay, to renew the youth 
 of the world, and transmit the great 
 soul of England through the cycles of 
 Infinite Change. All climates that 
 can best ripen the products of earth, 
 or form into various character and 
 temper the different families of man, 
 " rain influences " from the heaven 
 that smiles so benignly on those who 
 had once shrunk ragged from the wind, 
 or scowled on the thankless sun. 
 
 • The Caxtons. 
 
 October 13th. 
 I do think it requires a great sense 
 of religion, or, at all events, children 
 of one's own, in whom one is young 
 again, to reconcile oneself to becom- 
 ing old. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 213 
 
 October Hth. 
 
 Harold's Prayer hefore the Battle of 
 Hastings, Fought on Octoler Hth, 
 1066 : 
 
 O Lord of Hosts— We Children of 
 Doubt and Time, trembling in the 
 dark, dare not take to ourselves to 
 question Thine unerring will. Sorrow 
 and death, as joy and life, are at the 
 breath of a mercy divine, and a wis- 
 dom all-seeing : and out of the hours 
 of evil Thou drawest, in mystic circle, 
 the eternity of Good. " Thy will be 
 done on earth, as it is in heaven." If, 
 O Disposer of events, our human 
 prayers are not adverse to Thy pre- 
 judged decrees, protect these lives, the 
 bulwarks of our homes and altars, sons 
 whom the land offers as a sacrifice. 
 
214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 May Thine angel turn aside the blade 
 — as of old from the heart of Isaac ! 
 But if, O Kuler of E"ations, in whose 
 sight the ages are as moments, and 
 generations but as sands in the sea, 
 these lives are doomed, may the death 
 expiate their sins, and, shrived on the 
 battlefield, absolve and receive the 
 soul! 
 
 Harold. 
 
 October 15th. 
 Come, I will tell you the one secret 
 of my public life — that which explains 
 all its failure (for, in spite of my posi- 
 tion, I have failed) and its regrets — / 
 want conviction ! 
 
 Tlie Caxions. 
 
 October 16th. — Heaven. 
 "There," thought the musing 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 215 
 
 maiden, "cruelty and strife shall 
 cease — there, vanish the harsh dif- 
 ferences of life — there, those whom 
 we have loved and lost are found, and 
 through the Son, who tasted of mortal 
 sorrow, we are raised to the home of 
 the Eternal Father ! " 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 Octoher mh.—The Same. 
 "And there," thought the aspiring 
 sage, "the mind, dungeoned and 
 chained below, rushes free into the 
 realms of space — there, from every 
 mystery falls the veil — there, the 
 Omniscient smiles on those who, 
 through the darkness of life, have fed 
 that lamp — the soul — there. Thought, 
 
216 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 but the seed on earth, bursts into the 
 flower, and ripens to the fruit ! " 
 
 The Last of the Barom. 
 
 October ISth. 
 Life is a sleep in which we dream 
 most at the commencement and the 
 close — the middle part absorbs us too 
 much for dreams. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 October 19th. 
 Perhaps I would rather dream of 
 him, such as I would have him, than 
 know him for what he is. He might 
 be unkind, or ungenerous, or love me 
 but little ; rather Avould I not be loved 
 at all, than loved coldly, and eat away 
 my heart by comparing it with his. I 
 can love him now as something ab- 
 stract, unreal, and divine : but what 
 
FBOM BULWER LYTTON. 217 
 
 would be my shame, my grief, if I 
 were to find him less than I have im- 
 agined ! Then, indeed, my life would 
 have been wasted : then, indeed, the 
 beauty of the earth would be gone ! 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 October Wth. 
 Soldiers brave not the dangers that 
 are braved by a wise man in an un- 
 wise age ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 October 2 1st. 
 How incalculable — how measureless 
 — how viewless the consequences of one 
 crime, even when we think we have 
 weighed them all with scales that 
 would have turned with a hair's 
 weight ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 
 
 De-fine-gentlemanize yourself from 
 
 the crown of your head to the sole of 
 
 your foot, and become the greatest 
 
 aristocrat for so doing ; for he is more 
 
 than an aristocrat, he is a king, who 
 
 suffices in all things for himself — who 
 
 is his own master, because he wants no 
 
 valetaille. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Oetoher 23d. 
 Stop there, Mr. Simcox. Never mind 
 the devil yet awhile. Let her first 
 learn to do good, that God may love 
 her; the rest will follow. I would 
 rather make people religious through 
 their best feelings than their worst, — 
 through their gratitude and affections, 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 219 
 
 rather than their fears and calcula- 
 tions of risk and punishment. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 October ^th. 
 It is the persons we love that make 
 beautiful the haunts we have known. 
 
 Harold, 
 
 October 26th. 
 A man who gets in a passion with 
 himself may be soon out of temper 
 with others. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 October 26th. 
 The brave man wants no charms to 
 encourage him to his duty, and the 
 good man scorns all warnings that 
 would deter him from fulfilling it. 
 
 Harold. 
 
220 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October mth. 
 There is nothing more salutary to 
 active men than occasional intervals 
 of repose, — when we look within, in- 
 stead of without, and examine almost 
 insensibly (for I hold strict and con- 
 scious self-scrutiny a thing much rarer 
 than we suspect) — what we have done 
 — what we are capable of doing. It 
 is settling, as it were, a debtor and 
 creditor account with the Past, before 
 we plunge into new speculations. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 October 28th. 
 It is better to sow a good heart 
 with kindness than a field with corn, 
 for the heart's harvest is perpetual. 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 221 
 
 October 29th. 
 We are apt to connect the voice of 
 Conscience with the stillness of mid- 
 night. But I think we wrong that 
 innocent hour. It is that terrible 
 " NEXT MORNING," when reason is 
 wide awake, upon which remorse 
 fastens its fangs. Has a man gambled 
 away his all, or shot his friend in a 
 duel — has he committed a crime, or 
 incurred a laugh — it is the next morn- 
 ing, when the irretrievable past rises 
 before him like a spectre ; then doth 
 the churchyard of memory yield up 
 its grizzly dead — then is the witching 
 hour when the foul fiend within us 
 can least tempt perhaps, but most tor- 
 ment. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 October 30th. 
 The doubt and the fear — the caprice 
 and the change, which agitate the sur- 
 face, swell also the tides, of passion. 
 Woman, too, whose love is so much 
 the creature of her imagination, al- 
 ways asks something of mystery and 
 conjecture in the object of her af- 
 fection. It is a luxury to her to per- 
 plex herself with a thousand appre- 
 hensions ; and the more restlessly her 
 lover occupies her mind, the more 
 deeply he enthrals it. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 October 31st. 
 By St. Dunstan ! doth it matter 
 what may be the cause of quarrel. 
 
FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 223 
 
 SO long as dog or man bears himself 
 bravely, with a due sense of honor and 
 derring-do. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
NOVEMBER. 
 
I^ovemher 1st. 
 Me ! — Is it possible to ruin the 
 young, and strong, and healthy ! 
 Kuin me, with these thews and sinews ! 
 — ruin me, with the education you have 
 given me — thews and sinews of the 
 mind! Oh no! there, Fortune is 
 harmless I 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Novemher '2d. 
 What deduction from reason can 
 ever apply to love ? Love is a very 
 contradiction of all the elements of 
 our ordinary nature, — it makes the 
 proud man meek, — the cheerful, sad, 
 — the high-spirited, tame ; our strong- 
 
228 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 est resolutions, our hardiest energy- 
 fail before it. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 ISl'ovem'ber 3d. 
 Continue to cultivate the mind, to 
 sharpen by exercise the genius, to at- 
 tempt to delight or to instruct your 
 race ; and even supposing you fall 
 short of every model you set before 
 you — supposing your name moulder 
 with your dust, still you will have 
 passed life more nobly than the unla- 
 borious herd. Grant that you win not 
 that glorious accident, **a name be- 
 low," how can you tell but what you 
 may have fitted yourself for high des- 
 tiny and employ in the world not of 
 men, but of spirits ? The powers of 
 the mind are things that cannot be 
 
FE03f BULWEB LYTTON. 229 
 
 less immortal than the mere sense of 
 identity ; their acquisitions accompany 
 us through the Eternal Progress ; and 
 we may obtain a lower or a higher 
 grade hereafter, in proportion as we 
 are more or less fitted by the exercise 
 of our intellect to comprehend and ex- 
 ecute the solemn agencies of God. 
 
 Ernest 3IaUraver8, 
 
 JVoveviher 4th. 
 "A king without letters is a crowned 
 ass ? " When the king is an ass, asinine 
 are his subjects. Learn that a full 
 head makes a weighty hand. 
 
 Harold, 
 
 Novemher 6th. 
 Happiness will not permit us to be 
 mirthful. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 November 6th. 
 " It is destiny ! " — phrase of the weak 
 human heart ! " It is destiny ! " dark 
 apology for every error ! The strong 
 and the virtuous admit no destiny! 
 On earth, guides Conscience — in heaven 
 watches God. And Destiny is but 
 the phantom we invoke to silence the 
 one — to dethrone the other ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 November 7th, 
 "Giacomo," said Angelo, thought- 
 fully, " there are some men whom we, 
 of another mind and mould, can rarely 
 comprehend, and never fathom. And 
 of such men I have observed that a 
 supreme confidence in their own for- 
 tunes or their own souls, is the most 
 common feature. Thus impressed, and 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 231 
 
 thus buoyed, they rush into danger 
 with a seeming madness, and from dan- 
 ger soar to greatness, or sink to death. 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 November 8th. 
 The only gold a young man should 
 covet is enough to suffice for the 
 knight's spurs to his heels. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 November 9th. 
 
 " Men are often deceived," said she 
 
 sadly, yet with a half smile ; ^' but 
 
 women rarely, — save in love." 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 November 10th. 
 "Whoever is above the herd, whether 
 knight or scholar, must learn to de- 
 spise the hootings that follow Merit. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Novemher 11th. 
 God and His angels are in every 
 spot where virtue trembles and resists. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 Noveiiiber l^th. 
 It is a dark epoch in a man's life 
 when sleep forsakes him; when he 
 tosses to and fro, and Thought will 
 not be silenced; when the drug and 
 draught are the courters of stupefac- 
 tion, not sleep ; when the down pillow 
 is as a knotted log ; when the eyelids 
 close but with an effort, and there is a 
 drag and a weight, and a dizziness in 
 the eyes at morn. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Novemher 13th. 
 Desire and grief, and love, these are 
 the young man's torments, but iliQj 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 233 
 
 are the creatures of Time; Time re- 
 moves them as it brings, and the vigils 
 we keep, "while the evil days come 
 not," if weary, are brief and few. But 
 Memory, and Care and Ambition, and 
 Avarice, these are the demon-gods that 
 defy the Time that fathered them. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Novemher IJfth. 
 The worldlier passions are the 
 growth of mature years, and their 
 grave is dug but in our own. As the 
 dark Spirits in the northern tale, that 
 watch against the coming of one of a 
 brighter and holier race, lest, if he 
 seize them unawares, he bind them 
 prisoners in his chain, they keep ward 
 at night over the entrance of that deep 
 
234 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 cave — the human heart — and scare 
 away the angel Sleep ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 November 15th. 
 Amidst the grief and solitude of the 
 pure, there comes, at times, a strange 
 and rapt serenity — a sleep-awake — 
 over which the instinct of life beyond 
 the grave glides like a noiseless dream ; 
 and ever that heaven that the soul 
 yearns for is colored by the fancies of 
 the fond human heart, — each fashion- 
 ing the above from the desires unsatis- 
 fied below. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 JVovemher 16th. 
 Better task than that of astrologers, 
 and astronomers to boot ! Who among 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 235 
 
 them can " loosen the band of Orion " ? 
 — but who amongst us may not be per- 
 mitted by God to have sway over the 
 action and orbit of the human soul ? 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 November 17th. 
 In a dominant church the genius of 
 intolerance hetrays its cause; — in a 
 weak and a persecuted church, the 
 same genius mainly supports. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 November 18th. 
 Terrible and eternal moral for Wis- 
 dom and for Avarice, for sages and for 
 kings — ever shall he who would be the 
 maker of gold, breathe the air of 
 death ! 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 NoveTnher 19th. 
 The Night and the Solitude ! — these 
 make the ladder round which angels 
 cluster, and beneath which my spirit 
 can dream of God. Oh ! none can 
 know what the pilgrim feels as he 
 walks on his holy course ; nursing no 
 fear, and dreading no danger — for God 
 is with him ! He hears the winds 
 murmur glad tidings ; the woods sleep 
 in the shadow of Almighty wings ; the 
 stars are the Scriptures of Heaven, the 
 tokens of love, and the witnesses of 
 immortality. J^ight is the Pilgrim's 
 day. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 November Wth. 
 Behold ! the kingdom a man makes 
 out of his own mind is the only one 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 237 
 
 that it delighteth man to govern ! Be- 
 hold, he is lord over its springs and 
 movements ; its wheels revolve and 
 
 stop at his bidding. 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 JSTovemher 21st. 
 Freedom alone makes men sacrifice 
 to each other. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 Novemher '2'2d. 
 But while a nation has already a 
 fair degree of constitutional freedom, 
 I believe no struggle so perilous and 
 awful as that between the aristocratic 
 and the democratic principle. A peo- 
 ple against a despot — that contest re- 
 quires no prophet ; but the change from 
 an aristocratic to a democratic com- 
 
238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 monwealth is indeed the wide, un- 
 bounded prospect upon which rest 
 shadows, clouds, and darkness. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 NovemheT ^Sd. 
 It is ever the case with stern and 
 stormy spirits, that the meek ones 
 which contrast them steal strangely 
 into their affections. This principle of 
 human nature can alone account for 
 the enthusiastic devotion which the 
 mild sujfferings of the Saviour awoke 
 in the fiercest exterminators of the 
 North. In proportion, often, to the 
 warrior's ferocity, was his love to that 
 Divine model, at whose sufferings he 
 wept, to whose tomb he wandered 
 barefoot, and whose example of com- 
 passionate forgiveness he would have 
 
FEOM BULWEB LYTTON. 239 
 
 thought himself the basest of men to 
 follow I 
 
 Harold, 
 
 November ^^th. 
 Charm was the characteristic of 
 Lady EUinor — a charm indefinable. 
 It was not the mere grace of refined 
 breeding, though that went a great 
 way ; it was a charm that seemed to 
 spring from natural sympathy. Whom- 
 soever she addressed, that person ap- 
 peared for the moment to engage all 
 her attention, to interest her whole 
 mind. She had a gift of conversation 
 very peculiar. She made what she 
 said like a continuation of what was 
 said to her. She seemed as if she had 
 entered into your thoughts, and talked 
 them aloud. Her mind was evidently 
 
240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 cultivated with great care, but she was 
 perfectly void of pedantry. A hint, 
 an allusion sufficed to show how much 
 she knew to one well instructed, with- 
 out mortifying or perplexing the ig- 
 norant. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 November ^5th. 
 The law is very obliging, but more 
 polite than efficient. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii, 
 
 November 26th. 
 Ambition, like any other passion, 
 gives us unhappy moments ; but it gives 
 us also an animated life. In its pur- 
 suit, the minor evils of the world are 
 not felt ; little crosses, little vexations 
 do not disturb us. Like men who walk 
 in sleep, we are absorbed in one pow- 
 
FE03I BULWEB LYTTON. 241 
 
 erful dream, and do not even know the 
 obstacles in our way, or the dangers 
 that surround us : in a word we have 
 no private life. All that is merely 
 domestic, the anxiety and the loss 
 which fret other men, which blight the 
 happiness of other men, are not felt by 
 us : we are wholly public ; — so that if 
 we lose much comfort, we escape much 
 
 care. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 I^ovemher 27tli. 
 From this record of error he drew 
 forth the grand eras of truth. He 
 showed how earnest men never think 
 in vain, though their thoughts may be 
 errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, 
 age after age, the human mind marches 
 on — like the ocean, receding here, but 
 
242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 there advancing ; how from the specu- 
 lations of the Greeks sprang all true 
 philosophy ; how from the institutions 
 of the Koman rose all durable systems 
 of government ; how from the robust 
 follies of the north came the glory of 
 chivalry, and the modern delicacies of 
 honor, and the sweet, harmonizing in- 
 fluences of woman. 
 
 The Gaxtons. 
 
 J^ominber 28th. 
 Time had been, indeed, at work ; but, 
 with the same exulting bound and 
 happy voice, that little brook leaped 
 along its way. Ages hence, may the 
 course be as glad, and the murmur as 
 full of mirth ! They are blessed things, 
 those remote and unchanging streams ! 
 — they fill us with the same love as if 
 
FEOM BULWEE LYTTON. 243 
 
 they were living creatures !— and in a 
 green corner of the world there is one 
 that, for my part, I never see without 
 forgetting myself to tears— tears that 
 I would not lose for a king's ransom ; 
 tears that no other sight or sound could 
 call from their source ; tears of what 
 affection, what soft regret ; tears that 
 leave me, for days afterward, a better 
 and a kinder man ! 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
 Nommher Wth. 
 I have noted myself in life, that there 
 are objects, senseless as that mould of 
 iron, which, if we labor at them, wind 
 round our hearts as if they were flesh 
 and blood. So some men love learn- 
 ing, others glory, others power. 
 
 The La8t of the Barons, 
 
244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 JVovemher SOth. 
 Better hew wood and draw water, 
 then attach ourselves devotedly to an 
 art in which we have not the capacity 
 to excel. ... It is to throw away the 
 healthful objects of life for a diseased 
 dream, — worse than the Kosicrucians, 
 it is to make a sacrifice of all human 
 beauty for the smile of a sylphid, that 
 never visits us but in visions. 
 
 Ernest Maltravera, 
 
DECEMBER. 
 
December 1st. 
 Examine not, O child of man ! — ex- 
 amine not that mysterious melancholy 
 with the hard eyes of thy reason ; thou 
 canst not impale it on the spikes of thy 
 thorny logic, nor describe its enchanted 
 circle by problems conned from thy 
 schools. Borderer thyself of two 
 worlds — the Dead and the Living — 
 give thine ear to the tones, bow thy 
 soul to the shadows that steal, in the 
 Season of Change, from the dim Border 
 Land. 
 
 The Caxtons. 
 
 Decemher '2d. — Tlie Creed of an An- 
 cient Egyptian. 
 Of that which created the world, 
 we know, we can know, nothing, save 
 
248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 these attributes — power and unvarying 
 regularity : — stern, crushing, relentless 
 regularity — heeding no individual cases 
 — rolling — sweeping — burning on ; — no 
 matter what scattered hearts, severed 
 from the general mass, fall ground and 
 scorched beneath its wheels. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 December 3d. 
 Thus, when a great man, who has en- 
 grossed our thoughts, our conjectures, 
 our homage, dies, a gap seems suddenly 
 left in the world ; a wheel in the 
 mechanism of our own being appears 
 abruptly stilled ; a portion of ourselves, 
 and not our worst portion, for how 
 many pure, high, generous sentiments 
 it contains, dies with him ! 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON, 249 
 
 December Ifth. — A Loveless Match. 
 
 Thou dost not love. Bid farewell for- 
 ever to thy fond dreams of a life more 
 blessed than that of mortals. From 
 the stormy sea of the future are blotted 
 out eternally for thee — Calyph and her 
 Golden Isle. Thou canst no more 
 paint on the dim canvas of thy desires 
 the form of her with whom thou 
 couldst dwell forever. Thou hast 
 been unfaithful to thine own ideal — 
 thou hast given thyself forever and 
 forever to another — thou hast re- 
 nounced hope — thou must live as in a 
 prison, with a being with whom thou 
 hast not the harmory of love. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 December 5th. — A Love Match. 
 Attest the betrothal of these young 
 
250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 hearts, O ye Powers that draw nature 
 to nature by spells which no galdra 
 can trace, and have wrought in the 
 secrets of creation no mystery so per- 
 fect as love, — Attest it, thou temple, 
 thou altar! — attest it, O sun and O 
 air! While the forms are divided, 
 may the souls cling together — sorrow 
 with sorrow, and joy with joy. And 
 when, at length, bride and bridegroom 
 are one, — O stars, may the trouble 
 with which ye are charged have ex- 
 hausted its burthen ; may no danger 
 molest, and no malice disturb, but, 
 over the marriage-bed, shine in peace, 
 O ye stars ! 
 
 Harold. 
 
 Decemher 6th. 
 In that love my spirit awoke, and 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 251 
 
 was baptized ; every thought that has 
 risen from earth, and lost itself in 
 heaven, was breathed into my heart by 
 thee! Thy creature and thy slave, 
 hadst thou tempted me to sin, sin had 
 seemed hallowed by thy voice; but 
 thou saidst, " True love is virtue," and 
 so I worshipped virtue in loving thee. 
 Strengthened, purified, by thy bright 
 companionship, from thee came the 
 strength to resign thee— from thee the 
 refuge under the wings of God — from 
 thee the firm assurance that our union 
 yet shall be— not as our poor Hilda 
 dreams, on the perishable earth,— but 
 there! oh, there! yonder by the 
 celestial altars, in the land in which 
 all spirits are filled with love. 
 
 Harold. 
 
252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 Decemher 7th. 
 Kill my labor and thou destroyest 
 
 VCLQ 
 
 The Last of the Barons. 
 
 December 8th. 
 Look round on Nature — behold the 
 only company that humbles me not — 
 except the dead whose souls speak to 
 us from the immortality of books. 
 These herbs at your feet, I know their 
 secrets — I watch the mechanism of 
 their life ; the winds — they have taught 
 me their language ; the stars — I have 
 unravelled their mysteries ; and these, 
 the creatures and ministers of God — 
 these I offend not by my mood — to 
 them I utter my thoughts, and break 
 forth into my dreams, without reserve 
 and without fear. 
 
 Eugene Aram. 
 
FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 253 
 
 Decemher 9th. 
 The tyrant thinks he is free, because 
 he commands slaves : the meanest 
 peasant in a free state is more free 
 than he is. 
 
 Bienzi. 
 
 December 10th. 
 " And if, O stars ! " murmured Mal- 
 travers, from the depths of his excited 
 lieart — " if I have been insensible to 
 your solemn beauty — if the Heaven 
 and the Earth had been to me but as 
 air and clay — if I were one of a dull 
 and dim-eyed herd — I might live on, 
 and drop into the grave from the ripe- 
 ness of unprofitable years. It is be- 
 cause I yearn for the great objects of 
 an immortal being, that life shrinks 
 and shrivels up like a scroll. Away ! 
 
254 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 I will not listen to these human and 
 material monitors, and consider life 
 as a thing greater than the things that 
 I would live for. My choice is made, 
 glory is more persuasive than the 
 grave." 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 December 11th. 
 As courage was the first virtue that 
 honor called forth — the first virtue 
 from which all safety and civilization 
 proceed — so we do right to keep that 
 one virtue at least clear and unsullied 
 from all the money-making, mercenary, 
 pay-me-in-cash abominations which are 
 the vices, not the virtues, of the civili- 
 zation it has produced. 
 
 The Caxtona. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 255 
 
 December 12th. 
 There is a terrible disconnection be- 
 tween the author and the man — the 
 author's life and the man's life — the 
 eras of visible triumph may be those 
 of the most intolerable, though unre- 
 vealed and unconjectured anguish. 
 The book that delighted us to compose 
 may first appear in the hour when all 
 things under the sun are joyless. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 December 13th. — Ars Longa Vita 
 Brevis. 
 
 A vast empire rises on my view, 
 greater than that of Caesars and con- 
 querors — an empire durable and uni- 
 versal in the souls of men, that time 
 itself cannot overthrow ; and Death 
 marches with me, side by side, and the 
 
256 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 skeleton hand waves me back to the 
 nothingness of common men. 
 
 Ernest Maltravers. 
 
 December IJ/ih. 
 "Your Holiness knows well," said 
 the Cardinal, " that for the multitude 
 of men there are two watchwords of 
 war — Liberty and Keligion." 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 Decemher 15th. 
 A young man's ambition is but van- 
 ity, — it has no definite aim, — it plays 
 with a thousand toys. As with one 
 passion, so with the rest. In youth, 
 love is ever on the Aving, but, like the 
 birds in April, it hath not yet built its 
 nest. With so long a career of sum- 
 mer and hope before it, the disappoint- 
 ment of to-day is succeeded by the 
 
FE03I BULWER LYTTON. 257 
 
 novelty of to-morrow — and the sun 
 that advances to the noon but dries up 
 its fervent tears. But when we have 
 arrived at that epoch of life, — when, 
 if the light fail us — if the last rose 
 wither, — we feel that the loss cannot 
 be retrieved, and that the frost and 
 the darkness are at hand, — Love be- 
 comes to us a treasure that we watch 
 over and hoard with a miser's care. 
 Our youngest-born affection is our 
 darling and our idol, the fondest 
 pledge of the Past, the most cherished 
 of our hopes for the Future. A cer- 
 tain melancholy that mingles with our 
 joy the possession, only enhances its 
 charm. We feel ourselves so depend- 
 ent on it for all that is yet to come. 
 Our other barks — our gay galleys of 
 
258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 pleasure — our stately argosies of pride 
 — have been swallowed up by the re- 
 morseless wave. On this last vessel 
 we freight our all — to its frail tene- 
 ment we commit ourselves. The star 
 that guides it is our guide, — and in the 
 tempest that menaces, we behold our 
 
 own doom ! 
 
 Alice, 
 
 December 16th. 
 It was one of those listless panics, 
 those strange fits of indifference and 
 lethargy which often seize upon a peo- 
 ple who make liberty a matter of im- 
 pulse and caprice, to whom it has be- 
 come a catchword, who have not long 
 enjoyed all its rational, and sound, and 
 practical, and blessed results; who 
 have been affrayed by the storms that 
 
FBOM BULWEB LYTTON. 259 
 
 herald its dawn ; — a people such as is 
 common to the south: such as even 
 the north has known; such as, had 
 Cromwell lived a year longer, even 
 England might have seen; and, in- 
 deed, in some measure, such a reac- 
 tion from popular enthusiasm to pop- 
 ular indifference England did see, 
 when her children madly surrendered 
 the fruits of a bloody war, with- 
 out reserve, without foresight, to the 
 lewd pensioner of Louis, and the royal 
 murderer of Sydney. To such prostra- 
 tion of soul, such blindness of intellect, 
 even the noblest people will be sub- 
 jected, when liberty, which should be 
 the growth of ages, spreading its roots 
 through the strata of a thousand cus- 
 toms, is raised, the exotic of an hour. 
 
260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 and (like the tree and Dryad of an- 
 cient fable) flourishes and withers with 
 the single spirit that protects it. 
 
 Bienzi, 
 
 December 17th. 
 What has been the use of those ac- 
 quirements ? Has he benefited man- 
 kind by them ? Show me the poet — 
 the historian — the orator, and I will 
 yield to none of you ; no, not to Made- 
 line herself in homage of their genius : 
 but the mere creature of books — the 
 dry and sterile collector of other men's 
 learning — no — no. What should I ad- 
 mire in such a machine of literature, 
 except a waste of perseverance ? 
 
 Eugene Aram, 
 
 December 18th, 
 Love, in its first dim and imperfect 
 
FROM BULWER LYTTON. 261 
 
 shape, is but imagination concentrated 
 on one object. It is a genius of the 
 heart, resembling that of the intellect ; 
 it appeals to, it stirs up, it evokes the 
 sentiments and sympathies that lie 
 most latent in our nature. Its sigh is 
 the spirit that moves over the ocean, 
 and rouses the Anadyomene into life. 
 Therefore is it, that mind produces 
 affections deeper than those of exter- 
 nal form ; therefore it is, that women 
 are worshippers of glory, which is the 
 palpable and visible representative of 
 a genius whose operations they cannot 
 
 always comprehend. 
 
 Alice. 
 
 December 19th. 
 Genius has so much in common with 
 love — the imagination that animates 
 
262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 one is so much the property of the 
 other — that there is not a surer sign of 
 the existence of genius than the love 
 that it creates and bequeaths. It pen- 
 etrates deeper than the reason — it 
 binds a nobler captive than the fancy. 
 As the sun upon the dial, it gives to 
 the human heart both its shadow and 
 its light. Nations are its worshippers 
 and wooers ; and Posterity learns from 
 its oracles to dream — to aspire — to 
 
 adore ! 
 
 Alice. 
 
 December Wth. 
 If a man is called a genius, it means 
 that he is to be thrust out of all the 
 good things in this life. He is not fit 
 for anything but a garret ! Put a ge- 
 nius into office ! — make a genius a 
 
FB03I BULWER LYTTON. 263 
 
 bishop ! or a lord chancellor ! — the 
 world would be turned topsyturvy ! 
 You see that you are quite astonished, 
 that a genius can be even a county 
 magistrate, and know the difference 
 between a spade and a poker ! In 
 fact, a genius is supposed to be the 
 most ignorant, impracticable, good-for- 
 nothing, do-nothing, sort of thing that 
 ever walked upon two legs. Mediocre 
 men have the monopoly of the loaves 
 and fishes ; and even when talent does 
 rise in life, it is a talent that only dif- 
 fers from mediocrity by being more 
 
 energetic and bustling. 
 
 Alice. 
 
 Decemher '21st. 
 His was the age when we most sen- 
 sitively enjoy the mere sense of exist- 
 
264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 ence ; when the face of J^ature, and a 
 passive conviction of the benevolence 
 of our Great Father, suffice to create a 
 serene and ineffable happiness, which 
 rarely visits us till we have done with 
 the passions; — till memories, if more 
 alive than heretofore, are yet mel- 
 lowed in the hues of time, and Faith 
 softens into harmony all their as- 
 perities and harshness ; — till nothing 
 within us remains to cast a shadow 
 over the things without ; — and on the 
 verge of life, the Angels are nearer to 
 us than of yore. There is an old ago 
 which has more youth of heart than 
 youth itself ! 
 
 Alice, 
 
 December 22d. 
 Oh, Youth! begin not thy career 
 
FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 265 
 
 too soon, and let one passion succeed 
 in its due order to another — so that 
 every season of life may have its ap- 
 propriate pursuit and charm ! 
 
 Alice, 
 
 December ^Sd, 
 The fact is, that in civilization we 
 behold a splendid aggregate; — litera- 
 ture and science, wealth and luxury, 
 commerce and glory ; but we see not 
 the million victims crushed beneath 
 the wheels of the machine — the health 
 sacrij&ced — the board breadless — the 
 jails filled — the hospitals reeking — 
 the human life poisoned in every 
 spring, and poured forth like water! 
 Neither do we remember all the steps, 
 marked by desolation, crime, and 
 
266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 bloodshed, by which this barren sum- 
 mit has been reached. 
 
 Alice. 
 
 December 2Jf.th. 
 But the discontent does not prey 
 upon the springs of life ; it is the dis- 
 content of hope, not of despair; it calls 
 forth faculties, energies, and passions, 
 in which there is more joy than sor- 
 row. It is this desire which makes 
 the citizen in private life an anxious 
 father, a careful master, an active, and 
 therefore not an unhappy, man. You 
 allow that individuals can effect indi- 
 vidual good : this very restlessness, 
 this very discontent with the exact 
 place that he occupies, makes the citi- 
 zen a benefactor in his narrow circle. 
 Commerce, better than charity, feeds 
 
FB03I BULWEB LYTTON. 267 
 
 the hungry, and clothes the naked. 
 Ambition, better than brute affection, 
 gives education to our children, and 
 teaches them the love of industry, the 
 pride of independence, the respect for 
 others and themselves ! ^^^^^ 
 
 December ^5th.— Christmas Day. 
 
 Was it not worthy of a God to de- 
 scend to these dim valleys, in order to 
 clear up the clouds gathered over the 
 dark mount beyond— to satisfy the 
 doubts of sages— to convert specula- 
 tion into certainty— by example to 
 point out the rules of life— by revela- 
 tion to solve the enigma of the grave 
 
 and to prove that the soul did not 
 
 yearn in vain when it dreamed of an 
 
 immortality? „, , . ^ 
 
 "^ The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 December 26th. 
 "Come," said the Nazarene (as he 
 perceived the effect he had produced) 
 " come to the humble hall in which we 
 meet — a select and a chosen few ; 
 listen there to our prayers ; note the 
 sincerity of our repentant tears ; 
 mingle in our simple sacrifice — not of 
 victims, nor of garlands, but offered 
 by white-robed thoughts upon the altar 
 of the heart. The flowers that we lay 
 there are imperishable — they bloom 
 over us when we are no more ; nay, 
 they accompany us beyond the grave, 
 they spring up beneath our feet in 
 heaven, they delight us with an eternal 
 odor, for they are of the soul, they 
 partake of its nature; these offerings 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 269 
 
 are temptations overcome, and sins 
 repented." 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 December '27th. 
 Thou comest amongst us as an 
 examiner, mayest thou remain a con- 
 vert ! Our religion ? you behold it ! 
 Yon cross our sole image, yon scroll 
 the mysteries of our Csere and Eleusis ! 
 Our morality ? it is in our lives ! — 
 sinners we all have been; who now 
 can accuse us of a crime ? we have bap- 
 tized ourselves from the past. Think 
 not that this is of us, it is of God. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
 Decemher 28th. 
 Apaecides had already learned that 
 the faith of the philosophers was not 
 
270 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 that of the herd ; that if they secretly 
 professed a creed in some diviner 
 power, it was not the creed which 
 they thought it wise to impart to the 
 community. He had already learned, 
 that even the priest ridiculed what he 
 preached to the people — that the no- 
 tions of the few and the many were 
 never united. But, in this new faith, 
 it seemed to him that philosopher, 
 priest, and people, the expounders of 
 the religion and its followers, were 
 alike accordant : they did not speculate 
 and debate upon immortality, they 
 spoke of it as a thing certain and 
 assured; the magnificence of the 
 promise dazzled him — its consolations 
 soothed. 
 
 The Last Days of Pompeii. 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 271 
 
 December 29th. 
 
 Yes, he was a rare character, that 
 village priest ! Would it have been 
 better for Christianity, or the State, if 
 they had made him a bishop? And 
 yet, alas! so do we confound things 
 spiritual with things temporal, that 
 nine readers out of ten would be glad 
 to find, at the end of these volumes, 
 that the poor curate had been " prop- 
 erly rewarded for his deserts." 
 
 Do lawn sleeves, a powdered wig, 
 and the title of " My Lord the Bishop," 
 make more beautiful on the mountain- 
 tops the feet of him who bringeth glad 
 tidings ? 
 
 Alice. 
 
 December 30th. 
 Beauty, thou art twice blessed ! thou 
 
272 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 
 
 blessest the gazer and the possessor; 
 often, at once the effect and the cause 
 of goodness ! — A sweet disposition — a 
 lovely soul — an affectionate nature — 
 will speak in the eyes — the lips — the 
 brow — and become the cause of beauty. 
 On the other hand, they who have a 
 gift that commands love, a key that 
 opens all hearts, are ordinarily in- 
 clined to look with happy eyes upon 
 the world — to be cheerful and serene — 
 to hope and to confide. There is more 
 wisdom than the vulgar dream of, in 
 our admiration of a fair face. 
 
 Alice, 
 
 December 31st. 
 What is the Earth to Infinity — what 
 its duration to the Eternal ? Oh, how 
 
FROM BULWEB LYTTON. 273 
 
 much greater is the soul of one man 
 than the vicissitudes of the whole 
 globe. 
 
 Zanoni. 
 
stp I mo 
 
 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: April 2009 
 
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 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
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