1 9 ' 4 i or. MODERN ENGLISH PROSE SELECTED AND EDITED BY GEORGE RICE CARPENTER AKD WILLIAM TENNEY BREWSTER PROFESSORS IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Wefo gorfc THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. I9IO All rights reserved COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up, electrotyped, and published January, 1904. Reprinted April, October, 1904 ; January, 1905; January, October, 1906; January, 1907 ; August, 1908 ; February, 1909 ; January, 1910. PREFACE OUR aim in compiling this volume has been to present the largest possible amount of illustrative material for classes in rhetoric and English composition. In propor- tion as the secondary teaching of English becomes more adequate, the need of instructing freshmen in elementary rhetorical principles tends to disappear, and with it much of the importance of a text-book of rhetoric. Even where the text-book cannot be dispensed with altogether, the experienced teacher will wish to have it supplemented as much as possible by the reading and study of good models. Practically, as we have all found, this must be done by using a volume of illustrative material. But the available books of this sort are few. They contain comparatively little matter, and this matter consists mainly of short extracts, often illustrative only of one special form of composition. Our aim has been to present a rich store of material in complete essays, stories, chapters, or com- ponent parts of larger works, to provide illustration for all the main forms of composition, and to offer as little annotation and explanation as possible. The notes and questions at the end of the volume are merely suggestive, and though the book may be used by itself, it can also be V 2075659 VI PREFACE made supplementary to any of the standard treatises on rhetoric. The selections are complete and unabridged in every case, except that of Hudson's Plains of Patagonia, where a short excursus was omitted. The texts are, so far as possible, based upon first or standard editions. Foot- notes in brackets are those of the compilers. Foot-notes not in brackets are those of the original authors. To economize space we have, however, omitted authors' foot- notes when they consisted merely of bibliographical refer- ences or similar unessential matter. G. R. C. W. T. B. JANUARY, 1904. CONTENTS Byzantium The Yosemite Valley . Landor's Cottage St. Mark's The Plains of Patagonia The World's End I Wee Willie Winkie The Cask of Amontillado . Ethan Brand .... Markheim Among the Corn-rows The Lad in the Hemp-field . The Miracle of the Peach Tree . A Dog and his Master . ", The Combat in the Desert . David and the Ark . . . Pendennis Falls in Love . . A Voice from the Past An Impetuous Lover . . . The Civil War .... Braddock's Defeat The Storming of the Bastille Queen Elizabeth . National Characteristics as mould- ing Public Opinion PAGE Edward Gibbon I Josiah Dwight Whitney . 5 Edgar Allan Poe . . .18 John Ruskin . . -25 W. H. Hudson ... 30 George Borrow 37 Rudyard Kipling ... 42 Edgar Allan Poe . . -52 Nathaniel Hawthorne . . 59 Robert Louis Stevenson . 75 Hamlin Garland ... .92 James Lane Allen . .105 Mattrice Hewlett . . .108 Jack London . . .113 Walter Scott . . .123 Charles Dickens . . .130 William Makepeace Thackeray 1 44 George Eliot . . -155 George Meredith . . .165 Thomas Babington Macaulay 175 Francis Parkman . .188 Thomas Carlyle , . .198 John Richard Green . . 206 James Bryce . vii 215 Vlll CONTENTS .> The Origin of the Yosemite Valley On a Piece of Chalk . Glacier Ice Learned Words and PopularWords /^ Sweetness and Light . ; ,yv-^ Ornate Art ^Charles Lamb .... ^ The Pathetic Fallacy . -'* " Knowledge viewed in Relation to Professional Skill . The American Scholar Where I Lived, and What I Lived for The Gettysburg Address Second Inaugural Address . l Liberty .... Nil Nisi Bonum .... The Hero as Poet Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist The Vision of Sudden Death An Apology for Idlers PAGE 226 Josiah Dwight Whitney . Thomas Henry Huxley . John Tyndall . . . James Bradstreet Greenough and George Lyman Kittredge 260 Matthew Arnold . Walter Bagehot . Walter Pater John Ruskin 232 254 267 291 33 John Henry Newman . . 330 Ralph Waldo Emerson . 351 Henry David Thoreau . . 370 Abraham Lincoln . . 384 Abraham Lincoln . . 385 John Stuart Mill . . .387 William Makepeace Thackeray 40 1 Thomas Carlyle . . .410 Charles Lamb . . .431 Thomas De Quincey . . 438 Robert Louis Stevenson . 455 NOTES AND QUESTIONS 465 MODERN ENGLISH PROSE BYZANTIUM EDWARD GIBBON [From chapter xvii of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1781. The text is that of Bury's edition.] IF we survey Byzantium in the extent which it acquired with the august name of Constantinople, the figure of the Imperial city may be represented under that of an unequal triangle. The obtuse point, which advances towards the east and the shores of Asia, meets and repels the waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side of the city is bounded by the harbour ; and the southern is washed by the Propontis, or Sea of Marmara. The basis of the triangle is opposed to the west, and terminates the continent of Europe. But the admirable form and division of the circumjacent land and water cannot, without a more ample explanation, be clearly or sufficiently understood. The winding channel through which the waters of the Euxine flow with a rapid and incessant course towards the Mediterranean received the appellation of Bosphorus, a name not less celebrated in the history than in the fables of antiquity. A crowd of temples and of votive altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the unskilfulness, the terrors, and the devotion of the Grecian navigators, who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine. On these banks tradition long preserved the memory of the palace of Phineus, in- fested by the obscene harpies ; and of the sylvan reign of Amy- cus, who defied the son of Leda to the combat of the Cestus. The straits of the Bosphorus are terminated by the Cyanean rocks, which, according to the description of the poets, had once floated on the face of the waters, and were destined by the gods to protect the entrance of the Euxine against the eye of profane curiosity. From the Cyanean rocks to the point and harbour of 2 BYZANTIUM Byzantium, the winding length of the Bosphorus extends about sixteen miles, and its most ordinary breadth may be computed at about one mile and a half. The new castles of Europe and Asia are constructed, on either continent, upon the foundations of two celebrated temples, of Serapis and of Jupiter Urius. The old castles, a work of the Greek emperors, command the narrowest part of the channel, in a place where the opposite banks advance within five hundred paces of each other. These fortresses were restored and strengthened by Mahomet the Second, when he meditated the siege of Constantinople : but the Turkish con- queror was most probably ignorant that, near two thousand years before his reign, Darius had chosen the same situation to connect the two continents by a bridge of boats. At a small distance from the old castles we discover the little town of Chrysopolis, or Scutari, which may almost be considered as the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople. The Bosphorus, as it begins to open into the Propontis, passes between Byzantium and Chalcedon. The latter of these cities was built by the Greeks, a few years before the former ; and the blindness of its founders, who overlooked the superior advantages of the opposite coast, has been stigmatized by a proverbial expression of contempt. The harbour of Constantinople, which may be considered as an arm of the Bosphorus, obtained, in a very remote period, the denomination of the Golden Horn. The curve which it describes might be compared to the horn of a stag, or, as it should seem, with more propriety, to that of an ox. The epithet of golden was expressive of the riches which every wind wafted from the most distant countries into the secure and capacious port of Constanti- nople. The river Lycus, formed by the conflux of two little streams, pours into the harbour a perpetual supply of fresh water, which serves to cleanse the bottom and to invite the periodical shoals of fish to seek their retreat in that convenient recess. As the vicissitudes of tides are scarcely felt in those seas, the constant depth of the harbour allows goods to be landed on the quays without the assistance of boats; and it has been observed that in many places the largest vessels may rest their prows against the houses, while their sterns are floating in the water. From the mouth of the Lycus to that of the harbour this arm of the Bos- EDWARD GIBBON 3 phorus is more than seven miles in length. The entrance is about five hundred yards broad, and a strong chain could be occasionally drawn across it to guard the port and city from the attack of an hostile navy. Between the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, the shores of Europe and Asia receding on either side enclose the sea of Mar- mara, which was known to the ancients by the denomination of Propontis. The navigation from the issue of the Bosphorus to the entrance of the Hellespont is about 120 miles. Those who steer their westward course through the middle of the Propontis may at once descry the high lands of Thrace and Bithynia, and never lose sight of the lofty summit of Mount Olympus, covered with eternal snows. They leave on the left a deep gulf, at the bottom of which Nicomedia was seated, the imperial residence of Diocletian ; and they pass the small islands of Cyzicus and Pro- connesus before they cast anchor at Gallipoli ; where the sea, which separates Asia from Europe, is again contracted into a narrow channel. The geographers who, with the most skilful accuracy, have sur- veyed the form and extent of the Hellespont, assign about sixty miles for the winding course, and about three miles for the ordi- nary breadth of those celebrated straits. But the narrowest part of the channel is found to the northward of the old Turkish castles between the cities of Sestus and Abydus. It was here that the adventurous Leander braved the passage of the flood for the possession of his mistress. It was here likewise, in a place where the distance between the opposite banks cannot exceed 500 paces, that Xerxes imposed a stupendous bridge of boats, for the purpose of transporting into Europe 170 myriads of barbarians. A sea contracted within such narrow limits may seem but ill to deserve the singular epithet of broad, which Homer, as well as Orpheus, has frequently bestowed on the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness are of a relative nature : the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed along the Helles- pont, who pursued the windings of the stream, and contemplated the rural scenery, which appeared on every side to terminate the prospect, insensibly lost the remembrance of the sea ; and his fancy painted those celebrated straits with all the attributes of a 4 BYZANTIUM mighty river flowing with a swift current, in the midst of a woody and inland country, and at length, through a wide mouth, dis- charging itself into the /Egean or Archipelago. Ancient Troy, seated on an eminence at the foot of Mount Ida, overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely received an accession of waters from the tribute of those immortal rivulets Simois and Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve miles along the shore, from the Sigsean to the Rhoetean promontory ; and the flanks of the army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of Agamemnon. The first of those promon- tories was occupied by Achilles with his invincible Myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to his disappointed pride and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre was erected on the ground where he had defended the navy against the rage of Jove and of Hector ; and the citizens of the rising town of Rhoeteum celebrated his memory with divine honours. Before Constantine gave a just preference to the situation of Byzantium, he had con- ceived the design of erecting the seat of empire on this cele- brated spot, from whence the Romans derived their fabulous origin. The extensive plain which lies below ancient Troy, towards the Rhoetean promontory and the tomb of Ajax, was first chosen for his new capital ; and, though the undertaking was soon relinquished, the stately remains of unfinished walls and towers attracted the notice of all who sailed through the straits of the Hellespont. We are at present qualified to view the advantageous position of Constantinople, which appears to have been formed by Nature for the centre and capital of a great monarchy. Situated in the forty-first degree of latitude, the imperial city commanded, from her seven hills, the opposite shores of Europe and Asia ; the cli- mate was healthy and temperate, the soil fertile, the harbour secure and capacious ; and the approach on the side of the continent was of small extent and easy defence. The Bosphorus and the Helles- pont may be considered as the two gates of Constantinople ; and the prince who possessed those important passages could always shut them against a naval enemy and open them to the fleets of commerce. The preservation of the eastern provinces may, in EDWARD GIBBON 5 some degree, be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the bar- barians of the Euxine, who in the preceding age had poured their armaments into the heart of the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and despaired of forcing this insur- mountable barrier. When the gates of the Hellespont and Bos- phorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed, within their spacious inclosure, every production which could supply the wants, or gratify the luxury, of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coast of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of Turkish oppres- sion, still exhibits a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens, and of plentiful harvests ; and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of the most exquisite fish, that are taken in their stated seasons without skill, and almost without labour. But, when the passages of the Straits were thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and artificial riches of the north and south, of the Euxine, and of the Mediterranean. Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and Scythia, as far as the sources of the Tanais and the Borysthenes ; whatsoever was manufactured by the skill of Europe or Asia ; the corn of Egypt, and the gems and spices of the farthest India, were brought by the varying winds into the port of Constantinople, which, for many ages, attracted the commerce of the ancient world. THE YOSEMITE VALLEY JOSIAH DWIGHT WHITNEY [From The Yosemite Guide-Book, 1874.] THE Yosemite Valley is nearly in the centre of the State north and south, and just midway between the east and west bases of the Sierra, here a little over seventy miles wide. Its shape and position will be best understood by referring to the maps which accompany this volume. One of these is a reduction of a map prepared by Mr. Gardner for the commissioners, and includ- ing only the Valley and its immediate surroundings ; l the other, from the surveys of Messrs. Hoffmann and Gardner, embraces the 1 [See Notes, at the end of the volume.] 6 THE YO SEMITE VALLEY Valley and the region adjacent for twenty miles in each direction. The Valley is a nearly level area, about six miles in length and from half a mile to a mile in width, sunk almost a mile in perpen- dicular depth below the general level of the adjacent region. It may be roughly likened to a gigantic trough hollowed in the mountains, nearly at right angles to the irregular trend ; that is to say, north 60 east, the direction of the axis of the Sierra being, as before stated, north 31 west. This trough, as will be seen by reference to the map, is quite irregular, having several reentering angles and square recesses, let back, as it were, into its sides ; still, a general nor theast-by- easterly direction is maintained in the depression, until we arrive near its upper end, when it turns sharply, at right angles almost, and soon divides into three branches, through either of which we may, going up a series of gigantic steps, as it were, ascend to the general level of the Sierra. Down each of these branches, or canons, descend streams, forks of the Merced, coming down the steps in a series of stupen- dous waterfalls. At its lower end, the Valley contracts into a nar- row gorge, or canon, with steeply inclined walls, and not having the U shape of the Yosemite, but the usual V form of California valleys. The principal features of the Yosemite, and those by which it is distinguished from all other known valleys, are : first, the near approach to verticality of its walls ; second, their great height, not only absolutely, but as compared with the width of the valley itself; and, finally, the very small amount of talus or debris at the base of these gigantic cliffs. These are the great characteristics of the Yosemite throughout its whole length ; but, besides these, there are many other striking peculiarities, and features both of sublimity and beauty, which can hardly be surpassed, if equalled, by those of any mountain valleys in the world. Either the domes or the waterfalls of the Yosemite, or any single one of them even, would be sufficient in any European country to attract travellers from far and wide in all directions. Waterfalls in the vicinity of the Yosemite, surpassing in beauty many of those best known and most visited in Europe, are actually left entirely unnoticed by travellers, because there are so many other objects of interest to be visited that it is impossible to find time for them all. JOSIAH D WIGHT WHITNEY J In describing the Yosemite, we will first give the necessary details in regard to the different objects of interest in and about the Valley, following it upward, and supposing the traveller to enter from the Mariposa side. In doing this, we will point out the prominent objects, in the order in which they present themselves, giving the statistics of their elevation and dimensions, so far as required or ascertained ; after this has been done, we can enter into more general considerations in regard to the Valley and its surroundings, speaking of it as a whole, after due description of its parts. In descending the Mariposa trail, a steep climb of 2973 feet V; j/ down to the bottom of the Valley, the traveller has presented to \ him a succession of views, all of which range over the whole extent of the principal valley, revealing its dominant features, while at each new point of view he is brought nearer and, as it were, more face to face with these gigantic objects. The principal points seen present themselves as follows : on the left is El Capitan, on the right the Bridal Veil Fall, coming down on the back side of the Cathedral Rock, and in the centre the view of the Valley, and beyond into the canon of the Tenaya Fork of the Merced ; the point of the Half Dome is just visible over the ridge of which Sentinel Rock forms a part, and beyond it, in the farthest distance, Cloud's Rest is seen. A general idea of the Valley can be well obtained from this point and in one view; but, as we ride up between the walls, new objects are constantly becoming visible, which at the lower end were entirely concealed. Of the cliffs around the Valley, El Capitan and the Half Dome are the most striking ; the latter is the higher, but it would be difficult to say which conveys to the mind the most decided impression of grandeur and massiveness. El Capitan is an immense block of granite, projecting squarely out into the Valley, and pre- senting an almost vertical sharp edge, 3300 feet in elevation. The sides or walls of the mass are bare, smooth, and entirely destitute of vegetation. It is almost impossible for the observer to comprehend the enormous dimensions of this rock, which in clear weather can be distinctly seen from the San Joaquin plains, at a distance of fifty or sixty miles. Nothing, however, so helps to a realization of the magnitude of these masses about the Yosemite 8 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY as climbing around and among them. Let the visitor begin to ascend the pile of debris which lies at the base of El Capitan, and he will soon find his ideas enlarged on the point in question. And yet these debris piles along the cliffs, and especially under El Capitan, are of insignificant size compared with the dimensions of the solid wall itself. They are hardly noticeable in taking a general view of the Valley. El Capitan imposes on us by its stupendous bulk, which seems as if hewed from the mountains on purpose to stand as the type of eternal massiveness. It is doubt- ful if anywhere in the world there is presented so squarely cut, so lofty, and so imposing a face of rock. On the other side of the Valley we have the Bridal Veil Fall, unquestionably one of the most beautiful objects in the Yosemite. It is formed by the creek' of the same name, which rises a few miles east of Empire Camp, runs through the meadows at West- fall's, and is finally precipitated over the cliffs, on the west side of Cathedral Rock, into the Yosemite, in one leap of 630 feet per- pendicular. The water strikes here on a sloping pile of debris, down which it rushes in a series of cascades, for a perpendicular distance of nearly 300 feet more, the total height of the edge of the fall above the meadow at its base being 900 feet. The effect of the fall, as everywhere seen from the Valley, is as if it were 900 feet in vertical height, its base being concealed by the trees which surround it. The quantity of water in the Bridal Veil Fall varies greatly with the season. In May and June the amount is gener- ally at the maximum, and it gradually decreases as the summer advances. The effect, however, is finest when the body of water is not too heavy, since then the swaying from side to side, and the waving under the varying pressure of the wind, as it strikes the long column of water, is more marked. As seen from a distance at such times, it seems to flutter like a white veil, producing an indescribably beautiful effect. The name " Bridal Veil " is poeti- cal, but fairly appropriate. The stream which supplies this fall heads low down in the Sierra, far below the region of eternal snow ; hence, as summer advances, the supply of water is rapidly dimin- ished, and by the middle or end of July there is only a small streamlet trickling down the vertical face of the rock, over which it is precipitated in a bold curve when the quantity of water is JOSIAH D WIGHT WHITNEY 9 larger. At the highest stage, the stream divides into a dozen streamlets at the base of the fall, several of which are only just fordable on horseback. The Virgin's Tears Creek, on the other side of the Valley, and directly opposite the Bridal Veil, makes also a fine fall, over a thousand feet high, included in a deep recess of the rocks near the lower corner of El Capitan. This is a beautiful fall as long as it lasts ; but the stream which produces it dries up early in the season. In quantity of water, elevation, and general effect, this fall, hardly spoken of at the Yosemite among so many grander ones, is far superior to the celebrated Staubbach of Switzerland. Proceeding up the Valley, we find on the same side as Bridal Veil, and a little above it, the prominent and massively sculptured pile of granite, to which the name of Cathedral Rock has been given. In this view the Merced River occupies the foreground ; the trees in the middle ground are pitch pines from 125 to 150 feet high, and those which seem to fringe the summit of Cathedral Rock like small bushes are, in reality, firs and pines as tall as those in the valley, or even taller. Cathedral Rock is not so high nor so massive as El Capitan, nor are its sides quite so nearly vertical. The summit is 2660 feet above the Valley. Just beyond Cathedral Rock, on the same side, are the graceful pinnacles of rock called " The Spires." These spires are isolated columns of granite, at least 500 feet high, standing out from, but connected at the base with, the walls of the Valley. They are kept in obscurity, or brought out into wonderful relief, according to the different way the light or shadow falls upon them. The whole side of the Valley, along this part of it, is fantastically but exquisitely carved out into forms of gigantic proportions, which anywhere else, except in the Yosemite, would be considered objects of the greatest interest. From one point of view these spires appear symmetrical, of equal height, squarely cut, and ris- ing above the edge of the cliff behind exactly like two towers of a Gothic cathedral. The next prominent object, in going up the Valley, is the triple- group of rocks known as the Three Brothers. These rise in steps one behind the other, the highest being 3830 feet above the valley. From the summit of this there is a superb view of the IO THE YOSEMITE VALLEY Valley and its surroundings. The peculiar outline of these rocks as seen from below, resembling three frogs sitting with their heads turned in one direction, is supposed to have suggested the Indian name Pompompasus, which means, we are informed, " Leaping Frog Rocks." Nearly opposite the Three Brothers is a point of rocks project- ing into the Valley, the termination of which is a slender mass of granite, having something the shape of an obelisk, and called, from its peculiar position or from its resemblance to a gigantic watch- tower, the "Sentinel Rock." The obelisk form of the Sentinel continues down for a thousand feet or more from its summit; below that it is united with the wall of the Valley. Its entire height above the river at its base is 3043 feet. This is one of the grandest masses of rock in the Yosemite. From near the foot of Sentinel Rock, looking directly across the Valley, we have before us what probably most persons will admit to be, if not the most stupendous, at least the most attrac- tive feature of the Yosemite; namely, "the Yosemite Fall" par excellence, that one of all the falls about the Valley which is best entitled to bear that name. The finest view of this fall is in a group of oaks near the Lower Hotel, from which point the various parts seem most thoroughly to be blended into one whole of sur- prising attractiveness. Even the finest photograph is, however, utterly inadequate to convey to the mind any satisfactory impres- sion or realization of how many of the elements of grandeur and beauty are combined -in this waterfall and its surroundings and accessories. The first and most impressive of these elements is, as in all other objects about the Yosemite, vertical height. In this it surpasses, it is believed, any waterfall in the world with any- thing like an equal body of water. And all the accessories of this fall are of a character worthy of, and commensurate with, its height, so that everything is added which can be to augment the impression which the descent of so large a mass of water from such a height could not fail by itself to produce. The Yosemite Fall is formed by a creek of the same name, which heads on the west side of the Mount Hoffmann Group, about ten miles northeast of the Valley. Being fed by melting snows exclusively, and running through its whole course over JO SI AH D WIGHT WHITNEY II almost bare granite rock, its volume varies greatly at different times and seasons, according to the amount of snow remaining unmelted, the temperature of the air, and the clearness or cloudi- ness of the weather. In the spring, when the snow first begins to melt with rapidity, the volume of water is very great ; as ordinarily seen by visitors in the most favorable portion of the season, say from May to July, the quantity is still sufficient to produce a fine effect; still later, it shrinks down to a very much smaller volume. We estimated the size of the stream at the summit of the fall, at a medium stage of water, to be twenty feet in width and two feet in average depth. Mr. J. F. Houghton measured the Yosemite Creek below the fall, June 17, 1865, and found it to be thirty-seven feet wide and twenty-five inches deep, with the velocity of about a mile an hour, giving about half a million cubic feet as passing over the fall in an hour. 1 At the highest stage of water there is probably three times as much as this. The vertical height of the lip of the fall above the Valley is, in round num- bers, 2600 feet, our various measurements giving from 2537 to 2641, the discrepancies being due to the fact that a near approach to, or a precise definition of, the place where the perpendicular portion of the fall commences is not possible. The lip or edge of the fall is a great rounded mass of granite, polished to the last degree, on which it was found to be a very hazardous matter to move. A difference of a hundred feet, in a fall of this height, would be entirely imperceptible to most eyes. The fall is not in one perpendicular sheet. There is first a vertical descent of 1500 feet, when the water strikes on what seems to be a projecting ledge ; but which, in reality, is a shelf or recess, almost a third of a mile back from the front of the lower portion of the cliff. From here the water finds its way, in a series of cascades, down a descent equal to 626 feet perpendicular, and then gives one final plunge of about 400 feet on to a low talus of rocks at the base of the precipice. The whole arrangement and succession of the different parts of the fall can be easily under- stood by ascending to the base of the Upper Fall, which is a very interesting and not a difficult climb, or from Sentinel Dome, on 1 Our measurements gave about 220 cubic feet as the amount of water passing over the fall in one second. 12 THE YO SEMITE VALLEY the opposite "side of the Valley, where the spectator is at a con- siderable distance above its edge. 1 As the various portions of the fall are nearly in one vertical plane, the effect of the whole is nearly as grand, and perhaps even more picturesque, than it would be if the descent were made in one leap from the top of the cliff to the level of the Valley. Nor is the grandeur or beauty of the fall perceptibly diminished, by even a very considerable diminution of the quantity of water from its highest stage. One of the most striking features of the Yosemite Fall is the vibration of the upper portion from one side to the other, under the varying pressure of the wind, which acts with immense force on so long a column. The descending mass of water is too great to allow of its being entirely broken up into spray ; but it widens out very much towards the bottom probably to as much as 300 feet at high water, the space through which it moves being fully three times as wide. This vibratory motion of the Yosemite and Bridal Veil falls is something peculiar, and not observed in any others, so far as we know ; the effect of it is indescribably grand, especially under the magical illumination of the full moon. The cliff a little east of the Yosemite Fall rises in a bold peak to the height of 3030 feet above the Valley ; it can be reached up Indian Canon, a little farther east, and from this point a magnifi- cent view of the whole region can be obtained. The ascent to the summit of the fall and the return to the Valley can be made in one day, and without difficulty, by the trail recently built up this canon. It was formerly a very hard climb. Following up the Valley for about two miles above the Yosemite Falls, we find that the main portion of it comes to an end, and that it suddenly branches out in three distinct but much narrower cartons, as they would be called by Californians, each of which, however, has some new wonders to disclose. The Merced River keeps the middle one of these, and its course is here about the same that it was below or nearly west ; it holds this direction nearly up to the base of the Mount Lyell Group, where it heads, between the main crest of the Sierra and the parallel subordinate or side range called by us the Merced or Obelisk Group. In the !The exact distance from the Sentinel Dome across in a straight line to the edge of the Upper Yosemite Fall is two and a half miles. JOSIAH D WIGHT WHITNEY 13 left hand, or northwesterly canon, the Tenaya Fork of the Merced comes down, and in the right hand, or southwesterly one, the South Fork l or the Illilouette. At the angle where the Yosemite branches we have on the north side the rounded, columnar mass of rock called the Washington Column, and immediately to the left of it the immense arched cavity called the " Royal Arches," and over these is seen the dome- shaped mass called the North Dome. This is one of those rounded masses of granite which are not uncommon in the Sierra Nevada ; it rises to an elevation of 3568 feet above the Valley. Such dome- shaped masses are somewhat characteristic of all granitic regions, but are nowhere developed on so grand a scale as in the Sierra. An examination with a good glass will show that the North Dome is made up of huge concentric plates of rock, overlapping each other in such a way as to absolutely prevent an ascent on the side presented to the Valley ; to the north, however, the Dome runs out in a long ridge, as represented on the map, and from that side there is not the slightest difficulty in getting to the summit. The concentric structure of the North Dome is well seen in the Royal Arches, which are, in fact, a sort of appendage to its base. This peculiarity of structure pervades the whole mass of rock, and it is evident that these arches have been formed by the slipping down of immense plates of granite, the size of the cavity thus left being enormous, but not easily measured. The arches and the column, at the angle of the main valley and the Tenaya Canon, seem as if intended to form a base of adequate magnitude and grandeur for the support of the Dome which rests upon them. The Half Dome, on the opposite side of the Tenaya Canon, is the loftiest and most imposing mass of those considered as part of the Yosemite. It is not so high as Cloud's Rest, but the latter seems rather to belong to the Sierra than to the Yosemite. The Half Dome is in sight, in the distance, as we descend the Mariposa trail, but is not visible in the lower part of the Valley itself; it is seen first when we come to the meadow opposite Hutching's. It is a crest of granite, rising to the height of 4737 feet above the l This is the " South Fork of the Middle Fork," and not the main South Fork, which flows by Clark's Ranch. To avoid confusion, it will be well to call it by the Indian name, Illilouette, one not yet much in use in the Valley. 14 Valley, seeming perfectly inaccessible, and being the only one of all the prominent points about the Yosemite which never has been, and perhaps never will be, trodden by human feet. 1 The summit of the Half Dome runs in a northeast and southwest direction, parallel with the canon ; it rises on the southwest side with a grand, regular, domelike form, but falls off rapidly in a series of steps as it descends to the northeast. At right angles with this, or crosswise of the mass, the section is very peculiar. On the side fronting Tenaya Canon it is absolutely vertical for 1500 feet or more from the summit, and then falls off with a very steep slope, of probably sixty or seventy degrees, to the bottom of the canon. This slope, however, is not, as one would suppose, a talus of fragments fallen from above ; it is a mass of granite rock, part and parcel of the solid structure of the Dome ; the real debris pile at the bottom is absolutely insignificant in dimensions compared with the Dome itself. On the opposite face the Half Dome is not absolutely ver- tical ; it has a rounded form at the top, and grows more and more steep at the bottom. The whole appearance of the mass is that of an originally dome-shaped elevation, with an exceedingly steep curve, of which the western half has been split off and become ingulfed. This geological theory of its formation appears to have forced itself upon those who gave it the name " Half Dome," which is one that seems to suggest itself, at the first sight of this truly marvellous crest of rock. From the upper part of the Valley, and from all the heights about it, the Half Dome presents itself as an object of the most imposing grandeur. It has not the massiveness of El Capitan, but it is more astonishing, and probably there are few visitors to the Valley who would not concede to it the first place among all the wonders of the region. Those who have not 1 An attempt was made in September, 1871, by Mr. John Conway and his son, Major, aged nine years, an extremely active and daring climber, to get to the top of the Half Dome. They were furnished with a rope and eye-bolts, by which the hazards of the descent were to be in some measure provided against by carrying the rope through the bolts, driven in as occasion offered, and securing it at the upper end. Major reached an elevation of about 300 feet above the saddle or shoulder on the northeast side of the Dome, and thinks that he might have attained the summit; but the father deemed the risk too great, as the boy had reached a point where he could find no projection to which the rope could be made fast, and the return without its assistance was extremely hazardous. [A successful ascent was first made in 1875. J JOSIAH D WIGHT WHITNEY 15 seen it could never comprehend its extraordinary form and propor- tions, not even with the aid of photographs. It is entirely unique in the Sierra Nevada ; and, so far as we know, in the world. The only possible rival would be the Matterhorn. Each is unique in its way ; but the forms of the two are so different that they will hardly bear comparison. 1 Farther up the canon of the Tenaya is a beautiful little lake called " Mirror Lake," an expansion of the Tenaya Fork. It is frequently visited, and best early in the morning, for the purpose of getting the reflection from its unruffled surface of a noble over- hanging mass of rock, to which the name of Mount Watkins has been given, as a compliment to the photographer who has done so much to attract attention to this region. Still farther up the Tenaya Fork, on the right-hand side, is " Cloud's Rest," the somewhat fanciful designation of a long, bare, steep, and extremely elevated granite ridge, which connects the Valley with the High Sierra, and of which something more will be said in the next chapter. The canon of the Tenaya Fork is diffi- cult to climb through, owing to the great pile of angular fragments of rock with which it is obstructed. It has formerly been traversed occasionally by persons desiring to reach the Big Oak Flat trail to Mono Lake ; but now it is much easier to take the trail up Indian Canon, which has the advantage of being passable for animals, while the Tenaya Canon is not. The Indian Canon trail is steep and rough, though not at all dangerous. It affords a convenient way by which to reach the Tuolumne Canon and the region of Mount Hoffmann, although it has thus far been principally used for excursions to the summit of the Yosemite Falls. It was last year a free trail. We return now to the canon of the main Merced River, which also has its own peculiar wonders to disclose. Leaving the Yose- mite Valley proper, at the angle spoken of before, where the three canons unite, we follow up the Merced, soon crossing the Illilouette, which carries perhaps a third or a quarter as much 1 A model of the Half Dome, on a scale of 300 feet to the inch, was made by Mr. Hoffmann, under the direction of thewriter of this volume, and by him presented to Woodward's Garden in San Francisco, where it may be studied by those who feel an interest jn mountain forms. 1 6 THE YOSEMITE VALLEY water as the main river. Rising rapidly on a trail which runs along near the river, over the talus of great angular masses fallen from above, we ride a little less than a mile, and nearly to the base of the first of the two great falls made by the Merced in coming down from the level of the plateau above into the Yosemite Valley. In doing this, the river descends, in two miles, over 2000 feet, making, besides innumerable cascades, two grand falls, which are among the greater attractions of the Yosemite, not only on account of their height and the large body of water in the river during most of the season, but also on account of the stupendous scenery in the midst of which they are placed. The first fall reached in ascending the canon is the Vernal, a perpendicular sheet of water with a descent varying greatly with the season. Our measurements give all the way from 315 to 475 feet for the vertical height of the fall, between the months of June and October. The reason of these discrepancies seems to lie in the fact that the rock near the bottom is steeply inclined, so that a precise definition of the place where the perpendicular part ceases is very difficult amid the blinding spray and foam. As the body of water increases, the force of the fall is greater, and of course it is thrown farthest forward when the mass of water is greatest. Probably it is near the truth to call the height of the fall, at the average stage of water in June or July, 400 feet. The rock behind this fall is a perfectly square cut mass of granite extending across the canon, and it is wonderful to see, at low water, how little the eroding effect of the river has had to do with the formation of the canon and fall. It would seem as if causes now in action had little or nothing to do with the formation of this step in the descent of the Merced to any valley below. The path up the side of the canon near the fall winds around and along a steeply sloping mountain side, always wet with the spray, and consequently rather slippery in places. Ladies, how- ever, find no great difficulty in passing, with the aid of friendly arms, and protected by stout boots and india-rubber clothing brought from the hotel. The perpendicular part of the ascent is surmounted by the aid of a substantial and well-protected stair- case, which has lately taken the place of the former somewhat dangerous ladders. At the summit of the fall the view down the JO SI AH D WIGHT WHITNEY \J canon, as well as in the opposite direction, is extremely fine. A remarkable parapet of granite runs along the edge of Vernal Fall for some distance, just breast-high, and looking as if made on purpose to afford the visitor a secure position from which to enjoy the scene. From the Vernal Fall up stream, for the distance of about a mile, the river may be followed, and it presents a succession of cascades and rapids of great beauty. As we approach the Nevada Fall, the last great one of the Merced, we have at every step something new and impressive. On the left hand, or north side of the river, is the Cap of Liberty, a stupendous mass of rock, isolated and nearly perpendicular on all sides, rising perhaps 2000 feet above its base, and little inferior to the Half Dome in grandeur. It has been frequently climbed, and without difficulty, although appearing so inaccessible from the canon of the Merced. The Nevada Fall is, in every respect, one of the grandest waterfalls in the world, whether we consider its vertical height, the purity and volume of the river which forms it, or the stupen- dous scenery by which it is environed. The fall is not quite perpendicular, as there is near the summit a ledge of rock which receives a portion of the water, and throws it off with a peculiar twist, adding considerably to the general picturesque effect. A determination of the height of the fall was not easy, on account of the blinding spray at the bottom, and the uncertainty of the exact spot where the water strikes. Indeed, this seems to vary in the Nevada as well, although not so much, as in the Vernal Fall. Our measurements made the Nevada from 591 to 639 feet, at different times and seasons. To call the Vernal 400 and the Nevada 600 feet, in round numbers, will be near enough to the truth. The descent of fhe river in the rapids between the two falls is nearly 300 feet. In the canon of the South Fork, or Illilouette, there is a fine fall estimated at 600 feet high. It is seen from a point on the trail from the hotel to Mirror Lake, although but rarely visited by travellers, the canon being rough and difficult to climb. A trail should be made up this gorge, to give access to the fall, and to the superb views to be had of the back of the Half Dome, the Vernal Fall, and other interesting points, c 1 8 LANDOR'S COTTAGE Having thus run rapidly through the list of objects in the Valley best known and most likely to be visited, we will give a more systematic and general account of the Yosemite, its botany, topography, and geology ; this will enable us to bring forward some interesting considerations which could not so well be intro- duced in a detailed enumeration, in a geographical order, of the points of interest. LANDOR'S COTTAGE EDGAR ALLAN POE [A part of an imaginary sketch, entitled Lander's Cottage, published in his Works, 1850.] THE little vale into which I thus peered down from under the fog-canopy could not have been more than four hundred yards long ; while in breadth it varied from fifty to one hundred and fifty, or perhaps two hundred. It was most narrow at its northern extremity, opening out as it tended southwardly, but with no very precise regularity. The widest portion was within eighty yards of the southern extreme. The slopes which encompassed the vale could not fairly be called hills, unless at their northern face. Here a precipitous ledge of granite arose to a height of some ninety feet ; and, as I have mentioned, the valley at this point was not more than fifty feet wide ; but as the visitor proceeded south- wardly from this cliff, he found, on his right hand and on his left, declivities at once less high, less precipitous, and less rocky. All, in a word, sloped and softened to the south ; and yet the whole vale was engirdled by eminences, more or less high, except at two points. One of these I have already spoken of. It lay consider- ably to the north of west, and was where the setting sun made its way, as I have before described, into the amphitheatre, through a cleanly cut natural cleft in the granite embankment : this fissure might have been ten yards wide at its widest point, so far as the eye could trace it. It seemed to lead up, up, like a natural cause- way, into the recesses of unexplored mountains and forests. The other opening was directly at the southern end of the vale. Here, EDGAR ALLAN POE 19 generally, the slopes were nothing more than gentle inclinations, extending from east to west about one hundred and fifty yards. In the middle of this extent was a depression, level with the ordi- nary floor of the valley. As regards vegetation, as well as in respect to everything else, the scene softened and sloped to the south. To the north on the craggy precipice afew paces from the verge upsprang the magnificent trunks of numerous hickories, black walnuts, and chestnuts, interspersed with occasional oak ; and the strong lateral branches thrown out by the walnuts, espe- cially, spread far over the edge of the cliff. Proceeding south- wardly, the explorer saw at first the same class of trees, but less and less lofty and Salvatorish 1 in character; then he saw the gentler elm, succeeded by the sassafras and locust these again by the softer linden, red-bud, catalpa, and maple these yet again by still more graceful and more modest varieties. The whole face of the southern declivity was covered with wild shrub- bery alone an occasional silver willow or white poplar excepted. In the bottom of the valley itself (for it must be borne in mind that the vegetation hitherto mentioned grew only on the cliffs or hillsides) were to be seen three insulated trees. One was an elm of fine size and exquisite form : it stood guard over the southern gate of the vale. Another was a hickory, much larger than the elm, and altogether a much finer tree, although both were exceed- ingly beautiful : it seemed to have taken charge of the north- western entrance, springing from a group of rocks in the very jaws of the ravine, and throwing its graceful body, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, far out into the sunshine of the amphitheatre. About thirty yards east of this tree stood, however, the pride of the valley, and beyond all question the most magnificent tree I have ever seen, unless, perhaps, among the cypresses of Itchia- tuckanee. It was a triple-stemmed tulip tree the Lirio- dendron Tulipiferum one of the natural order of magnolias. Its three trunks separated from the parent at about three feet from the soil and, diverging very slightly and gradually, were not more than four feet apart at the point where the largest stem shot out into the foliage : this was at an elevation of about eighty feet. 1 [Salvator was more well known then than now as an Italian painter of wildly romantic scenery.] 2O LANDOR^S COTTAGE The whole height of the principal division was one hundred and twenty feet. Nothing can surpass in beauty the form or the glossy, vivid green of the leaves of the tulip tree. In the present instance they were fully eight inches wide ; but their glory was altogether eclipsed by the gorgeous splendor of the profuse blos- soms. Conceive, closely congregated, a million of the largest and most resplendent tulips ! Only thus can the reader get any idea of the picture I would convey. And then the stately grace of the clean, delicately-granulated columnar stems, the largest four feet in diameter, at twenty from the ground. The innumerable blos- soms, mingling with those of other trees scarcely less beautiful, although infinitely less majestic, filled the valley with more than Arabian perfumes. The general floor of the amphitheatre was grass of the same character as that I had found in the road : if anything, more de- liciously soft, thick, velvety, and miraculously green. It was hard to conceive how all this beauty had been attained. I have spoken of the two openings into the vale. From the one to the northwest issued a rivulet, which came, gently mur- muring and slightly foaming, down the ravine, until it dashed against the group of rocks out of which sprang the insulated hick- ory. Here, after encircling the tree, it passed on, a little to the north of east, leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the south, and making no decided alteration in its course until it came near the midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley. At this point, after a series of sweeps, it turned off at right angles and pursued a generally southern direction mean- dering as it went until it became lost in a small lake of irregular figure (although roughly oval), that lay gleaming near the lower extremity of the vale. This lakelet was, perhaps, a hundred yards in diameter at its widest part. No crystal could be clearer than its waters. Its bottom, which could be distinctly seen, consisted altogether of pebbles brilliantly white. Its banks, of the emerald grass already described, rounded, rather than sloped, off into the clear heaven below ; and so clear was this heaven, so perfectly, at times, did it reflect all objects above it, that where the true bank ended and where the mimic one commenced, it was a point of no little difficulty to determine. The trout, and some other varieties EDGAR ALLAN POE 21 of fish, with which this pond seemed to be almost inconveniently crowded, had all the appearance of veritable flying-fish. It was almost impossible to believe that they were not absolutely sus- pended in the air. A light birch canoe, that lay placidly on the water, was reflected in its minutest fibres with a fidelity unsur- passed by the most exquisitely polished mirror. A small island, fairly laughing with flowers in full bloom, and affording little more space than just enough for a picturesque little building, seemingly a fowl-house, arose from the lake not far from its northern shore, to which it was connected by means of an inconceivably light- looking and yet very primitive bridge. It was formed of a single broad and thick plank of the tulip wood. This was forty feet long, and spanned the interval between shore and shore with a slight but very perceptible arch, preventing all oscillation. From the southern extreme of the lake issued a continuation of the rivulet, which, after meandering for perhaps thirty yards, finally passed through the " depression " (already described) in the middle of the southern declivity, and tumbling down a sheer precipice of a hundred feet, made its devious and unnoticed way to the Hudson. The lake was deep at some points thirty feet but the rivulet seldom exceeded three, while its greatest width was about eight. Its bottom and banks were as those of the pond if a defect could have been attributed to them, in point of pictur- esqueness, it was that of excessive neatness. The expanse of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an occasional showy shrub, such as the hydrangea, or the common snowball, or the aromatic seringa ; or, more frequently, by a clump of geraniums blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. These latter grew in pots which were carefully buried in the soil, so as to give the plants the appearance of being indigenous. Besides all this, the lawn's velvet was exquisitely spotted with sheep a considerable flock of which roamed about the vale, in company with three tamed deer, and a vast number of brilliantly- plumed ducks. A very large mastiff seemed to be in vigilant attendance upon these animals, each and all. Along the eastern and western cliffs where, towards the upper portion of the amphitheatre, the boundaries were more or less precipitous grew ivy in great profusion so that only here 22 LAND OR' S COTTAGE and there could even a glimpse of the naked rock be obtained. The northern precipice, in like manner, was almost entirely clothed by grapevines of rare luxuriance ; some springing from the soil at the base of the cliff, and others from ledges on its face. The slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this little domain was crowned by a neat stone wall, of sufficient height to prevent the escape of the deer. Nothing of the fence kind was observable elsewhere ; for nowhere else was an artificial enclosure needed : any stray sheep, for example, which should attempt to make its way out of the vale by means of the ravine, would find its progress arrested, after a few yards' advance, by the precipitous ledge of rock over which tumbled the cascade that had arrested my attention as I first drew near the domain. In short, the only ingress or egress was through a grate occupying a rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which I stopped to reconnoitre the scene. I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the whole of its course. Its two general directions, as I have said, were first from west to east, and then from north to south. At the turn, the stream, sweeping backwards, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a peninsula, which was very nearly an island, and which included about the sixteenth of an acre. On this peninsula stood a dwelling-house and when I say that this house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, 1 " etait (Tune architecture inconnue dans les annales de la terre"^ I mean, merely, that its tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of combined novelty and propriety in a word, of poetry (for, than in the words just employed, I could scarcely give, of poetry in the abstract, a more rigorous definition) and I do not mean that the merely outre was perceptible in any respect. In fact, nothing could well be more simple, more utterly un- pretending, than this cottage. Its marvellous effect lay altogether in its artistic arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I looked at it, that some eminent landscape-painter had built it with his brush. The point of view from which I first saw the valley was not 1 [The hero of Beckford's romance of the same name.] 2 [Was of an architecture unknown in the annals of the earth.] EDGAR ALLAN POE 2$ altogether, although it was nearly, the best point from which to survey the house. I will therefore describe it as I afterwards saw it from a position on the stone wall at the southern extreme of the amphitheatre. The main building was about twenty-four feet long and sixteen broad certainly not more. Its total height, from the ground to the apex of the roof, could not have exceeded eighteen feet. To the west end of this structure was attached one about a third smaller in all its proportions : the line of its front standing back about two yards from that of the larger house ; and the line of its roof, of course, being considerably depressed below that of the roof adjoining. At right angles to these buildings, and from the rear of the main one, not exactly in the middle, extended a third com- partment, very small being, in general, one-third less than the western wing. The roofs of the two larger were very steep sweeping down from the ridge-beam with a long concave curve, and extending at least four feet beyond the walls in front, so as to form the roofs of two piazzas. These latter roofs, of course, needed no support ; but as they had the air of needing it, slight and perfectly plain pillars were inserted at the corners alone. The roof of the northern wing was merely an extension of a por- tion of the main roof. Between the chief building and western wing arose a very tall and rather slender square chimney of hard Dutch bricks, alternately black and red: a slight cornice of projecting bricks at the top. Over the gables the roofs also pro- jected very much : in the main building, about four feet to the east and two to the west. The principal door was not exactly in the middle of the main division, being a little to the east while the two windows were to the west. These latter did not extend to the floor, but were .much longer and narrower than usual they had single shutters like doors the panes were of lozenge form, but quite large. The door itself had its upper half of glass, also in lozenge panes a movable shutter secured it at night. The door to the west wing was in its gable, and quite simple a single window looked out to the south. There was no external door to the north wing, and it, also, had only one window to the east. The blank wall of the eastern gable was relieved by stairs (with a balustrade) running diagonally across it the ascent being from 24 LAN DOR'S COTTAGE the south. Under cover of the widely projecting eave these steps gave access to a door leading into the garret, or rather loft for it was lighted only by a single window to the north, and seemed to have been intended as a storeroom. The piazzas of the main building and western wing had no floors, as is usual ; but at the doors and at each window, large, flat, irregu- lar slabs of granite lay embedded in the delicious turf, affording comfortable footing in all weather. Excellent paths of the same material not nicely adapted, but with the velvety sod filling fre- quent intervals between the stones, led hither and thither from the house, to a crystal spring about five paces off, to the road, or to one or two outhouses that lay to the north, beyond the brook, and were thoroughly concealed by a few locusts and catalpas. Not more than six steps from the main door of the cottage stood the dead trunk of a fantastic pear tree, so clothed from head to foot in the gorgeous bignonia blossoms that one required no lit- tle scrutiny to determine what manner of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung cages of different kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking- 'bird ; in another, an oriole ; in a third, the impudent bobolink while three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal with canaries. The pillars of the piazza were enwreathed in jasmine and sweet honeysuckle ; while from the angle formed by the main structure -and its west wing, in front, sprang a grapevine of unexampled luxu- riance. Scorning all restraint, it had clambered first to the lower roof then to the higher ; and along the ridge of this latter it con- tinued to writhe on, throwing out tendrils to the right and left, until at length it fairly attained the east gable, and fell trailing over the stairs. The whole house, with its wings, was constructed of the old- fashioned Dutch shingles broad, and with unrounded corners. It is a peculiarity of this material to give houses built of it the appearance of being wider at bottom than at top after the man- ner of Egyptian architecture ; and in the present instance this exceedingly picturesque effect was aided by numerous pots of gor- geous flowers that almost encompassed the base of the buildings. The shingles were painted a dull gray ; and the happiness with EDGAR ALLAN POE 2$ which this neutral tint melted into the vivid green of the tulip tree leaves that partially overshadowed the cottage can readily be conceived by an artist. From the position near the stone wall, as described, the build- ings were seen at great advantage for the southeastern angle was thrown forward so that the eye took in at once the whole of the two fronts, with the picturesque eastern gable, and at the same time obtained just a sufficient glimpse of the northern wing, with parts of a pretty roof to the spring-house, and nearly half of a light bridge that spanned the brook in the near vicinity of the main buildings. ST. MARK'S JOHN RUSKIN [From chapter 4, volume ii, of The Stones of Venice, 1851-3.] AND now I wish that the reader, before I bring him into St. Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English cathedral town, and walk with me to the west front of its cathedral. Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the carts of the trades- men who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grassplots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side ; and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old- fashioned, but of red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, especially on the sunny 26 ST. MARK'S side where the canons' children are walking with their nursery- maids. And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark places between their pillars, where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the likeness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, per- haps a saintly king long ago in heaven ; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering wall of rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseemlier shape, and coloured on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold ; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scatter- ing, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities, and its evidence of the sense and steady performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated by the cathedral clock ; and weigh the influence of those dark towers on all who have passed through the lonely square at their feet for centuries, and on all who have seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or catching on their square masses the last rays of the sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only by the mist at the bend of the river. And then let us quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land at the extremity of the Calle Lunga San Moise, which may be considered as there answer- ing to the secluded street that led us to our English cathedral gateway. We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet wide where it is widest, full of people, and resonant with cries of itinerant sales- men, a shriek in their beginning, and dying away into a kind of JOHN RUSK IN 27 orazen ringing, all the worse for its confinement between the high houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Overhead an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and chimney flues pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, occupying, in fact, inter- vals between the square stone shafts, about eight feet high, which carry the first floors : intervals of which one is narrow and serves as a door ; the other is, in the more respectable shops, wainscoted to the height of the counter and glazed above, but in those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases entering at the front only, and fading away in a few feet from the threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious shopkeeper sometimes leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with a penny print ; the more religious one has his print coloured and set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured fringe, with perhaps a faded flower or two on each side, and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here at the fruiterer's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped upon the counter like cannon-balls, the Madonna has a tabernacle of fresh laurel leaves ; but the pewterer next door has let his lamp out, and there is nothing to be seen in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded patterns on the cop- per pans, hanging from his roof in the darkness. Next comes a "Vendita Frittole e Liquori," 1 where the Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, pre- sides over certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, at the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are offered " Vino Nos- trani a Soldi 28, 32, " 2 the Madonna is in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red casks of three-year-old vintage, and 1 [Shop for cakes and liquors.] 2 [Nostrani wine at so many soldi (cents).] 28 ST. MARK'S flanked by goodly ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps ; and for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to drink out, under her auspices, the money they have gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier. A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the square door of marble, deeply moulded in the outer wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its side ; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo San Moise, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the square), the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the frightful facade of San Moise, which we will pause at another time to examine, and then . by the modernizing of the shops as they near the piazza., and the mingling with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups of English and Austrians. We will push fast through them into the shadow _of__the pillars at the end of the "Bocca di Piazza," and then we forgeTthera-all ; for between those pillars there opens a great light, and, in the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level field of chequered stones ; and, on each side, the countless arches prolong themselves into ranged symmetry, as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed together above us in the dark alley had been struck back into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their rude casements and broken walls had been trans- formed into arches charged with goodly sculpture, and fluted shafts of delicate stone. And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away ; a multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long, low pyramid of coloured light ; a treasure- heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of- pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapss and pomegranates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together JOHN RUSK IN 29 into an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, thaTTialf refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatralike, " their^bluest veins to kiss " the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand ; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross ; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth ; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. Between that grim cathedral of England and this, what an inter- val ! There is a type of it in the very birds that haunt them ; for, instead of the restless crowd, hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have stood unchanged for seven hundred years. 3O THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA W. H. HUDSON [From chapter 13 of Idle Days in Patagonia, 1893.] NEAR the end of Darwin's famous narrative of the voyage of the Beagle there is a passage which, for me, has a very special interest and significance. It is as follows, and the italicization is mine : "In calling up images of the past, I find the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes ; yet these plains are pronounced by all to be most wretched and useless. They are characterized only by negative possessions ; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support only a few dwarf plants. Why, then and the case is not peculiar to myself have these arid wastes taken so firm possession of my mind? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can scarcely analyze these feelings, but it must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely practi- cable, and hence unknown ; they bear the stamp of having thus lasted for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was sur- rounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last bound- aries to man's knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations ? " That he did not in this passage hit on the right explanation of the sensations he experienced in Patagonia, and of the strength of the impressions it made on his mind, I am quite convinced ; for the thing is just as true of to-day as of the time, in 1836, when he wrote that the case was not peculiar to himself. Yet since that date which now, thanks to Darwin, seems so remote to the naturalist those desolate regions have ceased to be imprac- ticable, and, although still uninhabited and uninhabitable, except to a few nomads, they are no longer unknown. During the last twenty years the country has been crossed in various directions, from the Atlantic to the Andes, and from the Rio Negro to the IV. H. HUDSON 31 Straits of Magellan, and has been found all barren. The myste- rious illusive city, peopled by whites, which was long believed to exist in the unknown interior, in a valley called Trapalanda, is to moderns a myth, a mirage of the mind, as little to the traveller's imagination as the glittering capital of great Manoa, which Alonzo Pizarro and his false friend Orellana failed to discover. The trav- eller of to-day really expects to see nothing more exciting than a solitary huanaco keeping watch on a hill-top, and a few grey- plumaged rheas flying from him, and, possibly, a band of long- haired roving savages, with their faces painted black and red. Yet, in spite of accurate knowledge, the old charm still exists in all its freshness ; and after all the discomforts and sufferings endured in a desert cursed with eternal barrenness, the returned traveller finds in after years that it still keeps its hold on him, that it shines brighter in memory, and is dearer to him than any other region he may have visited. We know that the more deeply our feelings are moved by any scene the more vivid and lasting will its image be in memory a fact which accounts for the comparatively unfading character of the images that date back to the period of childhood, when we are most emotional. Judging from my own case, I believe that we have here the secret of the persistence of Patagonian images, and their frequent recurrence in the minds of many who have visited that grey, monotonous, and, in one sense, eminently uninteresting region. It is not the effect of the unknown, it is not imagination ; it is that nature in these desolate scenes, for a reason to be guessed at by and by, moves us more deeply than in others. In describing his rambles in one of the most desolate spots in Patagonia, Darwin remarks : " Yet, in passing over these scenes, without one bright object near, an ill-defined but strong sense of pleasure is vividly excited." When I recall a Patagonian scene, it comes before me so complete in all its vast extent, with all its details so clearly outlined, that, if I were actually gazing on it, I could scarcely see it more distinctly ; yet other scenes, even those that were beautiful and sublime, with forest, and ocean, and mountain, and over all the deep blue sky and brilliant sunshine of the tropics, appear no longer distinct and entire in memory, and only become more broken and clouded if any attempt is 32 THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA made to regard them attentively. Here and there I see a wooded mountain, a grove of palms, a flowery tree, green waves dashing on a rocky shore nothing but isolated patches of bright colour, the parts of the picture that have not faded on a great blurred canvas, or series of canvases. These last are images of scenes which were looked on with wonder and admiration feelings which the Patagonian wastes could not inspire but the grey, monoto- nous solitude woke other and deeper feelings, and in that mental state the scene was indelibly impressed on the mind. I spent the greater part of one winter at a point on the Rio Negro, seventy or eighty miles from the sea, where the valley on my side of the water was about five miles wide. The valley alone was habitable, where th^ere- was water for man and beast, and a thin soil producing grass and grain ; it is perfectly level, and ends abruptly at the foot of the bank or terrace-like formation of the higher barren plateau. It was my custom to go out every morn- ing on horseback with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley ; and no sooner would I climb the terrace and plunge into the grey universal thicket, than I would find my- self as completely alone and cut off from all sight and sound of human occupancy as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the hidden green valley and river. So wild and solitary and remote seemed that grey waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness of thorns. There I might have dropped down and died, and my flesh been devoured by birds, and my bones bleached white in sun and wind, and no person would have found them, and it would have been forgotten that one had ridden forth in the morning and had not returned. Or if, like the few wild animals there puma, huanaco, and harelike dolichotis, or Darwin's rhea and the crested tinamou among the birds I had been able to exist without water, I might have made myself a hermitage of brushwood or dug-out in the side of a cliff, and dwelt there until I had grown grey as the stones and trees around me, and no human foot would have stumbled on my hiding-place. Not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but day after day I returned to this solitude, going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, W. H. HUDSON 33 and leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me. And yet I had" no object in going no motive which could be put into words ; for although I carried a gun, there was nothing to shoot the shooting was all left behind in the valley. Sometimes a dolichotis, starting up at my approach, flashed for one moment on my sight, to vanish the next moment in the continuous thicket ; or a covey of tinamous sprang rocket- like into the air, and fled away with long wailing note and loud whur of wings ; or on some distant hillside a bright patch of yellow, of a deer that was watching me, appeared and remained motionless for two or three minutes. But the animals were few, and sometimes I would pass an entire day without seeing one mammal, and perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. The weather at that time was cheerless, generally with a grey film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak wind, often cold enough to make my bridle hand feel quite numb. Moreover, it was not possible to enjoy a canter ; the bushes grew so close together that it was as much as one could do to pass through at a walk without brushing against them ; and at this slow pace, which would have seemed intolerable in other circumstances, I would ride about for hours at a stretch. In the scene itself there was nothing to delight the eye. Everywhere through the light, grey mould, grey as ashes and formed by the ashes of myriads of generations of dead trees, where the wind had blown on it, or the rain had washed it away, the underlying yellow sand appeared, and the old ocean- polished pebbles, dull red, and grey, and green, and yellow. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to its summit, and stand there to sur- vey the prospect. On every side it stretched away in great undu- lations ; but the undulations were wild and irregular ; the hills were rounded and cone-shaped, they were solitary and in groups and ranges; some sloped gently, others were ridgelike and stretched away in league-long terraces, with other terraces beyond ; and all alike were clothed in the grey everlasting thorny vegeta- tion. How grey it all was ! hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon, where the hills were dim and the out- line blurred by distance. Sometimes I would see the large eagle- like, white-breasted buzzard, Buteo erythronotus, perched on the summit of a bush half a mile away ; and so long as it would con- D 34 THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA tinue stationed motionless before me my eyes would remain invol- untarily fixed on it, just as one keeps his eyes on a bright light shining in the gloom ; for the whiteness of the hawk seemed to exercise a fascinating power on the vision, so surpassingly bright was it by contrast in the midst of that universal unrelieved greyness. Descending from my look-out, I would take up my aimless wan- derings again, and visit other elevations to gaze on the same land- scape from another point ; and so on for hours, and at noon I would dismount and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or longer. One day, in these rambles, I discovered a small grove composed of twenty to thirty trees, about eighteen feet high, and taller than the surrounding trees. They were growing at a convenient dis- tance apart, and had evidently been resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals for a very long time, for the boles were polished to a glassy smoothness with much nibbing, and the ground beneath was trodden to a floor of clean, loose yellow sand. This grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neigh- bourhood, so that it was easy for me to find it on other occasions ; and after a time I made a point of finding and using it as a rest- ing-place every day at noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of that one spot, sometimes going miles out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes covering the country, on any other hillside. I thought nothing at all about it, but acted unconsciously ; only afterwards, when revolving the subject, it seemed to me that after having rested there once, each time I wished to rest again the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of trees, with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath ; and in a short time I formed a habit of returning, animal-like, to repose at that same spot. It was perhaps a mistake to say that I would sit down and rest, since I was never tired : and yet without being tired, that noon- day pause, during which I sat for an hour without moving, was strangely grateful. All day the silence seemed grateful, it was very perfect, very profound. There were no insects, and the only bird sound a feeble chirp of alarm emitted by a small skulking wrenlike species was not heard oftener than two or three times an hour. The only sounds as I rode were the muffled hoof-strokes IV. H. HUDSON 35 of my horse, scratching of twigs against my boot or saddle-flap, and the low panting of the dog. And it seemed to be a relief to escape even from these sounds when I dismounted and sat down : for in a few moments the dog would stretch his head out on his paws and go to sleep, and then there would be no sound, not even the rustle of a leaf. For unless the wind blows strong there is no fluttering motion and no whisper in the small stiff undeciduous leaves ; and the bushes stand unmoving as if carved out of stone. One day while listening to the silence, it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if I were to shout aloud. This seemed at the time a horrible suggestion of fancy, a " lawless and uncertain thought " which almost made me shudder, and I was anxious to dismiss it quickly from my mind. But during those solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind ; animal forms did not cross my vision or bird-voices assail my hearing more rarely. In that novel state of mind I was in, thought had become impossible. Elsewhere I had always been able to think most freely on horseback ; and on the pampas, even in the most lonely places, my mind was always most active when I travelled at a swinging gallop. This was doubtless habit ; but now, with a horse under me, I had become incapable of reflection : my mind had suddenly transformed itself from a thinking machine into a machine for some other unknown purpose. To think was like setting in motion a noisy engine in my brain ; and there was something there which bade me be still, and I was forced to obey. My state was one of suspense and watchfulness ; yet I had no expectation of meeting with an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I feel now when sitting in a room in London. The change in me was just as great and wonderful as if I had changed my identity for that of another man or animal ; but at the time I was powerless to wonder at or speculate about it ; the state seemed familiar rather than strange, and although accom- panied by a strong feeling of elation, I did not know it did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until I lost it and returned to my former self to thinking, and the old insipid existence. Such changes in us, however brief in duration they may be, and in most cases they are very brief, but which so long as they last 36 THE PLAINS OF PATAGONIA seem to affect us down to the very roots of our being, and come as a great surprise a revelation of an unfamiliar and unsuspected nature hidden under the nature we are conscious of can only be attributed to an instantaneous reversion to the primitive and wholly savage mental conditions. . . . It is true that we are eminently adaptive, that we have created, and exist in some sort of harmony with new conditions, widely different from those to which we were originally adapted ; but the old harmony was infinitely more perfect than the new, and if there be such a thing as historical memory in us, it is not strange that the sweetest moment in any life, pleasant or dreary, should be when Nature draws near to it, and, taking up her neglected instru- ment, plays a fragment of some ancient melody, long unheard on the earth. It might be asked : If nature has at times this peculiar effect on us, restoring instantaneously the old vanished harmony between organism and environment, why should it be experienced in a greater degree in the Patagonian desert than in other solitary places, a desert which is waterless, where animal voices are sel- dom heard, and vegetation is grey instead of green? I can only suggest a reason for the effect being so much greater in my own case. In subtropical woods and thickets, and in wild forests in temperate regions, the cheerful verdure and bright colours of flower and insects, if we have acquired a habit of looking closely at these things, and the melody and noises of bird-life engage the senses ; there is movement and brightness ; new forms, animal and vegetable, are continually appearing, curiosity and expectation are excited, and the mind is so much occupied with novel objects that the effect of wild nature in its entirety is minimized. In Patagonia the monotony of the plains, or expanse of low hills, the universal unrelieved greyness of everything, and the absence of animal forms and objects new to the eye, leave the mind open and free to receive an impression of visible nature as a whole. One gazes on the prospect as on the sea, for it stretches away sealike without change, into infinitude; but without the sparkle of water, the changes of hue which shadows and sunlight and nearness and dis- tance give, and motion of waves and white flash of foam. It has a look of antiquity, of desolation, of eternal peace, of a desert that W. H, HUDSON 37 has been a desert from of old and will continue a desert forever ; and we know that its only human inhabitants are a few wandering savages, who live by hunting as their progenitors have done for thousands of years. Again, in fertile savannahs and pampas there may appear no signs of human occupancy, but the traveller knows that eventually the advancing tide of humanity will come with its flocks and herds, and the ancient silence and desolation will be no more ; and this thought is like human companionship, and mitigates the effect of nature's wildness on the spirit. In Patago- nia no such thought or dream of the approaching changes to be wrought by human agency can affect the mind. There is no water there, the arid soil is sand and gravel pebbles rounded by the action of ancient seas, before Europe was ; and nothing grows except the barren things that nature loves thorns, and a few woody herbs, and scattered tufts of wiry bitter grass. THE WORLD'S END / GEORGE BORROW [From volume ii, chapter 12, of The Bible in Spain; or the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman, in an Attempt to Circit- late the Scriptures in the Peninsula, 1843.] IT was a beautiful autumnal morning when we left the choza [hut] and pursued our way to Corcuvion. I satisfied my host by presenting him with a couple of pesetas, and he requested as a favour, that if on our return we passed that way, and were over- taken by the night, we would again take up our abode beneath his toof. This I promised, at the same time determining to do my best to guard against the contingency ; as sleeping in the loft of a Gallegan hut, though preferable to passing the night on a moor or mountain, is anything but desirable. So we again started at a rapid pace along rough bridle-ways and footpaths, amidst furze and brushwood. In about an hour we obtained a view of the sea, and directed by a lad, whom we found on the moor employed in tending a few miserable sheep, we bent 38 THE WORLD'S END our course to the northwest, and at length reached the brow of the eminence, where we stopped for some time to survey the prospect which opened before us. It was not without reason that the Latins gave the name of Finisterrae to this district. We had arrived exactly at such a place as in my boyhood I had pictured to myself as the termination of the world, beyond which there was a wild sea, or abyss, or chaos. I now saw far before me an immense ocean, and below me a long and irregular line of lofty and precipitous coast. Certainly in the whole world there is no bolder coast than the Gallegan shore, from the debouchement of the Minho to Cape Finisterra. It consists of a granite wall of savage mountain, for the most part serrated at the top, and occasionally broken, where bays and firths like those of Vigo and Pontevedra intervene, running deep into the land. These bays and firths are invariably of an immense depth, and sufficiently capacious to shelter the navies of the proudest maritime nations. There is an air of stern and savage grandeur in everything around, which strongly captivates the imagination. This savage coast is the first glimpse of Spain which the voyager from the north catches, or he who has ploughed his way across the wide Atlantic : and well does it seem to realize all his visions of this strange land. " Yes," he exclaims, " this is indeed Spain stern flinty Spain land emblematic of those spirits to which she has given birth. From what land but that before me could have proceeded those portentous beings who astounded the Old World and filled the New with horror and blood : Alba and Philip, Cortez and Pizarro ; stern colossal spectres, looming through the gloom of bygone years, like yonder granite mountains through the haze upon the eye of the mariner. Yes, yonder is indeed Spain; flinty, indomitable Spain ; land emblematic of its sons ! " As for myself, when I viewed that wide ocean and its savage shore, I cried : " Such is the grave, and such are its terrific sides ; those moors and wilds, over which I have passed, are the rough and dreary journey of life. Cheered with hope, we struggle along through all the difficulties of moor, bog, and mountain, to arrive at what ? The grave and its dreary sides. Oh, may hope not desert us in the last hour : hope in the Redeemer and in God ! " GEORGE BORROW 39 We descended from the eminence, and again lost sight of the sea amidst ravines and dingles, amongst which patches of pine were occasionally seen. Continuing to descend, we at last came, not to the sea, but to the extremity of a long narrow firth, where stood a village or hamlet ; whilst at a small distance, on the western side of the firth, appeared one considerably larger, which was in- deed almost entitled to the appellation of town. This last was Corcuvion ; the first, if I forget not, was called Ria de Silla. We hastened on to Corcuvion, where I bade my guide make inquiries respecting Finisterra. He entered the door of a wine-house, from which proceeded much noise and vociferation, and presently returned, informing me that the village of Finisterra was distant about a league and a half. A man, evidently in a state of intoxi- cation, followed him to the door: "Are you bound for Finisterra, Cavalheiros [sirs] ? " he shouted. "Yes, my friend," I replied, "we are going thither." " Then you are going amongst a flock of drunkards (fato de barrachos) ," he answered. "Take care they do not play you a trick." We passed on, and striking across a sandy peninsula at the back of the town, soon reached the shore of an immense bay, the north- westernmost end of which was formed by the far-famed cape of Finisterra, which we now saw before us stretching far into the sea. Along a beach of dazzling white sand, we advanced towards the cape, the bourne of our journey. The sun was shining brightly, and every object was illumined by his beams. The sea lay before us like a vast mirror, and the waves which broke upon the shore were so tiny as scarcely to produce a murmur. On we sped along the deep winding bay, overhung by gigantic hills and mountains. Strange recollections began to throng upon my mind. It was upon this beach that, according to the tradition of all ancient Christendom, Saint James, the patron saint of Spain, preached the gospel to the heathen Spaniards. Upon this beach had once stood an immense commercial city, the proudest of all Spain. This now desolate bay had once resounded with the voices of myriads, when the keels and commerce of all the then known world were wafted to Duyo. "What is the name of this village?" said I to a woman, as we 40 THE WORLD'S END passed by five or six ruinous houses at the bend of the bay, ere we entered'upon the peninsula of Finisterra. " This is no village," said the Gallegan, " this is no village, Sir Cavalier, this is a city, this is Duyo." So much for the glory of the world ! These huts were all that the roaring sea and the tooth of time had left of Duyo, the great city ! Onward now to Finisterra. It was midday when we reached the village of Finisterra, con- sisting of about one hundred houses, and built on the southern side of the peninsula, just before it rises into the huge bluff head which is called the Cape. We sought in vain for an inn or venta, where we might stable our beast ; at one moment we thought that we had found one, and had even tied the animal to the manger. Upon our going out, however, he was instantly untied and driven forth into the street. The few people whom we saw appeared to gaze upon us in a singular manner. We, however, took little notice of these circumstances, and proceeded along the straggling street until we found shelter in the house of a Castilian shopkeeper, whom some chance had brought to this corner of Galicia this end of the world. Our first care was to feed the animal, who now began to exhibit considerable symptoms of fatigue. We then requested some refreshment for ourselves ; and in about an hour, a tolerably savory fish, weighing about three pounds, and fresh from the bay, was prepared for us by an old woman who appeared to officiate as housekeeper. Having finished our meal, I and my uncouth companion went forth and prepared to ascend the mountain. We stopped to examine a small, dismantled fort or battery facing the bay; and whilst engaged in this examination, it more than once occurred to me that we were ourselves the objects of scrutiny and investigation : indeed, I caught a glimpse of more than one countenance peering upon us through the holes and chasms of the walls. We now commenced ascending Finisterra ; and making numerous and long detours, we wound our way up its flinty sides. The sun had reached the top of heaven, whence he showered upon us perpendicularly his brightest and fiercest rays. My boots were torn, my feet cut, and the perspiration streamed from my brow. To my guide, however, the ascent appeared to be neither toilsome GEORGE BORROW 41 nor difficult. The heat of the day. for him had no terrors, no moisture was wrung from his tanned countenance ; he drew not one short breath, and hopped upon the stones and rocks with all the provoking agility of a mountain goat. Before we had accom- plished one-half of the ascent, I felt myself quite exhausted. I reeled and staggered. " Cheer up, master mine, be of good cheer, and have no care," said the guide. " Yonder I see a wall of stones ; lie down beneath it in the shade." He put his long and strong arm round my waist, and though his stature compared with mine was that of a dwarf, he supported me, as if I had been a child, to a rude wall which seemed to traverse the greatest part of the hill, and served probably as a kind of boundary. It was difficult to find a shady spot : at last he perceived a small chasm, perhaps scooped by some shepherd as a couch in which to enjoy his siesta. In this he laid me gently down, and taking off his enormous hat, commenced fanning me with great assiduity. By degrees I re- vived, and after having rested for a considerable time, I again attempted the ascent, which, with the assistance of my guide, I at length accomplished. We were now standing at a great altitude between two bays : the wilderness of waters before us. Of all the ten thousand barks which annually plough those seas in sight of that old cape, not one was to be descried. It was a blue shiny waste, broken by no object save the black head of a spermaceti whale, which would occasionally show itself on the top, casting up thin jets of brine. The principal bay, that of Finisterra, as far as the entrance, was beautifully variegated by an immense shoal of sardinhas, on whose extreme skirts the monster was probably feasting. From the north- ern side of the cape we looked down upon a smaller bay, the shore of which was overhung by rocks of various and grotesque shapes j this is called the outer bay, or, in the language of the country, Prai do mar de fora : a fearful place in seasons of wind and tem- pests, when the long swell of the Atlantic pouring in, is broken into surf and foam by the sunken rocks with which it abounds. Even in the calmest day there is a rumbling and a hollow roar in that bay which fill the heart with uneasy sensations. On all sides there was grandeur and sublimity. After gazing from the summit of the cape for nearly an hour, we descended. -<-, .< "' ;t V ' T ''' 42 WEE WILLIE WINKIE t" WEE WILLIE WINKIE RUDYARD KIPLING [From Pf>i? W7//*V Winkle and Other Stories, 1 888. The text is that of the unauthorized American edition.] " An officer and a gentleman." His full name was Percival William Williams, but he picked up the other name in a nursery-book, and that was the end of the christened titles. His mother's ayah called him Willie-^tf&z, but as he never paid the faintest attention to anything that the ayah said, her wisdom did not help matters. His father was the colonel of the 195 th, and as soon as Wee Willie Winkie was old enough to understand what military disci- pline meant, Colonel Williams put him under it. There was no other way of managing the child. When he was good for a week, he drew good-conduct pay ; and when he was bad, he was deprived of his good-conduct stripe. Generally he was bad, for India offers so many chances to little six-year-olds of going wrong. Children resent familiarity from strangers, and Wee Willie Winkie was a very particular child. Once he accepted an acquaintance, he was graciously pleased to thaw. He accepted Brandis, a subaltern of the 195th, on sight. Brandis was having tea at the colonel's, and Wee Willie Winkie entered, strong in the possession of a good-conduct badge won for not chasing the hens round the compound. He regarded Brandis with gravity for at least ten minutes, and then delivered himself of his opinion. " I like you," said he, slowly, getting off his chair and coming over to Brandis. " I like you. I shall call you Coppy, because of your hair. Do you mind being called Coppy ? it is because of ve hair, you know." Here was one of the most embarrassing of Wee Willie Winkie 's peculiarities. He would look at a stranger for some time, and then, without warning or explanation, would give him a name. And the name stuck. No regimental penalties could break Wee Willie Winkie of this habit. He lost his good-conduct badge for christening the commissioner's wife " Fobs " ; but nothing that the RUDYARD KIPLING 43 colonel could do made the station forego the nickname, and Mrs. Collen remained Mrs. " Fobs " till the end of her stay. So Brandis was christened " Coppy," and rose, therefore, in the estimation of the regiment. If Wee Willie Winkie took an interest in any one, the fortunate man was envied alike by the mess and the rank and file. And in their envy lay no suspicion of self-interest. " The colonel's son " was idolized on his own merits entirely. Yet Wee Willie Winkie was not lovely. His face was permanently freckled, as his legs were permanently scratched, and in spite of his mother's almost tearful remonstrances he had insisted upon having his long yellow locks cut short in the military fashion. " I want my hair like Sergeant TummiPs," said Wee Willie Winkie, and his father abetting, the sacrifice was accomplished. Three weeks after the bestowal of his youthful affections on Lieutenant Brandis henceforward to be called " Coppy " for the sake of brevity Wee Willie Winkie was destined to behold strange things and far beyond his comprehension. Coppy returned his liking with interest. Coppy had let him wear for five rapturous minutes his own big sword just as tall as Wee Willie Winkie. Coppy had promised him a terrier puppy ; and Coppy had permitted him to witness the miraculous operation of shaving. Nay, more Coppy had said that even he, Wee Willie Winkie, would rise in time to the ownership of a box of shiny knives, a silver soap-box, and a silver-handled " sputter- brush," as Wee Willie Winkie called it. Decidedly, there was no one except his father, who could give or take away good- conduct badges at pleasure, half so wise, strong, and valiant as Coppy with the Afghan and Egyptian medals on his breast. Why, then, should Coppy be guilty of the unmanly weakness of kissing vehemently kissing a " big girl," Miss Allardyce, to wit? In the course of a morning ride, Wee Willie Winkie had seen Coppy so doing, and, like the gentleman he was, had promptly wheeled round and cantered back to his groom, lest the groom should also see. Under ordinary circumstances he would have spoken to his father, but he felt instinctively that this was a matter on which Coppy ought first to be consulted. 44 WEE WILLIE WINKIE 11 Coppy," shouted Wee Willie Winkie, reining up outside that subaltern's bungalow early one morning, " I want to see you, Coppy ! " " Come in, young 'un," returned Coppy, who was at early breakfast in the midst of his dogs. " What mischief have you been getting into now ? " Wee Willie Winkie had done nothing notoriously bad for three days, and so stood on a pinnacle of virtue. " I've been doing nothing bad," said he, curling himself into a long chair with a studious affectation of the colonel's languor after a hot parade. He buried his freckled nose in a tea- cup and, with eyes staring roundly over the rim, asked : " I say, Coppy, is it pwoper to kiss big girls?" " By Jove ! You're beginning early. Who do you want to kiss?" " No one. My muwer's always kissing me if I don't stop her. If it isn't pwoper, how was you kissing Major Allardyce's big girl last morning, by ve canal ? " Coppy's brow wrinkled. He and Miss Allardyce had with great craft managed to keep their engagement secret for a fortnight. There were urgent and imperative reasons why Major Allardyce should not know how matters stood for at least another month, and this small marplot had discovered a great deal too much. " I saw you," said Wee Willie Winkie, calmly. " But ve groom didn't see. I said, ' Hutjao? " " Oh, you had that much sense, you young rip," groaned poor Coppy, half amused and half angry. "And how many people may you have told about it? " " Only me myself. You didn't tell when I twied to wide ve buffalo ven my pony was lame ; and I fought you wouldn't like." " Winkie," said Coppy, enthusiastically, shaking the small hand, " you're the best of good fellows. I/3ok here, you can't under- stand all these things. One of these days hang it, how can I make you see it ! I'm going to marry Miss Allardyce, and then she'll be Mrs. Coppy, as you say. If your young mind is so scan- dalized at the idea of kissing big girls, go and tell your father." "What will happen?" said Wee Willie Winkie, who firmly believed that his father was omnipotent. RUDYARD KIPLING 45 " I shall get into trouble," said Coppy, playing his trump card with an appealing look at the holder of the ace. "Ven I won't," said Wee Willie Winkie, briefly. "But my faver says it's un-man-ly to be always kissing, and I didn't fink you'd do vat, Coppy." " I'm not always kissing, old chap. It's only now and then, and when you're bigger you'll do it, too. Your father meant it's not good for little boys." " Ah ! " said Wee Willie Winkie, now fully enlightened. " It's like ve sputter-brush?" " Exactly," said Coppy, gravely. " But I don't fink I'll ever want to kiss big girls, nor no one, 'cept my muvver. And I must vat, you know." There was a long pause, broken by Wee Willie Winkle. " Are you fond of vis big girl, Coppy ? " " Awfully ! " said Coppy. " Fonder van you are of Bell or ve Butcha or me ? " " It's in a different way," said Coppy. "You see, one of these days Miss Alrardyce will belong to me, but you'll grow up and command the regiment and all sorts of things. It's quite dif- ferent, you see." " Very well," said Wee Willie Winkie, rising. " If you're fond of ve big girl, I won't tell any one. I must go now." Coppy rose and escorted his small guest to the door, adding : " You're the best of little fellows, Winkie. I tell you what. In thirty days from now you can tell if you like tell anyone you like." Thus the secret of the Brandis-Allardyce engagement was dependent on a little child's word. Coppy, who knew Wee Willie Winkie's idea of truth, was at ease, for he felt that he would not break promises. Wee Willie Winkie betrayed a special and unusual interest in Miss Allardyce, and, slowly revolving round that embarrassed young lady, was used to regard her gravely with unwinking eye. He was trying to discover why Coppy should have kissed her. She was not half so nice as his own mother. On the other hand, she was Coppy's property, and would in time belong to him. Therefore it behooved him to treat her with as much respect as Coppy's big sword or shiny pistol. 46 WEE WILLIE WINKIE The idea that he shared a great secret in common with Coppy kept Wee Willie Winkie unusually virtuous for three weeks. Then the Old Adam broke out, and he made what he called a " camp fire " at the bottom of the garden. How could he have foreseen that the flying sparks would have lighted the colonel's little hay- rick and consumed a week's store for the horses? Sudden and swift was the punishment deprivation of the good-conduct badge and, most sorrowful of all, two days' confinement to bar- racks the house and veranda coupled with the withdrawal of the light of his father's countenance. He took the sentence like the man he strove to be, drew him- self up with a quivering under-lip, saluted, and, once clear of the room, ran to weep bitterly in his nursery called by him "my quarters." Coppy came in the afternoon and attempted to con- sole the culprit. " I'm under awwest," said Wee Willie Winkie, mournfully, " and I didn't ought to speak to you." Very early the next morning he climbed on to the roof of the house that was not forbidden and beheld Miss Allardyce going for a ride. "Where are you going? " cried Wee Willie Winkie. "Across the river," she answered, and trotted forward. Now the cantonment in which the i95th lay was bounded on the north by a river dry in the winter. From his earliest years, Wee Willie Winkie had been forbidden to go across the river, and had noted that even Coppy the almost almighty Coppy had never set foot beyond it. Wee Willie Winkie had once been read to, out of a big blue book, the history of the princess and the goblins a most wonderful tale of a land where the goblins were always warring with the children of men until they were defeated by one Curdie. Ever since that date it seemed to him that the bare black and purple hills across the river were inhabited by goblins, and, in truth, every one had said that there lived the bad men. Even in his own house the lower halves of the windows were covered with green paper on account of the bad men who might, if allowed clear view, fire into peaceful drawing-rooms and comfortable bedrooms. Certainly, beyond the river, which was the end of all the earth, lived the bad men. And here was Major RUDYARD KIPLING 47 Allardyce's big girl, Coppy's property, preparing to venture into their borders ! What would Coppy say if anything happened to her? If the goblins ran off with her as they did with Curdie's princess ? She must at all hazards be turned back. The house was still. Wee Willie Winkie reflected for a moment on the very terrible wrath of his father ; and then broke his arrest ! It was a crime unspeakable. The low sun threw his shadow, very large and very black, on the trim garden-paths, as he went down to the stables and ordered his pony. It seemed to him in the hush of the dawn that all the big world had been bidden to stand still and look at Wee Willie Winkie guilty of mutiny. The drowsy groom handed him his mount, and, since the one great sin made all others insignificant, Wee Willie Winkie said that he was going to ride over to Coppy Sahib, and went out at a foot-pace, stepping on the soft mould of the flower-borders. The devastating track of the pony's feet was the last misdeed that cut him off from all sympathy of humanity. He turned into the road, leaned forward, and rode as fast as the pony could put foot to the ground in the direction of the river. But the liveliest of twelve-two ponies can do little against the long canter of a waler. Miss Allardyce was far ahead, had passed through the crops, beyond the police-post, when all the guards were asleep, and her mount was scattering the pebbles of the river- bed as Wee Willie Winkie left the cantonment and British India behind him. Bowed forward and still flogging, Wee Willie Winkie shot into Afghan territory, and could just see Miss Allardyce, a black speck, flickering across the stony plain. The reason of her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too hastily assumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a lesson. Almost at the foot of the inhospitable hills, Wee Willie Winkie saw the waler blunder and come down heavily. Miss Allardyce struggled clear, but her ankle had been severely twisted, and she could not stand. Having thus demonstrated her spirit, she wept copiously, and was surprised by the apparition of a white, wide- eyed child in khaki, on a nearly spent pony. " Are you badly, badly hurted ? " shouted Wee Willie Winkie, 48 WEE WILLIE WINKIE as soon as he was within range. "You didn't ought to be here." " I don't know," said Miss Allardyce, ruefully, ignoring the reproof. "Good gracious, child, what are you doing here?" "You said you was going acwoss ve wiver," panted Wee Willie Winkie, throwing himself off his pony. " And nobody not even Coppy must go acwoss ve wiver, and I came after you ever so hard, but you wouldn't stop, and now you've hurted yourself, and Coppy will be angvvy wiv me, and I've bwoken my awwest ! I've bwoken my awwest ! " The future colonel of the ip5th sat down and sobbed. In spite of the pain in her ankle the girl was moved. " Have you ridden all the way from cantonments, little man ? What for ? " "You belonged to Coppy. Coppy told me so ! " wailed Wee Willie Winkie, disconsolately. " I saw him kissing you, and he said he was fonder of you van Bell or ve Butcha or me. And so I came. You must get up and come back. You didn't ought to be here. Vis is a bad place, and I've bwoken my awwest." " I can't move, Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, with a groan. " I've hurt my foot. What shall I do ? " She showed a readiness to weep afresh, which steadied Wee Willie Winkie, who had been brought up to believe that tears were the depth of unmanliness. Still, when one is as great a sinner as Wee Willie Winkie, even a man may be permitted to break down. "Winkie," said Miss Allardyce, "when you've rested a little, ride back and tell them to send out something, to carry me back in. It hurts fearfully." The child sat still for a little time and Miss Allardyce closed her eyes ; the pain was nearly making her faint. She was roused by Wee Willie Winkie tying up the reins on his pony's neck and set- ting it free with a vicious cut of his whip that made it whicker. The little animal headed toward the cantonments. " Oh, Winkie ! What are you doing ? " " Hush ! " said Wee Willie Winkie. " Vere's a man coming one of ve bad men. I must stay wiv you. My faver says a man must always look after a girl. Jack will go home, and ven vey'll come and look for us. Vat's why I let him go." RUDYARD KIPLING 49 Not one man but two or three had appeared from behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of Wee Willie Winkie sunk within him, for just in this manner were the goblins wont to steal out and vex Curdie's soul. Thus had they played in Curdie's garden, he had seen the picture, and thus had they frightened the princess's nurse. He heard them talking to each other, and recognized with joy the bastard Pushto, that he had picked up from one of his father's grooms lately dismissed. People who spoke that tongue could not be the bad men. They were only natives after all. They came up to the boulders on which Miss Allardyce's horse had blundered. Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child of the domi- nant race, aged six and three-quarters, and said, briefly and emphatically, "Jao ! " The pony had crossed the river-bed. The men laughed, and laughter from the natives was the one thing Wee Willie Winkie could not tolerate. He asked them what they wanted and why they did not depart. Other men, with most evil faces and crooked- stocked guns, crept out of the shadows of the hills, till soon Wee Willie Winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty strong. Miss Allardyce screamed. " Who are you ? " said one of the men. " I am the Colonel Sahib's son, and my order is that you go at once. You black men are frightening the Miss Sahib. One of you must run into cantonments and take the news that the Miss Sahib has hurt herself, and that the colonel's son is here with her." " Put our feet into the trap ? " was the laughing reply. " Hear this boy's speech ! " " Say that I sent you I, the colonel's son. They will give you money." . " What is the use of this talk? Take up the child and the girl, and we can at least ask for the ransom. Ours are the villages on the heights," said a voice in the background. These were the bad men worse than the goblins and it needed all Wee Willie Winkie's training to prevent him from bursting into tears. But he felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother's ayah, would be an infamy greater than any mutiny. Moreover, he, as future colonel of the i95th, had that grim regiment at his back. 50 WEE WILLIE WINK IE "Are you going to carry us away?" said Wee Willie Winkie, very blanched and uncomfortable. " Yes, my little Sahib Bahadur" said the tallest of the men, " and eat you afterward." " That is child's talk," said Wee Willie Winkie. " Men do not eat men." A yell of laughter interrupted him, but he went on, firmly : " And if you do carry us away, I tell you that all my regiment will :ome up in a day and kill you all, without leaving one. Who will take my message to the Colonel Sahib? " Speech in any vernacular and Wee Willie Winkie had a col- loquial acquaintance with three was easy to the boy who could not yet manage his " r's " and " th's " aright. Another man joined the conference, crying : " Oh, foolish men ! What this babe says is true. He is the heart's heart of those white troops. For the sake of peace let them go both, for if he be taken, the regiment will break loose and gut the valley. Our villages are in the valley, and we shall not escape. That regi- ment are devils. They broke Khoda Yar's breast-bone with kicks when he tried to take the rifles ; and if we touch this child, they will fire and rape and plunder for a month, till nothing remains. Better to send a man back to take the message and get a reward. I say that this child is their god, and that they will spare none of us, nor our women, if we harm him." It was Din Mahommed, the dismissed groom of the colonel, who made the diversion, and an angry and heated discussion followed. Wee Willie Winkie, standing over Miss Allardyce, waited the upshot. Surely his " wegiment," his own " wegiment," would not desert him if they knew of his extremity. The riderless pony brought the news to the i95th, though there had been consternation in the colonel's household for an hour before. The little beast came in through the parade-ground in front of the main barracks, where the men were settling down to play spoil-five till the afternoon. Devlin, the color-sergeant of E Company, glanced at the empty saddle and tumbled through the barrack-rooms, kicking up each room corporal as he passed. RUDYARD KIPLING 5 1 " Up, ye beggars ! There's something happened to the colonel's son," he shouted. " He couldn't fall off ! S'elp me, 'e couldn't fall off," blubbered a drummer-boy. " Go an' hunt acrost the river. He's over there if he's anywhere, an' maybe those Pathans have got 'im. For the love o' Gawd don't look for 'im in the nullahs ! Let's go over the river." " There's sense in Mott yet," said Devlin. " E Company, double out to the river sharp ! " So E Company, in its shirt-sleeves mainly, doubled for the dear life, and in the rear toiled the perspiring sergeant, adjuring it to double yet faster. The cantonment was alive with the men of the 1 95th hunting for Wee Willie Winkie, and the colonel finally over- took E Company, far too exhausted to swear, struggling in the pebbles of the river-bed. Up the hill under which Wee Willie Winkie's bad men were discussing the wisdom of carrying off the child and the girl, a lookout fired two shots. "What have I said?" shouted Din Mahommed. "There is the warning ! The pulton are out already and are coming across the plain ! Get away ! Let us not be seen with the boy ! " The men waited for an instant, and then, as another shot was fired, withdrew into the hills, silently as they had appeared. " The wegiment is coming," said Wee Willie Winkie, confidently to Miss Allardyce, " and it's all wight. Don't cwy ! " He needed the advice himself, for ten minutes later, when his father came up, he was weeping bitterly with his head in Miss Allardyce's lap. And the men of the ipSth carried him home with shouts and rejoicings ; and Coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of the men. But there was balm for his dignity. His father assured him that not only would the breaking of arrest be condoned, but that the good-conduct badge would be restored as soon as his mother could sew it on his blouse-sleeve. Miss Allardyce had told the colonel a story that made him proud of his son. " She belonged to you, Coppy," said Wee Willie Winkie, indi< 52 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO eating Miss Allardyce with a grimy forefinger. " I knew she didn't ought to go acwoss ve wiver, and I knew ve wegiment would come to me if I sent Jack home." "You're a hero, Winkie." said Coppy, " a pukka hero ! " " I don't know what vat means," said Wee Willie Winkie, " but you mustn't call me Winkie any no more. I'm Percival WilPam Will'ams." And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie enter into his manhood. THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO EDGAR ALLAN POE [First published in 1846. The text is that of Griswold's edition of his Works, 1850.] THE thousand injuries of Fortunate I had borne as I best could ; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged ; this was a point definitively settled but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation. He had a weak point this Fortunato although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionnaires . In painting and gemmary Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not EDGAR ALLAN POE 53 differ from him materially : I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. I said to him " My dear Fortunate, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day ! But I have re- ceived a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." " How ? " said he. " Amontillado ? A pipe ? Impossible ! And in the middle of the carnival ? " "I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain." " Amontillado ! " " I have my doubts." " Amontillado ! " " And I must satisfy them." "Amontillado!" " As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me " " Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." " And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own." " Come, let us go." " Whither ? " " To your vaults." " My friend, no ; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Luchesi " " I have no engagement ; come." " My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre." 54 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO " Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amon- tillado ! You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado." Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home ; they had absconded to make merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the arch- way that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors. The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode. " The pipe," he said. " It is farther on," said I ; " but observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern walls." He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. " Nitre ? " he asked, at length. " Nitre," I replied. " How long have you had that cough? " " Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! " My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. " It is nothing," he said, at last. "Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved ; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back ; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi " " Enough," he said ; " the cough is a mere nothing ; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." EDGAR ALLAN POE 55 " True true," I replied ; " and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily but you should use all proper cau- tion. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps." Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould. " Drink," I said, presenting him the wine. He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled. " I drink," he said, " to the buried that repose around us." " And I to your long life." He again took my arm, and we proceeded. "These vaults," he said, " are extensive." "The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family." " I forgot your arms." " A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure ; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." " And the motto ? " " Nemo me impune lacessit" * " Good ! " he said. The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. " The nitre ! " I said ; " see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough " " It is nothing," he said ; " let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc." I broke and reached him a flacon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not under- stand. I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement a grotesque one. " You do not comprehend ? " he said. 1 [No one attacks me with impunity.] gg THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO ' Not I," I replied. " Then you are not of the brotherhood." " How ? " " You are not of the masons." " Yes, yes," I said, " yes, yes." " You ? Impossible ! A mason ? " " A mason," I replied. "A sign," he said. " It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire. "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few spaces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado." " Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame. At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the dis- placing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeav- ored to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see. "Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi " " He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In EDGAR ALLAN POE 57 an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its sur- face were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key, I stepped back from the recess. " Pass your hand," I said, " over the wall ; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power." " The Amontillado ! " ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment. "True," I replied ; " the Amontillado." As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche. I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I dis- covered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moan- jng cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth ; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason- work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated I trembled. Unsheath- 58 THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO ing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess : but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re- echoed I aided I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamorer grew still. It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight ; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said " Ha ! ha ! ha ! he ! he ! a very good joke indeed an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo he ! he ! he ! over our wine he ! he ! he ! " " The Amontillado ! " I said. " He ! he ! he ! he ! he ! he ! yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late ? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest ? Let us be gone." " Yes," I said, " let us be gone." " For the love of God, Montresor ! " " Yes," I said, " for the love of God ! " But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud " Fortunato ! " No answer. I called again " Fortunato ! " No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aper- ture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position ; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat ! NATHANIEL HAWTHORNS 59 ETHAN BRAND A CHAPTER FROM AN ABORTIVE ROMANCE NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE [First published in 1851. The text is that of the Snow Image and Other Twice- Told Tales, 1852.] BARTRAM the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, be- grimed with charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses with the scattered frag- ments of marble, when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of the forest. " Father, what is that ? " asked the little boy, leaving his play, and pressing betwixt his father's knees. " O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime- burner ; " some merry fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh loud enough within doors, lest he should blow the roof of the house off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock." " But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse, middle-aged clown, " he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the noise frightens me ! " "Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never make a man, I do believe ; there is too much of your mother in you. I have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark ! Here comes the merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm in him." Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however, on the mountain-side, stood un- impaired, and was in nothing changed since he had thrown his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its furnace, and melted 60 ETHAN BRAND them, as it were, into the one thought that took possession of his life. It was a rude, round, towerlike structure, about twenty feet high, heavily built of rough stones, and with a hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its circumference ; so that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart- loads, and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the tower like an oven-mouth, but large enough to ad- mit a man in a stooping posture, and provided with a massive iron door. With the smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this door, which seemed to give admit- tance into the hillside, it resembled nothing so much as the pri- vate entrance to the infernal regions, which the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains were accustomed to show to pilgrims. There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the purpose of burning the white marble which composes a large part of the substance of the hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior, which is open to the sky, and grass and wild- flowers rooting themselves into the chinks of the stones, look already like relics of antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries to come. Others, where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and night-long fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of marble, to hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the character is inclined to thought, may be an intensely thoughtful occupation ; as it proved in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to such strange pur- pose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very kiln was burning. The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and troubled himself with no thoughts save the very few that were requisite to his business. At frequent intervals, he flung back the clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face from the insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the intensity of heat ; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of the sur- rounding forest, and showed in the foreground a bright and NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 6 1 ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when again the iron door was closed, then reap- peared the tender light of the half-full moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring mountains ; and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus far down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and long ago. The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes that clustered beneath the trees. " Halloo ! who is it ? " cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's timidity, yet half infected by it. " Come forward, and show yourself, like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head 1 " " You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown man drew nigh. " Yet I neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own fireside." To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the kiln, whence immediately issued a gush of fierce light, that smote full upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless eye there appeared nothing very remarkable in his as- pect, which was that of a man in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin, with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed his eyes which were very bright intently upon the brightness of the furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of note within it. "Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so late in the day ? " " I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is finished." "Drunk! or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble with the fellow. The sooner I drive him away, the better." The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged him to shut the door of the kiln, so that there might not 62 ETHAN BRAND be so much light ; for that there was something in the man's face which he was afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with the grizzled hair hang- ing wildly about it, and those deeply-sunken eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him, and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he were a sane and sensible man, after all. " Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. " This marble has already been burning three days. A few hours more will convert the stone to lime." "Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well acquainted with my business as I am myself." " And well I may be," said the stranger ; " for I followed the same craft many a long year, and here, too, on this very spot. But you are a newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand ? " "The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin? " asked Bartram, with a laugh. " The same," answered the stranger. " He has found what he sought, and therefore he comes back again." " What ! then you are Ethan Brand himself ? " cried the lime- burner, in amazement. " I am a newcomer here, as you say, and they call it eighteen years since you left the foot of Gray- lock. But, I can tell you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln. Well, and so you have found the Un- pardonable Sin ? " " Even so 1 " said the stranger, calmly. " If the question is a fair one," proceeded Bartram, " where might it be ? " Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart. " Here ! " replied he. And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an involuntary recognition of the infinite absurdity of seek- ing throughout the world for what was the closest of all things NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 63 to himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was hidden in no other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the same slow, heavy laugh that had almost appalled the lime-burner when it heralded the wayfarer's approach. The solitary mountain-side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice. The laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child, the madman's laugh the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot, are sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no utter- ance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills. " Joe," said he to his little son, " scamper down to the tavern in the village, and tell the jolly fellows there that Ethan Brand has come back, and that he has found the Unpardonable Sin 1 " The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln. When the child was out of sight, and his swift and light foot- steps ceased to be heard treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain-path, the lime-burner began to re- gret his departure. He felt that the little fellow's presence had been a barrier between his guest and himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on his own confes- sion, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed to overshadow him. The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was within the scope of man's corrupted na- ture to conceive and cherish. They were all of one family ; they went to and fro between his breast and Ethan Brand's, and car- ried dark greetings from one to the other. Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown tra- 64 ETHAN BRAND ditionary in reference to this strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of the night, and was making himself at home in his old place, after so long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years, would have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he. Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the lurid blaze of this veiy kiln. The legend had been matter of mirth heretofore, but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before Ethan Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in order to confer with him about the Unpardonable Sin ; the man and the fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which could neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door, there to abide the intensest element of fire, until again summoned forth to share in the dreadful task of ex- tending man's possible guilt beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy. While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bartram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot from the raging furnace. " Hold ! hold ! " cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh ; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. " Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your devil now ! " " Man ! " sternly replied Ethan Brand, " what need have I of the devil ? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once." He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent for- ward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened upon his face. The lime- burner sat watching him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 65 " I have looked," said he, " into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin 1 " " What is the Unpardonable Sin ? " asked the lime-burner ; and then he shrank further from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered. " It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect, with a pride that distinguishes all enthu- siasts of his stamp. " A sin that grew nowhere else 1 The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims 1 The only sin that deserves a recom- pense of immortal agony ! Freely, were it to do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution ! " " The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to him- self. " He may be a sinner, like the rest of us, nothing more likely, but, I'll be sworn, he is a madman too." Nevertheless he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan Brand on the wild mountain-side, and was right glad to hear the rough murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty numerous party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the underbrush. Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the village tavern, comprehend- ing three or four individuals who had drunk flip beside the bar- room fire through all the winters, and smoked their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan Brand's depar- ture. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their voices to- gether in unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine and narrow streaks of firelight that illuminated the open space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and he of them. There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous man, now almost extinct, but whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the hotel of every thriving village throughout the country. It was the stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red- 66 ETHAN BRAND nosed, in a smartly-cut, brown, bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons, who, for a length of time unknown, had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and was still purring what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less on account of any intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy-toddy and tobacco-smoke, which impregnated all his ideas and expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered though strangely- altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called him in courtesy ; an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had been an attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue among the village litigants ; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning, noon, and night, had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and degrees of bodily labor, till at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into a soap-vat. In other words, Giles was now a soap- boiler, in a small way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human being, a part of one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand torn away by the devilish grip of a steam-engine. Yet though the corporeal hand was gone, a spir- itual member remained ; for, stretching forth the stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an invisible thumb and fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was ; but one, nevertheless, whom the world could not trample on, and had no right to scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes, since he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in charity, and with his one hand and that the left one fought a stern battle against want and hostile circumstances. Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It was the village doctor ; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a purple- visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with something wild, ruined, and des- perate in his talk, and in '" the details of his gesture and man- NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 6/ ners. Brandy possessed this man like an evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as miserable as a lost soul ; but there was supposed to be in him such wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and as somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire. These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each after his own fashion, earnestly inviting hiirt to par- take of the contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he would find something far better worth seeking for than the Unpardonable Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin, and found it within himself. The whole question on which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a delusion. "Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors 1 I have done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts, and found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone 1 " "Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the way you respond to the kindness of your best friends ? Then let me tell you the truth. You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow, I told you so twenty years ago, neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and the fit companion of old Humphrey, here ! " He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin visage, and unsteady eyes. For some years past this 68 ETHAN BRAND aged person had been wandering about among the hills, inquir- ing of all travellers whom he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a company of circus-performers ; and occasionally tidings of her came to the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the tight-rope. The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his face. " They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his hands with earnestness. " You must have seen my daughter, for she makes a grand figure in the world, and every- body goes to see her. Did she send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back ? " Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose, Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process. " Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer ; " it is no delusion. There is an Unpardonable Sin ! " While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of the hut. A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls, had hurrried up the hillside, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand, the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect, nothing but a sun-burnt way- farer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals, these young people speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was other amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling with a diorama on his back, was passing down the mountain-road towards the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to the lime-kiln. " Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, " let us see your pictures, if you can swear they are worth looking at ! " NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 69 "O, yes, Captain," answered the Jew, whether as a matter of courtesy or craft, he styled everybody Captain, "I shall show you, indeed, some very superb pictures 1 " So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and girls to look through the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded to exhibit a series of the most outrageous scratch- ings and daubings, as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with tobacco-smoke, and otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe ; others rep- resented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea-fights ; and in the midst of these would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand, which might have been mistaken for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it was only the showman's, pointing its fore- finger to various scenes of the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When, with much merriment at its abominable deficiency of merit, the exhibition was concluded, the German bade little Joe put his head into the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense Titanic child, the mouth grinning broadly, and the eyes and every other feature overflowing with fun at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to hor- ror, for this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the glass. " You make the little man to be afraid, Captain," said the German Jew, turning up the dark and strong outline of his vis- age, from his stooping posture. " But look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word ! " Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back, looked fixedly at the German. What had he seen ? Nothing, apparently ; for a curious youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment, beheld only a vacant space of canvas. 70 ETHAN BRAND " I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the show- man. " Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, with a dark smile, "I find it to be a heavy matter in my show-box, this Unpardonable Sin ! By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders this long day, to carry it over the mountain." " Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, " or get thee into the furnace yonder ! " The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly dog, who seemed to be his own master, as no person in the company laid claim to him, saw fit to render himself the object of public notice. Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed old dog, going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by any kindly hand that would take so much trou- ble. But now, all of a sudden, this grave' and venerable quad- ruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail, which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal shorter than it should have been. Never was seen such headlong eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained ; never was heard such a tremendous out- break of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping, as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most un- forgivable enmity with the other. Faster and faster, round about went the cur ; and faster and still faster fled the unap- proachable brevity of his tail ; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of rage and animosity ; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he had begun it. The next moment he was as mild, quiet, sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when he first scraped acquaintance with the company. As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine performer responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail, but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to amuse the spectators. Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE J\ and moved, it might be, by a perception of some remote analogy between his own case and that of this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of his inward being. From that moment, the mer- riment of the party was at an end ; they stood aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be reverberated around the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their ears. Then, whispering one to another that it was late, that the moon was almost down, that the August night was growing chill, they hurried homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings, the open space on the hillside was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that darksome verge, the firelight glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black foli- age of pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of de^ad trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed to little Joe a timorous and imaginative child that the silent forest was holding its breath, until some fearful thing should happen. Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the kiln ; then looking over his shoulder at the lime- burner and his son, he bade, rather than advised, them to rest. " For myself, I cannot sleep," said he. " I have matters that it concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch the fire, as I used to do in the old time." " And call the devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I suppose," muttered Bartram, who had been making intimate acquaintance with the black bottle above-mentioned. " But watch, if you like, and call as many devils as you like ! For my part, I shall be all the better for a snooze. Come, Joe ! " As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in which this man had enveloped himself. When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crack- ling of the kindled wood, and looking at the Tittle spirts of fire 72 ETHAN BRAND that issued through the chinks of the door. These trifles, how- ever, once so familiar, had but the slightest hold of his atten- tion, while deep within his mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change that had been wrought upon him by the search to which he had devoted himself. He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him, how the dark forest had whispered to him, how the stars had gleamed upon him a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards became the inspiration of his life ; with what reverence he had then looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally divine; and, however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother ; with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual development, wjiich, in its progress, disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed his life had operated as a means of education ; it had gone on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they were susceptible ; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer to stand on a star- lit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth, laden with the lore of universities, might vainly strive to clamber after him. So much for the intellect ! But where was the heart ? That, indeed, had withered had contracted had hardened : had perished ! It had ceased to partake of the universal throb. He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets ; he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study. Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that *his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 73 of improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest effort and inevitable development, as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor, he had pro- duced the Unpardonable Sin ! " What more have I to seek ? What more to achieve ? " said Ethan Brand to himself. " My task is done, and well done ! " Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait, and ascending the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of the immense mass of broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment. Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which alone could have suited its expression ; it was that of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf*of intensest torment. " O Mother Earth," cried he, " who art no more my Mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall never be resolved ! O mankind, whose brotherhood I have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet ! O stars of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and upward ! farewell all, and forever ! Come, deadly element of Fire, henceforth my familiar friend ! Embrace me, as I do thee 1 " That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heav- ily through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son ; dim shapes of horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight. " Up, boy, up ! " cried the lime-burner, staring about him. 74 ETHAN BRAND "Thank Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and rather that pass such another, I would watch my lime-kiln, wide awake, foi a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such mighty favor, in taking my place ! " He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold of his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pour- ing its gold upon the mountain-tops ; and though the valleys were still in shadow, they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of the great hand of Provi- dence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible ; the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a fore-glim- mering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded weather-cocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits, and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. Step- ping from one to another of the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream to look at it. To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Na- ture so readily adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling down the mountain-road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness. Little Joe's face brightened at once. " Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, " that NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 75 strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it ! " " Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, " but he has let the fire go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bush- els of lime are not spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like tossing him into the furnace ! " With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln. After a moment's pause, he called to his son. " Come up here, Joe ! " said he. So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the circle, snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime, lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long re- pose. Within the ribs strange to say was the shape of a human heart. " Was the fellow's heart made of marble ? " cried Bartram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon. " At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special good lime ; and taking all the bones together, my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him." So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments. MARKHEIM ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON [First published in 1885. The text is that of The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, 1887.] "YES," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, " and in that case," he continued, " I profit by my virtue." Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the 76 MARKHEIM near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside. The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed, " when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that ; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books ; you will have to pay, be- sides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions ; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled ; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet ? A remarkable collector, sir ! " And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror. " This time," said he, " you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabi- net is bare to the wainscot ; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared ; " and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday ; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected." There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence. " Well, sir," said the dealer, " be it so. You are an old cus- tomer after all ; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now," he went on, " this hand glass fifteenth ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON' 77 century, warranted ; comes from a good collection, too ; but I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remark- able collector." The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stooped to take the object from its place ; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that now received the glass. " A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. " A glass? For Christmas? Surely not? " " And why not? " cried the dealer. " Why not a glass? " Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expres- sion. "You ask me why not?" he said. " Why, look here look in it look at yourself ! Do you like to see it ? No ! nor I nor any man." The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so sud- denly confronted him with the mirror ; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. " Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favored," said he. " I ask you," said Markheim, " for a Christmas present, and you give me this this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies this hand-conscience ! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind ? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man ? " The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing ; there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth. " What are you driving at? " the dealer asked. " Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not chari- table ; not pious ; not scrupulous ; unloving, unbeloved ; a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all ? Dear God, man, is that all?" " I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharp- ness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. " But I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health." 78 MARKHEIM " Ah ! " cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. " Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about that." " I," cried the dealer. " I in love ! I never had the time, nor have I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?" " Where is the hurry? " returned Markheim. " It is very pleas- ant to stand here talking ; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliffs edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it a cliff a mile high high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other ; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might be- come friends ? " " I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. " Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop." " True, true," said Markheim. " Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else." The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat ; he drew himself up and filled his lungs ; at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repul- sion ; and through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out. " This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer ; and then, as he began to rearise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a heap. Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming to their great age ; others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings. He looked ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ft about him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught ; and by that inconsiderable move- ment, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea : the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger. From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo ! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie ; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion there it must lie till it was found. Found ! ay, and then ? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. " Time was that when the brains were out," he thought ; and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished time, which had closed for the victim, had become instant and momen- tous for the slayer. The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon. The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army of spies ; his own eyes met and detected hini and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a sickening iteration, of the 8o MARKHEIM thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour ; he should have prepared an alibi ; he should not have used a knife ; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him ; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also ; he should have done all things otherwise ; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot ; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoul- der, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish ; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumor of 'the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity ; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memo- ries of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exer- cise ; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger : every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly ; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell ; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house. But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trem- bled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible , ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 8l surmise on the pavement these could at worst suspect, they could not know ; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone ? He knew he was ; he had watched the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, " out for the day " written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course ; and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of delicate footing he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely ; to every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it ; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had eyes to see with ; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred. At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow? Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman be- gan to beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no ! he lay quite still ; he was fled away far be- yond earshot of these blows and shoutings ; he was sunk beneath seas of silence ; and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking and departed. Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence his bed. One visitor had come : at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern ; and as a means to that, the keys. G 82 MARKHEIM He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scat- tered, the trunk doubled, on the floor ; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fishers' village : a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer ; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored : Brownrigg with her apprentice ; the Mannings with their murdered guest ; Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell ; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion : he was once again that little boy ; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures ; he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory ; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer. He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these considerations ; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bend- ing his mind to realize the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with every change of senti- ment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies ; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain ; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness ; the same" heart ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 83 which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor. With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back the door. The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs ; on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing ; and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the dis- tance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers ; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to his legs ; and as he began with a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would possess his soul ! And then again, and heark- ening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unrest- ing sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck ; his eyes, which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something name* 84 MARKHEIM iess vanishing. The four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies. On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's observing eyes ; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he wondered a little, recol- lecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause ; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim : the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive ; the stout planks might yield under his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch ; ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him : if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim ; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared ; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himself he was at ease ; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew ; it was there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice. When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with pack- ing cases and incongruous furniture ; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage ; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall ; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 85 a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor ; but by great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbors. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many ; and it was irksome, besides ; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door even glanced at it from time to time directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody ! How fresh the youthful voices ! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys and his mind was thronged with answer- able ideas and images ; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navi- gated sky ; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel. And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened. Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned. 86 MARKHEIM "Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him. Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the waver- ing candle-light of the shop ; and at times he thought he knew him ; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God. And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile ; and when he added, " You are looking for the money, I believe ? " it was in the tones of everyday politeness. Markheim made no answer. "I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I ne-ed not describe to him the consequences." "You know me?" cried the murderer. The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favorite of mine," he said ; " and I have long observed and often sought to help you." " What are you ? " cried Markheim ; " the devil ? " " What I may be," returned the other, " cannot affect the ser- vice I propose to render you." "It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never ; not by you ! You do not know me yet ; thank God, you do not know me ! " " I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness. " I know you to the soul." " Know me ! " cried Markheim. " Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do ; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and mufHed in a cloak. If they had their own control if you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes and saints ! I am worse than most ; myself is more overlaid ; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself." ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 87 "To me?" inquired the visitant. "To you before all," returned the murderer. " I supposed you were intelligent. I thought since you exist you would prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts ! Think of it ; my acts ! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants ; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts ! But can you not look within ? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me ? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity the unwilling sinner?" " All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, " but it regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies ; the servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer ; and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas streets ! Shall I help you ; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find the money?" " For what price? " asked Markheim. "I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other. Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. " No," said he, " I will take nothing at your hands ; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credu- lous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil." " I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the visitant. " Because you disbelieve their efficacy ! " Markheim cried. " I do not say so," returned the other ; " but I look on these things from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you 88 MARKHEIM do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of ser- vice to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confi- dence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto ; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board ; and when the night be- gins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to the man's last words : and when I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope." "And do you, then, suppose me such a creature? " asked Mark- heim. "Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of man- kind? or is it because you find me with red hands that you pre- sume such baseness? and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good ? " " Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. " All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting ; I find in all that the last consequence is death ; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visi- bly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins ? I follow virtues also ; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action, but in char- acter. The bad man is dear to me ; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered to forward your escape." " I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. " This ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 89 crime on which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many lessons ; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been driven with revolt to what I would not ; I was a bond-slave to poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these temptations ; mine was not so : I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day, and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor in the world ; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past ; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my life ; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination." "You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked the visitor ; " and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands?" " Ah," said Markheim, " but this time I have a sure thing." " This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly. " Ah, but I keep back the half ! " cried Markheim. "That also you will lose," said the other. The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. " Well, then, what matter?" he exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms ; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor ; who knows their trials better than myself ? I pity and help them ; I prize love, I love honest laughter ; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so ; good, also, is a spring of acts." But the visitant raised his finger. " For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world," said he, " through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. 90 MARKHEIM Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil ? five years from now I shall detect you in the fact ! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you." " It is true," Markheim said huskily, " I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all : the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings." " I will propound to you one simple question," said the other ; " and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax ; possibly you do right to be so ; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein? " "In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of con- sideration. " No," he added, with, despair, " in none ! I have gone down in all." "Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you will never change ; and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down." Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show you the money?" " And grace ? " cried Markheim. " Have you not tried it ? " returned the other. "Two or three years ago, did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn ? " " It is true," said Markheim ; " and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul ; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am." At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house ; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour. "The maid !" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 9 1 you, and there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill ; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance no smiles, -no overacting, and I promise you success ! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening the whole night, if needful to ran- sack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up ! " he cried ; " up, friend ; your life hangs trembling in the scales ; up, and act ! " Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. " If I be con- demned to evil acts," he said, " there is still one door of freedom open I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barren- ness ; it may, and let it be ! But I have still my hatred of evil ; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage." The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change : they brightened and softened with a tender triumph ; and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the trans- formation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him ; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer ; but on the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour. He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile. "You had better go for the police," said he; "I have killed your master." 92 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS AMONG THE CORN-ROWS HAMLIN GARLAND [From Main-Travelled Roads. This is the second part of the story. In the first part Rob is in Dakota. " He was from one of the finest counties of Wisconsin, over toward Milwaukee. He was of German parentage, a middle- sized, cheery, wide-awake, good-looking young fellow atypical claim-holder. He was always confident, jovial, and full of plans for the future. He had dug his own well, built his own shanty, washed and mended his own clothing. He could do anything and do it well. He had a fine field of wheat, and was finish- ing the ploughing of his entire quarter-section." He determines to go back to Wisconsin, find a wife, and return with her in ten days.] A CORN-FIELD in July is a sultry place. The soil is hot and dry ; the wind comes across the lazily-murmuring leaves laden with a warm, sickening smell drawn from the rapidly growing, broad- flung banners of the corn. The sun, nearly vertical, drops a flood of dazzling light upon the field over which the cool shadows run, only to make the heat seem the more intense. Julia Peterson, faint with hunger, was toiling back and forth between the corn-rows, holding the handles of the double-shovel corn-plough, while her little brother Otto rode the steaming horse. Her heart was full of bitterness, her face flushed with heat, and her muscles aching with fatigue. The heat grew terrible. The corn came to her shoulders, and not a breath seemed to reach her, while the sun, nearing the noon mark, lay pitilessly upon her shoulders, protected only by a calico dress. The dust rose under her feet, and as she was wet with perspiration it soiled her till, with a woman's instinctive cleanliness, she shuddered. Her head throbbed dangerously. What matter to her that the kingbird pitched jovially from the maples to catch a wandering bluebottle fly, that the robin was feeding its young, that the bobolink was singing? All these things, if she saw them, only threw her bond- age to labor into greater relief. Across the field, in another patch of corn, she could see her father a big, gruff- voiced, wide-bearded Norwegian at work also with a plough. The corn must be ploughed, and so she toiled on, the tears dropping from the shadow of the ugly sun-bonnet HAMLIN GARLAND 93 she wore. Her shoes, coarse and square-toed, chafed her feet ; her hands, large and strong, were browned, or, more properly, burnt, on the backs by the sun. The horse's harness " creak- cracked " as he swung steadily and patiently forward, the moisture pouring from his sides, his nostrils distended. The field bordered on a road, and on the other side of the road ran a river a broad, clear, shallow expanse at that point, and the eyes of the boy gazed longingly at the pond and the cool shadow each time that he turned at the fence. " Say, Jule, I'm goin' in ! Come, can't I? Come say ! " he pleaded, as they stopped at the fence to let the horse breathe. " I've let you go wade twice." " But that don't do any good. My legs is all smarty, 'cause ol' Jack sweats so." The boy turned around on the horse's back and slid back to his rump. " I can't stand it ! " he burst out, sliding off and darting under the fence. " Father can't see." The girl put her elbows on the fence and watched her little brother as he sped away to the pool, throwing off his clothes as he ran, whooping with uncontrollable delight. Soon she could hear him splashing about in the water a short distance up the stream, and caught glimpses of his little shiny body and happy face. How cool that water looked ! And the shadows there by the big basswood ! How that water would cool her blistered feet. An impulse seized her, and she squeezed between the rails of the fence, and stood in the road looking up and down to see that the way was clear. It was not a main-travelled road ; no one was likely to come ; why not ? She hurriedly took off her shoes and stockings how delicious the cool, soft velvet of the grass ! and sitting down on the bank under the great basswood, whose roots formed an abrupt bank, she slid her poor blistered, chafed feet into the water, her bare head leaned against the huge tree-trunk. And now, as she rested, the beauty of the scene came to her. Over her the wind moved the leaves. A jay screamed far off, as if answering the cries of the boy. A kingfisher crossed and recrossed the stream with dipping sweep of his wings. The river sang with its lips to the pebbles. The vast clouds went by majestically, far above the tree-tops, and the snap and buzzing and ringing whir of 94 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS July insects made a ceaseless, slumberous undertone of song solvent of all else. The tired girl forgot her work. She began to dream. This would not last always. Some one would come to release her from such drudgery. This was her constant, tenderest, and most secret dream. He would be a Yankee, not a Norwegian. The Yankees didn't ask their wives to work in the field. He would have a home. Perhaps he'd live in town perhaps a merchant ! And then she thought of the drug clerk in Rock River who had looked at her A voice broke in on her dream, a fresh, manly voice. " Well, by jinks ! if it ain't Julia ! Just the one I wanted to see ! " The girl turned, saw a pleasant-faced young fellow in a derby hat and a cutaway suit of diagonals. " Bob Rodemaker ! How come " She remembered her situation and flushed, looked down at the water, and remained perfectly still. "Ain't you goin' to shake hands? Y' don't seem very glad t' see me." She began to grow angry. " If you had any eyes, you'd see." Rob looked over the edge of the bank, whistled, turned away. " Oh, I see ! Excuse me ! Don't blame yeh a bit, though. Good weather f'r corn," he went on, looking up at the trees. " Corn seems to be pretty well forward," he continued, in a louder voice, as he walked away, still gazing into the air. " Crops is looking first-class in Boomtown. Hello! This Otto? H'yare, y* little scamp ! Get on to that horse agin. Quick, 'r I'll take y'r skin off an' hang it on the fence. What y' been doin' ? " " Ben in swimmin'. Jimminy, ain't it fun ! When 'd y' get back? " said the boy, grinning. " Never you mind ! " replied Rob, leaping the fence by laying his left hand on the top rail. " Get on to that horse." He tossed the boy up on the horse, and hung his coat on the fence. " I s'pose the oF man makes her plough, same as usual? " " Yup," said Otto. " Dod ding a man that'll do that ! I don't mind if it's neces- sary, but it ain't necessary in his case." He continued to mutter in this way as he went across to the other side of the field. As they turned to come back, Rob went up and looked at the horse's HAMLIN GARLAND 95 mouth. " Gettin' purty near of age. Say, who's sparkin' Julia now anybody ? " " Nobody 'cept some ol' Norwegians. She won't have them. For wants her to, but she won't." " Good f 'r her. Nobody comes t' see her Sunday nights, eh?" " Nope ; only 'Tias Anderson an' Ole Hoover ; but she goes off an' leaves 'em." " Chk ! " said Rob, starting old Jack across the field. It was almost noon, and Jack moved reluctantly. He knew the time of day as well as the boy. He made this round after distinct protest. In the meantime Julia, putting on her shoes and stockings, went to the fence and watched the man's shining white shirt as he moved across the corn-field. There had never been any special tenderness between them, but she had always liked him. They had been at school together. She wondered why he had come back at this time of the year, and wondered how long he would stay. How long had he stood looking at her? She flushed again at the thought of it. But he wasn't to blame ; it was a public road. She might have known better. She stood under a little popple tree, whose leaves shook musi- cally at every zephyr, and her eyes, through half-shut lids, roved over the sea of deep-green, glossy leaves, dappled here and there by cloud shadows, stirred here and there like water by the wind ; and out of it all a longing to be free from such toil rose like a breath, filling her throat and quickening the motion of her heart. Must this go on forever, this life of heat and dust and labor? What did it all mean? The girl laid her chin on her strong red wrists, and looked up into the blue spaces between the vast clouds aerial mountains dissolving in a shoreless azure sea. How cool and sweet and rest- ful they looked ! If she might only lie out on the billowy, snow- white, sunlit edge ! The voices of the driver and the ploughman recalled her, and she fixed her eyes again upon the slowly nodding head of the patient horse, on the boy turned half about on his saddle, talking to the white-sleeved man, whose derby hat bobbed up and down quite curiously, like the horse's head. Would she ask him to dinner ? What would her people say? 96 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS " Phew ! it's hot ! " was the greeting the young fellow gave as he came up. He smiled in a frank, boyish way, as he 'hung his hat on the top of a stake and looked up at her. " D' y' know, I kind o' enjoy gettin' at it again^? Fact. It ain't no work for a girl, though," he added. " When 'd you get back?" she asked, the flush not yet out of her face. Rob was looking at her thick, fine hair and full Scan- dinavian face, rich as a rose in color, and did not reply for a few seconds. She stood with her hideous sun-bonnet pushed back on her shoulders. A kingbird was chattering overhead. " Oh, a few days ago." "How long y' goin' t' stay?" " Oh, I d' know. A week, mebbe." A far-off halloo came pulsing across the shimmering air. The boy screamed " Dinner ! " and waved his hat with an answering whoop, then flopped off the horse like a turtle off a stone into water. He had the horse unhooked in an instant, and had flung his toes up over the horse's back, in act to climb on, when Rob said : " H'yare, young feller ! wait a minute. Tired?" he asked the girl, with a tone that was more than kindly. It was almost tender. " Yes," she replied, in a low voice. " My shoes hurt me." "Well, here y' go," he replied, taking his stand by the horse, and holding out his hand like a step. She colored and smiled a little as she lifted her foot into his huge, hard, sunburned hand. " Oop-a-daisy ! " he called. She gave a spring, and sat on the horse like one at home there. Rob had a deliciously unconscious, abstracted, business-like air. He really left her nothing to do but enjoy his company, while he went ahead and did precisely as he pleased. " We don't raise much corn out there, an' so I kind o' like to see it once more." " I wish I didn't have to see another hill of corn as long as I live ! " replied the girl, bitterly. " Don't know as I blame yeh a bit. But, all the same, I'm glad you was working in it to-day," he thought to himself, as he walked beside her horse toward the house. HAMLIN GARLAND 97 "Will you stop to dinner?" she inquired bluntly, almost surlily. It was evident there were reasons why she didn't mean to press him to do so. " You bet I will," he replied ; " that is, if you want I should." " You know how we live," she replied evasively. " If you can stand it, why " She broke off abruptly. Yes, he remembered how they lived in that big, square, dirty, white frame house. It had been three or four years since he had been in it, but the smell of the cabbage and onions, the penetrat- ing, peculiar mixture of odors, assailed his memory as something unforgettable. " I guess I'll stop," he said, as she hesitated. She said no more, but tried to act as if she were not in any way responsible for what came afterward. " I guess I c'n stand f r one meal what you stand all the while," he added. As she left them at the well and went to the house, he saw her limp painfully, and the memory of her face so close to his lips as he helped her down from the horse gave him pleasure at the same time that he was touched by its tired and gloomy look. Mrs. Peterson came to the door of the kitchen, looking just the same as ever. Broad-faced, unwieldy, flabby, apparently wearing the same dress he remembered to have seen her in years before, a dirty, drab-colored thing, she looked as shapeless as a sack of wool. Her English was limited to, " How de do, Rob?" He washed at the pump, while the girl, in the attempt to be hospitable, held the clean towel for him. " You're purty well used up, eh ? " he said to her. " Yes ; it's awful hot out there." " Can't you lay off this afternoon? It ain't right." " No. He won't listen to that." "Well, let me take your place." " No ; there ain't any use o' that." Peterson, a brawny, wide-bearded Norwegian, came up at this moment, and spoke to Rob in a sullen, gruff way. "Hallo, whan yo' gaet back?" "To-day. He ain't very glad to see me," said Rob, winking at Julia. " He ain't b'ilin' over with enthusiasm ; but I c'n stand it, it 98 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS for your sake," he added, with amazing assurance; but the girl had turned away, and it was wasted. At the table he ate heartily of the " bean swaagen," which rilled a large wooden bowl in the centre of the table, and which was ladled into smaller wooden bowls at each plate. Julia had tried hard to convert her mother to Yankee ways, and had at last given it up in despair. Rob kept on safe subjects, mainly asking ques- tions about the crops of Peterson, and when addressing the girl, inquired of the schoolmates. By skilful questioning, he kept the subject of marriage uppermost, and seemingly was getting an inventory of the girls not yet married or engaged. It was embarrassing for the girl. She was all too well aware of the difference between her home and the home of her schoolmates and friends. She knew that it was not pleasant for her " Yankee " friends to come to visit her when they could not feel sure of a welcome from the tireless, silent, and grim-visaged old Norse, if, indeed, they could escape insult. Julia ate her food mechanically, and it could hardly be said that she enjoyed the brisk talk of the young man, his eyes were upon her so constantly and his smile so obviously addressed to her. She rose as soon as possible and, going outside, took a seat on a chair under the trees in the yard. She was not a coarse or dull girl. In fact, she had developed so rapidly by contact with the young people of the neighborhood, that she no longer found pleasure in her own home. She didn't believe in keeping up the old-fashioned Norwegian customs, and her life with her mother was not one to breed love or confidence. She was more like a hired hand. The love of the mother for her " Yulyie " was sincere though rough and inarticulate, and it was her jealousy of the young "Yankees " that widened the chasm between the girl and herself an inevitable result. Rob followed the girl out into the yard, and threw himself on the grass at her feet, perfectly unconscious of the fact that this attitude was exceedingly graceful and becoming to them both. He did it because he wanted to talk to her, and the grass was cool and easy ; there wasn't any other chair, anyway. "Do they keep up the ly-ceum and the sociables same as ever?" " Yes. The others go a /rood 'eal, but I don't. We're gettin' HAMLIN GARLAND 9$ such a stock round us, and father thinks he needs me s' much, I don't get out often. I'm gettin' sick of it." " I sh'd think y' would," he replied, his eyes on her face. " I c'd stand the churnin' and housework, but when it comes t' workin' outdoors in the dirt an 1 hot sun, gettin' all sunburned and chapped up, it's another thing. An' then it seems as if he gets stingier 'n' stingier every year. I ain't had a new dress in I d'-know-how-long. He says it's all nonsense, an' mother's just about as bad. She don't want a new dress, an' so she thinks I don't." The girl was feeling the influence of a sympathetic lis- tener and was making up for the long silence. " I've tried t' go out t' work, but they won't let me. They'd have t' pay a hand twenty dollars a month f r the work I do, an' they like cheap help ; but I'm not goin' t' stand it much longer, I can tell you that." Rob thought she was very handsome as she sat there with her 6yes fixed on the horizon, while these rebellious thoughts found utterance in her quivering, passionate voice. " Yulie ! Kom haar ! " roared the old man from the well. A frown of anger and pain came into her face. She looked at Rob. " That means more work." " Say ! let me go out in your place. Come, now ; what's the use " " No ; it wouldn't do no good. It ain't t'-day s' much ; it's every day, and " " Yu//V / " called Peterson again, with a string of impatient Norwegian. "Batter yo' kom pooty hal quick." " Well, all right, only I'd like to " Rob submitted. " Well, good-by," she said, with a little touch of feeling. "When d' ye go back?" " I don't know. I'll see y' again before I go. Good-by." He stood watching her slow, painful pace till she reached the well, where Otto was standing with the horse. He stood watch- ing them as they moved out into the road and turned down toward the field. He felt that she had sent Jiim away ; but still there was a look in her eyes which was not altogether He gave it up in despair at last. He was not good at analyses of this nature ; he was used to plain, blunt expressions. There was a woman's subtlety here quite beyond his reach. 100 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS He sauntered slowly off up the road after his talk with Julia. His head was low on his breast ; he was thinking as one who is about to take a decided and important step. He stopped at length, and, turning, watched the girl moving along in the deeps of the corn. Hardly a leaf was stirring ; the untempered sunlight fell in a burning flood upon the field ; the grasshoppers rose, snapped, buzzed, and fell ; the locust uttered its dry, heat-intensifying cry. The man lifted his head. " It's a d n shame ! " he said, beginning rapidly to retrace his steps. He stood leaning on the fence, awaiting the girl's coming very much as she had waited his on the round he had made before dinner. He grew impatient at the slow gait of the horse, and drummed on the rail while he whistled. Then he took off his hat and dusted it nervously. As the horse got a little nearer he wiped his face carefully, pushed his hat back on his head, and climbed over the fence, where he stood with elbows on the middle rail as the girl and boy and horse came to the end of the furrow. " Hot, ain't it? " he said, as she looked up. " Jimminy Peters, it's awful ! " puffed the boy. The girl did not reply till she swung the plough about after the horse, and set it upright into the next row. Her powerful body had a superb swaying motion at the waist as she did this a motion which affected Rob vaguely but massively. " I thought you'd gone," she said gravely, pushing back her bonnet till he could see her face dewed with sweat, and pink as a rose. She had the high cheek-bones of her race, but she had also their exquisite fairness of color. "Say, Otto," asked Rob, alluringly, "wan' to go swimmin'?" "You bet," replied Otto. " Well, I'll go a round if" The boy dropped off the horse, not waiting to hear any more. Rob grinned, but the girl dropped her eyes, then looked away. " Got rid o' him mighty quick. Say, Julyie, I hate like thunder r' see you out here > it ain't right. I wish you'd I wish " She could not look at him now, and her bosom rose and fell with a motion that was not due to fatigue. Her moist hair matted around her forehead gave her a boyish look. Rob nervously tried again, tearing splinters from the fence. HAMLIN GARLAND IOI "Say, now, I'll tell yeh what I came back here for t' git married ; and if you're willin', I'll do it to-night. Come, now, whaddy y' say? " "What've /got t' do 'bout it?" she finally asked, the color flooding her face, and a faint smile coming to her lips. "Go ahead. I ain't got anything " Rob put a splinter in his mouth and faced her. " Oh, looky here, now, Julyie ! you know what I mean. I've got a good claim out near Boomtown a rattliri 1 good claim ; a shanty on it four- teen by sixteen no tarred paper about it, and a suller to keep butter in, and a hundred acres o' wheat just about ready to turn now. I need a wife." Here he straightened up, threw away the splinter, and took off his hat. He was a very pleasant figure as the girl stole a look at him. His black laughing eyes were especially earnest just now. His voice had a touch of pleading. The popple tree over their heads murmured applause at his eloquence, then hushed to listen. A cloud dropped a silent shadow down upon them, and it sent a little thrill of fear through Rob, as if it were an omen of failure. As the girl remained silent, looking away, he began, man-fashion, to desire her more and more, as he feared to lose her. He put his hat on the post again and took out his jack-knife. Her calico dress draped her supple and powerful figure simply but naturally. The stoop in her shoulders, given by labor, disappeared as she partly leaned upon the fence. The curves of her muscular arms showed through her sleeve. " It's all-fired lonesome f r me out there on that claim, and it ain't no picnic f r you here. Now, if you'll come out there with me, you needn't do anything but cook f r me, and after harvest we can git a good layout o' furniture, an' I'll lath and plaster the house and put a little hell [ell] in the rear." He smiled, and so did she. He felt encouraged to say : " An' there we be, as snug as y' please. We're close t' Boomtown, an' we can go down there to church sociables an' things, and they're a jolly lot there." The girl was still silent, but the man's simple enthusiasm came to her charged with passion and a sort of romance such as her hard life had known little of. There was something enticing about this trip to the West. IO2 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS " What '11 my folks say? "she said at last. A virtual surrender, but Rob was not acute enough to see it He pressed on eagerly : " I don't care. Do you? They'll jest keep y' ploughin' corr and milkin' cows till the day of judgment. Come, Julyie, I ain't got no time to fool away. I've got t' get back t' that grain. It's a whoopin' old crop, sure's y'r born, an' that means sompin' purty scrumptious in furniture this fall. Come, now." He approached her and laid his hand on her shoulder very much as he would have touched Albert Seagraves or any other comrade. "Whaddy y' say?" She neither started nor shrunk nor looked at him. She simply moved a step away. " They'd never let me go," she replied bit- terly. " I'm too cheap a hand. I do a man's work an' get no pay at all." " You'll have half o' all I c'n make," he put in. " How long c'n you wait ? " she asked, looking down at her dress. " Just two minutes," he said, pulling out his watch. " It ain't no use t' wait. The old man'll be jest as mad a week from now as he is to-day. Why not go now? " " I'm of age in a few days," she mused, wavering, calculating. " You c'n be of age to-night if you'll jest call on old Squire Hatfield with me." " All right, Rob," the girl said, turning and holding out her hand. " That's the talk ! " he exclaimed, seizing it. " And now a kiss, to bind the bargain, as the fellah says." " I guess we c'n get along without that." " No, we can't. It won't seem like an engagement without it." " It ain't goin' to seem much like one, anyway," she answered, with a sudden realization of how far from her dreams of courtship this reality was. "Say, now, Julyie, that ain't fair; it ain't treatin' me right. You don't seem to understand that I like you, but I do." Rob was carried quite out of himself by the time, the place, and the girl. He had said a very moving thing. The tears sprang involuntarily to the girl's eyes. " Do you mean it? If y' do, you may." HAM LIN GARLAND 1 03 She was trembling with emotion for the first time. The sin- cerity of the man's voice had gone deep. He put his arm around her almost timidly, and kissed her on the cheek, a great love for her springing up in his heart. " That settles it," he said. " Don't cry, Julyie. You'll never be sorry for it. Don't cry. It kind o' hurts me to see it." He hardly understood her feelings. He was only aware that she was crying, and tried in a bungling way to soothe her. But now that she had given way, she sat down in the grass and wept bitterly. " Yufyie/" yelled the vigilant old Norwegian, like a distant foghorn. The girl sprang up ; the habit of obedience was strong. " No ; you set right there, and I'll go round," he said. "Otto ! " The boy came scrambling out of the wood, half dressed. Rob tossed him upon the horse, snatched Julia's sun-bonnet, put his own hat on her head, and moved off down the corn-rows, leaving the girl smiling through her tears as he whistled and chirped to the horse. Farmer Peterson, seeing the familiar sun-bonnet above the corn-rows, went back to his work, with a sentence of Norwegian trailing after him like the tail of a kite something about lazy girls who didn't earn the crust of their bread, etc. Rob was wild with delight. " Git up there, Jack ! Hay, you old corncrib ! Say, Otto, can you keep your mouth shet if it puts money in your pocket? " " Jest try me 'n' see," said the keen-eyed little scamp. " Well, you keep quiet about my bein' here this afternoon, and I'll put a dollar on y'r tongue hay ? what ? understand ? " " Show me y'r dollar," said the boy, turning about and showing his tongue. " All right. Begin to practise now by not talkin' to me." Rob went over the whole situation on his way back, and when he got in sight of the girl his plan was made. She stood waiting for him with a new look on her face. Her sullenness had given way to a peculiar eagerness and anxiety to believe in him. She was already living that free life in a far-off, wonderful country. No more would her stern father and sullen mother force her to tasks which she hated. She'd be a member of a new firm. She'd 104 AMONG THE CORN-ROWS work, of course, but it would be because she wanted to, and not because she was forced to. The independence and the love promised grew more and more attractive. She laughed back with a softer light in her eyes, when she saw the smiling face of Rob looking at her from her sun-bonnet. "Now you mustn't do any more o' this," he said. "You go back to the house an' tell y'r mother you're too lame to plough any more to-day, and it's gettin' late, anyhow. To-night ! " he whispered quickly. " Eleven ! Here ! " The girl's heart leaped with fear. " I'm afraid." " Not of me, are yeh?" " No, I'm not afraid of you, Rob." " I'm glad o' that. I I want you to like me, Julyie ; won't you?" " I'll try," she answered, with a smile. "To-night, then," he said, as she moved away. " To-night. Good-by." " Good-by." He stood and watched her till her tall figure was lost among the drooping corn-leaves. There was a singular choking feeling in his throat. The girl's voice and face had brought up so many memories of parties and picnics and excursions on far-off holidays, and at the same time held suggestions of the future. He already felt that it was going to be an unconscionably long time before eleven o'clock. He saw her go to the house, and then he turned and walked slowly up the dusty road. Out of the May-weed the grasshoppers sprang, buzzing and snapping their dull red wings. Butterflies, yellow and white, fluttered around moist places in the ditch, and slender, striped water-snakes glided across the stagnant pools at sound of footsteps. But the mind of the man was far away on his claim, building a new house, with a woman's advice and presence. ******* It was a windless night. The katydids and an occasional cricket were the only sounds Rob could hear as he stood beside his team and strained his ear to listen. At long intervals a little breeze ran through the corn like a swift serpent, bringing to his nostrils HAM LIN GARLAND 1 05 the sappy smell of the growing corn. The horses stamped un- easily as the mosquitoes settled on their shining limbs. The sky was full of stars, but there was no moon. " What if she don't come ? " he thought. " Or can't come ? I can't stand that. I'll go to the old man an' say, ' Looky here ' Sh!" He listened again. There was a rustling in the corn. It was not like the fitful movement of the wind ; it was steady, slower, and approaching. It ceased. He whistled the wailing sweet cry of the prairie-chicken. Then a figure came out into the road a woman Julia ! He took her in his arms as she came panting up to him. " Rob ! " "Julyie!" ******* A few words, the dull tread of swift horses, the rising of a silent train of dust, and then the wind wandered in the growing corn, the dust fell, a dog barked down the road, and the katydids sang to the liquid contralto of the river in its shallows. THE LAD IN THE HEMP-FIELD JAMES LANE ALLEN [From The Reign of Law, 1900.] SOME sixty-five years later, one hot day of midsummer in 1865 one Saturday afternoon a lad was cutting weeds in a wood- land pasture ; a big, raw-boned, demure boy of near eighteen. He had on heavy shoes, the toes green with grass stain ; the leather so seasoned by morning dews as to be like wood for hard- ness. These were to keep his feet protected from briers or from the bees scattered upon the wild white clover or from the terrible hidden thorns of the honey-locust. No socks. A pair of scant homespun trousers, long outgrown. A coarse clean shirt. His big shock-head thatched with yellow straw, a dilapidated sun-and-rain shed. 106 THE LAD IN THE HEMP-FIELD The lanky young giant cut and cut and cut : great purple-bodied poke, strung with crimson-juiced seed; great burdock, its green burrs a plague ; great milkweed, its creamy sap gushing at every gash ; great thistles, thousand-nettled ; great ironweed, plumed with royal purple ; now and then a straggling bramble prone with velvety berries the outpost of a patch behind him ; now and then more carefully, lest he notch his blade low sprouts of wild cane, survivals of the impenetrable brakes of pioneer days. All these and more, the rank, mighty measure of the soil's fertility low down. Measure of its fertility aloft, the tops of the trees, from which the call of the red-headed woodpecker sounded as faint as the memory of a sound and the bark of the squirrels was elfin- thin. A hot crowded land, crammed with undergrowth and overgrowth wherever a woodland stood ; and around every woodland dense corn-fields ; or, denser still, the leagues of swaying hemp. The smell of this now lay heavy on the air, seeming to be dragged hither and thither like a slow scum on the breeze, like a moss on a sluggish pond. A deep robust land ; and among its growths he this lad, in his way a self-unconscious human weed, the seed of his kind borne in from far some generations back, but springing out of the soil naturally now, sap of its sap, strength of its strength. He paused by and by and passed his forefinger across his fore- head, brushing the sweat away from above his quiet eyes. He moistened the tip of his thumb and slid it along the blade of his hemp hook he was using that for lack of a scythe. Turning, he walked back to the edge of the brier thicket, sat down in the shade of a black walnut, threw off his tattered head-gear, and, reaching for his bucket of water covered with poke leaves, lifted it to his lips and drank deeply, gratefully. Then he drew a whet- stone from his pocket, spat on it, and fell to sharpening his blade. The heat of his work, the stifling air, the many-toned woods, the sense of the vast summering land these things were not in his thoughts. Some days before, despatched from homestead to homestead, rumors had reached him away off here at work on his father's farm, of a great university to be opened the following autumn at Lexington. The like of it with its many colleges Ken- tucky, the South, the Mississippi valley, had never seen. It had JAMES LANE ALLEN' been the talk among the farming people in their harvest fields, at the cross-roads, on their porches the one deep sensation among them since the war. For solemn, heart-stirring as such tidings would have been at any other time, more so at this. Here, on the tableland of this unique border state, Kentucky between the halves of the nation lately at strife scene of their advancing and retreating armies pit of a frenzied commonwealth here was to arise this calm university, pledge of the new times, plea for the peace and amity of learning, fresh chance for study of the revelation of the Lord of Hosts and God of battles. The animosities were over, the humanities rebegun. Can you remember your youth well enough to be able to recall the time when the great things happened for which you seemed to be waiting? The boy who is to be a soldier one day he hears a distant bugle : at once he knows. A second glimpses a bellying sail : straightway the ocean path beckons to him. A third discovers a college, and toward its kindly lamps of learn- ing turns young eyes that have been kindled and will stay kindled to the end. For some years this particular lad, this obscure item in Nature's plan which always passes understanding, had been growing more unhappy in his place in creation. By temperament he was of a type the most joyous and self-reliant those sure signs of health ; and discontent now was due to the fact that he had outgrown his place. Parentage a farm and its tasks a country neighbor- hood and its narrowness what more are these sometimes than a starting-point for a young life ; as a flower-pot might serve to sprout an oak, and as the oak would inevitably reach the hour when it would either die or burst out, root and branch, into the whole heavens and the earth ; as the shell and yolk of an egg are the starting-point for the wing and eye of the eagle. One thing only he had not outgrown, in one thing only he was not unhappy : his religious nature. This had always been in him as breath was in him; as blood was in him : it was his life. Dissatisfied now with his position in the world, it was this alone that kept him contented in himself. Often the religious are the weary; and perhaps nowhere else does a perpetual vision of Heaven so IO8 THE MIRACLE OF THE PEACH TREE disclose itself to the weary as above lonely toiling fields. The lad had long been lifting his inner eye to this vision. When, therefore, the tidings of the university with its Bible College reached him, whose outward mould was hardship, whose inner bliss was piety, at once they fitted his ear as the right sound, as the gladness of long-awaited intelligence. It was bugle to the soldier, sail to the sailor, lamp of learning to the innate student. At once he knew that he was going to the university sometime, somehow and from that moment felt no more discon- tent, void, restlessness, nor longing. It was of this university, then, that he was happily day-dream- ing as he whetted his hemp hook in the depths of the woods that Saturday afternoon. Sitting low amid heat and weeds and thorns, he was already as one who had climbed above the earth's eternal snow-line and sees only white peaks and pinnacles the last sublimities. He felt impatient for to-morrow. One of the professors of the university, of the faculty of the Bible College, had been travelling over the state during the summer, pleading its cause before the people. He had come into that neighborhood to preach and to plead. The lad would be there to hear. The church in which the professor was to plead for learning and religion was the one first set up in the Kentucky wilderness as a house of religious liberty ; and the lad was a great-grandchild of the founder of that church, here emerging mysteriously from the deeps of life four generations down the line. THE MIRACLE OF THE PEACH TREE MAURICE HEWLETT [From " Madonna of the Peach Tree," in Little Novels of Italy, 1899. Gio- vanna Scarpa of Verona has been slandered and almost mobbed in the absence of her husband, and has fled from the city with her baby in her arms.] DIRECTLY you were outside the Porta San Zeno the peach trees began acre by acre of bent trunks, whose long branches, tied at the top, took shapes of blown candle-flames : beyond these was an open waste of bents and juniper scrub, which afforded certain eatage for goats. MAURICE HEWLETT IOQ Here three herd-boys, Luca, Biagio, and Astorre, simple brown- skinned souls, watched their flocks all the summer night, sleeping, waking to play pranks on each other, whining endless doggerel, praying at every scare, and swearing at every reassurance. Sim- ple, puppyish folk though they were, Madonna of the Peach Tree chose them to witness her epiphany. It was a very still night, of wonderful star-shine, but without a moon. The stars were so thickly spread, so clear and hot, that there was light enough for the lads to see each other's faces, the rough shapes of each other. It was light enough to notice how the square belfry of San Zeno cut a wedge of black into the span- gled blue vault. Sheer through the Milky Way it ploughed a broad furrow, which ended in a ragged edge. You would never have seen that if it had not been a clear night. Still also it was. You heard the cropping of the goats, the jaws' champ when they chewed the crisp leaves; the flicker of the bats' wings. In the marsh, half a mile away, the chorus of frogs, when it swelled up, drowned all nearer noise ; but when it broke off suddenly, those others resumed their hold upon the stillness. It was a breathless night of suspense. Anything might happen on such a night. Luca, Biagio, and Astorre, under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling, white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again : this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds ; but " No, no ! " cried Luca, eldest of the three, " the wings are too short, friends. That is a fluffy new soul just let loose. She knows not the way, you see. Let us pray for her. There are devils abroad on such close nights as this." Pray they did, with a will, " Ave Maria," " O maris Stella," and half the Paternoster, when Biagio burst into a guffaw, and gave Luca a push which sent Astorre down. " Why, 'tis only a screech-owl, you fools ! " he cried, though the sound of his own voice made him falter ; " an old mouse- teaser," he went on in a much lower voice. " Who's afraid ? " A black and white cat making a pounce had sent hearts to 1 10 THE MIRACLE OF THE PEACH TREE mouths after this : though they lound her out before they had got to "Dominus tecum," she left them all in a quiver. It had been a cat, but it might have been the devil. Then, before the bristles had folded down on their backs, they rose up again, and the hair of their heads became rigid as quills. Over the brow of a little hill, through the peach trees (which bowed their spiry heads to her as she walked), came quietly a tall white Lady in a dark cloak. Hey ! powers of earth and air, but this was not to be doubted ! Evenly forward she came, without a footfall, without a rustle or the crackling of a twig, without so much as kneeing her skirt stood before them so nearly that they saw the pale oval of her face, and said in a voice like a muffled bell, " I am hungry, my friends; have you any meat?" She had a face like the moon, and great round eyes ; within her cloak, on the bosom of her white dress, she held a man-child. He, they passed their sacred word, lifted in his mother's arms and turned open-handed towards them. Luca, Biagio, and Astorre, goat-herds all and honest lads, fell on their faces with one accord ; with one voice they cried, " Madonna, Madonna, Madonna ! pray for us sinners ! " But again the Lady spoke in her gentle tones. "I am very hungry, and my child is hungry. Have you nothing to give me? " So then Luca kicked the prone Biagio, and Biagio's heel nicked Astorre on the shin. But it was Luca, as became the eldest, who got up first, all the same ; and as soon as he was on his feet the others followed him. Luca took his cap off, Biagio saw the act and followed it. Astorre, who dared not lift his eyes, and was so busy making crosses on himself that he had no hands to spare, kept his on till Luca nudged Biagio, and Biagio cuffed him soundly, saying, "Uncover, cow-face." Then Luca on his knees made an offering of cheese and black bread to the Lady. They saw the gleam of her white hand as she stretched it out to take the victual. That hand shone like agate in the dark. They saw her eat, sitting very straight and noble upon a tussock of bents. Astorre whispered to Biagio, Biagio consulted with Luca for a few anxious moments, and communicated again with Astorre. Astorre jumped up and scuttled away into the dark. Presently he came back, bearing something in his two hands. The three shock-heads inspected his burden ; there was MAURICE HEWLETT III much whispering, some contention, almost a scuffle. The truth was, that Biagio wanted to take the thing from Astorre, and that Luca would not allow it. Luca was the eldest, and wanted to take it himself. Astorre was in tears. " Cristo anwref" 1 he blub- bered, " you will spill the milk between you. I thought of it all by myself. Let go, Biagio ; let go, Luca ! " So they whispered and tussled, pulling three different ways. The Lady's voice broke over them like silver rain. " Let him who thought of the kind act give me the milk," she said ; so young Astorre on his knees handed her the horn cup, and through the cracks of his fingers watched her drink every drop. That done, the cup returned with a smile piercingly sweet, the Lady rose. Saints on thrones, how tall she was ! " The bimbo 2 will thank you for this to-morrow, as I do now," said she. " Good night, my friends, and may the good God have mercy upon all souls!" She turned to go the way she had come, but 'Astorre, covering his eyes with one hand, crept forward on three legs (as you might say) and plucked the hem of her robe up, and kissed it. She stooped to lay a hand upon his head. " Never kiss my robe, Astorre," said she and how under Heaven did she know his name if she were not what she was ? " Never kiss my robe, but get up and let me kiss you." Well of Truth ! to think of it ! Up gets Astorre, shaking like a nun in a fit, and the Lady bent over him and, as sure as you are you, kissed his forehead. Astorre told his village next day as they sat round him in a ring, and he on the well-head as plain to be seen as this paper, that he felt at that moment as if two rose leaves had dropped from heaven upon his forehead. Slowly, then, very slowly and smoothly (as they report), did the Lady move away towards the peach trees whence she had come. In the half light there was for by this it was the hour before dawn they saw her take a peach from one of the trees. She stayed to eat it. Then she walked over the crest of the orchard and disappeared. As soon as they dared, when the light had come, they looked for her over that same crest, but could see nothing whatever. With pale, serious faces the three youths regarded each other. There was no doubt as to what had happened a miracle ! a miracle ! l [For the love of Christ.] 3 [Baby.] 112 THE MIRACLE OF THE PEACH TREE With one consent then since this was plainly a Church affair they ran to their parish priest, Don Gasparo. He got the whole story at last ; nothing could shake them ; no detail was wanting. Thus it was : the Blessed Virgin, carrying in her arms the Santis- simo Bambino Gesii, 1 had come through the peach trees, asked for and eaten of their food, prayed for them aloud to Messer Domeneddio 2 himself, and kissed Astorre on the forehead. As they were on their knees, she walked away, stopped, took a peach, ate it, walked on, vanished ecco / 3 The curate rubbed his head, and tried another boy. Useless : the story was the same. Third boy, same story. He tucked up his cassock with decision, took his biretta and walking-staff, and said to the three goat-herds " My lads, all this is matter of miracle. I do not deny its truth God forbid it in a simple man such as I am. But I do cer- tainly ask you to lead me to the scene of your labors." The boys needed no second asking : off they all set. The curate went over every inch of the ground. Here lay Luca, Biagio, and Astorre ; the belfry of San Zeno was in such and such a direction, the peach trees in such and such. Good : there they were. What next ? According to their account, Madonna had come thus and thus. The good curate bundled off to spy for footprints in the orchard. Marvel ! there were none. This made him look very grave ; for if she made no earthly footprints, she could have no earthly feet. Next he must see by what way she had gone. She left them kneeling here, said they, went towards the peach garden, stayed by a certain tree (which they pointed out), plucked a peach from the very top of it this they swore to, though the tree was near fourteen feet high stood while she ate it, and went over the brow of the rising ground. Here was detail enough, it is to be hoped. The curate nosed it out like a slot-hound ; he paced the track himself from the scrub to the peach tree, and stood under this last gazing to its top, from there to its roots ; he shook his head many times, stroked his chin a few : then with a broken cry he made a pounce and picked up a peach stone ! After this to doubt would have been childish ; as a fact he had no more than the boys. " My children," said he, " we are here face to face with a great l [The most holy child Jesus.] a [God.] 3 [Behold !] MAURICE HEWLETT 113 mystery. It is plain that Messer Domeneddio hath designs upon this hamlet, of which we, His worms, have no conception. You, my dear sons, He hath chosen to be workers for His purpose, which we cannot be very far wrong in supposing to be the build- ing of an oratory or tabernacle to hold this unspeakable relic. That erection must be our immediate anxious care. Meantime I will place the relic in the pyx of our Lady's altar, and mark the day in our calendar for perpetual remembrance. I shall not fail to communicate with his holiness the bishop. Who knows what may be the end of this ? " He was as good as his word. A procession was formed in no time children carrying their rosaries and bunches of flowers, three banners, the whole village with a candle apiece ; next Luca, Biagio, and Astorre with larger candles half a pound weight each at the least ; then four men to hold up a canopy, below which came the good curate himself with the relic on a cushion. It was deposited with great reverence in the place devoted, hav- ing been drenched with incense. There was a solemn mass. After which things the curate thought himself at liberty to ruffle into Verona with his news. A DOG AND HIS MASTER JACK LONDON [From The Call of the Wild, 1903.] FOR a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment he left the tent to when he entered it again, Buck would follow at his heels. His transient masters since he had come into the Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could be permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his life as Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had passed out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was haunted by this fear. At such times he would shake off sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of the tent, where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master's breathing. 114 A DOG AND HIS MASTER But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton, which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the strain of the primitive, which the Northland had aroused in him, remained alive and active. Faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come in from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather than a dog of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of generations of civilization. Because of his very great love, he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant ; while the cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection. His face and body were scored by the teeth of many dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly. Skeet and Nig were too good-natured for quarrelling, besides, they belonged to John Thornton ; but the strange dog, no matter what the breed or valor, swiftly acknowledged Buck's supremacy or found himself struggling for life with a terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law ; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed. He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eter- nity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long- furred ; but behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and JACK LONDON 1 15 dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams. So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why ; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperi- ously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton drew him back to the fire again. Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or pet him ; but he was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton ; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly ; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the saw- mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig. For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had grub-staked them- selves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head- waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck ! " he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety. Il6 A DOG AND HIS MASTER "It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. " No, it is splendid, and it is ter- rible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid." " I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he's around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck. " Py Jingo ! " was Hans's contribution. " Not mineself either." It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's appre- hensions were realized. " Black " Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton stepped good-naturedly between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner, head on paws, watch- ing his master's every action. Burton struck out, without warn- ing, straight from the shoulder. Thornton was sent spinning, and saved himself from falling only by clutching the rail of the bar. Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark nor yelp, but a something which is best described as a roar, and they saw Buck's body rise up in the air as he left the floor for Burton's throat. The man saved his life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed his teeth from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for the throat. This time the man succeeded only in partly blocking, and his throat was torn open. Then the crowd was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling furiously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an array of hostile clubs. A " miners' meeting," called on the spot, decided that the dog had sufficient provocation, and Buck was discharged. But his reputation was made, and from that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska. Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John Thornton's life in quite another fashion. The three partners were lining a long and narrow poling-boat down a bad stretch of rapids on the Forty- Mile Creek. Hans and Pete moved along the bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree, while Thornton remained in the boat helping its descent by means of a pole, and shouting JACK LONDON II? directions to the shore. Buck, on the bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of the boat, his eyes never off his master. At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely submerged rocks jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the rope, and, while Thornton poled the boat out into the stream, ran down the bank with the end in his hand to snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did, and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a mill-race, when Hans checked it with the rope and checked too suddenly. The boat flirted over and snubbed in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer could live. Buck had sprung in on the instant ; and at the end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhauled Thornton. When he felt him grasp his tail, Buck headed for the bank, swim- ming with all his splendid strength. But the progress shoreward was slow ; the progress down-stream amazingly rapid. From be- low came the fatal roaring where the wild current went wilder and was rent in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrust through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was frightful, and Thorn- ton knew that the shore was impossible. He scraped furiously over a rock, bruised across a second, and struck a third with crushing force. He clutched its slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and above the roar of the churning water shouted : " Go, Buck ! go ! " Buck could not hold his own, and swept on down-stream, struggling desperately, but unable to win back. When he heard Thornton's command repeated, he partly reared out of the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look, then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam powerfully and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where swim- ming ceased to be possible and destruction began. They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging on. They attached the line with which they had been snubbing the boat to Buck's neck and shoulders, Il8 A DOG AND HIS MASTER being careful that it should neither strangle him nor impede his swimming, and launched him into the stream. He struck out boldly, but not straight enough into the stream. He discovered the mistake too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly past. Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were a boat. The rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the cur- rent, he was jerked under the surface, and under the surface he remained till his body struck against the bank and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and Hans and Pete threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him and the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell down. The faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and though they could not make out the words of it, they knew that he was in his extremity. His master's voice acted on Buck like an electric shock. He sprang to his feet and ran up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous departure. Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream. He had mis- calculated once, but he would not be guilty of it a second time. Hans paid out the rope, permitting no slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. Buck held on till he was on a line straight above Thornton ; then he turned, and with the speed of an express train headed down upon him. Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him like a battering ram, with the whole force of the current behind him, he reached up and closed with both arms around the shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling, suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other, dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and snags, they veered in to the bank. Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently propelled back and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete. His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs. JACK LONDON 119 "That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here." And camp they did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able to travel. That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame. This exploit was par- ticularly gratifying to the three men ; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which men waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. Buck, because of his record, was the target for these men, and Thornton was driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one man stated that his dog could start a sled with five hundred pounds and walk off with it ; a second bragged six hundred for his dog ; and a third, seven hundred. " Pooh ! pooh ! " said John Thornton ; " Buck can start a thou- sand pounds." "And break it out? and walk off with it for a hundred yards?" demanded Matthewson, a Bonanza King, he of the seven hundred vaunt. " And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred yards," John Thornton said coolly. "Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could hear, " I've got a thousand dollars that says he can't. And there it is." So saying, he slammed a sack of gold dust of the size of a bologna sausage down upon the bar. Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had been called. He could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face. His tongue had tricked him. He did not know whether Buck could start a thousand pounds. Half a ton ! The enor- mousness of it appalled him. He had great faith in Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of starting such a load ; but never, as now, had he faced the possibility of it the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him, silent and waiting. Further, he had no thousand dollars ; nor had Hans or Pete. " I've got a sled standing outside now, with twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour on it," Matthewson went on with brutal directness ; "so don't let that hinder you." 120 A DOG AND HIS MASTER Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say. He glanced from face to face in the absent way of a man who has lost the power of thought and is seeking somewhere to find the thing that will start it going again. The face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon King and old-time comrade, caught his eyes. It was as a cue to him, seeming to rouse him to do what he would never have dreamed of doing. " Can you lend me a thousand? " he asked, almost in a whisper. " Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack by the side of Matthewson's. " Though, it's little faith I'm having, John, that the beast can do the trick." The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. The tables were deserted, and the dealers and gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome of the wager and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred and mittened, banked around the sled within easy distance. Matthewson's sled, loaded with a thou- sand pounds of flour, had been standing for a couple of hours, and in the intense cold (it was sixty below zero) the runners had frozen fast to the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two to one that Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning the phrase " break out." O'Brien contended it was Thornton's privilege to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to " break it out " from a dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the phrase included breaking the runners from the frozen grip of the snow. A majority of the men who had witnessed the making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds went up to three to one against Buck. There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of the feat. Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy with doubt ; and now that he looked at the sled itself, * the concrete fact, with the regular team of ten dogs curled up in the snow before it, the more impossible the task appeared. Matthewson waxed jubilant. " Three to one ! " he proclaimed. " I'll lay you another thou- sand at that figure, Thornton. What d'ye say? " Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his fighting spirit was aroused the fighting spirit that soars above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, and is deaf to all save the clamor for JACK LONDON 121 battle. He called Hans and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own the three partners could rake together only two hundred dollars. In the ebb of their fortunes, this sum was their total capital ; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against Matthew- son's six hundred. The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his own harness, was put into the sled. He had caught the contagion of the excitement, and he felt that in some way he must do a great thing for John Thornton. Murmurs of admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so many pounds of grit and virility. His furry coat shone with the sheen of silk. Down the neck and across the shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of vigor made each particular hair alive and active. The great breast and heavy fore legs were no more than in proportion with the rest of the body, where the muscles showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds went down to two to one. " Gad, sir ! Gad, sir ! " stuttered a member of the latest dy- nasty, a king of the Skookum Benches. " I offer you eight hun- dred for him, sir, before the test, sir, eight hundred just as he stands." Thornton shook his head and stepped to Buck's side. " You must stand off from him," Matthewson protested. " Free play and plenty of room." The crowd fell silent ; only could be heard the voices of gam- blers vainly offering two to one. Everybody acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal, but twenty fifty-pound sacks of flour bulked too large in their eyes for them to loosen their pouch-strings. Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head in his two hands and rested cheek on cheek. He did not playfully shake him, as was his wont, or murmur soft love curses ; but he whispered in his ear. " As you love me, Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered. Buck whined with suppressed eagerness. The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was growing mysterious. It seemed like a conjuration. As Thornton got to 122 A DOG AND HIS MASTER his feet, Buck seized his mittened hand between his jaws, pressing it with his teeth and releasing slowly, half reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not of speech, but of love. Thornton stepped well back. " Now, Buck," he said. Buck tightened the traces, then slackened them for a matter of several inches. It was the way he had learned. " Gee ! " Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense silence. Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp crackling. " Haw ! " Thornton commanded. Buck duplicated the manoeuvre, this time to the left. The crackling turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the runners slipping and grating several inches to the side. The sled was broken out. Men were holding their breaths, intensely un- conscious of the fact. " Now, MUSH ! " Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol shot. Buck threw himself forward, tightening the trace.5 with a jarring lunge. His whole body was gathered compactly together in the tremen- dous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed snow in parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled, half started forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man groaned aloud. Then the sled lurched ahead in what appeared a rapid succession of jerks, though it really never came to a dead stop again half an inch an inch two inches the jerks perceptibly diminished ; as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was moving steadily along. Men gasped and began to breathe again, unaware that for a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running be- hind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as he passed the firewood JACK LONDON 12$ and halted at command. Every man was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands, it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general incoherent babel. But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was against head, and he was shaking him back and forth. Those who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him long and fervently, and softly and lovingly. "Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" spluttered the Skookum Bench king. " I'll give you a thousand for him, sir, a thousand, sir twelve hundred, sir." Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The tears were streaming frankly down his cheeks. " Sir," he said to the Skookum Bench king, " no, sir. You can go to hell, sir. It's the best I can do for you, sir." Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton shook him back and forth. As though animated by a common impulse, the onlookers drew back to a respectful distance ; nor were they again indiscreet enough to interrupt. THE COMBAT IN THE DESERT SIR WALTER SCOTT [Chapter I of The Talisman, 1825.] They, too, retired To the wilderness, but 'twas with arms. Paradise Regained. THE burning sun of Syria had not yet attained its highest point in the horizon, when a knight of the Red Cross, who had left his distant northern home and joined the host of the Crusaders in Palestine, was pacing slowly along the sandy deserts which lie in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, or, as it is called, the Lake Asphal- tites, where the waves of the Jordan pour themselves into an inland sea, from which there is no discharge of waters. The warlike pilgrim had toiled among cliffs and precipices during the earlier part of the morning ; more lately, issuing from 124 THE COMBAT IN THE DESERT those rocky and dangerous defiles, he had entered upon that great plain, where the accursed cities provoked, in ancient days, the direct and dreadful vengeance of the . Omnipotent. The toil, the thirst, the dangers of the way were forgotten, as the traveller recalled the fearful catastrophe which had converted into an arid and dismal wilderness the fair and fertile valley of Siddim, once well watered, even as the garden of the Lord, now a parched and blighted waste, condemned to eternal sterility. Crossing himself, as he viewed the dark mass of rolling waters, in color as in quality unlike those of every other lake, the trav- eller shuddered as he remembered that beneath these sluggish waves lay the once proud cities of the plain, whose grave was dug by the thunder of the heavens, or the eruption of subterra- neous fire, and whose remains were hid, even by that sea which holds no living fish in its bosom, bears no skiff on its surface, and, as if its own dreadful bed were the only fit receptacle for its sullen waters, sends not, like other lakes, a tribute to the ocean. The whole land around, as in the days of Moses, was " brimstone and salt ; it is not. sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth thereon " ; the land as well as the lake might be termed dead, as producing nothing having resemblance to vegetation, and even the very air was entirely devoid of its ordinary winged inhabitants, deterred probably by the odor of bitumen and sulphur, which the burning sun exhaled from the waters of the lake, in steaming clouds, fre- quently assuming the appearance of waterspouts. Masses of the slimy and sulphurous substance called naphtha, which floated idly on the sluggish and sullen waves, supplied those rolling clouds with new vapours, and afforded awful testimony to the truth of the Mosaic history. Upon this scene of desolation the sun shone with almost in- tolerable splendour, and all living nature seemed to have hidden itself from the rays, excepting the solitary figure which moved through the flitting sand at a foot's pace,, and appeared the sole breathing thing on the wide surface of the plain. The dress of the rider and the accoutrements of his horse were peculiarly unfit for the traveller in such a country. A coat of linked mail/ with long sleeves, plated gauntlets, and a steel breastplate, had not been esteemed a sufficient weight of armour : there was also his SIR WALTER SCOTT 125 triangular shield suspended round his neck, and his barred helmet of steel, over which he had a hood and collar of mail, which was drawn around the warrior's shoulders and throat, and filled up the vacancy between the hauberk and the head-piece. His lower limbs were sheathed, like his body, in flexible mail, securing the legs and thighs, while the feet rested in plated shoes, which cor : responded with the gauntlets. A long, broad, straight-shaped, double-edged falchion, with a handle formed like a cross, corre- sponded with a stout poniard on the other side. The knight also bore, secured to his saddle, with one end resting on his stirrup, the long steel-headed lance, his own proper weapon, which, as he rode, projected backward, and displayed its little pennoncelle, to dally with the faint breeze, or drop in the dead calm. To this cumbrous equipment must be added a surcoat of embroidered cloth, much frayed and worn, which was thus far useful, that it excluded the burning rays of the sun from the armour, which they would otherwise have rendered intolerable to the wearer. The surcoat bore, in several places, the arms of the owner, although much defaced. These seemed to be a couchant leopard, with the motto, " I sleep wake me not." An outline of the same device might be traced on his shield, though many a blow had almost effaced the painting. The flat top of his cumbrous cylindrical helmet was unadorned with any crest. In retaining their own unwieldy defensive armor, the northern Crusaders seemed to set at defiance the nature of the climate and country to which they had come to war. The accoutrements of the horse were scarcely less massive and unwieldy than those of the rider. The animal had a heavy saddle plated with steel, uniting in front with a species of breastplate, and behind with defensive armour made to cover the loins. Then there was a steel axe, or hammer, called a mace-of-arms, and which hung to the saddle-bow ; the reins were secured by chain-work, and the front-stall of the bridle was a steel plate, with apertures for the eyes and nostrils, having in the midst a short, sharp pike, projecting from the forehead of the horse like the horn of the fabulous unicorn. But habit had made the endurance of this load of panoply a second nature both to the knight and his gallant charger. Num- bers, indeed, of the Western warriors who hurried to Palestine 126 THE COMBAT IN THE DESERT died ere they became inured to the burning climate ; but there were others to whom that climate became innocent and even friendly, and among this fortunate number was the solitary horse- man who now traversed the border of the Dead Sea. Nature, which cast his limbs in a mould of uncommon strength, fitted to wear his linked hauberk with as much ease as if the meshes had been formed of cobwebs, had endowed him with a constitution as strong as his limbs, and which bade defiance to almost all changes of climate, as well as to fatigue and privations of every kind. His disposition seemed, in some degree, to par- take of the qualities of his bodily frame ; and as the one possessed great strength and endurance, united with the power of violent exertion, the other, under a calm and undisturbed semblance, had much of the fiery and enthusiastic love of glory which constituted the principal attribute of the renowned Norman line, and had rendered them sovereigns in every corner of Europe where they had drawn their adventurous swords. It was not, however, to all the race that fortune proposed such tempting rewards ; and those obtained by the solitary knight dur- ing two years' campaign in Palestine had been only temporal fame, and, as he was taught to believe, spiritual privileges. Meantime, his slender stock of money had melted away, the rather that he did not pursue any of the ordinary modes by which the followers of the Crusade condescended to recruit their diminished resources, at the expense of the people of Palestine : he exacted no gifts from the wretched natives for sparing their possessions when engaged in warfare with the Saracens, and he had not availed him- self of any opportunity of enriching himself by the ransom of prisoners of consequence. The small train which had followed him from his native country had been gradually diminished, as the means of maintaining them disappeared, and his only remaining squire was at present on a sick-bed, and unable to attend his master, who travelled, as we have seen, singly and alone. This was of little consequence to the Crusader, who was accustomed to consider his good sword as his safest escort, and devout thoughts as his best companion. Nature had, however, her demands for refreshment and repose, even on the iron frame and patient disposition of the Knight of SIR WALTER SCOTT 12? the Sleeping Leopard ; and at noon, when the Dead Sea lay at some distance on his right, he joyfully hailed the sight of two or three palm trees, which arose beside the well which was assigned for his midday station. His good horse, too, which had plodded forward with the steady endurance of his master, now lifted his head, expanded his nostrils, and quickened his pace, as if he snuffed afar off the living waters, which marked the place of re- pose and refreshment. But labour and danger were doomed to intervene ere the horse or horseman reached the desired spot. As the Knight of the Couchant Leopard continued to fix his eyes attentively on the yet distant cluster of palm trees, it seemed to him as if some object was moving among them. The distant form separated itself from the trees, which partly hid its motions, and advanced toward the knight with a speed which soon showed a mounted horseman, whom his turban, long spear, and green caftan floating in the wind, on his nearer approach, showed to be a Saracen cavalier. " In the desert," saith an Eastern proverb, " no man meets a friend." The Crusader was totally indifferent whether the infidel, who now approached on his gallant barb, as if borne on the wings of an eagle, came as friend or foe ; perhaps, as a vowed champion of the Cross, he might rather have preferred the latter. He disengaged his lance from his saddle, seized it with the right hand, placed it in rest with its point half elevated, gathered up the reins in the left, waked his horse's mettle with the spur, and prepared to encounter the stranger with the calm self- confidence belonging to the victor in many contests. The Saracen came on at the speedy gallop of an Arab horse- man, managing his steed more by his limbs and the inflection of his body than by any use of the reins, which hung loose in his left hand ; so that he was enabled to wield the light round buckler of the skin of the rhinoceros, ornamented with silver loops, which he wore on his arm, swinging it as if he meant to oppose its slender circle to the formidable thrust of the Western lance. His own long spear was not couched or levelled like that of his antago- nist, but grasped by the middle with his right hand, and bran- dished at arm's length above his head. As the cavalier approached his enemy at full career, he seemed to expect that the Knight of the Leopard should put his horse to the gallop to encounter him. 128 THE COMBAT IN THE DESERT But the Christian knight, well acquainted with the customs of Eastern warriors, did not mean to exhaust his good horse by any unnecessary exertion; and, on the contrary, made a dead halt, confident that if the enemy advanced to the actual shock, his own weight, and that of his powerful charger, would give him sufficient advantage, without the additional momentum of rapid motion. Equally sensible and apprehensive of such a probable result, the Saracen cavalier, when he had approached toward the Christian within twice the length of his lance, wheeled his steed to the left with inimitable dexterity, and rode twice around his antagonist, who, turning without quitting his ground, and presenting his front constantly to his enemy, frustrated his attempts to attack him on an unguarded point ; so that the Saracen, wheeling his horse, was fain to retreat to the distance of an hundred yards. A second time, like a hawk attacking a heron, the Heathen renewed the charge, and a second time was fain to retreat without coming to a close struggle. A third time he approached in the same manner, when the Christian knight, desirous to terminate this elusory war- fare, in which he might at length have been worn out by the activity of his foeman, suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and, with a strong hand and unerring aim, hurled it against the head of the Emir, for such and not less his enemy appeared. The Saracen was just aware of the formidable missile in time to interpose his light buckler betwixt the mace and his head ; but the violence of the blow forced the buckler down on his turban, and though that defence also contributed to deaden its violence, the Saracen was beaten from his horse. Ere the Christian could avail himself of this mishap, his nimble foeman sprung from the ground, and calling on his horse, which instantly returned to his side, he leaped into his seat without touching the stirrup, and regained all the advantage of which the Knight of the Leopard hoped to deprive him. But the latter had in the mean- while recovered his mace, and the Eastern cavalier, who remem- bered the strength and dexterity with which his antagonist had aimed it, seemed to keep cautiously out of reach of that weapon, of which he had so lately felt the force, while he showed his pur- pose of waging a distant warfare with missile weapons of his own. Planting his long spear in the sand at a distance from the scene of SIR WALTER SCOTT I2Q combat, he strung, with great address, a short bow which he carried at his back, and putting his horse to the gallop, once more de- scribed two or three circles of a wider extent than formerly, in the course of which he discharged six arrows at the Christian with such unerring skill that the goodness of his harness alone saved him from being wounded in as many places. The seventh shaft apparently found a less perfect part of the armour, and the Christian dropped heavily from his horse. But what was the surprise of the Saracen, when, dismounting to examine the condition of his pros- trate enemy, he found himself suddenly within the grasp of the European, who had had recourse to this artifice to bring his enemy within his reach ! Even in this deadly grapple, the Saracen was saved by his agility and presence of mind. He unloosed the sword-belt, in which the Knight of the Leopard had fixed his hold, and, thus eluding his fatal grasp, mounted his horse, which seemed to watch his motions with the intelligence of a human being, and again rode off. But in the last encounter the Saracen had lost his sword and his quiver of arrows, both of which were attached to the girdle, which he was obliged to abandon. He had also lost his turban in the struggle. These disadvantages seemed to incline the Moslem to a truce : he approached the Christian with his right hand extended, but no longer in a menacing attitude. "There is truce betwixt our nations," he said, in the lingua franca commonly used for the purpose of communication with the Crusaders ; " wherefore should there be war betwixt thee and me ? Let there be peace betwixt us." " I am well contented," answered he of the Couchant Leopard ; "but what security dost thou offer that thou wilt observe the truce ? " " The word of a follower of the Prophet was never broken," answered the Emir. "It is thou, brave Nazarene, from whom I should demand security, did I not know that treason seldom dwells with courage." The Crusader felt that the confidence of the Moslem made him ashamed of his own doubts. " By the cross of my sword," he said, laying his hand on the weapon as he spoke, " I will be true companion to thee, Saracen, while our fortune wills that we remain in company together." K 1 30 DA VID AND THE ARK " By Mahommed, Prophet of God, and by Allah, God of the Prophet," replied his late foeman, " there is not treachery in my heart toward thee. And now wend we to yonder fountain, for the hour of rest is at hand, and the stream had hardly touched my lip when I was called to battle by thy approach." The Knight of the Couchant Leopard yielded a ready and courteous assent ; and the late foes, without an angry look or gesture of doubt, rode side by side to the little cluster of palm trees. DAVID AND THE ARK CHARLES DICKENS [From chapter 3 of The Personal History and Experience of David Copper- field the Younger, 1849-50.] THE carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep the people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say "drove," but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that ; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling. Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of which never relaxed ; and I could not have believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much. We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, CHARLES DICKENS 131 when we saw Yarmouth. It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography-book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yar- mouth might be situated at one of the poles ; which would account for it. As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent pros- pect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater. When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me), and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an injus- tice ; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters), that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe, " Here's my Am 1 " screamed Peggotty, " growed out of knowledge ! " He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house ; and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of met But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpsring boy's face and curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without 132 DAVID AND THE ARK any legs in them. And you couldn't so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy. Ham carrying me on his back, and a small box of ours under his arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders' yards, shipwrights' yards, ship-breakers' yards, caulkers' yards, riggers' lofts, smiths' forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance ; when Ham said : " Yon's our house, Mas'r Davy ! " I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wil- derness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could / make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of 'superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily ; but nothing else in the way of a habitation that was visible to me. " That's not it ? " said I. " That ship-looking thing ? " " That's it, Mas'r Davy," returned Ham. If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it ; but the won- derful charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the cap- tivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely ; but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode. It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military- looking child who was trundling a hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a Bible ; and the tray, if it had tumbled CHARLES DICKENS 133 down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were some common colored pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects ; such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of Peggotty's brother's house again, at one view. Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over the little mantle-shelf was a picture of the Sarah Jane lugger, built at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it ; a work of art, combining composition with carpentry, which I con- sidered to be one of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not divine then ; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort, which served for seats and eked out the chairs. All this, I saw in the first glance after I crossed the thres- hold childlike, according to my theory and then Peggotty opened a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completes! and most desirable bedroom ever seen in the stern of the vessel ; with a little window, where the rudder used to go through ; a little looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with oyster-shells ; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get into, and a nose- gay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house was the smell of fish ; which was so searching that when I took out my pocket- handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish ; and I afterwards found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little wooden out- house where the pots and kettles were kept. We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron. 134 DAVID AND THE ARK whom I had seen curtseying at the door when I was on Ham's back, about a quarter of a mile off. Likewise by a most beauti- ful little girl (or I thought her so) with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn't let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous" manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chof for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home As he called Peggotty " Lass," and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt, from the general propriety of her con- duct, that he was her brother ; and so he turned out being pres- ently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty, the master of the house. "Glad to see you, sir," said Mr. Peggotty. "You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready." I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a delightful place. " How's your ma, sir ? " said Mr. Peggotty. " Did you leave her pretty jolly ? " I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish, and that she desired her compliments which was a polite fiction on my part. " I'm much obleeged to her, I'm sure," said Mr. Peggotty. " Well, sir, if you can make out here, for a fortnut, 'long wi' her," nodding at his sister, " and Ham, and little Em'ly, we shall be proud of your company." Having done the honors of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking that " cold would never get his muck off." He soon returned, greatly improved in appearance ; but so rubicund, that I couldn't help thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, that it went into the hot water very black, and came out very red. After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em'ly had over- CHARLES DICKENS 135 come her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just fitted into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron was knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needle-work was as much at home with Saint Paul's and the bit of wax-candle as if they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme for telling fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smok- ing his pipe. I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence. "Mr. Peggotty," says I. " Sir," says he. " Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of ark? " Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered : " No, sir. I never giv him no name." " Who gave him that name, then ? " said I, putting question number two of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty. "Why, sir, his father giv it him," said Mr. Peggotty. " I thought you were his father ! " " My brother Joe was his father," said Mr. Peggotty. " Dead, Mr. Peggotty ? " I hinted, after a respectful pause. " Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty. I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham's father, and began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it out with Mr. Peggotty. " Little Em'ly," I said, glancing at her. " She is your daugh- ter, isn't she, Mr. Peggotty ? " " No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father." I couldn't help it. " Dead, Mr. Peggotty ? " I hinted, after another respectful silence. "Drowndead," said Mr. Peggotty. I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said : " Haven't you any children, Mr. Peggotty ? " 136 DAVID AND THE ARK " No, master," he answered, with a short laugh. " I'm a bacheldore." "A bachelor!" I said, astonished. "Why, who's that, Mr. Peggotty ? " pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting. " That's Missis Gummidge," said Mr. Peggotty. " Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty ? " But at this point Peggotty I mean my own peculiar Peg- gotty made such impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that Ham and Em'ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had at differ- ent times adopted in their childhood, when they were left desti- tute ; and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man him- self, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel those were her similes. The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed a violent temper or swore an oath, was this generosity of his ; and if it were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck the table a heavy blow with his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he would be " Gormed " if he didn't cut and run for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed ; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation. I was very sensible of my entertainer's goodness, and listened to the women's going to bed in another little crib like mine at the opposite end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two hammocks for themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all ; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did happen. CHARLES DICKENS 137 Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out with little Em'ly, picking up stones upon the beach. " You're quite a sailor, I suppose ? " I said to Em'ly. I don't know that I supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of gallantry to say something ; and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little image of itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my head to say this. " No," replied Em'ly, shaking her head," I'm afraid of the sea." " Afraid ! " I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and look- ing very big at the mighty ocean. " /an't ! " " Ah ! but it's cruel," said Em'ly. " I have seen it very cruel to some of our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house all to pieces." " I hope it wasn't the boat that " " That father was drownded in ? " said Em'ly. " No. Not that one, I never see that boat." " Nor him ? " I asked her. Little Em'ly shook her head. " Not to remember 1 " Here was a coincidence ! I immediately went into an expla- nation how I had never seen my own father ; and how my mother and I had always lived by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then, and always meant to live so ; and how my father's grave was in the churchyard near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of which I had walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But there were some differences between Em'ly's orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She had lost her mother before her father ; and where her father's grave was no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea. " Besides," said Em'ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, " your father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady ; and my father was a fisherman and my mother was a fisherman's daughter, and my uncle Dan is a fisherman." " Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he ? " said I. "Uncle Dan yonder," answered Em'ly, nodding at the boat-house. 138 DAVID AND THE ARK " Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think." " Good ? " said Em'ly. " If I was ever to be a lady, I'd give him a sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money." I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures. I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat ; but I kept these sentiments to myself. Little Em'ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her enumeration of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles. " You would like to be a lady ? " I said. Em'ly looked at me, and laughed and nodded "yes." " I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then. Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn't mind then, when there come stormy weather. Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would for the poor fishermen's, to be sure, and we'd help 'em with money when they come to any hurt." This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and therefore not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the contemplation of it, and little Em'ly was emboldened to say, shyly, " Don't you think you are afraid of the sea, now ? " It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. However, I said " No," and I added, " You don't seem to be, either, though you say you are ; " for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was afraid of her falling over. " I'm not afraid in this way," said little Em'ly. " But I wake when it blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham, and believe I hear 'em crying out for help. That's why I should like so much to be a lady. But I'm not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look here ! " CHARLES DICKENS 139 She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here, I daresay, accurately as it was that day, and little Em'ly springing forward to her de- struction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I have never forgotten, directed far out to sea. The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered ; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day. There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since I do not say it lasted long, but it has been when I have asked myself the question, Would it have been better for little Em'ly to have had the waters close above her head that morning in my sight, and when I have answered Yes. This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, per- haps. But let it stand. We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought curious, and put some stranded star-fish carefully back into the water I hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the reverse and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty's dwelling. We stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure. " Like two young mavishes," Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this 140 DAVID AND THE ARK meant, in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and re- ceived it as a compliment. Of course I was in love with little Em'ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more dis- interestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed . mite of a child, which etherealised, and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny fore- noon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away be- fore my eyes, I don't think I should have regarded it as much more than I had reason to expect. We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em'ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did. As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other diffi- culty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger. We were the admira- tion of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little locker side by side, " Lor 1 wasn't it beautiful ! " Mr. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else. They had something of the -sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum. I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make her- self so agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gum- midge's was rather a fretful disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes than was comfortable for other parties in so small an establishment. I was very sorry for her ; but there were mo- ments when it would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived. CHARLES DICKENS 141 Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing Mind. I discovered, this, by his being out on the sec- ond or third evening of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge's look- ing up at the Dutch clock, between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was more, she had known in the morning he would go there. Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. " I am a lone lorn creetur','' were Mrs. Gummidge's words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, " and everythink goes con- trairy with me.". "Oh, it'll soon leave off," said Peggotty I again mean our Peggotty " and besides, you know, it's not more disagreeable to you than to us." " I feel it more," said Mrs. Gummidge. It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. Gummidge's peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the warmest and snuggest in the place, as her chair was cer- tainly the easiest, but it didn't suit her that day at all. She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called "the creeps." At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again that she was " a lone lorn creetur' and everythink went contrairy with her." " It is certainly very cold," said Peggotty. " Everybody must feel it so." " I feel it more than other people," said Mrs. Gummidge. So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately after me, to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment ; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and made that former declaration with great bitterness. Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of water-boots ; and I, with little Em'ly by my side, 142 DAVID AND THE ARK had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since tea. " Well, Mates," said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, " and how are you ? " We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knit- ting. " What's amiss ? " said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. " Cheer up, old Mawther ! " (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.) Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes ; but instead of putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out, ready for use. " What's amiss, dame ? " said Mr. Peggotty. " Nothing," returned Mrs. Gummidge. " You've come from The Willing Mind, Dan'l ? " " Why, yes, I've took a short spell at The Willing Mind to- night," said Mr. Peggotty. " I'm sorry I should drive you there," said Mrs. Gummidge. "Drive! I don't wan 't no driving," returned Mr. Peggotty, with an honest laugh. " I only go too ready." " Very ready," said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes. " Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry it should be along of me that you're so ready." " Along o' you ? It an't along o' you I " said Mr. Peggotty. " Don't ye believe a bit on it." " Yes, yes, it is," cried Mrs. Gummidge. " I know what I am. I know that I am a lone lorn creetur' and not only that everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It's my misfortun'." I really couldn't help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such re- tort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up. " I an't what I could wish myself to be," said Mrs. Gum- CHARLES DICKENS 143 midge. " I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrairy, I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I wish I didn't feel 'em, but I do. I wish I could be hardened to 'em, but I an't. I make the house uncomfort- able. I don't wonder at it. I've made your sister so all day, and Master Davy." Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, " No, you haven't, Mrs. Gummidge," in great mental distress. " It's far from right that I should do it," said Mrs. Gummidge. " It an't a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn creetur', and had much better not make myself contrairy here. If thinks must go contrairy with me, and I must go contrairy myself, let me go contrairy in my parish. Dan'l, I'd better go into the house, and die and be a riddance!" Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not ex- hibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper : " She's been thinking of the old 'un ! " I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on see- ing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge ; and that her brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham : " Poor thing ! She's been thinking of the old 'un ! " And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration. So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the varia- tion of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty's times of going out and coming in, and altered Ham's engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. 144 PENDENNIS FALLS IN LOVE I don't know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I be- lieve this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach,' the bells ringing for church, little Em'ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows. PENDENNIS FALLS IN LOVE WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY [From chapters 3 and 4 of The History of Pendennis : his Fortunes and Misfortunes, his Friends and his Greatest Enemy, 1849-50.] WHILE these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble in honest Pen's bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into Chat- teris for the purpose of carrying to the County Chronicle a tre- mendous and thrilling poem for the next week's paper; and putting up his horse, according to custom, at the stables of the George Hotel there, he fell in with an old acquaintance. A grand black tandem, with scarlet wheels, came rattling into the inn yard, as Pen stood there in converse with the hostler about Rebecca ; and the voice of the driver called out, " Hallo, Pendennis, is that you?" in a loud patronizing manner. Pen had some difficulty in recognizing, under the broad-brimmed hat and the vast great- coats and neckcloths, with which the new comer was habited, the person and figure of his quondam school-fellow, Mr. Foker. A year's absence had made no small difference in that gentle- man. A youth who had been deservedly whipped a few months previously, and who spent his pocket-money on tarts and hard- bake, now appeared before Pen in one of those costumes to which public consent, which I take to be quite as influential in this re- spect as Johnson's Dictionary, has awarded the title of " Swell." He had a bull-dog between his legs, and in his scarlet shawl neck- cloth was a pin representing another bull-dog in gold : he wore a WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 145 fur waistcoat laced over with gold chains ; a green cut-away coat with basket buttons, and a white upper-coat ornamented with cheese-plate buttons, on each of which was engraved some stirring incident of the road or the chase ; all of which ornaments set off this young fellow's figure to such advantage that you would hesi- tate to say which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a boxer en goguette? or a coachman in his gala suit. " Left that place for good, Pendennis?" Mr. Foker said, descend- ing from his landau and giving Pendennis a finger. " Yes, this year or more," Pen said. " Beastly old hole," Mr. Foker remarked. " Hate it. Hate the Doctor ; hate Towzer, the second master : hate everybody there. Not a fit place for a gentleman." " Not at all," said Pen, with an air of the utmost consequence. " By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the Doctor's walk- ing into me," Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he thought that he himself had likewise fearful dreams of this nature). " When I think of the diet there, by gad, sir, I wonder how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef, pudding on Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look at my leader did you ever see a prettier animal ? Drove over from Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty minutes. Not bad going, sir." " Are you stopping at Baymouth, Foker? " Pendennis asked. " I'm coaching there," said the other with a nod. " What? " asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder that Foker burst out laughing, and said, " He was blowed if he didn't think Pen was such a flat as not to know what coaching meant." " I'm come down with a coach from Oxbridge. A tutor, don't you see, old boy? He's coaching me, and some other men, for the little go. Me and Spavin have the drag between us. And I thought I'd just tool over, and go to the play. Did you ever see Rovvkins do the hornpipe?" and Mr. Foker began to perform some steps of that popular dance in the inn yard, looking round for the sympathy of his groom, and the stable men. Pen thought he would like to go to the play too : and could ride home afterwards, as there was a moonlight. So he accepted 1 [In good humor.") L 146 PENDENNIS FALLS IN LOVS Foker's invitation to dinner, and the young men entered the inn together, where Mr. Foker stopped at the bar, and called upon Miss Rummer, the landlady's fair daughter, who presided there, to give him a glass of " his mixture." Pen and his family had been known at the George ever since they came into the county; and Mr. Pendennis's carriage and horses always put up there when he paid a visit to the county town. The landlady dropped the heir of Fairoaks a very respectful cour- tesy, and complimented him upon his growth and manly appear- ance, and asked news of the family at Fairoaks, and of Dr. Portman and the Clavering people, to all of which questions the young gentleman answered with much affability. But he spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Rummer with that sort of good nature with which a young Prince addresses his father's subjects ; never dreaming that those bonnes gens 1 were his equals in life. Mr. Foker's behaviour was quite different. He inquired for Rummer and the cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rummer a riddle, asked Miss Rummer when she would be ready to marry him, and paid his compliments to Miss Brett, the other young lady in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a liveliness and facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle ; and he gave a cluck, ex- pressive of great satisfaction, as he tossed off his mixture, which Miss Rummer prepared and handed to him. " Have a drop," said he to Pen. " Give the young one a glass, R., and score it up to yours truly." Poor Pen took a glass, and everybody laughed at the face which he made as he put it down. Gin, bitters, and some other cordial, was the compound with which Mr. Foker was so delighted as to call it by the name of Foker's own. As Pen choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took occasion to remark to Mr. Rum- mer that the young fellow was green, very green, but that he would soon form him ; and then they proceeded to order dinner which Mr. Foker determined should consist of turtle and venison ; cautioning the landlady to be very particular about icing the wine. Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High Street together the former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had drawn out of a case almost as big as a portmanteau. He went in * '^Good people.] WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 147 to replenish it at Mr. Lewis's, and talked to that gentleman for a while, sitting down on the counter: he then looked in at the fruiterer's, to see the pretty girl there : then they passed the County Chronicle office, for which Pen had his packet ready, in the shape of " Lines to Thyrza," but poor Pen did not like to put the letter into the editor's box while walking in company with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met heavy dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteris : and stopped and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a pretty girl was Miss Brown, and what a dem fine woman Mrs. Jones was. It was in vain that Pen recalled to his own mind how stupid Foker used to be at school how he could scarcely read, how he was not cleanly in his person, and notorious for his blunders and dulness. Mr. Foker was not more refined now than in his school days : and yet Pen felt a secret pride in strutting down High Street with a young fellow who owned tandems, talked to officers, and ordered turtle and champagne for dinner. He listened, and with respect too, to Mr. Foker's accounts of what the men did at the university of which Mr. F. was an ornament, and encountered a long series of stories about boat-racing, bumping, College grass-plats, and milk-punch and began to wish to go up himself to College to a place where there were such manly pleasures and enjoyments. Farmer Gurnett, who lives close by Fairoaks, riding by at this minute and touching his hat to Pen, the latter stopped him, and sent a message to his mother to say that he had met with an old school-fellow, and should dine in Chatteris. The two young gentlemen continued their walk, and were pass- ing round the Cathedral Yard, where they could hear the music of the afternoon service (a music which always exceedingly affected Pen), but whither Mr. Foker came for the purpose of inspecting the nursery maids who frequent the Elms Walk there, and here they strolled until with a final burst of music the small congrega- tion was played out. Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the venerable gate. Spying Pen, he came and shook him by the hand, and eyed with wonder Pen's friend, from whose mouth and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which curled round the Doctor's honest face and shovel hat. 148 PENDENNIS FALLS 2N LOVE "An old school-fellow of mine, Mr. Foker," said Pen. The Doctor said " H'm " : and scowled at the cigar. He did not mind a pipe in his study, but the cigar was an abomination to the worthy gentleman. "I came up on Bishop's business," the Doctor said. "We'll ride home, Arthur, if you like?" "I I'm engaged to my friend here," Pen answered. " You had better come home with me," said the Doctor. " His mother knows he's out, sir," Mr. Foker remarked : " don't she, Pendennis? " " But that does not prove that he had not better come home with me," the Doctor growled, and he walked off with great dignity. " Old boy don't like the weed, I suppose," Foker said. " Ha ! who's here? here's the General, and Bingley, the manager. How do, Cos? How do, Bingley?" "How does my worthy and gallant young Foker?" said the gentleman addressed as the General, and who wore a shabby military cape with a mangy collar, and a hat cocked very much over one eye. "Trust you are very well, my very dear sir," said the other gentleman, " and that the Theatre Royal will have the honour of your patronage to-night. We perform The Stranger, in which your humble servant will " " Can't stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley," young Mr. Foker said. On which the General, with the Irish accent, said : " But I think ye'll like Miss Fotheringay, in Mrs. Haller, or me name's not Jack Costigan." Pen looked at these individuals with the greatest interest. He had never seen an actor before ; and he saw Dr. Portman's red face looking over the Doctor's shoulder, as he retreated from the Cathedral Yard, evidently quite dissatisfied with the acquaintances into whose hands Pen had fallen. Perhaps it would have been much better for him had he taken the parson's advice and company home. But which of us knows his fate? Having returned to the George, Mr. Foker and his guest sat down to a handsome repast in the coffee-room ; where Mr. Rum- WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 149 mer brought in the first dish, and bowed as gravely as if he was waiting upon the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Pen could not but respect Foker's connoisseurship as he pro- nounced the champagne to be condemned gooseberry, and winked at the port with one eye. The latter he declared to be of the right sort ; and told the waiters there was no way of humbugging him. All these attendants he knew by their Christian names, and showed a great interest in their families; and, as the London coaches drove up, which in those early days used to set off from the George, Mr. Foker flung the coffee-room window open, and called the guards and coachmen by their Christian names, too, asking about their respective families, and imitating with great liveliness and accuracy the tooting of the horns as Jem the ostler whipped the horses' cloths off, and the carriages drove gaily away. " A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port, and a shass caffy, it ain't so bad, hay, Pen? " Foker said, and pronounced, after all these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and fruit had been despatched, that it was time to " toddle." Pen sprang up with very bright eyes, and a flushed face ; and they moved off towards the theatre, where they paid their money to the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money-taker's box. " Mrs. Dropsicum, Bing- ley's mother-in-law, great in Lady Macbeth," Foker said to this companion. Foker knew her, too. They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the theatre, which was no better filled than country theatres usually are, in spite of the "universal burst of attraction and galvanic thrills of delight," advertised by Bingley in the play-bills. A score or so of people dotted the pit-benches, a few more kept a-kicking and whistling in the galleries, and a dozen others, who came in with free admissions, were in the boxes where our gentlemen sat. Lieutenants Rodgers and Podgers, and young Cronet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen seemed to hold conversations with the players when not engaged in the dialogue, and applauded them by name loudly. Bingley, the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and comic parts, except when he modestly retreated to make way for 150 PENDENNIS FALLS IN LOVE the London stars, who came down occasionally to Chatteris, was great in the character of the Stranger. He was attired in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which the stage legend has given to that injured man, with a large cloak and beaver, and a hearse-feather in it drooping over his raddled old face, and only partially concealing his great buckled brown wig. He had the stage -jewelry on, too, of which he selected the largest and most shiny rings for himself, and allowed his little finger to quiver out of his cloak with a sham diamond ring covering the first joint of the finger and twiddling in the faces of the pit. Bingley made it a favour to the young men of his company to go on in light comedy parts with that ring. They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has its traditional jewels, as the Crown and all great families have. This had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it from Mr. Quin, who may have bought it for a shilling. Bingley fancied the world was fascinated with its glitter. He was reading out of the stage-book that wonderful stage- book which is not bound like any other book in the world, but is rouged and tawdry like the hero or heroine who holds it ; and who holds it as people never do hold books : and points with his finger to a passage, and wags his head ominously at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the ceiling, professing to de- rive some intense consolation from the work between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. As soon as the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at them ; eyeing them solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on the stage- bank, showing his hand, his ring, and his Hessians. He calculated the effect that every one of these ornaments would produce upon his victims : he was determined to fascinate them, for he knew they had paid their money ; and he saw their families coming in from the country and filling the cane chairs in his boxes. As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made re- marks upon his master. " Again reading," said Francis, " thus it is from morn to night. To him nature has no beauty life no charm. For three years I have never seen him smile " (the gloom of Bingley's face was fearful to witness during these comments of the faithful domestic). "Nothing diverts him. Oh, if he would but attach WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY I$l himself to any living thing, were it an animal for something man must love." [Enter Tobias ( Goll) from the hut.'] He cries, " O, how re- freshing, after seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams again. Thanks, bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste ! " He presses his cap between his hands, looks up and prays. The Stranger eyes him attentively. Francis to the Stranger. " This old man's share of earthly hap- piness can be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for his portion of it." Bingley. " Because, though old, he is but a child in the leading- string of Hope." (He looks steadily at Foker, who, however, con- tinues to suck the top of his stick in an unconcerned manner.) Francis. " Hope is the nurse of life." Bingley. " And her cradle is the grave." The Stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in agony, and fixed his glance on Pendennis so steadily that the poor lad was quite put out of countenance. He thought the whole house must be look- ing at him and cast his eyes down. As soon as ever he raised them Bingley's were at him again. All through the scene the manager played at him. How relieved the lad was when the scene ended, and Foker, tapping with his cane, cried out, " Bravo, Bingley ! " " Give him a hand, Pendennis ; you know every chap likes a hand," Mr. Foker said ; and the good-natured young gentleman, and Pendennis laughing, and the dragoons in the opposite box, began clapping hands to the best of their power. A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias's hut and the Stranger and his boots; and servants appeared bustling about with chairs and tables. " That's Hicks and Miss Thackthwaite," whispered Foker. " Pretty girl, ain't she, Pendennis ? But stop hurray bravo ! here's the Fotheringay." The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas ; a volley of applause was fired from the gallery ; the Dragoon officers and Foker clapped their hands furiously : you would have thought the house was full, so loud were their plaudits. The red face and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan were seen peering from the side-scene. Pen's eyes opened wide and bright, as Mrs. Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at the sound of the applause, swept 152 PEN DENNIS FALLS IN LOVE the house with a grateful glance, and, folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent curtsey. More applause, more umbrellas ; Pen this time, flaming with wine and enthusiasm, clapped hands and sang " Bravo " louder than all. Mrs. Haller saw him, and everybody else, and old Mr. Bows, the little first fiddler of the orchestra (which was this night increased by a de- tachment of the band of the dragoons, by the kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail), looked up from the desk where he was perched, with his crutch beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad. Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her marriage and introduction into London . life, have little idea how beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set eyes on her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of six-and-twenty for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only nineteen in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast, and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple, and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus that delight of gods and men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up to gaze on you, and ere she dropped their purple, deep-fringed lids, shone with tenderness and mystery unfathomable. Love and Genius seemed to look out from them and then retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice. Who could have had such a commanding brow but a woman of high intellect? She never laughed (indeed her teeth were not good), but a smile of endless tenderness and sweetness played round her beautiful lips, and in the dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin. Her nose defied description in those days. Her ears were like two little pearl shells, which the ear-rings she wore (though the handsomest properties in the theatre) only insulted. She was dressed in long, flowing robes of black, which she managed and swept to and fro with wonderful grace, and out of the folds of which you only saw her sandals occasionally ; they were of rather a large size ; but Pen thought them as ravishing -as the slippers of Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm that this magnificent creature most ex- celled in, and somehow you could never see her but through WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 153 them. They surrounded her. When she folded them over her bosom in resignation ; when she dropped them in mute agony, or raised them in superb command ; when in sportive gaiety her hands fluttered and waved before her, like what shall we say? like the snowy doves before the chariot of Venus it was with these arms and hands that she beckoned, repelled, entreated, embraced her admirers no single one, for she was armed with her own virtue, and with her father's valour, whose sword would have leapt from its scabbard at any insult offered to his child but the whole house ; which rose to her, as the phrase was, as she curtseyed and bowed, and charmed it. Thus she stood for a minute complete and beautiful as Pen stared at her. " I say, Pen, isn't she a stunner? " asked Mr. Foker. " Hush ! " Pen said. " She's speaking." She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who know the play of the Stranger are aware that the remarks made by the various characters are not valuable in themselves, either for their sound or sense, their novelty of observation, or their poetic fancy. Nobody ever talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will happen, it is a great mercy that they do not use such absurdly fine words. The Stranger's talk is sham, like the book he reads, and the hair he wears, and the bank he sits on, and the diamond ring he makes play with but, in the midst of the balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and forgiveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever it is preached, and sets all the world sym- pathising. With what smothered sorrow, with what gushing pathos, Mrs. Haller delivered her part ! At first when, as Count Wintersen's housekeeper, and preparing for his Excellency's arrival, she has to give orders about the beds and furniture, and the dinner, etc., to be got ready, she did so with the calm agony of despair. But when she could get rid of the stupid servants, and give vent to her feelings to the pit and the house, she overflowed to each 'indi- vidual as if he were her particular confidant, and she was crying out her griefs on his shoulder : the little fiddler in the orchestra (whom she did not seem to watch, though he followed her cease- lessly) twitched, twisted, nodded, pointed about, and when she 154 PENDENNIS FALLS IN LOVE came to the favourite passage : " I have a William, too, if he be still alive Ah, yes, if he be still alive. His little sisters, too! Why, Fancy, dost thou rack me so? Why dost thou image my poor children fainting in sickness and crying to to their mum um other" when she came to this passage little Bows buried his face in his blue cotton handkerchief, after crying out " Bravo." All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out a large yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was gone too far for that. He followed the woman about and about when she was off the stage, it and the house were blank ; the lights and the red officers reeled wildly before his sight. He watched her at the side-scene where she stood waiting to come on the stage, and where her father took off her shawl : when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on Mr. Bingley's shoulders, whilst the children clung to their knees, and the Countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steintforth (performed with great liveliness and spirit by Garbetts) while the rest of the characters formed a group round them, Pen's hot eyes only saw Fotheringay, Fother- ingay. The curtain fell upon him like a pall. He did not hear a word of what Bingley said, who came forward to announce the play for the next evening, and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for himself. Pen was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling for Miss Fotheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend that anybody else but himself had caused the success of the play. At last he understood it stepped back with a grin, and presently appeared with Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful she looked ! Her hair had fallen down, the officers threw her flowers. She clutched them to her heart. She put back her hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen's. Down went the curtain again ; and she was gone. Not one note could he hear of the overture which the brass band of the dra- goons blew by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail. "She is a crusher, ain't she, now?" Mr. Foker asked of his companion. Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered vaguely. He could not tell the other what he felt ; he could not have spoken, just then, to any mortal. Besides, Pendennis did not WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 155 quite know what he felt yet; it was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious ; a fever of wild joy and undefined longing. And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to dance the favourite double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned himself to the delights of this ballet, just as he had to the tears of the tragedy a few minutes before. Pen did not care for it, or indeed think about the dance, except to remember that that woman was acting with her in the scene where she first came in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of the dance he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go. " Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Axe" Foker said ; " Bingley's splendid in it ; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs. B. over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she's too heavy. It's great fun, do stop." Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss Fotheringay's name might be hidden, somewhere, in the list of the actors of the after-piece, but there was no such name. Go he must. He had a long ride home. He squeezed Foker's hand. He was choking to speak, but he couldn't. He quitted the theatre and walked frantically about the town, he knew not how long ; then he mounted at the George and rode homewards, and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the yard at Fair- oaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but she only heard him from the passage outside his room as he dashed into bed and pulled the clothes over his head. A VOICE FROM THE PAST GEORGE ELIOT [From chapter 3, book iv, of The Mitt on the Floss, 1 860.] MAGGIE'S sense of loneliness and utter privation of joy had deepened with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favourite outdoor nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her parents in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Everv affection, every delight the 156 A VOICE FROM THE PAST poor child had had, was like an aching nerve to her. There was no music for her any more no piano, no harmonised voices, no delicious stringed instruments, with their passionate cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And of all her school life there was nothing left her now but her little collection of school-books, which she turned over with a sickening sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren of comfort. Even at school she had often wished for books with more in them : everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that snapped im- mediately. And now without the indirect charm of school- emulation Tel6maque was mere bran ; so were the hard dry questions on Christian Doctrine : there was no flavour in them no strength. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have been contented with absorbing fancies ; if she could have had all of Scott's novels and Byron's poems ! then, perhaps, she might have found happiness enough to dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. And yet they w_ere hardly what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own, but no dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life ; the unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table ; the childish, be- wildered mother ; the little sordid tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure ; the need of some tender, demonstrative love ; the cruel sense that Tom didn't mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer playfellows together ; the privation of all pleasant things that had come to her more than to others : she wanted some key that would enable her to understand, and, in understanding, endure the heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught " real learning and wis- dom, such as great men knew," she thought she should have held the secrets of life ; if she had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise men knew ! Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She knew little of saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teaching, that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism, and had all died at Smithfield. GEORGE ELIOT 157 In one of these meditations, it occurred to her that she had forgotten Tom's school-books, which had been sent home in his trunk. But she found the stock unaccountably shrunk down to the few old ones which had been well thumbed the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torn Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich's Logic, and the exasperating Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would surely be a considerable step in masculine wisdom in that knowledge which made men contented, and even glad to live. Not that the yearning for effectual wisdom was quite unmixed : a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honoured for her surprising attain- ments. And so the poor child, with her soul's hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vacant hours with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was quite equal to these peculiarly masculine studies. For a week or two she went on resolutely enough, though with an occasional .sink- ing of heart, as if she had set out toward the Promised Land alone, and found it a thirsty, trackless, uncertain journey. In the severity of her early resolution, she would take Aldrich out into the fields, and then look oft' her book toward the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to the reeds and bushes by the river, from which the water-fowl rustled forth on its anxious, awkward flight with a startled sense that the relation between Aldrich and this living world was extremely remote for her. The dis- couragement deepened as the days went on, and the eager heart gained faster and faster on the patient mind. Somehow, when she sat at the window with her book, her eyes would fix them- selves blankly on the outdoor sunshine ; then they would fill with tears, and sometimes, if her mother was not in the room, the studies would all end in sobbing. She rebelled against her lot, she fainted under its loneliness, and fits even of anger and hatred toward her father and mother, who were so unlike what she would have them to be toward Tom, who checked her and met her thought or feeling always by some thwarting differ- ence would flow out over affections and conscience like a 158 A VOICE FROM THE PAST lava-stream, and frighten her with a sense that it was not difficult for her to become a demon. Then her brain would be busy with wild romances of flight from home in search of some- thing less sordid and dreary ; she would go to some great man Walter Scott, perhaps and tell him how wretched and how clever she was, and he would surely do something for her. But, in the middle of her vision, her father would perhaps enter the room for the evening, and, surprised that she still sat without no- ticing him, would say, complainingly : " Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself ? " The voice pierced through Maggie like a sword ; there was another sadness besides her own, and she had been thinking of turning her back on it and forsaking it. This afternoon the sight of Bob's cheerful freckled face had given her discontent a new direction. She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the bur- then of larger wants than others seemed to feel that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something,'what- ever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth. She wished she could have been like Bob, with his easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had something to do on which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose, and disregard everything else. Poor child ! as she leaned her head against the window- frame, with her hands clasped tighter and tighter, and her foot beating the ground, she was as lonely in her trouble as if she had been the only girl in the civilised world of that day who had come out of her school-life with a soul untrained for inevi- table struggles with no other part of her inherited share in the hard-won treasures of thought, which generations of painful toil have laid up for the race of men, than shreds and patches of feeble literature and false history with much futile informa- tion about Saxon and other kings of doubtful example but happily quite without that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, governing the habits, becomes morality, and, developing the feelings of submission and depen- dence, becomes religion: as lonely in her trouble as if every other girl besides herself had been cherished and watched over by elder minds, not forgetful of their own early time, when need was keen and impulse strong. GEORGE ELIOT 159 At last Maggie's eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly the leaves of the Portrait Gallery ; but she soon pushed this aside to examine the little row of books tied together with string. Beauties of the Spectator, Rasselas, Economy of Human Life, Gregory's Letters she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these : the Christian Year that seemed to be a hymn- book, and she laid it down again ; but Thomas a Kempis ? the name had come across her in her reading, and she felt the satis- faction, which every one knows, of getting some idea to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity : it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now for ever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed " Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world ... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free from care : for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross thee. . . . Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, every- where thou shalt find the Cross : and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown. ... If thou desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inor- dinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome ; which evil being once overcome and subdued, there will pres- ently ensue great peace and tranquillity. ... It is but little thou sufferest in comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof. . . . Blessed I6O A VOICE FROM THE PAST are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth outwardly, but unto the Truth, which teaches inwardly " A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had been awakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupour. She went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly conscious that she was reading seeming rather to listen while a low voice said " Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy rest ? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away, and thou together with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them, lest thou be entangled and perish. . . . If a man should give all his substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue, and very fervent devotion, yet is there much wanting ; to wit, one thing, which is most necessary for him. What is that ? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love. ... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace. . . . Then shall all vain imaginations, evil per- turbations, and superfluous cares fly away ; then shall immoder- ate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets here was a sublime height to be reached without the help of outward things here was insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity, of the universe ; and for the first time she saw the possibility of shift- GEORGE ELIOT l6l ing the position from which she looked at the gratification of her own desires of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely-guided whole. She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength ; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness ; and, in the ardour of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had not perceived how could she until she had lived longer ? the inmost truth of the old monk's outpourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy be- cause she had found the key to it. She knew nothing of doc- trines and systems of mysticism or quietism ; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an unquestioned message. I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness : while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting ; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph not writ- ten on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and human consola- tions : the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to M 1 62 A VOICE FROM THE PAST fall into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no objects being eligible but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then, good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faery ballrooms ; rides off its ennui on thorough- bred horses, lounges at the club, has to keep clear of crinoline vortices, gets its science done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best houses : how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis ? But good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very expensive production ; requiring nothing less than a wide and ar- duous national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, ham- mering, weaving under more or less oppression of carbonic acid or else, spread over sheep-walks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide national life is based entirely on em- phasis the emphasis of want, which urges it into all the ac- tivities necessary for the maintenance of good society and light irony : it spends its heavy years often in a chill, uncarpeted fashion, amid family discord unsoftened by long corridors. Under such circumstances, there are many among its myriads of souls who have absolutely needed an emphatic belief : life in this unpleasurable shape demanding some solution even to un- speculative minds ; just as you inquire into the stuffing of your couch when anything galls you there, whereas eider-down and perfect French springs excite no question. Some have an em- phatic belief in alcohol, and seek their ekstasis or outside stand- ing-ground in gin ; but the rest require something that good society calls " enthusiasm," something that will present motive in an entire absence of high prizes, something that will give patience and feed human love when the limbs ache with weari- ness, and human looks are hard upon us something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires, that includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is not ourselves. Now and then, that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-echoing voice that GEORGE ELIOT 163 comes from an experience springing out of the deepest need. And it was by being brought within the long lingering vibra- tions of such a voice that Maggie, with her girl's face and unnoted sorrows, found an effort and a hope that helped her through years of loneliness, making out a faith for herself with- out the aid of established authorities and appointed guides for they were not at hand, and her need was pressing. From what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her self-renunciation : her own life was still a drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be played with intensity. And so it came to pass that she often lost the spirit of humility by being excessive in the outward act ; she" often strove after too high a flight, and came down with her poor little half-fledged wings dabbled in the mud. For example, she not only determined to work at plain sewing, that she might contribute something towards the fund in the tin box, but she went, in the first instance, in her zeal of self-mortification, to ask for it at a linen shop in St. Ogg's, instead of getting it in a more quiet and indirect way ; and could see nothing but what was entirely wrong and unkind, nay, persecuting, in Tom's reproof of her for this unnecessary act. " I don't like my sister to do such things," said Tom ; " 7Y/ take care that the debts are paid, without your lowering yourself in that way." Surely there was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and self-assertion of that little speech ; but Maggie held it as dross, overlooking the grains of gold, and took Tom's rebuke as one of her outward crosses. Tom was very hard to her, she used to think, in her long night-watchings to her who had always loved him so ; and then she strove to be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing. That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of egoism the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honours to be gathered and worn. The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich that wrinkled fruit of the tree of knowledge had been all laid by ; for Maggie 164 A VOICE FROM THE PAST had turned her back on the vain ambition to share the thoughts of the wise. In her first ardour she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she had risen above the need of them ; and if they had been her own, she would have burned them, be- lieving that she would never repent. She read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas a Kempis, and the Christian Year (no longer rejected as a " hymn-book "), that they filled her mind with a constant stream of rhythmic memo- ries ; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of her new faith to need any other material for her mind to work on, as she sat with her well-plied needle, mak- ing shirts and other complicated stitchings falsely called " plain" by no means plain to Maggie, since wristband and sleeve and the like had a capability of being sewed in wrong side out- ward in moments of mental wandering. Hanging diligently over her sewing, Maggie was a sight any one might have been pleased to look at. That new inward life of hers, notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of impris- oned passions, yet shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with the gradual en- riched colour and outline of her blossoming youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of puzzled wonder that Maggie should be " growing up so good ; " it was amazing that this once " contrary " child was become so submissive, so backward to assert her own will. Maggie used to look up from her work and find her mother's eyes fixed upon her: they were watching and waiting for the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some needful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her tall, brown girl, the only bit of furniture now on which she could bestow her anxiety and pride ; and Maggie, in spite of her own ascetic wish to have no personal adornment, was obliged to give way to her mother about her hair, and submit to have the abundant black locks plaited into a coronet on the summit of her head, after the pitiable fashion of those antiquated times. " Let your mother have that bit o' pleasure, my dear," said Mrs. Tulliver ; " I'd trouble enough with your hair once." So Maggie, glad of anything that would soothe her mother, and cheer their long day together, consented to the vain decora- GEORGE ELIOT 165 tion, and showed a queenly head above her old frocks steadily refusing, however, to look at herself in the glass. Mrs. Tulliver liked to call the father's attention to Maggie's hair and other unexpected virtues, but he had a brusque reply to give. " I knew well enough what she'd be, before now it's nothing new to me. But it's a pity she isn't made o' commoner stuff ; she'll be thrown away, I doubt : there'll be nobody to marry her as is fit for her." And Maggie's graces of mind and body fed his gloom. He sat patiently enough while she read him a chapter, or said something timidly when they were alone together about trouble being turned into a blessing. He took it all as part of his daughter's goodness, which made his misfortune the sadder to him because they dam- aged her chance in life. In a mind charged with an eager pur- pose and an unsatisfied vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings: Mr. Tulliver did not want spiritual consolation he wanted to shake off the degradation of debt, and to have his revenge. AN IMPETUOUS LOVER GEORGE MEREDITH [From chapters 8 10 of Beauchamfs Career, 1875. Nevil Beauchamp, a young officer in the English navy, is deeply- in love with Renee, the sister of Roland, a young French officer, his intimate friend. She is, however, betrothed to the marquis, who is much older than she. The scene is in Venice.] THE marquis was clad in a white silken suit, and a dash of red round the neck set off his black beard ; but when he lifted his broad straw hat, a baldness of sconce shone. There was ele- gance in his gestures ; he looked a gentleman, though an ultra- Gallican one, that is, too scrupulously finished for our taste, smelling of the valet. He had the habit of balancing his body on the hips, as if to emphasize a juvenile vigour, and his general attitude suggested an idea that he had an oration for you. Seen from a distance, his baldness and strong nasal projection were not winning features ; the youthful standard he had evidently prescribed to himself in his dress and his ready jerks of acqui- 1 66 AN IMPETUOUS LOVER escence and delivery might lead a. forlorn rival to conceive him something of an Ogre straining at an Adonis. It could not be disputed that he bore his disappointment remarkably well ; the more laudably, because his position was within a step of the ridiculous, for he had shot himself to the mark, despising sleep, heat, dust, dirt, diet, and lo, that charming object was delib- erately slipping out of reach, proving his headlong journey an absurdity. As he stood declining to participate in the lunatic voyage, and bidding them perforce good speed off the tip of his fingers, Rene'e turned her eyes on him, and away. She felt a little smart of pity, arising partly from her antagonism to Ro- land's covert laughter ; but it was the colder kind of feminine pity, which is nearer to contempt than to tenderness. She sat still, placid outwardly, in fear of herself, so strange she found it to be borne out to sea by her sailor lover under the eyes of her betrothed. She was conscious of a tumultuous rush of sensa- tions, none of them of a very healthy kind, coming as it were from an unlocked chamber of her bosom, hitherto of unimagined contents ; and the marquis being now on the spot to defend his own, she no longer blamed Nevil : it was otherwise utterly. All the sweeter side of pity was for him. He was at first amazed by the sudden exquisite transition. Tenderness breathed from her, in voice, in look, in touch ; for she accepted his help that he might lead her to the stern of the vessel, to gaze well on setting Venice, and sent lightnings up his veins ; she leaned beside him over the vessel's rails, not separated from him by the breadth of a fluttering riband. Like him, she scarcely heard her brother when he for an instant intervened, and with Nevil she said adieu to Venice, where the faint red Doge's palace was like the fading of another sunset northwestward of the glory along the hills. Venice dropped lower and lower, breasting the waters, until it was a thin line in air. The line was broken, and ran in dots, with here and there a pillar standing on opal sky. At last the topmost campanile sank. Rene'e looked up at the sails, and back for the submerged city. " It is gone 1 " she said, as though a marvel had been worked ; and swiftly : " we have one night 1 " GEORGE MEREDITH 1 6? She breathed it half like a question, like a petition, catching her breath. The adieu to Venice was her assurance of liberty, but Venice hidden rolled on her the sense of the return and plucked shrewdly at her tether of bondage. They set their eyes toward the dark gulf ahead. The night was growing starry. The softly ruffled Adriatic tossed no foam. " One night ? " said Nevil ; " one ? Why only one ? " Rene shuddered. " Oh ! do not speak." " Then, give me your hand." " There, my friend." He pressed a hand that was like a quivering chord. She gave it as though it had been his own to claim. But that it meant no more than a hand he knew by the very frankness of her com- pliance, in the manner natural to her ; and this was the charm, it rilled him with her peculiar image and spirit, and while he held it he was subdued. Lying on the deck at midnight, wrapt in his cloak and a coil of rope for a pillow, considerably apart from jesting Roland, the recollection of that little sanguine spot of time when Rente's life-blood ran with his, began to heave under him like a swelling sea. For Nevil the starred black night was Rene. Half his heart was in it ; but the combative division flew to the morning and the deadly iniquity of the marriage, from which he resolved to save her ; in pure devotedness, he believed. And so he closed his eyes. She, a girl, with a heart fluttering open and fearing, felt only that she had lost herself somewhere, and she had neither sleep nor symbols, nothing but a sense of infinite strangeness, as though she were borne superhumanly through space. The breeze blew steadily, enough to swell the sails and sweep the vessel on smoothly. The night air dropped no moisture on deck. Nevil Beauchamp dozed for an hour. He was awakened by light on his eyelids, and starting up beheld the many pinnacles of grey and red rocks and shadowy high white regions at the head of the gulf waiting for the sun ; and the sun struck them. One by one they came out in crimson flame, till the vivid host appeared to have stepped forward. The shadows on the snow- 1 68 AN IMPETUOUS LOVER fields deepened to purple below an irradiation of rose and pink and dazzling silver. There of all the world you might imagine gods to sit. A crowd of mountains endless in range, erect, or flowing, shattered and arid, or leaning in smooth lustre, hangs above the gulf. The mountains are sovereign Alps, and the sea is beneath them. The whole gigantic body keeps the sea, as with a hand, to right and left. Nevil's personal rapture craved for Rene'e with the second long breath he drew ; and now the curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and greeting him with a half smile, she looked out. The Adriatic was dark, the Alps had heaven to themselves. Crescents and hollows, rosy mounds, white shelves, shining ledges, domes and peaks, all the towering heights were in illu- mination from Friuli into farthest Tyrol ; beyond earth to the stricken sense of the gazers. Colour was steadfast on the mas- sive front ranks : it wavered in the remoteness, and was quick and dim as though it fell on beating wings ; but there too divine colour seized and shaped forth solid forms, and thence away to others in uttermost distances where the incredible flick- ering gleam of new heights arose, that soared, or stretched their white uncertain curves in sky-like wings traversing infinity. It seemed unlike morning to the lovers, but as if night had broken with a revelation of the kingdom in the heart of night. While the broad smooth waters rolled unlighted beneath that transfigured upper sphere, it was possible to think the scene might vanish like a view caught out of darkness by lightning. Alp over burning Alp, and around them a hueless dawn 1 The two exulted ; they threw off the load of wonderment, and in looking they had the delicious sensation of flight in their veins. Rene stole toward Nevil. She was mystically shaken and at his mercy ; and had he said then, " Over to the other land, away from Venice ! " she would have bent her head. She asked his permission to rouse her brother and madame, so that they should not miss the scene. Roland lay in the folds of his military greatcoat, too com- pletely happy to be disturbed, Nevil Beauchamp chose to think ; and Rosamund Culling, he told Rene, had been separated from her husband last on these waters. GEORGE MEREDITH 169 " Ah ! to be unhappy here," sighed Renee. " I fancied it when I begged her to join us. It was in her voice." The impressionable girl trembled. He knew he was dear to her, and for that reason, judging of her by himself, he forbore to urge his advantage, conceiving it base to fear that loving him she could yield her hand to another ; and it was the critical instant. She was almost in his grasp. A word of sharp en- treaty would have swung her round to see her situation with his eyes, and detest and shrink from it. He committed the capital fault of treating her as his equal in passion and courage, not as metal ready to run into the mould under temporary stress of fire. Even later in the morning, when she was cooler, and he had come to speak, more than her own strength was needed to resist him. The struggle was hard. The boat's head had been put about for Venice, and they were among the dusky-red Chioggian sails in fishing quarters, expecting momently a campanile to sig- nal the sea-city over the level. Rene waited for it in suspense. To her it stood for the implacable key of a close and stifling chamber, so different from this brilliant boundless region of air, that she sickened with the apprehension ; but she knew it must appear, and soon, and therewith the contraction and the gloom it indicated to her mind. He talked of the beauty. She fretted at it, and was her petulant self again in an epigrammatic note of discord. He let that pass. " Last night you said ' one night,' " he whispered. " We will have another sail before we leave Venice." "One night, and in a little time one hour! and next one min- ute ! and there's the end," said Renee. Her tone alarmed him. " Have you forgotten that you gave me your hand ? " " I gave my hand to my friend." "You gave it to me for good." " No ; I dared not ; it is not mine." " It is mine," said Beauchamp. Rene pointed to the dots and severed lines and isolated col- umns of the rising city, black over bright sea. 1 70 AN IMPETUOUS LOVER " Mine there as well as here," said Eeauchamp, and looked at her with the fiery zeal of eyes intent on minutest signs for a con- firmation, to shake that sad negation of her face. " Renee, you cannot break the pledge of the hand you gave me last night." " You tell me how weak a creature I am." " You are me, myself ; more, better than me. And say, would you not rather coast here and keep the city under water ? " She could not refrain from confessing that she would be glad never to land there. " So, when you land, go straight to your father," said Beau- champ, to whose conception it was a simple act resulting from the avowal. " Oh ! you torture me," she cried. Her eyelashes were heavy with tears. " I cannot do it. Think what you will of me ! And, my friend, help me. Should you not help me ? I have not once actually disobeyed my father, and he has indulged me, but he has been sure of me as a dutiful girl. That is my source of self-respect. My friend can always be my friend." " Yes, while it's not too late," said Beauchamp. She observed a sudden stringing of his features. He called to the chief boatman, made his command intelligible to that portly capitano, and went on to Roland, who was puffing his after-breakfast cigarette in conversation with the tolerant Eng- lish lady. " You condescend to notice us, signer ? " said Roland. " The vessel is up to some manoeuvre ? " " We have decided not to land," replied Beauchamp. " And, Roland," he checked the Frenchman's shout of laughter, " I think of making for Trieste. Let me speak to you, to both. Ren6e is in misery. She must not go back." Roland sprang to his feet, stared, and walked over to Rene. " Nevil," said Rosamond Culling, " do you know what you are doing?" " Perfectly," said he. " Come to her. She is a girl, and I must think and act for her." Roland met them. GEORGE MEREDITH \J\ " My dear Nevil, are you in a state of delusion ? Rene denies . . ." " There's no delusion, Roland. I am determined to stop a catastrophe. I see it as plainly as those Alps. There is only one way, and that's the one I have chosen." " Chosen ! my friend. But allow me to remind you that you have others to consult. And Ren6e herself . . ." " She is a girl. She loves me, and I speak for her." " She has said it ? " " She has more than said it." " You strike me to the deck, Nevil. Either you are down- right mad which seems the likeliest, or we are all in a nightmare. Can you suppose I will let my sister be carried away the deuce knows where, while her father is expecting her, and to fulfil an engagement affecting his pledged word ? " Beauchamp simply replied " Come to her." The four sat together under the shadow of the helmsman, by whom they were regarded as voyagers in debate upon the ques- tion of some hours further on salt water. " No bora," he threw in at intervals, to assure them that the obnoxious wind of the Adriatic need not disturb their calculations. It was an extraordinary sitting, but none of the parties to it thought of it so when Nevil Beauchamp had plunged them into it. He compelled them, even Rene and she would have flown had there been wings on her shoulders to feel some- thing of the life and death issues present to his soul, and submit to the discussion, in plain language of the market-place, of the most delicate of human subjects for her, for him, and hardly less for the other two. An overmastering fervour can do this. It upsets the vessel we float in, and we have to swim our way out of deep waters by the directest use of the natural faculties, with- out much reflection on the change in our habits. To others not under such an influence the position seems impossible. This discussion occurred. Beauchamp opened the case in a couple of sentences, and when the turn came for Rene to speak, and she shrank from the task in manifest pain, he spoke for her, and no one heard her contradiction. She would have wished AN IMPETUOUS LOVER the fearful impetuous youth to succeed if she could have slept through the storm he was rousing. Roland appealed to her. " You ! my sister, it is you that consent to this wild freak, enough to break your father's heart ? " He had really forgotten his knowledge of her character what much he knew in the dust of the desperation flung about her by Nevil Beauchamp. She shook her head ; she had not consented. " The man she loves is her voice and her will," said Beau- champ. " She gives me her hand and I lead her." Roland questioned her. It could not be denied that she had given her hand, and her bewildered senses made her think that it had been with an entire abandonment ; and in the heat of her conflict of feelings, the deliciousness of yielding to him curled round and enclosed her, as in a cool humming sea-shell. " Renee ! " said Roland. " Brother ! " she cried. " You see that I cannot suffer you to be borne away." "No; do not!" But the boat was flying fast from Venice, and she could have fallen at his feet and kissed them for not countermanding it. " You are in my charge, my sister." " Yes." " And now, Nevil, between us two," said Roland. Beauchamp required no challenge. He seemed, to Rosamund Culling, twice older than he was, strangely adept, yet more strangely wise of worldly matters, and eloquent too. But it was the eloquence of frenzy, madness, in Roland's ear. The arro- gation of ?. terrible foresight that harped on present and future to persuade him of the righteousness of this headlong proceed- ing advocated by his friend, vexed his natural equanimity. The argument was out of the domain of logic. He could hardly sit to listen, and tore at his moustache at each end. Nevertheless his sister listened. The mad Englishman accomplished the miracle of making her listen, and appear to consent. Roland laughed scornfully. " Why Trieste ? I ask you, why Trieste ? You can't have a Catholic priest at your bidding, without her father's sanction." GEORGE MEREDITH 1/3 "We leave Renee at Trieste, under the care of madame," said Beauchamp, " and we return to Venice, and I go to your father. This method protects Rene from annoyance." " It strikes me that if she arrives at any determination she must take the consequences." " She does. She is brave enough for that. But she is a girl ; she has to fight the battle of her life in a day, and I am her lover, and she leaves it to me." " Is my sister such a coward ? " said Roland. Rene could only call out his name. " It will never do, my dear Nevil ; " Roland tried to deal with his unreasonable friend affectionately. " I am responsible for her. It's your own fault if you had not saved my life I should not have been in your way. Here I am, and your proposition can't be heard of. Do as you will, both of you, when you step ashore in Venice." " If she goes back she is lost," said Beauchamp, and he attacked Roland on the side of his love for Renee, and for him. Roland was inflexible. Seeing which, Renee said, " To Venice, quickly, my brother ! " and now she almost sighed with relief to think that she was escaping from this hurricane of a youth, who swept her off her feet and wrapt her whole being in a delirium. " We were in sight of the city just now ! " cried Roland, staring and frowning. " What's this ? " Beauchamp answered him calmly, " The boat's under my orders." " Talk madness, but don't act it," said Roland. " Round with the boat at once. Hundred devils ! you haven't your wits." To his amazement, Beauchamp refused to alter the boat's present course. " You heard my sister? " said Roland. " You frighten her," said Beauchamp. " You heard her wish to return to Venice, I say." " She has no wish that is not mine." It came to Roland's shouting his command to the men, while Beauchamp pointed the course on for them. " You will make this a ghastly pleasantry," said Roland. 1/4 AN IMPETUOUS LOVER " I do what I know to be right," said Beauchamp. " You want an altercation before these fellows ? " " There won't be one ; they obey me." Roland blinked rapidly in wrath and doubt of mind. " Madame," he stooped to Rosamund Culling, with a happy inspiration, "convince him; you have known him longer than I, and I desire not to lose my friend. And tell me, madame I can trust you to be truth itself, and you can see it is actually the time for truth to be spoken is he justified in taking my sister's hand ? You perceive that I am obliged to appeal to you. Is he not dependent on his uncle ? And is he not, there- fore, in your opinion, bound in reason as well as in honour to wait for his uncle's approbation before he undertakes to speak for my sister ? And, since the occasion is urgent, let me ask you one thing more : whether, by your knowledge of his position, you think him entitled to presume to decide upon my sister's des- tiny? She, you are aware, is not so young but that she can speak for herself. ..." " There you are wrong, Roland," said Beauchamp ; " she can neither speak nor think for herself: you lead her blindfolded." " And you, my friend, suppose that you are wiser than any of us. It is understood. I venture to appeal to madame on the point in question." The poor lady's heart beat dismally. She was constrained to answer, and said, "His uncle is one who must be consulted." " You hear that, Nevil," said Roland. Beauchamp looked at her sharply ; angrily, Rosamund feared. She had struck his hot brain with the vision of Everard Romfrey as with a bar of iron. If Rosamund had inclined to the view that he was sure of his uncle's support, it would have seemed to him a simple confirmation of his sentiments, but he was not of the same temper now as when he exclaimed, " Let him see her ! " and could imagine, give him only Renee's love, the world of men subservient to his wishes. Then he was dreaming ; he was now in fiery earnest, for that reason accessible to facts presented to him ; and Rosamund's reluctantly spoken words brought his stubborn uncle before his eyes, inflicting a sense of helplessness of the bitterest kind. GEORGE MEREDITH 1/5 They were all silent. Beauchamp stared at the lines of the deck-planks. His scheme to rescue Rene was right and good ; but was he the man that should do it ? And was she, moreover, he thought, speculating on her bent head, the woman to be forced to brave the world with him, and poverty ? She gave him no sign. He was assuredly not the man to pretend to powers he did not feel himself to possess, and though from a personal, and still more from a lover's, inability to see all round him at one time and accurately to weigh the forces at his disposal, he had gone far, he was not a wilful dreamer nor so very selfish a lover. The instant his consciousness of a superior strength failed him he acknowledged it. Renee did not look up. She had none of those lightnings of primitive energy, nor the noble rashness and reliance on her lover, which his imagination had filled her with ; none. That was plain. She could not even venture to second him. Had she done so he would have held out. He walked to the head of the boat without replying. Soon after this the boat was set for Venice again. THE CIVIL WAR THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY [From chapter i of The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, 1848.] IN August 1642 the sword was at length drawn; and soon, in almost every shire of the kingdom, two hostile factions appeared in arms against each other. It is not easy to say which of the contending parties was at first the more formidable. The Houses commanded London and the counties round London, the fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and most of the large towns and seaports. They had at their disposal almost all the military stores of the kingdom, and were able to raise duties, both on goods im- ported from foreign countries, and on some important products of domestic industry. The King was ill provided with artillery 176 THE CIVIL WAR and ammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts occupied by his troops produced, it is probable, a sum far less than that which the Parliament drew from the city of London alone. He relied, indeed, chiefly, for pecuniary aid, on the mu- nificence of his opulent adherents. Many of these mortgaged their land, pawned their jewels, and broke up their silver chargers and christening bowls, in order to assist him. But experience has fully proved that the voluntary liberality of individuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poor financial resource when compared with severe and methodical taxation, which presses on the willing and unwilling alike. Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it well, would have more than compensated for the want of stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanage- ment, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first fought much better than those of the Parlia- ment. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless, the dif- ference was great. The parliamentary ranks were filled with hire- lings whom want and idleness had induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best ; and even Hampden's regiment was described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving men out of place. The royal army, on the other hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen, high spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider dishonour as more terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire arms, to bold riding, and to manly and perilous sport, which has been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favourite horses, and commanding little bands, composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers and huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision of movement, which are characteristic of the regular soldier, these gallant volunteers never attained. But they were at first opposed to enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the Cavaliers were successful in almost every encounter. The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a gen- THOMAS BAB ING TON MACAU LAY 177 eral. The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him one of the most important members of the parliamentary party. He had borne arms on the Continent with credit, and, when the war began, had as high a military reputation as any man in the coun- try. But it soon appeared that he was unfit for the post of Commander in Chief. He had little energy and no originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in the war of the Palatinate did not save him from being surprised and baffled by such a Captain as Rupert, who could claim no higher fame than that of an enterprising partisan. Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under Essex qualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this, indeed, the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country which had not, within the memory of the oldest person living, made war on a great scale by land, generals of tried skill and valour were not to be found. It was necessary, therefore, in the first instance, to trust untried men ; and the preference was naturally given to men distinguished either by their station, or by the abili- ties which they had displayed in parliament. In scarcely a sin- gle instance, however, was the selection fortunate. Neither the grandees nor the orators proved good soldiers. The Earl of Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed by the Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of his contemporaries in talents for civil business, disgraced himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all the states- men who at this juncture accepted high military commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the capac- ity and strength of mind which had made him eminent in politics. When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly with the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the western and in the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the second city in the kingdom, from the Parliament. They had won several battles, and had not sustained a single serious or ignomini- ous defeat. Among the Roundheads adversity had begun to pro- duce dissension and discontent. The Parliament was kept in alarm, sometimes by plots, and sometimes by riots. It was thought necessary to fortify London against the royal army, and to hang some disaffected citizens at their own doors. Several of the most N 178 THE CIVIL WAR distinguished peers who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled to the court at Oxford ; nor can it be doubted that, if the operations of the Cavaliers had, at this season, been directed by a sagacious and powerful mind, Charles would have soon marched in triumph to Whitehall. But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away ; and it never returned. In August 1643 he sate down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with a determination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The train- bands of the City volunteered to march wherever their services might be required. A great force was speedily collected, and began to move westward. The siege of Gloucester was raised. The Royalists in every part of the kingdom were disheartened : the spirit of the parliamentary party revived ; and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to Westminster. And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to appear in the distempered body politic. There had been, from the first, in the parliamentary party, some men whose minds were set on objects from which the majority of that party would have shrunk with horror. These men were, in religion, Independents. They conceived that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things spiritual ; that appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcely less unscriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches, or to the Vatican ; and that Popery, Prel- acy, and Presbyterianism were merely forms of one great apostasy. In politics the Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, root and branch men, or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals. Not content with limiting the power of the mon- arch, they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. At first they had been inconsiderable, both in numbers and in weight ; but before the war had lasted two years they became, not indeed the largest, but the most powerful faction in the country. Some of the old parliamentary leaders had been removed by death; and others had forfeited the public confidence. Pym had been borne, with princely honours, THOMAS BASING TON MA CA ULA Y 1 79 to a grave among the Plantagenets. Hampden had fallen, as became him, while vainly endeavouring, by his heroic example, to inspire his followers with courage to face the fiery cavalry of Rupert. Bedford had been untrue to the cause. Northumber- land was known to be lukewarm. Essex and his lieutenants had shown little vigour and ability in the conduct of military operations. At such a conjuncture it was that the Independent party, ardent, resolute, and uncompromising, began to raise its head, both in the camp and in the House of Commons. The soul of that party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. No sooner had he become a soldier than he discerned, with the keen glance of genius, what Essex and men like Essex, with all their experience, were unable to perceive. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that there were abundant and excel- lent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the King were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in Eng- land, he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimu- lants of fearful potency. The events of the year 1644 m ^y proved the superiority of his abilities. In the south, where Essex held the command, the parliamentary forces underwent a succession of shameful disasters ; but in the north the victory of Marston Moor fully compensated for all that had been lost elsewhere. The victory was not a more serious blow to the Royalists than to the party which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster ; for it was notorious that the day, disgracefully lost by the Presbyterians, had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell, and by the steady valour of the warriors whom he had trained. These events produced the Selfdenying Ordinance and the new 180 THE CIVIL WAR model of the army. Under decorous pretexts, and with every mark of respect, Essex and most of those who had held high posts under him were removed ; and the conduct of the war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, a brave soldier, but of mean understanding and irresolute temper, was the nominal Lord General of the forces ; but Cromwell was their real head. Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the same principles on which he had organized his own regiment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and the remodelled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority of the Parlia- ment was fully established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character, delivered up to his English subjects. While the event of the war was still doubtful, the Houses had put the Primate to death, had interdicted, within the sphere of their authority, the use of the Liturgy, and had required all men to subscribe that renowned instrument known by the name of the Solemn League and Covenant. When the struggle was over, the work of innovation and revenge was pushed on with still greater ardour. The ecclesiastical polity of the kingdom was remodelled. Most of the old clergy were ejected from their benefices. Fines, often of ruinous amount, were laid on the Royalists, already im- poverished by large aids furnished to the King. Many estates were confiscated. Many proscribed Cavaliers found it expedient to purchase, at an enormous cost, the protection of eminent mem- bers of the victorious party. Large domains belonging to the crown, to the bishops, and to the chapters were seized, and either granted away or put up to auction. In consequence of these spoliations, a great part of the soil of England was at once offered for sale. As money was scarce, as the market was glutted, as the THOMAS BASING TON MACAU LAY l8l title was insecure, and as the awe inspired by powerful bidders prevented free competition, the prices were often merely nominal. Thus many old and honourable families disappeared and were heard of no more ; and many new men rose rapidly to affluence. But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus, it suddenly passed out of their hands. It had been obtained by calling into existence a power which could not be controlled. In the summer of 1647, about twelve months after the last fortress of the Cavaliers had submitted to the Parliament, the Parliament was compelled to submit to its own soldiers. Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under various names and forms, really governed by the sword. Never before that time, or since that time, was the civil power in our country subjected to military dictation. The army which now became supreme in the State was an army very different from any that has since been seen among us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as to seduce any but the humblest class of English labourers from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous and extensive are the remote dependencies of England, that every man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many years in exile, and some years in climates unfavourable to the health and vigour of the European race. The army of the Long Parliament was raised for home service. The pay of the private soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of the people ; and, if he distin- guished himself by intelligence and courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of recruiting offi- cers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre, that they were no janissaries, but freeborn Englishmen. 1 82 THE CIVIL WAR who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved. A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency, be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general, sol- diers who should form themselves into political clubs, elect dele- gates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state, would soon break loose from all control, would cease to form an army, and would become the worst and most dangerous of mobs. Nor would it be safe, in our time, to tolerate in any regiment religious meet- ings, at which a corporal versed in Scripture should lead the devo- tions of his less gifted colonel, and admonish a backsliding major. But such was the intelligence, the gravity, and the selfcommand of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained, that in their camp a political organization and a religious organization could exist without destroying military organization. The same men, who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers, were dis- tinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of battle. In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Crom- well, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have main- tained order as strict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most rigid disci- pline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of Crusaders. From the time when the army was remodelled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ire- land, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces what- ever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with which THOMAS BAB ING TON MACAULAY 183 his English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier, when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy ; and the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by allies, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counter- scarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the Marshals of France. But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pela- gian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the "pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not sa- voury ; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige of 1 Popery. To keep down the English people was no light task even for that army. No sooner was the first pressure of military tyranny felt, than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began to struggle fiercely. Insurrections broke out even in those counties which, during the recent war, had been the most submissive to the Parlia- ment. Indeed, the Parliament itself abhorred its old defenders more than its old enemies, and was desirous to come to terms with Charles at the expense of the troops. In Scotland, at the same time, a coalition was formed between the Royalists and a large body 1 84 THE CIVIL WAR of Presbyterians who regarded the doctrines of the Independents with detestation. At length the storm burst. There were risings in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Wales. The fleet in the Thames suddenly hoisted the royal colours, stood out to sea, and menaced the southern coast. A great Scottish force crossed the frontier and advanced into Lancashire. It might well be suspected that these movements were contemplated with secret complacency by a majority both of the Lords and of the Commons. But the yoke of the army was not to be shaken off. While Fairfax suppressed the risings in the neighbourhood of the capital, Oliver routed the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving their castles in ruins, marched against the Scots. His troops were few, when com- pared with the invaders ; but he was little in the habit of count- ing his enemies. The Scottish army was utterly destroyed. A change in the Scottish government followed. An administration, hostile to the King, was formed at Edinburgh ; and Cromwell, more than ever the darling of his soldiers, returned in triumph to London. And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the civil war, no man would have dared to allude, and which was not less inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant than with the old law of England, began to take a distinct form. The austere warriors who ruled the nation had, during some months, meditated a fearful vengeance on the captive King. When and how the scheme originated ; whether it spread from the general to the ranks, or from the ranks to the general ; whether it is to be ascribed to policy using fanaticism as a tool, or to fanaticism bearing down policy with headlong impulse, are questions which, even at this day, cannot be answered with perfect confidence. It seems, however, on the whole, probable that he who seemed to lead was really forced to follow, and that, on this occasion, as on another great occasion a few years later, he sacrificed his own judgment and his own inclinations to the wishes of the army. For the power which he had called into existence was a power which even he could not always control ; and, that he might ordinarily com- mand, it was necessary that he should sometimes obey. He publicly protested that he was no mover in the matter, that the first steps had been taken without his privity, that he could THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 185 not advise the Parliament to strike the blow, but that he sub- mitted his own feelings to the force of circumstances which seemed to him to indicate the purposes of providence. It has been the fashion to consider those professions as instances of the hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to him. But even those who pronounce him a hypocrite will scarcely venture to call him a fool. They are therefore bound to show that he had some purpose to serve by secretly stimulating the army to take the course which he did not venture openly to recommend. It would be absurd to suppose that he, who was never by his respectable enemies rep- resented as wantonly cruel or implacably vindictive, would have taken the most important step of his life under the influence of mere malevolence. He was far too wise a man not to know, when he consented to shed that august blood, that he was doing a deed which was inexpiable, and which would move the grief and horror, not only of the Royalists, but of nine tenths of those who had stood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have deluded others, he was assuredly dreaming, neither of a republic on the antique pattern, nor of the millennial reign of the saints. If he already aspired to be himself the founder of a new dynasty, it was plain that Charles the First was a less formidable competitor than Charles the Second would be. At the moment of the death of Charles the First, the loyalty of every Cavalier would be trans- ferred, unimpaired, to Charles the Second. Charles the First was a captive ; Charles the Second would be at liberty. Charles the First was an object of suspicion and dislike to a large proportion of those who yet shuddered at the thought of slaying him ; Charles the Second would excite all the interest which belongs to distressed youth and innocence. It is impossible to believe that considera- tions so obvious, and so important, escaped the most profound politician of that age. The truth is that Cromwell had, at one time, meant to mediate between the throne and Parliament, and to reorganize the distracted State by the power of the sword, under the sanction of the royal name. In this design he persisted till he was compelled to abandon it by the refractory temper of the soldiers, and by the incurable duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began to clamour for the head of the traitor, who was for treating with Agag. Conspiracies were formed. Threats of 1 86 THE CIVIL WAR impeachment were loudly uttered. A mutiny broke out, which all the vigour and resolution of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a judicious mixture of severity and kindness, he suc- ceeded in restoring order, he saw that it would be in the highest degree difficult and perilous to contend against the rage of warriors, who regarded the fallen tyrant as their foe, and as the foe of their God. At the same time it became more evident than ever that the King could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bring out in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince, therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely to learn frank- ness in the midst of embarrassments and distresses. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was a politician to whom so many frauds and false- hoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly recognized the Houses of Westminster as a legal Parliament, and, at the same time, made a private minute in council, declaring the recognition null. He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his people : he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Loraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists : at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at Popery : he privately assured his wife, that he intended to tolerate Popery in England ; and he author- ised Lord Glamorgan to promise that Popery should be estab- lished in Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's expense. Glamorgan received, in the royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be read by others, and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted the King's whole nature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining to each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics. His defeats, they said, gave him less pain than his intrigues. Since he had been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which had not been the object both of his flatteries and of his machina- THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 1 8? tions : but never was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole and to undermine Cromwell. Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard the attachment of his party, the attachment of his army, his own great- ness, nay his own life, in an attempt, which would probably have been vain, to save a prince whom no engagement could bind. With many struggles and misgivings, and probably not without many prayers, the decision was made. Charles was left to his fate. The military saints resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, the King should expiate his crimes with his blood. He for a time expected a death like that of his unhappy predecessors, Edward the Second and Richard the Second. But he was in no danger of such treason. Those who had him in their gripe were not mid- night slabbers. What they did, they did in order that it might be a spectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might be held in everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal which they gave. That the ancient constitution and the public opinion of England were directly opposed to regicide made regi- cide seem strangely fascinating to a party bent on effecting a com- plete political and social revolution. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should first break in pieces every part of the machinery of the government ; and this necessity was rather agreeable than painful to them. The Commons passed a vote tending to accommodation with the King. The soldiers excluded the majority by force. The Lords unanimously rejected the proposition that the King should be brought to trial. Their house was instantly closed. No court, known to the law, would take on itself the office of judging the fountain of justice. A revo- lutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy ; and his head was severed from his shoulders before thousands of spectators, in front of the banqueting hall of his own palace. 1 88 BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT FRANCIS PARKMAN [From chapter 4 of The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War against the English Colonies after the Conquest of Canada, 1851.] THE people of the northern English colonies had learned to regard their Canadian neighbors with the bitterest enmity. With them, the very name of Canada called up horrible recollections and ghastly images : the midnight massacre of Schenectady, and the desolation of many a New England hamlet ; blazing dwellings and reeking scalps ; and children snatched from their mothers' arms, to be immured in convents and trained up in the abomina- tions of Popery. To the sons of the Puritans, their enemy was doubly odious. They hated him as a Frenchman, and they hated him as a Papist. Hitherto he had waged his murderous warfare from a distance, wasting their settlements with rapid onsets, fierce and transient as a summer storm ; but now, with enterprising audac- ity, he was intrenching himself on their very borders. The Eng- lish hunter, in the lonely wilderness of Vermont, as by the warm glow of sunset he piled the spruce boughs for his woodland bed, started as a deep, low sound struck faintly on his ear, the evening gun of Fort Frederic, booming over lake and forest. The erection of this fort, better known among the English as Crown Point, was a piece of daring encroachment which justly kindled resentment in the northern colonies. But it was not here that the immediate occasion of a final rupture was to arise. By an article of the treaty of Utrecht, confirmed by that of Aix la Chapelle, Acadia had been ceded to England ; but scarcely was the latter treaty signed, when debates sprang up touching the limits of the ceded province. Commissioners were named on either side to adjust the disputed boundary ; but the claims of the rival powers proved utterly irrec- oncilable, and all negotiation was fruitless. Meantime, the French and English forces in Acadia began to assume a belligerent atti- tude, and indulge their ill blood in mutual aggression and reprisal. But while this game was played on the coasts of the Atlantic, interests of far greater moment were at stake in the west. FRANCIS PACKMAN 189 The people of the middle colonies, placed by their local position beyond reach of the French, had heard with great composure of the sufferings of their New England brethren, and felt little con- cern at a danger so doubtful and remote. There were those among them, however, who, with greater foresight, had been quick to perceive the ambitious projects of the French ; and, as early as 1716, Spotswood, governor of Virginia, had urged the expe- diency of securing the valley of the Ohio by a series of forts and settlements. His proposal was coldly listened to, and his plan fell to the ground. The time at length was come when the danger was approaching too near to be slighted longer. In 1748, an association, called the Ohio Company, was formed with the view of making settlements in the region beyond the Alleghanies ; and two years later, Gist, the company's surveyor, to the great disgust of the Indians, carried chain and compass down the Ohio as far as the falls at Louisville. But so dilatory were the English, that before any effectual steps were taken, their agile enemies appeared upon the scene. In the spring of 1753, the middle provinces were startled at the tidings that French troops had crossed Lake Erie, fortified themselves at the point of Presqu'-Isle, and pushed forward to the northern branches of the Ohio. Upon this, Governor Din- widdie, of Virginia, resolved to despatch a message requiring their removal from territories which he claimed as belonging to the British crown ; and looking about him for the person best quali- fied to act as messenger, he made choice of George Washington, a young man twenty-one years of age, adjutant general of the Virginian militia, Washington departed on his mission, crossed the mountains, descended to the bleak and leafless valley of the Ohio, and thence continued his journey up the banks of the Alleghany until the fourth of December. On that day he reached Venango, an Indian town on the Alleghany, at the mouth of French Cre*ek. Here was the advanced post of the French ; and here, among the Indian log-cabins and huts of bark, he saw their flag flying above the house of an English trader, whom the military intruders had unceremoniously ejected. They gave the young envoy a hospitable reception, and referred him to the commanding officer, 1 90 BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT whose headquarters were at Le Boeuf, a fort which they had just built on French Creek, some distance above Venango. Thither Washington repaired, and on his arrival was received with stately courtesy by the officer, Legardeur de St. Pierre, whom he describes as an elderly gentleman of very soldier-like appearance. To the message of Dinwiddie, St. Pierre replied that he would forward it to the governor general of Canada ; but that, in the mean time, his orders were to hold possession of the country, and this he should do to the best of his ability. With this answer Washington, through all the rigors of the midwinter forest, re- traced his steps, with one attendant, to the English borders. With the first opening of spring, a newly raised company of Virginian backwoodsmen, under Captain Trent, hastened across the mountains, and began to build a fort at the confluence of the Monongahela and Alleghany, where Pittsburg now stands ; when suddenly they found themselves invested by a host of French and Indians, who, with sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes, had descended from Le Bceuf and Venango. The English were ordered to evacuate the spot ; and, being quite unable to re- sist, they obeyed the summons, and withdrew in great discom- fiture towards Virginia. Meanwhile Washington, with another party of backwoodsmen, was advancing from the borders; and hearing of Trent's disaster, he resolved to fortify himself on the Monongahela, and hold his ground, if possible, until fresh troops could arrive to support him. The French sent out a scouting party under M. Jumonville, with the design, probably, of watching his movement ; but, on a dark and stormy night, Washington sur- prised them, as they lay lurking in a rocky glen not far from his camp, killed the officer, and captured the whole detachment. Learning that the French, enraged by this reverse, were about to attack him in great force, he thought it prudent to fall back, and retired accordingly to a spot called the Great Meadows, where he' had before thrown up a slight intrenchment. Here he found himself assailed by nine hundred French and Indians, commanded by a brother of the slain Jumonville. From eleven in the morn- ing till eight at night, the backwoodsmen, who were half famished from the failure of their stores, maintained a stubborn defence, some fighting within the intrenchment, and some on the plain FRANCIS PARK MAN 191 without. In the evening, the French sounded a parley, and offered terms. They were accepted, and on the following day Washington and his men retired across the mountains, leaving the disputed territory in the hands of the French. While the rival nations were beginning to quarrel for a prize which belonged to neither of them, the unhappy Indians saw, with alarm and amazement, their lands becoming a bone of contention between rapacious strangers. The first appearance of the French on the Ohio excited the wildest fears in the tribes of that quarter, among whom were those who, disgusted by the encroachments of the Pennsylvanians, had fled to these remote retreats to escape the intrusions of the white men. Scarcely was their fancied asylum gained, when they saw themselves invaded by a host of armed men from Canada. Thus placed between two fires, they knew not which way to turn. There was no union in their coun- sels, and they seemed like a mob of bewildered children. Their native jealousy was roused to its utmost pitch. Many of them thought that the two white nations had conspired to destroy them, and then divide their lands. " You and the French," said one of them, a few years afterwards, to an English emissary, " are like the two edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth which is cut to pieces between them." The French labored hard to conciliate them, plying them with gifts and flatteries, and proclaiming themselves their champions against the English. At first, these arts seemed in vain, but their effect soon began to declare itself; and this effect was greatly increased by a singular piece of infatuation on the part of the proprietors of Pennsylvania. During the summer of 1754, dele- gates of the several provinces met at Albany, to concert measures of defence in the war which now seemed inevitable. It was at this meeting that the memorable plan of a union of the colonies was brought upon the carpet ; a plan, the fate of which was curious and significant, for the crown rejected it as giving too much power to the people, and the people as giving too much power to the crown. A council was also held with the Iroquois, and though they were found but lukewarm in their attachment to the English, a treaty of friendship and alliance was concluded with their deputies. It would have been well if the matter had ended here ; but, with ill- 192 BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT timed rapacity, the proprietary agents of Pennsylvania took advan- tage of this great assemblage of sachems to procure from them the grant of extensive tracts, including the lands inhabited by the very tribes whom the French were at that moment striving to seduce. When they heard that, without their consent, their conquerors and tyrants, the Iroquois, had sold the soil from beneath their feet, their indignation was extreme ; and, convinced that there was no limit to English encroachment, many of them from that hour became fast allies of the French. The courts of London and Versailles still maintained a diplo- matic intercourse, both protesting their earnest wish that their conflicting claims might be adjusted by friendly negotiation ; but while each disclaimed the intention of hostility, both were hasten- ing to prepare for war. Early in 1755, an English fleet sailed from Cork, having on board two regiments destined for Virginia, and commanded by General Braddock ; and soon after, a French fleet put to sea from the port of Brest, freighted with munitions of war and a strong body of troops under Baron Dieskau, an officer who had distinguished himself in the campaigns of Marshal Saxe. The English fleet gained its destination, and landed its troops in safety. The French were less fortunate. Two of their ships, the Lys and the Alcide, became involved in the fogs of the banks of Newfoundland ; and when the weather cleared, they found them- selves under the guns of a superior British force, belonging to the squadron of Admiral Boscawen, sent out for the express purpose of intercepting them. "Are we at peace or war?" demanded the French commander. A broadside from the Englishman soon solved his doubts, and after a stout resistance the French struck their colors. News of the capture caused great excitement in England, but the conduct of the aggressors was generally approved ; and under pretence that the French had begun the war by their alleged encroachments in America, orders were issued for a general attack upon their marine. So successful were the British cruisers, that, before the end of the year, three hundred French vessels, and nearly eight thousand sailors, were captured and brought into port. The French, unable to retort in kind, raised an outcry of indignation, and Mirepoix, their ambassador, withdrew from the court of London. FRANCIS PARK MAN 193 Thus began that memorable war which, kindling among the forests of America, scattered its fires over the kingdoms of Europe, and the sultry empire of the Great Mogul ; the war made glorious by the heroic death of Wolfe, the victories of Frederic, and the marvellous exploits of dive ; the war which controlled the destinies of America, and was first in the chain of events which led on to her Revolution, with all its vast and undeveloped consequences. On the old battle-ground of Europe, the struggle bore the same familiar features of violence and horror which had marked the strife of former generations fields ploughed by the cannon ball, and walls shattered by the exploding mine, sacked towns and blazing suburbs, the lamentations of women, and the license of a maddened soldiery. But in America, war assumed a new and striking aspect. A wilder- ness was its sublime arena. Army met army under the shadows of primeval woods ; their cannon resounded over wastes unknown to civilized man. And before the hostile powers could join in battle, endless forests must be traversed, and morasses passed, and every where the axe of the pioneer must hew a path for the bayonet of the soldier. Before the declaration of war, and before the breaking off of negotiations between the courts of France and England, the Eng- lish ministry formed the plan of assailing the French in America on all sides at once, and repelling them, by one bold push, from all their encroachments. A provincial army was to advance upon Acadia, a second was to attack Crown Point, and a third Niagara ; while the two regiments which had lately arrived in Virginia under General Braddock, aided by a strong body of provincials, were to dislodge the French from their newly-built fort of Du Quesne. To Braddock was assigned the chief command of all the British forces in America ; and a person worse fitted for the office could scarcely have been found. His experience had been ample, and none could doubt his courage ; but he was profligate, arrogant, perverse, and a bigot to military rules. On his first arrival in Virginia, he called together the governors of the several provinces, in order to explain his instructions and adjust the details of the projected operations. These arrangements complete, Braddock advanced to the borders of Virginia, and formed his camp at Fort Cumber- land where he spent several weeks in training the raw backwoods- 194 BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT men, who joined him, into such discipline as they seemed capable of ; in collecting horses and wagons, which could only be had with the utmost difficulty; in railing at the contractors, who scanda- lously cheated him ; and in venting his spleen by copious abuse of the country and the people. All at length was ready, and early in June, 1755, the army left civilization behind, and struck into^the broad wilderness as a squadron puts out to sea. It was no easy task to force their way over that rugged ground, covered with an unbroken growth of forest ; and the difficulty was increased by the needless load of baggage which encumbered their march. The crash of falling trees resounded in the front, where a hundred axemen labored, with ceaseless toil, to hew a passage for the army. The horses strained their utmost strength to drag the ponderous wagons over roots and stumps, through gullies and quagmires; and the regular troops were daunted by the depth and gloom of the forest which hedged them in on either hand, and closed its leafy arches above their heads. So tedious was their progress, that, by the advice of Washington, twelve hundred, chosen men moved on in advance with the lighter baggage and artillery, leaving the rest of the army to follow, by slower stages, with the heavy wagons. On the eighth of July the advanced body reached the Monongahela, at a point not far distant from Fort du Quesne. The rocky and impracticable ground on the eastern side debarred their passage, and the general resolved to cross the river in search of a smoother path, and recross it a few miles lower down, in order to gain the fort. The first passage was easily made, and the troops moved, in glittering array, down the western margin of the water, rejoicing that their goal was well-nigh reached, and the hour of their expected triumph close at hand. Scouts and Indian runners had brought the tidings of Braddock's approach to the French at Fort du Quesne. Their dismay was great, and Contrecoeur, the commander, thought only of retreat, when Beaujeu, a captain in the garrison, made the bold proposal of leading out a party of French and Indians to waylay the Eng- lish in the woods, and harass or interrupt their march. The offer was accepted, and Beaujeu hastened to the Indian camps. Around the fort and beneath the adjacent forest were the bark lodges of savage hordes. wVim the French had mustered from far FRANCIS PARK MAN 195 and near : Ojibwas and Ottawas, Hurons and Caughnawagas, Abenakis and Delawares. Beaujeu called the warriors together, flung a hatchet on the ground before them, and invited them to- follow him out to battle ; but the boldest stood aghast at the peril, and none would accept the challenge. A second interview took place with no better success ; but the Frenchman was resolved to carry his point. " I am determined to go," he exclaimed. "What, will you suffer your father to go alone?" His daring proved contagious. The warriors hesitated no longer ; and when, on the morning of the ninth of July, a scout ran in with the news that the English army was but a few miles distant, the Indian camps were at once astir with the turmoil of preparation. Chiefs harangued their yelling followers, braves bedaubed themselves with war-paint, smeared themselves with grease, hung feathers in their scalp-locks, and whooped and stamped till they had wrought themselves into a delirium of valor. That morning, James Smith, an English prisoner recently cap- tured on the frontier of Pennsylvania, stood on the rampart, and saw the half-frenzied multitude thronging about the gateway, where kegs of bullets and gunpowder were broken open, that each might help himself at will. Then band after band hastened away towards the forest, followed and supported by nearly two hundred and fifty French and Canadians, commanded by Beaujeu. There were the Ottawas, led on, it is said, by the remarkable man whose name stands on the title-page of this history; there were the Hurons of Lorette under their chief, whom the French called Athanase, and many more, all keen as hounds on the scent of blood. At about nine miles from the fort, they reached a spot where the narrow road descended to the river through deep and gloomy woods, and where two ravines, concealed by trees and bushes, seemed formed by nature for an ambuscade. Here the warriors ensconced themselves, and, levelling their guns over the edge, lay in fierce expectation, listening to the advancing drums of the English army. It was past noon of a day brightened with the clear sunlight of an American midsummer, when the forces of Braddock began, for a second time, to cross the Monongahela, at the fording-place, which to this day bears the name of their ill-fated leader. The 196 BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT scarlet columns of the British regulars, complete in martial ap- pointment, the rude backwoodsmen with shouldered rifles, the trains of artillery and the white-topped wagons, moved on in long procession through the shallow current, and slowly mounted the opposing bank. Men were there whose names have become his- toric : Gage, who, twenty years later, saw his routed battalions recoil in disorder from before the breastwork on Bunker Hill ; Gates, the future conqueror of Burgoyne ; and one destined to far loftier fame, George Washington, a boy in years, a man in calm thought and self-ruling wisdom. With steady and well-ordered march, the troops advanced into the great labyrinth of woods which shadowed the eastern borders of the river. Rank after rank vanished from sight. The forest swallowed them up, and the silence of the wilderness sank down once more on the shores and waters of the Monongahela. Several guides and six light horsemen led the way ; a body of grenadiers was close behind, and the army followed in such order as the rough ground would permit. Their road was tunnelled through the forest ; yet, deaf alike to the voice of common sense and to the counsel of his officers, Braddock had neglected to throw out scouts in advance, and pressed forward in blind security to meet his fate. Leaving behind the low grounds which bordered on the river, the van of the army was now ascending a gently sloping hill ; and here, well hidden by the thick standing columns of the forest, by mouldering prostrate trunks, by matted under- growth, by long rank grasses, lay, on either flank, the two fatal ravines where the Indian allies of the French were crouched in breathless ambuscade. No man saw the danger, when suddenly a discordant cry arose in front, and a murderous fire blazed in the teeth of the astonished grenadiers. Instinctively, as it were, the surviv- ors returned the volley, and returned it with good effect ; for a random shot struck down the brave Beaujeu, and the courage of the assailants was staggered by his fall. Dumas, second in com- mand, rallied them to the attack ; and while he, with the French and Canadians, made good the pass in front, the Indians opened a deadly fire on the right and left of the British columns. In a few moments, all was confusion. The advance guard fell back on- the main body, and every trace of subordination vanished. FRANCIS PARK MAN 197 The fire soon extended along the whole length of the army, from front to rear. Scarce an enemy could be seen, though the forest resounded with their yells ; though every bush and tree was alive with incessant flashes ; though the lead flew like a hailstorm, and with every moment the men went down by scores. The regular troops seemed bereft of their senses. They huddled to- gether in the road like flocks of sheep ; and happy did he think himself who could wedge his way into the midst of the crowd, and place a barrier of human flesh between his life and the shot of the ambushed marksmen. Many were seen eagerly loading their mus- kets, and then firing them into the air, or shooting their own com- rades, in the insanity of their terror. The officers, for the most part, displayed a conspicuous gallantry ; but threats and commands were wasted alike on the panic-stricken multitude. It is said that at the onset Braddock showed signs of fear ; but he soon recovered his wonted intrepidity. Five horses were shot under him, and five times he mounted afresh. He stormed and shouted, and, while the Virginians were fighting to good purpose, each man be- hind a tree, like the Indians themselves, he ordered them with furious menace to form in platoons, where the fire of the enemy mowed them down like grass. At length, a mortal shot silenced him, and two provincials bore him off the field. Washington rode through the tumult calm and undaunted. Two horses were killed under him, and four bullets pierced his clothes ; but his hour was not come, and he escaped without a wound. Gates was shot through the body, and Gage also was severely wounded. Of eighty- six officers, only twenty-three remained unhurt; and of twelve hundred soldiers who crossed the Monongahela, more than seven hundred were killed and wounded. None suffered more severely than the Virginians, who had displayed throughout a degree of courage and steadiness which put the cowardice of the regulars to shame. The havoc among them was terrible, for of their whole number scarcely one-fi'fth left the field alive. The slaughter lasted three hours ; when, at length, the survivors, as if impelled by a general impulse, rushed tumultuously from the place of carnage, and with dastardly precipitation fled across the Monongahela. The enemy did not pursue beyond the river, flocking back to the field to collect the plunder, and gather a rich 198 THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE harvest of scalps. The routed troops pursued their flight until they met the rear division of the army, under Colonel Dunbar ; and even then their senseless terrors did not abate. Dunbar's soldiers caught the infection. Cannon, baggage, provisions and wagons were destroyed, and all fled together, eager to escape from the shadows of those awful woods, whose horrors haunted their imagination. They passed the defenceless settlements of the border, and hurried on to Philadelphia, leaving the unhappy peo- ple to defend themselves as they might against the tomahawk and scalping-knife. The calamities of this disgraceful overthrow did not cease with the loss of a few hundred soldiers on the field of battle ; for it entailed upon the provinces all the miseries of an Indian war. Those among the tribes who had thus far stood neutral, wavering between the French and English, now hesitated no longer. Many of them had been disgusted by the contemptuous behavior of Braddock. All had learned to despise the courage of the English, and to regard their own prowess with unbounded complacency. It is not in Indian nature to stand quiet in the midst of war ; and the defeat of Braddock was a signal for the western savages to snatch their tomahawks and assail the English settlements with one accord ; to murder and pillage with ruthless fury, and turn the whole frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia into one wide scene of woe and desolation. THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE THOMAS CARLYLE [From chapter 6, book v, of The French Revolution: a History, 1837.] IN any case, behold, about nine in the fhorning, our National Volunteers rolling in long wide flood south-westward to the Hotel des Invalides ; in search of the one thing needful. King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there ; the Cure" of Saint-Etienne du Mont marches unpacific at the head of his militant Parish ; the Clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see THOMAS CARLYLE 199 marching, now Volunteers of the Basoche ; the Volunteers of the Palais Royal : National Volunteers, numerable by tens of thou- sands; of one heart and mind. The King's muskets are the Nation's ; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them ! Old M. de Sombreuil would fain hold parley, send couriers ; but it skills not : the walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot ; the gates must be flung open. Patriotism rushes in, tumultuous, from grunsel up to ridge-tile, through all rooms and passages ; rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar or what cranny can escape it ? The arms are found ; all safe there ; lying packed in straw, apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangour and vociferation, pounces on them ; struggling, dashing, clutching : to the jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture and probable extinction of the weaker Patriot. And so, with such protracted crash of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of as many National Guards, lifted thereby out of darkness into fiery light. Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets, as they flash by 1 Gardes Francaises, it is said, have cannon levelled on him ; ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the River. Motionless sits he; "astonished," one may flatter one- self, " at the proud bearing (Jiere contenance) of the Parisians." And now, to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians! There grape- shot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and steps are now tending. Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew " into his interior " soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since, hampered, as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The H6tel-de-Ville " invites " him to admit National Soldiers, which is a soft name for surrender- ing. On the other hand, His Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young Swiss ; his walls indeed are nine feet thick, he has cannon and powder ; but, alas, only one day's pro- vision of victuals. The city too is French, the poor garrison 2SKB THE STORMING JF THE BASTILLE /' mostly French. Rigorous old De Launay, think what thou wilt do ! All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere : To the Bastille ' Repeated " deputations of citizens " have been here, passionate for arms ; whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains admittance ; finds De Launay in- disposed for surrender ; nay disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements ; heaps of paving-stones, old iron and missiles lie piled ; cannon all duly levelled; in every embrasure a cannon, only drawn back a little 1 But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street : tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the generate ; the Suburb Saint- Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as one man ! Such vision (spectral yet real) thou, O Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories and loud- gibbering Spectral Realities, which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt ! " Que voulez-vous ? " said De Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of menace. " Mon- sieur," said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, " what mean you 1 Consider if I could not precipitate both of us from this height," say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch 1 Whereupon De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows him- self from some pinnacle, to comfort the multitude becoming sus- picious, fremescent : then descends ; departs with protests ; with warning addressed also to the Invalides, on whom, however, it produces but a mixed indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest ; besides, it is said, De Launay has been profuse of beverages (prodigue des boissons). They think, they will not fire, if not fired on, if they can help it ; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by circumstances. Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances ! Soft speeches will not serve ; hard grapeshot is questionable ; but hovering between the two is ?/questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men ; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry, which THOMAS CARLYLE 2I .'atter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot ; new deputation of citi- zens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer Court : soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire ; pulls up his Drawbridge. A slight splut- ter ; which has kindled the too combustible chaos ; made it a roaring fire-chaos ! Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration ; and over head, from the Fortress, let one great gun, with its grape- shot, go booming, to show what we could do. The Bastille is besieged ! On, then, all Frenchmen, that have hearts in your bodies ! Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty ; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit ; for it is the hour ! Smite thou, Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphin^ ; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee ! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man ; down with it to Orcus : let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be swallowed up forever ! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard-room, some " on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall," Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him : the chain yields, breaks ; the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glori- ous : and yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The Eight grim Towers, with their Invalide musketry, their paving-stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact ; Ditch yawning impas- sable, stone-faced ; the inner Drawbridge with its back towards us ; the Bastille is still to take ! To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most important in History) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to under- stand so much as the plan of the building ! But there is open Esplanade, at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine ; there are such Fore-courts, Cour Avance, Gourde VOrme, arched Gate- way (where Louis Tournay now fights) ; then new drawbridges, 202 THE STORMING GF THE BASTILLE dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers : a labyrinthic Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty ; beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again ! Ordnance of all calibres ; throats of all capacities ; men of all plans, every man his own engineer : seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals ; no one would heed him in coloured clothes : half-pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve. Frantic Patriots pick up the grapeshots ; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the H6tel-de-Ville : Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt 1 Flesselles is " pale to the very lips ; " for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy ; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirlpool, strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming ; and all minor whirlpools play distract- edly into that grand Fire-Maelstrom which is lashing round the Bastille. And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the Marine Service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's cannon. Sin- gular (if we were not used to the like) : Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn ; the King of Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of him for a hundred years. Yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music. For, hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Bre.st Diligence, and ran. Gardes Francaises also, will be here, with real artillery : were not the walls so thick ! Upwards from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry, without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone ; hardly through portholes show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot ; and make no impression ! Let the conflagration rage ; of whatsoever is combustible ! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. ( A distracted " Peruke-maker with two fiery torches " is for burning " the salt- petres of the Arsenal ; " had not a woman run screaming THSMAS CARLYLE 2O3 had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), over-turned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. ] A young beautiful lady seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in De Launay's sight ; she lies swooned on a paillasse : but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemere, the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt ; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke : almost to the choking of Patriotism itself ; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart, and Reole the " gigantic haberdasher " another. Smoke as of Tophet ; confusion as of Babel ; noise as the Crack of Doom ! Blood flows ; the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie ; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall ? The walls are so thick ! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the H6tel-de-Ville ; Abb6 Fauchet (who was of one) can say, with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gate- way; and stand, rolling their drum; but to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them: they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What^to do ? The Firemen are S here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides cannon, to wet the touch-holes ; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high ; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classi- cal knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired by a " mixture of phosphorus and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing-pumps : " O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready ? Every man his own engineer ! And still the fire-deluge abates not ; even women are firing, and Turks ; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk. Gardes Francaises have come ; real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy ; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands. How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner - 204 THE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE Court there, at its ease, hour after hour ; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing ! It tolled One when the firing began ; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing slakes not. Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes ; their Turnkeys answer vaguely. Wo to thee, De Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides 1 Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy : Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoi- tring, cautiously along the Quais, as far as Pont Neuf. " We are come to join you," said the Captain ; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening nis blue lips, for there is sense in him ; and croaks : " Alight then, and give up your arms ! " The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole.- Who the squat individual was ? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple ! Great truly, O thou remarkable Dog- leech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth : and yet this same day come four years 1 But let the curtains of the Future hang. What shall De Launay do ? One thing only De Launay could have done : what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm's-length of the Powder- Magazine ; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-holder ; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was : Harmless he sat there, while unharmed ; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should in no wise be surrendered, save to the King's Messenger : one old man's life is worthless, so it be lost with honour ; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs skyward ! In such statu- esque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Basoche, Cur6 of Saint- Stephen, and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to work their will. And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts THOMAS CARLYLE 2O5 of all men ; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men ? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul ; their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs ? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the Pop- ulace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser : Bread ! Bread ! Great is the combined voice of men ; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing somewhere beyond Time. De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between two ; hopes in the middle of despair ; surrenders not his Fortress ; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee 1 Jail, Jailoring and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish. For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared : call it the World-Chimaera, blowing fire ! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets : they have made a white flag of napkins ; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing ; disheartened in the fire- deluge : a porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man ! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone Ditch, plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots, he hovers peri- lous : such a Dove toward such an Ark ! Deftly, thou shifty Usher : one man already fell ; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry 1 Usher Maillard falls not : deftly, unerr- ing, he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his porthole ; the shifty Usher snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender : Pardon, immunity to all ! Are they ac- cepted? " Foi d'officier, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, " they are ! " Sinks the drawbridge, Usher Maillard bolt- ing it when down ; rushes-in the living deluge : the Bastille is fallen I Victoire I La Bastille est prise ! 206 QUEEN ELIZABETH QUEEN ELIZABETH JOHN RICHARD GREEN [From A Short History of the English People, 1874.] NEVER had the fortunes of England sunk to a lower ebb than at the moment when Elizabeth mounted the throne. The coun- try was humiliated by defeat, and brought to the verge of rebel- lion by the bloodshed and misgovernment of Mary's reign. The old social discontent, trampled down for a time by the horsemen of Somerset, remained a menace to public order. The religious strife had passed beyond hope of reconciliation, now that the reformers were parted from their opponents by the fires of Smithfield and the party of the New Learning all but dissolved. The more earnest Catholics were bound helplessly to Rome. The temper of the Protestants, burned at home or driven into exile abroad, had become a fiercer thing, and the Calvinistic refugees were pouring back from Geneva with dreams of revolu- tionary change in Church and State. England, dragged at the heels of Philip into a useless and ruinous war, was left without an ally save Spain ; while France, mistress of Calais, became mistress of the Channel. Not only was Scotland a standing dan- ger in the north, through the French marriage of its queen Mary Stuart, and its consequent bondage to French policy ; but Mary Stuart and her husband now assumed the style and arms of Eng- lish sovereigns, and threatened to rouse every Catholic through- out the realm against Elizabeth's title. In presence of this host of dangers the country lay helpless, without army or fleet, or the means of manning one, for the treasury, already drained by the waste of Edward's reign, had been utterly exhausted by Mary's restoration of the Church-lands in possession of the Crown, and by the cost of her war with France. England's one hope lay in the character of her queen. Eliza- beth was now in her twenty-fifth year. Personally she had more than her mother's beauty ; her figure was commanding, her face long but queenly and intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had grown up amidst the liberal culture of Henry's court a bold JOHN RICHARD GREEN 2O/ horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful d ancer, a skilled musician, and an accomplished scholar. She studied every morning the Greek Testament, and followed this by the tragedies of Sophocles or orations of Demosthenes, and could " rub up her rusty Greek " at need to bandy pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. But she was far from being a mere pedant. The new literature which was springing up around her found constant welcome in her court. She spoke Italian and French as fluently as her mother-tongue. She was t familiar with Ariosto and Tasso. Even amidst the affectation and love of anagrams and puerilities which sullied her later years, she listened with delight to the Faery Queen, and found a smile for " Master Spenser " when he appeared in her presence. Her moral temper recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood within her veins. She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless courage and her amaz- ing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were school- boys ; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear ; she would break now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But strangely in contrast with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self- indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. " To see her was heaven," Hatton told her, " the lack of her was hell." She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands ; ' or dance a coranto that the French ambassador, hidden dexter- ously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his* 208 QUEEN ELIZABETH master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly k*- jests, gave color to a thousand scandals. Her_character, in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which had broken out in the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostenta- tiously throughout her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her " sweet Robin," Lord Leicester, in the face of the court. It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth almost to the last to be little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered how " a wanton " could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Eliza- beth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. The wilfulness of Henry, the triviality of Anne Boleyn, played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellec- tual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, Eliza- beth lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her in state affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet ; she was herself plain and downright of speech with her counsellors, and she looked for a corresponding plain- ness of speech in return. If any trace of her sex lingered in her actual statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of purpose that often underlies a woman's fluctuations of feeling. It was this in part which gave her her marked supe- riority over the statesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round a council-board than those who gathered round the council-board of Elizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, she weighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy as a whole was her own. It was a policy, not of genius, but of good sense. Her aims were simple and obvious : to preserve her throne, to JOHN RICHARD GREEN 2OQ keep England out of war, to restore civil and religious order. Something of womanly caution and timidity perhaps backed the passionless indifference with which she set aside the larger JT schemes of ambition which were ever opening before her eyes. ' She was resolute in her refusal of the Low Countries. She rejected with a laugh the offers of the Protestants to make her "head of the religion" and "mistress of the seas." But her amazing success in the end sprang mainly from this wise limita- tion of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of her coun- sellors of her real resources ; she knew instinctively how far she could go, and what she could do. Her cold, critical intellect was never swayed by enthusiasm or by panic either to exagger- ate or to under-estimate her risks or her power. Of political wisdom indeed in its larger and more generous sense Elizabeth had little or none ; but her political tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course at a glance, but she played with a hundred courses, fitfully and discursively, as a musician runs his fingers over the key-board, till she hit sud- denly upon the right one. Her nature was essentially practical and of the present. She distrusted a plan in fact just in pro- portion to its speculative range or its outlook into the future. Her notion of statesmanship lay in watching how things turned out around her, and in seizing the moment for making the best of them. A policy of this limited, practical, tentative order was not only best suited to the England of her day, to its small resources and the transitional character of its religious and political belief, but it was one eminently suited to Elizabeth's peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail, and in details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope for their exer- cise. " No War, my Lords," the Queen used to cry imperiously at the council-board, " No War ! " but her hatred of war sprang less from her aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, than from the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomatic manoeuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her delight in the consciousness of her ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish freaks, freaks in which one can hardly see any purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mysti- fication. She revelled in " bye-ways " and " crooked ways." p 2IO QUEEN ELIZABETH y~" She played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much of the same feline delight in the mere embarrass- ment of her victims. When she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh sport in mystifying her own jninisters. Had Elizabeth written the story of her reign she would have prided herself, not on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she had hood- winked and outwitted every statesman in Europe during fifty years. Nor was her trickery without political value. Ignoble, inexpressibly wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems to us now, tracing it as we do through a thousand despatches, it suc- ceeded in its main end. It gained time, and every year that was gained doubled Elizabeth's strength. Nothing is more revolting in the Queen, but nothing is more characteristic, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. A falsehood was to her simply an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty ; and the ease with which she asserted or denied whatever suited her purpose was only equalled by the cynical indifference with which she met the exposure of her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. The same purely intellectual view of things showed itself in the dexterous use she made of her very faults. Her levity carried her gaily over moments of detection and embarrassment where better women would have died of shame. She screened her tentative and hesitating statesmanship under the natural timid- ity and vacillation of her sex. She turned her very luxury and sports to good account. There were moments of grave danger in her reign when the country remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the Queen give her days to hawking and hunting, and her nights to dancing and plays. Her vanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all had their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with the successive candidates - for her hand. If political necessities made her life a lonely one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war and con- spiracies by love sonnets and romantic interviews, or of gaining a year of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a flirtation. As we track Elizabeth trough her tortuous mazes of lying JOHN RICHARD GREEN 211 and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt. But wrapped as they were in a cloud of mystery, (; the aims of her policy were throughout temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a singular tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to time broke her habitual hesi- tation proved that it was no hesitation of weakness. Elizabeth could wait and finesse ; but when the hour was come she could strike, and strike hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rash self-confidence rather than to self-distrust. She had, as strong natures always have, an unbounded confidence in her luck. " Her Majesty counts much on Fortune," Walsingham wrote bitterly ; " I wish she would trust more in Almighty God."\ The diplomatists who censured at one moment her irresolution, her delay, her changes of front, censure at the next her " obsti- nacy," her iron will, her defiance of what seemed to them inevi- table ruin. " This woman," Philip's envoy wrote after a wasted remonstrance, " this woman is possessed by a hundred thousand devils." To her own subjects, indeed, who knew nothing of her manoeuvres and retreats, of her " bye-ways " and " crooked ways," she seemed the embodiment of dauntless resolution. Brave as they were, the men who swept the Spanish Main or glided between the icebergs of Baffin's Bay never doubted that the palm of bravery lay with their Queen. Her steadiness and courage in the pursuit of her aims was equalled by the wisdom with which she chose the men to accomplish them. She had a quick eye for merit of any sort, and a wonderful power of enlist- ing its whole energy in her service. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham was just as unerring in its choice of the meanest of her agents. Her success indeed in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the single exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she set them to do, sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristic of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim her temper fell below many of the tempers of her time, in the breadth of its range, in the universality of its sympathy it stood far above them all. Elizabeth could talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno ; she could discuss Euphuism with Lyly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex ; she could turn from talk of the last fashions 212 QUEEN ELIZABETH to pore with Cecil over despatches and treasury books ; she could pass from tracking traitors with Walsingham to settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculate with Frobisher the chances of a north-west passage to the Indies. The versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understand every phase of the intellectual movement of her day, and to fix by a sort of instinct on its higher representatives. But the greatness of the Queen rests above all on her power over her people. We have had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as Elizabeth. The passion of love, of loyalty, of admiration which finds its most perfect expression in the Faery Queen, throbbed as intensely through the veins of her meanest subjects. To England, during her reign of half a century, she was a virgin and a Protestant Queen ; and her immorality, her absolute want of religious enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the brightness of the national ideal. Her worst acts broke fruitlessly against the general devotion. A Puritan, whose hand she cut off in a freak of tyrannous resentment, waved his hat with the hand that was left, and shouted, " God save Queen Elizabeth ! " Of her faults, indeed, England beyond the circle of her court knew little or nothing. The shiftings of her diplomacy were never seen out- side the royal closet. The nation at large could only judge her foreign policy by its main outlines, by its temperance and good sense, and above all by its success. But every Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth in her rule at home, in her love of peace, her instinct of order, the firmness and moderation of her gov- ernment, the judicious spirit of conciliation and compromise among warring factions which gave the country an unexampled tranquillity at a time when almost every other country in Europe was torn with civil war. Every sign of the growing prosperity, the sight of London as it became the mart of the world, of stately mansions as they rose on every manor, told, and justly told, in Elizabeth's favour. In one act of her civil administration she showed the boldness and originality of a great ruler ; for the opening of her reign saw her face the social difficulty which had so long impeded English progress, by the issue of a commis- sion of inquiry which ended in the solution of the problem by the system of poor-laws. She lent a ready patronage to the JOHN RICHARD GREEN 21$ new commerce ; she considered its extension and protection as a part of public policy, and her statue in the centre of the Lon- don Exchange was a tribute on the part of the merchant class to the interest with which she watched and shared personally in its enterprises. Her thrift won a general gratitude. The memo- ries of the Terror and of the Martyrs threw into bright relief the aversion from bloodshed which was conspicuous in her ear- lier reign, and never wholly wanting through its fiercer close. Above all there was a general confidence in her instinctive knowledge of the national temper. Her finger was always on the public pulse. She knew exactly when she could resist the feeling of her people, and when she must give way before the new sentiment of freedom which her policy unconsciously fostered. But when she retreated, her defeat had all the grace of victory ; and the frankness and unreserve of her surrender won back at once the love that her resistance had lost. Her attitude at home in fact was that of a woman whose pride in the well-being of her subjects, and whose longing for their favour, was the one warm touch in the coldness of her natural temper. If Elizabeth could be said to love anything, she loved England. " Nothing," she said to her first Parliament, in words of unwonted fire, " nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, is so dear to me as the love and good-will of my subjects." And the love and good-will which were so dear to her she fully won. She clung perhaps to her popularity the more passionately that it hid in some measure from her the terrible loneliness of her life. She was the last of the Tudors, the last of Henry's children ; and her nearest relatives were Mary Stuart and the House of Suffolk, one the avowed, the other the secret claimant of her throne. Among her mother's kindred she found but a single cousin. Whatever womanly tenderness she had, wrapt itself around Leicester ; but a marriage with Leicester was impossible, and every other union, could she even have bent to one, was denied to her by the political difficulties of her position. The one cry of bitterness which burst from Elizabeth revealed her terrible sense of the solitude of her life. " The Queen of Scots," she cried at the birth of James, " has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock." But the loneliness of her 214 QUEEN ELIZABETH position only reflected the loneliness of her nature. She stood utterly apart from the world around her, sometimes above it, sometimes below it, but never of it. It was only on its intellec- tual side that Elizabeth touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her. It was a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moral energy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when honour and enthusiasm took colours of poetic beauty, and religion became a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men around her touched Elizabeth simply as the fair tints of a picture would have touched her. She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism of William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and lives were only counters on her board. She was the one soul in her realm whom the news of St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst for ven- geance ; and while England was thrilling with its triumph over the Armada, its Queen was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit out of the spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that saved her. To the voice of gratitude, indeed, she was for the most part deaf. She accepted services such as were never rendered to any other English sovereign without a thought of return. Walsingham spent his fortune in saving her life and her throne, and she left him to die a beggar. But, as if by a strange irony, it was to this very want of sympathy that she owed some of the grander features of her character. If she was without love, she was without hate. She cherished no petty resentments ; she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. She was indifferent to abuse. Her good humor was never ruffled by the charges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last the mark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was the one hardest to bring home to her. Even when the Catholic plots broke out in her very household she would listen to no proposals for the removal of Catholics from her court. JAMES BRYCE 21$ NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AS MOULDING PUBLIC OPINION JAMES BRYCE [Chapter 80 of The American Commonwealth, 1894.] As the public opinion of a people is even more directly than its political institutions the reflection and expression of its charac- ter, we may begin the analysis of opinion in America by noting some of those general features of national character which give tone and colour to the people's thoughts and feelings on politics. There are, of course, varieties proper to different classes, and to different parts of the vast territory of the Union ; but it is well to consider first such characteristics as belong to the nation as a whole, and afterwards to examine the various classes and districts of the country. And when I speak of the nation, I mean the native Americans. What follows is not applicable to the recent immigrants from Europe, and, of course, even less applicable to the Southern negroes ; though both these elements are potent by their votes. The Americans are a good-natured people, kindly, helpful to one another, disposed to take a charitable view even of wrong- doers. Their anger sometimes flames up, but the fire is soon extinct. Nowhere is cruelty more abhorred. Even a mob lynching a horse thief in the West has consideration for the criminal, and will give him a good drink of whisky before he is strung up. Cruelty to slaves was unusual while slavery lasted, the best proof of which is the quietness of the slaves during the war when all the men and many of the boys of the South were serving in the Confederate armies. As everybody knows, juries are more lenient to offences of all kinds but one, offences against women, than they are anywhere in Europe. The Southern "rebels" were soon forgiven; and though civil wars are pro- verbially bitter, there have been few struggles in which the combatants did so many little friendly acts for one another, few in which even the vanquished have so quickly buried their 2l6 NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS resentments. It is true that newspapers and public speakers say hard things of their opponents ; but this is a part of the game, and is besides a way of relieving their feelings : the bark is sometimes the louder in order that a bite may not follow. Vindictiveness shown by a public man excites general dis- approval, and the maxim of letting bygones be bygones is pushed so far that an offender's misdeeds are often forgotten when they ought to be remembered against him. All the world knows that they are a humorous people. They are as conspicuously the purveyors of humour to the nineteenth century as the French were the purveyors of wit to the eighteenth. Nor is this sense of the ludicrous side of things confined to a few brilliant writers. It is diffused among the whole people ; it colours their ordinary life, and gives to their talk that distinctively new flavour which a European palate enjoys. Their capacity for enjoying a joke against themselves was oddly illustrated at the outset of the Civil War, a time of stern excitement, by the merri- ment which arose over the hasty retreat of the Federal troops at the battle of Bull Run. When William M. Tweed was ruling and robbing New York, and had set on the bench men who were openly prostituting justice, the citizens found the situation so amusing that they almost forgot to be angry. Much of President Lincoln's popularity, and much also of the gift he showed for restoring confidence to the North at the darkest moments of the war, was due to the humorous way he used to turn things, convey- ing the impression of not being himself uneasy, even when he was most so. . That indulgent view of mankind which I have already mentioned, a view odd in a people whose ancestors were penetrated with the belief in original sin, is strengthened by this wish to get amuse- pient out of everything. The want of seriousness which it pro- duces may be more apparent than real. Yet it has its signifi- cance ; for people become affected by the language they use, as we see men grow into cynics when they have acquired the habit of talking cynicism for the sake of effect. They are a hopeful people. Whether or no they are right in calling themselves a new people, they certainly seem to feel in their veins the bounding pulse of youth. They see a long vista JAMES BRYCE 21? of years stretching out before them, in which they will have time enough to cure all their faults, to overcome all the obstacles that block their path. They look at their enormous territory with its still only half-explored sources of wealth, they reckon up the growth of their population and their products, they contrast the comfort and intelligence of their labouring classes with the con- dition of the masses in the Old World. They remember the dangers that so long threatened the Union from the slave power, and the rebellion it raised, and see peace and harmony now restored, the South more prosperous and contented than at any previous epoch, perfect good feeling between all sections of the country. It is natural for them to believe in their star. And this sanguine temper makes them tolerant of evils which they regard as transitory, removable as soon as time can be found to root them up. . They have unbounded faith in what they call the People and in a democratic system of government. The great States of the European continent are distracted by the contests of Republicans and Monarchists, and of rich and poor, contests which go down to the foundations of government, and in France are further em- bittered by religious passions. Even in England the ancient Constitution is always under repair, and while many think it is being ruined by changes, others hold that still greater changes are needed to make it tolerable. No such questions trouble native American minds, for nearly everybody believes, and everybody declares, that the frame of government is in its main lines so excellent that such reforms as seem called for need not touch those lines, but are required only to protect the Constitution from being perverted by the parties. Hence a further confidence that the people are sure to decide right in the long run, a confidence inevitable and essential in a government which refers every ques- tion to the arbitrament of numbers. There have, of course, been instances where the once insignificant minority proved to have been wiser than the majority of the moment. Such was eminently the case in the great slavery struggle. But here the minority pre- vailed by growing into a majority as events developed the real issues, so that this also has been deemed a ground for holding that all minorities which have right on their side will bring round 2l8 NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS their antagonists, and in the long run win by voting power. If you ask an intelligent citizen why he so holds, he will answer that truth and justice are sure to make their way into the minds and consciences of the majority. This is deemed an axiom, and the more readily so deemed, because truth is identified with common sense, the quality which the average citizen is most confidently proud of possessing. This feeling shades off into another, externally like it, but at bottom distinct the feeling not only that the majority, be it right or wrong, will and must prevail, but that its being the major- ity proves it to be right. This idea, which appears in the guise sometimes of piety and sometimes of fatalism, seems to be no contemptible factor in the present character of the people. It will be more fully dealt with in a later chapter. The Americans are an educated people, compared with the whole mass of the population in any European country except Switzerland, parts of Germany, Norway, Iceland, and Scotland; that is to say, the average of knowledge is higher, the habit of reading and thinking more generally diffused, than in any other country. (I speak, of course, of the native Americans, excluding negroes and recent immigrants.) They know the Constitution of their own country, they follow public affairs, they join in local gov- ernment and learn from it how government must be carried on, and in particular how discussion must be conducted in meetings, and its results tested at elections. The Town Meeting has been the most perfect school of self-government in any modern country. In villages, they still exercise their minds on theological questions, debating points of Christian doctrine with no small acuteness. Women in particular, though their chief reading is fiction and theology, pick up at the public schools and from the popular magazines far more miscellaneous information than the women of any European country possess, and this naturally tells on the intelligence of the men. That the education of the masses is nevertheless a superficial education goes without saying. It is sufficient to enable them to think they know something about the great problems of politics : insufficient to show them how little they know. The public ele- mentary school gives everybody the key to knowledge in making JAMES BRYCE 219 reading and writing familiar, but it has not time to teach him how to use the key, whose use is in fact, by the pressure of daily work, almost confined to the newspaper and the magazine. So we may say that if the political education of the average American voter be compared with that of the average voter in Europe, it stands high ; but if it be compared with the functions which the theory of the American government lays on him, which its spirit implies, which the methods of its party organization assume, its inadequacy is manifest. This observation, however, is not so much a reproach to the schools, which generally do what English schools omit instruct the child in the principles of the Constitution as a tribute to the height of the ideal which the American conception of popular rule sets up. For the functions of the citizen are not, as has hitherto been the case in Europe, confined to the choosing of legislators, who are then left to settle issues of policy and select executive rulers. The American citizen is one of the governors of the Republic. Issues are decided and rulers selected by the direct popular vote. Elections are so frequent that to do his duty at them a citizen ought to be constantly watching public affairs with a full compre- hension of the principles involved in them, and a judgment of the candidates derived from a criticism of their arguments as well as a recollection of their past careers. The instruction received in the common schools and from the newspapers, and supposed to be developed by the practice of primaries and conventions, while it makes the voter deem himself capable of governing, does not fit him to weigh the real merits of statesmen, to discern the true grounds on which questions ought to be decided, to note the drift of events and discover the direction in which parties are being carried. He is like a sailor who knows the spars and ropes of the ship and is expert in working her, but is ignorant of geogra- phy and navigation ; who can perceive that some of the officers are smart and others dull, but cannot judge which of them is qualified to use the sextant or will best keep his head during a hurricane. They are a moral and well-conducted people. Setting aside the colhivies gentium * which one finds in Western mining camps, 1 [Offscourings of nations.] 220 NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS and which popular literature has presented to Europeans as fat larger than it really is, setting aside also the rabble of a few great cities and the negroes of the South, the average of temperance, chastity, truthfulness, and general probity is somewhat higher than in any of the great nations of Europe. The instincts of the native farmer or artisan are almost invariably kindly and charitable. He respects the law ; he is deferential to women and indulgent to children ; he attaches an almost excessive value to the possession of a genial manner and the observance of domestic duties. They are also a religious people. It is not merely that they respect religion and its ministers, for that one might say of Russians or Sicilians, not merely that they are assiduous church-goers and Sunday-school teachers, but that they have an intelligent interest in the form of faith they profess, are pious without superstition, and zealous without bigotry. The importance which they still, though less than formerly, attach to dogmatic propositions, does not prevent them from feeling the moral side of their theology. Christianity influences conduct, not indeed half as much as in theory it ought, but probably more than it does in any other modern country, and far more than it did in the so-called ages of faith. Nor do their moral and religious impulses remain in the soft haze of self-complacent sentiment. The desire to expunge or cure the visible evils of the world is strong. Nowhere are so many philanthropic and reformatory agencies at work. Zeal out- runs discretion, outruns the possibilities of the case, in not a few of the efforts made, as well by legislation as by voluntary action, to suppress vice, to prevent intemperance, to purify popular literature. Religion apart, they are an unreverential people. I do not mean irreverent, far from it ; nor do I mean that they have not a great capacity for hero-worship, as they have many a time shown. I mean that they are little disposed, especially in public ques- tions political, economical, or social to defer to the opinions of those who are wiser or better instructed than themselves. Everything tends to make the individual independent and self- reliant. He goes early into the world ; he is left to make his way alone ; he tries one occupation after another, if the first or second venture does not prosper ; he gets to think that each man is his JAMES BRYCE 221 own best helper and adviser. Thus he is led, I will not say to form his own opinions, for even in America few are those who do that, but to fancy that he has formed them, and to feel little need of aid from others towards correcting them. There is, therefore, less disposition than in Europe to expect light and leading on public affairs from speakers or writers. Oratory is not directed towards instruction, but towards stimulation. Special knowledge, which commands deference in applied science or in finance, does not command it in politics, because that is not deemed a special subject, but one within the comprehension of every practical man. Politics is, to be sure, a profession, and so far might seem to need professional aptitudes. But the professional politician is not the man who has studied statesmanship, but the man who has prac- tised the art of running conventions and winning elections. Even that strong point of America/ the completeness and highly popular character of local government, contributes to lower the standard of attainment expected in a public man, [because the citizens judge of all politics .by the politics they see first and know best, those of their township or city, and fancy that he who is fit to be selectman, or county commissioner, or alder- man, is fit to sit in the great council of the nation. Like the shepherd in Virgil, they think the only difference between their town and Rome is in its size, and believe that what does for La- fay etteville will do well enough for Washington. Hence when a man of statesmanlike gifts appears, he has little encouragement to take a high and statesmanlike tone, for his words do not neces- sarily receive weight from his position. He fears to be instruc- tive or hortatory, lest such an attitude should expose him to ridicule ; and in America ridicule is a terrible power. Nothing escapes it. Few have the courage to face it. In the indulgence of it even this humane race can be unfeeling. They are a busy people. I have already observed that the leisured class is relatively small, is in fact confined to a few East- ern cities. The citizen has little time to think about political problems. Engrossing all the working hours, his avocation leaves him only stray moments for this fundamental duty. It is true that he admits his responsibilities, considers himself a member of a party, takes some interest in current events. But although 222 NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS he would reject the idea that his thinking should be done for him, he has not leisure to do it for himself, and must practically lean upon and follow his party. It astonishes an English visitor to find how small a part politics play in conversation among the wealthier classes and generally in the cities. During a tour of four months in America in the autumn of 1881, in which I had occasion to mingle with all sorts and conditions of men in all parts of the country, and particularly in the Eastern cities, I never once heard American politics discussed except when I or some other European brought the subject on the carpet. In a presi- dential year, and especially during the months of a presidential campaign, there is, of course, abundance of private talk, as well as of public speaking, but even then the issues raised are largely personal rather than political in the European sense. But at other times the visitor is apt to feel more, I think, than he feels anywhere in Britain that his host has been heavily pressed by his own business concerns during the day, and that when the hour of relaxation arrives he gladly turns to lighter and more agreeable topics than the state of the nation. This remark is less applicable to the dwellers in villages. There is plenty of political chat round the store at the cross roads, and though it is rather in the nature of gossip than of debate, it seems, along with the practice of local government, to sustain the interest of ordinary folk in public affairs. 1 The want of serious and sustained thinking is not confined to politics. One feels it even more as regards economical and social questions. To it must be ascribed the vitality of certain preju- dices and fallacies which could scarcely survive the continuous application of such vigorous minds as one finds among the Ameri- cans. Their quick perceptions serve them so well in business and in the ordinary affairs of private life that they do not feel the need for minute^ investigation and patient reflection on the under- lying principles of things. They are apt to ignore difficulties, and 1 The European country where the common people best understand politics is Switzerland. That where they talk most about politics is, I think, Greece. I re- member, for instance, in crossing the channel which divides Cephalonia from Ithaca, to have heard the boatmen discuss a recent ministerial crisis at Athens, during the whole voyage, with the liveliest interest and apparently some knowledge. JAMES BRYCE 22* when they can no longer ignore them, they will evade them rather than lay siege to them according to the rules of art. The sense that there is no time to spare haunts an American even when he might find the time, and would do best for himself by finding it. Some one will say that an aversion to steady thinking belongs to the average man everywhere. Admitting this, I must repeat once more that we are now comparing the Americans not with average men in other countries, but with the ideal citizens of a democracy. We are trying them by the standard which the theory of their government assumes. In other countries states- men or philosophers do, and are expected to do, the solid think- ing for the bulk of the people. Here the people are expected to do it for themselves. To say that they do it imperfectly is not to deny them the credit of doing it better than a European phi- losopher might have predicted. They are a commercial people, whose point of view is primarily that of persons accustomed to reckon profit and loss. Their impulse is to apply a direct practical test to men and measures, to assume that the men who have got on fastest are the smartest men, and that a scheme which seems to pay well deserves to be supported. Abstract reasonings they dislike, subtle reasonings they suspect ; they accept nothing as practical which is not plain, downright, apprehensible by an ordinary understanding. Although open-minded, so far as willingness to listen goes, they are hard to convince, because they have really made up their minds on most subjects, having adopted the prevailing notions of their locality or party as truths due to their own reflection. It may seem a contradiction to remark that with this shrewd- ness and the sort of hardness it produces, they are nevertheless an impressionable people. Yet this is true. It is not their intellect, however, that is impressionable, but their imagination and emo- tions, which respond in unexpected ways to appeals made on behalf of a cause which seems to have about it something noble or pathetic. They are capable of an ideality surpassing that of Englishmen or Frenchmen. They are an unsettled people. In no State of the Union is the bulk of the population so fixed in its residence as everywhere in Europe ; in many it is almost nomadic. Except in some of the 224 NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS stagnant districts of the South, nobody feels rooted to the soil. Here to-day and gone to-morrow, he cannot readily contract habits or trustful dependence on his neighbours. Community of interest, or of belief in such a cause as temperance, or protection for native industry, unites him for a time with others similarly minded, but congenial spirits seldom live long enough together to form a school or type of local opinion which develops strength and becomes a proselytizing force. Perhaps this tends to prevent the growth of variety in opinion. When a man arises with some power of original thought in politics, he is feeble if isolated, and is depressed by his insignificance, whereas if he grows up in favourable soil with sympathetic minds around him, whom he can in prolonged intercourse permeate with his ideas, he learns to speak with confidence and soars on the wings of his disciples. One who considers the variety of conditions under which men live in America may certainly find ground for surprise that there should be so few independent schools of opinion. But even while an unsettled, they are nevertheless an associative, because a sympathetic people. Although the atoms are in con- stant motion, they have a strong attraction for one another. Each man catches his neighbour's sentiment more quickly and easily than happens with the English. That sort of reserve and isolation, that tendency rather to repel than to invite confidence, which for- eigners attribute to the Englishman, though it belongs rather to the upper and middle class than to the nation generally, is, though not absent, yet less marked in America. 1 It seems to be one of the notes of difference between the two branches of the race. In the United States, since each man likes to feel that his ideas raise in other minds the same emotions as in his own, a sentiment or impulse is rapidly propagated and quickly conscious of its strength. Add to this the aptitude for organization which their history and institutions have educed, and one sees how the tendency to form and the talent to work combinations for a political or any other 1 I do not mean that Americans are more apt to unbosom themselves to strangers, but that they have rather more adaptiveness than the English, and are less disposed to stand alone and care nothing for the opinion of others. It is worth noticing that Americans travelling abroad seem to get more easily into touch with the inhabitants of the country than the English do ; nor have they the English habit of calling those inhabitants Frenchmen, for instance, or Germans " the natives." JAMES BRYCE 22$ object has become one of the great features of the country. Hence, too, the immense strength of party. It rests not only on interest and habit and the sense of its value as a means of work- ing the government, but also on the sympathetic element and instinct of combination ingrained in the national character. They are a changeful people. Not fickle, for they are if any- thing too tenacious of ideas once adopted, too fast bound by party ties, too willing to pardon the errors of a cherished leader. But they have what chemists call low specific heat; they grow warm suddenly and cool as suddenly; they are liable to swift and vehement outbursts of feeling which rush like wildfire across the country, gaining glow, like the wheel of a railway car, by the accelerated motion. The very similarity of ideas and equality of conditions which makes them hard to convince at first makes a conviction once implanted run its course the more triumphantly. They seem all to take flame at once, because what has told upon one, has told in the same way upon all the rest, and the obstruct- ing and separating barriers which exist in Europe scarcely exist here. Nowhere is the saying so applicable that nothing succeeds like success. The native American or so-called Know-nothing party had in two years from its foundation become a tremendous force, running, and seeming for a time likely to carry, its own presidential candidate. In three years more it was dead without hope of revival. Now and then, as for instance in the elections of 1874-75, and again in those of 1890, there comes a rush of feeling so sudden and tremendous, that the name of Tidal Wave has been invented to describe it. After this it may seem a paradox to add that the Americans are a conservative people. Yet any one who observes the power of habit among them, the tenacity with which old institutions and usages, legal and theological formulas, have been clung to, will admit the fact. A love for what is old and established is in their English blood. Moreover, prosperity helps to make them conservative. They are satisfied with the world they live in, for they have found it a good world, in which they have grown rich and can sit under their own vine and fig tree, none making them afraid. They are proud of their history and of their Constitu- tion, which has come out of the furnace of civil war with Q 226 THE ORIGIN OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY scarcely the smell of fire upon it. It is little to say that they do not seek change for the sake of change, because the nations that do this exist only in the fancy of alarmist philosophers. There are nations, however, whose impatience of existing evils, or whose proneness to be allured by visions of a brighter future, makes them under-estimate the risk of change, nations that will pull up the plant to see whether it has begun to strike root. This is not the way of the Americans. They are no doubt ready to listen to suggestions from any quarter. They do not consider that an institution is justified by its existence, but admit everything to be matter for criticism. Their keenly competitive spirit and pride in their own ingenuity have made them quicker than any other people to adopt and adapt inventions : telephones were in use in every little town over the West, while in the city of Lon- don men were just beginning to wonder whether they could be made to pay. I have remarked in an earlier chapter that the fondness for trying experiments has produced a good deal of hasty legislation, especially in the newer States, and that some of it has already been abandoned. But these admissions do not affect the main proposition. The Americans are at bottom a conserva- tive people, in virtue both of the deep instincts of their race and of that practical shrewdness which recognizes the value of per- manence and solidity in institutions. They are conservative in their fundamental beliefs, in the structure of their governments, in their social and domestic usages. They are like a tree whose pendulous shoots quiver and rustle with the lightest breeze, while its roots enfold the rock with a grasp which storms cannot loosen. THE ORIGIN OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY JOSIAH DWIGHT WHITNEY [From The Yosemite Guide-Book, 1874.] ALL will recognize in the Yosemite a peculiar and unique type of scenery. Cliffs absolutely vertical, like the upper portions of the Half Dome and El Capitan, and of such immense height as JOSIAH DWIGHT WHITNEY 22? these, are, so far as we know, to be seen nowhere else. The dome form of mountains is exhibited on a grand scale in other parts of the Sierra Nevada ; but there is no Half Dome, even among the stupendous precipices at the head of the King's River. No one can avoid asking, What is the origin of this peculiar type of scen- ery? How has this unique valley been formed, and what are the geological causes which have produced its wonderful cliffs, and all the other features which combine to make this locality so remark- able ? These questions we will endeavor to answer, as well as our ability to pry into what went on in the deep-seated regions of the ' earth, in former geological ages, will permit. Most of the great canons and valleys of the Sierra Nevada have resulted from aqueous denudation, and in no part of the world has this kind of work been done on a larger scale. The long- continued action of tremendous torrents of water, rushing with impetuous velocity down the slopes of the mountains, has exca- vated those immense gorges by which the chain of the Sierra Nevada is furrowed, on its western slope, to the depth of thou- sands of feet. This erosion, great as it is, has been done within a comparatively recent period, geologically speaking, as is conclu- sively demonstrated in numerous localities. At the Abbey's Ferry crossing of the Stanislaus, for instance, a portion of the mass of Table Mountain is seen on each side of the river, in such a posi- tion as to demonstrate that the current of the lava which forms the summit of this mountain once flowed continuously across what is now a canon over 2000 feet deep, showing that the erosion of that immense gorge has all been effected since the lava flowed down from the higher portion ' of the Sierra. This event took place, as we know from the fossil bones and plants embedded under the volcanic mass, at a very recent geological period, or in the latter part of the Tertiary epoch, and after the appearance of man on the earth. The eroded canons of the Sierra, however, whose formation is due to the action of water, never have vertical walls, nor do their sides present the peculiar angular forms which are seen in the Yosemite, as, for instance, in El Capitan, where two perpendic- ular surfaces of smooth granite, more than 3000 feet high, meet each other at a right angle. It is sufficient to look for a 228 THE ORIGIN OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY moment at the vertical faces of El Capitan and the Bridal Veil Rock, turned down the Valley, or away from the direction in which the eroding forces must have acted, to be able to say that aqueous erosion could not have been the agent employed to do any such work. The squarely cut re-entering angles, like those below El Capitan, and between Cathedral Rock and the Sentinel, or in the Illilouette canon, were never produced by ordinary ero- sion. Much less could any such cause be called in to account for the peculiar formation of the Half Dome, the vertical portion of which is all above the ordinary level of the walls of the Valley, rising 2000 feet, in sublime isolation, above any point which could have been reached by denuding agencies, even supposing the current of water to have filled the whole Valley. Much less can it be supposed that the peculiar form of the Yosemite is due to the erosive action of ice. A more absurd the- ory was never advanced than that by which it was sought to ascribe to glaciers the sawing out of these vertical walls, and the rounding of the domes. Nothing more unlike the real work of ice, as exhibited in the Alps, could be found. Besides, there is no reason to suppose, or at least no proof, that glaciers have ever occupied the Valley or any portion of it, as will be explained in the next chapter ; so that this theory, based on entire ignorance of the whole subject, may be dropped without wasting any more time upon it. The theory of erosion not being admissible to account for the formation of the Yosemite Valley, we have to fall back on some one of those movements of the earth's crust to which the primal forms of mountain valleys are due. The forces which have acted to produce valleys are complex in their nature, and it is not easy to classify the forms which have resulted from them in a satisfac- tory manner. The two principal types of valleys, however, are those produced by rents or fissures in the crust, and those resulting from flexures or foldings of the strata. The former are usually transverse to the mountain chain in which they occur ; the latter are more frequently parallel to them, and parallel to the general strike of the strata of which the mountains are made up. Valleys which have originated in cross fractures are usually very narrow defiles, enclosed within steep walls of rocks, the steepness of the JO SI AH D WIGHT WHITNEY 229 walls increasing with the hardness of the rock. It would be diffi- cult to point to a good example of this kind of valley in California ; the famous defile of the Via Mala in Switzerland is one of the best which could be cited. Valleys formed by foldings of the strata are very common in many mountain chains, especially in those typical ones, the Jura and the Appalachian. Many of the valleys of the Coast Ranges are of this order. A valley formed in either one of the ways suggested above may be modified afterwards by forces pertaining to either of the others ; thus a valley originating in a transverse fissure may afterwards become much modified by an erosive agency, or a longitudinal flexure valley may have one of its sides raised up or let down by a " fault " or line of fissure run- ning through or across it. If we examine the Yosemite to see if traces of an origin in either of the above ways can be detected there, we obtain a negative answer. The Valley is too wide to have been formed by a fissure ; it is about as wide as it is deep, and, if it had been originally a simple crack, the walls must have been moved bodily away from each other, carrying the whole chain of the Sierra with them, to one side or the other, or both, for the distance of half a mile. Besides, when a cliff has been thus formed, there will be no difficulty in recognizing the fact, from the corre- spondence of the outlines of the two sides ; just as, when we break a stone in two, the pieces must necessarily admit of being fitted together again. No correspondence of the two sides of the Yosemite can be detected, nor will the most ingenious con- triving, or lateral moving, suffice to bring them into anything like adaptation to each other. A square recess on one side is met on the other, not by a corresponding projection, but by a plain wall or even another cavity. These facts are sufficient to make the adoption of the theory of a rent or fissure impossible. There is much the same difficulty in conceiving of the formation of the Valley by any flexure or folding process. The forms and outlines of the masses of rock limiting it are too angular, and have too little development in any one direction ; they are cut off squarely at the upper end, where the ascent to the general level of the country is by gigantic steps, and not by a gradual rise. The direction of the Valley, too, is transverse to the gen 230 THE ORIGIN OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY era! line of elevation of the mountains, and not parallel with it, as it should be, roughly at least, were it the result of folding or upheaval. In short, we are led irresistibly to the adoption of a theory of the origin of the Yosemite Valley in a way which has hardly yet been recognized as one of those in which valleys may be formed, probably for the reason that there are so few cases in which such an event can be absolutely proved to have occurred. We conceive that, during the process of upheaval of the Sierra, or, possibly, at some time after that had taken place, there was at the Yosemite a subsidence of a limited area, marked by lines of " fault" or fissures crossing each other somewhat nearly at right angles. In other and more simple language, the bottom of the Valley sank down to an unknown depth, owing to its support being withdrawn from underneath during some of those convulsive movements which must have attended the upheaval of so extensive and elevated a chain, no matter how slow we may imagine the process to have been. Subsidence, over ex- tensive areas, of portions of the earth's crust, is not at all a new idea in geology, and there is nothing in this peculiar application of it which need excite surprise. It is the great amount of vertical displacement for the small area implicated which makes this a peculiar case ; but it would not be easy to give any good reason why such an exceptional result should not be brought about, amid the complicated play of forces which the elevation of a great mountain chain must set in motion. By the adoption of the subsidence theory for the formation of the Yosemite, we are able to get over one difficulty which appears insurmountable with any other. This is, the very small amount of debris at the base of the cliffs, and even, at a few points, its entire absence, as previously noticed in our descrip- tion of the Valley. We see that fragments of rocks are loos- ened by rain, frost, gravity, and other natural causes, along the walls, and probably not a winter elapses that some great mass of detritus does not come thundering down from above, adding, as it is easy to see from actual inspection of those slides which have occurred within the past few years, no inconsiderable amount to the talus. Several of these great rock-avalanches JO SI AH D WIGHT WHITNEY 231 have taken place since the Valley was inhabited. One which fell near Cathedral Rock is said to have shaken the Valley like an earthquake. This abrasion of the edges of the Valley has unquestionably been going on during a vast period of time ; what has become of the detrital material ? Some masses of granites now lying in the Valley one in particular near the base of the Yosemite Fall are as large as houses. Such masses as these could never have been removed from the Valley by currents of water ; in fact, there is no evidence of any considerable amount of aqueous erosion, for the canon of the Merced below the Yosemite is nearly free from detritus, all the way down to the plain. The falling masses have not been carried out by a gla- cier, for there are below the Valley no remains of the moraines which such an operation could not fail to have formed. It appears to us that there is no way of disposing of the ^ast mass of detritus, which must have fallen from the walls of the Yosemite since the formation of the Valley, except by assuming that it has gone down to fill the abyss, which was opened by the subsidence which our theory supposes to have taken place. What the depth of the chasm may have been we have no data, for computing ; but that it must have been very great is proved by the fact that it has been able to receive the accumulation of so long a period of time. The cavity was, undoubtedly, occu- pied by water, forming a lake of unsurpassed beauty and gran- deur, until quite a recent epoch. The gradual desiccation of the whole country, the disappearance of the glaciers, and the filling up of the abyss to nearly a level with the present outlet, where the Valley passes into a canon of the usual form, have converted the lake into a valley with a river meandering through it. The process of filling up still continues, and the talus will accumulate perceptibly fast, although a long time must elapse before the general appearance of the Valley will be much altered by this cause, so stupendous is the vertical height of its walls, and so slow their crumbling away, at least as compared with the historic duration of time. Lake Tahoe and the valley which it partly occupies we con- ceive also to be, like the Yosemite, the result of local subsidence. It has evidently not been produced by erosion ; its depth below 232 ON A PIECE OF CHALK the mountains on each side, amounting to as much as 3000 feet, forbids this idea, as do also its limited area and its parallelism with the axis of the chain. The Lake is still very deep, over 1000 feet; but how deep it was originally, and how much detritus has been carried into it, we have no data for even crudely estimating. ON A PIECE OF CHALK A LECTURE TO WORKING MEN THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY TP ^y~ *\ -i N^ [From Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, 1870.] IF a well were to be sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as " chalk." Not only here, but over the whole country of Norfolk, the well-sinker might carry his shaft down many hundred feet with- out coming to the end of the chalk ; and, on the sea-coast, where the waves have pared away the face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the high cliffs are often wholly formed of the same material. Northward, the chalk may be followed as far as Yorkshire ; on the south coast it appears abruptly in the picturesque western bays of Dorset, and breaks into the Needles of the Isle of Wight; while on the shores of Kent it supplies that long line of white cliffs to which England owes her name of Albion. Were the thin soil which covers it all washed away, a curved band of white chalk, here broader, and there narrower, might be followed diagonally across England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough Head in Yorkshire a distance of over 280 miles as the crow flies. From this land to the North Sea, on the east, and the Chan- nel, on the south, the chalk is largely hidden by other deposits ; THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 233 but, except in the Weald of Kent and Sussex, it enters into the very foundations of all the south-eastern counties. Attaining, as it does in some places, a thickness of more than a thousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted to be a mass of considerable magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers but an insignificant portion of the whole area occupied by the chalk formation of the globe, which has precisely the same general characters as ours, and is found in detached patches, some less, and others more extensive, than the English. Qhalk occurs in north-west Ireland ; it stretches over a large part of France, the chalk which underlies Paris being, in fact, a continuation of that of the London basin ; it runs through Denmark and Central Europe, and extends southward to North Africa ; while eastward, it appears in the Crimea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores' of the Sea of Aral, in Central Asia. If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circum- scribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3000 miles in long diameter the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the largest existing inland sea the Mediterranean. Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the dis- tricts in which it occurs. The undulating downs, and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk country, have a peacefully domestic and mutton-suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be called either grand or beautiful. But on our southern coasts, the wall-sided cliffs, many hundred feet high, with vast needles and pinnacles standing out in the sea, sharp and solitary enough to serve as perches for the wary cormorantj confer a wonderful beauty and grandeur upon the chalk headlands. And, in the East, chalk has its share in the formation of some of the most venerable of mountain ranges, such as the Lebanon. What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth ? and whence did it come ? 234 ON A PIECE OF CHALK You may think this is no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification. If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a " piece of chalk " for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest. A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, to-night. Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful uni- verse, and of man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature. The language of the chalk is not hard to learn, not nearly so hard as Latin, if you only want to get at the broad features of the story it has to tell ; and I propose that we now set to work to spell that story out together. We all know that if we " burn " chalk the result is quicklime. Chalk, in fact, is a compound of carbonic acid gas, and lime, and when you make it very hot the carbonic acid flies away and the lime is left. By this method of procedure we see the lime, but we do not see the carbonic acid. If, on the other hand, you were to pow- der a little chalk and drop it into a good deal of strong vinegar, there would be a great bubbling and fizzing, and, finally, a clear THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 23$ liquid, in which no sign of chalk would appear. Here you see the carbonic acid in the bubbles ; the lime, dissolved in the vine- gar, vanishes from sight. There are a great many other ways of showing that chalk is essentially nothing but carbonic acid and quicklime. Chemists enunciate the result of all the experi- ments which prove this, by stating that chalk is almost wholly composed of " carbonate of lime." It is desirable for us to start from the knowledge of this fact, though it may not seem to help us very far towards what we seek. For carbonate of lime is a widely-spread substance, and is met with under very various conditions. All sorts of lime- stone are composed of more or less pure carbonate of lime. The crust which is often deposited by waters which have drained through limestone rocks, in the form of what are called stalag- mites and stalactites, is carbonate of lime. Or, to take a more familiar example, the fur on the inside of a tea-kettle is carbo- nate of lime ; and, for anything chemistry tells us to the contrary, the chalk might be a kind of gigantic fur upon the bottom of the earth-kettle, which is kept pretty hot below. Let us try another method of making the chalk tell its own history. To the unassisted eye chalk looks simply like a very loose and open kind of stone. But it is possible to grind a slice of chalk down so thin that you can see through it until it is thin enough, in fact, to be examined with any magnifying power that may be thought desirable. A thin slice of the fur of a J kettle might be made in the same way. If it were examined microscopically, it would show itself to be a more or less dis- tinctly laminated mineral substance, and nothing more. But the slice of chalk presents a totally different appearance when placed under the microscope. The general mass of it is made up pf very minute granules ; but, imbedded in this matrix, are innumerable bodies, some smaller and some larger, but, on a rough average, not more than a hundredth of an inch in diameter, having a well-defined shape and structure. A cubic inch of some specimens of chalk may contain hundreds of thousands of these bodies, compacted together with incalcu- lable millions of the granules. The examination of a transparent slice gives a good notion of 236 ON A PIECE OF CHALK the manner in which the components of the chalk are arranged, and of their relative proportions. But, by rubbing up some chalk with a brush in water and then pouring off the milky fluid, so as to obtain sediments of different degrees of fineness, the granules and the minute rounded bodies may be pretty well separated from one another, and submitted to microscopic examination, either as opaque or as transparent objects. By combining the views obtained in these various methods, each of the rounded bodies may be proved to be a beautifully-con- structed calcareous fabric, made up of a number of chambers, communicating freely with one another. The chambered bodies are of various forms. One of the commonest is something like a badly-grown raspberry, being formed of a number of nearly globular chambers of different sizes congregated together. It is called Globigerina, and some specimens of chalk consist of little else than Globigeri?ue and granules. Let us fix our attention upon the Globigerina. It is the spoor of the game we are tracking. If we can learn what it is and what are the conditions of its existence, we shall see our way to the origin and past history of the chalk. A suggestion which may naturally enough present itself is, that these curious bodies are the result of some process of aggregation which has taken place in the carbonate of lime ; that, just as in winter, the rime on our windows simulates the most delicate and elegantly arborescent foliage proving that the mere mineral water may, under certain conditions, assume the outward form of organic bodies so this mineral substance, carbonate of lime, hidden away in the bowels of the earth, has taken the shape of these chambered bodies. I am not raising a merely fanciful and unreal objection. Very learned men, in former days, have even entertained the notion that all the formed things found in rocks are of this nature ; and if no such conception is at present held to be admissible, it is because long and varied experience has now shown that mineral matter never does assume the form and structure we find in fossils. If any one were to try to persuade you that an oyster-shell (which is also chiefly composed of carbonate of lime) had crystallized out of sea-water, I suppose you would laugh at the THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY absurdity. Your laughter would be justified by the fact that all experience tends to show that oyster-shells are formed by the agency of oysters, and in no other way. And if there were no better reasons, we should be justified, on like grounds, in be- lieving that Globigerina is not the product of anything but vital activity. Happily, however, better evidence in proof of the organic nature of the Globigerince than that of analogy is forthcoming. It so happens that calcareous skeletons, exactly similar to the Globigerina of the chalk, are being formed, at the present' moment, by minute living creatures, which flourish in multitudes, literally more numerous than the sands of the sea-shore, over a large extent of that part of the earth's surface which is covered by the ocean. The history of the discovery of these living Globigerince, and of the part which they play in rock building, is singular enough. It is a discovery which, like others of no less scientific impor- tance, has arisen, incidentally, out of work devoted to very dif- ferent and exceedingly practical interests. When men first took to the sea, they speedily learned to look out for shoals and rocks ; and the more the burthen of their ships increased, the more imperatively necessary it became for sailors to ascertain with precision the depth of the waters they traversed. Out of this necessity grew the use of the lead and sounding line ; and, ultimately, marine-surveying, which is the recording of the form of coasts and of the depth of the sea, as ascertained by the sounding-lead, upon charts. At the same time, it became desirable to ascertain and to indicate the nature of the sea-bottom, since this circumstance greatly affects its goodness as holding ground for anchors. Some ingenious tar, whose name deserves a better fate than the oblivion into which it has fallen, attained this object by " arm- ing " the bottom of the lead with a lump of grease, to which more or less of the sand or mud, or broken shells, as the case might be, adhered, and was brought to the surface. But, how- ever well adapted such an apparatus might be for rough nauti- cal purposes, scientific accuracy could not be expected from the armed lead, and to remedy its defects (especially when applied 238 ON A PIECE OF CHALK to sounding in great depths) Lieut. Brooke, of the American Navy, some years ago invented a most ingenious machine, by which a considerable portion of the superficial layer of the sea- bottom can be scooped out and brought up, from any depth to which the lead descends. In 1853, Lieut. Brooke obtained mud from the bottom of the North Atlantic, between Newfoundland and the Azores, at a depth of more than 10,000 feet, or two miles, by the help of this sounding apparatus. The specimens were sent for exami- nation to Ehrenberg of Berlin, and to Bailey of West Point, and those able microscopists found that this deep-sea mud was almost entirely composed of the skeletons of living organ- isms the greater proportion of these being just like the Globi- gerincz already known to occur in the chalk. Thus far, the work had been carried on simply in the inter- ests of science, but Lieut. Brooke's method of sounding ac- quired a high commercial value, when the enterprise of laying down the telegraph-cable between this country and the United States was undertaken. For it became a matter of immense importance to know, not only the depth of the sea over the whole line along which the cable was to be laid, but the exact nature of the bottom, so as to guard against chances of cutting or fraying the strands of that costly rope. The Admiralty con- sequently ordered Captain Dayman, an old friend and ship- mate of mine, to ascertain the depth over the whole line of the cable, and to bring back specimens of the bottom. In former days, such a command as this might have sounded very much like one of the impossible things which the young prince in the Fairy Tales is ordered to do before he can obtain the hand of the princess. However, in the months of June and July, 1857, my friend performed the task assigned to him with great expedition and precision, without, so far as I know, having met with any reward of that kind. The specimens of Atlantic mud which he procured were sent to me to be examined and reported upon. The result of all these operations is, that we know the con- tours and the nature of the surface-soil covered by the North Atlantic, for a distance of 1700 miles from east to west, as well as we know that of any part of the dry land. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 239 It is a prodigious plain one of the widest and most even plains in the world. If the sea were drained off, you might drive a wagon all the way from Valentia, on the west coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, in Newfoundland. And, except upon one sharp incline about 200 miles from Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be necessary to put the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents upon that long route. From Valentia* the road would lie down-hill for about 200 miles to the point at which the bottom is now covered by 1700 fathoms of sea- water. Then would come the central plain, more than 1000 miles wide, the inequalities of the surface of which would be hardly perceptible, though the depth of water upon it now varies from 10,000 to 15,000 feet; and there are places in which Mont Blanc might be sunk without showing its peak above water. Beyond this, the ascent on the American side commences, and gradually leads, for about 300 miles, to the Newfoundland shore. Almost the whole of the bottom of this central plain (which extends for many hundred miles in a north and south direction) is covered by a fine mud, which, when brought to the surface, dries into a greyish-white friable substance. You can write with this on a blackboard, if you are so inclined ; and, to the eye, it is quite like very soft, greyish chalk. Examined chemi- cally, it proves to be composed almost wholly of carbonate of lime ; and if you make a section of it, in the same way as that of the piece of chalk was made, and view it with the microscope, it presents innumerable Globigerince embedded in a granular matrix. Thus this deep-sea mud is substantially chalk. I say substan- tially, because there are a good many minor differences ; but as these have no bearing on the question immediately before us, which is the nature of the Globigerina of tjhe chalk, it is unnec- essary to speak of them. Globigerina of every size, from the smallest to the largest, are associated together in the Atlantic mud, and the chambers of many are filled by a soft animal matter. This soft substance is, in fact, the remains of the creature to which the Globigerina shell, or rather skeleton, owes its existence and which is an animal of the simplest imaginable description. It is, in fact, a 240 ON A PIECE OF CHALK mere particle of living jelly, without defined parts of any kind without a mouth, nerves, muscles, or distinct organs, and only manifesting its vitality to ordinary observation by thrusting out and retracting from all parts of its surface, long filamentous processes, which serve for arms and legs. Yet this amorphous particle, devoid of everything which, in the higher animals, we call organs, is capable of feeding, growing, and multiplying ; of separating from the ocean the small proportion of carbonate of lime which is dissolved in sea water ; and of building up that substance into a skeleton for itself, according to a pattern which can be imitated by no other known agency. The notion that animals can live and flourish in the sea, at the vast depths from which apparently living Globigerince have been brought up, does not agree very well with our usual con- ceptions respecting the conditions of animal life ; and it is not so absolutely impossible as it might at first sight appear to be, that the Globigerince of the Atlantic sea-bottom do not live and die where they are found. As I have mentioned, the soundings from the great Atlantic plain are almost entirely made up of Globigerince, with the granules which have been mentioned, and some few other cal- careous shells ; but a small percentage of the chalky mud pe'r- haps at most some five per cent, of it is of a different nature, and consists of shells and skeletons composed of silex, or pure flint. These silicious bodies belong partly to the lowly vege- table organisms which are called Diatomacece, and partly to the minute, and extremely simple, animals, termed Radiolaria. It is quite certain that these creatures do not live at the bottom of the ocean, but at its surface where they may be obtained in prodigious numbers by the use of a properly constructed net. Hence it follows that these silicious organisms, though they are not heavier than the lightest dust, must have fallen, in some cases, through fifteen thousand feet of water, before they reached their final resting-place on the ocean-floor. And, considering how large a surface these bodies expose in proportion to their weight, it is probable that they occupy a great length of time in making their burial journey from the surface of the Atlantic to the bottom. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 24! But if the Radiolaria and Diatoms are thus rained upon the bottom of the sea, from the superficial layer of its waters in which they pass their lives, it is obviously possible that the Globigerincz may be similarly derived ; and if they were so, it would be much more easy to understand how they obtain their supply of food than it is at present. Nevertheless, the positive and negative evidence all points the other way. The skeletons of the full-grown, deep-sea Globigerincz are so remarkably solid and heavy in proportion to their surface as to seem little fitted for floating ; and, as a matter of fact, they are not to be found along with the Diatoms and Radiolaria, in the uppermost stratum of the open ocean. It has been observed, again, that the abundance of Globigeriruz, in proportion to other organisms, of like kind, increases with the depth of the sea; and that deep-water Globigeriruz are larger than those which live in shallower parts of the sea ; and such facts negative the supposition that these organisms have been swept by currents from the shallows into the deeps of the Atlantic. It therefore seems to be hardly doubtful that these wonderful creatures live and die at the depths in which they are found. However, the important points for us are, that the living Globigerina are exclusively marine animals, the skeletons of which abound at the bottom of deep seas ; and that there is not a shadow of reason for believing that the habits of the Globi- gerincz of the chalk differed from those of the existing species. But if this be true, there is no escaping the conclusion that the chalk itself is the dried mud of an ancient deep sea. In working over the soundings collected by Captain Dayman, I was surprised to find that many of what I have called the " granules " of that mud, were not, as one might have been tempted to think at first, the mere powder and waste of Globi- gerincz, but that they had a definite form and size. I termed these bodies " coccoliths" and doubted their organic nature. Dr. Wallich verified my observation, and added the interesting dis- covery that, not unfrequently, bodies similar to these " coccoliths " were aggregated together into spheroids, which he termed " coc- cospheres" So far as we knew, these bodies ; the nature of which R 242 ON A PIECE OF CHALK is extremely puzzling and problematical, were peculiar to the Atlantic soundings. But, a few years ago, Mr. Sorby, in making a careful exami- nation of the chalk by means of thin sections and otherwise, observed, as Ehrenberg had done before him, that much of its granular basis possesses a definite form. Comparing these formed particles with those in the Atlantic soundings, he found the two to be identical ; and thus proved that the chalk, like the soundings, contains these mysterious coccoliths and coccospheres. Here was a further and a most interesting confirmation, from in- ternal evidence, of the essential identity of the chalk with modern deep-sea mud. Globigerituz, coccoliths, and coccospheres are found as the chief constituents of both, and testify to the general similarity of the conditions under which both have been formed. The evidence furnished by the hewing, facing, and superposi- tion of the stones of the Pyramids, that these structures were built by men, has no greater weight than the evidence that the chalk was built by Globigerina ; and the belief that those ancient pyramid-builders were terrestrial and air-breathing creatures like ourselves, is not better based than the conviction that the chalk- makers lived in the sea. But as our belief in the building of the Pyramids by men is not only grounded on the internal evidence afforded by these structures, but gathers strength from multitudinous collateral proofs, and is clinched by the total absence of any reason for a a contrary belief ; so the evidence drawn from the Globigerincs that the chalk is an ancient sea-bottom, is fortified by innumer- able independent lines of evidence ; and our belief in the truth of the conclusion to which all positive testimony tends, receives the like negative justification from the fact that no other hypothe- sis has a shadow of foundation. It may be worth while briefly to consider a few of these col- lateral proofs that the chalk was deposited at the bottom of the sea. The great mass of the chalk is composed, as we have seen, of the skeletons of Globigerince, and other simple organisms, im- bedded in granular matter. Here and there, however, this hardened mud of the ancient sea reveals the remains of higher animals which have lived and died, and left their hard parts in THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 243 the mud, just as the oysters die and leave their shells behind them, in the mud of the present seas. There are, at the present day, certain groups of animals which are never found in fresh waters, being unable to live anywhere but in the sea. Such are the corals ; those corallines which are called Polyzoa ; those creatures which fabricate the lamp-shells, and are called Brachiopoda ; the pearly Nautilus, and all animals allied to it ; and all the forms of sea-urchins and star-fishes. Not only are all these creatures confined to salt water at the present time ; but, so far as our records of the past go, the con- ditions of their existence have been the same: hence, their occurrence in any deposit is as strong evidence as can be ob- tained that that deposit was formed in the sea. Now the remains of animals of all the kinds which have been enumerated, occur in the chalk, in greater or less abundance ; while not one of those forms of shell-fish which are characteristic of fresh water has yet been observed in it. When we consider that the remains of more than three thou- sand distinct species of aquatic animals have been discovered among the fossils of the chalk, that the great majority of them are of such forms as are now met with only in the sea, and that there is no reason to believe that any one of them inhabited fresh water the collateral evidence that the chalk represents an ancient sea-bottom acquires as great force as the proof de- rived from the nature of the chalk itself. I think you will now allow that I did not overstate my case when I asserted that we have as strong grounds for believing that all the vast area of dry land, at present occupied by the chalk, was once at the bottom of the sea, as we have for any matter of history whatever ; while there is no justification for any other belief. No less certain it is that the time during which the countries we now call south-east England, France, Germany, Poland, Rus- sia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, were more or less completely covered by a deep sea, was of considerable duration. We have already seen that the chalk is, in places, more than a thousand feet thick. I think you will agree with me, that it must have taken some time for the skeletons of animalcules of a hundredth of an inch in diameter to heap up such a mass as 244 ON A P J ECE F CHALK that. I have said that throughout the thickness of the chalk the remains of other animals are scattered. These remains are often in the most exquisite state of preservation. The valves of the shell-fishes are commonly adherent ; the long spines of some of the sea-urchins, which would be detached by the smallest jar, often remain in their places. In a word, it is certain that these animals have lived and died when the place which they now occupy was the surface of as much of the chalk as had then been deposited ; and that each has been covered up by the layer of Globigerina mud, upon which the creatures imbedded a little higher up have, in like manner, lived and died. But some of these remains prove the existence of reptiles of vast size in the chalk sea. These lived their time, and had their ancestors and descendants, which assuredly implies time, reptiles being of slow growth. There is more curious evidence, again, that the process of covering up, or, in other words, the deposit of Globigerina skele- tons, did not go on very fast. It is demonstrable that an ani- mal of the cretaceous sea might die, that its skeleton might lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom long enough to lose all its out- ward coverings and appendages by putrefaction ; and that, after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might itself die before the calcareous mud had buried the whole. Cases of this kind are admirably described by Sir Charles Lyell. He speaks of the frequency with which geologists find in the chalk a fossilized sea-urchin, to which is attached the lower valve of a Crania. This is a kind of shell-fish, with a shell composed of two pieces, of which, as in the oyster, one is fixed and the other free. " The upper valve is almost invariably wanting, though occa- sionally found in a perfect state of preservation in the white chalk at some distance. In this case, we see clearly that the sea-urchin first lived from youth to age, then died and lost its spines, which were carried away. Then the young Crania ad- hered to the bared shell, grew and perished in its turn ; after which, the upper valve was separated from the lower, before the Echinus became enveloped in chalky mud." THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 245 A specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology, in London, still further prolongs the period which must have elapsed be- tween the death of the sea-urchin, and its burial by the Globi- gerince. For the outward face of the valve of a Crania, which is attached to a sea-urchin (Micraster) is itself overrun by an incrusting coralline, which spreads thence over more or less of the surface of the sea-urchin. It follows that, after the upper valve of the Crania fell off, the surface of the attached valve must have remained exposed long enough to allow the growth of the whole coralline, since corallines do not live imbedded in mud. The progress of knowledge may, one day, enable us to deduce from such facts as these the maximum rate at which the chalk can have accumulated, and thus to arrive at the minimum dura- tion of the chalk period. Suppose that the valve of the Crania upon which a coralline has fixed itself in the way just described, is so attached to the sea-urchin that no part of it is more than an inch above the face upon which the sea-urchin rests. Then, as the coralline could not have fixed itself, if the Crania had been covered up with chalk mud, and could not have lived had itself been so covered, it follows, that an inch of chalk mud could not have accumulated within the time between the death and decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin and the growth of the coralline to the full size which it has attained. If the decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin ; the attachment, growth to maturity, and decay of the Crania; and the subsequent attach- ment and growth of the coralline, took a year (which is a low esti- mate enough), the accumulation of the inch of chalk must have taken more than a year : and the depth of a thousand feet of chalk must, consequently, have taken more than twelve thou- sand years. The foundation of all this calculation is, of course, a knowl- edge of the length of time the Crania and the coralline needed to attain their full size ; and, on this head, precise knowledge is at present wanting. But there are circumstances which tend to show, that nothing like an inch of chalk has accumulated during the life of a Crania ; and, on any probable estimate of the length of that life, the chalk period must have had a much longer dura- tion than that thus roughly assigned to it. 246 ON A PIECE OF CHALK Thus, not only is it certain that the chalk is the mud of an ancient sea-bottom ; but it is no less certain, that the chalk sea existed during an extremely long period, though we may not be prepared to give a precise estimate of the length of that period in years. The relative duration is clear, though the absolute duration may not be definable. The attempt to affix any precise date to the period at which the chalk sea began, or ended, its existence, is baffled by difficulties of the same kind. But the relative age of the cretaceous epoch may be determined with as great ease and certainty as the long duration of that epoch. You will have heard of the interesting discoveries recently made, in various parts of Western Europe, of flint implements, obviously worked into shape by human hands, under circum- stances which show conclusively that man is a very ancient denizen of these regions. It has been proved that the old populations of Europe, whose existence has been revealed to us in this way, consisted of sav- ages, such as the Esquimaux are now ; that, in the country which is now France, they hunted the reindeer, and were famil- iar with the mammoth and the bison. The physical geography of France was in those days different from what it is now the river Somme, for instance, having cut its bed a hundred feet deeper between that time and this ; and it is probable that the climate was more like that of Canada or Siberia, than that of Western Europe. The existence of these people is forgotten even in the tradi- tions of the oldest historical nations. The name and fame of them had utterly vanished until a few years back; and the amount of physical change which has been effected since their day, renders it more than probable that, venerable as are some of the historical nations, the workers of the chipped flints of Hoxne or of Amiens are to them, as they are to us, in point of antiquity. But, if we assign to these hoar relics of long-vanished genera- tions of men the greatest age that can possibly be claimed for them, they are not older than the drift, or boulder clay, which, in comparison with the chalk, is but a very juvenile deposit. You need go no further than your own sea-board for evidence THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 247 cf this fact. At one of the most charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, Cromer, you will see the boulder clay forming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must consequently have come into existence after it. Huge boulders of chalk are, in fact, included in the clay, and have evidently been brought to the position they now occupy, by the same agency as that which has planted blocks of syenite from Norway side by side with them. The chalk, then, is certainly older than the boulder clay. If you ask how much, I will again take you no further than the same spot upon your own coasts for evidence. I have spoken of the boulder clay and drift as resting upon the chalk. That is not strictly true. Interposed between the chalk and the drift is a comparatively insignificant layer, containing vegetable mat- ter. But that layer tells a wonderful history. It is full of stumps of trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts ; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is appropriately called the " forest-bed." It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and con- verted into dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the bolls of some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed re- mained in the same conditions for long ages. And not only do the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and other great wild beasts, which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the Rev. Mr. Gunn. When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and be- think you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impos- sible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the tree-stumps. Thus there is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which 248 ON A PIECE OF CHALK cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the great game whose spoils have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition can- not be said ; but " the whirligig of time brought its revenges " in those days as in these. That dry land, with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant ; and at length what we call the history of England dawned. Thus you have, within the limits of your own country, proof that the chalk can justly claim a very much greater antiquity than even the oldest physical traces of mankind. But we may go further and demonstrate, by evidence of the same authority as that which testifies to the existence of the father of men, that the chalk is vastly older than Adam himself. The Book of Genesis informs us that Adam, immediately upon his creation, and before the appearance of Eve, was placed in the Garden of Eden. The problem of the geographical position of Eden has greatly vexed the spirits of the learned in such mat- ters, but there is one point respecting which, so far as I know, no commentator has ever raised a doubt. This is, that of the four rivers, which are said to run out of it, Euphrates and Hid- dekel are identical with the rivers now known by the names of Euphrates and Tigris. But the whole country in which these mighty rivers take their origin, and through which they run, is composed of rocks which are either of the same age as the chalk, or of later date. So that the chalk must not only have been formed, but, after its formation, the time required for the deposit of these later rocks, and for their upheaval into dry land, must have elapsed, before THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 249 the smallest brook which feeds the swift stream of " the great river, the river of Babylon," began to flow. Thus, evidence which cannot be rebutted, and which need not be strengthened, though if time permitted I might indefinitely increase its quantity, compels you to believe that the earth, from the time of the chalk to the present day, has been the theatre of a series of changes as vast in their amount, as they were slow in their progress. The area on which we stand has been first sea and then land, for at least four alternations ; and has remained in each of these conditions for a period of great length. Nor have these wonderful metamorphoses of sea into land, -t ' and of land into sea, been confined to one corner of England. During the chalk period, or " cretaceous epoch," not one of the present great physical features of the globe was in existence. Our great mountain ranges, Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, Andes, have all been upheaved since the chalk was deposited, and the cretaceous sea flowed over the sites of Sinai and Ararat. All this is certain, because rocks of cretaceous, or still later, date have shared in the elevatory movements which gave rise to these mountain chains ; and may be found perched up, in some cases, many thousand feet high upon their flanks. And evi- dence of equal cogency demonstrates that, though, in Norfolk, the forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yet it does so, not because the period at which the forest grew immediately fol- lowed that at which the chalk was formed, but because an im- mense lapse of time, represented elsewhere by thousands of feet of rock, is not indicated at Cromer. I must ask you to believe that there is no less conclusive proof that a still more prolonged succession of similar changes occurred, before the chalk was deposited. Nor have we any reason to think that the first term in the series of these changes is known. The oldest sea-beds preserved to us are sands, and mud, and pebbles, the wear and tear of rocks which were formed in still older oceans. But, great as is the magnitude of these physical changes of the world, they have been accompanied by a no less striking series of modifications in its living inhabitants. 250 ON A PIECE OF CHALK All the great classes of animals, beasts of the field, fowls of the air, creeping things, and things which dwell in the waters, flourished upon the globe long ages before the chalk was de- posited. Very few, however, if any, of these ancient forms of animal life were identical with those which now live: Certainly not one of the higher animals was of the same species as any of those now in existence. The beasts of the field, in the days before the chalk, were not our beasts of the field, nor the fowls of the air such as those which the eye of men has seen flying, unless his antiquity dates infinitely further back than we at present surmise. If we could be carried back into those times, we should be as one suddenly set down in Australia before it was colonized. We should see mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, snails, and the like, clearly recognisable as such, and yet not one of them would be just the same as those with which we are familiar, and many would -be extremely different. From that time to the present, the population of the world has undergone slow and gradual, but incessant changes. There has been no grand catastrophe no destroyer has swept away the forms of life of one period, and replaced them by a totally new creation ; but one species has vanished and another has taken its place ; creatures of one type of structure have diminished, those of another have increased, as time passed on. And thus, while the differences between the living creatures of the time before the chalk and those of the present day appear startling, if placed side by side, we are led from one to the other by the most gradual progress, if we follow the course of Nature through the whole series of those relics of her operations which she has left behind. And it is by the population of the chalk sea that the ancient and the modern inhabitants of the world are most completely connected. The groups which are dying out flourish, side by side, with the groups which are now the dominant forms of life. Thus the chalk contains remains of those strange flying and swimming reptiles, the pterodactyl, the ichthyosaurus, and the plesiosaurus, which are found in no later deposits, but abounded in preceding ages. The chambered shells, called ammonites and THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 2$ I belemnites, which are so characteristic of the period preceding the cretaceous, in like manner die with it. But, amongst these fading remainders of a previous state of things, are some very modern forms of life, looking like Yankee pedlars among a tribe of Red Indians. Crocodiles of modern type appear ; bony fishes, many of them very similar to existing species, almost supplant the forms of fish which predominate in more ancient seas ; and many kinds of living shell-fish first become known to us in the chalk. The vegetation acquires a modern aspect. A few living animals are not even distinguish- able as species, from those which existed at that remote epoch. The Globigerina of the present day, for example, is not differ- ent specifically from that of the chalk; and the same may be said of many other Foraminifera. I think it probable that criti- cal and unprejudiced examination will show that more than one species of much higher animals have had a similar longevity ; but the only example which I can at present give confidently is the snake's-head lamp-shell (Terebratulina caput serpentis); which lives in our English seas and abounded (as Terebratulina striata of authors) in the chalk. The longest line of human ancestry must hide its diminished head before the pedigree of this insignificant shell-fish. We Englishmen are proud to have an ancestor who was present at the Battle of Hastings. The ancestors of Terebratulina caput serpentis may have been present at a battle of Ichthyosauria in that part of the sea which, when the chalk was forming, flowed over the site of Hastings. While all around has changed, this Terebratulina has peacefully propagated its species from genera- tion to generation, and stands to this day, as a living testimony to the continuity of the present with the past history of the globe. Up to this moment I have stated, so far as I know, nothing but well-authenticated facts, and the immediate conclusions which they force upon the mind. But the mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest in facts and immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the remoter links in the chain of causation. Taking the many changes of any given spot of the earth's 252 ON A PIECE OF CHALK surface, from sea to land and from land to sea, as an established fact, we cannot refrain from asking ourselves how these changes have occurred. And when we have explained them as they must be explained by the alternate slow movements of eleva- tion and depression which have affected the crust of the earth, we go still further back, and ask, Why these movements ? I am not certain that any one can give you a satisfactory answer to that question. Assuredly I cannot. All that can be said, for certain, is, that such movements are part of the ordinary course of nature, inasmuch as they are going on at the present time. Direct proof may be given, that some parts of the land of the northern hemisphere are at this moment insensibly rising and others insensibly sinking; and there is indirect, but per- fectly satisfactory, proof, that an enormous area now covered by the Pacific has deepened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea came into existence. Thus there is not a shadow of reason for believing that the physical changes of the globe, in past times, have been affected by other than natural causes. Is there any more reason for believing that the concomitant modifications in the forms of the living inhabitants of the globe have been brought about in other ways ? Before attempting to answer this question, let us try to form a distinct mental picture of what has happened, in some special case. The crocodiles are animals which, as a group, have a very vast antiquity. They abounded ages before the chalk was deposited ; they throng the rivers, in warm climates, at the present day. There is a difference in the form of the joints of the back-bone, and in some minor particulars, between the crocodiles of the present epoch and those which lived before the chalk ; but, in the cretaceous epoch, as I have already men- tioned, the crocodiles had assumed the modern type of structure. Notwithstanding this, the crocodiles of the chalk are not iden- tically the same as those which lived in the times called " older tertiary," which succeeded the cretaceous epoch ; and the croco- diles of the older tertiaries are not identical with those of the newer tertiaries, nor are these identical with existing forms. I leave open the question whether particular species may have THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY lived on from epoch to epoch. But each epoch has had its peculiar crocodiles ; though all, since the chalk, have belonged to the modern type, and differ simply in their proportions, and in such structural particulars as are discernible only to trained eyes. How is the existence of this long succession of different species of crocodiles to be accounted for? Only two suppositions seem to be open to us. Either each species of crocodile has been specially created, or it has arisen out of some pre-existing form by the operation of natural causes. Choose your hypothesis ; I have chosen mine. I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of suc- cessive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy ; nor can even the perverse ingenuity of a commentator pretend to discover this sense, in the simple words in which the writer of Genesis records the proceedings of the fifth and sixth days of the Creation. On the other hand, I see no good reason for doubting the necessary alternative, that all these varied species have been evolved from pre-existing crocodilian forms, by the operation of causes as completely a part of the common order of nature, as those which have effected the changes of the inorganic world. Few will venture to affirm that the reasoning which applies to crocodiles loses its force among other animals, or among plants. If one series of species has come into existence by the operation of natural causes, it seems folly to deny that all may have arisen in the same way. A small beginning has led to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting " without haste, but 254 GLACIER ICE without rest " of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe. GLACIER ICE JOHN TYNDALL [From lecture vi in Heat considered as a Mode of Motion, 1863.] SNOW, perfectly formed, is not an irregular aggregate of ice-par- ticles ; in a calm atmosphere, the aqueous atoms arrange them- selves so as to form the most exquisite figures. You have seen those six-petalled flowers which form themselves within a block of ice when a beam of heat is sent through it. The snow-crystals, formed in a calm atmosphere, are built upon the same type : the molecules arrange themselves to form hexagonal stars. From a central nucleus shoot spiculae, every two of which are separated by an angle of 60. From these central ribs smaller spiculae shoot right and left with unerring fidelity to the angle 60, and from these again other smaller ones diverge at the same angle. The six-leaved blossoms assume the most wonderful variety of form ; their tracery is of the finest frozen gauze ; and round about their corners other rosettes of smaller dimensions often cling. Beauty is superposed upon beauty, as if Nature, once committed to her task, took delight in showing, even within the narrowest limits, the wealth of her resources. These frozen blossoms constitute our mountain snows ; they load the Alpine heights, where their frail architecture is soon de- stroyed by the accidents of the weather. Every winter they fall, and every summer they disappear, but this rhythmic action does not perfectly compensate itself. Below a certain line warmth is predominant, and the quantity which falls every winter is entirely swept away; above this line cold is predominant, the quantity which falls is in excess of the quantity melted, and an annual resi- due remains. In winter the snows reach to the plains ; in summer they retreat to the snow-line, to that particular line where the snow-fall of every year is exactly balanced by the consumption, JOHN TYNDALL 25$ and above which is the region of eternal snows. But if a residue remains annually above the snow-line, the mountains must be loaded with a burden which increases every year. Supposing at a particular point above the line referred to, a layer of three feet a year is added to the mass ; this deposit, accumulating even through the brief period of the Christian era, would produce an elevation of 5580 feet. And did such accumulations continue throughout geologic instead of historic ages, there is no knowing the height to which the snows would pile themselves. It is manifest no accu- mulation of this kind takes place ; the quantity of snow on the mountains is not augmenting in this way; for some reason or other the sun is not permitted to lift the ocean out of its basins and pile its waters permanently upon the hills. But how is this annually augmenting load taken off the shoulders of the mountains? The snows sometimes detach themselves and rush down the slopes in avalanches, melting to water in the warmer air below. But the violent rush of the avalanche is not their only motion ; they also creep by almost insensible degrees down the slopes. As layer, moreover, heaps itself upon layer, the deeper portions of the mass become squeezed and consolidated ; the air first entrapped in the meshes of the snow is squeezed out, and the compressed mass approximates more and more to the character of ice. You know how the granules of a snowball will adhere ; you know how hard you can make it if mischievously inclined : the snowball is incipient ice ; augment your pressure, and you actu- ally concert it into ice. But even after it has attained a compact- ness which would entitle it to be called ice, it is still capable of yielding more or less, as the snow yields, to pressure. When, therefore, a sufficient depth of the substance collects upon the earth's surface, the lower portions are squeezed out by the press- ure of the upper ones, and if the snow rests upon a slope, it will yield principally in the direction of the slope, and move downwards. This- motion is incessantly going on along the slopes of every [_ snow-laden mountain ; in the Himalayas, in the Andes, in the Alps ; but in addition to this motion, which depends upon the power of the substance itself to yield to pressure, there is also a sliding motion over the inclined bed. The consolidated snow moves bodily over the mountain slope, grinding off the asperities 256 GLACIER ICE of the rocks, and polishing their hard surfaces. The under surface of the mighty polisher is also scarred and furrowed by the rocks over which it has passed ; but as the compacted snow descends, it enters a warmer region, is more copiously melted and some- times, before the base of its slope is reached, it is wholly cut off by fusion. Sometimes, however, large and deep valleys receive the gelid masses thus sent down; in these valleys it is further consoli- dated, and through them it moves, at a slow but measurable pace, imitating in all its motions those of a river. The ice is thus carried far beyond the limits of perpetual snow, until, at length, the consumption below equals the supply above, and at this point the glacier ceases. From the snow-line downwards in summer, we have ice ; above the snow-line, both summer and winter, we have, on the surface, snow. The portion below the snow-line is called a glacier, that above the snow-line is called the neve. The neve, then, is the feeder of the glacier. Several valleys thus filled may unite in a single valley, the tribu- tary glaciers welding themselves together to form a trunk glacier. Both the main valley and its tributaries are often sinuous, and the tributaries must change their direction to form the trunk. The width of the valley, also, often changes ; the glacier is forced through narrow gorges, widening after it has passed them; the centre of the glacier moves more quickly than the sides, and the surface more quickly than the bottom. The point of swiftest motion follows the same law as that observed in the flow of rivers, changing from one side of the centre to the other, as the flexure of the valley changes. Most of the great glaciers in the Alps have, in summer, a central velocity of two feet a day. There are points on the Mer-de-Glace, opposite the Montenvert, which have a daily motion of thirty inches in summer, and in winter have been found to move at half this rate. The power of accommodating itself to the channel through which it moves has led eminent men to assume that ice is viscous ; and the phenomena at first sight seem to enforce this assumption. The glacier widens, bends, and narrows, and its centre moves more quickly than its sides ; a viscous mass would undoubtedly do the same. But the most delicate experiments on the capacity of ice to yield to strain, to stretch out like treacle, honey or tar, JOHN TYNDALL have failed to detect this stretching power. Is there, then, any other physical quality to which the power of accommodation pos- sessed by glacier ice, may be referred ? Let us approach this subject gradually. We know that vapour is continually escaping from the free surface of a liquid ; that the particles at the surface attain their gaseous liberty sooner than the particles within the liquid ; it is natural to expect a similar state of things with regard to ice; that when the temperature of a mass of ice is uniformly augmented, the first particles to attain liquid liberty are those at the surface ; for here they are entirely free, on one side, from the controlling action of the surrounding particles. Supposing, then, two pieces of ice raised throughout to 32, and melting at this temperature at their surfaces; what may be expected to take place if we place the liquefying surfaces close together? We thereby virtually transfer these surfaces to the centre of the ice, where the motion of each molecule is con- trolled all round by its neighbours. As might reasonably be ex- pected, the liberty of liquidity at each point where the surfaces touch each other, is arrested, and the two pieces freeze together at these points. Let us make the experiment : Here are two masses, which I have just cut asunder by a saw ; I place their flat surfaces together ; half a minute's contact will suffice ; they are now frozen together, and by taking hold of one of them I thus lift them both. This is the effect to which attention was first directed by Mr. Faraday in June 1850, and which is now known under the name of Regelation. On a hot summer's day, I have gone into a shop in the Strand where fragments of ice were exposed in a basin in the window ; and with the shopman's permission have laid hold of the topmost piece of ice, and by means of it have lifted the whole of the pieces bodily out of the dish. Though the ther- mometer at the time stood at 80, the pieces of ice had frozen together at their points of junction. Even under hot water this effect takes place ; I have here a basin of water as hot as my hand can bear ; I plunge into it these two pieces of ice, and hold them together for a moment : they are now frozen together, notwith- standing the presence of the heated liquid. A pretty experiment of Mr. Faraday's is to place a number of small fragments of ice 258 GLACIER ICE in a dish of water deep enough to float them. When one piece touches the other, if only at a single point, regelation instantly sets in. Thus a train of pieces may be caused to touch each other, and, after they have once so touched, you may take the terminal piece of the train, and, by means of it, draw all the others after it. When we seek to bend two pieces thus united at their point of junction, the frozen points suddenly separate by fracture, but at the same moment other points come into contact, and regelation sets in between them. Thus a wheel of ice might be caused to roll on an icy surface, the contacts being incessantly ruptured, with a crackling noise, and others as quickly established by regelation. In virtue of this property of regelation, ice is able to reproduce many of the phenomena which are usually ascribed to viscous bodies. Here, for example, is a straight bar of ice : I can by passing it successively through a series of moulds, each more curved than the last, finally turn it out as a semi-ring. The straight bar in being squeezed into the curved mould breaks, but by continuing the pressure new surfaces come into contact, and the continuity of the mass is restored. I take a handful of those small ice frag- ments and squeeze them together, they freeze at their points of contact and now the mass is one aggregate. The making of a snowball, as remarked by Mr. Faraday, illustrates the same prin- ciple. In order that this freezing shall take place, the snow ought to be at 32 and moist. When below 32 and dry, on being squeezed it behaves like salt. The crossing of snow bridges in the upper regions of the Swiss glaciers is often rendered possible solely by the regelation of the snow granules. The climber treads the mass carefully, and causes its granules to regelate : he thus obtains an amount of rigidity which, without the act of regelation, would be quite unattainable. To those accustomed to such work, the crossing of snow bridges, spanning, as they often do, fissures 100 feet and more in depth, must appear quite appalling. If I still further squeeze this mass of ice fragments, I bring them into still closer proximity. My hand, however, is incompetent to squeeze them very closely together. I place them in this boxwood mould, which is a shallow cylinder, and placing a flat piece of box- wood overhead, I introduce both between the plates of a small JOHN TYNDALL hydraulic press, and squeeze the mass forcibly into the mould. J now relieve the pressure and turn the substance out before you : it is converted into a coherent cake of ice. I place it in this lenticular cavity and again squeeze it. It is crushed by the press- ure, of course, but new contacts establish themselves, and there you have the mass a lens of ice. I now transfer my lens to this hemispherical cavity, and bring down upon it a hemispherical pro- tuberance, which is not quite able to fill the cavity. I squeeze the mass ; the ice, which a moment ago was a lens, is now squeezed into the space between the two spherical surfaces : I remove the protuberance, and here I have the interior surface of a cup of glassy ice. By care I release it from the mould, and there it is, a hemispherical cup, which I can fill with cold sherry, without the escape of a drop. I scrape with a chisel a quantity of ice from this block, and placing the spongy mass within this spherical cavity, I squeeze it and add to it, till finally I can bring down another spherical cavity upon it, enclosing it as a sphere between both. As I work the press the mass becomes more and more compacted. I add more material, and again squeeze ; by every such act the mass is made harder, and there you have a snow-ball before you such as you never saw before. It is a sphere of hard translucent ice. Thus, you see, broken ice can be compacted together by pressure, and in virtue *of the property of regelation, which cements its touching surfaces, the substance may be made to take any shape we please. Were the experiment worth the trouble, I feel satisfied that I could form a rope of ice from this block, and after- wards coil the rope into a knot. Nothing of course can be easier than to produce statuettes of the substance from suitable moulds. It is easy to understand how a substance so endowed can be squeezed through the gorges of the Alps can bend so as to accommodate itself to the flexures of the Alpine valleys, and can permit of a differential motion of its parts, without at the same time possessing a sensible trace of viscosity. The hypothesis of viscosity, first started by Rendo, and worked out with such ability by Prof. Forbes, accounts, certainly, for half the facts. Where pressure comes into play, the deportment of ice is apparently that of a viscous body ; where tension comes into play, the analogy with a viscous body ceases, 260 LEARNED WORDS AND POPULAR WORDS LEARNED WORDS AND POPULAR WORDS JAMES BRADSTREET GREENOUGH AND GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE [Chapter 3 of Words and their Ways in English Speech, 1901.] IN every cultivated language there are two great classes of words which, taken together, comprise the whole vocabulary. First, there are those words with which we become acquainted in ordi- nary conversation, which we learn, that is to say, from the members of our own family and from our familiar associates, and which we should know and use even if we could not read or write. They concern the common things of life, and are the stock in trade of all who speak the language. Such words maybe called "popular," since they belong to the people at large and are not the exclusive possession of a limited class. On the other hand, our language includes a multitude of words which are comparatively seldom used in ordinary conversation. Their meanings are known to every educated person, but there is little occasion to employ them at home or in the market-place. Our first acquaintance with them comes not from our mother's lips or from the talk of our schoolmates, but from books that we read, lectures that we hear, or the more formal conversation of highly educated speakers, who are discussing some particular topic in a style appropriately elevated above the habitual level of every- day life. Such words are called " learned," and the distinction between them and " popular " words is of great importance to a right understanding of linguistic process. The difference between popular and learned words may be easily seen in a few examples. We may describe a girl as " lively " or as " vivacious." In the first case, we are using a native Eng- lish formation from the familiar noun life. In the latter, we are using a Latin derivative which has precisely the same meaning. Yet the atmosphere of the two words is quite different. No one ever got the adjective lively out of a book. It is a part of every- body's vocabulary. We cannot remember a time when we did (GREENOUGH AND KJTTREDGE^ 261 \ not know it, and we feel sure that we learned it long before we were able to read. On the other hand, we must have passed several years of our lives before learning the word vivacious. We may even remember the first time that we saw it in print or heard it from some grown-up friend who was talking over our childish heads. Both lively and vivacious are good English words, but lively is " popular " and vivacious is " learned." From the same point of view we may contrast the following pairs of synonyms: 1 the same, identical; speech, oration; fire, con- flagration; choose, select; brave, valorous; swallowing, degluti- tion; striking, percussion; building, edifice ; shady, umbrageous; puckery, astringent; learned, erudite; secret, cryptic; destroy, annihilate ; stiff, rigid; flabby, flaccid; queer, eccentric ; behead, decapitate; round, circular; thin, emaciated; fat, corpulent; truthful, veracious; try, endeavor; bit, modicum; piece, frag- ment ; sharp, acute; crazy, maniacal; king, sovereign; book, volume; lying, mendacious ; beggar, mendicant; teacher, instruc- tor; play, drama; air, atmosphere; paint, pigment. Tfhe terms "popular" and "learned," as applied to words, are not absolute definitions. No two persons have the same stock of words, and the same word may be "popular" in one man's vocabulary and " learned " in another's. 2 There are also different grades of " popularity " ; indeed there is in reality a continuous gradation from infantile words like mamma axi&papa to such erudite derivatives as concatenation and cataclysm. Still, the division into "learned" and "popular" is convenient and sound. Disputes may arise as to the classification of any particular word, but there can be no difference of opinion about the general principle. We must be careful, however, to avoid misconception. When we call a word " popular," we do not mean that it is a favorite word, but simply that it belongs to the people as a whole, that is, it is everybody's word, not the possession of a limited number. When 1 Not all the words are exact synonyms, but that is of no importance in the present discussion. 2 It is instructive to study one's own vocabulary from this point of view, mak- ing a list of (i) those words which we feel sure we learned in childhood, (2) those which we have learned in later life, but not from books, (3) those which have entered our vocabulary from books. We shall also find it useful to consider the difference between our reading vocabulary and our speaking vocabulary. > rS -. 262 LEARNED WORDS AND POPULAR WORDS we call a word "learned," we do not mean that it is used by scholars alone, but simply that its presence in the English vocabu- lary is due to books and the cultivation of literature rather than to the actual needs of ordinary conversation. \ Here is one of the main differences between a cultivated and an uncultivated language. Both possess a large stock of "popular" words; but the cultivated language is also rich in " learned " words, with which the ruder tongue has not provided itself, simply because it has never felt the need of them. In English it will usually be found that the so-called learned words are of foreign origin. Most of them are derived from French or Latin, and a considerable number from Greek. The reason is obvious. The development of English literature has not been isolated, but has taken place in close connection with the earnest study of foreign literatures. Thus, in the fourteenth century, when our language was assuming substantially the shape which it now bears, the literary exponent of English life and thought, Geoffrey Chaucer, the first of our great poets, was pro- foundly influenced by Latin literature as well as by that of France and Italy. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Greek and Latin classics were vigorously studied by almost every English writer of any consequence, and the great authors of antiquity were regarded as models, not merely of general literary form, but of expression in all its details. These foreign influences have varied much in character and intensity. But it is safe to say that there has been no time since 1350 when English writers of the highest class have not looked to Latin, French, and Italian authors for guidance and inspiration. From 1600 to the present day the direct influence of Greek literature and philosophy has also been enormous, affecting as it has the finest spirits in a peculiarly pervasive way, and its indirect influence is quite beyond calculation. Greek civilization, we should remember, has acted upon us, not merely through Greek literature and art, but also through the medium of Latin, since the Romans borrowed their higher culture from Greece. Now certain facts in the history of our language have made it peculiarly inclined to borrow from French and Latin. The Nor- man Conquest in the eleventh century made French the language GREENOUGH AND KITTREDGE 263 of polite society in England ; and, long after the contact between Norman-French and English had ceased to be of direct signifi- cance in our linguistic development, the reading and speaking of French and the study of French literature formed an important part of the education of English-speaking men and women. When literary English was in process of formation in the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries, the authors whose works deter- mined the cultivated vocabulary were almost as familiar with French as with their mother tongue, and it was therefore natural that they should borrow a good many French words. But these same authors were also familiar with Latin, which, though called a dead language, has always been the professional dialect of eccle- siastics and a lingua franca for educated men. Thus the borrow- ing from French and from Latin went on side by side, and it is often impossible to say from which of the two languages a par- ticular English word is taken. The practice of naturalizing French and Latin words was, then, firmly established in the four- teenth century, and when, in the sixteenth century, there was a great revival of Greek studies in England, the close literary re- lations between Greece and Rome facilitated the adoption of a considerable number "of words from the Greek. Linguistic processes are cumulative : one does not stop when another begins. Hence we find all of these influences active in increasing the modern vocabulary. In particular, the language of science has looked to Greece for its terms, as the language of abstract thought has drawn its nomenclature from Latin. It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that all our " popular " terms are of native origin, and that all foreign deriva- tives are " learned." The younger and less cultivated members of a community are naturally inclined to imitate the speech of the older and more cultivated. Hence, as time has passed, a great num- ber of French and Latin words, and even some that are derived from the Greek, have made themselves quite at home in ordinary con- versation. Such words, whatever their origin, are as truly popular as if they had been a part of our language from the earliest period. Examples of such popular ] words of foreign derivation are the following : 1 The exact grade of " popularity " differs in these examples. 264 LEARNED WORDS AND POPULAR WORDS From French : army, arrest, bay, card, catch, city, chase, chim- ney, conveyance, deceive, entry, engine, forge, hour, letter, mantle, mason, merchant, manner, mountain, map, move, navy, prince, pen, pencil, parlor, river, rage, soldier, second, table, veil, village. From Latin : accommodate, act, add, adopt, animal, anxious, applause, arbitrate, auction, agent, calculate, cancer, circus, collapse, collision, column, congress, connect, consequence, con- tract, contradict, correct, creation, cuctimber, curve, centen- nial, decorate, delicate, dentist, describe, diary, diffident, different, digest, direct, discuss, divide, educate, elect, emigrant, equal, erect, expect, extra, fact, genius, genuine, graduate, gratis, horrid, imitate, item, joke, junction, junior, major, magnificent, medicine, medium, miser, obstinate, omit, pagan, pastor, pauper, pedal, pendulum, per- mit, picture, plague, postpone, premium, prevent, prospect, protect, quiet, recess, recipe, reduce, regular, salute, secure, series, single, species, specimen, splendid, strict, student, subscribe, subtract, suburb, suffocate, suggest, tedious, timid, urge, vaccinate, various, ventilation, vest, veto, victor, vim, vote. From Greek : anthracite, apathy, arsenic, aster, athlete, atlas, attic, barometer, biography, calomel, catarrh, catholic, catastrophe, catechism, caustic, chemist, crisis, dialogue, diphtheria, elastic, ency- clopedia, hector, homeopathy, iodine, lexicon, microscope, monoto- nous, myth, neuralgia, panic, panorama, photograph, skeleton, strychnine, tactics, telegraph, tonic, zoology. No language can borrow extensively from foreign sources with- out losing a good many words of its own. Hence, if we compare the oldest form of English (Anglo-Saxon) with our modern speech, we shall discover that many words that were common in Anglo- Saxon have gone quite out of use, being replaced by their foreign equivalents. The "learned" word has driven out the "popular" word, and has thereupon, in many cases, become " popular " itself. Thus instead of A.S. here we use the French word army ; instead of thegn or theow, the French word servant ; instead of sciphere (a compound of the Anglo-Saxon word for ship and that for army}, we use navy ; instead of micel, we say large ; instead of sige, vic- tory ; instead of swithe, very ; instead of laf, we say remainder or remnant, and so on. Curiously enough, it sometimes happens that when both the GREENOUGH AND KITTREDGB 26$ native and the foreign word still have a place in our language, the latter has become the more popular, the former being relegated to the higher or poetical style. Thus it is more natural for us to say divide (from L. divldd) than cleave (from A.S. cteofari) ; travel than fare; 1 river than stream; castle than burg; resi- dence than dwelling; remain than abide; expect than ween; pupil or scholar than learner; destruction than bale ; protect or defend than shield; immediately than straightway; encourage than hearten; present than bestow ; firm than steadfast; direct than forthright; impetuous than heady ; modest than shamefaced; prince thanat/ie- ling ; noise or tumult or disturbance than din ; people than folk ; prophet than soothsayer ; fate than weird ; lancer than spear- man ; I intend than / am minded; excavate than delve; resist than withstand; beautiful than goodly ; gracious than kindly. The very fact that the native words belong to the older stock has made them poetical ; for the language of poetry is always more archaic than that of prose. Frequently we have kept both the native and the foreign word, but in different senses, thus increasing our vocabulary to good purpose. The foreign word may be more emphatic than the native : as in brilliant, bright; scintillate, sparkle ; astonishment, wonder; a conflagration, a fire; devour, eat up; labor, work. Or the native word may be more emphatic than the foreign : as in stench, odor ; straightforward, direct ; dead, deceased ; murder, homicide. Often, however, there is a wide distinction in meaning. Thus driver differs from propeller ; child from infant; history from tale ; book from volume ; forehead horn front; length from longi- tude; moony from lunar; sunny from solar; nightly from noc- turnal; churl from villain ; wretch from miser ; poor man from pauper ; run across from occur; run into from incur; fight from debate. From time to time attempts have been made to oust foreign words from our vocabulary and to replace them by native words that have become either obsolete or less usual (that is to say, less popular). Whimsical theorists have even set up the principle that no word of foreign origin should be employed when a native 1 Fare is still common as a noun and in figurative senses. 2 But the irregular plural folks is a common colloquialism. 266 LEARNED WORDS AND POPULAR WORDS word of the same meaning exists. In English, however, all such efforts are predestined to failure. They result, not in a simpler and more natural style, but in something unfamiliar, fantastic, and affected. Foreign words that have long been in common use are just as much English as if they had been a part of our language from the beginning. There is no rational theory on which they should be shunned. It would be just as reasonable for an English- man whose ancestors had lived in the island ever since the time of King Alfred, to disown as his countrymen the descendants of a Frenchman or a German who settled there three hundred years ago. The test of the learned or the popular character of a word is not its etymology, but the facts relating to its habitual employ- ment by plain speakers. Nor is there any principle on which, of two expressions, that which is popular should be preferred to that which is learned or less familiar. The sole criterion of choice con- sists in the appropriateness of one's language to the subject or the occasion. It would be ridiculous to address a crowd of soldiers in the same language that one would employ in a council of war. It would be no less ridiculous to harangue an assembly of generals as if they were a regiment on the eve of battle. The reaction against the excessive Latinization of English is a wholesome ten- dency, but it becomes a mere " fad " when it is carried out in a doctrinaire manner. As Chaucer declares : " Ek Plato seith, whoso that can him rede, ' The wordes mot be cosin to the dede.' " Every educated person has at least two ways of speaking his mother tongue. The first is that which he employs in his family, among his familiar friends, and on ordinary occasions. The sec- ond is that which he uses in discoursing on more complicated subjects, and in addressing persons with whom he is less intimately acquainted. It is, in short, the language which he employs when he is "on his dignity," as he puts on evening dress when he is going to dine. The difference between these two forms of lan- guage consists, in great measure, in a difference of vocabulary. The basis of familiar words must be the same in both, but the vocabulary appropriate to the more formal occasion will include many terms which would be stilted or affected in ordinary talk. GREENOUGH AND KTTTREDGE 26? There is also considerable difference between familiar and digni- fied language in the manner of utterance. Contrast the rapid utterance of our everyday dialect, full of contractions and clipped forms, with the more distinct enunciation of the pulpit or the platform. Thus, in conversation, we habitually employ such con- tractions as /'//, don't, won't, it's, we'd, he'd, and the like, which we should never use in public speaking, unless of set purpose, to give a markedly colloquial tinge to what we have to say. SWEETNESS AND LIGHT MATTHEW ARNOLD [Chapter I of Culture and Anarchy, 1869.} THE disparagers of culture make its motive curiosity ; some- times, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity ; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or else as an engine of social and class distinc- tion, separating its holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would call this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all. To find the real ground for the very different estimate which serious people will set upon culture, we must find some motive for culture in the terms of which may lie a real ambiguity ; and such a motive the .vord curiosity gives us. I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense. With us the word is always used in a somewhat disapprov- ing sense. A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curi- osity, but with us the word always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly Review, some little time ago, was an estimate of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly in this : that 268 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT in our English way it left out of sight the double sense really involved in the word curiosity, thinking enough was said to stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to per- ceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him, would consider that this was praiseworthy and not blame- worthy, or to point out why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity, a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are, which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity. Montesquieu says : " The first motive which ought to impel us to study is the desire to augment the excellence of our nature, and to render an intel- ligent being yet more intelligent." This is the true ground to assign for the genuine scientific passion, however manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it is a worthy ground, even though we let the term curiosity stand to describe it. But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it. There is a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and beneficence, the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion, and diminish- ing human misery, the noble aspiration to leave the world better and happier than we found it, motives eminently such as are called social, come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main and pre-eminent part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origjn in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection ; 4tts a study of perfection. It moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but also of the moral and social MATTHEW ARNOLD 269 passion for doing good. As, in the first view of it, we took for its worthy motto Montesquieu's words : " To render an intelli- gent being yet more intelligent ! " so, in the second view of it, there is no better motto which it can have than these words of Bishop Wilson : " To make reason and the will of God prevail 1 " Only, whereas the passion for doing good is apt to be over- hasty in determining what reason and the will of God say, because its turn is for acting rather than thinking and it wants to be beginning to act ; and whereas it is apt to take its own conceptions, which proceed from its own state of development and share in all the imperfections and immaturities of this, for a basis of action ; what distinguishes culture is, that it is possessed by the scientific passion as well as by the passion of doing good ; that it demands worthy notions of reason and the will of God, and does not readily suffer its own crude conceptions to substitute themselves for them. And knowing that no action or institution can be salutary and stable which is not based on reason and the will of God, it is not so bent on acting and insti- tuting, even with the great aim of diminishing human error and misery ever before its thoughts, but that it can remember that acting and instituting are of little use, unless we know how and what we ought to act and to institute. This culture is more interesting and more far-reaching than that other, which is founded solely on the scientific passion for knowing. But it needs times of faith and ardour, times when the intellectual horizon is opening and widening all round us, to flourish in. And is not the close and bounded intellectual horizon in which we have long lived and moved now lifting up, and are not new lights finding free passage to shine in upon us ? For a long time there was no passage for them to make their way in upon us, and then it was of no use to think of adapting the world's action to them. Where was the hope of making reason and the will of God prevail among people Avho had a - routine which they had christened reason and the will of God, in which they were inextricably bound, and beyond which they had no power of looking ? But now the iron force of adhesion to the old routine, social, political, religious, has wonder- 2/0 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT fully yielded ; the iron force of exclusion of all which is new has wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, not that people should obstinately refuse to allow anything but their old routine to pass for reason and the will of God, but either that they should allow some novelty or other to pass for these too easily, or else that they should underrate the importance of them alto- gether, and think it enough to follow action for its own sake, without troubling themselves to make reason! and the will of God prevail therein. Now, then, is the moment for culture to be of service, culture which believes in making reason and the will of God prevail, believes in perfection, is the study and pur- suit of perfection, and is no longer debarred, by a rigid invinci- ble exclusion of whatever is new, from getting acceptance for its ideas, simply because they are new. The moment this view of culture is seized, the moment it is regarded not solely as the endeavour to see things as they are, to draw towards a knowledge of the universal order which seems to be intended and aimed at in the world, and which it is a man's happiness to go along with or his misery to go counter to, to learn, in short, the will of God, the moment, I say, culture is considered not merely as the endeavour to see and learn this, but as the endeavour, also, to make it prevail, the moral, social, and beneficent character of culture "becomes manifest. The mere endeavour to see and learn the truth for our own personal satisfaction is indeed a commencement for making it prevail, a preparing the way for this, which always serves this, and is wrongly, therefore, stamped with blame abso- lutely in itself and not only in its caricature and degeneration. But perhaps it has got stamped with blame, and disparaged with the dubious title of curiosity, because in comparison with this wider endeavour of such great and plain utility it looks self- ish, petty, and unprofitable. And religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself, religion, that voice of the deepest human experience, does not only enjoin and sanction the aim which is the great aim of culture, the aim of setting ourselves to ascertain what perfection is and to make it prevail ; but also, in determining MATTHEW ARNOLD 2?1 generally in what human perfection consists, religion comes to a conclusion identical with that which culture, culture seeking the determination of this question through all the voices of hu- man experience which have been heard upon it, of art, science, poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of religion, in order to give a greater fulness and certainty to its solution, likewise reaches. Religion says : The kingdom of God is within you ; and culture, in like manner, places human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and predominance of our hu- manity proper, as distinguished from our animality. It places it in the ever-increasing efficacy and in the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling, which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature. As I have said on a former occasion : " It is in making endless addi- tions to itself, in the endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, that the spirit of the human race finds its ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an indispensable aid, and that is the true value of culture." Not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming, is the character of per- fection as culture conceives it ; and here, too, it coincides with religion. And because men are all members of one great whole, and the sympathy which is in human nature will not allow one mem- ber to be indifferent to the rest or to have a perfect welfare independent of the rest, the expansion of our humanity, to suit the idea of perfection which culture forms, must be a general expansion. Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated. The individual is re- quired, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march towards perfection, to be continually doing all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream sweep- ing thitherward. And here, once more, culture lays on us the same obligation as religion, which says, as Bishop Wilson has admirably put it, that " to promote the kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness." But, finally, perfection, as culture from a thorough dis- interested study of human nature and human experience learns 2/2 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT to conceive it, is a harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the beauty and worth of human nature, and is not consistent with the over-development of any one power at the expense of the rest. Here culture goes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived by us. If culture, then, is a study of perfection, and of harmonious perfection, general perfection, and perfection which consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in an in- ward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances, it is clear that culture, instead of being the frivolous and useless thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt to call it, has a very important function to fulfil for mankind. And this function is particularly important in our modern world, of which the whole civilisation is, to a much greater degree than the civili- sation of Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, and tends constantly to become more so. But above all in our own country has culture a weighty part to perform, because here that mechanical character, which civilisation tends to take everywhere, is shown in the most eminent degree. Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the hu- man family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of " every man for himself." Above all, the idea of perfection as a harmonious expansion of human nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country. Its preachers have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it, and they will much oftener be regarded, for a great while to come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than as MATTHEW ARNOLD 2/3 friends and benefactors. That, however, will not prevent their doing in the end good service if they persevere. And, mean- while, the mode of action they have to pursue, and the sort of habits they must fight against, ought to be made quite clear for every one to see, who may be willing to look at the matter atten- tively and dispassionately. Faith in machinery is, I said, our besetting danger ; often in machinery most absurdly disproportioned to the end which this machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is to serve ; but always in machinery, as if it had a value in and for itself. What is freedom but machinery? what is population but machinery? what is coal but machinery ? what are railroads but machinery ? what is wealth but machinery ? what are, even, religious organi- sations but machinery ? Now almost every voice in England is accustomed to speak of these things as if they were precious ends in themselves, and therefore had some of the characters of perfection indisputably joined to them. I have before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's stock argument for proving the greatness and happiness of England as she is, and for quite stopping the mouths of all gainsayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of reit- erating this argument of his, so I do not know why I should be weary of noticing it. " May not every man in England say what he likes ? " Mr. Roebuck perpetually asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, and when every man may say what he likes, our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But the aspirations of cul- ture, which is the study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless what men say, when they may say what they like, is worth saying, has good in it, and more good than bad. In the same way the Times, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself ; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that. And in the same way with respect to railroads and coal. Every one must have observed the strange language current during the late discussions as to the possible failures of our supplies of coal. T 274 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT Our coal, thousands of people were saying, is the real basis of our national greatness ; if our coal runs short, there is an end of the greatness of England. But what is greatness ? culture makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration ; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admira- tion. If England were swallowed up by the sea to-morrow, which of the two, a hundred years hence, would most excite the love, interest, and admiration of mankind, would most, therefore, show the evidences of having possessed greatness, the England of the last twenty years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a time of splendid spiritual effort, but when our coal, and our industrial operations depending on coal, were very little developed ? Well, then, what an unsound habit of mind it must be which makes us talk of things like coal or iron as constituting the greatness of England, and. how salutary a friend is culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and thus dissipating delusions of this kind and fixing standards of perfection that are real 1 Wealth, again, that end to which our prodigious works for material advantage are directed, the commonest of common- places tells us how men are always apt to regard wealth as a precious end in itself ; and certainly they have never been so apt thus to regard it as they are in England at the present time. Never did people believe anything more firmly than nine Eng- lishmen out of tea at the present day believe that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being so very rich. Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our great- ness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says : " Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice ; look at them attentively ; observe MATTHEW ARNOLD 2?$ the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds ; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it ? " And thus culture begets a dis- satisfaction which is of the highest possible value in stemming the common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy and industrial community, and which saves the future, as one may hope, from being vulgarised, even if it cannot save the present. Population, again, and bodily health and vigour, are things which are nowhere treated in such an unintelligent, misleading, exaggerated way as in England. Both are really machinery ; yet how many people all around us do we see rest in them and fail to look beyond them ! Why, one has heard people, fresh from reading certain articles of the Times on the Registrar-Gen- eral's returns of marriages and births in this country, who would talk of our large English families in quite a solemn strain, as if they had something in itself beautiful, elevating, and meritorious in them ; as if the British Philistine would have only to present himself before the Great Judge with his twelve children, in order to be received among the sheep as a matter of right 1 But bodily health and vigour, it may be said, are not to be classed with wealth and population as mere machinery; they have a more real and essential value. True ; but only as they are more intimately connected with a perfect spiritual condition than wealth or population are. The moment we disjoin them from the idea of a perfect spiritual condition, and pursue them, as we do pursue them, for their own sake and as ends in themselves, our worship of them becomes as mere worship of machinery, as our worship of wealth or population, and as unintelligent and vulgar- ising a worship as that is. Every one with anything like an adequate idea of human perfection has distinctly marked this subordination to higher and spiritual ends of the cultivation of bodily vigour and activity. " Bodily exercise profiteth little ; but godliness is profitable unto all things," says the author of the Epistle to Timothy. And the utilitarian Franklin says just as explicitly : " Eat and drink such an exact quantity as suits the constitution of thy body, in reference to the services of the mind, n 2/6 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT But the point of view of culture, keeping the mark of human per- fection simply and broadly in view, and not assigning to this per- fection, as religion or utilitarianism assigns to it, a special and limited character, this point of view, I say, of culture is best given by these words of Epictetus : " It is a sign of avia," says he, that is, of a nature not finely tempered, " to give yourselves up to things which relate to the body ; to make, for instance, a great fuss about exercise, a great fuss about eating, a great fuss about drinking, a great fuss about walking, a great fuss about riding. All these things ought to be done merely by the way : the formation of the spirit and character must be our real con- cern." This is admirable ; and, indeed, the Greek word djJ(MATTHEW ARNOLD^ Jc\ 279 special application, of making it a mere jargon, that for the con- demnation which religion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious organisations they have no ear ; they are sure to cheat themselves and to explain this condemnation away. They can only be reached by the criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a language not to be sophisticated, and resolutely test- ing these organisations by the ideal of a human perfection com- plete on all sides, applies to them. But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage to a harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our animality, which it is the glory of these religious organisations to have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have often been without the virtues as well as the faults of the Puritan ; it has been one of their dan- gers that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will not, however, excul- pate them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in morality, and morality is indispensable. And they have been punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance. They have been punished wherein they erred ; but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains the true ideal of perfec- tion still ; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection remains nar- row and inadequate, although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' voyage, they and their standard of perfection , ' are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakspeare or Virgil, souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane, were eminent, accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company Shakspeare and Virgil would have found them ! In the same way let us judge the religious organisations which we see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished ; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human perfection is narrow and inade- quate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true 280 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT goal. As I said with regard to wealth : Let us look at the life of those who live in and for it, so I say with regard to the reli- gious organisations. Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonconformist, a life of jealousy of the Establishment, dis- putes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons; and then think of it as an ideal of a human life completing itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection ! Anotner newspaper, representing, like the Nonconformist, one of the religious organisations of this country, was a short time ago giving an account of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby day, and of all the vice and hideousness which was to be seen in that crowd ; and then the writer turned suddenly round upon Pro- fessor Huxley, and asked him how he proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness without religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this question : and how do you propose to cure it with such a religion as yours ? How is the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so narrow, so far re- moved from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the life of your religious organisation as you yourself reflect it, to conquer and transform all this vice and hideousness ? In- deed, the strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea of perfection held by the religious organisations, express- ing, as I have said, the most widespread effort which the human race has yet made after perfection, is to be found in the state of our life and society with these in possession of it, and having been in possession of it I know not how many hundred years. We are all of us included in some religious organisation or other ; we all call ourselves, in the sublime and aspiring language of religion which I have before noticed, children of God. Children of God ; it is an immense pretension ! and how are we to justify it ? By the works which we do, and the words which we speak. And the work which we collective children of God do, our grand centre of life, our city which we have builded for us to dwell in, is London ! London, with its unutterable external hideousness, and with its internal canker of publice egestas, pri- vatim opulentia? to use the words which Sallust puts into 1 [Public poverty, private opulence.] MATTHEW ARNOLD 28 1 Cato's mouth about Rome, unequalled in the world ! The word again, which we children of God speak, the voice which most hits our collective thought, the newspaper with the largest circu- lation in England, nay, with the largest circulation in the whole world, is the Daily Telegraph ! I say that when our religious organisations, which I admit to express the most considerable effort after perfection that our race has yet made, land us in no better result than this, it is high time to examine carefully their idea of perfection, to see whether it does not leave out of account sides and forces of human nature which we might turn to great use ; whether it would not be more operative if it were more complete. And I say that the English reliance on 'our religious organisations and on their ideas of human perfection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth, mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing things as they are, and on drawing the human race onwards to a more complete, a harmonious perfection. Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of perfection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude towards all this ma- chinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men do themselves by their blind belief in some machinery or other, whether it is wealth and industrial- ism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily strength and activ- ity, or whether it is a political organisation, or whether it is a religious organisation, oppose with might and main the ten- dency to this or that political and religious organisation, or to games and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrialism, and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which sweetness and light give, and which is one of the rewards of culture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see that a tendency may be neces- sary, and even, as a preparation for something in the future, salutary, and yet that the generations or individuals who obey this tendency are sacrificed to it, that they fall short of the hope of perfection by following it ; and that its mischiefs are to be criticised, lest it should take too firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose. 282 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at Paris, and others have pointed out the same thing, how necessary is the present great movement towards wealth and industrialism, in order to lay broad foundations of material well-being for the society of the future. The worst of these justifications is, that they are generally addressed to the very people engaged, body and soul, in the movement in question ; at all events, that they are always seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite justifying their life ; and that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement towards fortune-making and exag- gerated industrialism, readily allows that the future may derive benefit from it ; but insists, at the same time, that the passing generations of industrialists, forming, for the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism, are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result of all the games and sports which occupy the passing generation of boys and young men may be the estab- lishment of a better and sounder physical type for the future to work with. Culture does not set itself against the games and sports ; it congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its improved physical basis ; but it points out that our passing generation of boys and young men is, meantime, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to develop the moral fibre of the English race, Nonconformity to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination over men's minds and to pre- pare the way for freedom of thought in the distant future ; still, culture points out that the harmonious perfection of generations of Puritans and Nonconformists have been, in consequence, sac- rificed. Freedom of speech may be necessary for the society of the future, but the young lions of the Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in his coun- try's government may be necessary for the society of the future, but meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults ; and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize one truth, the truth that beauty and sweetness are essen- MATTHEW ARNOLD 283 rial characters of a complete human perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been at the bot- tom of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our opposi- tion to so many triumphant movements. And the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, and has shown its power even in its defeat. We have not won our political battles, we have not carried our main points, we have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously with the modern world ; but we have told silently upon the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up our own communications with the future. Look at the course of the great movement which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years ago ! It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman's Apology may see, against what in one word may be called " Liberalism." Liberalism prevailed ; it was the ap- pointed force to do the work of the hour ; it was necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail. The Oxford movement was broken, it failed ; our wrecks are scattered on every shore : Quse regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? 1 But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It was the great middle- class liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial fortunes ; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than this were not opposed to the Oxford movement : but this was the force which really beat it ; this was the force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with ; this was the force which till only the other day seemed to be the paramount force in this country, and to be in possession of the future ; this was the force 1 [What region in the earth not full of our labor ?] 284 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admi- ration, and whose rule he was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where is this great force of Philistinism now ? It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the future. A new power has suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class liberalism ; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither the legislation of middle- class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of middle-class indus- trialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant religion. I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its own ideals are better ; all I say is, that they are wholly different. And who will estimate how much the currents of feeling created by Dr. Newman's movements, the keen desire for beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hard- ness and vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism, who will estimate how much all these contrib- uted to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground under self-confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and superses- sion? It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner long may it continue to conquer ! In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have said that the new and more democratic force which is now superseding our old middle- class liberalism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still to form. We hear promises of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I know not what ; but those promises come rather from its advo- cates, wishing to make a good plea for it and to justify it for superseding middle-class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it has itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of well-intentioned friends against whom culture may with ad- MATTHEW ARNOLD 285 vantage continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfec- tion; that this is an inward spiritual activity, having for its char- acters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism and the world of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from the world of middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in machinery to which, as we have seen, Englishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class liberalism. He complains with a sorrowful indignation of people who " appear to have no proper estimate of the value of the franchise ; " he leads his disciples to believe, what the Englishman is always too ready to believe, that the having a vote, like the having a large family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and perfecting effect upon human nature. Or else he cries out to the democracy, " the men," as he calls them, " upon whose shoulders the greatness of England rests," he cries out to them : " See what you have done ! I look over this country and see the cities you have built, the railroads you have made, the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest mercantile navy the world has ever seen ! I see that you have converted by your labours what was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful gar- den ; I know that you have created this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of power throughout all the world." Why, this is just the very style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the middle classes, and makes such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of teach- ing a man to value himself not on what he is, not on his prog- ress in sweetness and light, but on the number of the railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the middle classes are told that they have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they have done it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy to put its trust in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they are superseding ; and they too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to sit down at the ban- 286 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT quet of the future without having on a wedding garment, and nothing excellent can then come from them. Those who know their besetting faults, those who have watched them and listened to them, or those who will read the instructive account recently given of them by one of themselves, the Journeyman Engineer, will agree that the idea which culture sets before us of perfec- tion, an increased spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy, is an idea which the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own industrial performances. Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the past, ab- stract systems of renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the future, these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte, one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an old friend of mine, and I am glad to have an opportunity of publicly express- ing my respect for his talents and character, are among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural enough motive ; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism, its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract system. Culture is always assigning to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their friends like. A current in people's minds sets towards new ideas ; people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the real merit of having early and strongly felt and helped the new current, but who brings plenty of narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of it, is cred- ited with being the author of the whole current, the fit person to be entrusted with its regulation and to guide the human race. MATTHEW ARNOLD 28? The excellent German historian of the mythology of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome under trie Tarquins of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, healing, and recon- ciliation, will have us observe that it was not so much the Tar- quins who brought to Rome the new worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind of the Roman people which set powerfully at that time towards a new worship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our attention to the natural current there is in human affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let us rivet our faith upon any one man and his doings. It makes us see not only his good side, but also how much in him was of necessity limited and transient ; nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. I remember, when I was under the influence of a mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most con- siderable, it seems to me, whom America has yet produced, Benjamin Franklin, I remember the relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable common-sense, I came upon a project of his for a new version of the Book of Job, to replace the old version, the style of which, says Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agreeable. " I give," he continues, " a few verses, which may serve as a sample of the kind of version I would recommend." We all recollect the famous verse in our translation : " Then Satan answered the Lord and said : ' Doth Job fear God for nought ? ' ' Franklin makes this : " Does your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct is the effect of mere personal attachment and affection? " I well re- member how, when first I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself : " After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond Frank'lin's victorious good sense ! " So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and Bentham's mind and ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, I open the Deontology. There I read : " While Xenophon was writing his history and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense under pretence of talking wis- 288 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT dom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted in words ; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every man's experience." From the moment of reading that, I am delivered from the bondage of Bentham ! the fanaticism of his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of his mind and ideas for supplying the rule of human society, for perfection. Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, of disciples, of a school ; with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. However much it may find to admire in these personages, or in some of them, it nevertheless remem- bers the text : "Be not ye called Rabbi 1 " and it soon passes on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves a Rabbi ; it does not want to pass on from its Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached perfection ; it wants its Rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, that they may with the more authority recast the world ; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture, eternally passing onwards and seeking, is an impertinence and an offence. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobinism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of his own along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism itself a service. So, too, Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence proper to culture, the consid- eration of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful judgment of persons. " The man of culture is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, " one of the poorest mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, and he complains that the man of culture stops him with a " turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and in- decision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except for " a critic of new books or a professor of belles-lettres ? " Why, it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasperation which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses through the whole pro- duction in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. It is of use because, like religion, that other effort MATTHEW ARNOLD 289 after perfection, it testifies that, where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work. The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater I the passion for making them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweet- ness and light for as many as possible. Again and again I have insisted how those are the happy moments of humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the flowering times for literature and art and all the crea- tive power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and thought, when the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real thought and real beauty ; real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. Our religious and politi- cal organisations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither way ; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes ; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes ; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere ; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, u 2QO SWEETNESS AND LIGHT as it uses them itself, freely, nourished, and not bound by them. This is the social idea ; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time ; who have laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive ; to humanise it, to make' it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowl- edge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections ; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder in Germany, at the end of the last century ; and their services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect than the works of Les- sing and Herder will be produced in Germany; and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And why ? Because they humanised knowl- edge ; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence ; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augus- tine they said : " Let us not leave thee alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness ; let the chil- dren of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times ; for the old order is passed, and the new arises ; the night is spent, the day is come forth ; and thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth labourers into thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs ; when thou shalt send forth new labourers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." WALTER BAGEHOT ORNATE ART WALTER BAGEHOT [From Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetry, 1864.] THE extreme opposite to this pure art is what may be called ornate art. This species of art aims also at giving a delineation of the typical idea in its perfection and its fulness, but it aims at so doing in a manner most different. It wishes to surround the type with the greatest number of circumstances which it will bear. It works not by choice and selection, but by accumulation and aggregation. The idea is not, as in the pure style, presented with the least clothing which it will endure, but with the richest and most involved clothing that it will admit. We are fortunate in not having to hunt out of past literature an illustrative specimen of the ornate style. Mr. Tennyson has just given one admirable in itself, and most characteristic of the defects and the merits of this style. The story of Enoch Arden, as he has enhanced and presented it, is a rich and splendid composite of imagery and illustration. Yet how simple that story is in itself ! A sailor who sells fish, breaks his leg, gets dismal, gives up selling fish, goes to sea, is wrecked on a desert island, stays there some years, on his return finds his wife married to a miller, speaks to a landlady on the subject, and dies. Told in the pure and simple, the unadorned and classical style, this story would not have taken three pages, but Mr. Tennyson has been able to make it the principal the largest tale in his new volume. He has done so only by giving to every event and inci- dent in the volume an accompanying commentary. He tells a great deal about the torrid zone, which a rough sailor like Enoch Arden certainly would not have perceived ; and he gives to the fishing village, to which all the characters belong, a softness and a fascination which such villages scarcely possess in reality. The description of the tropical island on which the sailor is thrown, is an absolute model of adorned art : ORNATE ART "The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long cojiycilvjuljises That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail : No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail." No expressive circumstances can be added to this description, no enhancing detail suggested. A much less happy instance is the description of Enoch's life before he sailed : " While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, Or often journeying landward ; for in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion -whelp, And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering." WALTER BAGEHOT 293 So much has not often been made of selling fish. The essence of ornate art is in this manner to accumulate round the typical object, everything which can be said about it, every associated thought that can be connected with it, without impairing the essence of the delineation. The first defect which strikes a student of ornate art the first which arrests the mere reader of it is what is called a want of simplicity. Nothing is described as it is ; everything has about it an atmosphere of something else. The combined and associated thoughts, though they set off and heighten particular ideas and aspects of the central and typical conception, yet complicate it : a simple thing "a daisy by the river's brim " is never left by itself, something else is put with it; something not more con- nected with it than " lion- whelp " and the " peacock yew-tree " are with the " fresh fish for sale " that Enoch carries past them. Even in the highest cases, ornate art leaves upon a cultured and delicate taste, the conviction that it is not the highest art, that it is somehow excessive and over-rich, that it is not chaste in itself or chastening to the mind that sees it that it is in an explained manner unsatisfactory, " a thing in which we feel there is some hidden want ! " That want is a want of " definition." We must all know land- scapes, river landscapes especially, which are in the highest sense beautiful, which when we first see them give us a delicate pleasure ; which in some and these the best cases give even a gentle sense of surprise that such things should be so beautiful, and yet when we come to live in them, to spend even a few hours in them, we seem stifled and oppressed. On the other hand there are peo- ple to whom the sea-shore is a companion, an exhilaration ; and not so much for the brawl of the shore as for the limited vastness, the finite infinite of the ocean as they see it. Such people often come home braced and nerved, and if they spoke out the truth, would have only to say, " We have seen the horizon line " ; if they were let alone indeed, they would gaze on it hour after hour, so great to them is the fascination, so full the sustaining calm, which they gain from that union of form and greatness. To a very infe- rior extent, but still, perhaps, to an extent which most people understand better, a common arch will have the same effect. 294 ORNATE ART A bridge completes a river landscape ; if of the old and many- arched sort, it regulates by a long series of defined forms the vague outline of wood and river, which before had nothing to measure it ; if of the new scientific sort, it introduces still more strictly a geometrical element; it stiffens the scenery which was before too soft, too delicate, too vegetable. Just such is the effect of pure style in literary art. It calms by conciseness ; while the ornate style leaves on the mind a mist of beauty, an excess of fascination, a complication of charm, the pure style leaves behind it the sim- ple, defined, measured idea, as it is, and by itself. That which is chaste chastens ; there is a poised energy a state half thrill, half tranquillity which pure art gives, which no other can give; a pleasure justified as well as felt ; an ennobled satisfaction at what ought to satisfy us, and must ennoble us. Ornate art is to pure art what a painted statue is to an unpainted. It is impossible to deny that a touch of colour does bring out cer- tain parts ; does convey certain expressions ; does heighten certain features, but it leaves on the work as a whole, a want, as we say, "of something"; a want of that inseparable chasteness which clings to simple sculpture, an impairing predominance of alluring details which impairs our satisfaction with our own satisfaction ; which makes us doubt whether a higher being than ourselves will be satisfied even though we are so. In the very same manner, though the rouge of ornate literature excites our eye, it also impairs our confidence. Mr. Arnold has justly observed that this self-justifying, self-prov- ing purity of style is commoner in ancient literature than in modern literature, and also that Shakespeare is not a great or an unmixed example of it. No one can say that he is. His works are full of undergrowth, are full of complexity, are not models of style ; except by a miracle, nothing in the Elizabethan age could be a model of style ; the restraining taste of that age was feebler and more mistaken than that of any other equally great age. Shakespeare's mind so teemed with creation that he required the most just, most forcible, most constant restraint from without. He most needed to be guided among poets, and he was the least and worst guided. As a whole no one can call his works finished models of the pure style, or of any style. But he has many WALTER BAGEHOT 295 passages of the most pure style, passages which could be easily cited if space served. And we must remember that the task which Shakespeare undertook was the most difficult which any poet has ever attempted, and that it is a task in which after a million efforts every other poet has failed. The Elizabethan drama as Shakespeare has immortalised it undertakes to delineate in five acts, under stage restrictions, and in mere dia- logue, a whole list of dramatis persona, a set of characters enough for a modern novel, and with the distinctness of a modern novel. Shakespeare is not content to give two or three great characters in solitude and in dignity, like the classical dramatists ; he wishes to give a whole party of characters in the play of life, and according to the nature of each. He would " hold the mirror up to nature," not to catch a monarch in a tragic posture, but a whole group of characters engaged in many actions, intent on many purposes, thinking many thoughts. There is life enough, there is action enough, in single plays of Shakespeare to set up an ancient dram- atist for a long career. And Shakespeare succeeded. His charac- ters, taken en masse, and as a whole, are as well known as any novelist's characters ; cultivated men know all about them, as young ladies know all about Mr. Trollope's novels. But no other dramatist has succeeded in such an aim. No one else's charac- ters are staple people in English literature, hereditary people whom every one knows all about in every generation. The contempo- rary dramatists, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, etc., had many merits, some of them were great men. But a critic must say of them the worst thing he has to say: "They were men who failed in their characteristic aim ; " they attempted to describe numerous sets of complicated characters, and they failed. No one of such characters, or hardly one, lives in com- mon memory; the Faustus of Marlowe, a really great idea, is not remembered. They undertook to write what they could not write five acts full of real characters, and in consequence, the fine individual things they conceived are forgotten by the mixed multitude, and known only to a few of the few. Of the Spanish theatre we cannot speak ; but there are no such characters in any French tragedy : the whole aim of that tragedy forbad it. Goethe has added to literature a few great characters ; he may be said 296 ORNATE ART almost to have added to literature the idea of " intellectual crea- tion," the idea of describing the great characters through the intellect but he has not added to the common stock what Shake- speare added, a new multitude of men and women ; and these not in simple attitudes, but amid the most complex parts of life, with all their various natures roused, mixed, and strained. The sever- est art must have allowed many details, much overflowing circum- stance, to a poet who undertook to describe what almost defies description. Pure art would have commanded him to use details lavishly, for only by a multiplicity of such could the required effect have been at all produced. Shakespeare could accomplish it, for his mind was a spring, an inexhaustible fountain, of human nature, and it is no wonder that being compelled by the task of his time to let the fulness of his nature overflow, he sometimes let it over- flow too much, and covered with erroneous conceits and superflu- ous images characters and conceptions which would have been far more justly, far more effectually, delineated with conciseness and simplicity. But there is an infinity of pure art in Shakespeare although there is a great deal else also. It will be said, if ornate art be, as you say, an inferior species of art, why should it ever be used? If pure art be the best sort of art, why should it not always be used ? The reason is this : literary art, as we just now explained, is concerned with literatesque characters in literatesque situations ; and the best art is concerned with the most literatesque characters in the most literatesque situations. Such are the objects of pure art; it embodies with the fewest touches, and under the most select and choice circumstances, the highest conceptions ; but it does not follow that only the best subjects are to be treated by art, and then only in the very best way. Human nature could not endure such a critical commandment as that, and it would be an erroneous criticism which gave it. Any literatesque character may be described in literature under any circumstances which exhibit its literatesqueness. The essence of pure art consists in its describing what is as it is, and this is very well for what can bear it, but there are many inferior things which will not bear it, and which nevertheless ought to be described in books. A certain kind of literature deals WALTER BAGEHOT 297 with illusions, and fhis kind of literature has given a colouring to the name romantic. A man of rare genius, and even of poetical genius, has gone so far as to make these illusions the true subject of poetry almost the sole subject. " Without," says Father Newman, of one of his characters, 1 " being himself a poet, he was in the season of poetry, in the sweet spring-time, when the year is most beautiful because it is new. Novelty was beauty to a heart so open and cheerful as his ; not only because it was novelty, and had its proper charm as such, but because when we first see things, we see them in a gay con- fusion, which is a principal element of the poetical. As time goes on, and we number and sort and measure things, as we gain views, we advance towards philosophy and truth, but we recede from poetry. " When we ourselves were young, we once on a time walked on a hot summer day from Oxford to Newington a dull road, as any one who has gone it knows ; yet it was new to us ; and we protest to you, reader, believe it or not, laugh or not, as you will, to us it seemed on that occasion quite touchingly beautiful ; and a soft melancholy came over us, of which the shadows fall even now, when we look upon that dusty, weary journey. And why? because every object which met us was unknown and full of mystery. A tree or two in the distance seemed the beginning of a great wood, or park, stretching endlessly ; a hill implied a vale beyond, with that vale's history; the bye-lanes, with their green hedges, wound on and vanished, yet were not lost to the imagination. Such was our first journey ; but when we had gone over it several times, the mind refused to act, the scene ceased to enchant, stern reality alone remained ; and we thought it one of the most tiresome, odious roads we ever had occasion to traverse." That is to say, that the function of the poet is to introduce a " gay confusion," a rich medley which does not exist in the actual world which perhaps could not exist in any world but which would seem pretty if it did exist. Every one who reads Enoch Arden will perceive that this notion of all poetry is exactly ap- plicable to this one poem. Whatever be made of Enoch's " Ocean spoil in ocean-smelling osier," of the " portal-warding lion-whelp," 1 Charles Reding, in Loss and Gain, volume i, chapter 3. 298 ORNATE ART and the "peacock yew-tree," every one knows that in himself Enoch could not have been charming. People who sell fish about the country (and that is what he did, though Mr. Tennyson won't speak out, and wraps it up) never are beautiful. As Enoch was and must be coarse, in itself the poem must depend for a charm on a " gay confusion " on a splendid accumulation of impossible accessories. Mr. Tennyson knows this better than many of us he knows the country world ; he has proved that no one living knows it better; he has painted with pure art with art which describes what is a race perhaps more refined, more delicate, more conscien- tious, than the sailor the Northern Farmer and we .all know what a splendid, what a living thing, he has made of it. He could, if he only would, have given us the ideal sailor in like manner the ideal of the natural sailor we mean 1 the characteristic present man as he lives and is. But this he has not chosen. He has endeavoured to describe an exceptional sailor, at an exceptionally refined port, performing a graceful act, an act of relinquishment. And with this task before him, his profound taste taught him that ornate art was a necessary medium was the sole effectual instru- ment for his purpose. It was necessary for him if possible to abstract the mind from reality, to induce us not to conceive or think of sailors as they are while we are reading of his sailors, but to think of what a person who did not know, might fancy sailors to be. A casual traveller on the seashore, with the sen- sitive mood and the romantic imagination Dr. Newman has described, might fancy, would fancy, a seafaring village to be like that. Accordingly, Mr. Tennyson has made it his aim to call off the stress of fancy from real life, to occupy it otherwise, to bury it with pretty accessories ; to engage it on the " peacock yew-tree," and the " portal- warding lion-whelp." Nothing, too, can be more splendid than the description of the tropics as Mr. Tennyson delineates them, but a sailor would not have felt the tropics in that manner. The beauties of nature would not have so much occupied him. He would have known little of the scarlet shafts of sunrise and nothing of the long convolvuluses. As in Robin- son Crusoe, his own petty contrivances and his small ailments would have been the principal subject to him. " For three years," he might have said, " my back was bad ; and then I put two pegs WALTER BAGEHOT 299 into a piece of drift-wood and so made a chair ; and after that it pleased God to send me a chill." In real life his piety would scarcely have gone beyond that. It will indeed be said, that though the sailor had no words for, and even no explicit consciousness of, the splendid details of the torrid zone, yet that he had, notwithstanding, a dim latent inex- pressible conception of them : though he could not speak of them or describe them, yet they were much to him. And doubtless such is the case. Rude people are impressed by what is beauti- ful deeply impressed though they could not describe what they see, or what they feel. But what is absurd in Mr. Tenny- son's description absurd when we extract it from the gorgeous additions and ornaments with which Mr. Tennyson distracts us is, that his hero feels nothing else but these great splendours. We hear nothing of the physical ailments, the rough devices, the low superstitions, which really would have been the first things, the favourite and principal occupations of his mind. Just so when he gets home he may have had such fine sentiments, though it is odd, and he may have spoken of them to his landlady, though that is odder still, but it is incredible that his whole mind should be made up of fine sentiments. Besides those sweet feelings, if he had them, there must have been many more obvious, more pro- saic, and some perhaps more healthy. Mr. Tennyson has shown a profound judgment in distracting us as he does. He has given us a classic delineation of the Northern Farmer with no ornament at all as bare a thing as can be because he then wanted to describe a true type of real men ; he has given us a sailor crowded all over with ornament and illustration, because he then wanted to describe an unreal type of fancied men, not sailors as they are, but sailors as they might be wished. Another prominent element in Enoch Arden is yet more suit- able to, yet more requires the aid of, ornate art. Mr. Tennyson undertook to deal with half belief. The presentiments which Annie feels are exactly of that sort which everybody has felt, and which every one has half believed which hardly any one has more than half believed. Almost every one, it has been said, would be angry if any one else reported that he believed in ghosts ; yet hardly any one, when thinking by himself, wholly disbelieves 3OO ORNATE ART them. Just so such presentiments as Mr. Tennyson depicts, impress the inner mind so much that the outer mind the rational understanding hardly likes to consider them nicely or to discuss them sceptically. For these dubious themes an ornate or complex style is needful. Classical art speaks out what it has to say plainly and simply. Pure style cannot hesitate ; it describes in concisest outline what is, as it is. If a poet really believes in presentiments, he can speak out in pure style. One who could have been a poet one of the few in any age of whom one can say certainly that they could have been and have not been has spoken thus : " When Heaven sends sorrow, Warnings go first, Lest it should burst With stunning might On souls too bright To fear the morrow. " Can science bear us To the hid springs Of human things? Why may not dream, Or thought's day-gleam, Startle, yet cheer. " Are such thoughts fetters, While faith disowns Dread of earth's tones, Recks but Heaven's call, And on the wall, Reads but Heaven's letters?" 1 But if a poet is not sure whether presentiments are true or not true ; if he wishes to leave his readers in doubt ; if he wishes an atmosphere of indistinct illusion and of moving shadow, he must use the romantic style, the style of miscellaneous adjunct, the style " which shirks, not meets " your intellect, the style which, as you are scrutinising, disappears. Nor is this all, or even the principal lesson, which Enoch 1 John Henry Newman's Warnings. WALTER BAGEHOT 30 1 Arden may suggest to us, of the use of ornate art. That art is the appropriate art for an unpleasing type. Many of the characters of real life, if brought distinctly, prominently, and plainly before the mind, as they really are, if shown in their inner nature, their actual essence, are doubtless very unpleasant. They would be horrid to meet and horrid to think of. We fear it must be owned that Enoch Arden is this kind of person. A dirty sailor who did not go home to his wife is not an agreeable being : a varnish must be put on him to make him shine. It is true that he acts rightly ; that he is very good. But such is human nature that it finds a little tameness in mere morality. Mere virtue belongs to a charity-school girl, and has a taint of the catechism. All of us feel this, though most of us are too timid, too scrupulous, too anxious about the virtue of others to speak out. We are ashamed of our nature in this respect, but it is not the less our nature. And if we look deeper into the matter there are many reasons why we should not be ashamed of it. The soul of man, and, as we necessarily believe, of beings greater than man, has many parts besides its moral part. It has an intellectual part, an artis- tic part, even a religious part, in which mere morals have no share. In Shakespeare or Goethe, even in Newton or Archimedes, there is much which will not be cut down to the shape of the commandments. They have thoughts, feelings, hopes immor- tal thoughts and hopes which have influenced the life of men, and the souls of men, ever since their age, but which the " whole duty of man," the ethical compendium, does not recognise. Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind. A highly developed moral nature joined to an unde- veloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It repre- sents a bit of human nature a good bit, of course but a bit only, in disproportionate, unnatural, and revolting prominence ; and, therefore, unless an artist use delicate care, we are offended. The dismal act of a squalid man needed many condiments to make it pleasant, and therefore Mr. Tennyson was right to mix them subtly and to use them freely. A mere act of self-denial can indeed scarcely be pleasant upon paper. A heroic struggle with an external adversary, even though 3O2 CHARLES LAMB it end in a defeat, may easily be made attractive. Human nature likes to see itself look grand, and it looks grand when it is making a brave struggle with foreign foes. Bat__iLjdofiS_not look grand when it is divided against itself. An excellent person striving with temptation is a very admirable being in reality, but he is not a pleasant being in description. We hope he will win and overcome his temptation ; but we feel that he would be a more interesting being, a higher being, if he had not felt that tempta- tion so much. The poet must make the struggle great in order to make the self-denial virtuous, and if the struggle be too great, we are apt to feel some mixture of contempt. The internal meta- physics of a divided nature are but an inferior subject for art, but if they are to be made attractive, much else must be combined with them. If the excellence of Hamlet had depended on the ethical qualities of Hamlet, it would not have been the master- piece of our literature. He acts virtuously of course, and kills the people he ought to kill, but Shakespeare knew that such good- ness would not much interest the pit. He made him a handsome prince and a puzzling meditative character ; these secular quali- ties relieve his moral excellence, and so he becomes "nice." In proportion as an artist has to deal with types essentially im- perfect, he must disguise their imperfections ; he must accumu- late around them as many first-rate accessories as may make his readers forget that they are themselves second-rate. The sudden millionaires of the present day hope to disguise their social de- fects by buying old places, and hiding among aristocratic furni- ture ; just so a great artist who has to deal with characters artistically imperfect, will use an ornate style, will fit them into a scene where there is much else to look at. For these reasons ornate art is, within the limits, as legitimate as pure art. It does what pure art could not do. The very excellence of pure art confines its employment. Precisely be- cause it gives the best things by themselves and exactly as they are, it fails when it is necessary to describe inferior things among other things, with a list of enhancements and a crowd of accom- paniments that in reality do not belong to it. Illusion, half belief, unpleasant types, imperfect types, are as much the proper sphere of ornate art, as an inferior landscape is the proper sphere for WALTER PATER 303 the true efficacy of moonlight. A really great landscape needs sunlight and bears sunlight ; but moonlight is an equaliser of beauties ; it gives a romantic unreality to what will not stand the bare truth. And just so does romantic art. CHARLES LAMB WALTER PATER [From Appreciations, 1889.] THOSE English critics who at the beginning of the present cen- tury introduced from Germany, together with some other subtle- ties of thought transplanted hither not without advantage, the dis- tinction between the Fancy and the Imagination, made much also of the cognate distinction between Wit and Humour, between that unreal and transitory mirth, which is as the crackling of thorns under the pot, and the laughter which blends with tears and even with the sublimities of the imagination, and which, in its most exquisite motives, is one with pity the laughter of the comedies of Shakespeare, hardly less expressive than his moods of seriousness or solemnity, of that deeply stirred soul of sympathy in him, as flowing from which both tears and laughter are alike genuine and contagious. This distinction between wit and humour, Coleridge and other kindred critics applied, with much effect, in their studies of some of our older English writers. And as the distinction between imagination and fancy, made popular by Wordsworth, found its best justification in certain essential differences of stuff in Words- worth's own writings, so this other critical distinction, between wit and humour, finds a sort of visible interpretation and instance in the character and writings of Charles Lamb; one who lived more consistently than most writers among subtle literary theories, and whose remains are still full of curious interest for the student of literature as a fine art. The author of the English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century, coming to the humourists of the nineteenth, Would have found, as is true pre-eminently of Thackeray himself, the springs of pity in them deepened by the deeper subjectivity, the intenser and closer 304 CHARLES LAMB living with itself, which is characteristic of the temper of the later generation ; and therewith, the mirth also, from the amalgam of which with pity humour proceeds, has become, in Charles Dickens, for example, freer and more boisterous. To this more high-pitched feeling, since predominant in our literature, the writings of Charles Lamb, whose life occupies the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, are a transition ; and such union of grave, of terrible even, with gay, we may note in the circumstances of his life, as reflected thence into his work. We catch the aroma of a singular, homely sweetness about his first years, spent on Thames' side, amid the red bricks and terraced gardens, with their rich historical memories of old-fashioned legal London. Just above the poorer class, deprived, as he says, of the " sweet food of academic insti- tution," he is fortunate enough to be reared in the classical lan- guages at an ancient school, where he becomes the companion of Coleridge, as at a later period he was his enthusiastic disciple. So far, the years go by with less than the usual share of boyish difficulties ; protected, one fancies, seeing what he was after- wards, by some attraction of temper in the quaint child, small and delicate, with a certain Jewish expression in his clear, brown com- plexion, eyes not precisely of the same colour, and a slow walk add- ing to the staidness of his figure ; and whose infirmity of speech, increased by agitation, is partly engaging. And the cheerfulness of all this, of the mere aspect of Lamb's quiet subsequent life also, might make the more superficial reader think of him as in himself something slight, and of his mirth as cheaply bought. Yet we know that beneath this blithe surface there was something of the fateful domestic horror, of the beauti- ful heroism and devotedness too, of old Greek tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his senior, in a sudden paroxysm of mad- ness, caused the death of her mother, and was brought to trial for what an overstrained justice might have construed as the greatest of crimes. She was released on the brother's pledging himself to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age of twenty-one, Charles Lamb sacrificed himself, "seeking thence- forth," says his earliest biographer, " no connexion which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability WALTER PATER 30$ to sustain and comfort her." The "feverish, romantic tie of love " he cast away in exchange for the " charities of home." Only, from time to time, the madness returned, affecting him too, once ; and we see the brother and sister voluntarily yielding to restraint. In estimating the humour of Elia, we must no more forget the strong undercurrent of this great misfortune and pity, than one could forget it in his actual story. So he becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so macabre. Rosamund Grey, written in his twenty-third year, a story with something bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible in it, strikes clearly this note in his work. For himself, and from his own point of view, the exercise of his gift, of his literary art, came to gild or sweeten a life of monoto- nous labour, and seemed, as far as regarded others, no very impor- tant thing ; availing to give them a little pleasure, and inform them a little, chiefly in a retrospective manner, but in no way concerned with the turning of the tides of the great world. And yet this very modesty, this unambitious way of conceiving his work, has impressed upon it a certain exceptional enduringness. For of the remarkable English writers contemporary with Lamb, many were greatly preoccupied with ideas of practice religious, moral, political ideas which have since, in some sense or other, entered permanently into the general consciousness ; and, these having no longer any stimulus for a generation provided with a different stock of ideas, the writings of those who spent so much of them- selves in their propagation have lost, with posterity, something of what they gained by them in immediate influence. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley even sharing so largely in the unrest of their own age, and made personally more interesting thereby, yet, of their actual work, surrender more to the mere course of time than some of those who may have seemed to exercise themselves hardly at all in great matters, to have been little serious, or a little indifferent, regarding them. Of this number of the disinterested servants of literature, smaller in England than in France, Charles Lamb is one. In the making of prose he realises the principle of art for its own sake, as com- pletely as Keats in the making of verse. And, working ever close CHARLES LAMB to the concrete, to the details, great or small, of actual things, books, persons, and with no part of them blurred to his vision by the intervention of mere abstract theories, he has reached an enduring moral effect also, in a sort of boundless sympathy. Unoccupied, as he might seem, with great matters, he is in immediate contact with what is real, especially in its caressing littleness, that littleness in which there is much of the whole woe- ful heart of things, and meets it more than half-way with a perfect understanding of it. What sudden, unexpected touches of pathos in him ! bearing witness how the sorrow of humanity, the Welt- schmerz, the constant aching of its wounds, is ever present with him : but what a gift also for the enjoyment of life in its subtleties, of enjoyment actually refined by the need of some thoughtful economies and making the most of things ! Little arts of happi- ness he is ready to teach to others. The quaint remarks of chil- dren which another would scarcely have heard, he preserves little flies in the priceless amber of his Attic wit and has his "Praise of chimney-sweepers " (as William Blake has written, with so much natural pathos, the Chimney-sweeper's Song), valuing carefully their white teeth, and fine enjoyment of white sheets in stolen sleep at Arundel Castle, as he tells the story, anticipating something of the mood of our deep humourists of the last genera- tion. His simple mother-pity for those who suffer by accident, or unkindness of nature, blindness for instance, or fateful disease of mind like his sister's, has something primitive in its largeness ; and on behalf of ill-used animals he is early in composing a Pity's Gift. And if, in deeper or more superficial sense, the dead do care at all for their name and fame, then how must the souls of Shake- speare and Webster have been stirred, after so long converse with things that stopped their ears, whether above or below the soil, at his exquisite appreciations of them; the souls of Titian and of Hogarth too ; for, what has not been observed so generally as the excellence of his literary criticism, Charles Lamb is a fine critic of painting also. It was as loyal, self- forgetful work for others, for Shakespeare's self first, for instance, and then for Shakespeare's readers, that that too was done : he has the true scholar's way of forgetting himself in his subject. For though " defrauded," as we WALTER PATER saw, in his young years, " of the sweet food of academic institu- tion," he is yet essentially a scholar, and all his work mainly ret- rospective, as I said; his own sorrows, affections, perceptions, being alone real to him of the present. " I cannot make these present times," he says once, " present to me." Above all, e he becomes not merely an expositor, permanently valuable, but for Englishmen almost the discoverer of the old English drama. " The book is such as I am glad there should be," he modestly says of the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare ; to which, however, he adds in a series of notes the very quintessence of criticism, the choicest savour and perfume of Elizabethan poetry being sorted, and stored here, with a sort of delicate intellectual epicureanism, which has had the effect of winning for these, then almost forgot- ten, poets, one generation after another of enthusiastic students. Could he but have known how fresh a source of culture he was evoking there for other generations, through all those years in which, a little wistfully, he would harp on the limitation of his time by business, and sigh for a better fortune in regard to literary opportunities ! To feel strongly the charm of an old poet or moralist, the lit- erary charm of Burton, for instance, or Quarles, or The Duchess of Newcastle ; and then to interpret that charm, to convey it to others he seeming to himself but to hand on to others, in mere humble ministration, that of which for them he is really the crea- tor this is the way of his criticism ; cast off in a stray letter often, or passing note, or lightest essay or conversation. It is in such a letter, for instance, that we come upon a singularly pene- trative estimate of the genius and writings of Defoe. Tracking, with an attention always alert, the whole process of their production to its starting-point in the deep places of the mind, he seems to realise the but half-conscious intuitions of Hogarth or Shakespeare, and develops the great ruling unities which have swayed their actual work ; or " puts up," and takes, the one morsel of good stuff in an old, forgotten writer. Even in what he says casually there comes an aroma of old English ; noticeable echoes, in chance turn and phrase, of the great masters of style, the old masters. Godwin, seeing in quotation a passage 308 CHARLES LAMB fromfo/m Woodvil, takes it for a choice fragment of an old drama- tist, and goes to Lamb to assist him in rinding the author. His power of delicate imitation in prose and verse reaches the length of a fine mimicry even, as in those last essays of Elia on Popular Fallacies, with their gentle reproduction or caricature of Sir Thomas Browne, showing, the more completely, his mastery, by disinter- ested study, of those elements of the man which were the real source of style in that great, solemn master of old English, who, ready to say what he has to say with fearless homeliness, yet continually overawes one with touches of a strange utterance from worlds afar. For it is with the delicacies of fine literature especially, its gradations of expression, its fine judgment, its pure sense of words, of vocabu- lary things, alas! dying out in the English literature of the present, together with the appreciation of them in our literature of the past that his literary mission is chiefly concerned. And yet, delicate, refining, daintily epicurean, as he may seem, when he writes of giants such as Hogarth or Shakespeare, though often but, in a stray note, you catch the sense of veneration with which those great names in past literature and art brooded over his intelligence, his undiminished impressibility by the great effects in them. Reading, commenting on Shakespeare, he is like a man who walks alone under a grand stormy sky, and among unwonted tricks of light, when powerful spirits might seem to be abroad upon the air ; and the grim humour of Hogarth, as he analyses it, rises into a kind of spectral grotesque ; while he too knows the secret of fine, significant touches like theirs. There are traits, customs, characteristics of houses and dress, surviving morsels of old life, such as Hogarth has transferred so vividly into The Rake's Progress, or Marriage a la Mode, con- cerning which we well understand how, common, uninteresting, or even worthless in themselves, they have come to please us at last as things picturesque, being set in relief against the modes of our different age. Customs, stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff furniture types of cast-off fashions, left by accident, and which no one ever meant to preserve we contemplate with more than good-nature, as having in them the veritable accent of a time, not altogether to be replaced by its more solemn and self-conscious deposits ; like those tricks of individuality which we find quite tolerable in per- WALTER PATER 309 sons, because they convey to us the secret of lifelike expression, and with regard to which we are all to some extent humourists. But it is part of the privilege of the genuine humourist to anticipate this pensive mood with regard to the ways and things of his own day ; to look upon the tricks in manner of the life about him with that same refined, purged sort of vision, which will come naturally to those of a later generation, in observing whatever may have survived by chance of its mere external habit. Seeing things always by the light of an understanding more entire than is pos- sible for ordinary minds, of the whole mechanism of humanity, and seeing also the manner, the outward mode or fashion, always in strict connexion with the spiritual condition which determined it, a humourist such as Charles Lamb anticipates the enchantment of distance ; and the characteristics of places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even now and in advance of time, by poetic light ; justifying what some might condemn as mere senti- mentality, in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition of such fashion or accent. " The praise of beggars," " the cries of Lon- don," the traits of actors just grown " old," the spots in " town " where the country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on, one after another, amidst the bustle ; the quaint, dimmed, just played-out farces, he had relished so much, coming partly through them to understand the earlier English theatre as a thing once really alive ; those fountains and sun-dials of old gardens, of which he entertains such dainty discourse : he feels the poetry of these things, as the poetry of things old indeed, but surviving as an actual part of the life of the present, and as something quite different from the poetry of things flatly gone from us and antique, which come back to us, if at all, as entire strangers, like Scott's old Scotch-border personages, their oaths and armour. Such gift of appreciation depends, as I said, on the habitual apprehension of men's life as a whole its organic wholeness, as extending even to the least things in it of its outward manner in connex- ion with its inward temper ; and it involves a fine perception of the congruities, the musical accordance between humanity and its environment of custom, society, personal intercourse ; as if all this, with its meetings, partings, ceremonies, gesture, tones of speech, were some delicate instrument on which an expert performer is playing 310 CHARLES LAMB These are some of the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, " never judging," as he says, " system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars " ; say- ing all things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," in catching and recording more frequently than others " the gayest, happiest atti- tude of things " ; a casual writer for dreamy readers, yet always giving the reader so much more than he seemed to propose. There is something of the follower of George Fox about him, and the Quaker's belief in the inward light coming to one passive, to the mere wayfarer, who will be sure at all events to lose no light which falls by the way glimpses, suggestions, delightful half- apprehensions, profound thoughts of old philosophers, hints of the innermost reason in things, the full knowledge of which is held in reserve ; all the varied stuff, that is, of which genuine essays are made. And with him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is, below all more superficial tendencies, the real motive in writ- ing at all a desire closely connected with that intimacy, that modern subjectivity, which may be called the Montaignesque ele- ment in literature. What he designs is to give you himself, to acquaint you with his likeness ; but must do this, if at all, indi- rectly, being indeed always more or less reserved, for himself and his friends ; friendship counting for so much in his life, that he is jealous. of anything that might jar or disturb it, even to the length of a sort of insincerity, to which he assigns its quaint " praise " ; this lover of stage plays significantly welcoming a little touch of the artificiality of play to sweeten the intercourse of actual life. And, in effect, a very delicate and expressive portrait of him does put itself together for the duly meditative reader. In indi- rect touches of his own work, scraps of faded old letters, what others remembered of his talk, the man's likeness emerges ; what he laughed and wept at, his sudden elevations, and longings after absent friends, his fine casuistries of affection and devices to jog sometimes, as he says, the lazy happiness of perfect love, his solemn moments of higher discourse with the young, as they came across him on occasion, and went along a little way with him, the WALTER PATER 311 sudden, surprised apprehension of beauties in old literature, reveal- ing anew the deep soul of poetry in things, and withal the pure spirit of fun, having its way again ; laughter, that most short-lived of all things (some of Shakespeare's even being grown hollow) wearing well with him. Much of all this comes out through his letters, which may be regarded as a department of his essays. He is an old-fashioned letter-writer, the essence of the old fashion of letter-writing lying, as with true essay-writing, in the dexterous availing oneself of accident and circumstance, in the prosecution of deeper lines of observation ; although, just as with the record of his conversation, one loses something, in losing the actual tones of the stammerer, still graceful in his halting, as he halted also in composition, composing slowly and by fits, " like a Flemish painter," as he tells us, so " it is to be regretted," says the editor of his letters, " that in the printed letters the reader will lose the curious varieties of writing with which the originals abound, and which are scrupulously adapted to the subject." Also, he was a true " collector," delighting in the personal find- ing of a thing, in the colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which attest previous ownership. . Wither's Emblems, " that old book and quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less because a child had coloured the plates with his paints. A lover of household warmth everywhere, of that tempered atmosphere which our various habitations get by men's living within them, he " sticks to his favourite books as he did to his friends," and loved the " town," with a jealous eye for all its characteristics, "old houses" coming to have souls for him. The yearning for mere warmth against him in another, makes him content, all through life, with pure brotherliness, " the most kindly and natural species of love," as he says, in place of the passion of love. Brother and sister, sitting thus side by side, have, of course, their anticipations how one of them must sit at last in the faint sun alone, and set us speculating, as we read, as to precisely what amount of melancholy really accompanied for him the approach of old age, so steadily foreseen ; make us note also, with pleasure, his successive wakings up to cheerful realities, out of a too curious musing over what is gone and what remains, of life. In his subtle capacity for enjoying the more refined points of earth, of human 312 CHARLES LAMB relationship, he could throw the gleam of poetry or humour on what seemed common or threadbare ; has a care for the sighs, and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of very weak people, down to their little pathetic "gentilities," even; while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death, almost like Shakespeare. And that care, through all his enthusiasm of discovery, for what is accustomed, in literature, connected thus with his close clinging to home and the earth, was congruous also with that love for the accustomed in religion, which we may notice in him. He is one of the last votaries of that old-world sentiment, based on the feelings of hope and awe, which may be described as the religion of men of letters (as Sir Thomas Browne has his Religion of the Physician), religion as understood by the soberer men of letters in the last century, Addison, Gray, and Johnson ; by Jane Austen and Thack- eray, later. A high way of feeling developed largely by constant intercourse with the great things of literature, and extended in its turn to those matters greater still, this religion lives, in the main retrospectively, in a system of received sentiments and beliefs ; received, like those great things of literature and art, in the first instance, on the authority of a long tradition, in the course of which they have linked themselves in a thousand complex ways to the conditions of human life, and no more questioned now than the feeling one keeps by one of the greatness say ! of Shake- speare. For Charles Lamb, such form of religion becomes the solemn background on which the nearer and more exciting objects of his immediate experience relieve themselves, borrowing from it an expression of calm ; its necessary atmosphere being indeed a profound quiet, that quiet which has in it a kind of sacramental efficacy, working, we might say, on the principle of the opus ope- ratum, almost without any co-operation of one's own, towards the assertion of the higher self. And, in truth, to men of Lamb's delicately attuned temperament mere physical stillness has its full value ; such natures seeming to long for it sometimes, as for no merely negative thing, with a sort of mystical sensuality. The writings of Charles Lamb are an excellent illustration of the value of reserve in literature. Below his quiet, his quaintness, his humour, and what may seem the slightness, the occasional or WALTER PATER 313 accidental character of his work, there lies, as I said at starting, as in his life, a genuinely tragic element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest in those hard shadows of Rosamund Grey, is always there, though not always realised either for himself or his readers, and re- strained always in utterance. It gives to those lighter matters on the surface of life and literature among which he for the most part moved, a wonderful force of expression, as if at any moment these slight words and fancies might pierce very far into the deeper soul of things. In his writing, as in his life, that quiet is not the low-flying of one from the first drowsy by choice, and needing the prick of some strong passion or worldly ambition, to stimulate him into all the energy of which he is capable ; but rather the reaction of nature, after an escape from fate, dark and insane as in old Greek tragedy, following upon which the sense of mere relief be- comes a kind of passion, as with one who, having narrowly escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a thing for grateful tears in just sit- ting quiet at home, under the wall, till the end of days. He felt the genius of places ; and I sometimes think he re- sembles the places he knew and liked best, and where his lot fell London, sixty- five years ago, with Covent Garden and the old theatres, and the Temple gardens still unspoiled, Thames gliding down, and beyond to north and south the fields at Enfield or Hampton, to which, " with their living trees," the thoughts wan- der "from the hard wood of the desk" fields fresher, and com- ing nearer to town then, but in one of which the present writer remembers, on a brooding early summer's day, to have heard the cuckoo for the first time. Here, the surface of things is certainly humdrum, the streets dingy, the green places, where the child goes a-maying, tame enough. But nowhere are things more apt to respond to the brighter weather, nowhere is there so much dif- ference between rain and sunshine, nowhere do the clouds roll together more grandly ; those quaint suburban pastorals gathering a certain quality of grandeur from the background of the great city, with its weighty atmosphere, and portent of storm in the rapid light on dome and bleached stone steeples. 1878. 314 THE PATHETIC FALLACY . THE PATHETIC FALLACY JOHN RUSKIN [Part iv., chapter 12, of Modern Painters, 1856.] i. GERMAN dulness, and English affectation, have of late much multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysi- cians, namely, " Objective " and " Subjective." No words can be more exquisitely, and in all points, useless ; and I merely speak of them that I may, at once and for ever, get them out of my way, and out of my reader's. But to get that done, they must be explained. The word " Blue," say certain philosophers, means the sensa- tion of colour which the human eye receives in looking at the open sky, or at a bell gentian. Now, say they farther, as this sensation can only be felt when the eye is turned to the object, and as, therefore, no such sensa- tion is produced by the object when nobody looks at it, there- fore the thing, when it is not looked at, is 'not blue ; and thus (say they) there are many qualities of things which depend as much on something else as on themselves. To be sweet, a thing must have a taster ; it is only sweet while it is being tasted, and if the tongue had not the capacity of taste, then the sugar would not have the quality of sweetness. And then they agree that the qualities of things which thus depend upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as affected by them, shall be called Subjective ; and the quali- ties of things which they always have, irrespective of any other nature, as roundness or squareness, shall be called Objective. From these ingenious views the step is very easy to a farther opinion, that it does not much matter what things are in them- selves, but only what they are to us ; and that the only real truth of them is their appearance to, or effect upon, us. From which position, with a hearty desire for mystification, and much egotism, selfishness, shallowness, and impertinence, a philosopher may easily go so far as to believe, and say, that everything in JOHN RUSK IN 315 the world depends upon his seeing or thinking of it, and that nothing, therefore, exists, but what he sees or thinks of. 2. Now, to get rid of all these ambiguities and troublesome words at once, be it observed that the word " Blue " does not mean the sensation caused by a gentian on the human eye ; but it means the power of producing that sensation ; and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not left a man on the face of the earth. Precisely in the same way gun- powder has a power of exploding. It will not explode if you put no match to it. But it has always the power of so exploding, and is therefore called an explosive compound, which it very positively and assuredly is, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary. In like manner, a gentian does not produce the sensation of blueness if you don't look at it. But it has always the power of doing so ; its particles being everlastingly so arranged by its Maker. And, therefore, the gentian and the sky are always verily blue, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary ; and if you do not see them blue when you look at them, it is not their fault but yours. 1 3. Hence I would say to these philosophers : If, instead of using the sonorous phrase, " It is objectively so," you will use the plain old phrase, " It is so ; " and if instead of the sonorous phrase, " It is subjectively so," you will say, in plain old English, " It does so," or " It seems so to me ; " you will, on the whole, be more intelligible to your fellow-creatures : and besides, if you find that a thing which generally " does so " to other people (as a gentian looks blue to most men) does not so to you, on any particular occasion, you will not fall into the impertinence of saying that the thing is not so, or did not so, but you will say 1 It is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation, there may be a doubt whether different people receive the same sensation from the same thing (compare Part ii, Sec. i, Chap. v. 6) ; but, though this makes such facts not distinctly ex- plicable, it does not alter the facts themselves. I derive a certain sensation, which I call sweetness, from sugar. That is a fact. Another person feels a sensation, which he also calls sweetness, from sugar. That is also a fact. The sugar's power to produce these two sensations, which we suppose to be, and which are, in all probability, very nearly the same in both of us, and, on the whole, in the human race, is its sweetness. 316 THE PATHETIC FALLACY simply (what you will be all the better for speedily finding out) that something is the matter with you. If you find that you cannot explode the gunpowder, you will not declare that all gun- powder is subjective, and all explosion imaginary, but you will simply suspect and declare yourself to be an ill-made match. Which, on the whole, though there may be a distant chance of a mistake about it, is, nevertheless, the wisest conclusion you can come to until farther experiment. 1 4. Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in question, namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us ; and the extraor- dinary, or false appearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, or contemplative fancy; 2 false appearances, I say, as being entirely unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only imputed to it by us. For instance " The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold." 8 This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant ; its yellow is not gold, but 1 In fact (for I may as well, for once, meet our German friends in their own style) , all that has been subjected to us on this subject seems object to this great objection; that the subjection of all things (subject to no exceptions) to senses which are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of perpetual contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to subject ourselves to the senses, and to remove whatever objections existed to such subjection. So that, finally, that which is the subject of examination or object of attention, uniting thus in itself the characters of subness and obness (so that, that which has no obness in it should be called sub- subjective, or a sub-subject, and that which has no subness in it should be called upper or ober-objective, or an ob-object) ; and we also, who suppose ourselves the ob- jects of every arrangement, and are certainly the subjects of every sensual impression, thus uniting in ourselves, in an obverse or adverse manner, the characters of obness and subness, must both become metaphysically dejected or rejected, nothing re- maining in us objective, but subjectivity, and the very objectivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this subjectivity of the Human. There is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if the reader cares to make it out ; but in a pure German sentence of the highest style there is often none whatever. See Appendix II, " German Philosophy." 2 Contemplative, in the sense explained in Part iii, Sec. ii, Chap. iv. 8 Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her Recollections of a Literary Life. JOHN RUSK IN 317 saffron. How is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain crocus ? It is an important question. For, throughout our past reason- ings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. But here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue. And what is more, if we think over our favourite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being so. 5. It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation that it will be believed ; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or less irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speak presently ; but, in this chapter, I want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits, when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke, "' They rowed her in across the rolling foam The cruel, crawling foam." The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally charac- terize as the " Pathetic Fallacy." 6. Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which we allow it, as one eminently poetical, because passionate. But, I believe, if we look well into the matter, that we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness, that it is only the second order of poets who much delight in it. 1 1 I admit two orders of poets, but no third ; and by these two orders I mean the Creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson) . But both of these must bejirsf-rate in their range, though their range is different ; and with poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed 3l8 THE PATHETIC FALLACY Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of Acheron " as dead leaves flutter from a bough," he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing 'his own clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves : he makes no confusion of one with the other. But when Coleridge speaks of " The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can," he has a morbid, that is to' say, a so far false, idea about the leaf ; he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not ; con- fuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merri- ment, and the wind that shakes it with music. Here, however, there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage ; but take an instance in Homer and Pope. Without the knowledge of Ulysses, Elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the Circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader, or companions, in the haste of their departure. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian land; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus. The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor. Ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen in Hamlet? addresses the spirit with the simple, startled words : to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best, much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life ; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, " that they believe there is some good in what they have written ; that they hope to do better in time," etc. Some good ! If there is not all good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now? Let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better than to so waste their time ; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this ; all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts, and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. 1 " Well said, old mole ! can'st work i' the ground so fast ? " JOHN RUSK IN 319 "Elpenor! How earnest thou under the shadowy darkness? Hast thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship? " Which Pope renders thus : " O, say, what angry power Elpenor led To glide in shades, and wander with the dead? How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?" I sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind ! And yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to us in the other instances ? 7. For a very simple reason. They are not a pathetic fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion a passion which never could possibly have spoken them ago- nized curiosity. Ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter ; and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in any wise what was not a fact. The delay in the first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most frightful discord in music. No poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written the passage. 1 Therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Coleridge's fal- lacy has no discord in it, but Pope's has set our teeth on edge. Without farther questioning, I will endeavour to state the main bearings of this matter. 8. The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy is, as I said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them ; borne away, 1 It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of Keats : " He wept, and his bright tears Went trickling down the golden bow he held. Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood; While from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by, With solemn step, an awful goddess cam'e. And there was purport in her looks for him, Which he with eager guess began to read : Perplexed the while, melodiously he said, ' How cam'st thou over the unfooted sea ? ' " 320 THE PATHETIC FALLACY or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion ; and it is a more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it is no credit to a man that he is not mor- bid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them ; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. But it is still a grander con- dition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions ; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating ; even if he melts, losing none of his weight. So, then, we have the three ranks : the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a prim- rose : a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associa- tions and passions may be, that crowd around it. And, in general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets of the first ; only, however great a man may be, there are always some subjects which ought to throw him off his balance ; some, by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought into the inac- curate and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things. 9. And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly ; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets) ; the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of JOHN RUSK IN $21 poets) ; and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration. 10. I separate these classes, in order that their character may be clearly understood ; but of course they are united each to the other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, accord- ing to the influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into the various states. Still, the difference between the great and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of alter- ability. That is to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much of the past and future, and of all things beside and around that which immediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His mind is made up ; his thoughts have an accustomed* current ; his ways are stedfast ; it is not this or that new sight which will at once unbalance him. He is tender to impression at the surface, like a rock with deep moss upon it ; but there is too much mass of him to be moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at once carried off his feet ; he wants to do something he did not want to do before ; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears ; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come and go to him. Therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, to a great extent, impassive (as shallow people think Dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from far off. Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of him- self, and can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats and Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expressions and modes of thought which are in some sort diseased or false. 11. Now so long as we see that the feeling is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces; we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kings- 322 THE PATHETIC FALLACY ley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. But the' moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cool blood. An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of " raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame " ; but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of " raging waves," " remorseless floods," " ravenous billows," etc. ; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one. To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man in despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea, "Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away, Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay." Observe, there is not a single false or even overcharged expres- sion. " Mound " of the sea-wave is perfectly simple and true ; " changing " is as familiar as may be ; " foam that passed away," strictly literal ; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The word " wave " is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass : it does not by itself convey a perfect image. But the word " mound " is heavy, large, dark, definite ; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then the term " changing " has a peculiar force also. Most people think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at the sea carefully, they will per- ceive that the waves do not rise and fall. They change. Change both place and form, but they do not fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on ; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now JOHN RUSK IN 323 shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not how, becomes another wave. The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still more perfectly, " foam that passed away." Not merely melt- ing, disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave. Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite fact, the image of the green mounds that do not change, and the white and written stones that do not pass away ; and thence to follow out also the associated images of the calm life with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with the fading foam : " Let no man move his bones." "As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water." But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. Even the word " mock " is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for " deceive " or "defeat," without implying any imper- sonation of the waves. 12. It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances to show the peculiar dignity possessed by all passages which thus limit their expression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather what he can from it. Here is a notable one from the Iliad. Helen, looking from the Scaean gate of Troy over the Grecian host, and telling Priam the names of its captains, says at last : "I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot see, Castor and Pollux, whom one mother bore with me. Have they not followed from fair Lacedaemon, or have they indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in Me?" Then Homer: " So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, there in Lacedsemon, in the dear fatherland." 324 THE PATHETIC FALLACY Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No ; though Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving. These are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else than these. Make what you will of them. 13. Take another very notable instance from Casimir de la Vigne's terrible ballad, "La Toilette de Constance." I must quote a few lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader who has not the book by him, to understand its close. " Vite, Anna, vite ; au miroir Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance, Et je vais au bal ce soir Chez 1'ambassadeur de France. Y pensez-vous, ils sont fanes, ces nceuds, Us sont d'hier; mon Dieu, comme tout passe! Que du reseau qui retient mes cheveux Les glands d'azur retombent avec grS.ce. Plus haut ! Plus has ! Vous ne comprenez rien ! Que sur mon front ce saphir etincelle : Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien, Bien, chere Anna ! Je t'aime, je suis belle. Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier (Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espere. (Ah, fi ! profane, est-ce la mon collier? Quoi ! ces grains d'or benits par le Saint-Pere ! ) II y sera ; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, En y pensant, a peine je respire : Pere Anselmo doit m'entendre demain, Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire ? Vite un coup d'oeil au miroir, Le dernier. J'ai 1'assurance Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir Chez 1'ambassadeur de France. Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait. Dieu ! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle ! Au feu ! Courez ! Quand 1'espoir 1'enivrait Tout perdre ainsi ! Quoi ! Mourir, et si belle ! JOHN RUSKIN 325 L'horrible feu ronge avec volupte Ses bras, son sein, et 1'entoure, et s'eleve, Et sans pitie devore sa beaute, Ses dixhuit ans, helas, et son doux rive 1 Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour ! On disait, Pauvre Constance ! Et 1'on dansait, jusqu'au jour, Chez 1'ambassadeur de France." x Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet does not say. What you may think about it, he does not know. He has nothing to do with that. There lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There they danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of France. Make what you will of it. If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I have quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expres- sion, except in one stanza. The girl speaks as simple prose as may be ; there is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing. The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as they come. At last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. The fire gnaws with volup- tuousness without pity. It is soon past. The fate is fixed for ever ; and he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth. He closes all with the calm veracity, " They said, ' Poor Constance ! ' " 14. Now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperament. For, be it clearly and constantly remem- bered, that the greatness of a poet depends upon the two facul- ties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government of -it; there being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes 326 THE PATHETIC FALLACY just and true. Thus the destruction of the kingdom of Assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact is too great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices. " Yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying, ' Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.' " So, still more, the thought of the presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment. " The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." 15. But by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not cause enough for it ; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere affectation of it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful metaphorical expressions, as a sort of current coin ; yet there is even a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of writing than this, in which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately wrought out with chill and studied fancy ; as if we should try to make an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead leaves, or white-hot, with hoar frost. When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the char- acter of a truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim " Where shall I find him ? angels, tell me where. You know him; he is near you; point him out. Shall I see glories beaming from his brow, Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?" This emotion has a worthy, cause, and is thus true and right But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a shepherd girl : " Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade ! TYees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, And winds shall waft it to the powers above. JOHN RUSKIN 32; But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, The wondering forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call, And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall." This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language of passion. It is simple falsehood, uttered by hypoc- risy ; definite absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth of nature and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself ; but it must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very closely parallel passage in Wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress : " Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid, When thus his moan he made : ' Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, That in some other way yon smoke May mount into the sky. If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, Headlong, the waterfall must come, Oh, let it, then, be dumb Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'" Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a water- fall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening : but with what dif- ferent relation to the mind that contemplates them ! Here, in the extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle might be wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress, that nature is kind, and God is kind, and that grief is strong : it knows not well what is possible to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a cottage wall, one might think it could do as much as that! 1 6. I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy, that so far as it is a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. Even in the most inspired 328 THE PATHETIC FALLACY prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school ; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it springs ; always, however, implying necessarily some degree of weakness in the character. Take two most exquisite instances from master hands. The Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted. Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, says : " If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, ' Hope not to find delight in us,' they say, ' For we are spotless, Jessy, we are pure.' " Compare with this some of the words of Ellen : "'Ah, why,' said Ellen, sighing to herself, ' Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, And nature, that is kind in woman's breast, And reason, that in man is wise and good, And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge, Why do not these prevail for human life, To keep two hearts together, that began Their springtime with one love, and that have need Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet To grant, or be received; while that poor bird O, come and hear him ! Thou who hast to me Been faithless, hear him; though a lowly creature, One of God's simple children, that yet know not The Universal Parent, how he sings ! As if he wished the firmament of heaven Should listen, and give back to him the voice Of his triumphant constancy and love. The proclamation that he makes, how far His darkness doth transcend our fickle light.' " The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insu- JOHN RUSK IN 329 perable. But, of the two characters imagined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her ; they would do so if she saw them rightly. Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought. " As if," she says, " I know he means nothing of the kind ; but it does verily seem as if." The reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength. 1 It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in all re- spects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of Truth is entire, over this, as over every other natu- ral and just state of the human mind, we may go on to the sub- ject for the dealing with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary ; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith. 1 I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, in Maude : " For a great speculation had fail'd ; And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air" " There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. The red rose cries, ' She is near, she is near/' And the white rose weeps, ' She is late.' The larkspur listens, ' I hear, I hear I ' And the lily whispers, ' I wait.' " 330 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN [Discourse vii in The Idea of a University defined and illustrated, 1854.] I HAVE been insisting, in my two preceding Discourses, first, on the cultivation of the intellect, as an end which may reasonably be pursued for its own sake ; and next, on the nature of that cultiva- tion, or what that cultivation consists in. Truth of whatever kind is the proper object of the intellect; its cultivation then lies in fitting it to apprehend and contemplate truth. Now the intellect in its present state, with exceptions which need not here be specified, does not discern truth intuitively, or as a whole. We know, not by a direct and simple vision, not at a glance, but, as it were, by piecemeal and accumulation, by a mental process, by going round an object, by the comparison, the combination, the mutual correc- tion, the continual adaptation, of many partial notions, by the employment, concentration, and joint action of many faculties and exercises of mind. Such a union and concert of the intellectual powers, such an enlargement and development, such a compre- hensiveness, is rfecessarily a matter of training. And again, such a training is a matter of rule ; it is not mere application, however exemplary, which introduces the mind to truth, nor the reading many books, nor the getting up many subjects, nor the witnessing many experiments, nor the attending many lectures. All this is short of enough ; a man may have done it all, yet be lingering in the vestibule of knowledge : he may not realize what his mouth utters ; he may not see with his mental eye what confronts him ; he may have no grasp of things as they are ; or at least he may have no power at all of advancing one step forward of himself, in consequence of what he has already acquired, no power of dis- criminating between truth and falsehood, of sifting out the grains of truth from the mass, of arranging things according to their real value, and, if I may use the phrase, of building up ideas. Such a JOHN HENR Y NE WMAN 3 3 1 power is the result of a scientific formation of mind ; it is an acquired faculty of judgment, of clear-sightedness, of sagacity, of wisdom, of philosophical reach of mind, and of intellectual self- possession and repose, qualities which do not come of mere acquirement. The bodily eye, the organ for apprehending mate- rial objects, is provided by nature ; the eye of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit. This process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science, is disci- plined for its own sake, for the perception of its own proper object, and for its own highest culture, is called Liberal Educa- tion ; and though there is no one in whom it is carried as far as is conceivable, or whose intellect would be a pattern of what intel- lects should be made, yet there is scarcely any one but may gain an idea of what real training is, and at least look towards it, and make its true scope and result, not something else, his standard of excellence ; and numbers there are who may submit themselves to it, and secure it to themselves in good measure. And to set forth the right standard, and to train according to it, and to help forward all students towards it according to their various capaci- ties, this I conceive to be the business of a University. Now this is what some great men are very slow to allow ; they insist that Education should be confined to some particular and narrow end, and should issue in some definite work, which can be weighed and measured. They argue as if every thing, as well as every person, had its price ; and that where there has been a great outlay, they have a right to expect a return in kind. This they call making Education and Instruction " useful," and " Utility " becomes their watchword. With a fundamental principle of this nature, they very naturally go on to ask, what there is to show for the expense of a University ; what is the real worth in the market of the article called "a Liberal Education," on the supposition that it does not teach us definitely how to advance our manu- factures, or to improve our lands, or to better our civil economy ; or again, if it does not at once make this man a lawyer, that an 332 KNO WLED GE IN RELA TION TO PR FES SIGNAL SKILL engineer, and that a surgeon ; or at least if it does not lead to discoveries in chemistry, astronomy, geology, magnetism, and science of every kind. This question, as might have been expected, has been keenly debated in the present age, and formed one main subject of the controversy, to which I referred in the Introduction to the present Discourses, as having been sustained in the first decade of this century by a celebrated Northern Review on the one hand, and defenders of the University of Oxford on the other. Hardly had the authorities of that ancient seat of learning, waking from their long neglect, set on foot a plan for the education of the youth committed to them, than the representatives of science and litera- ture in the city, which has sometimes been called the Northern Athens, remonstrated, with their gravest arguments and their most brilliant satire, against the direction and shape which the reform was taking. Nothing would content them, but that the University should be set to rights on the basis of the philosophy of Utility ; a philosophy, as they seem to have thought, which needed but to be proclaimed in order to be embraced. In truth, they were little aware of the depth and force of the principles on which the academical authorities were proceeding, and, this being so, it was not to be expected that they would be allowed to walk at leisure over the field of controversy which they had selected. Accordingly they were encountered in behalf of the University by two men of great name and influence in their day, of very different minds, but united, as by Collegiate ties, so in the clear-sighted and large view which they took of the whole subject of Liberal Education ; and the defence thus provided for the Oxford studies has kept its ground to this day. 3 Let me be allowed to devote a few words to the memory of dis- tinguished persons, under the shadow of whose name I once lived, and by whose doctrine I am now profiting. In the heart of Oxford there is a small plot of ground, hemmed in by public thorough- fares, which has been the possession and the home of one Society for about five hundred years. In the old time of Boniface the Eighth and John the Twenty-second, in the age of Scotus and JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 333 Occam and Dante, before Wiclif or Huss had kindled those miserable fires which are still raging to the ruin of the highest interests of man, an unfortunate king of England, Edward the Second, flying from the field of Bannockburn, is said to have made a vow to the Blessed Virgin to found a religious house in her honour, if he got back in safety. Prompted and aided by his Almoner, he decided on placing this house in the city of Alfred ; and the Image of our Lady, which is opposite its entrance-gate, is to this day the token of the vow and its fulfilment. King and Almoner have long been in the dust, and strangers have entered into their inheritance, and their creed has been forgotten, and their holy rites disowned ; but day by day a memento is still made in the holy Sacrifice by at least one Catholic Priest, once a member of that College, for the souls of those Catholic benefactors who fed him there for so many years. The visitor, whose curiosity has been excited by its present fame, gazes perhaps with some- thing of disappointment on a collection of buildings which have with them so few of the circumstances of dignity or wealth. Broad quadrangles, high halls and chambers, ornamented cloisters, stately walks, or umbrageous gardens, a throng of students, ample revenues, or a glorious history, none of these things were the portion of that old Catholic foundation ; nothing in short which to the common eye sixty years ago would have given tokens of what it was to be. But it had at that time a spirit working within it, which enabled its inmates to do, amid its seeming insignifi- cance, what no other body in the place could equal ; not a very abstruse gift or extraordinary boast, but a rare one, the honest purpose to administer the trust committed to them in such a way as their conscience pointed out as best. So, whereas the Colleges of Oxford are self-electing bodies, the fellows in each perpetually filling up for themselves the vacancies which occur in their number, the members of this foundation determined, at a time when, either from evil custom or from ancient statute, such a thing was not known elsewhere, to throw open their fellowships to the competition of all comers, and, in the choice of associates henceforth, to cast to the winds every personal motive and feel- ing, family connexion, and friendship, and patronage, and political interest, and local claim, and prejudice, and party jealousy, and 334 KNO WLED GE IN RELA TION TO PR OFESSIONAL SKILL to elect solely on public and patriotic grounds. Nay, with a remarkable independence of mind, they resolved that even the table of honours, awarded to literary merit by the University in its new system of examination for degrees, should not fetter their judgment as electors ; but that at all risks, and whatever criticism it might cause, and whatever odium they might incur, they would select the men, whoever they were, to be children of their Founder, whom they thought in their consciences to be most likely from their intellectual and moral qualities to please him, if (as they expressed it) he were still upon earth, most likely to do honour to his College, most likely to promote the objects which they believed he had at heart. Such persons did not promise to be the disciples of a low Utilitarianism ; and consequently, as their collegiate reform synchronized with that reform of the Academical body, in which they bore a principal part, it was not unnatural that, when the storm broke upon the University from the North, their Alma Mater, whom they loved, should have found her first defenders within the walls of that small College, which had first put itself into a condition to be her champion. These defenders, I have said, were two, of whom the more dis- tinguished was the late Dr. Copleston, then a Fellow of the Col- lege, successively its Provost, and Protestant Bishop of Llandaff. In that Society, which owes so much to him, his name lives, and ever will live, for the distinction which his talents bestowed on it, for the academical importance to which he raised it, for the gen- erosity of spirit, the liberality of sentiment, and the kindness of heart, with which he adorned it, and which even those who had least sympathy with some aspects of his mind and character could not but admire and love. Men come to their meridian at various periods of their lives ; the last years of the eminent person I am speaking of weft given . to duties which, I am told, have been the means of endearing him to numbers, but which afforded no scope for that peculiar vigour and keenness of mind which enabled him, when a young man, single-handed, with easy gallantry, to en- counter and overthrow the charge of three giants of the North combined against him. I believe I am right in saying that, in the progress of the controversy, the most scientific, the most critical, and the most witty, of that literary company, all of them now, as" JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 335 he himself, removed from this visible scene, Professor Playfair Lord Jeffrey, and the Rev. Sydney Smith, threw together theii several efforts into one article of their Review, in order to crush and pound to dust the audacious controvertist who had come out against them in defence of his own Institutions. To have even contended with such men was a sufficient voucher for his ability, even before we open his pamphlets, and have actual evidence of the good sense, the spirit, the scholar-like taste, and the purity of style, by which they are distinguished. He was supported in the controversy, on the same general principles, but with more of method and distinctness, and, I will add, with greater force and beauty and perfection, both of thought and of language, by the other distinguished writer, to whom I have already referred, Mr. Davison ; who, though not so well known to the world in his day, has left more behind him than the Provost of Oriel, to make his name remembered by posterity. This thoughtful man, who was the admired and intimate friend of a very remarkable person, whom, whether he wish it or not, numbers revere and love as the first author of the subsequent movement in the Protestant Church .towards Catholicism, 1 this grave and philosophical writer, whose works I can never look into without sighing that such a man was lost to the Catholic Church, as Dr. Butler before him, by some early bias or some fault of self- education he, in a review of a work by Mr. Edgeworth on Pro- fessional Education, which attracted a good deal of attention in its day, goes leisurely over the same ground, which had already been rapidly traversed by Dr. Copleston, and, though professedly employed upon Mr. Edgeworth, is really replying to the northern critic who had brought that writer's work into notice, and to a far greater author than either of them, who in a past age had argued on the same side. 4 The author to whom I allude is no other than Locke. That celebrated philosopher has preceded the Edinburgh Reviewers in condemning the ordinary subjects in which boys are instructed 1 Mr. Keble, Vicar ot Hursley, late Fellow of Oriel, and Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, 336 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL in school, on the ground that they are not needed by them in after life ; and before quoting what his disciples have said in the present century, I will refer to a few passages of the master. " Tis matter of astonishment," he says in his work on Education, " that men of quality and parts should suffer themselves to be so far misled by custom and implicit faith. Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them, when they come to be men, rather than that their heads should be stuffed with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live ; and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for." And so again, speaking of verse-making, he says, " I know not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who does not desire him to bid defiance to all other callings and busi- ness ; which is not yet the worst of the case ; for, if he proves a successful rhymer, and gets once the reputation of a wit, I desire it to be considered, what company and places he is likely to spend his time in, nay, and estate too ; for it is very seldom seen that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in Parnassus. 'Tis a pleasant air, but a barren soil." In another passage he distinctly limits utility in education to its bearing on the future profession or trade of the pupil, that is, he scorns the idea of any education of the intellect, simply as such. " Can there be any thing more ridiculous," he asks, " than that a father should waste his own money, and his son's time, in setting him to learn the Roman language, when at the same time he designs him for a trade, wherein he, having no use of Latin, fails not to forget that little which he brought from school, and which 'tis ten to one he abhors for the ill-usage it procured him? Could it be believed, unless we have every where amongst us examples of it, that a child should be forced to learn the rudi- ments of a language, which he is never to use in the course of life that he is designed to, and neglect all the while the writing a good hand, and casting accounts, which are of great advantage in all conditions of life, and to most trades indispensably necessary ? " Nothing of course can be more absurd than to neglect in educa- tion those matters which are necessary for a boy's future calling; JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 337 but the tone of Locke's remarks evidently implies more than this, and is condemnatory of any teaching which tends to the general cultivation of the mind. Now to turn to his modern disciples. The study of the Classics had been made the basis of the Oxford education, in the reforms which I have spoken of, and the Edinburgh Reviewers protested, after the manner of Locke, that no good could come of a system which was not based upon the principle of Utility. " Classical Literature," they said, "is the great object at Oxford. Many minds, so employed, have produced many works and much fame in that department ; but if all liberal arts and sciences, use- ful to human life, had been taught there, if some had dedicated themselves to chemistry, some to mathematics, some to experimen- tal philosophy, and itevery attainment had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility, the system of such a Univer- sity would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less." Utility may be made the end of education, in two respects : either as regards the individual educated, or the community at large. In which light do these writers regard it? in the latter. So far they differ from Locke, for they consider the advancement of science as the supreme and real end of a University. This is brought into view in the sentences which follow. " When a University has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful. A set of Lectures on Political Economy would be discouraged in Oxford, probably despised, probably not permitted. To discuss the in- closure of commons, and to dwell upon imports and exports, to come so near to common life, would seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr or the Bentley of the day would be scandalized, in a University, to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt ; and yet, what other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour but usefulness ? And what ought the term University to mean, but a place where every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time use- ful to mankind ? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds as a steady and invariable appeal to utility in our appreciation of all human knowledge. . . . Look- 338 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL ing always to real utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive mind arranging the productions of nature, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering the difficulties of the learned languages. We should not care whether he was chemist, naturalist, or scholar, because we know it to be as necessary that matter should be studied and subdued to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, and imagination inflamed." Such then is the enunciation, as far as words go, of the theory of Utility in Education ; and both on its own account, and for the sake of the able men who have advocated it, it has a claim on the at- tention of those whose principles I am here representing. Certainly it is specious to contend that nothing is worth pursuing but what is useful ; and that life is not long enough to expend upon inter- esting, or curious, or brilliant trifles. Nay, in one sense, I will grant it is more than specious, it is true ; but, if so, how do I propose directly to meet the objection? Why, Gentlemen, I have really met it already, viz., in laying down, that intellectual culture is its own end ; for what has its end in itself, has its use in it- self also. I say, if a Liberal Education consists in the culture of the intellect, and if that culture be in itself a good, here, without going further, is an answer to Locke's question ; for if a healthy body is a good in itself, why is not a healthy intellect ? and if a College of Physicians is a useful institution, because it contem- plates bodily health, why is not an Academical Body, though it were simply and solely engaged in imparting vigour and beauty and grasp to the intellectual portion of our nature? And the Reviewers I am quoting seem to allow this in their better moments, in a passage which, putting aside the question of its justice in fact, is sound and true in the principles to which it appeals : " The present state of classical education," they say, " cultivates the imagination a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little, and trains up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed them. . . . The matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or twenty-four is a man princi- pally conversant with works of imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. Talents for specula- tion and original inquiry he has none, nor has he formed the JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 339 invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and unamusing facts as the materials for reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cultivation; he hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his opinions and prove his assertions." 5 Now, I am not at present concerned with the specific question of classical education ; else, I might reasonably question the justice of calling an intellectual discipline, which embraces the study of Aristotle, Thucydides, and Tacitus, which involves Scholarship and Antiquities, imaginative ; still so far I readily grant, that the culti- vation of the " understanding," of a " talent for speculation and original inquiry," and of "the habit of pushing things up to their first principles," is a principal portion of a good QT liberal educa- tion. If then the Reviewers consider such cultivation the char- acteristic of a useful education, as they seem to do in the foregoing passage, it follows, that what they mean by " useful " is just what I mean by " good " or " liberal " : and Locke's question becomes a verbal one. Whether youths are to be taught Latin or verse- making will depend on the fact, whether these studies tend to mental culture ; but, however this is determined, so far is clear, that in that mental culture consists what I have called a liberal or non-professional, and what the Reviewers call a useful education. This is the obvious answer which may be made to those who urge upon us the claims of Utility in our plans of Education ; but I am not going to leave the subject here : I mean to take a wider view of it. Let us take " useful," as Locke takes it, in its proper and popular sense, and then we enter upon a large field of thought, to which I cannot do justice in one Discourse, though to-day's is all the space that I can give to it. I say, let us take " useful " to mean, not what is simply good, but what tends to good, or is the instrument of good ; and in this sense also, Gentlemen, I will show you .how a liberal education is truly and fully a useful, though it be not a professional, education. " Good " indeed means one thing, and " useful " means another ; but I lay it down as a principle, which will save us a great deal of anxiety, that, 340 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL though the useful is not always good, the good is always useful. Good is not only good, but reproductive of good ; this is one of its attributes ; nothing is excellent, beautiful, perfect, desirable for its own sake, but it overflows, and spreads the likeness of itself all around it. Good is prolific ; it is not only good to the eye, but to the taste ; it not only attracts us, but it communicates itself; it excites first our admiration and love, then our desire and our gratitude, and that, in proportion to its intenseness and fulness in particular instances. A great good will impart great good. If then the intellect is so excellent a portion of us, and its cultivation so excellent, it is not only beautiful, perfect, ad- mirable, and noble in itself, but in a true and high sense it must be useful to the possessor and to all around him ; not useful in any low, mechanical, mercantile sense, but as diffusing good, or as a blessing, or a gift, or power, or a treasure, first to the owner, then through him to the world. I say then, if a liberal education be good, it must necessarily be useful too. You will see what I mean by the parallel of bodily health. Health is a good in itself, though nothing came of it, and is es- pecially worth seeking and cherishing ; yet, after all, the blessings which attend its presence are so great, while they are so close to it and so redound back upon it and encircle it, that we never think of it except as useful as well as good, and praise and prize it for what it does, as well as for what it is, though at the same time we cannot point out any definite and distinct work or pro- duction which it can be said to effect. And so as regards intel- lectual culture, I am far from denying utility in this large sense as the end of Education, when I lay it down, that the culture of the intellect is a good in itself and its own end ; I do not exclude from the idea of intellectual culture what it cannot but be, from the very nature of things ; I only deny that we must be able to point out, before we have any right to call it useful, some art, or business, or profession, or trade, or work, as resulting from it, and as its real and complete end. The parallel is exact: As the body may be sacrificed to some manual or other toil, whether moderate or oppressive, so may the intellect be devoted to some JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 341 specific profession ; and I do not call this the culture of the intellect. Again, as some member or organ of the body may be inordinately used and developed, so may memory, or imagination, or the reasoning faculty ; and this again is not intellectual culture. On the other hand, as the body may be tended, cherished, and exercised with a simple view to its general health, so may the intellect also be generally exercised in order to its perfect state ; and this is its cultivation. Again, as health ought to precede labour of the body, and as a man in health can do what an unhealthy man cannot do, and as of this health the properties are strength, energy, agility, graceful carriage and action, manual dexterity, and endurance of fatigue, so in like manner general culture of mind is the best aid to pro- fessional and scientific study, and educated men can do what illiterate cannot ; and the man who has learned to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze, who has refined his taste, and formed his judgment, and sharpened his mental vision, will not indeed at once be a lawyer, or a pleader, or an orator, or a statesman, or a physician, or a good landlord, or a man of business, or a soldier, or an engineer, or a chemist, or a geologist, or an antiquarian, but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of the sciences or callings I have referred to, or any other for which he has a taste or special talent, with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and a success, to which another is a stranger. In this sense then, and as yet I have said but a very few words on a large subject, mental culture is emphatically useful. If then I am arguing, and shall argue, against Professional or Scientific knowledge as the sufficient end of a University Edu- cation, let me not be supposed, Gentlemen, to be disrespectful towards particular studies, or arts, or vocations, and those who are engaged in them. In saying that Law or Medicine is not the end of a University course, I do not mean to imply that the Uni- versity does not teach Law or Medicine. What indeed can it teach at all, if it does not teach something particular? It teaches all knowledge by teaching all branches of knowledge, and in no other way. I do but say that there will be this distinction as regards a Professor of Law, or of Medicine, or of Geology, or of 342 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL Political Economy, in a University and out of it, that out of a University he is in danger of being absorbed and narrowed by his pursuit, and of giving Lectures which are the Lectures of nothing more than a lawyer, physician, geologist, or political economist ; whereas in a University he will just know where he and his science stand, he has come to it, as it were, from a height, he has taken a survey of all knowledge, he is kept from extravagance by the very rivalry of other studies, he has gained from them a special illumination and largeness of mind and freedom and self-possession, and he treats his own in consequence with a philosophy and a resource, which belongs not to the study itself, but to his liberal education. This then is how I should solve the fallacy, for so I must call it, by which Locke and his disciples would frighten us from culti- vating the intellect, under the notion that no education is useful which does not teach us some temporal calling, or some mechani- cal art, or some physical secret. I say that a cultivated intellect, because it is a good in itself, brings with it a power and a grace to every work and occupation which it undertakes, and enables us to be more useful, and to a greater number. There is a duty we owe to human society as such, to the state to which we belong, to the sphere in which we move, to the individuals towards whom we are variously related, and whom we successively encounter in life ; and that philosophical or liberal education, as I have called it, which is the proper function of a University, if it refuses the fore- most place to professional interests, does but postpone them to the formation of the citizen, and, while it subserves the larger interests of philanthropy, prepares also for the successful prosecu- tion of those merely personal objects, which at first sight it seems to disparage. 7 And now, Gentlemen, I wish to be allowed to enforce in detail what I have been saying, by some extracts from the writings to which I have already alluded, and to which I am so greatly indebted. , "It is an undisputed maxim in Political Economy," says Dr. Copleston, " that the separation of professions and the division of labour tend to the perfection of every art, to the wealth of nations, JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 343 to the general comfort and welt-being of the community. This principle of division is in some instances pursued so far as to excite the wonder of people to whose notice it is for the first time pointed out. There is no saying to what extent it may not be carried ; and the more the powers of each individual are concen- trated in one employment, the greater skill and quickness will he naturally display in performing it. But, while he thus contributes more effectually to the accumulation of national wealth, he becomes himself more and more degraded as a rational being. In proportion as his sphere of action is narrowed his mental powers and habits become contracted ; and he resembles a subordinate part of some powerful machinery, useful in its place, but insignifi- cant and worthless out of it. If it be necessary, as it is beyond all question necessary, that society should be split into divisions and subdivisions, in order that its several duties may be well per- formed, yet we must be careful not to yield up ourselves wholly and exclusively to the guidance of this system ; we must observe what its evils are, and we should modify and restrain it, by bringing into action other principles, which may serve as a check and counter- poise to the main force. " There can be no doubt that every art is improved by confin- ing the professor of it to that single study. But, although the art itself is advanced by this concentration of mind in its service, the individual who is confined to it goes back. The advantage of the community is nearly in an inverse ratio with his own. " Society itself requires some other contribution from each indi- vidual, besides the particular duties of his profession. And, if no such liberal intercourse be established, it is the common failing of human nature, to be engrossed with petty views and interests, to underrate the importance of all in which we are not concerned, and to carry our partial notions into cases where they are inappli- cable, to act, in short, as so many unconnected units, displacing and repelling one another. " In the cultivation of literature is found that common link, which, among the higher and middling departments of life, unites the jarring sects and subdivisions into one interest, which supplies common topics, and kindles common feelings, unmixed with those narrow prejudices with which all professions are more or less 344 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL infected. The knowledge, too, which is thus acquired, expands and enlarges the mind, excites its faculties, and calls those limbs and muscles into freer exercise which, by too constant use in one direction, not only acquire an illiberal air, but are apt also to lose somewhat of their native play and energy. And thus, without directly qualifying a man for any of the employments of life, it enriches and ennobles all. Without teaching him the peculiar business of any one office or calling, it enables him to act his part in each of them with better grace and more elevated carriage ; and, if happily planned and conducted, is a main ingredient in that complete and generous education which fits a man ' to per- form justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.'" 1 8 The view of Liberal Education, advocated in these extracts, is expanded by Mr. Davison in the Essay to which I have already referred. He lays more stress on the "usefulness" of Liberal Education in the larger sense of the word than his predecessor in the controversy. Instead of arguing that the Utility of knowl- edge to the individual varies inversely with its Utility to the public, he chiefly employs himself on the suggestions contained in Dr. Copleston's last sentences. He shows, first, that a Liberal Edu- cation is something far higher, even in the scale of Utility, than what is commonly called a Useful Education, and next, that it is necessary or useful for the purposes even of that Professional Education which commonly engrosses the title of Useful. The former of these two theses he recommends to us in an argument from which the following passages are selected : " It is to take a very contracted view of life," he says, " to think with great anxiety how persons may be educated to superior skill in their department, comparatively neglecting or excluding the more liberal and enlarged cultivation. In his (Mr. Edge- worth's) system, the value of every attainment is to be measured by its subserviency to a calling. The specific duties of that call- ing are exalted at the cost of those free and independent tastes and virtues which come in to sustain the common relations of 1 Vidt Milton on Education. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 345 society, and raise the individual in them. In short, a man is to be usurped by his profession. He is to be clothed in its garb from head to foot. His virtues, his science, and his ideas are all to be put into a gown or uniform, and the whole man to be shaped, pressed, and stiffened, in the exact mould of his technical character. Any interloping accomplishments, or a faculty which cannot be taken into public pay, if they are to be indulged in him at all, must creep along under the cloak of his more serviceable privileged merits. Such is the state of perfection to which the spirit and general tendency of this system would lead us. " But the professional character is not the only one which a per- son engaged in a profession has to support. He is not always upon duty. There are services he owes, which are neither paro- chial, nor forensic, nor military, nor to be described by any such epithet of civil regulation, and yet are in no wise inferior to those that bear these authoritative titles ; inferior neither in their intrinsic value, nor their moral import, nor their impression upon society. As a friend, as a companion, as a citizen at large ; in the connec- tions of domestic life ; in the improvement and embellishment of his leisure, he has a sphere of action, revolving, if you please, within the sphere of his profession, but not clashing with it ; in which if he can show none of the advantages of an improved understanding, whatever may be his skill or proficiency in the other, he is no more than an ill-educated man. " There is a certain faculty in which all nations of any refine- ment are great practitioners. It is not taught at school or college as a distinct science ; though it deserves that what is taught there should be made to have some reference to it ; nor is it endowed at all by the public ; everybody being obliged to exercise it for himself in person, which he does to the best of his skill. But in nothing is there a greater difference than in the manner of doing it. The advocates of professional learning will smile when we tell them that this same faculty which we would have encouraged, is simply that of speaking good sense in English, without fee or reward, in common conversation. They will smile when we lay some stress upon it ; but in reality it is no such trifle as they imagine. Look into the huts of savages, and see, for there is nothing to listen to, the dismal blank of their stupid hours of 346 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL silence ; their professional avocations of war and hunting are over ; and, having nothing to do, they have nothing to say. Turn to improved life, and you find conversation in all its forms the medium of something more than an idle pleasure ; indeed, a very active agent in circulating and forming the opinions, tastes, and feelings of a whole people. It makes of itself a considerable affair. Its topics are the most promiscuous all those which do not belong to any particular province. As for its power and influence, we may fairly say that it is of just the same consequence to a man's immediate society, how he talks, as how he acts. Now of all those who furnish their share to rational conversation, a mere adept in his own art is universally admitted to be the worst. The sterility and uninstructiveness of such a person's social hours are quite proverbial. Or if he escape being dull, it is only by launch- ing into ill-timed, learned loquacity. We do not desire of him lectures or speeches ; and he has nothing else to give. Among benches he may be powerful ; but seated on a chair he is quite another person. On the other hand, we may affirm, that one of the best companions is a man who, to the accuracy and research of a profession, has joined a free excursive acquaintance with vari- ous learning, and caught from it the spirit of general observation." 9 Having thus shown that a Liberal Education is a real benefit to the subjects of it, as members of society, in the various duties and circumstances and accidents of life, he goes on, in the next place, to show that, over and above those direct services which might fairly be expected of it, it actually subserves the discharge of those particular functions, and the pursuit of those particular advantages, which are connected with professional exertion, and to which Professional Education is directed. " We admit," he observes, " that when a person makes a busi- ness of one pursuit, he is in the right way to eminence in it ; and that divided attention will rarely give excellence in many. But our assent will go no further. For, to think that the way to pre- pare a person for excelling in any one pursuit (and that is the only point in hand), is to fetter his early studies, and cramp the first development of his mind, by a reference to the exigencies of JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 347 that pursuit barely, is a very different notion, and one which, we apprehend, deserves to be exploded rather than received. Pos- sibly a few of the abstract, insulated kinds of learning might be approached in that way. The exceptions to be made are very few, and need not be recited. But for the acquisition of pro- fessional and practical ability such maxims are death to it. The main ingredients of that ability are requisite knowledge and culti- vated faculties; but, of the two, the latter is by far the chief. A man of well improved faculties has the command of another's knowledge. A man without them, has not the command of his own. " Of the intellectual powers, the judgment is that which takes the foremost lead in life. How to form it to the two habits it ought to possess, of exactness and vigour, is the problem. It would be ignorant presumption so much as to hint at any routine of method by which these qualities may with certainty be imparted to every or any understanding. Still, however, we may safely lay it down that they are not to be got ' by a gatherer of simples,' but are the combined essence and extracts of many different things, drawn from much varied reading and discipline, first, and observation afterwards. For if there be a single intelligible point on this head, it is that a man who has been trained to think upon one subject or for one subject only, will never be a good judge even in that one : whereas the enlargement of his circle gives him increased knowledge and power in a rapidly increasing ratio. So much do ideas act, not as solitary units, but by grouping and combination ; and so clearly do all the things that fall within the proper province of the same faculty of the mind, intertwine with and support each other. Judgment lives as it were by compari- son and discrimination. Can it be doubted, then, whether the range and extent of that assemblage of things upon which it is practised in its first essays are of use to its power? " To open our way a little further on this matter, we will define what we mean by the power of judgment ; and then try to ascer- tain among what kind of studies the improvement of it may be expected at all. "Judgment does not stand here for a certain homely, useful quality of intellect, that guards a person from committing mis- 348 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL takes to the injury of his fortunes or common reputation ; but for that master-principle of business, literature, and talent, which gives him strength in any subject he chooses to grapple with, and enables him to seize the strong point in it. ' Whether this defini- tion be metaphysically correct or not, it comes home to the sub- stance of our inquiry. It describes the power that every one desires to possess when he comes to act in a profession, or else- where and corresponds with our best idea of a cultivated mind. " Next, it will not be denied, that in order to do any good to the judgment, the mind must be employed upon such subjects as come within the cognizance of that faculty, and give some real exercise to its perceptions. Here we have a rule of selection by which the different parts of learning may be classed for our pur- pose. Those which belong to the province of the judgment are religion (in its evidences and interpretation), ethics, history, elo- quence, poetry, theories of general speculation', the fine arts, and works of wit. Great as the variety of these large divisions of learn- ing may appear, they are all held in union by two capital principles of connexion. First, they are all quarried out of one and the same great subject of man's moral, social, and feeling nature. And secondly, they are all under the control (more or less strict) of the same power of moral reason." "If these studies," he continues, "be such as give a direct play and exercise to the faculty of the judgment, then they are the true basis of education for the active and inventive powers, whether destined for a profession or any other use. Miscellaneous as the assemblage may appear, of history, eloquence, poetry, ethics, etc., blended together, they will all conspire in an union of effect. They are necessary mutually to explain and interpret each other. The knowledge derived from them all will amalgamate, and the habits of a mind versed and practised in them by turns will join to produce a richer vein of thought and of more general and prac- tical application than could be obtained of any single one, as the fusion of the metals into Corinthian brass gave the artist his most ductile and perfect material. Might we venture to imitate an author (whom indeed it is much safer to take as an authority than to attempt to copy), Lord Bacon, in some of his concise illustra- tions of the comparative utility of the different studies, we should JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 349 say that history would give fulness, moral philosophy strength, and poetry elevatibn to the understanding. Such in reality is the natural force and tendency of the studies ; but there are few minds susceptible enough to derive from them any sort of virtue adequate to those high expressions. We must be contented therefore to lower our panegyric to this, that a person cannot avoid receiving some infusion and tincture, at least, of those several qualities, from that course of diversified reading. One thing is unquestionable, that the elements of general reason are not to be found fully and truly expressed in any one kind of study ; and that he who would wish to know her idiom, must read it in many books. " If different studies are useful for aiding, they are still more useful for correcting each other ; for as they have their particular merits severally, so they have their defects, and the most exten- sive acquaintance with one can produce only an intellect either too flashy or too jejune, or infected with some other fault of con- fined reading. History, for example, shows things as they are, that is, the morals and interests of men disfigured and perverted by all their imperfections of passion, folly, and ambition ; philoso- phy strips the picture too much ; poetry adorns it too much ; the concentrated lights of the three correct the false peculiar colouring of each, and show us the truth. The right mode of thinking upon it is to be had from them taken all together, as every one must know who has seen their united contributions of thought and feeling expressed in the masculine sentiment of our immortal statesman, Mr. Burke, whose eloquence is inferior only to his more admirable wisdom. If any mind improved like his, is to be our instructor, we must go to the fountain head of things as he did, and study not his works but his method ; by the one we may become feeble imitators, by the other arrive at some ability of our own. But, as all biography assures us, he, and every other able thinker, has been formed, not by a parsimonious admeasure- ment of studies to some definite future object (which is Mr. Edge- worth's maxim), but by taking a wide and liberal compass, and thinking a great deal on many subjects with no better end in view than because the exercise was one which made them more ra- tional and intelligent beings." 350 KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL SKILL 10 But I must bring these extracts to an end. To-day I have confined myself to saying that that training of the intellect, which is best for the individual himself, best enables him to discharge his duties to society. The Philosopher, indeed, and the man of the world differ in their very notion, but the methods, by which they are respectively formed, are pretty much the same. The Philosopher has the same command of matters of thought, which the true citizen and gentleman has of matters of business and conduct. If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art ; heroic minds come under no rule ; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shake- speares, though such miracles of nature it has before now con- tained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though such too it includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end ; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judg- ments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrele- vant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate him- JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 351 self to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class ; he knows when to speak and when to be silent ; he is able to converse, he is able to listen ; he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to impart him- self; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happi- ness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and dis- appointment have a charm. The art which tends to make a man all this, is in the object which it pursues as useful as the art of wealth or the art of health, though it is less susceptible of method, and less tangible, less certain, less complete in its result. THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR RALPH WALDO EMERSON [An oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, August 31, 1837. The text is that 8 NIL NISI BONUM great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description. Many Londoners not all have seen the British Museum Library. I speak a cceur ouvert? and pray the kindly reader to bear with me. I have seen all sorts of domes of Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon, what not ? and have been struck by none of them so much as by that catholic dome in Blooms- bury, under which our million volumes are housed. What peace, what love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what generous kindness for you and me, are here spread out ! It seems to me one cannot sit down in that place without a heart full of grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, and to have thanked heaven for this my English birth- right, freely to partake of these bountiful books, and to speak the truth I find there. Under the dome which held Macaulay's brain, and from which his solemn eyes looked out on the world but a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store of learning was ranged 1 what strange lore would he not fetch for you at your bidding ! A volume of law, or history, a book of poetry familiar or forgotten (except by himself who forgot noth- ing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand. I spoke to him once about Clarissa. " Not read Clarissa!" he cried out. " If you have once thoroughly entered on Clarissa and are infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot season at the hills, and there were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had Clarissa with me : and, as soon as they be- gan to read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace ! The Governor's wife seized the book, and the Sec- retary waited for it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for tears 1 " He acted the whole scene : he paced up and down the " Athenaeum " library : I dare say he could have spoken pages of the book of that book, and of what countless piles of others ! In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi bonum. One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says " he had no heart." Why, a man's books may not always speak the 1 [With an open heart.] WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 409 truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself: and it seems to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against wrong, craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance ; how he backs and applauds freedom struggling for its own ; how he hates scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful ; how he recognizes genius, though selfish villains possess it ! The critic who says Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had none : and two men more generous, and more loving, and more hating, and more partial, and more noble, do not live in our history. Those who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably tender and gen- erous, 1 and affectionate he was. It was not his business to bring his family before the theatre footlights, and call for bouquets from the gallery as he wept over them. If any young man of letters reads this little sermon and to him, indeed, it is addressed I would say to him, " Bear Scott's words in your mind, and ' be good, my dear? " Here are two literary men gone to their account, and, laus Deo, 2 as far as we know, it is fair, and open, and clean. Here is no need of apolo- gies for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would have been virtues but for unavoidable &c. Here are two examples of men most differently gifted : each pursuing his calling ; each speaking his truth as God bade him ; each honest in his life ; just and irreproachable in his dealings ; dear to his friends ; honoured by his country ; beloved at his fireside. It has been the fortunate lot of both to give incalculable happiness and de- light to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our service. We may not win the baton or epaulettes ; but God give us strength to guard the honour of the flag I 1 Since the above was written, I have been informed that it has been found, on examining Lord Macaulay's papers, that he was in the habit of giving away more than a fourth part of his annual income. 2 [Praise God.] 4IO THE HERO AS POET THE HERO AS POET THOMAS CARLYLE [From Lecture 3, in On Heroes, Hero- Worship and the Heroic in History^ 1841.] THE Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old ages ; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of Poet ; a character which does not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages ; whom all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom the newest age as the oldest may produce; and will produce, always when Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul ; in no age is it other than possible that he may be shaped into a Poet. Hero, Prophet, Poet, many different names, in different times and places, do we give to Great Men ; according to vari- eties we note in them, according to the sphere in which they have displayed themselves 1 We might give many more names, on this same principle. I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere con- stitutes the grand origin of such distinction ; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher ; in one or the other degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I cannot understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was THOMAS CARLYLE 4 u in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fundamental character is that of Great Man ; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal ; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye : there it lies ; no man whatever, in what province soever, can prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well : one can easily believe it ; they had done things a little harder than these ! Burns, a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mirabeau. Shakspeare, one knows not what he could not have made, in the supreme degree. True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature does not make all great men, more than all other men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless ; but infinitely more of circumstance ; and far oftenest it is the latter only that are looked to. But it is as with common men in the learning of trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capability of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman ; and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason : he is then and thenceforth that and nothing else. And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a street- porter staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of cloth and small Whitechapel needle, it cannot be considered that aptitude of Nature alone has been consulted here either ! The Great Man also, to what shall he be bound apprentice ? Given your Hero, is he to become Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet ? It is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and him ! He will read the world and its laws ; the world with its laws will be there to be read. What the world, on this matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about the world. Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern notions of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synony- 412 THE HERO AS POET mous ; Vates means both Prophet and Poet : and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same ; in this most important respect especially, That they have pene- trated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe ; what Goethe calls " the open secret." " Which is the great secret? " asks one. "The open secret," open to all, seen by almost none ! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, " the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance," as Fichte styles it ; of which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the Appear- ance of Man and his work, is but the vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine mystery is in all times and in all places ; veritably is. In most times and places it is greatly overlooked ; and the Universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as the realised Thought of God, is con- sidered a trivial, inert, commonplace matter, as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together ! It could do no good, at present, to speak much about this ; but it is a pity for every one of us if we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. Really a most mournful pity ; a failure to live at all, if we live otherwise I But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mystery, the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us. That always is his message ; he is to reveal that to us, that sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present with. While others forget it, he knows it ; I might say, he has been driven to know it ; without consent asked of him, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too could not help being a sincere man ! Whosoever may live in the show of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the ' open secret," are one. With respect to their distinction again : The Vates Prophet, THOMAS CARLYLE 413 we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition ; the Vates Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love. But indeed these two provinces run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love : how else shall he know what it is we are to do ? The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, " Consider the lilies of the field ; they toil not, neither do they spin : yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. " The lilies of the field," dressed finer than earthly princes, springing-up there in the humble furrow-field ; a beautiful eye looking-out on you, from the great inner Sea of Beauty ! How could the rude Earth make these, if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not inwardly Beauty ? In this point of view, too, a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning : " The Beautiful," he intimates, " is higher than the Good : the Beautiful includes in it the Good." The true Beautiful; which however, I have said somewhere, " differs from the false as Heaven does from Vauxhall 1 " So much for the distinction and identity of Poet and Prophet. In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets who are accounted perfect ; whom it were a kind of treason to find fault with. This is noteworthy ; this is right : yet in strict- ness it is only an illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect Poet ! A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men ; no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are all poets when we read a poem well. The " imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not that the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own ? No one but Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammaticus, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did : but every one models some kind of story out of it ; every one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend time in defining. Where there is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has so much more of the poetic element developed in him as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by hi? 414 THE HERO AS POET < neighbours. World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet ; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal ; no man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are very soon forgotten : but not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be remembered for- ever ; a day comes when he too is not 1 Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a difference between true Poetry and true Speech not poetical : what is the difference ? On this point many things have been written, especially by late German Critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. They say, for example, that the Poet has an infinitude in him ; communicates an Unendlichkeit, a certain character of " infini- tude," to whatsoever he delineates. This, though not very pre- cise, yet on so vague a matter is worth remembering : if well meditated, some meaning will gradually be found in it. For my own part, I find considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinc- tion of Poetry being metrical, having music in it, being a Song. Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say this as soon as anything else : If your delineation be authentically musical, musical, not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will be poetical ; if not, not. Musical : how much lies in that ! A musical thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing ; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden in it ; the inward har- mony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; naturally utter themselves in Song. The mean- ing of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us ? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that ! Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in it : not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent ; the rhythm or tune to which the people there sing what they THOMAS CARLYLE 415 have to say ! Accent is a kind of chanting ; all men have accent of their own, though they only notice that of others. Observe too how all passionate language does of itself become musical, with a finer music than the mere accent ; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song ; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls ! The primal element of us ; of us, and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies ; it was the feeling they had of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul of all her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on power of intellect ; it is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in comparison with the Vates Prophet ; his function, and our esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The Hero taken as Divinity ; the Hero taken as Prophet ; then next the Hero taken only as Poet : does it not look as if our estimate of the Great Man, epoch after epoch, were continually diminishing ? We take him first for a god, then for one god-inspired ; and now in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word gains from us only the recognition that he is a Poet, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or such- like ! It looks so ; but I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man still there is the same altogether peculiar admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that there at any time was. I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattain- able Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom and Heroism, are ever rising higher; not altogether that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in 41 6 THE HERO AS POET this the highest province of human things, as in all provinces, make sad work ; and our reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes-out in poor plight, hardly recognisable. Men worship the shows of great men ; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. The dreariest, fatalest faith ; believing which, one would literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at Napoleon ! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery ; that is the show of him : yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put together could not be? High Duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, Burns ; a strange feeling dwelling in each that they had never heard a man like this ; that, on the whole, this is the man ! In the secret heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and flashing sun- eyes, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do not we feel it so ? But now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that sorrowful brood, cast-out of us, as, by God's blessing, they shall one day be ; were faith in the shows of things entirely swept-out, replaced by clear faith in the things, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the other non-extant ; what a new livelier feeling towards this Burns were it I Nay here in these pages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified ? Shaks- peare and Dante are Saints of Poetry ; really, if we will think of it, canonised, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The un- guided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in a kind of royal soli- tude ; none equal, none second to them : in the general feeling of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, invests these two. They are canonised, though no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it ! Such, in spite of every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence for heroism. We will look a little THOMAS CARLYLE at these Two, the Poet Dante and the Poet Shakspeare : what little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. Many volumes have been written by way of commentary on Dante and his Book ; yet, on the whole, with no great result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecoverably lost for us. An un- important, wandering, sorrowstricken man, not much note was taken of him while he lived ; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The Book ; and one might add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever did it. To me it is a most touching face ; perhaps of all faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it ; the deathless sorrow and pain, the known* victory which is also deathless; significant of the whole history of Dante ! I think it is the mournfulest face that ever was painted from reality; an alto- gether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child ; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnega- tion, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal soul looking- out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice ! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scorn- ful one : the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-out his heart, as if it were withal a mean insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in pro- test, and life-long unsurrendering battle, against the world. Affection all converted into indignation : an implacable indigna- tion ; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god ! The eye too, it looks-out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was of such a sort ? This is Dante : so he looks, this "voice of ten silent centuries," and sings us "his mystic un- fathomable song." The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds well 418 THE HERO AS POET enough with this Portrait and this Book. He was born at Florence, in the upper class of society, in the year 1265. His education was the best then going ; much school-divinity, Aris- totelean logic, some Latin classics, no inconsiderable insight into certain provinces of things : and Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better than most all that was learnable. He has a clear cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety ; the best fruit of education he had con- trived to realise from these scholastics. He knows accurately and well what lies close to him ; but, in such a time, without printed books or free intercourse, he could not know well what was distant : the small clear light, most luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular chiaroscuro striking on what is far off. This was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies ; been twice out cam- paigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been on embassy ; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own age and rank, and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with her. All readers know his graceful affecting account of this ; and then of their being parted ; of her being wedded to another, and of her death soon after. She makes a great figure in Dante's Poem ; seems to have made a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his whole strength of affection loved. She died : Dante himself was wedded ; but it seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make happy. We will not complain of Dante's miseries : had all gone right with him as he wished it, he might have been Prior, Podesta, or whatsoever they call it, of Florence, well accepted among neigh- bours, and the world had wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor ; and the ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten oth^*" listening centuries (for there will be THOMAS CARLYLE 419 ten of them and more) had no Divina Commedia to hear! We will complain of nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for this Dante ; and he, struggling like a man led towards death and crucifixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give him the choice of his happiness ! He knew not, more than we do, what was really happy, what was really miserable. In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some other confused disturbances rose to such a height, that Dante, whose party had seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment ; doomed thence- forth to a life of woe and wandering. His property was all confiscated and more ; he had the fiercest feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated ; tried even by warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand : but it would not do ; bad only had become worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in the Florence Archives, dooming this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive ; so it stands, they say : a very curious civic document. Another curious document, some con- siderable number of years later, is a Letter of Dante's to the Florentine Magistrates, written in answer to a milder proposal of theirs, that he should return on condition of apologising and paying a fine. He answers, with fixed stern pride : " If J cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will never return, nunquam revertar" For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wan- dered from patron to patron, from place to place ; proving in his own bitter words, " How hard is the path, Come e duro called The wretched are not cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody hu- mours, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (nebulones ac histriones) making him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he said : " Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself so entertaining ; while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to amuse 42O THE HERO AS POET us with at all ? " Dante answered bitterly : " No, not strange ; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, Like to Like ; " given the amuser, the amusee must also be given 1 Such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be evi- dent to him that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. The earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander ; no living heart to love him now ; for his sore miseries there was no solace here. The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him ; that awful reality over which,- after all, this Time-world, with its Florences and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt never see : but Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see ! What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether ? ETERNITY : thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound 1 The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that awful other world. Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the one fact important for him. Bodied or bodi- less, it is the one fact important for all men : but to Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape ; he no more doubted of that Malebolge Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy circles, with its alti guai? and that he himself should see it, than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into " mystic unfathomable song ; " and this his Divine Comedy, the most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see, a proud thought for him at times, That he, here in exile, could do this work ; that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was great ; the greatest a man could do. " If thou follow thy star, Se tu segui tua stella" so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in his extreme need, still say to himself : " Follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of a glori- ous haven 1 " The labour of writing, we find, and indeed could l [Deep waitings.] THOMAS CARLYLE 421 know otherwise, was great and painful for him ; he says, This Book, " which has made me lean for many years." Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil, not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed most good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole history, this Book. He died after finishing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six ; broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies buried in his death-city Ravenna: Hie daudor D antes patriis extorris ab oris. The Florentines begged back his body, in a century after ; the Ravenna people would not give it. " Here am I Dante laid, shut-out from my native shores." I said, Dante's Poem was a Song : it is Tieck who calls it " a mystic unfathomable Song ; " and such is literally the character of it. Coleridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that wher- ever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning too. For body and soul, word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere. Song : we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech ! All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are ; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines, to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part ! What we want to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any : why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly ? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing ; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers, whose speech is Song. Pretenders to this are many ; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme ! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed ; it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who can speak their thought, not to sing it ; to understand that, in a serious 422 THE HERO AS POET time, among serious men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are charmed by it as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing. I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his Divine Comedy that it is, in all senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there is a canto fermo^ it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple terza rima? doubtless helped him in this. One reads along naturally with a sort of ////. But I add that it could not be otherwise ; for the essence and material of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it musical ; go deep enough, there is music everywhere. A true inward symmetry, what one calls an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all : archi- tectural ; which also partakes of the character of music. The three kingdoms, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, look-out on one another like compartments of a great edifice; a great super- natural world-cathedral, piled-up there, stern, solemn, awful ; Dante's World of Souls 1 It is, at bottom, the sincerest of all Poems ; sincerity, here too, we find to be the measure of worth. It came deep out of the author's heart of hearts ; and it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. The people of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, used to say, " Eccovi r uom ch* e stato air Inferno, See, there is the man that was in Hell ! " Ah yes, he had been in Hell ; in Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle ; as the like of him is pretty sure to have been. Commedias that come out divine are not accomplished otherwise. Thought, true labour of any kind, high- est virtue itself, is it not the daughter of Pain ? Born as out of the black whirlwind ; true effort, in fact, as of a captive strug- gling to free himself : that is Thought. In all ways we are " to become perfect through suffering." But, as I say, no work known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It had made him " lean " for many years. Not the general whole only ; every 1 [This is intended to be paraphrased by the clause that follows it.] 3 [The triple scheme of rhyme used in the poem.] THOMAS CARLYLE 423 compartment of it is worked out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into clear visuality. Each answers to the other ; each fits in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. It is the soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered forever rhythmically visible there. No light task ; a right intense one : but a task which is done. Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much that depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante's genius. Dante does not come before us as a large catholic mind ; rather as a narrow and even sectarian mind : it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, concentred itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the outermost development of his intensity, consider how he paints. He has a great power of vision ; seizes the very type of a thing ; presents that and nothing more. You remember that first view he gets of the Hall of Dite : red pinnacle, redhot cone of iron glowing through the dim immensity of gloom ; so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever ! It is as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brevity, an abrupt precision in him : Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed ; and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smiting word ; and then there is silence, nothing more said. His silence is more eloquent than words. It is strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true likeness of a matter : cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, collapses at Virgil's rebuke ; it is " as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken." Or that poor Brunette Latini, with the cotto aspetto, "face baked," parched brown and lean; and the " fiery snow," that falls on them there, a " fiery snow without wind," slow, deliberate, never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs ; square sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul in torment ; the lids laid open there ; they are to be shut at the Day of Judgment, through Eternity. And how Farinata rises ; and how Cavalcante falls at hear 424 THE HERO AS POET ing of his Son, und the past tense "fue " I 1 The very movements in Dante have something brief ; swift, decisive, almost military. It is of the inmost essence of his genius, this sort of painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent, passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, its silent " pale rages," speaks itself in these things. For though this of painting is one of the outermost develop- ments of a man, it comes like all else from the essential faculty of him ; it is physiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something ; mark his manner of doing it, as very characteristic of him. In the first place, he could not have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless he had, what we may call, sympathised with it, had sympathy in him to bestow on objects. He must have been sincere about it too ; sincere and sympathetic : a man without worth cannot give you the likeness of any object ; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and. trivial hearsay, about all objects. And indeed may we not say that intellect altogether expresses itself in this power of dis- cerning what an object is ? Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may have will come out here. Is it even of business, a matter to be done ? The gifted man is he who sees the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage : it is his faculty too, the man of business's faculty, that he discern the true likeness, not the false superficial one, of the thing he has got to work in. And how much of morality is in the kind of insight we get of anything ; " the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing 1 " To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of any object. In the commonest human face there lies more than Raphael will take away with him. Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness as of fire in dark night ; taken on the wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the outcome of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what qualities in that 1 A thing woven as out i [Was.] THOMAS CARLYLE 42$ of rainbows, on a ground of eternal black. A small flute-voice of infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too ; (fella bella persona, che mi fit, tolta; 1 and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he will never part from her ! Saddest tragedy in these alti guai. And the racking winds, in that aer bruno? whirl them away again, to wail forever ! Strange to think : Dante was the friend of this poor Francesca's father ; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law: it is so Nature is\made; it is so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion is that of his Divine Comedy's being a poor splenetic impotent ter- restrial libel ; putting those into Hell whom he could not be avenged-upon on earth ! I suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the heart of any man, it was in Dante's. But a man who does not know rigour cannot pity either. His very pity will be cowardly, egoistic, sentimentality, or little better. I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love : like the wail of ^Eolean harps, soft, soft; like a child's young heart; and then that stern, sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his towards his Beatrice; their meeting together in the Paradiso ; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been puri- fied by death so long, separated from him so far : one likens it to the song of angels ; it is among the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of a human soul. For the intense Dante is intense in all things ; he has got into the essence of all. His intellectual insight as painter, on occa- sion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of inten- sity. Morally great, above all, we must call him ; it is the beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love ; as indeed, what are they but the inverse or converse of his love ? " A Dio spiacenti ed a 1 nemici sui, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God : " lofty scorn, unappeasable silent repro- bation and aversion : " Non ragionam di lor, We will not speak 1 [The fair body that was taken from me.] 2 [Dusky air.] 426 THE HERO AS POET of them, look only and pass." Or think of this ; " They have not the hope to die, Non han speranza di morte" One day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of Dante, that he, wretched, never-resting, worn as he was, would full surely die; " that Destiny itself could not doom him not to die." Such words are in this man. For rigour, earnestness and depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world ; to seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew Bible, and live with the antique Prophets there. I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly pre- ferring the Inferno to the two other parts of the Divine Corn- media. Such preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feeling. The Purgatorio and Paradiso, especially the former, one would almost say, is even more excellent than it. It is a noble thing, that Purgatorio, " Mountain of Purification ; " an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is man purified ; Repentance is the grand Christian act. It is beauti- ful how Dante works it out. The tremolar dell' onde, that " trem- bling " of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now dawned ; never-dying Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of daemons and reprobate is underfoot ; a soft breathing of peni- tence mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy itself. " Pray for me," the denizens of that Mount of Pain all say to him. " Tell my Giovanna to pray for me," my daughter Gio- vanna ; " I think her mother loves me no more ! " They toil painfully up by that winding steep, " bent-down 1 like corbels of a building," some of them, crushed-together so "for the sin of pride;" yet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have reached the top, which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed ; the whole Mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind 1 I call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. THOMAS CARLYLE 427 But indeed the Three compartments mutually support one another, are indispensable to one another. The Paradiso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming side of the Inferno ; the Inferno without it were untrue. All three make-up the true Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages ; a thing forever memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. It was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ; a man sent to sing it, to keep it long memorable. Very notable with what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day reality, into the Invisible one ; and in the second or third stanza, we find ourselves in the World of Spirits ; and dwell there, as among things palpable, indubitable ! To Dante they were so ; the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a world. At bottom, the one was as //r/