ccc c *.. f>> .v ; s,< --.*^. . v**w2v". ^i'^ v'v ; J" ... 4f* V . % !* .^ *L -^ f * v *4i * * * * w 3>i-.*'!*'^;J<-'3^* *; ^V" -' fp^aK^-^i AMERICA'S NEGLECT OF WHITMAN. [Oliver Elton, in the London Academy.] Could there be a greater, and apparently more dismal, paradox than the sight of the seer of democracy sitting serene under the total neglect of the democracy ? If anything could bely the faith of the " Demo cratic Vistas," if anything could make one think the loud energetic civilization of America nothing but a gigantic imposture, it is the spectacle of the only great living American poet dependent in his old age upon the sympathy and at one moment almost upon the main tenance of foreign friends. And yet he keeps his faith in the faith less people unshaken, for it is not at the mercy of personal neglect or personal discomfort ; and, if he is right in his robust belief, surely the solution of the paradox lies in the meaning of that much -abused word the " people." The " people " in whom his confidence burns so un- quenchably are not the rich people, not the millions of wire-pullers and place-hunters, not the spurious elite of culture, but the mass of the people, who know little of Whitman and his books, or of any books, who labor obscurely, manfully, and restlessly, who represent the vast sum-total of energy comparable to the energies of nature herself, the mass of the people whose force and fertility are independent of all possible vicissitudes in institutions. aJfr^^ MEMORANDA. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. Washington, D. C. 1871. See ADVERTISEMENT at end of this Volume, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by WALT WHITMAN, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Electrotyped by SMITH & McDoucAL, 82 Beekman Street, New York. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. MERICA, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems, cheerfully accepting the past, including Feudalism, (as, indeed, the present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism,) counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, as yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come. Sole among nationalities, These States have assumed the task to put in forms of lasting power and practi cality, on areas of amplitude rivaling the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral and political specula tions of ages, long, long deferred, the Democratic Re publican principle, and the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and self-suppliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history, so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act upon, and go security for, these things ? But let me strike at once the key-note of my purpose in the following strain. First premising that, though passages of it have been written at widely different times, (it is, in fact, a collection of memoranda, perhaps for future designers, comprehenders,) and though it may be open to the charge of one part contradicting another for there are opposite sides to the great ques tion of Democracy, as to every great question I feel 4 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. the parts harmoniously blended in my own realization and convictions, and present them to be read only in such oneness, each page modified and tempered by the others. Bear in mind, too, that they are not the result of studying up in political economy, but of the ordinary sense, observing, wandering among men, These States, these stirring years of war and peace. I will not gloss over the appalling dangers of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her within whose thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating, be tween Democracy's convictions, aspirations, and the People's crudeness, vice, caprices, I mainly write this book. I shall use the words America and Democracy as con vertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United States are destined either to surmount the gor geous history of Feudalism, or else prove the mos^ tre mendous failure of time. Not the least doubtful am I on any prospects of their material success. The trium phant future of their business, geographic, and produc tive departments, on larger scales and in more varieties than ever, is certain. In those respects the Republic must soon (if she does not already) outstrip all ex amples hitherto afforded, and dominate the world.* * " From a territorial area of less than nine hundred .thou sand square miles, the Union has expanded into over four mil lions and a half fifteen times larger than that of Great Britain and France combined with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal to the entire circumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines far wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and renown. With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over two thousand millions of dollars per year ; with a railway traffic of four to six thousand millions per year, and the annual domestic exchanges of the country running up to nearly ten thousand millions per year ; with over two thousand millions of dollars invested in manufac turing, mechanical, and mining industry ; with over five hun dred millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with their appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and producing annually crops valued at over three thousand mil lions of dollars ; with a realm which, if the density of Belgium's DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 5 Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political institutions, general suffrage (and cheerfully acknowledging the latest, widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper than these, what finally and only is to make of our Western World a National ity superior to any hitherto known, and outtopping the past, must be vigorous, yet unsuspected Litera tures, perfect personalities and sociologies, original, transcendental, and expressing (what, in highest sense, are not yet expressed at all,) Democracy and the Mod ern. W T ith these, and out of these, I promulge new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women, indispen sable to endow the birth-stock of a New World. For Feudalism, caste, the Ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the very subsoil, of education, and of social standards and Literature. I say that Democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of arts, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. It is curious to me that while so many voices, pens, minds, in the press, lecture-rooms, in our Congress, &c., are discussing intellectual topics, pecuniary dan gers, legislative problems, the suffrage, tariff and labor questions, and the various business and benevolent needs of America, with propositions, remedies, often worth deep attention, there is one need, a hiatus, and the profoundest, that no eye seems to perceive, no voice to state. Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest reference to pres- population were possible, would be vast enough to include all the present inhabitants of the world ; and with equal rights guaran teed to even the poorest and humblest of our forty millions of people we can, with a manly pride akin to that which distin guished the palmiest days of 'Rome, claim," &c., &c., &c. Vice- President Coif ax's fipccch, July 4, 1070. 6 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. ent conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native Authors, Literatuses, far different, far higher in grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope wi'h our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American men tality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than the popular superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the elections of Presidents or Con gresses, radiating, begetting appropriate teachers and schools, manners, costumes, and, as its grandest re sult, accomplishing, (what neither the schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto accomplished, and without which this nation will no more stand, per manently, soundly, than a house will stand without a substratum,) a religious and moral character beneath the political and productive and intellectual bases of The States. For know you not, dear, earnest reader, that the people of our land may all know how to read and write, and may all possess the right to vote and yet the main things may be entirely lacking ? (and this to supply or suggest .them.) Viewed, to-day, from a point of view sufiiciently over arching, the problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social and religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. The priest departs, the di vine Literatus comes. Never was anything more wanted than, to-day, and here in The States, the Poet of the Modern is wanted, or the great Literatus of the Mod ern. At all times, perhaps, the central point in any nation, and that whence it is itself really swayed the most, and whence it sways others, is its national litera ture, especially its archetypal poems. Above all previ ous lands, a great original literature is surely to be come the justification and reliance, (in some respects the sole reliance,) of American Democracy. Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives hue to all, shapes aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle ways, with irresistible power, con structs, sustains, demolishes at will. Why tower, in DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 7 reminiscence, above all tho old nations of the earth, (wo special lands, petty in themselves, yet inexpressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar ? Immortal Judah liver, and Greece immortal lives, in a couple of poems. Nearer than this. It is not generally realized, but it is true, as the genius of Greece, and all the sociology, personality, politics and religion of those wonderful states, resided in their literature or esthetics, that what was afterwards the main support of European chivalry, the feudal, ecclesiastical, dynastic world over there, forming its osseous structure, holding it together fcr hundreds, thousands of years, preserving its flesh and bloom, giving it form, decision, rounding it out, and so saturating it in the conscious and unconscious blood, breed, belief, and intuitions of men, that it still pre vails powerfully to this day, in defiance of the mighty changes of time, was its literature, permeating to the very marrow, especially that major part, its enchant ing songs, ballads, and poems.* To the osteiit of the senses and eyes, I know, the in fluences which stamp the world's history are wars, up risings or downfalls of dynasties, changeful movements of trade, important inventions, navigation, military or civil governments, advent of powerful personalities, conquerors, &c. These of course play their part ; yet, it may be, a single new thought, imagination, prin ciple, even literary style, fit for the time, put in shape by some great Literatus, and projected among man- * See, for hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's Border JMin- strelsy, Percy's Collection, Ellis's Early English Metrical Ro mances, the European Continental Poems of Walter of A quit a- nia, and the Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction ; the history of the Troubadours, by Fauriel ; even the far, far-back cumbrous old Hindu epics, as indicating the Asian eggs, out of which European chivalry was hatched ; Ticknor's chapters on the Cid, and on the Spanish poems and poets of Cal- deron's time. Then always, and, of course, as the superbest, poetic culmination-expression of Feudalism, the Shakspearean dramas, in the attitudes, dialogue, characters, &c., of the princes, lords and gentlemen, the pervading atmosphere, the implied and expressed standard of manners, the high port and proud ctomach, the regal embroidery of ctylo, c. 8 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. kind, may duly cause changes, growths, removals, greater than the longest and bloodiest war, or the most stupendous merely political, dynastic, or com mercial overturn. In short, as, though it may not be realized, it is strictly true, that a few first-class poets, philosophs, and authors, have substantially settled and given status to the entire religion, education, law, sociology, &c., of the hitherto civilized world, by tinging and often crea ting the atmospheres out of which they have arisen, such also must stamp, and more than ever stamp, the interior and real Democratic construction of this Ameri can continent, to-day, and days to come. Remember also this fact of difference, that, while through the antique and through the mediaeval ages, highest thoughts and ideals realized themselves, and their expression made its way by other arts, as much as, or even more than by, technical literature, (not open to the mass of persons, nor even to the majority of eminent persons,) such literature in our day and for current purposes, is not only more . eligible than all the other arts put together, but has become the only gen eral means of morally influencing the world. Paint ing, sculpture, and the dramatic theatre, it would seem, no longer play an indispensable or even im portant part in the workings and mediumship of in tellect, utility, or even high esthetics. Architecture remains, doubtless with capacities, and. a real future. Then music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual, noth ing more sensuous, a god, yet completely human, ad vances, prevails, holds highest place; supplying in cer tain wants and quarters what nothing else could supply. Yet, in the civilization of to-day it is undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond all shapes the character of church and school or, at any rate, is capable of doing so. Including the litera ture of science, its scope is indeed unparalleled. Before proceeding further, it were perhaps well to discriminate on certain points. Literature tills its crops in many fields, and some may flourish, while others lag. "What I say in these Vistas has its main DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 9 bearing on Imaginative Literature, especially Poetry, the stock of all. In the department of Science, and the specialty of Journalism, there appear, in These States, promises, perhaps fulfilments, of highest earnestness, reality, and life. These, of course, are modern.. But in the region of imaginative, spinal and essential attri butes, something equivalent to creation is imperatively demanded. For not only is it not enough that the new blood, new frame of Democracy shall be vivified and held together merely by political means, superficial suffrage, legislation, &c., but it is clear to me that, un less it goes deeper, gets at least as firm and as warm a hold in men's hearts, emotions and belief, as, in their days, Feudalism or Ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own perennial sources, welling from the centre forever, its strength will be defective, its growth doubtful, and its main charm wanting. I suggest, therefore, the possibility, should some two or three really original American poets, (perhaps artists or lecturers,) arise, mounting the horizon like planets, stars of the first magnitude, that, from their eminence, fusing contributions, races, far localities, &c., together, they would give more compaction and more moral iden tity, (the quality to-day most needed,) to These States, than all its Constitutions, legislative and judicial ties, and all its hitherto political, 'warlike, or materialistic experiences. As, for instance, there could hardly hap pen anything that would more serve The States, with all their variety of origins, their diverse climes, cities, standards, &c., than possessing an aggregate of heroes, characters, exploits, sufferings, prosperity or misfor tune, glory or disgrace, common to all, typical of all no less, but even greater would it be to possess the aggregation of a cluster of mighty poets, artists, teach ers, fit for us, national expressers, comprehending and effusing for the men and women of The States, what is universal, native, common to all, inland and seaboard, northern and southern. The historians say of ancient Greece, with her ever-jealous autonomies, cities, and states, that the only positive unity she ever owned or received, was the sad unity of a common subjection, at 10 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. the last, to foreign conquerors. Subjection, aggrega tion of that sort, is impossible to America ; but the fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the lack of a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me. Or, if it does not, nothing is plainer than the need, a long period to come, of a fusion of The States into the only reliable identity, the moral and artistic one. For, I say, the true nationality of The States, the genuine union, when we come to a mortal crisis, is, and is to be, after all, neither the written law, nor, (as is generally supposed,) either self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects but the fervid and tremendous IDEA, melting everything else with re sistless heat, and solving all lesser and definite distinc tions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, emotional power. It may be claimed, (and I admit the weight of the claim,) that common and general worldly prosperity, and a populace well-to-do, and with all life's material comforts, is the main thing, and is enough. It may be arg'ued that our Republic is, in performance, really enacting to-day the grandest arts, poems, &c., by beat ing up the wilderness into fertile farms, and in her railroads, ships, machinery, &c. And it may be asked, Are these not better, indeed, for America, than any utterances even of greatest rhapsode, artist, or literatus ? I too hail those achievements with pride and joy : then answer that the soul of man will not with such only nay, not with such at all be finally satisfied ; but needs what, (standing on those and on all things, as the feet stand on the ground,) is addressed to the loftiest, to itself alone. Out of such considerations, such truths, arise* for treatment in these Vistas the important question of Character, of. an American stock-personality, with Literatures and Arts for outlets and return-expres sions, and, of course, to correspond, within outlines common to all. To these, the main affair, the thinkers of the United States, in general so acute, have either given feeblest attention, or have remained, and re main, in a state of somnolence. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 11 For my part, I would alarm and caution even the political and business reader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusion that the establishment of free political institutions, and plentiful intellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, in dustry, &c., (desirable and precious advantages as they all are,) do, of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of Democracy the fruitage of success. With such advantages at present fully, or almost fully, pos sessed the Union just issued, victorious, from the struggle with the only foes it need ever fear, (namely, those within itself, the interior ones,) and with unpre cedented materialistic advancement Society, in These States, is cankered, crude, superstitious, and rotten. Political, or law-made society is, and private, or volun tary society, is also. In any vigor, the element of the moral conscience, the most important, the vertebrae, to State or man, seems to me either entirely lacking or seriously enfeebled or ungrown. I say we had best look our time and lands search- ingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying- principles of The States are not honestly believed in, (for all this hectic glow, and these melo-dramatic screamings,) nor is Humanity itself believed in. What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all +he litterateurs is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid person, in the Revenue Depart ment in Washington, who is led by the course of his employment to regularly visit the cities, North, South, and West, to investigate frauds, has talked much with 12 DEJIOCHATIC VISTAS. me (1869-70) about his discoveries. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The whole of the official services of America, National, State, and Munici pal, in all their branches and departments, except the Judiciary, are steeped, saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, in al- administration ; and the Judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelisin. In fash ionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In busi ness, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The ma gician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other ser pents ; and money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field. The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably-dressed speculators and vulgarians. True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce, enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and stupendous labors are to be discovered, existing crudely and going on in the background, to ad vance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are none the less terrible. I say that our New World De mocracy, however great a success in uplifting the' masses out of their sloughs, in materialistic development, pro ducts, and in a certain highly-deceptive superficial popu lar intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, in any superb general personal character, and in really grand religious, moral, literary, and esthetic results. In vain do we march with unpre cedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying the an tique, beyond Alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of Borne. In vain do we annex Texas, California, Alaska, and reach north for Canada and south for Cuba. It is as if we were somehow being endowed with a vast and more and more thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or no soul. Let me illustrate further, as I write, with current ob servations, localities, &c. The subject is important, and will bear repetition. After an absence, I am now (Sep- DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 13 tember, 1870,) again in New York City and Brooklyn, on a few weeks' vacation. The splendor, picturesqueness, and oceanic amplitude and rush of these great cities, the unsurpassed situation, rivers and bay, sparkling sea- tides, costly and lofty new buildings, the faqades of marble and iron, of original grandeur and elegance of design, with the masses of gay color, the preponderance of white and blue, the flags flying, the endless ships, the tumultuous streets, Broadway, the heavy, low, mu sical roar, hardly ever intermitted, even at night ; the jobbers' houses, the rich shops, the wharves, the great Central Park, and the Brooklyn Park of Hills, (as I wander among them this beautiful fall weather, musing, watching, absorbing,) the assemblages of the citizens in their groups, conversations, trade, evening amuse ments, or along the by-quarters these, I say, and the like of these, completely satisfy my senses of power, ful ness, motion, &c., and give me, through' such senses and appetites, and through my esthetic conscience, a continued exaltation and absolute fulfilment. Always, and more and more, as I cross the East and North rivers, the ferries, or with the pilots in their pilot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall street, or the gold exchange, I realize, (if we must admit such partialisrns,) that not Nature alone is great in her fields of freedom and the open air, in her storms, the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests, seas but in the artificial, the work of man too is equally great in this profusion of teeming humanity, in these ingenuities, streets, goods, houses, ships these seething, hurrying, feverish crowds of men, their complicated business genius, (not least among the geniuses,) and all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry concentrated here. But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and grandeur of the general effect, coming down to what is of the only real importance, Personalities, and exam ining minutely, we question, we ask, Are there, indeed, Men here worthy the name ? Are there athletes ? Are there perfect women, to match the generous material luxuriance ? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beau tiful manners ? Are there crops of fine youths, and ma- 14 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. jestic old persons? Are there arts worthy Freedom, and a rich people ? Is there a great moral and religious civilization the only justification of a great material one? Confess that rather to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sa hara appears, these cities, crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vul garity, low cunning, infidelity everywhere, the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe everywhere an abnormal libidinousneas, unhealthy forms, male, fe male, painted, padded, dyed, chignoned, muddy com plexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceased, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners, (consid ering the advantages enjoyed,) probably the meanest to be seen in the world.* Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into them the breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new founded literature, not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, or pander to what is called taste not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate the beautiful, the refined, the past, -or exhibit technical, *0f -these rapidly-sketched portraitures, hiatuses, the two which seem to me most serious are, for one, the condition, absence, or perhaps the singular abeyance, of moral, conscientious fibre all through American society ; and, for another, the appalling deple tion of women in their powers of sane athletic maternity, their crowning attribute, and ever making the woman, in loftiest spheres, superior to the man. I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means of a reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of woman, affording, for races to come, (as the conditions that antedate birth are indispen sable,) a perfect motherhood. Great, great, indeed far greater than they know, is the sphere of woman. But doubtless the question of such new sociology all goes together, includes many varied and complex influences and premises, and the man as well as the woman, and the woman as well as the man. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 15 rhythmic, or grammatical dexterity but a Literature underlying life, religious, consistent with science, hand ling the elements and forces with competent power, teaching and training men and, as perhaps the most precious of its results, achieving the entire redemption of woman out of these incredible holds and webs of sil liness, millinery, and every kind of dyspeptic depletion and thus insuring to The States a strong and sweet Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers is what is needed. And now, in the full conception of these facts and points, and all that they infer, pro and con with yet unshaken faith in the elements of the American masses, the composites, of both sexes, and even considered as individuals and ever recognizing in them the broad est bases of the best literary and esthetic appreciation I proceed with my speculations, Vistas. First, let us see what we can make out of a brief, gen eral, sentimental consideration of political Democracy, and whence it has arisen, with regard to some of its current features, as an aggregate, and as the basic structure of our future literature and authorship. We shall, it is true, quickly and continually find the origin- idea of the singleness of man, individualism, asserting itself, and cropping forth, even from the opposite ideas. But the mass, or lump character, for imperative rea sons, is to be ever carefully weighed, borne in mind, and provided for. Only from it, and from its proper regulation and potency, comes the other, comes the chance of Individualism. * The two are contradictory, but our task is to reconcile them.* * Tlie question hinted here is one which time only can answer. Must not the virtue of modern Individualism, continually enlarg ing, usurping all, seriously affect, perhaps keep down entirely, in America, the like of the ancient virtue of Patriotism, the fervid and absorbing love of general country? 1 have no doubt myself that the two will merge, and will mutually profit and brace each other, and that from them a greater product, a third, will arise. But I feel that at present they and their oppositions form a serious problem and paradox in the United States. 16 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. The political history of the past may be summed up as having grown out of what underlies the words Order, Safety, Caste, and especially out of the need of some prompt deciding Authority, and of Cohesion, at all cost. Leaping time, we come to the period within the memory of people now living, when, as from some lair where they had slumbered long, accumulating wrath, sprang up and are yet active, (1790, and on even to the present, 1870,) those noisy eructations, destructive icon- oclasms, a fierce sense of wrongs, and amid which moves the Form, well known in modern history, in the old world, stained with much blood, and marked by savage reactionary clamors and demands. These bear, mostly, as on one enclosing point of need. For after the rest is said after the many time-hon ored and really true things for subordination, experi ence, rights of property, &c., have been listened to and acquiesced in after the valuable and well-settled state ment of our duties and relations in society is thoroughly conned over and exhausted it remains to bring forward and modify everything else with the idea of that Some thing a man is, (last precious consolation of the drudg ing poor,) standing apart from all else, divine in his own right, and a woman in hers, sole and untouchable by any canons of authority, or any rule derived from precedent, state-safety, the acts of legislatures, or even from what is called religion, modesty, or art. The radiation of this truth is the key of the most sig nificant doings of our immediately preceding three centuries, and has been the political genesis aiicl life of America. Advancing visibly, it still more advances in visibly. Underneath the fluctuations of the expressions of society, as well as the movements of the politics of the leading nations of the world, we see steadily press ing ahead, and strengthening itself, even in the midst of immense tendencies toward aggregation, this image of completeness in separatism, of individual personal dignity, of a single person, either male or female, char acterized in the main, not from extrinsic acquirements or position, but in the pride of himself or herself alone; and, as an eventual conclusion and summing up, (or DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 17 else the entire scheme of things is aimless, a cheat, a crash,) the simple idea that the last, best dependence is to be upon Humanity itself, and its own inherent, nor mal, full-grown qualities, without any superstitious sup port whatever. This idea of perfect individualism it is indeed that deepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the Aggregate. For it is mainly or altogether to serve independent separatism that we favor a strong generalization, consolidation. As it is to give the best vitality and freedom to the rights of the States, (every bit as important as the right of Nationality, the union,) that we insist on the identity of the Union at all hazards. The purpose of Democracy supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of established dynastic ralership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly trained in sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and series of laws, unto him self, surrounding and providing for, not only his own personal control, but all his relations to other individ uals, and to the State ; and that, while other theories, as in the past histories of nations, have proved wise enough, and indispensable perhaps for their conditions, this, as matters now stand in our civilized world, is the only Scheme worth working from, as warranting results like those of Nature's laws, reliable, when once estab lished, to carry on themselves. The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we ad mit, by no means all on one side. What we shall offer will be far, far from sufficient. But while leaving un said much that should properly even prepare the way for the treatment of this many-sided question of politi cal liberty, equality, or republicanism leaving the whole history and consideration of the Feudal Plan and its products, embodying Humanity, its politics and civili zation, through the retrospect of past time, (which Plan and products, indeed, make up all of the past, and a major part of the present) Leaving unanswered, at 18 DEMOCEATIC VISTAS. least by any specific and local answer, many a well- wrought argument and instance, and many a conscien tious declamatory cry and warning as, very lately, from an eminent and venerable person abroad* things, problems, full of doubt, dread, suspense, (not new to me, but old occupiers of many an anxious hour in city's din, or night's silence,) we still may give a page or so, whose drift is opportune. Time alone can finally answer these things. But as a substitute in passing, let us, even if fragmentarily, throw forth a short direct or indirect suggestion of the premises of that other Plan, in the new spirit, under the new forms, started here in our America. As to the political section of Democracy, which intro duces and breaks ground for further and vaster sec tions, few probably are the minds, even in These Re publican States, that fully comprehend the aptness of that phrase, " THE GOVERNMENT or THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOB THE PEOPLE," which we inherit from the lips of Abraham Lincoln ; a formula whose verbal shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both the totality and all minutiae of the lesson. The People ! Like our huge earth itself, which, to ordinary scansion, is full of vulgar contradictions and offence, Man, viewed in the lump, displeases, and is a constant puzzle and affront to the merely educated classes. The rare, cosmical, artist-mind, lit with the Infinite, alone confronts his manifold and oceanic qual- ities, but taste, intelligence and culture, (so-called,) have been against the masses, and remain so. There is plenty of glamour about the most damnable crimes and * ' SHOOTING NIAGARA." I was at first roused to much anger a-nd abuse by this Essay from Mr. Carlyle, so insulting to the the ory of America but happening to think afterwards how I had more than once been in the like mood, during which his essay was evidently cast, and seen persons and things in the same light, (indeed some might say there are signs of the same feeling in this book) I have since read it again, not only as a study, expressing as it does certain judgments from the highest Feudal point of view, but have read it with respect, as coming from an earnest soul, and as contributing certain sharp-cutting metallic grains, which, if not gold or silver, may be good hard, honest iron. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 19 hoggish meannesses, special and general, of the Feudal and dynastic world over there, with its personnel of lords and queens and courts, so well-dressed and so handsome. But the People are ungrammatical, untidy, and their sins gaunt and ill-bred. Literature, strictly considered, has never recognized the People, and, whatever may be said, does not to-day. Speaking generally, the tendencies of literature, as hith erto pursued, have been to make mostly critical and querulous men. It seems as if, so far, there were some natural repugnance between a literary and professional life, and the rude rank spirit of the Democracies. There is, in later literature, a treatment of benevolence, a charity business, rife enough it is true ; but I know nothing more rare, even in this country, than a fit scien tific estimate and reverent appreciation of the People of their measureless wealth of latent power and capacity, their vast, artistic contrasts of lights and shades with, in America, their entire reliability in emergencies, and a certain breadth of historic grandeur, of peace or war, far suspassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes, or any haut ton coteries, in all the records of the world. The movements of the late Secession war, and their results, to any sense that studies well and compre hends them, show that Popular Democracy, whatever its faults and dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the proudest claims and wildest hopes of its enthusiasts. Probably no future age can know, but I well know, how the gist of this fiercest and most resolute of the world's warlike contentions resided exclusively in the unnamed, unknown rank and file ; and how the brunt of its labor of death was, to all essential purposes, Volunteered. The People, of their own choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently attacked by the Secession- Slave-Power, and its very existence imperiled. De scending to detail, entering any of the armies, and mixing with the private soldiers, we see and have seen august spectacles. We have seen the alacrity with which the American-born populace, the peaceablest and most good-natured race in the world, and the most personally independent and intelligent, and the least fitted to submit UNIVERSITY 20 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. to the irksomeness and exasperation of regimental disci - pline, sprang, at the first tap of the drum, to arms not for gain, nor even glory, nor to repel invasion but for an emblem, a mere abstraction for the life, the safety of the Flag. We have seen the unequaled docility and obedience of these soldiers. We have seen them tried long and long by hopelessness, mismanagement, and by defeat ; have seen the incredible slaughter toward or through which the armies, (as at first Fredericksburg, and afterward at the Wilderness,) still unhesitating ly obeyed orders to advance. We have seen them in trench, or crouching behind breastwork, or tramp ing in deep mud, or amid pouring rain or thick- falling snow, or under forced marches in hottest summer (as on the road to get to Gettysburg) vast suffocating swarms, divisions, corps, with every single man so grimed and black with sweat and dust, his own mother would not have known him his clothes all dirty, stained and torn, with sour, accumulated sweat for perfume many a comrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck, staggering out, dying, by the roadside, of exhaustion yet the great bulk bearing steadily on, cheery enough, hollow-bellied from hunger, but sinewy with unconquerable resolution. We have seen this race proved by wholesale by drearier, yet more fearful tests the wound, the ampu tation, the shattered face or limb, the slow, hot fever, long, impatient anchorage in bed, and all the forms of maiming, operation and disease. Alas I America have we seen, though only in her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have we watched these sol diers, many of them only boys in years marked their decorum, their religious nature and fortitude, and their sweet affection. Wholesale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps, in countless tents, stood the regi mental, brigade and division hospitals ; while every where amid the land, in or near cities, rose clusters of huge, white-washed, crowded, one-story wooden bar racks, (Washington City alone, with its suburbs, at one period, containing in her Army hospitals of this kind, 50,090 wounded and sick men) and there ruled Agony with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought a cry ; DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 21 and there stalked Death by day and night along the narrow aisles between the rows of cots, or by the blankets on the ground, and touched lightly many a poor sufferer, often with blessed, welcome touch. I know not whether I shall be understood, but I realize that it is finally from what I learned personally mixing in such scenes that I am now penning these pages. One night in the gloomiest period of the war, in the Patent Office Hospital in Washington City, as I stood by the bedside of a Pennsylvania soldier, who lay, conscious of quick approaching death, yet perfectly calm, and with noble, spiritual manner, the veteran surgeon, turning aside, said to me, that though he had witnessed many, many deaths of soldiers, and had been a worker at Ball Eun, Antietam, Fredericksburg, &c., he had not seen yet the first case of man or boy that met the approach of dissolution with cowardly qualms or terror. My own observation fully bears out the remark. What have we here, if not, towering above all talk and argument, the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of Democracy, in its personalities ? Curiously enough, too, the proof on this point conies, I should say, every bit as much from the South, as from the North. Although I have spoken only of the latter, yet I delib erately include all. Grand, common stock ! to me the accomplished and convincing growth, prophetic of the future ; proof undeniable to sharpest sense, of perfect beauty, tenderness and pluck, that never Feudal lord, nor Greek, nor Roman breed, yet rivaled. Let no tongue ever speak in disparagement of the American races, North or South, to one who has been through the war in the great army hospitals. Meantime, general Humanity, (for to that we return, as, for our purposes, what it really is, to bear in mind,) has always, in every department, been full of perverse maleficence, and is so yet. In downcast hours the Soul thinks it always will be but soon recovers from such sickly moods. I, as Democrat, see clearly enough, (as already illustrated,) the crude, defective streaks in all the strata of the common people ; the specimens and vast collections of the ignorant, the credulous, the unfit 22 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. and uncouth, the incapable, and the very low and poor. The eminent person just mentioned, sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a Nation's politics by absorbing such morbid collections and qual ities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens who will never get over it. Our answer is gen eral, and is involved in the scope and letter of this essay. We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government, (having, of course, provided for the police, the safety of life, property, and for the basic statute and common lav/, and their administration, always first in order,) to be, among the rest, not merely to rule, to re press disorder, &c., but to develop, to open up to culti vation, to encourage the possibilities of all beneficent and manly outcroppage, and of that aspiration for inde pendence, and the pride and self-respect latent in all characters. (Or, if there be exceptions, we cannot, fix ing our eyes on them alone, make theirs the rule for all.) I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civil ized lands, is not repression alone, and not authority alone, not even of law, nor by that favorite standard of the eminent writer, the rule of the best men, the born heroes and captains of the race, (as if such ever, or one time out of a hundred, got into the big places, elective or dynastic!) but, higher than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities through all their grades, be ginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves. What Christ appeared for in the moral-spiritual field for Human-kind, namely, that in respect to the absolute Soul, there is in the possession of such by each single individual, something so transcendent, so incapable of gradations, (like life,) that, to that extent, it places all beings on a common level, utterly regardless of the dis tinctions of intellect, virtue, station, or any height or lowliness whatever is tallied in like manner, in this other field, by Democracy's rule that men, the Nation, as a common aggregate of living identities, affording in each a separate and complete subject for freedom, worldly thrift and happiness, and for a fair chance for DEMOCEATIC VISTAS. 23 growth, and for protection in citizenship, &c., must, to the political extent of the suffrage or vote, if no further, be placed, in each and in the whole, on one broad, pri mary, universal, common platform. The purpose is not altogether direct ; perhaps it is more indirect. For it is not that Democracy is of ex haustive account, in itself. Perhaps, indeed, it is, (like Nature,) of no account in itself. It is that, as we see, it is the best, perhaps only, fit and full means, formu- later, general caller-forth, trainer, for the million, not for grand material personalities only, but for immortal souls. To be a voter with the rest is not so much ; and this, like every institute, will have its imperfections. But to become an enfranchised man, and now, impedi ments removed, to stand and start without humiliation, and equal with the rest ; to commence, or have the road cleared to commence, the grand experiment of develop ment, whose end, (perhaps requiring several genera tions,) mF.y be the forming of a full-grown man or woman that is something. To ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to be secured, in no other way. We do not, (at any rate I do not,) put it either on the ground that the People, the masses, even the best of them, are, in their latent or exhibited qualities, essen tially sensible and good nor on the ground of their rights ; but that, good or bad, rights or no rights, the Democratic formula is the only safe and preservative one for coining times. 'We endow the masses with the suffrage for their own sake, no doubt ; then, perhaps still more, from another point of view, for community's sake. Leaving the rest to the sentimentalists, we pre sent Freedom as sufficient in its scientific aspects, cold as iee, reasoning, deductive, clear and passionless as crystal. Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind. Many suppose, (and often in its own ranks the error,) that it means a throwing aside of law, and run ning riot. But, briefly, it is the superior law, not alone that of physical force, the body, which, adding to, it supersedes with that of the spirit. Law is the unshaka- 24 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. ble order qf the universe forever ; and the law over all, and law of laws, is tlie law of successions ; that of the superior law, in time, gradually supplanting and over whelming the inferior one. (While, for myself, I would cheerfully agree first covenanting that the formative tendencies shall be administered in favor, or, at least not against it, and that this reservation be closely con strued that until the individual or community show due signs, or be so minor and fractional as not to en danger the State, the condition of authoritative tutel age may continue, and self-government must abide its time.) Nor is the esthetic point, always an important one, without fascination for highest aiming souls. The com mon ambition strains for elevations, to become some privileged exclusive. The master sees greatness and health in being part of the mass. Nothing will do as well as common ground. Would you have in yourself the divine, vast, general law? Then merge yourself in it. And, topping Democracy, this most alluring record, that ib alone can bind, and ever seeks to bind, all na tions, all men, of however various and distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family. It is the old, yet ever- modern dream of Earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, her fond philosophers and poets. Not that half only, Individualism, which isolates. There is an other half, which is Adhesiveness or Love, that fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, and fraternizing all. Both are to be vitalized by Religion, (sole worthiest elevator of man or State,) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath of life. For I say at the core of Democracy, finally, is the Religious element. All the Religions, old and new, are there. Nor may the Scheme step forth, clothed in resplendent beauty and command, till these, bearing the best, the latest fruit, the Spiritual, the aspirational, sha.ll fully appear. A portion of our pages we might indite with refer ence toward Europe, especially the British part of it, more than our own land, and thus, perhaps not abso- DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 25 lutely needed for the home reader. But the whole ques tion hangs together, and fastens and links all peoples. The Liberalist of to-day has this advantage over antique or medieval times, that his doctrine seeks not only to universalize, but to individualize. Then the great word Solidarity has arisen. I say of all dangers to a Nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having cer tain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackery teems, of course, even on Democracy's side, yet does not really affect the orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and justify God, his divine aggre gate, the People, (or, the veritable horned and sharp- tailed Devil, his aggregate, if there be who convulsively insist upon it,) this, I say, is what Democracy is for; and this is what our America means, and is doing may I not say, has done ? If not, she means nothing more, and does nothing more, than any other land. And as, by virtue of its kosmical, antiseptic power, Nature's stomach is fully strong enough not only to digest the morbific matter always presented, not to be turned aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating thither but even to change such contributions into nutriment for highest use and life so American Democracy's. That is the lesson we, these days, send over to European lands by every western breeze. And, truly, whatever may be said in the way of ab stract argument, for or against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in any civilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all European lands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,) that some form of such democratizing is about the only resource now left. Tliat, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Any thing worthy to be called statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among the advanced students, 26 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and mon- archize, or to look forward and democratize but how, and in what degree and part, most prudently to demo cratize. The difficulties of the transfer may "be fearful ; perhaps none here in our America can truly know them. I, for one, fully acknowledge them, and sympathize deeply. But there is Time, and must be Faith ; and Opportunities, though gradual and slow, will every where abroad be born. There is (turning home again,) a thought, or fact, I must not forget subtle and vast, dear to America, twin-sister of its Democracy so ligatured indeed to it, that cither's death, if not the other's also, would make that other live out life, dragging a corpse, a loathsome horrid tag and burden forever at its feet. What the idea of Messiah was to the ancient race of Israel, through storm and calm, through public glory and their name's humiliation, tenacious, refusing to be ar gued with, shedding all shafts of ridicule and disbelief, undestroyed by captivities, battles, deaths -for neither the scalding blood of war, nor the rotted ichor of peace could ever wash it ourt, nor has yet a great Idea, bed ded in Judah's heart- source of the loftiest Poetry the world yet knows continuing on the same, though all else varies the spinal thread of the incredible romance of that people's career along five thousand years, So runs this thought, this fact, amid our own land's race and history. It is the thought of Oneness, averaging, including all ; of Identity the indissoluble sacred Union of These States. The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reform ers and revolutionists are indispensable to counter balance the inertness and fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. The latter will always take care of themselves the danger being that they rapidly tend to ossify us. The former is to be treated with in dulgence, and even respect. As circulation to air, so is agitation and a plentiful degree of speculative license DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 27 to political and moral sanity. Indirectly, but surely, goodness, virtue, law, (of tlio very best,) follow Free dom. These, to Democracy, are what the keel is to the ship, or saltness to the ocean. The true gravitation-hold of Liberalism in the United States will be a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general comfort a vast, inter twining reticulation of wealth. As the human frame, or, indeed, any object in this manifold Universe, is best kept together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity, exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied Nationality, occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it may sound, and a paradox after what we have been say ing, Democracy looks with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant, and on those out of business. She asks for men and women with occupa tions, well-on^ owners of houses and acres, and with cash in the bank and with some cravings for litera ture, too ; and must have them, and hastens to make them. Luckily, the seed is already well-sown, and has taken ineradicable root.* Huge and mighty are our Days, our republican lands and most in their rapid shif tings, their changes, all in the interest of the Cause. As I write this pass- * For fear of mistake, I may as well distinctly announce, as cheerfully included in the model and standard of These Vistas, a practical, stirring, worldly, money -making, even materialistic character. It is undeniable that our farms, stores, offices, dry- goods, coal and groceries, enginery, cash-accounts, trades, earn ings, markets, &c., should be attended to in earnest, and actively pursued, just as if they had a real and permanent existence. I perceive clearly that the extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States, are vital parts of amelioration and progress, and perhaps indispensa bly needed to prepare the very results I demand. My theory in cludes riches, and the getting of riches, and the amplest products, power, activity, inventions, movements, &c. Upon these, as upon substrata, I raise the edifice designed in These Vistas. 28 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. age, (November, 1863,) the din of disputation rages around me. Acrid the temper of the parties, vital the pending questions. Congress convenes ; the President sends his Message ; Reconstruction is still in abeyance ; the nominations and the contest for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with loudest threat and bustle. Of these, and all the like of these, the eventuations I know not ; but well I know that behind them, and what ever their eventuations, the really vital things remain safe and certain, and all the needed work goes on. Time, with soon or later superciliousness, disposes of Presidents, Congressmen, party platforms, and such. Anon, it clears the stage of each and any mortal shred that thinks itself so potent to its day ; and at and after which, (with precious, golden exceptions once or twice in a century,) all that relates to sir potency is flung to moulder in a burial-vault, and no one bothers himself the least bit about it afterward. But the People ever remains, tendencies continue, and all the idiocratic transfers in unbroken chain go on. In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far inland, toward the West. Our future National Capitol may not be where the present one is. It is possible,' nay likely, that in less than fifty years, it will migrate a thousand or two miles, will be re-founded, and every thing belonging to it made on a different plan, original, far more superb. The main social, political spine-character of The States will probably run along the Ohio, Missouri and Missis sippi Rivers, and west and north of them, including Canada. Those regions, with the group of powerful brothers toward the Pacific, (destined to the mastership of that sea and its countless Paradises of islands,) will compact and settle the traits of America, with all the old retained, but more expanded, grafted on newer, hardier, purely native stock. A giant growth, compo site from the rest, getting their contribution, absorbing it, to make it more illustrious. From the North, Intel lect, the sun of things also the idea of unswayable Justice, anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests. From the South, the living Soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily admitting no demonstration but its DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 29 own. While from the West itself comes solid Person ality, with blood and brawn, and the deep quality of all-accepting fusion. Political Democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making grand young men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of all. We try often, though we foil back often. A brave delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satis fies, out of the action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least. Time is ample. Let the victors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play its part among men. Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid hourly pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craffc of tyrants a ad the credulity of the populace, in some of their protean forms, no voice can at any time say, They are not. The clouds break a little, and the sun shines out but soon and certain the lowering dark ness falls again, as if to last forever. Yet is there an immortal courage and prophecy in every sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances, capitulate. Vive, the attack the perennial assault ! Vive, the un popular cause the spirit that audaciously aims the never-abandoned efforts, pursued the same amid oppo sing proofs and precedents. Once, before the war, (Alas ! I dare not say how many times the mood has come!) I, too, was filled with doubt and gloom. A foreigner, an acute and good man, had impressively said to me, that day putting in form, indeed, my own observations : I have traveled much in the United States, and watched their politicians, and listened to the speeches of the candidates, and read the journals, and gone into the public houses, and heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found your vaunted America honey-combed from top to toe with infidelism, even to itself and its own programme. I 30 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. have marked the brazen hell-faces of secession and slavery gazing defiantly from 'all the windows and door ways. I have everywhere found, primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have four.d the North just as full of bad stuff as the South. Of the holders of public office in the Nation, or in the States, or their municipalities., I have found that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous selection of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nomi nated and put through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got in by corrupt rings and elec tioneering, not capacity or desert. I have noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politi cians. And I have noticed more and more, the alarm ing spectacle of parties usurping the Government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes. Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply confronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great and little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over the powerfulest par ties, looms a Power, too sluggish may-be, but ever hold ing decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute them as soon as plainly needed, and at times, indeed, summarily crushing to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour of their pride. In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things from what, at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt important who is elected President or Governor, Mayor or Legislator, (and full of dismay when incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do,) there are other, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c., will always be the show, like ocean's scum ; enough, if waters deep and clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroidered shoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft are gen uine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race, the land which could raise such as the late Rebel lion, could also put it down. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 31 The average man of a land at last only is important. He, in These States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good uses, somehow, out of any sort of servant in office, even the basest ; because, (certain universal requisites, and their settled regularity and protection, being first secured,) a Nation like ours, in a sort of geo logical formation state, trying continually new experi ments, choosing new delegations, is not served by the best men only, but sometimes more by those that pro voke it by the combats they arouse. Thus national rage, fury, discussion, &c., better than content. Thus, also, the warning signals, invaluable for after times. What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen repeated, and doubtless long shall see the pop ular judgment taking the successful candidates on trial in the offices standing off, as it were, and observing them and their doings for a while, and always giving, finally, the fit, exactly due reward ? I think, after all, the sublimest part of political his tory, and its culmination, is currently issuing from the American people. . I know nothing grander, better ex ercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in humankind, than a well-contested American national election. Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-pass age in overtures,) giving the key and echo to these pages. When I pass to and fro, different latitudes, dif ferent seasons, beholding the crowds of the great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore when I mix with these interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent citizens, mechan ics, clerks, young persons at the idea of this mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singu lar awe falls upon me. I feel, with dejection and amaze ment, that among our geniuses and talented writers or speakers, few or none have yet really spoken to this people, or created a single image-making work that could be called for them or absorbed the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs, and which, thus, 32 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. in highest ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated, unexpressed. Dominion strong is the body's ; dominion -stronger is the mind's. What has filled, and fills to-day our intel lect, our fancy, furnishing the standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakespeare included, are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people, the life-blood of Democracy. The models of our literature, as we get it from other lands, ultramarine, have had their birth in courts, and basked and grown in castle sunshine ; all smells of princes' favors. Of workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, contributing after their kind ; many elegant, many learned, all complacent. But, touched by the National test, or tried by the standards of Democratic personality, they wither to ashes. I say I have not seen a single writer, artist, lecturer, or what not, that has confronted the voiceless but ever erect and active, pervading, underlying will and typic Aspiration of the land, in a spirit kindred to itself. Do you call those genteel little creatures American poets ? Do you term that perpetual, pistareen, paste-pot work, American art, American drama, taste, verse ? I think I hear, echoed as from some mountain-top afar in the West, the scorn ful laugh of the Genius of These States. Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not of Literature and Art only not of men only, but of women. The idea of the women of America, (extricated from this daze, this fossil and unhealthy air which hangs about the word Lady,) developed, raised to become the robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and political deciders with the men greater than man, we may admit, through their divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical attri bute but great, at any rate, as man, in all depart ments ; or, rather, capable of being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, inde pendent, stormy life. Then, as toward our thought's finale, (arid, in that, DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 83 overarching the true scholar's lesson,) we have to say there can be no complete or epical presentation of Do- mocracy in the aggregate, or any thing like it, at this day, because its doctrines will only be effectually incar nated in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit is at the root and centre. Far, far, indeed, stretch, in dis tance, our vistas ! How much is still to be disentangled, freed ! How long it takes to make this world see that it is, in itself, the final authority and reliance ! Did you, too, O friend, suppose Democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name ? I say Democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest f :>rms of interaction between men, and their beliefs in lleligion, Literature, colleges, and schools Democracy in all public and private life, and in the Army and Navy.* I have intimated that, as a paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and believers. I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted propa gandists or champions, or has been essentially helped, though often harmed, by them. It has been and is car ried on by all the moral forces, and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in fact, by all the developments of history, and can no more be stopped than the tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, it resides, crude and latent, well down in the hearts of the fair average of the American-born people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But it is not vet/ there or anywhere, the fully-received, the fervid, the ab solute faith. I submit, therefore, that the fruition of Democracy, on aught like a grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite Feudal world, we see "" The whole present system of the officering and pertonnel of the^Army and Navy of These States, and the spirit and letter of their trebly-aristocratic rules and regulations, is a monstrous ex otic, a nuisance and revolt, and belong here just as much as orders of nobility, or the Pope's council of Cardinals. I say if the pres ent theory of our Army and Navy is sensible and true, then the rest of America is an unmitigated fraud. 34 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, flie re sults of a deep, integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which issued laws, ecclesia, manners, in stitutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hitherto une- qualed,) faithfully partaking of their source, and in deed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute so, long ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal retrospect, an equal History for the Democratic principle. It, too, must be adorned, credited with its results then, when ib, with imperial power, through amplest time, has domi nated mankind has been the source and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious expres sions and institutes of the civilized world has begotten them in spirit and in form, and carried them to its own unprecedented heights has had, (it is possible,) monas tics and ascetics, more numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all previous creeds has swayed the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying Nature's own has fashioned, systematized, and triumphantly fin ished and carried out, in its own interest, and with un paralleled success, a New Earth and a New Man. Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are upon us ; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong formations, doubts, suspense tar then the afflatus of such themes haply may fall upon us, more or less ; and then, hot from surrounding war and revolution, our speech, though without polished coherence, and a fail ure by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least, as the lightnings. And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own re ward (for there are yet some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged.) Though not for us the joy of en tering at the last the conquered city nor ours the chance ever to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid eclat of the Democratic principle, arrived at meridian, filling the world with effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past history's kings, DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 35 or all dynastic sway there is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the prophetic vision, the joy of being tossed in the brave turmoil of these times the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not, hear not with the proud consciousness that amid what ever clouds, seductions, or heart-wearying postpone ments, we have never deserted, never despaired, never abandoned the Faith. So much contributed, to be conned well, to help pre pare and brace our edifice, our plann'd Idea we still proceed to give it in another of its aspects perhaps the main, the high faqade of all. For to Democracy, the leveler, the unyielding principle of the average, is surely joined another principle, equally unyielding, closely tracking the first, indispensable to it, opposite, (as the sexes are opposite,) and whose existence, con fronting and ever modifying the other, often clashing, paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail without the other, plainly supplies to these grand cosmic politics of ours, and to the launched forth mortal dangers of Re publicanism, to-day or any day, the counterpart and offset, whereby Nature restrains the deadly original re- lentlessness of all her first-class laws. This second principle is Individuality, the pride and centripetal iso lation of a human being in himself, Identity Person- all sm. Whatever the name, its acceptance and thorough infusion through the organizations of political common alty now shooting Aurora-like about the world, are of utmost importance, as the principle itself is needed for very life's sake. It forms, in a sort, or is to form, the compensating balance-wheel of the successful working machinery of aggregate America. And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest upon and what object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, &c., but rich, luxuriant, varied Personal- ism ? To that, all bends ; and it is because toward such result Democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale, breaks up the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants 36 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. the seed, and gives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest. The Literature, Songs, Esthetics, &c., of a country are of importance principally because they furnish the materials and suggestions of Personality for the women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thou sand effective ways.* As the topmost claim of a strong consolidating of the Nationality of These States, is, that only by such pow erful compaction can the separate States secure that full and free swing within their spheres, which is becoming to them, each after its kind, so will Individuality, with unimpeded branchings, nourish best under imperial Re publican forms. Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo * After the rest is satiated, all interest culminates in the field of Persons, and never flags there. Accordingly in this field hav > the great poets and Literatuses signally toiled. They too, in all ages, all lands, have been creators, fashioning, making types of men and women, as Adam and Eve are made in the divine fable. Behold, shaped, bred by Orientalism, Feudalism, through their long growth and culmination, and breeding back in return, (When shall wo have an equal series, typical of Democracy ?) Behold, commencing in primal Asia, (apparently formulated, in what beginning we know, in the gods of the mythologies, and coming down thence,) a few samples out of the countless product, bequeathed to the moderns, bequeathed to America as studios. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most of the Old and New Testament characters ; Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus, Prometheus, Hercules, JEneas, St. John, Plutarch's heroes; the Merlin of Celtic bards, the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and Hagen in the Niebelungen ; Roland and Oliver ; Roustam in the Shah-Nehmah ; and so on to Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Richard II., Lear, Marc Antony, &c., and the modern Faust. These, I say, are models, combined, adjusted to other standards than America's, but of priceless value to her and hers. Among women, the goddesses of the Egyptian, Indian and Greek mythologies, certain Bible characters, especially the Holy Mother ; Cleopatra, Penelope ; the portraits of Brunhelde and Chriemhilde in the Niebelungen ; Oriana, Una, &c. ; the modern Consuelo, Walter Scott's Jeanie and Effie Deans, &c., &c. (Woman, portrayed or outlined at her best, or as perfect human Mother, does not yet, it seems to me, fully appear in Literature.) DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 37 condition, and that the only large and satisfactory justi fication of it resides in the future, mainly through the copious production of perfect characters among the people, and through the advent of a sane and pervading Beligiousness, it is with regard to the atmosphere and spaciousness fit for such characters, and of certain nutri ment and cartoon-draftings proper for them, and indi cating them, for New World purposes, that I continue the present statement an exploration, as of new ground, wherein, like other primitive surveyors, I must do the best I can, leaving it to those who come after me to do much better. The service, in fact, if any, must be to merely break a sort of first path or track, no matter how rude and ungeometrical. We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwith standing the resonance and the many angry tempests, out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten. As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in The States, (and I entirely respect them,) are toward those vast and sweeping movements, influences, moral and physical, of humanity, now and always current over the planet, on the scale of the impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to reduce the whole matter to the considera tion of a single self, a man, a woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the treatment of the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary Soul. There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of Identity yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spir itual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such devout 88 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of the Me in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminous- ness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and looked upon, it expands over the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven. The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto not criticism by other stand ards, and adjustments thereto is the lesson of Nature. True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs ; but if, engaged disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays the precious idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, the man's self, the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general cultivation. Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are not only at tended to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like a cancer. Already, the Democratic genius watches, ill- pleased, these tendencies. Provision for a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what one has in one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. Negative quali ties, even deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and normal simplicity, and separation, amid this more and more complex, more and more artificialized, state of society how pensively we yearn for them ! how we would welcome their return ! In some such direction, then at any rate enough to preserve the balance we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not for absolute reasons, but cur rent ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform, and ever cram and stuff, is the pressure of our days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of all this, we perceive that we have not now to consider the ques tion of what is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set of nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies already becoming stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelisuc literature, and polite conformity and art. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. rw^'O 1 In addition to established sciences, we suggest a science as it were of healthy average Personalism, on original-universal grounds, the object of which should be to raise up and supply through The States a copious race of superb American men and women, cheerful, re ligious, ahead of any yet known. America, leaving out her politics, has yet morally originated nothing. She seems singularly unaware that the models of persons, books, manners, &c., appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are but exiles and exotics here. No current of her life, as shown on the surfaces of what is authoritatively called her So ciety, accepts or runs into moral, social, or esthetic De mocracy ; but all the currents set squarely against it. Never, in the Old World, was thoroughly upholstered Exterior Appearance and show, mental and other, built entirely on the idea of caste, and on the sufficiency of mere outside Acquisition never were Glibness, verbal Intellect, more the test, the emulation more loftily elevated as head and sample than they are on the surface of our Kepublicau States this day. The writers of a time hint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the modern, say these voices, is the word Culture. "We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. This word Culture, or what it has come to rep resent, involves, by contrast, our whole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement. Cer tain questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out, are not the processes of Culture rapidly creating a class of super cilious infidels, who believe in nothing ? Shall a man lose himself in countless masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that, and the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave parts of him are reduced and clipped away, like the bordering of box in a garden ? You can cultivate corn and roses and orchards but who shall cultivate the primaeval forests, the mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tum bling gorgeousness of the clouds? Lastly Is the readily-given reply that Culture only seeks to help, 40 DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. systematize, and put in attitude, the elements of fer tility and power, a conclusive reply ? I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should certainly insist, for the purposes of These States, on a radical change of category, in the distribution of precedence. I should demand a programme of Cul ture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the West, the working-men, the facts of farms and jackplanes and engineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should demand of this programme or theory a scope generous enough to include the widest human area. It must have for its spinal meaning the formation of a typical Personality of character, eligible to the uses of the high average of men and not restricted by conditions ineligible to the masses. The best culture will always be that of the manly and courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and of self-respect aiming to form, over this continent, an Idiocrasy of Universalism, which, true child of America, will bring joy to its mother, returning to her in her own spirit, recruiting myriads of men, able, natural, per ceptive, tolerant, devout, real men, alive and full, be lievers in her, America, and with some definite instinct why and for what she has arisen, most vast, most formi dable of historic births, and is, now and here, with won derful step, journeying through Time. The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World, is, under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion, (ensemble- Individuality,) at all hazards, to vitalize man's free play of special Per- sonalism, recognizing in it something that calls ever more to be considered, fed, and adopted as the substra tum for the best that belongs to us, (government indeed is for it,) including the new esthetics of our future. To formulate beyond this present vagueness to help line and put before us, the species, or a specimen of the DEMOCRATIC VISTAS. 41 species, of the Democratic ethnology of the future, is a work toward which the Genius of our land, with pecu liar encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Already, certain limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading and watery, have appeared. We too, (repressing doubts and qualms,) will try our hand. Attempting then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait of Personality, for general use for the manli ness of The States, (and doubtless that is most useful which is most simple, comprehensive for all, and toned low enough,) we should prepare the canvas well before hand. Parentage must consider itself in advance. (Will the time hasten when fatherhood and mother hood shall become a science and the noblest science ?) To our model a clear-blooded, strong-fibred physique, is indispensable ; the questions of food, drink, air, exer cise, assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-begotten Selfhood in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring*, full of adven ture ; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre ; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flushed, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing and a general pres ence that holds its own in the company of the highest. For it is native Personality, and that alone, that endows a man to stand before Presidents or Generals, or in any distinguished collection, with aplomb ; and not Culture, or any knowledge or intellect whatever. With regard to the mental-educational part of our model, enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, &c., the concentration thitherward of all the customs of our age, especially in America, is so overweening, and provides so fully for that part, that, important and necessary as it is, it really needs nothing from us here except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint. Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell upon here. Like beauty, grace of motion, 42 DEMOCRATIC VISTAH. 33) > >; :> '-> > ^o * ? , ^ > o > 5D> ^ I \ i I i J 9 > -p J> s < '^- > '> ,> '; J>. I > ' ^V ' S > ')}J> > ^ 5. --> j> 5* f sT* ^ V > ^ / ' && &&8 -> j /-? M -J ' ;> K5>5. t '-> J> j > D ^^r>j o , ]: !i!M