THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 DAVIS 
 
HOURS 
 
 AND BOOKS 
 
 WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D. 
 
 THIRTEENTH EDITION. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 0. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 1895. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
COPT-RIGHT, 1877, 
 Br 8. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 
 
 Kfjr ILakrsitit 
 
 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO., CHICAGO 
 
TO 
 
 HON. HENRY W. PAINE, LL.D. 
 
 OF BOSTON, MASS., 
 
 IN MEMORY OP A LIFE-LONG FRIENDSHIP, BEGUN IN MY SCHOOL-BOY 
 DAYS, WHEN, AS MY TEACHER, 
 
 "tu solebas 
 Meas esse aliquid putare nugas," 
 
 THIS BOOK IS INSCKIBED 
 WITH THE AFFECTIONATE REGARDS OP 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. THOMAS DE QUINCEY, - - - 9 
 
 II. ROBERT SOUTH, - 58 
 
 III. CHARLES H. SPURGEON, * 81 
 
 IV. RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY, 97 
 V. MORAL GRAHAMISM, - - - 117 
 
 VI. STRENGTH AND HEALTH, - 129 
 
 VII. PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING, - 136 
 
 VIII. THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING, 159 
 
 IX. THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY, - - 171 
 
 X. HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING, 229 
 
 XI. LITERARY TRIFLERS, - - - 237 
 
 XII. WRITING FOR THE PRESS, 256 
 
 XIII. THE STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES, - 263 
 
 XIV. WORKING BY RULE, 272 
 XV. Too MUCH SPEAKING, - 279 
 
 XVI. A FORGOTTEN WIT, 287 
 
 XVII. ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? - 299 
 
 XVIII. A DAY AT OXFORD, 307 
 
 XIX. AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, - - 327 
 
 XX. BOOK-BUYING* - 336 
 
 XXI. A PINCH OF SNUFF, - - - - 347 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 A BOUT twenty years ago there might have been seen 
 -*--*- flitting about the rural lanes in the neighborhood 
 of Edinburgh, Scotland, a strange, diminutive, spectral- 
 looking being, clad in a motley costume, with his hat 
 hung over the back of his head, his neck-cloth twisted 
 like a wisp of straw, and altogether so grotesque-looking, 
 that you could not help stopping to look at him, and 
 wondering to what race, order, or age of human beings 
 he belonged. As you stopped to look at him, you found 
 him also stopping in suspicious alarm, and looking back 
 at you; and then suddenly, like some ticket-of-leave man, 
 hastily moving on, and, as if fearful of being caught, 
 darting round the first turning, and disappearing from 
 view. What was your surprise when it was whispered in 
 your ear that in this fragile and unsubstantial figure, 
 this dagger of lath, this ghostly body resting on a pair 
 of immaterial legs, which you could have " trussed with 
 all its apparel into an eelskin" resided one of the most 
 potent and original spirits that ever dwelt in a tenement 
 of clay! And how was your surprise deepened, when 
 you were further told that this singular being, this 
 migratory and almost disembodied intellect, this little 
 wandering anatomy, topped with a brain, whom you had 
 found so shy, as if he had " feared each bush an officer," 
 was one of the subtlest thinkers, and the greatest 
 
10 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 masters of English prose, in this century; in a word, the 
 far-famed "Opium-Eater," Thomas DeQuincey! It is the 
 character and writings of this extraordinary man, and 
 most unique and original genius, that we purpose to con 
 sider in this essay. 
 
 Among all the charmed names of modern English lit 
 erature, is there probably any other English author whose 
 works are read and re-read with such feelings of delight, 
 wonder, and admiration as those of DeQuincey? Glanc 
 ing over the books that are books on his shelves, \each 
 the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, " the purest 
 efficacy and extraction of that living spirit that bred 
 them," does the scholar's eye rest on any with which it 
 would cost him a keener pang to part, than with the 
 writings of this great magister-sententiarum, this Aqui- 
 nas-Richter, this arch-dreamer of dreams, "the Opium- 
 Eater?" Read wherever the English language is spoken, 
 he is by universal acknowledgment the most powerful 
 and versatile master of that tongue in our time, the 
 acutest, and at the same time the most gorgeous and elo 
 quent writer of English prose in the nineteenth century. 
 Where, in the entire range of our later literature, will 
 you find an intellect at once so solid and so subtle, so 
 enormous learning conjoined with such power of original 
 thinking, so daring, eccentric wit and grotesque fun with 
 such sharpness and severity of style? Whatever the sub 
 ject he discusses, whether the character of the Caesars or 
 the Aristocracy of England, Homer and the Hoineridae, or 
 Nichols's System of the Heavens, Lessing's Laocoon, or 
 the English Corn-Laws, War, or Murder considered as one 
 of the Fine Arts, Casuistry, or Dinner, Real and Reputed, 
 - Miracles, or Secret Societies, Logic, Political Economy, 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 11 
 
 or the Sphinx's Riddle, he treats all in the same fasci 
 nating, yet subtle and searching manner, investing them 
 with the charms of learning and scholarship, wit and 
 humor, and combining, as have rarely before been com 
 bined, the rarely harmonizing elements of severe logic 
 and exuberant fancy. 
 
 Who, that has once read it, will ever forget that 
 wondrous paper on "The English Mail Coach?" that 
 coach on which he rode, and on which it was " worth 
 five years of life to ride," after the battle of Talavera, 
 rode as if borne on the wings of a mighty victory flying 
 by night through the sleeping land, " that should start to 
 its feet at the words they came to speak?" What mar 
 vellous word-painting in the sketch entitled " The Spanish 
 Nun," and in the essay on " Modern Superstitions," 
 particularly in the descriptions of the phantoms which 
 haunt the traveler in trackless deserts, and of the strange 
 voices which are heard by those who sail upon unknown 
 seas! What lover of the horrible will ever forget the 
 weird, snake-like fascination of that masterpiece of pow 
 erful writing in which De Quincey's slow, sustained, long- 
 continued method of following a subject reaches a climax 
 in his art of dealing with the feeling of terror, we mean 
 the "Three Memorable Murders?" Anything more fear 
 fully thrilling than the description of Williams, the mur 
 derer, with his ghastly face, in whose veins ran, not 
 life-blood, that could kindle into a blush of shame, but 
 a sort of green sap, with his eyes that seemed frozen 
 and glazed, as if their light were all converged upon 
 some victim lurking in the background, and the oiliness 
 and snaky insinuation of his demeanor, that counteracted 
 the repulsiveness of his physiognomy, who, if you hnd 
 
12 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 run against him in the street, would have offered the 
 most gentlemanly apologies, hoping that the mallet under 
 his coat, his hidden instrument of murder, had not hurt 
 you! anything more horrible than this never froze the 
 blood, or held the spirit petrified in terror's hell of cold. 
 Compared with the spell worked by this mighty magician, 
 the necromancy of Monk Lewis is tame; the stories with 
 which Ann Radcliffe, Miss Crowe, Schiller, and even the 
 Baron Reichenbach himself, make the blood run cold, the 
 nerves prick, and the hair stand on end, are dull and 
 insipid; and the enchantments of all the other high-priests 
 of the supernatural, cheap and vulgar. - 
 
 Again, with what a magnetism does De Quincey hold us 
 in the " Retreat of a Tartar Tribe," a paper recording 
 a section of romantic story *' not equalled," he says, 
 "since the retreat of the fallen angels!" What a 
 fluctus decumanus of rhetoric is his " Vision of a Sudden 
 Death," a tale as mystically fearful as "The Ancient 
 Mariner." With what a climax of painful incident, begin 
 ning with an absolute minimum of interest, does he chain 
 our attention in " The Household Wreck ! " How he thrills 
 us with the fiery eloquence of the Confessions, and entrances 
 us with the solemn, sustained, and lyrical raptures of the 
 "Suspiria," and the "Dream Fugue 1 ' following his "Vision 
 of a Sudden Death ! " What a power he exhibits of seizing 
 the impalpable and air-drawn scenery of dreams, and 
 embodying it in impassioned language, a faculty which 
 nowhere else, in the whole compass of literature, has been 
 so vividly displayed, as in that piece, so daring in its 
 imaginative sweep, the final climax of his "Joan of Arc!' 1 
 Dip wherever we will into this author's writings, we find 
 on every page examples of the same narrative power, the 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 13 
 
 same depth and keenness of philosophic criticism, the same 
 psychological subtlety detecting the most veiled aspects of 
 things, the same " quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles " 
 of fancy, relieving the severity of the profoundest thoughts, 
 the same dazzling fence of rhetoric, the same imperial 
 dominion over the resources of expression, and the same 
 sustained, witching melody of style. In his curious brain 
 the most opposite elements are united; "fire and frost 
 embrace each other." 
 
 At once colossal and keen, DeQuincey's intellect seems 
 capable of taking the profoundest views of men and things, 
 and of darting the most piercing glances into details ; it has 
 an eagle's eye to gaze at the sun, and the eye of a cat to 
 glance at things in the dark ; is quick as a hawk to pounce 
 upon a brilliant falsehood, yet as slow as a ferret to pursue 
 a sophism through all its mazes and sinuosities. Now 
 meditative in gentle thought, and anon sharp in analytic 
 criticism ; now explaining the subtle charm of Wordsworth's 
 poetry, and again unravelling a knotty point in Aristotle, 
 or cornering a lie in Josephus ; to-day penetrating the bowels 
 of the earth with the geologist, to-morrow soaring through 
 the stellar spaces with the astronomer; it seems exactly 
 fitted for every subject it discusses, and reminds you of the 
 elephant's lithe proboscis, which with equal dexterity can 
 uproot an oak or pick up a pin. Of this universality of his 
 genius one who knew him well says, that in theology his 
 knowledge was equal to that of two bishops ; in metaphysics 
 he could puzzle any German professor; in astronomy he 
 outshone Professor Nichol; in chemistry he could outdive 
 Samuel Brown; and in Greek, excite to jealousy the shades 
 of Porson and Samuel Parr. In short, to borrow an illus 
 tration of Macaulay, it is hardly an exaggeration to say of 
 
14 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 the Opium-Eater's intellect, that it resembled the tent 
 which the fairy Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed, " Fold 
 it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady; spread it, 
 and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath 
 its shade." 
 
 Witty all this capaciousness and subtlety, however, 
 DeQuincey 's is, at the same time, of all intellects the most 
 vagrant and capricious, scorning above all things the 
 beaten track, doing nothing by square, rule, and compass, 
 and never pursuing any path of inquiry, without digres 
 sion, for ten minutes together. Whatever the. subject he 
 announces to be under discussion, the title of one of his 
 papers affords you no key to its contents. Like Montaigne, 
 who in his chapter on Coaches treats only of Alexander and 
 Julius Caesar, or like the writer on Iceland, who begins his 
 chapter, " Of the Snakes of Iceland," by saying " There 
 are no snakes in Iceland, 1 ' DeQuincey contents himself 
 often with the barest allusion to his theme, and strays into 
 a thousand tempting bye-paths, leading off whole leagues 
 therefrom, " winding like a river at its own sweet will," 
 shedding " a light as from a painted window " on the most 
 trivial objects, but profoundly indifferent whether, at the 
 end of his disquisition, he will have made any progress 
 toward the goal for which he started. Like a fisherman, he 
 throws out his capacious net into the ocean of learning, and 
 sweeps in everything, however miscellaneous or motley its 
 character. Hence, in reading his logical papers, you 
 declare him the prince of desperate jokers; reading his 
 jeux d'esprit, you are ready with Archdeacon Hare to pro 
 nounce him the great logician of our times. "Oh, Mr. 
 North! Mr. North! " shouts the Ettrick Shepherd in one of 
 <&e "Noctes." when DeQuincey is about to refute one of his 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 15 
 
 post-prandial propositions, " I'm about to fa' into Mr. 
 De Quinshy's hauns, sae come to my assistance, for I canna 
 thole, being pressed up backward, step by step, intell a 
 corner, till an argument that's ca'd a clincher clashes in 
 your face, and knocks your head in sic force against the 
 wa', that your crown gets a clour, leaving a dent in the 
 wainscot." 
 
 Fully to estimate an author, we must know the man; 
 and therefore, before entering upon a more critical notice 
 of the Opium-Eater's genius, let us glance at some of the 
 more notable facts of his life and character. Thomas 
 De Quincey was born at Greenhayes, near Manchester, in 
 1785. His father, a foreign merchant, who began life 
 with what has been termed " the dangerous fortune of 
 6,000," prospered so well in business that, when he died 
 of consumption in his thirty-ninth year, he left to his 
 widow and six young children a fortune of 30,000 and 
 a pleasant seat in the place just named. This " imperfectly 
 despicable man," as De Quincey calls him in allusion to his 
 commercial position, rarely saw his children; and it was, 
 therefore, the more fortunate that they had so good a 
 mother, a well-educated, pious woman, who spared no pains 
 to promote their welfare and happiness. Thomas, the son, 
 came into the world, as he tells us, upon that tier of the 
 social scaffolding which is the happiest for all good influ 
 ences. Agur's prayer was realized for him; he was neither 
 too high, nor too low, too rich, nor too poor. High 
 enough he was to see models of good manners, of self- 
 respect, and of simple dignity ; obscure enough to be left in 
 the sweetest of solitudes. 
 
 He was a singularly small and delicate child, with a 
 large brain, and a most acute rervou's system, ill clad 
 
16 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 with flesh, which made him the victim of those ills and 
 miseries of boyhood from which the poet Cowper, in his 
 early years, so keenly suffered. In his infancy he was 
 afflicted for more than two years with ague; an affliction 
 which was compensated by the double share of affection 
 lavished upon him by his mother and sisters, by whom 
 he was made the pet of the family, and regarded as one 
 of the sanctities of home. When, in after years, like 
 Marcus Aurelius, he thanked Providence for the separate 
 blessings of his childhood, he was wont to single out as 
 worthy of special commemoration, that " he lived in a 
 rustic solitude; that this solitude was in England; that 
 his infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters, 
 and not by horrid pugilistic brothers; and, finally, that 
 he and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, 
 holy and magnificent church." 
 
 A life so encompassed and hallowed seems specially 
 adapted to develop his remarkable mental idiosyncrasies, 
 and to intensify his exquisite sensibilities; but he was 
 speedily to learn that there is no earthly seclusion 
 inviolable to the inroad of sorrow; and suddenly, the 
 whole complexion of the world was changed for him by 
 an affliction that remained apparently an abiding grief 
 through life, the death of his "gentlest of sisters," 
 Elizabeth, the superb development of whose head was 
 the astonishment of science. The marvelous passage in 
 which he tells us how he bewailed the loss of this sister, 
 and describes his feelings when he stole silently and 
 secretly up to the chamber where the body lay, and, 
 softly entering the room, closed the door, and found 
 himself alone with the dead, when, catching a glimpse 
 from the open window of the scenery outside, he con- 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 17 
 
 traslod the glory and the pomp of nature, redolent of 
 life and beauty, with the little body, from which all life 
 had tied, lying so still upon its bed, " the frozen eyelids, 
 the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them, 
 the marble lips, the stiffening hands laid palm to palm, 
 as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish," 
 is one of the most beautiful pieces of prose in our 
 language. 
 
 "Could these be mistaken for life? Had it been so, wherefore did I not 
 spring to those lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it was not. 
 I stood checked for a moment; awe, not fear, fell upon me; and whilst I 
 stood, a solemn wind began to blow the saddest that ear ever heard. It 
 was a wind that might have swept the fields of mortality for a thousand 
 centuries. Many times since upon summer days, when the sun is about the 
 hottest, I have rema/ked the same wind arising and uttering the same 
 hollow, solemn, Memuouian, but saintly swell: it is in this world the one 
 great audible symbol of eternity. And three times in my life have I hap 
 pened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances, namely, when 
 standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day." 
 
 In the same connection, he says: 
 
 " God speaks to children also in dreams, and by the oracles that lurk 
 in darkness. But in solitude, above all things, when made vocal to the 
 meditative heart by the truths and services of a national church, God holds 
 with children ' communion undisturbed.' Solitude, though it may be silent 
 as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to 
 man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone. Even a little 
 child has a dread, whispering consciousness, that, if he should be summoned 
 to travel into God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to kad him 
 by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, nor little sister to share 
 his trepidations. King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and 
 child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, 
 which in this world appals or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a 
 far deeper solitude, through which already he has passed, and of another 
 solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude 
 prefiguration of another." 
 
 DeQuincey's grief, too deep for tears, would perhaps 
 have hurried him into an untimely grave, had he not been 
 awakened, somewhat rudely, from his reveries, by the 
 
18 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 arrival home of his elder brother. This brother was an 
 extraordinary boy, as eccentric in his way as Thomas him 
 self, over whom he tyrannized by the mere force of character. 
 He had a genius for mischief amounting almost to inspira 
 tion; "it was a divine afflatus which drove him in that 
 direction; and such was his capacity for riding in whirl 
 winds and directing storms, that he made it his trade to 
 create them, in order that he might direct them." A strong 
 contrast was this active, mischief-loving, bold, and clever 
 boy to the puny Thomas, whom, naturally enough, he 
 thoroughly despised. His martial nature prompted him to 
 deeds too daring for the meek and gentle nature of the 
 younger, from whom, nevertheless, he exacted the most 
 unquestioning obedience. This obedience was based on the 
 assumption that he himself was commander-in L chief ; there 
 fore Thomas owed him military allegiance, while, as cadet 
 of his house, he owed him suit and service as its head. 
 
 Having declared war against the "hands" of a Man 
 chester cotton mill, one of whose number had insulted 
 them by calling them " bucks," as they passed along Oxford 
 Road home from school, the elder brother made the younger 
 major-general; sometimes directing his movements upon 
 the flank, and sometimes upon the rear of the enemy, now 
 planting him in ambush, and now as a corps of observation, 
 as the exigencies of the case required. For two entire 
 years, and twice every day in the week, did fearful battle 
 rage between the belligerents with showers of stones and 
 sticks, during which Thomas was thrice a prisoner in the 
 enemy's hands. Arrived at home, the commander issued a 
 bulletin of the engagement, which was read with much 
 ceremony to the housekeeper. Sometimes this document 
 announced a victory, sometimes a defeat; but the conduct 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 19 
 
 of the major-general was sure to be sharply criticised, 
 whatever the result. Now he was decorated with the Bath, 
 and now he was deprived of his commission. At one time 
 his services merited the highest promotion, at another, he 
 behaved with a cowardice that was inexplicable, except on 
 the supposition of treachery. Once he was drummed out 
 of the army, but " restored at the intercession of a distin 
 guished lady,' 1 to wit, the housekeeper. 
 
 A most wonderful boy was this brother, who absolutely 
 hated all books, except those which he himself wrote ; which 
 were not only numerous, but upon every subject under the 
 sun; so that, if not luminous, he could boast of being the 
 most vo-luminous author of his time. He kept the nursery 
 in a perfect whirl of excitement, giving burlesque lectures 
 " on all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine 
 Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, leger 
 demain, magic, both black and white, thaumaturgy and 
 necromancy." His most popular treatise was entitled 
 " How to Raise a Ghost; and when you've got him, how to 
 keep him down." He also gave lectures on physics to an 
 audience in the nursery, and tried to construct an apparatus 
 for walking across the ceiling like a fly, first on the princi 
 ple of skates, and afterward upon that of a humming-top. 
 He was profound on the subject of necromancy, and 
 frequently terrified his young admirers by speculating on 
 the possibility of a general confederation, or solemn league 
 and conspiracy, of the ghosts of all time against the single 
 generation of men at any one time composing the garrison 
 of this earth. He made a balloon; and wrote, and, with 
 his brothers and sisters, performed two acts of a most har 
 rowing tragedy, in which all the personages were beheaded 
 at the end of each act, leaving none to carry on the play, a 
 
20 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 perplexity which ultimately caused " Sultan Amurath " to 
 be abandoned to the housemaids. "It is well," observes 
 De Quincey, " that my brother's path in life diverged from 
 mine, else I should infallibly have broken my neck in con 
 fronting perils which brought neither honor nor profit." 
 
 Thomas De Quincey was scarcely ten years old when he 
 began laying the deep foundations of that wonderful accu 
 racy which he acquired in the Greek and Latin tongues, 
 and storing the cells of his memory with wide and varied 
 information by browsing freely in all the fields of litera 
 ture. After receiving instruction from a succession of 
 masters, at Bath, at Winkfield, and at Manchester, he began 
 to feel that profound contempt for his tutor which a boy 
 of genius always feels for a pompous pedant; and, indig 
 nant because his guardians did not allow him at once to 
 enter himself at the University of Oxford, he ran away at 
 night, with a small English poet in one pocket, and nine 
 plays of Euripides in the other, and began wandering 
 about in Wales. Of the ups and downs of his life there, 
 he has given a characteristically vivid account. Sometimes 
 he slept in fine hotels, sometimes on the hillside, with 
 nothing but the heavens to shelter him, fearing lest " while 
 my sleeping face was upturned to the stars, some one of the 
 many little Brahminical-looking cows on the Cambrian 
 hills, one or other, might poach her foot into the centre of 
 my face;" sometimes he dined for the small sum of six 
 pence; sometimes he wanted a dinner, and was compelled 
 to relieve the cravings of his hunger by plucking and 
 eating the berries from off the hedges; and sometimes he 
 earned a meal and a night's lodging by writing letters for 
 cottagers and for sweethearts. 
 
 Weary of these aimless wanderings, he turned his 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 21 
 
 back on Wales, and next found himself penniless and 
 without a friend, in the solitude of London. And now 
 began that painful, yet marvellous and intense]y inter 
 esting episode in his history, which he has so vividly 
 portrayed in the "Confessions." Now began that wear 
 ing life, which chills the spirits, saps the morality, and 
 turns the blood to gall, waiting day after day at a 
 usurer's office, perpetually listening to fresh excuses for 
 delay, and fresh demands for the preparation of fresh 
 securities. Strangest and most thrilling of written experi 
 ence, where, in any autobiography, at least, shall we 
 find its equal? Why, instead of letting these vultures 
 keep him in suspense till he was on the verge of starva 
 tion, he did not try to earn a living by his pen, or by 
 teaching, is a mystery. Not only would he receive as 
 heir, in four years more, for he was now seventeen, 
 4,000 or 5,000, an almost fabulous sum for a literary 
 man of that period, but he had abundant resources 
 against want in his teeming imagination and elegant 
 scholarship. So great and accurate were his classical 
 attainments, that his master, more than a year before, 
 had proudly pointed him out to a stranger, with the 
 remark: "That boy could harangue an Athenian mob 
 better than you or I could address an English one." 
 Moreover, we* find him, soon after this, gravely weighing 
 the propriety of writing a remonstrance in Greek to the 
 Bishop of Bangor, concerning some fancied insult received 
 at the hands of that learned prelate. De Quincey himself 
 tells us that he wielded the Greek language " with preter 
 natural address for varying the forms of expression, and 
 for bringing the most refractory ideas within the harness 
 of Grecian phraseology." 
 
22 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 Of this accomplishment he was never inclined to 
 vaunt; for any slight vanity which he might connect 
 with a power so rarely attained, and which, under ordi 
 nary circumstances, so readily transmutes itself into 
 disproportionate admiration of the author, in him, he 
 tells us, was absolutely swallowed up in the tremendous 
 hold taken of his entire sensibilities at that time by our 
 English literature. Already at fifteen he had made 
 himself familiar with the great English poets, and had 
 appreciated the subtle charm of Wordsworth's poetry, 
 when not fifty persons in England, who had read the 
 sneering criticisms of the Edinburgh Review, knew who 
 the poet that had cautioned men against " growing 
 double," was. Here we cannot help quoting from his 
 "Brief Appraisal of the Greek Literature," a noble 
 passage in which, in spite of his admiration of the 
 Hellenic genius, he confesses the superiority of the 
 English: "It is," he says, "a pitiable spectacle to any 
 man of sense and feeling, who happens to be really 
 familiar with the golden treasures of his own ancestral 
 literature, and a spectacle which alternately moves scorn 
 and sorrow, to see young people squandering their time 
 and painful study upon writers not fit to unloose the 
 shoes' latchets of many amongst their own compatriots; 
 making painful and remote voyages aft&r the drossy 
 refuse, when the pure gold lies neglected at their feet." 
 To return to the narrative: unlike Savage's or Chat- 
 terton's, De Quincey's misery at this time seems to have 
 been self-inflicted. What reader of the "Confessions" 
 has forgotten his description of this period, when, friend 
 less and alone, he paced up and down the never-ending 
 streets of London, with their pomp and majesty of life, 
 
THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 23 
 
 a prey to the gnawings of hunger, and seeking by 
 constant motion to baffle the piercing cold? What 
 American that has paced those silent thoroughfares after 
 midnight, has not thought of the boy who wandered up 
 and down Oxford street, looking at the long vistas of the 
 lamps, and conversing with the unfortunate creatures 
 who still moved over the cold, hard stones? Who does 
 not remember how, overpowered by the pangs of inan 
 ition, he fainted away in Soho Square, and was rescued 
 from the very gates of death by a poor girl, who admin 
 istered to him a tumbler of spiced wine, bought with 
 money which destitution had compelled her to earn by 
 sin? Whose heart has not been touched by the story 
 of "Poor Anne"? Her wrongs and sorrows, it has been 
 well said, have doubtless caused many prayers to be 
 breathed for others who, like herself, have been the 
 victims of man's dishonor and sin. 
 
 For more than sixteen weeks De Quincey was a prey 
 to hunger, the bitterest that a man can suffer and sur 
 vive. During all this time he slept in the open air, and 
 subsisted on a precarious charity. At last he found an 
 asylum, better at least than a stone door-step for a 
 night's lodging, a large, empty house, peopled chiefly 
 with rats. There at night he would lie down on the bare 
 floor, with a dusty bundle of law-papers for a pillow, 
 and a cloak and an old sofa-covering for bed-clothes; 
 while, for a companion, he had a poor, friendless girl, 
 a deserted child, about ten years old, who nestled close 
 to him for warmth and protection against the ghosts 
 which, to her infant imagination, peopled the hours of 
 darkness. But it was to " poor Anne " that he looked 
 for the chief solace of his miserable life. He never knew 
 
24 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 her surname, and, as he always depended upon finding 
 her, he did not think it necessary to learn more. Part 
 ing from her one day with a kiss of brotherly affection, 
 he set out on a business errand to Eton; but when he 
 returned to London, he lost all trace of her. Night after 
 night he returned to the trysting-place, and years after 
 in visits to the city he peered into myriads of faces with 
 the hope of descrying the well-known features; but in 
 vain; poor Ann he never saw more. Again and again 
 would he pace the flags of Oxford street, the " stony 
 hearted step-mother," and listen again to the tunes which 
 used to solace himself and her in their dreary wander 
 ings, and with tears would exclaim: "How often have I 
 wished that, as in ancient times, the curse of a father 
 was believed to have a supernatural power, and pursue its 
 object with a fatal necessity of fulfilment, even so the 
 benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might 
 have a like prerogative; might have power given it from 
 above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to pursue tbee into 
 the central darkness of a London brothel, or, if it were 
 possible, even into the darkness of a grave, there to 
 awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and 
 forgiveness, and of final reconciliation!" 
 
 With the loss of Ann his Greek-street life ended; and 
 becoming reconciled to his guardians by a Providential 
 occurrence, he went home, and soon after entered Oxford 
 University as a student. Of his life there at Worcester 
 College, we know almost nothing. It was so hermit-like, 
 that, for the first two years, he computes that he did not 
 ntter one hundred words. He had but one conversation 
 with his tutor. "It consisted of three sentences," he 
 says, " two of which fell to his share, one to mine. Ox- 
 
THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 25 
 
 ford, ancient mother! hoary with ancestral honors, time- 
 honored, and, haply it may be, time-shattered power, I 
 owe thee nothing! Of thy vast riches I took not a shil 
 ling, though living among multitudes who owed thee their 
 daily bread." When the examinations came, De Quincey 
 went through the first day's trial so triumphantly that 
 one of the examiners said to a resident of Worcester Col 
 lege: "You have sent us to-dav the cleverest man I ever 
 
 O 
 
 met with; if his viva voce examination to-morrow corre 
 spond with what he has done in writing, he will carry 
 everything before him." De Quincey, however, did not 
 wait to be questioned further; but for some reason, 
 whether self- distrust, or a depression of spirits following 
 a large dose of opium, packed his trunk, and walked 
 away from Oxford, never to return. In 1804 he made 
 the acquaintance of Charles Lamb. In 1807 he was in 
 troduced to Coleridge, for whose vast intellectual powers 
 he had a profound admiration; and, hearing that he was 
 harassed by pecuniary troubles, contrived to convey to 
 him, through Mr. Cottle's hand, the sum of 500. In 
 this generous gift De Quincey was actuated by a pure 
 artistic love of genius and literature. From 1808 to 1829, 
 he passed nine months out of twelve among the lakes 
 and mountains of Westmoreland. He took a lease ol 
 Wordsworth's cottage at Grasmere, wedded a gentle 
 and loving wife; and amidst the delights of the lake 
 scenery, a good library of 5000 volumes, lettered friends, 
 and his darling drug, realized the ideal of earthly bliss 
 for which the Roman poet so often sighed, and drank a 
 sweet oblivion of the cares of anxious life. Speaking at 
 this time of Wordsworth's good luck, for whose benefit 
 some person became conveniently defunct whenever he 
 
26 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 wanted money, De Quincey says: "So true it is, that, just 
 as Wordsworth needed a place and a fortune, the holder 
 of that place or fortune was immediately served with a 
 notice to surrender it. So certainly was this impressed 
 upon my belief as one of the blind necessities, making 
 up the prosperity and fixed destiny of Wordsworth, that, 
 for myself, had I happened to know of any peculiar adapta 
 tion in an estate or office of mine to an existing need of 
 Wordsworth, forthwith, and, with the speed of a man 
 running for his life, I would have laid it down at his 
 feet. 'Take it,' I should have said; 'take it, or in three 
 weeks I shall be a dead man." 1 
 
 It was in 1804, at the age of 19, that De Quincey first 
 began taking opium, to ease rheumatic pains in the face 
 and head. This dangerous remedy having been recom 
 mended to him by a fellow-student at Oxford, he entered 
 a druggist's shop, and, like Thalaba in the witches' lair, 
 wound about himself the first threads of a coil, which, 
 after the most gigantic efforts, he was never able wholly 
 to shake off. Using opium at first to quiet pain, he quickly 
 found that it had mightier and more magical effects, and 
 went on increasing the doses till in 1816 he was taking 
 320 grains, or 8,000 drops of laudanum a day. What a 
 picture he has given us of the discovery he made! What 
 a revelation the dark but subtle drug made to his spiritual 
 eyes! What an agent of immortal and exalted pleasures! 
 What an apocalypse of the world within him! Here was 
 a panacea for sorrow and suffering, for brain-ache and 
 heart-ache, immunity from pain, and care, and all hu 
 man woes. He swallowed a bit of the drug, and lo! the 
 inner spirit's eyes were opened, a fairy ministrant had 
 burst into wings, waving a wondrous wand, a fresh tree 
 
THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 27 
 
 of knowledge had yielded its fruit, and it seemed as good 
 as it was beautiful. " Happiness might now be bought 
 for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket ; portable 
 ecstasies might now be had, corked up in a pint bottle; 
 and peace of mind sent down in gallons by mail. 11 Here 
 we may observe that De Quincey contradicts the state 
 ments which are usually made regarding opium. He 
 denies that it intoxicates, and shows that there is such 
 an insidiousness about it, that it scarcely seems to be a 
 gratification of the senses. The pleasure of wine is one 
 that rises to a certain pitch, and then degenerates into 
 stupidity, while that of opium remains stationary for eight 
 or ten hours. Again, the influence of wine tends to dis 
 order the mind, while opium tends to exalt the ideas, 
 and yet to contribute to harmony and order in their ar 
 rangement. " The opium-eater feels that the diviner part 
 of his nature is uppermost; that is, the moral affections 
 are in a state of cloudless serenity, and over all is the 
 great light of the majestic intellect/ 1 
 
 Up to the middle of 1817 De Quincey judges himself 
 to have been a happy man; and nothing can be more 
 charming than the picture he draws of the interior of 
 his cottage in a stormy winter night, with " warm hearth 
 rugs, tea from an eternal tea-pot,' 1 eternal a parte ante 
 and a parte post, for he drank from eight in the evening 
 till four in the morning, " a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, 
 curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst 
 the wind and rain are raging audibly without, 
 
 l As heaven and earth they would together mell.'" 
 
 Alas ! that this blissful state could not continue ! But the 
 very drug which had revealed to him such an abyss of 
 divine enjoyment, which had given to him the keys of 
 
28 THOMAS DE QUItfCEY. 
 
 Paradise, causing to pass before his spirit's eyes a never- 
 ending succession of splendid imagery, the gorgeous col 
 oring of sky and cloud, the pomp of woods and forests, 
 the majesty of boundless oceans, and the grandeur of 
 imperial cities, while to the ears, cleansed from their 
 mortal infirmities, were borne the sublime anthem of the 
 winds and waves, and a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs 
 and harping symphonies, this very power became event 
 ually its own avenging Nemesis, and inflicted torments 
 compared with which those of Prometheus were as the 
 bites of a gnat. 
 
 Of all the torments which opium inflicts upon its vo 
 tary, perhaps there is no one more destructive of his 
 peace than the sense of incapacity and feebleness, of 
 inability to perform duties which conscience tells him he 
 must not neglect. The opium-eater, De Quincey tells us, 
 loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations; he wishes 
 and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes 
 possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but the springs 
 of his will are all broken, and his intellectual apprehen 
 sion of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not 
 of execution only, but even of power to attempt. " He 
 lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies 
 in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a 
 man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor 
 of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury 
 or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: 
 he curses the spells which chain him down from motion ; 
 he would lay down his life if he might but get up and 
 walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even 
 attempt to rise." 
 
 Of the cup of horrors which opium finally presents to 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 29 
 
 its devotees, De Quincey drank to the dregs, especially in 
 his dreams at night, when the fearful and shadowy phan 
 toms that flitted by his bedside made his sleep insuffera 
 ble by the terror and anguish they occasioned. Of these 
 dreams, as portrayed in the " Confessions " and some of 
 his other writings, we doubt if it would be possible to 
 find a parallel in any literature, ancient or modern. 
 Sometimes they are blended with appalling associations, 
 encompassed with the power of darkness, or shrouded 
 with the mysteries of death and the gloom of the grave. 
 Now they are pervaded with unimaginable horrors of 
 oriental imagery and mythological tortures; the dreamer 
 is oppressed with tropical heat and vertical sunlight, and 
 brings together all the physical prodigies of China and 
 Hindostan. He runs into pagodas, and is fixed for cen 
 turies at the summit, or in secret rooms; he flees from 
 the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; 
 Vishnu hates him; Seeva lays wait for him; he comes 
 suddenly on Isis and Osiris; he has done a deed, they 
 say, at which the ibis and the crocodile tremble; he is 
 buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mum 
 mies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of 
 eternal pyramids. He is kissed with cancerous kisses by 
 crocodiles ; and laid, confounded with all unutterable, slimy 
 things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. 
 
 "Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incar 
 ceration, brooded a' sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an 
 oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two 
 slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All 
 before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main agents were 
 ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile 
 became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was 
 compelled to live with him ; and (as was always the case, almost, in my 
 dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in Chinese 
 
30 THOMAS DE QTJINCEY. 
 
 houses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon 
 became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his 
 leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I 
 stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt 
 my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very 
 same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything when I 
 am sleeping), and instantly I awoke : it was broad noon, and my children 
 were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside; come to show me their colored 
 shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest 
 that so awful was the transition from the damned crocodile, and the other 
 unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of innocent 
 human natures and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revulsion of 
 mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed their faces." 
 
 Anon, there would come suddenly a dream of a fai 
 different character, a tumultuous dream, commencing 
 with music, and a multitudinous movement of infinite 
 cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. 
 The morning was come of a mighty day, a day of crisis 
 and of ultimate hope for human nature, then suffering 
 mysterious eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. 
 
 "Somewhere, but I knew not where, somehow, but I knew not how, 
 by some beings, I knew not by whom, a battle, a strife, an agony was 
 traveling through all its stages, was evolving itself like the catastrophe of 
 some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable, 
 from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its 
 undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where, of necessity, we make 
 ourselves central to every movement,) had the power, and yet had not the 
 power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and 
 yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon 
 me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. ' Deeper than ever plummet 
 sounded,' I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some 
 greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause, than ever yet the sword 
 had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurry 
 ings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether 
 from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human 
 faces; and, at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the 
 features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed, 
 and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then everlasting fare 
 wells; and with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed, when the incestuous 
 mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated, 
 everlasting farewells I and again, and yet again reverberated, everlasting 
 farewells!" 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 31 
 
 When did ever man, like this man, realize "the fierce 
 vexation of a dream" ? As with Byron's Manfred, the voice 
 of incantation rang forever in his ears: 
 
 "Though thy slumber may be deep, 
 Yet thy spirit shall not sleep; 
 There are shades which will not vanish, 
 There are thoughts thou canst not banish; 
 And to thee shall night deny 
 All the quiet of her sky." 
 
 How fearfully does he make us feel that 
 
 " This is truth the poet sings, 
 That a sorrow's crown of sorrows is remembering happier things;" 
 
 and we would fain say to him: 
 
 " Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof, 
 In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof." 
 
 Here, were it not needless, we might pause to speak of 
 the egregious folly of those persons who fancy that by 
 swallowing opium like De Quincey, they may have De 
 Quincey' s visions and dreams. As well might they expect 
 to produce an explosion by touching a match, not to gun 
 powder, but to a lump of lead. Opium was, indeed, the 
 teasing irritant of De Quincey's genius; but the genius 
 was in him, or the visions would not have come. Dryden 
 was most inspired after a dose of salts; but a common 
 place man will never be able to dash off an "Alexander's 
 Feast," though he take pills till he bankrupt Brandreth. 
 He will have " all the contortions of the Sibyl without 
 the inspiration." A booby will remain a booby still, 
 though he feed upon the nectar and ambrosia of the gods. 
 
 Having yielded to the Circean spells of opium, De 
 Quincey lay from 1817 to 1821 in a kind of intellectual 
 torpor, utterly incapable of sustained exertion. At last, 
 his nightly visions became so insupportable that he deter- 
 
32 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 mined to abjure the deadly drug; and, after a desperate 
 struggle, the foul fiend was nearly exorcised. But long 
 after its departure, he suffered most keenly; his sleep 
 was still tumultuous; and like the gates of Paradise to 
 our first parents when looking back from afar, it was 
 still (in the tremendous line of Milton) 
 
 " With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms." 
 
 It was at this time that he began those literary labors 
 which have made his fame, and which have enabled the 
 world to see what mighty results he might have accom 
 plished, if opium had not enfeebled his powers. Writing 
 the first part of the " Confessions " in 1821, he from that 
 time plied his pen with great, but fitful industry, on vari 
 ous publications, such as " Blackwood's Magazine," " Tart's," 
 the " North British Review," " Hogg's Instructor," and the 
 "Encyclopaedia Britannica." Till 1827 he continued to 
 live at Grasmere, with occasional visits to London, when he 
 changed his residence for two years to Edinburgh, after 
 which he took up his abode again among the Westmore 
 land hills, in a " rich farm-house, flowing with milk and 
 honey, with mighty barns and spacious pastures," near 
 his former cottage at Grasmere. To this charming rural 
 retreat he invited Charles Knight and his family to visit 
 him, in a letter such as only the Opium-Eater could 
 write. "And now, my friend," he urges, "think what a 
 glorious El Dorado of milk and butter, and cream cheeses, 
 and all other dairy products, I can offer you morning, 
 noon, and night. You may absolutely bathe in new 
 milk, or even in cream; and you shall bathe, if you like 
 it. I know that you care not much for luxuries for the 
 dinner-table; else, though our luxuries are few and 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 33 
 
 simple, I could offer you some temptations, mountain 
 lamb equal to Welsh; char famous to the antipodes; 
 trout and pike from the very lake within twenty-five feet 
 of our door; bread, such as you have never presumed to 
 dream of, made of our own wheat, not doctored and 
 separalfed by the usual miller's process into fine insip 
 flour, and coarse, that is, merely dirty-looking white, but 
 all ground down together, which is the sole receipt 
 (experto crede) for having rich, lustrous, red-brown, 
 ambrosial bread; new potatoes, of celestial earthiness and 
 raciness, which, with us, last to October; and finally, 
 milk, milk, milk cream, cream, cream, (hear it, thou 
 benighted Londoner!) in which you must and shall 
 bathe." De Quincey's last years were spent at Lasswade, 
 near Edinburgh, Scotland, where he died December 8, 
 1859, in his seventy-fifth year. During the last three 
 or four years of his life, he suffered exquisite pain from 
 a constant gnawing in the stomach, which impelled him 
 some days to walk fifteen miles at a time, and which he 
 believed was owing to the presence there of a voracious 
 living parasite. But for his obligations to his wife and 
 daughters, he declared, the temptation to commit suicide 
 would have been greater than he could have resisted; 
 and he repeatedly announced his intention of bequeath 
 ing his body to the surgeons for a post mortem examina 
 tion into his strange disease. 
 
 Physically, De Quincey was a frail, slender-looking 
 man, exceedingly diminutive in stature, with small, 
 clearly-chiselled features, as pale almost as alabaster, a 
 large head, and a singularly high, square forehead. The 
 head showed behind a want of animal force. The lips 
 were curiously expressive and subtle in their character; 
 
34 THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 
 
 the eyes, that seemed to have seen much sorrow, peered 
 out of two rings of darkness; and there was a peculiarly 
 high and regular arch in the wrinkles of his brow, 
 which was "loaded with thought." All that met him 
 were struck with the measured, silvery, yet somewhat 
 hollow and unearthly tones of his voice, the more 
 impressive that the flow of his talk was unhesitating and 
 unbroken. Though capable of undergoing a great deal 
 of labor and fatigue, he declares that his body was the 
 very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system, 
 and that he " should almost have been ashamed to 
 bequeath his wretched structure to any respectable dog." 
 Of his odd, eccentric character, no adequate account ever 
 has been, or, probably ever will be given, so removed 
 were his from all the normal conditions of human nature. 
 In his boyhood the shiest of children, " naturally dedi 
 cated to despondency," he was passionately fond of peace, 
 had a perfect craze for being despised, considered 
 contempt as the only security for unmolested repose, 
 and always sought to hide his accomplishments from the 
 curiosity of strangers. He tells us humorously, and no 
 doubt truthfully, how, after he had reached manhood, he 
 was horrified at a party in London when he saw a large 
 number of guests filing in one by one, and guessed from 
 their looks that they had come to "lionize" the Opium- 
 Eater. It has been questioned if he ever knew what it 
 is " to eat a good dinner," or could even comprehend the 
 nature of such a felicity. He had an ear most perfectly 
 attuned to the enjoyment of " beauty born of murmuring 
 sound," and one of his most exquisite pleasures was 
 listening to instrumental, and especially vocal, music; 
 yet a discord, a wrong note, was agony to him; and it 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 35 
 
 is said that, on one occasion, he with ludicrous solem 
 nity apostrophized his unhappy fate as one over whom a 
 cloud of the darkest despair had been drawn, because a 
 peacock had just come to live within hearing distance 
 of him, and not only the terrific yells of the accursed 
 biped pierced him to the soul, but the continued terror 
 of their recurrence kept his nerves in agonizing tension 
 during the intervals of silence. In this sensitiveness to 
 harsh noises he reminds one of the poet Beattie, who 
 denounces chanticleer for his lusty proclamation of morn 
 ing to his own and the neighboring farm-yards, in terms 
 hardly merited by a Nero. 
 
 In everything that concerned the happiness of others, 
 DeQuincey was the very soul of courtesy. A gentleman 
 who visited him repeatedly at Lasswade, tells us that for 
 every woman, however humble, he seemed to have the 
 profoundest reverence; and when, in walking along the 
 country highway together, they met any person in female 
 attire, however lowly or meanly clad, were she fine lady 
 or servant girl, DeQuincey would turn aside from the 
 road, back up against the hedge, and pulling off his hat, 
 bow and continue bowing profoundly, till she had passed 
 beyond them. While listening to the mythical and fear 
 fully wearisome recital of an old crone at Melrose Abbey, 
 he continued bowing, with his hat off, to the end, with as 
 much deference as if she had been a duchess. A corre 
 spondent of a New York journal, who spent some hours at 
 his Scottish home, gives an additional illustration of his 
 tender regard for the feelings of the lowly: 
 
 " There was a few moments' pause in the ' table talk,' when one of the 
 daughters asked our opinion of Scotland and the Scotch. De Quincey had 
 heen in a kind of reverie, from which the question aroused him. Turning 
 to us, he said, in a kindly, half-paternal manner, ' The servant that waits at 
 
36 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 my table is a Scotch girl. It may be that you have something severe to say 
 about Scotland. I know that I like the English church and dislike many 
 things about the Puritanical Scotch; but I never utter anything that might 
 wound my servant. Heaven knows that the lot of a poor servant girl is hard 
 enough, and if there is any person in the world of whose feelings I am 
 especially tender, it is those of a female compelled to do for us our drudgery. 
 Speak as freely as you choose, but please reserve your censure, if you have 
 any, for the moments when she is absent from the room.' Un gentilhomme 
 est touj&urs un gentilhomme, a man of true sensibility and courtesy will 
 manifest it on all occasions, toward the powerless as well as toward the 
 strong. When the dinner was ended and the waiting girl had left, his elo 
 quent tongue gave the Ultra Puritanism of Scotland such a castigation, that 
 we looked around us with a shudder, expecting to see the ghost of John 
 Knox stalking into the room, fluid-hot with holy wrath." 
 
 Though the author of a profound, philosophic treatise 
 on political economy, DeQuincey was in all money matters 
 a child. Brooding over great intellectual problems, he 
 gave no thought to pounds, shillings, and pence, or ques 
 tions touching the payment of weekly bills. Only the most 
 immediate, craving necessities could extract from him an 
 acknowledgment of the vulgar agencies by which men 
 subsist in civilized society; and only while the necessity 
 lasted, did the acknowledgment exist. He would arrive 
 late at a friend's door, and represent in his usual silvery 
 voice and measured rhetoric, the urgent necessity he had 
 for the immediate and absolute use of a certain sum of 
 money; and if he thought the friend hesitated, or the time 
 seemed long before the required loan was forthcoming, a 
 loan, perhaps, of seven shillings and sixpence, he would 
 rummage his waistcoat pocket in search of a document 
 which, he would confidently declare, was an ample security, 
 and which would prove to be, when the crumpled paper 
 was spread out, a bank note for 50 ! It was the opinion 
 of those who knew him well, that, had the bank note been 
 accepted, his friend would never have heard anything more 
 of the transaction. 
 
THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 37 
 
 Mr. John Hill Burton, in " The Book-Hunter," to which we 
 are indebted for these particulars, has related a variety of 
 other incidents, similarly illustrative of De Quincey's char 
 acter. Sometimes a visitor of De Quincey, made oblivious of 
 the lapse of time by the charm of his conversation, would dis 
 cover, at a late hour, that " lang Scots 1 miles " lay between 
 his host's and his own home. Thereupon De Quincey would 
 volunteer to accompany the forlorn traveler, and guide 
 him through the difficulties of the way; for had not his 
 midnight wanderings and musings made him familiar with 
 all the intricacies of the road? Roofed by a huge wide 
 awake, which makes his tiny figure look like the stalk of some 
 great fungus, with a lantern of more than common dimen 
 sions in his hand, away he goes, down the wooded path, up 
 the steep bank, along Hie brawling stream, and across the 
 waterfall; and ever as he goes, there comes from him a 
 continued stream of talk concerning the philosophy of 
 Immanuel Kant, and other kindred themes. Having seen 
 his guest home, he would still continue walking on, until, 
 weariness overtaking him, he would take his rest like some 
 poor mendicant, under a hayrick, or in a wet furrow. No 
 wonder that he used to denounce, with fervent eloquence, 
 that barbarous and brutal provision of the law of England 
 which rendered sleeping in the open air an act of vagrancy, 
 and so punishable, if the sleeper could not give a satis 
 factory account of himself; " a thing," adds Mr. Burton, 
 " which he could never give under any circumstances." 
 His social habits were as eccentric as everything else per 
 taining to him. Being detained one evening at Prof. 
 Wilson's in Edinburgh, when in a great hurry, by a 
 shower, he remained nearly a year. Mrs. Gordon, Prof. 
 Wilson's daughter, states that at this time his dose of 
 
38 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 laudanum was an ounce a day, an amount which, though 
 small compared with what he had formerly taken, was 
 sufficient to prostrate animal life in the morning. " It was 
 no unfrequent sight," she says, " to find him in his room, 
 lying upon the rug in front of the fire, his head resting 
 upon a book, with his arms crossed over his breast, plunged 
 into profound slumber. For several hours he would lie in 
 this state, until the effect of the torpor had passed away." 
 
 When he was invited to a dinner-party, no one ever 
 thought of waiting dinner for him. He came and departed 
 always at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punct 
 ualities, nor burdening others by exacting them. " The 
 festivities of the afternoon are far on when a commotion 
 is heard in the hall, as if some dog, or other stray animal 
 had forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest 
 tells him of the arrival ; he opens the door, and fetches in 
 the little stranger. What can it be? a street-boy of some 
 sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great coat, 
 very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to 
 the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti-colored 
 belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list-shoes, covered 
 with snow, for it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers, 
 some one suggests that they are inner linen garments 
 blackened with writing-ink ; but De Quincey never would 
 have been at the trouble so to disguise them. What can 
 be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in 
 the world, it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest 
 at hand. Had chance thrown to him a court single-breasted 
 coat, with a bishop's apron, a kilt, and top boots, in these 
 he would have made his entry." One of his peculiarities 
 was an intense dislike for shirts, of wearing which he was 
 as innocent as Adam. Unlike Coleridge's father, who, 
 
THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 39 
 
 starting on a journey with six shirts, came home wearing 
 the entire half dozen, DeQuincey sloughed off this garment 
 almost as soon as his good wife had persuaded him to put 
 it on. 
 
 DeQuincey was a prodigious reader, had an anaconda- 
 like digestion, and assimilated his mental food with amazing 
 rapidity. An ardent lover of books, he cared nothing for 
 pet editions, the niceties a ad luxuries of paper, printing, 
 and binding. Tree-calf and sheep, Turkey-morocco and 
 muslin, were all one to him. His pursuit of books was 
 like that of the savage who ieeks but to appease the hunger 
 of the moment. Mr. Burton says that if his intellectual 
 appetite craved a passage in the (Edipus, or in the Medeia, 
 or in Plato's Republic, he would be content with the most 
 tattered fragment of the volume, if it contained what he 
 wanted; but on the other hand, he would not hesitate to 
 seize upon your tall copy in Russia, gilt and tooled. Nor 
 would he hesitate to lay his sacrilegious hands upon an 
 editio princeps, even to wrench out the twentieth volume 
 of your " Encyclopedic Methodique " or " Ersch und Gruber," 
 leaving a vacancy like an extracted front tooth, and carry 
 ing it off to his den of Cacus. " Some legend there is," 
 says the same amusing writer, " of a book-creditor having 
 forced his way into the Cacus den, and there seen a sort of 
 rubble work inner wall of volumes, with their edges out 
 ward; while others, bound and unbound, the plebeian 
 sheepskin and the aristocratic Russian, were squeezed into 
 certain tubs drawn from the washing establishment of a 
 confiding landlady." In common with the whole tribe of 
 book-borrowers, he rarely returned a book loaned to him, 
 folio or quarto, single or one of a set; though sometimes 
 the book was recognized at large, greatly enhanced in value 
 
40 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 by a profuse edging of manuscript notes. When short of 
 writing paper, he never hesitated to tear out the leaves of a 
 broad-margined book, whether his own or belonging to 
 another. It is even reported that he once gave in "copy" 
 written " on the edges of a tall octavo Somnium Scipionis; 
 and as he did not obliterate the original matter, the printer 
 was rather puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the 
 letter-press Latin and the manuscript English." It is 
 a remarkable fact that, in spite of these piratical proceed 
 ings, none of his friends ever complained of him. They 
 never said, as did Southey of Wordsworth, that letting him 
 into one's library was " like letting a bear into a tulip 
 garden." 
 
 DeQuincey's indifference to the fate of his printed writ 
 ings is a peculiarity not less marked than the other traits 
 of his strange, prismatic genius. Not till the very end of 
 his life, and then, we believe, only at the suggestion of an 
 American publisher, did he set about collecting his scattered 
 papers, a feat which he once declared "that not the 
 archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary, durst 
 attempt. 1 ' It is to the honor of our country that, like the 
 splendid essays of Macaulay, the twenty-four volumes of 
 the Opium-Eater's writings were first published in Boston; 
 and it would be pleasant to see confirmed a statement we 
 have met with in a New York newspaper, that during the 
 closing years of his life, the broad and brilliant sunrise of 
 his fame in the United States did more than any other 
 single thing to stimulate him to continuous literary labor 
 and to kindle his literary enthusiasm. 
 
 Turning from De Quincey the man to De Quincey the 
 author, the first thing that strikes us is the extraordinary 
 depth and compass of his knowledge. He never seems to 
 
THOMAS DE QTJINCEY. 41 
 
 put forth all his learning on any subject, nor are there 
 any signs of " cram " in his writings. His thought comes 
 from a brimming reservoir, and never shows the mud 
 at the bottom. Indeed, we know of no man who more 
 completely realizes his own wonderful description of a 
 great scholar, as " one endowed not merely with a great 
 memory, but with an infinite and electrical power of 
 combination, bringing together from the four winds, 
 like the angels of the resurrection, what else were but 
 the dust of dead men's bones, and breathing into them 
 the unity of life." 
 
 When we consider the number and variety of the 
 themes he has discussed, many of them of the most 
 recondite, out-of-the-way character, and especially when 
 we think of his digressions, quotations, notes, allusions, 
 and extrajudicial opinions, we are astonished at the vast 
 and eccentric range of his reading, and still more at the 
 tenacity of a memory by which such portentous acqui 
 sitions could be held. He seems to have been his own 
 encyclopaedia, quoting, wherever he chanced to be, all 
 that he wished to quote, even dates and references, with 
 out the aid of a library. Ranging over all the fields of 
 inquiry, he is perpetually surprising you with side 
 glimpses and hints of truths which he cannot at present 
 follow up. Often on a topic seemingly the most remote 
 from abstract philosophy, through a m'ere allusion or 
 hint, chasms are opened to you in the depths of specu 
 lation, and the ghosts of buried mediaeval problems are 
 made to stalk before you. We know of no other memory 
 which is so large as De Quincey's, and yet so personal ; 
 so ample, and yet so accurate; which is at once so object 
 ive, and yet so subjective, giving the vividness of self 
 
42 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 to outward acquisition, and to the consciousness of self 
 the enlargement of imperial knowledge. 
 
 Again, it is rarely that a scholar, especially one who 
 has spent so much time in the nooks and hidden corners 
 of learning, has been so close an observer of character. 
 All of his works, but especially his "Autobiographic 
 Sketches " and " Literary Reminiscences," are strewn 
 with passages showing that while it was a peculiarity 
 of his intellect to be exquisitely introspective, he was 
 yet marvellously swift in his appreciations of men and 
 things, and noted personal traits with Boswellian minute 
 ness. In discovering motives and feelings by their outward 
 manifestations, by the most microscopic peculiarities of 
 look, shape, tone, or gesture, he was as acute as Lavater. 
 Another rare endowment, which he has to a wonderful 
 degree, is the power of detecting resemblances, hidden 
 analogies, parallelisms, connecting things otherwise 
 wholly remote. Often, he tells us, he was mortified 
 by compliments to his memory, which, in fact, were due 
 to " the far higher faculty of an electric aptitude for 
 seizing analogies, and, by means of these aerial pontoons, 
 passing over like lightning from one topic to another." 
 To this power we may trace much of the excellence of 
 his criticism, the keenness of penetration with which he 
 sees, not only into the genius, but all round the life of 
 an author. Perhaps no literary critic has equalled him 
 in making incidents in a writer's life, unnoticed by other 
 men, flash light upon his genius; and, again, in making 
 hidden peculiarities of his genius clear up mysteries in 
 his life. Hence he never repeats the old, worn-out 
 commonplaces of criticism, but, breaking away from the 
 traditional views, startles you with opinions as novel as 
 they are acute and ingenious. 
 
THOMAS DE QUI^CEY. 43 
 
 Who can forget his original and admirable distinction 
 between the literature of knowledge and the literature of 
 power? " What," he asks, " do you learn from Paradise 
 Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a 
 cookery book? Something new, something you did not 
 know before, in every paragraph. But would you there 
 fore put the wretched cookery book on a higher level of 
 estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to 
 Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate 
 items are still but a million of advancing steps on the 
 same earthly level; what you owe is power; that is, 
 exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of 
 sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each 
 separate influx is a step upward, a step ascending, as 
 upon a Jacob's ladder, from earth to mysterious altitudes 
 above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from the 
 first to the last, carry you farther on the same plane, 
 but could never raise you one foot above your ancient 
 level of earth; whereas the very first step in power is a 
 flight, is an ascending, into another element, where earth 
 is forgotten." 
 
 Again: how charming to a lover of intellectual sub 
 tlety is his reasoning concerning the Essenes! With 
 what a keenness of philosophical criticism, with what 
 a prodigality of learning, logic, and illustration, does 
 DeQuincey refute the popular dogmas about Pope; that 
 he was a writer of the Gallic school; that he was a second 
 or third rate poet, and that his distinctive merit was cor 
 rectness; when he was, in fact, a great, impassioned, 
 musical thinker of social life, who had in his soul innate 
 germs of grandeur, which did not open into power, or 
 which had but an imperfect growth. Again: how adroitly 
 
44 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 he unmasks and scalps the superficially omniscient and 
 overrated Brougham, who has " deluged Demosthenes with 
 his wordy admiration!" With how firm a grasp he 
 throttles " Junius"; how keenly he dissects that brilliant 
 mocking-bird, Sheridan; and how hollow the pompous 
 Parr feels in his grip! This exquisite subtlety in dis 
 criminating the resemblances and differences of things is 
 one of the most remarkable traits of De Quincey's genius. 
 In this, as in the wide range of his intellectual sympathies, 
 and in his habit of minute]/ dissecting his own emotions, 
 he resembled Coleridge ; but in other respects they stood in 
 almost polar antithesis. De Quincey, it has been truly said, 
 was a Greek; but Coleridge was essentially a German in 
 his culture, tastes, and habits of mind. De Quincey had 
 a dry, acute, critical intellect, piercing as a sword-blade, 
 and as brilliant and relentless; Coleridge was a poet, of 
 " imagination all compact," with a mind of tropical fruit- 
 fulness and splendor, and a sensibility as delicate as a 
 woman's. In thus differentiating De Quincey from the 
 " noticeable man, with large, gray eyes," we would not 
 intimate that, with all his intellectual acumen, he had 
 not something far better than this metaphysic, hair 
 splitting talent. Though he absolutely revels in nice 
 distinctions and scrupulous qualifications, he was not a 
 dry Duns Scotus, a juiceless Thomas Aquinas. While 
 his logic cut like a razor, his imagination burned like a 
 furnace. Though he had a schoolman's passion for logical 
 forms, and could have beaten the enemies of Reuchlin at 
 their own weapons, his rhetorical aptitudes were profound 
 and varied, and his speculative imagination was little less 
 than wonderful in its range and power. 
 
 De Quincey's humor is of a kind which is not easy to 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 45 
 
 characterize. Like everything belonging to him, it is odd, 
 unique, as original as his genius. Always playful and 
 stingless, it takes at one time the form of banter, at 
 another of mock dignity. Now it speaks with admiration, 
 or with a dry, business tone of things usually regarded 
 with indignation or horror; now it mocks at gravity, 
 cracks jests upon venerable persons or institutions, quizzes 
 the owls of society, and pulls the beards of dignitaries. 
 At one hour it greets us in the grave robe of the critic, 
 and pokes fun at the learned; at another, in the scarlet 
 dress of the satirist, and blasts hypocrisy with its ridi 
 cule; and again it comes to us in motley, with cap and 
 bells, and reminds us of Touchstone's wise fooling and 
 the mingled pathos and bitterness of the poor fool in Lear. 
 One of the commonest forms of DeQuincey's playfulness 
 is exaggeration, the expenditure of pages of the gravest 
 and most elaborate ratiocination upon a trifle, the devo 
 tion of a senior wrangler's analytic powers to the dissec 
 tion of the merest crotchet; reminding one in this, it has 
 been well said, of a great musical composer, who seats 
 himself before a stately organ, and choosing as his theme 
 some street song, "0 dear, what can the matter be?" or 
 " Polly, put the kettle on," pursues it through figures of 
 surpassing pomp and orchestral tumult, glorifying it 
 into intricate harmonies, and transfiguring its original 
 meanness into bewildering bravura and interminable fan 
 tasia. The following passage from " The English Mail 
 Coach," while it illustrates in some degree De Quincey's 
 peculiar humor, interveined, as it often is, with grave 
 remark, is also a fine specimen of his measured and stately 
 style : 
 
 "The modern modes of traveling cannot compare with the mail-coach 
 system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, but not, how- 
 
46 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 ever, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon 
 alien evidence; as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone 
 fifty miles in the hour, or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we 
 find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London. Apart from such an 
 assertion, or such a result, I am little aware of the pace. But, seated on 
 the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the 
 velocity. On this system the word was Non magna loquimur, as upon 
 railways, but magna mmmus. The vital experience of the glad animal sen 
 sibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard 
 our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the 
 product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was 
 incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of an animal, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic 
 muscles, and echoing hoofs. This speed was incarnated in the visible conta 
 gion amongst brutes of some impulse, that, radiating into their natures, had 
 yet its centre and beginning in man. The sensibility of the horse, uttering 
 itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a 
 movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first, but the intervening 
 link that connected them, that spread the earthquake of the battle into the 
 eyeball of the horse, was the heart of man, kindling in the rapture of the 
 fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by motions, and gestures 
 to the sympathies, more or less dim, in his servant, the horse 
 
 "Bat now, on the new system of traveling, iron tubes and boilers have 
 disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. Nile nor 
 Trafalgar has power any more to raise an extra bubble in a steam kettle. 
 The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever: man's imperial nature no longer 
 sends itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; interagen- 
 cies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master, 
 out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists 
 that hid, or sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight 
 solitudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse all nations, must hencefor- 
 wards travel by culinary process ; and the trumpet that once announced from 
 afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking, when heard screaming on the wind, 
 and advancing through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its 
 route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler." 
 
 The crowning achievement of De Quincey in this depart 
 ment is his " Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," 
 which all will admit to be a masterpiece of cynicism, with 
 out a parallel in our literature. The principle on which 
 this paper is based, is that everything is to be judged, 
 in an aesthetic point of view, by the end it professes to 
 accomplish, and is to be considered good or bad, that is, 
 for its own purposes, according to the degree in which 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 47 
 
 it accomplishes that end. As Aristotle would say, " The 
 virtue of a thing is to be judged by its end." For ex 
 ample, dirt, according to Lord Palmerston's famous defini 
 tion, is only " matter in the wrong place." Put it at the 
 bottom of a fruit-tree, and so far is it from being a nui 
 sance, that the dirtier it is the better. So with murder; 
 leave out of view the ultimate purpose of the thing, and 
 take it simply on its own merits, and the more murder 
 ous it is, the more does it come up to its fundamental 
 idea. It follows that there are clever, brilliant, even ideal 
 murders, and that they may be criticised by dilettanti 
 and amateurs, like a painting, or statue, or other work 
 of art. In a similar spirit De Quincey claims that a proper 
 proportion of rogues is essential to the proper mounting 
 of a metropolis, that is, the idea is not complete without 
 them. 
 
 What can be more exquisite than the fooling in the 
 following passage: "Believe me, it is not necessary to a 
 man's respectability that he should commit a murder. 
 Many a man has passed through life most respectably, 
 without attempting any species of homicide, good, bad, 
 or indifferent. It is your first duty to ask yourself, quid 
 valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent? we cannot all be 
 brilliant men in this life. ... A man came to me as 
 the candidate for the place of my servant, just then va 
 cant. He had the reputation of having dabbled a little 
 in our art, some said, not without merit. What startled 
 me, however, was, that he supposed this art to be part 
 of the regular duties in my service. Now that was a thing 
 I would not allow ; so I said at once : ' If once a man 
 indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think 
 little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to 
 
48 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility 
 and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, 
 you never know where you are to stop. Many a man 
 has dated his ruin from some murder or other that per 
 haps he thought little of at the time. Principiis obsta, 
 that's my rule." 
 
 Of pathos, we need only cite " The Confessions," " The 
 Vision of a Sudden Death," " Joan of Arc," and " The 
 Household Wreck," to show that De Quincey was a con 
 summate master. The fine paper on " The English Mail 
 Coach," of which we have already spoken, has several 
 passages which show that he had an ear delicately at 
 tuned to 
 
 41 The still ead music of humanity," 
 
 one of which we cannot forbear quoting. After stating 
 that " the mail-coaches it was that distributed over the 
 face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, 
 the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Salamanca, of 
 Vittoria, of Waterloo," he proceeds to describe a ride to 
 London in a coach that bore the tidings of a great vic 
 tory in Spain. At one village where the coach stopped, 
 a poor woman, seeing De Quincey with a newspaper in 
 his hand, came to him. She had a son there in the 23d 
 Dragoons. "My heart sank within me as she made that 
 answer." This regiment, originally three hundred and 
 fifty strong, had made a sublime charge that day, par 
 alyzing a French column six thousand strong, and had 
 come back one in four! De Quincey told her all that he 
 had the heart to tell her of that dearly bought victory, 
 but 
 
 "I told her not of the bloody price that had been paid. I showed her 
 not the funeral banners under which the noble regiment lay sleeping. But 
 I told her how those dear children of England, officers and privates, had 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 49 
 
 leaped their horses over all obstacles as gayly as hunters to the morning's 
 chase. I told her how they rode their horses into the mists of death, (say 
 ing to myself, but not saying to her) and laid down their young lives for 
 thee, O mother England! as willingly, poured out their noble blood as 
 cheerfully, as ever, after a long day's sport, when infants, they had rested 
 their heads upon their mother's knees, or sunk to sleep in her arms. Strange 
 as it is, she seemed to have no fear of her son's safety. Fear was swallowed 
 up in joy so absolutely that in the mere simplicity of her fervent nature, the 
 poor woman threw her arms round my neck, as she thought of her son, and 
 gave to me the kiss which was secretly meant for him." 
 
 De Quincey is not only a great master of pathos, but his 
 genius for the sublime is equally manifest; it would be 
 hard to name a modern English writer who had a mind 
 more sensitive to emotions of grandeur. One of the most 
 striking peculiarities of his sensuous framework, was his 
 exquisite sensibility to the luxuries and grandeurs of sound. 
 Keenly alive to the pomps and glories of the eye, it was 
 through the ear that he drank in the highest intoxications 
 of sense; and to obtain " a grand debauch" of that nature, 
 there was hardly any sacrifice that he was not willing to 
 make. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that his 
 style is preeminently musical, and that from music he 
 draws many of his aptest and most impressive metaphors. 
 
 De Quincey's dialectic skill and ability in handling prac 
 tical themes are shown in his " Logic of Political Economy," 
 a work in which he defends and illustrates the doctrines of 
 Ricardo, and which drew forth the praise of J. S. Mill. In 
 speaking of his motives for writing this treatise, he says of 
 certain others on the same subject: " I saw that these were 
 generally the very dregs and rinsings of the human intel 
 lect; and that any man of sound head, and practised in 
 wielding logic with a scholastic adroitness, might take up 
 the whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them 
 between heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or 
 bray their fungous heads to powder with a lady's fan." 
 3 
 
50 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 The great, crowning glory of DeQuincey is his style, 
 upon which he bestowed incredible labor, rewriting some 
 pages of the " Confessions," as he told a friend of ours, not 
 less than sixty times. His style is an almost perfect vehicle 
 of his ideas, accommodating itself, as it does, with mar 
 vellous flexibility, to the highest nights of imagination, to 
 the minutest subtleties of reasoning, and to the wildest 
 freaks of humor, in short, to all the exigencies of his 
 thought. In his hands our stiff Saxon language becomes 
 almost as ductile as the Greek. Ideas that seem to defy 
 expression, ideas so subtle, or so vague and elusive, that 
 most thinkers find it difficult to contemplate them at all, 
 are conveyed on his page with a nicety, a felicity of phrase, 
 that might almost provoke the envy of Shakespeare. It is 
 the most passionately eloquent, the most thoroughly poetical 
 prose, our language has produced, the organ-like variety 
 and grandeur of its cadence affecting the mind as only per 
 fect verse affects it. Grave, stately, and sustained, when 
 expressing solemn and imperial thoughts, light and care 
 lessly graceful when playing with the theme, it is at once 
 sharp and sweet, flowing and pithy, condensed and expan 
 sive ; now expressing chapters in a sentence, now amplifying 
 a single thought into pages of rich, glowing, and delightful 
 eloquence. Even Milton, in his best prose, is not a greater 
 master of melody and harmony; and in some of the grandest 
 passages, where the thought and feeling go on swelling and 
 deepening from the first note to the last in a lofty climax, 
 the language of De Quincey can be compared only to the 
 swell and crash of an orchestra. 
 
 It is true his style bristles with scholasticisms; but how 
 they tell! You feel, as you read, that here is a man who 
 has gauged the potentiality of every word he uses; who has 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 51 
 
 analyzed the simples of all his compound phrases. The 
 chief characteristic of his style is elaborate stateliness; his 
 principal figure, personification. Generally his sentences 
 are long; the very opposite of those asthmatic and short- 
 winded ones which he pronounces a defect in French 
 writers; and they are as full of life and joints as a serpent. 
 It was said of Coleridge that no stenographer could do 
 justice to his lectures, because, though he spoke deliber 
 ately, yet it was impossible, from the first part of his 
 sentences, even to guess how they would end. Each clause 
 was a new surprise, and the close often as unexpected as a 
 thunderbolt. So with the Opium-Eater; "the great Pla 
 tonic year," as Hazlitt says of Sir Thomas Browne, "re 
 volves in one of his periods ; " or, as De Quincey himself 
 says of Bishop Berkeley, " he passes with the utmost ease 
 and speed from tar-water to the Trinity, from a moleheap 
 to the thrones of the Godhead." Of all the great writers, 
 he is one of the easiest we know of to read aloud. So perfect 
 is the construction of his sentences, so exquisitely articu 
 lated are all their vertebrae and joints, so musical are his 
 longest periods, even when they accomplish a cometary 
 sweep ere he closes, that the most villainous elocutionist, 
 in reading them, cannot help laying the emphases in the 
 right place. 
 
 And yet, with all these wondrous gifts as a writer, De 
 Quincey has one glaring defect, which neutralizes in a great 
 degree the force of his splendid genius, frustrates all ade 
 quate success. Among the fairies who dropped gifts into his 
 cradle, there was one whose gift was a curse. She gave him 
 Irresolution, the want of coordinating power, of central 
 control, of intellectual volition. It is for this reason that 
 De Quincey, with all his transcendent abilities and immense 
 
52 THOMAS DE QUIKCEY. 
 
 learning, has no commanding position in English literature, 
 exerts little influence on his age, is the centre of no 
 circle. Unhappily this weakness of will was still further 
 aggravated by opium; and of the Opium-Eater he himself 
 tells us, half sportively, but too truly, that it is a character 
 istic never to finish anything. To these two causes may be 
 ascribed the abiding deficiency of his writings, the fact 
 that, with all his genius and learning, he exerts less positive 
 influence than many a man with a tithe of his ability. To 
 foreigners he is hardly known. The one melancholy reflec 
 tion which his writings suggest is that they are all pro- 
 vokingly fragmentary; he has produced not one complete 
 and connected whole. As his power of conception is logical 
 rather than creative, he analyzes wonderfully, but com 
 pounds imperfectly, is a philosopher rather than a poet. 
 Tantalus-like, he stands up to the chin in learning, but is 
 unable, save by a desperate effort of the will, to lure it to 
 the lip. Over his head hang golden fruits, but only the 
 most convulsive, dexterous grasp rescues them from those 
 gales of nervous distraction which would scatter them to 
 the four winds. Hence his writings, with all their marvel 
 lous subtlety and exquisite beauty, are chaotic and indeter 
 minate, tend to no fixed goal, are as purposeless as 
 dreams. They are reveries, outpourings, improvisations, 
 not works. He modulates and weaves together fragments 
 of divinest song; but gives us no symphony. Gleams come 
 upon his page from deep central fires; lights flash across it 
 from distant horizons; but the light is that of a dancing 
 will-o'-the-wisp, not the steady throbbing of a star by 
 which men may shape their course. As Carlyle says of 
 John Stirling's conversation, De Quincey's writings are 
 " beautifullest sheet-lightning, not to be condensed into 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 53 
 
 thunderbolts." Hence it is that he has charmed, delighted, 
 astonished his age, but failed to impress it. 
 
 De Quincey himself appears sensible of this vagrancy, 
 this peripatetic instinct of his mind, and calls it an inter 
 mitting necessity, affecting his particular system like that 
 of moulting in birds, or that of migration which affects 
 swallows. " Nobody, 1 ' says he, " is angry with swallows 
 for vagabondizing periodically, and surely I have a better 
 right to indulge therein than a swallow; I take precedency 
 of a swallow in any company whatever." Who, after this 
 naive and ingenious " confession and avoidance," can have 
 the heart to complain? Prim folks, who cling to the 
 dramatic unities, and all that, and who are shocked by a 
 style that deviates from the reproachless routine of Hugh 
 Blair, D.D., will, no doubt, continue to be scandalized by 
 this dreamer. But those who have drunk inspiration 
 from Richter and deep draughts of wisdom from Montaigne, 
 will forgive De Quincey, too, his vagrancy, for the sake 
 of its erratic pleasantness. As Menzel says of the German 
 rambler: "We would willingly pardon every one his 
 mannerism, if he were but a Jean Paul; and a fault of 
 richness is always better than one of poverty," so we 
 may say of the English. Who would have thought to 
 " pull up " Samuel Taylor Coleridge in one of his infinitely 
 parenthetical monologues, because he diverged from the 
 grand trunk line, and hurried you into insulated recesses 
 and sequestered Edens unnoted in the way bill? No man, 
 surely, but a grim utilitarian, reduced to the very lowest 
 denomination. 
 
 This very discursiveness and libertinism of intellect, 
 this tendency to wander from the main channel of his 
 thought, to steer toward every port but that set down 
 
54 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 in the bill of lading, lent, it must be confessed, an 
 indescribable charm to De Quincey's conversation as it 
 welled out from those capacious, overflowing cells of 
 thought and memory, which a single word, or hint, or 
 token could agitate. Gilfillan has finely described his 
 small, thin, piercing voice, winding out so distinctly his 
 subtleties of thought and feeling, his long and strange 
 sentences evolving like a piece of complicated music; and 
 the Ettrick Shepherd, in the " Noctes," addresses him as one 
 having the " voice of a nicht-wanderin' man, laigh and 
 lone, pitched on the key o' a wimblin' burn speakin' to 
 itsel' in the silence, aneath the moon and stars." A 
 gentleman who visited De Quincey in 1854, thus records 
 his impressions of him, after a half hour's conversation: 
 " We have listened to Sir William Hamilton at his own 
 fireside, to Carlyle walking in the parks of London, to 
 Lamartine in the midst of a favored few at his own house, 
 to Cousin at the Sorbonne, and to many others; but never 
 have we heard such sweet music of eloquent speech as 
 then flowed from De Quincey's tongue. Strange light 
 beamed from that grief-worn face, and for a little while 
 that weak body, so long fed upon by pain, seemed to be 
 clothed upon with supernatural youth." 
 
 Eloquent as De Quincey was, his conversational powers 
 were at their full height only when he was under the 
 influence of his favorite drug. The best time to hear 
 the lion roar was at four or five o'clock in the morning; 
 then, when recovering from the stupor into which the opium 
 had plunged him, his tongue seemed touched with an 
 eloquence almost divine. It mattered little what was the 
 theme of his high argument; whether beeves or butter 
 flies, St. Basil or ^Eschylus; upon the grandest or the 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 55 
 
 most trivial, he would descant in the same lenem susur- 
 rum, never losing a certain mellow earnestness, yet 
 never rising into declamation, in sentences exquisitely 
 jointed, and with the enthusiasm of a mystic, the subtlety 
 of a schoolman, and the diction of a poet. It is a curious 
 fact that, though he was the soul of courtesy, he never 
 for a moment thought of adapting his language to the 
 understanding of his listener. The most illiterate porter, 
 housemaid, or even prowling beggar, he would address on 
 the most trivial themes, with as much pomp of rhetoric, 
 in language as precise and measured, and abounding in 
 as many "long-tailed words in osity and ation" as that 
 in which he would have addressed an Oxford professor on 
 a vexed point in metaphysics, or Porson on a classical 
 emendation. Mrs. Gordon, in her life of Professor Wilson, 
 has given a specimen of the style in which the Opium- 
 Eater was wont to address her father's housekeeper, 
 when directing her how to prepare his food; and did it 
 come from a less trustworthy source, we should take the 
 order as a burlesque or caricature. Wishing his meat 
 cut with the grain, he would say: "Owing to dyspepsia 
 afflicting my system, and the possibility of any additional 
 derangement of the stomach taking place, consequences 
 incalculably distressing would arise, so much so, indeed, 
 as to increase nervous irritation, and prevent me from 
 attending to matters of overwhelming importance, if you 
 do not remember to cut the mutton in a diagonal, rather 
 than in a longitudinal form." No wonder that the cook, 
 a simple Scotchwoman, stood aghast, exclaiming: " Weel, 
 I never heard the like o' that in a' my days; the body 
 has an awfu' sicht o 1 -words. If it had been my ain 
 master that was wanting his dinner, he would ha' ordered 
 
56 THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 
 
 a hale table-fu' wi' little mair than a waff o' his haun, 
 and here's a' this claver aboot a bit o' mutton nae bigger 
 than a prin. Mr. De Quinshey would make a gran 1 
 preacher, though I'm thinkin' a hantle o' the folks 
 wouldna ken what he was drivin' at."* 
 
 Doubtless the description of Praed's vicar, applied to 
 DeQuincey, would be no exaggeration: 
 
 " His talk is like a stream which runs 
 
 With rapid change from rocks to roses; 
 It slips from politics to puns, 
 
 It glides from Mahomet to Moses; 
 Beginning with the laws which keep 
 
 The planets in their radiant courses, 
 And ending with some precept deep 
 
 For skinning eels, or shoeing horses." 
 
 In conclusion, we would urge those of our readers, 
 especially our young readers, who are strangers to the 
 Opium-Eater's twenty-four volumes, to read them at 
 their earliest opportunity. If they would make the 
 acquaintance of one of the greatest scholars and thinkers 
 of our century, of a piercing and imperial intellect, 
 which, in all the great faculties of analysis, combination, 
 and reception, has had few superiors in modern times, 
 of one of the subtlest yet most sympathetic critics our 
 literature can boast, whether of art, nature, literature, or 
 life, of a writer who, in an age of scoffing and skepti 
 cism, has never sown the seeds of doubt in any human 
 heart, of a writer who, by the magnetism of his genius, 
 the affluence of his knowledge, his logical acumen, his 
 imaginative wealth, his marvellous word-painting, gives 
 a charm to every theme he touches; above all, if they 
 
 * The account here given of De Quincey'a conversation is necessarily a 
 repetition, with some changes, of that given in the author's former book, 
 " The Great Conversers, and Other Essays." 
 
THOMAS DE QUINCEY. 57 
 
 would know the might and majesty, the pomp, the deli 
 cacy, and the beauty of our noble English tongue when 
 its winged words are commanded by a master, we would 
 conjure them to study the writings of De Quincey. 
 Though he has left no great single work to which we 
 can point as a monument of his genius, and his most 
 precious ideas are in the condition of the Sibyl's leaves 
 after they had been scattered by the wind, we may, 
 nevertheless, say in the words of an English reviewer, 
 "that the exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic 
 rigor of his logic, form a combination which centuries 
 may never reproduce, but which every generation should 
 study, as one of the marvels of English literature." 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 person who is wont to slake his intellectual thirst 
 at "the wells of English undefiled," will soon for 
 get the tingling delight, the exhilaration of mind and 
 spirit, with which he first read the sermons of Robert 
 South, the shrewdest, most caustic, most fiery, and, with 
 the exception of Thomas Fuller, the wittiest of the old 
 English divines. Among the giants of English theology 
 he stands alone. Intellectually and morally, his individ 
 uality was strongly marked. To neither Hooker nor Bar 
 row, to neithei Taylor nor Tillotson, nor, indeed, to 
 any one of his great contemporaries, except in intellectual 
 might, can we compare him. Nature seems to have framed 
 but one such, and then broken the mould. He was a 
 kind of Tory Sydney Smith, yet lacking the genial, sunny 
 disposition, and the humor, of that divine wit and witty 
 divine; and in reading his works, it is difficult to say 
 which is most to be admired, the thorough grasp and 
 exhaustive treatment of the subject, the masterly arrange 
 ment of the "thoughts, or the vitality, energy and freshness 
 of expression, which have given his sermons a higher place 
 in the library of the scholar than even in that of the 
 theologian or the pulpit orator. 
 
 Robert South was the son of an eminent London mer 
 chant, and was born in 1633. In 1647 he was admitted 
 a king's scholar at Westminster, under the tuition of the 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 59 
 
 celebrated Dr. Busby, and, while there, gave indications 
 of that out-and-out Toryism for which he was conspicu 
 ous through life by praying for Charles I, by name, while 
 reading the Latin prayers in school on the day of that 
 monarch's execution. In 1651 he entered Christ Church, 
 Oxford, at the same time with John Locke, the future 
 champion of the divine right of kings in company with 
 the future champion of freedom. At college, he was a 
 zealous student, indefatigable in his efforts to prepare 
 himself for the gladiatorial contests in which he was to 
 measure swords with some of the most adroit masters of 
 theological fence of the time. He graduated in 1655, 
 and only eight years after had so distinguished himself 
 by his learning and eloquence, that he obtained the de 
 gree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1660 he was elected public 
 orator to the University, and preached before the king's 
 commissioners his celebrated discourse entitled " The Scribe 
 Instructed, 1 ' the object of which is to show what are the 
 qualifications of the Christian preacher, and the absurdity 
 and wickedness involved in becoming a preacher of God's 
 word without sufficient ability, knowledge and preparation. 
 Though preached at the early age of twenty-seven, this 
 sermon is one of his most original and vigorous produc 
 tions, and is characterized throughout by that logical 
 arrangement, strength of thought, and freshness and epi 
 grammatic pungency of style, which distinguish all of his 
 best discourses. The intensity of thought and feeling which 
 burns through this discourse must have stamped South, 
 in the minds of all who heard him, as a preacher of the 
 highest ability, as a spirit "of the greatest size, and the 
 divinest mettle." 
 
 After speaking of the natural abilities of the preacher, 
 
60 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 he proceeds to show the importance of perfecting them 
 by study, exercise, and due improvement of the same, 
 and says: "A well radicated habit, in a lively, vegete 
 faculty, is like ' an apple of gold in a picture of silver.' 
 ... It is not enough to have books, or for a man to 
 have his divinity in his pocket, or upon the shelf; but 
 he must have mastered his notions, till they even incor 
 porate into his mind, so as to be able to produce and 
 wield them upon all occasions; and not, when a difficulty 
 is proposed and a performance enjoined, to say that he 
 will consult such and such authors: for this is not to be 
 a divine, who is rather to be a walking library than a 
 walking index. ... It is not the oil in the wick, but 
 in the vessel, which must feed the lamp. The former may 
 indeed cause a present blaze, but it is the latter which 
 must give it a lasting light. It is not the spending money 
 a man has in his pocket, but his hoards in the chest, or 
 in the bank, which must make him rich. A dying man 
 has his breath in his nostrils, but to have it in the lungs 
 is that which must preserve life." Of quacks and moun 
 tebanks in divinity he proclaims himself the mortal foe, 
 declaring that when Christ says that a scribe must be 
 stocked with "things new and old," he does not mean 
 "that he should have a hoard of old sermons, with a 
 bundle of new opinions," and as for "such mushroom 
 divines generally, who start up so of a sudden, we do 
 not find their success so good as to recommend their 
 practice. Hasty births are seldom long-lived, but never 
 strong." He has a sharp thrust at a class of preachers 
 not altogether extinct in our own day, who so pray that 
 they "do not supplicate, but compliment Almighty God;" 
 and he ridicules others who " lie grovelling on the ground 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 61 
 
 with a dead and contemptible flatness," passing off " dull 
 ness as a mark of regeneration." 
 
 Passages of this sermon rise to a high pitch of eloquence, 
 as where he dwells on the duty of the preacher to em 
 ploy significant speech and expression in enforcing the 
 truths of the gospel. God's word he pronounces a sys 
 tem of the best rhetoric, as well as a body of religion; 
 and Politian, who says that he abstained from reading the 
 Scriptures, for fear they would spoil his style, is declared 
 to be a blockhead as well as an atheist, who has " as little 
 gust for the elegancies of expression as for the sacredness 
 of the matter." As the highest things require the highest 
 expressions, so, South says, we shall find nothing in Scrip 
 ture so sublime in itself, but it is reached and sometimes 
 overtopped by the sublimity of the expression. The pas 
 sions, he asserts, have been more powerfully described by 
 the Hebrew than by the heathen poets. " What poetry," 
 he asks, " ever paralleled Solomon in his description of 
 love, as to all the ways, effects, and ecstasies, and tyran 
 nies of that commanding passion? And where do we read 
 such strange risings and fallings, now the faintings and 
 languishings, now the terrors and astonishments of despair, 
 venting themselves in such high amazing strains, as in 
 Ps. Ixxvii? Or where did we ever find sorrow flowing 
 forth in such a natural prevailing pathos, as in the lam 
 entations of Jeremy? One would think that every let 
 ter was written with a tear, every word was the noise 
 of a breaking heart; that the author was a man compacted 
 of sorrows, disciplined to grief from his infancy, one 
 who never breathed but in sighs, nor spoke but in a 
 groan." 
 
 In his boyhood, South was an admirer of Oliver Crom- 
 
62 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 well; but he early became an ardent partisan of the Res 
 toration, " the very bulldog," one has termed him, " of 
 the civil and ecclesiastical establishment." During the 
 reign of William he rejected all offers of preferment; he 
 was a great admirer of Archbishop Laud, and execrated 
 the Toleration Act, being equally intolerant to indul 
 gences and forbearances, to Papist and Puritan. In 1663, 
 he preached before Charles the Second, on the anniversary 
 of the "murder" of Charles I, his famous sermon, "Pre 
 tence of Conscience no Excuse for Rebellion," the fiercest 
 and most truculent of his political discourses. The whole 
 vocabulary of scorn is exhausted in this invective for terms 
 in which to denounce the enemies of the late King, who 
 was " causelessly rebelled against," and " barbarously mur 
 dered by the worst of men and the most obliged of sub 
 jects." This murder, which he pronounces the blackest 
 fact which the sun ever saw since he hid his face upon 
 the crucifixion of our Saviour, was perpetrated by the scum 
 of the nation that is, by what was then the uppermost 
 and basest part of it. Like Actseon, Charles was torn by 
 a pack of bloodhounds. The difference between being con 
 quered and slain by another king, and being killed by 
 infamous rebels, is the difference between being torn by 
 a lion, and being eat up by vermin. Ask the Puritans 
 what made them murder their lawful sovereign, rob the 
 church, perjure themselves, and extirpate the government, 
 and the constant answer is conscience conscience "still 
 this large capacious thing, their conscience, which is alwaj^s 
 of a much larger compass than their understanding." No 
 terms are too scathing for Charles's enemies; Sir Harry 
 Vane is contemptuously termed " that worthy knight who 
 was executed on Tower Hill;" and Milton is "the Latin 
 
EGBERT SOUTH. 63 
 
 advocate, who, like a blind adder, has spit so much venom 
 on the King's person and cause." 
 
 We commend this sermon of South to those croakers 
 who are always bewailing the degeneracy of our age, and 
 the fierceness of its religious controversies; who sigh for 
 the good old times when the champions of opposite doc 
 trines addressed each other in the dialect of doves, and 
 disputed in bucolics. It is a common error to suppose 
 that the controversies of the present day are carried on 
 with a violence and bitterness unknown to past centuries, 
 or, at least, to some golden age to which no date is fixed. 
 The truth is, controversialists, like poets, have always been 
 " an irritable race " ; and those who doubt the statement 
 have only to look into the ponderous folios which the 
 giants of old hurled at each other, when contending on 
 the battle-fields of thought. To go no further back than 
 Gregory Nazianzen, we find him, when pitted against the 
 Emperor Julian, hurling the most acrid anathemas, and 
 bestowing upon him epithets which " a beggar, in his 
 drink, would not bestow upon his callet." Everybody 
 knows with what fury Martin Luther, the hero of Wit 
 tenberg and Worms, waged war upon his theological adver 
 saries, how he showered down upon them an incessant 
 flood of darts,- pointed with cutting wrath, and feathered 
 with scorn. Of the Catholic divines, he says: " The Papists 
 are all asses, and always will remain asses. Put them in 
 whatever sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, 
 skinned, beat, hashed, they are always the same asses. 1 ' 
 Again: " What a pleasing sight it would be to see the Pope 
 and the Cardinals hanging on one gallows, in exact order, 
 like the seals which dangle from the bulls of the Pope." 
 But even Luther must yield the palm for virulence, not 
 
64 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 to say scurrility, to John Calvin. The latter' s adversaries 
 are always knaves, lunatics, drunkards, assassins; and some 
 times bulls, asses, cats and dogs. But of all the contro 
 versialists of ancient or modern times, it would be diffi 
 cult to name one who, with the same intellectual might, 
 has descended to such low abuse as Milton. One who is 
 conversant with the old bard through his exquisite poetry 
 alone, whose thoughts of him are identified with the 
 gorgeous imagery of " Paradise Lost," and who thinks of 
 him as wandering where the Muses haunt clear spring, 
 or sunny grove, smit with the love of sacred song, as 
 the blind old man, equal in fate and renown with blind 
 Thamyris and blind Maeonides, feeding on thoughts that 
 voluntary move harmonious numbers, as the wakeful bird 
 sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid, tunes her 
 nocturnal note, can hardly credit the fact that he is the 
 same person who, in his prose writing, so out-Herods 
 Herod in blackening and vilifying his opponents. Not 
 content with riddling Salmasius with the " leaden rain 
 and iron hail " of his logic, with tossing his giant adver 
 sary round the ring on the horns of his merciless dilem 
 mas, he writes him down a dunce, in capital letters, 
 page after page. Again, at the end of the sublime 
 prose hymn which concludes his work, " Of Reformation 
 in England," he prays that certain of his adversaries, 
 "after a shameful end in this life, (which God grant 
 them,) shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest 
 and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the despiteful con 
 trol, the trample and spurn, of all the other damned, 
 that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other 
 ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over 
 them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 65 
 
 plight forever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, 
 most underfoot and downtrodden vassals of perdition." 
 Neither South in his wildest excesses of invective, nor 
 probably any later controversialist, has anything in his 
 writing which approaches to the awful severity of this 
 imprecation. 
 
 Again, in the next century we find Rowland Hill calling 
 Charles Wesley " a designing wolf," a man " as unprin 
 cipled as a rook, and as silly as a jackdaw," " a miscre 
 ant apostate, whose perfection consists in his perfect hatred 
 of all goodness and of all good men." We find Toplady 
 charging Wesley with " low serpentine cunning," " dirty 
 subterfuges," and " mean, malicious impotence," which 
 " degrade the man of parts into a lying sophister, and 
 sink a divine into the level of an oyster-woman." " I 
 'would no more enter into a formal controversy with such 
 a scribbler, than I would contend for the wall with a 
 chimney-sweeper." Yet of these fierce controversialists 
 two were authors of hymns which are sung oftener, per 
 haps, than any others in the language, Toplady having 
 written "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me"; and "Jesus, Lover 
 of my Soul," being the production of Charles Wesley. 
 
 To return from this digression: in 1662 South preached 
 his sermon on. "Man Created in the Image of God," which 
 is unquestionably his masterpiece. In vigor and weight 
 of thought, in comprehensive grasp of the theme, and in 
 pregnant brevity of expression, it has never been sur 
 passed by any production of the British pulpit. The 
 subject of the discourse is the ideal man, whom South 
 daguerreotypes as he supposes him to have been in 
 Paradise. In doing this, he describes what he terms the 
 universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, the 
 
66 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 understanding, the will, the passions, and affections. Of 
 the understanding he says that " it gave the soul a bright 
 and full view into all things, and was not only a window, 
 but was itself the prospect. Briefly, there is as much 
 difference between the clear representations of the under 
 standing then, and the obscure discoveries that it makes 
 now, as there is between the prospect of a casement and 
 of a keyhole." Again, he says: "We may collect the 
 excellency of the understanding then, by the glorious 
 reminders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the 
 building by the magnificence of its ruins. Certainly, that 
 must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which 
 are so admirable. He that is comely when old and 
 decrepid, surely was very beautiful when young. An 
 Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens 
 but the rudiments of paradise." Of the passion of Joy, 
 he says that it was not that which now often usurps the 
 name. "It was not the mere crackling of thorns, or 
 sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled 
 fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy was then a masculine 
 and a severe thing; the recreation of the judgment, the 
 jubilee of reason. ... It did not run out in voice, or 
 indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the 
 universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, 
 but composed, like the pleasantness of youth tempered 
 with the gravity of age, or the mirth of a festival managed 
 with the silence of contemplation." 
 
 Hardly inferior to the foregoing discourse is the sermon 
 on " The Pleasantness of Wisdom's Ways," which has many 
 of those pithy, epigrammatic sayings, in which all of 
 South's writings abound. "When reason," he says, "by 
 the assistance of grace, has prevailed over and outgrown 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 67 
 
 the encroachments of sense, the delights of sensuality are 
 to such a one but as a hobby-horse would be to a coun 
 sellor of state, or as tasteless as a bundle of hay to a 
 hungry lion." Of the fickleness and fleeting nature of 
 popular applause, he says: "Like lightning, it only 
 flashes upon the face, and is gone, and it is well if it 
 does not hurt the man." The pleasure of the religious 
 man, he declares, " is an easy and a portable pleasure, 
 such a one as he carries about in his bosom, without 
 alarming either the eye or the envy of the world. A 
 man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a 
 traveller's putting all his goods into one jewel; the value 
 is the same, and the convenience greater." The sermon 
 closes with some characteristic sarcasms upon the auster 
 ities of the Romanists: "Pilgrimages, going barefoot, 
 hair-shirts, and whips, with other such gospel artillery, 
 are their only helps to devotion. ... It seems that, 
 with them, a man sometimes cannot be a penitent, unless 
 he also turns vagabond, and foots it to Jerusalem, or 
 wanders over this or that part of the world to visit the 
 shrine of such or such a pretended saint; thus, that which 
 was Cain's curse, is become their religion." Of self- 
 scourging he concludes that " if men's religion lies no 
 deeper than their skin, it is possible that they may 
 scourge themselves into very great improvements." 
 
 In 1663 South was made Prebendary of St. Peter's, 
 Westminster. In 1670 he was installed a canon of Christ 
 Church, Oxford. In 1678 he preached a sermon on " Christ's 
 Promise the Support of his Despised Ministers," which has 
 some sharp thrusts at Jeremy Taylor. Recommending 
 simplicity of speech, he says: "There is a certain majesty 
 in plainness; as the proclamation of a prince never frisks 
 
68 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 it in tropes or fine conceits, in numerous and well-turned 
 periods, but commands in sober, natural expressions. A 
 substantial beauty, as it comes out of the hands of 
 nature, needs neither paint nor patch; things never made 
 to adorn, but to cover something that would be hid." 
 He then cites Paul's mode of preaching, and says: 
 "Nothing here of 'the fringes of the North Star;' 
 nothing of ' nature's becoming unnatural ;' nothing of the 
 ' down of angels' wings,' or ' the beautiful locks of cheru- 
 bims;' no starched similitudes introduced with a 'Thus 
 have I seen a cloud rolling in its airy mansion,' and 
 the like. No, these were sublimities above the rise of 
 the apostolic spirit. For the Apostles, poor mortals, 
 were content to take lower steps, and to tell the world 
 in plain terms, that he who believed should be saved, 
 and that he who believed not should be damned. And 
 this was the dialect which pierced the conscience, and 
 made the hearers cry out ' Men and brethren, what shall 
 we do ? ' It tickled not the ear, but eunk into the 
 heart." South's vehement and fiery spirit had but little 
 taste for " the process of smoothness and delight " by 
 which the Spenser of theology would have lured men 
 into heaven. To his masculine understanding the diffuse, 
 sensuous, and somewhat effeminate over- richness of 
 Taylor's writings was particularly distasteful; and the 
 conceits, quaint similes, unexpected analogies, and gaudy 
 flowers of rhetoric, which he scattered in thick profusion 
 throughout sermons on the grandest and most solemn 
 themes, were as offensive and incongruous as would be 
 the placing of the frippery fountains, and clipped yews, 
 and trim parterres of Versailles among the glaciers and 
 precipices of the Alps. 
 
EGBERT SOUTH. 69 
 
 In 1681 South preached before the king at Westmin 
 ster his sermon on "All Contingencies Directed by God's 
 Providence." In this occurs the famous hit at that " bank 
 rupt, beggarly fellow, Cromwell," who is represented as 
 " first entering the Parliament House with a threadbare, 
 torn cloak, and a greasy hat, and perhaps neither of 
 them paid for,' 1 a gibe which so tickled Charles that he 
 laughed heartily, and said to Rochester, "Odsfish! Lory, 
 your chaplain must be a bishop; therefore, put me in 
 mind of him at the next death." But South was no 
 place-hunter; it was no sycophantic motive that prompted 
 his sarcasm at the Protector, or led him to champion the 
 king or the church. During the reigns of both Charles 
 and James he steadily refused a bishopric. Though he 
 disliked James's measures regarding the Catholics, his 
 loyalty never wavered; and after the Prince of Orange 
 ascended the throne, it was some time before he acknowl 
 edged the legality of the revolution settlement. When 
 offered one of the sees vacated by the non-juring bishops, 
 he declined, saying "he blessed God he was neither so 
 ambitious, nor in want of preferment, as, for the sake 
 of it, to build his rise upon the ruin of any one father 
 of the church." 
 
 During the last years of his life he suffered from pain 
 ful and irritating ailments, yet they did not extinguish his 
 sprightliness and vivacity, nor did his wit lose any of its 
 keenness. In 1709 his infirmities were so great that the 
 eyes of eager expectants were turned to him, in hopes of a 
 speedy vacancy in his prebend's stall and rectory. There is 
 a characteristic letter to Halifax from Swift, who coveted 
 the place, and was impatient at South's tenacity of life, in 
 which he writes: "Pray, my lord, desire Dr. South to die 
 
70 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 about the fall of the leaf, for he has a prebend of West 
 minster, which will make me your neighbor;" to which 
 Halifax replies, October 6, 1709, "Dr. South holds out still, 
 but he cannot be immortal." The infirm old man lingered, 
 however, seven years longer, outliving Halifax himself, and 
 ended his laborious life on the 8th of July, 1716, at the age 
 of eighty-three. 
 
 The life and writings of South show that he was a man 
 of powerful intellect, a worthy compeer of Hooker, Barrow, 
 and Taylor, in short, one of the giants of English the 
 ology. While his writings have not the depth and sugges- 
 tiveness of Hooker's, nor that mighty and sustained power 
 controlled by the severest logic, that peculiar quality of 
 mastery and vigor to which all tasks appear equally easy, 
 which we find in Barrow, and while we miss in his page 
 the imaginative fancies, the exquisite and subtle harmony 
 which delight us in the sweet poet of theology, we find in 
 South's works a vigorous and sterling sense, a sharp and 
 piercing wit, and a terseness, vitality, and freshness of 
 expression which are surpassed in no other English dis 
 courses. To a large and acute understanding, he united a 
 frank and courageous nature, and what he believed and felt 
 he never feared to utter. Nice, squeamish persons, who 
 dislike to hear ugly things called by ugly names, and prefer 
 dainty, mincing terms, weighed in a hair-balance of pro 
 priety and good breeding, to the blunt and homely language 
 in which honest indignation is wont to vent itself, will not 
 relish his Spartan plainness of speech. They would have 
 liked him better had he sought what an old poet calls 
 
 'Modoft, close-couched terms 
 Cleanly to gird our looser libertines." 
 
 But whatever other faults may be laid to his charge, he 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 71 
 
 was evidently no flincher, no trimmer; he was not "pigeon- 
 livered, or lacking gall." Vice he never feared to denounce, 
 in high places or low, nor did he hesitate to declare the 
 whole counsel of God to an unprincipled monarch and a 
 dissolute court, whom his theories of political government 
 led him to look up to with feelings of reverence. Tory as 
 he was, there are passages in his sermons which must have 
 made the cheeks of Charles and his sycophants tingle. A 
 warm friend and an outspoken enemy, he had no reserves 
 nor disguises, and always championed his principles a 
 routrance. Wherever his tiword fell, it always fell with 
 the whole vigor of his arm, and he was satisfied with 
 nothing less than cleaving his opponent from crown to 
 chin. He never stopped to consider what expression would 
 be most politic, or to hunt up dainty, holiday terms by 
 which to characterize an opponent. No one can doubt that 
 he would have fought, if necessary, with the same spirit 
 that he wrote; and, indeed, during Monmouth's rebellion, 
 he declared he was ready, if there should be occasion, to 
 change his black gown for a buff coat. That he was a 
 bigot in politics and religion, who could brook no dissent 
 from his own rooted and ultra opinions, is too true; but 
 this fault becomes almost a virtue when contrasted with 
 the opposite vices of cringing servility, hypocrisy, and cant, 
 which at the Kestoration were almost universal. 
 
 South's writings are a storehouse of vehement expres 
 sion, such as can be found in no other English writer. He 
 had at his command the whole vocabulary of abuse, satire, 
 and scorn, and, when his ire was aroused, he was never 
 niggard of the treasures of his indignant rhetoric. Words 
 were the only weapons which his sacred calling allowed 
 him to use; but words, as he employed them, were sharper 
 
72 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 than " drawn swords." Radical editors should study his 
 writings day and night; nowhere else (except in Milton) 
 will they find such biting words and stinging phrases with 
 which to denounce wicked men, wicked institutions, and 
 wicked practices. The intensity of thought and feeling 
 which burns through his writings has hardly any parallel 
 in English literature. It has been compared to the un 
 wearied fire of the epic poet. There are times when he 
 seems to wrestle with his subject, as if he would grind it 
 into powder ; and when he seems to say all that he does say 
 to us, only that we may conjecture how much more he 
 could say if he were able to wreak bis thoughts upon 
 expression. It has been truly said that many sentences in 
 his works appear torn from his brain by main strength, 
 expressing not only the thought he intended to convey, but 
 a kind of impatient rage that it did not come with less 
 labor. With all his command of language, he seems often 
 to struggle with it in order to wrest from it words enough 
 for his wealth of thought. He wrote doubtless from his 
 own consciousness when he represented study as racking 
 the inward and destroying the outward man, as clothing 
 the soul with the spoils of the body, and as that which, 
 "like a stronger blast of lightning, not only melts the 
 sword, but consumes the scabbard." 
 
 His sermons on "Extempore Prayer," " Covetousness," 
 "Education," "The Fatal Imposture and Force of Words," 
 " Shamelessness in Sin," and " Prosperity ever Danger 
 ous to Virtue," are masterpieces of their kind, full of 
 of striking thoughts that root themselves in the mem 
 ory of every thoughtful reader. It would be difficult to 
 find in any other sermons so many aphorisms and maxims 
 having a direct bearing on life and duty, so many terse 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 73 
 
 sayings which are true, though not obvious, or moral 
 reflections sharpened into epigrams. " When Providence," 
 he says, " designs strange and mighty changes, it gives men 
 wings instead of legs; and instead of climbing leisurely, 
 makes them fly at once to the top and height of greatness 
 and power." Of ingratitude he says that it is " too base to 
 return a kindness, and too proud to regard it; much like 
 the tops of the mountains, barren indeed, but yet lofty; 
 they produce nothing; they feed nobody; they clothe no 
 body; yet are high and stately, and look down upon all 
 the world about them." 
 
 Again, he speaks of the politician as " treating gratitude 
 as a worse kind of witchcraft, which only serves to conjure 
 up the pale, meagre ghosts of dead and forgotten kindnesses 
 to haunt and trouble him." Of prayer he says: "Know 
 that the lower thou fallest, the higher will thy prayer 
 rebound." Again he observes: "God does not command us 
 to set off our prayers with dress and artifice, to flourish it 
 in trope and metaphor, and to beg our daily bread in blank 
 verse, or to show anything of the poet in our devotions 
 but indigence and want. . . . Does not he present his 
 Maker not only with a more decent, but also more free and 
 liberal oblation, who tenders Him much in little, and 
 brings Him his whole heart and soul wrapped up in three 
 or four words, than he who, with full mouth and loud 
 lungs, sends up whole vollies of articulate breath to the 
 throne of grace? No doubt God accounts and accepts of 
 the former as infinitely a more valuable offering than the 
 latter; as that subject pays his prince a much nobler and 
 more acceptable tribute who tenders him a purse of gold 
 than he who brings him a whole cart-load of farthings, 
 in which there is weight without worth, and number with- 
 
74 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 out account." Again he observes on the same subject: 
 " It is not length, nor copiousness of language, that is 
 devotion, any more than bulk and bigness is valor, or flesh 
 the measure of the spirit. A short sentence may oftentimes 
 be a large and a mighty prayer. Devotion so managed is 
 like water in a well, where you have fullness in a little 
 compass; which surely is much nobler than the same car 
 ried out into many little petit, creeping rivulets, with 
 length and shallowness together." 
 
 South's style is more modern than that of any other 
 divine of his century. It is fervid, forcible, and flexible, 
 often rhythmic, never obscure; and readily adapts itself 
 to all the demands of his thought. 
 
 William Cobbett, who, we fear, did not " reck his own 
 rede," says: "A man, as he writes on a sheet of paper 
 a word or a sentence, ought to bear in mind that he is 
 writing something which may, for good or evil, live for 
 ever." How much more momentous is the same thought 
 as expressed by South, "He who has published an ill 
 book must know that his guilt and his life determine not 
 together; no, such an one, as the Apostle saith, 'Being 
 dead, yet speaketh 1 ; he sins in his very grave, corrupts 
 others while he is rotting himself, and has a growing 
 account in the other world after he has paid Nature's 
 last debt in this; and, in a word, quits this life like a 
 man carried off by the plague, who, though he dies him 
 self, does execution upon others by a surviving infliction." 
 
 Speaking of the dependence of the intellectual man 
 upon the physical, he observes that while the soul is a 
 sojourner in the body, "it must be content to submit its 
 own quickness and spirituality to the dullness of its 
 vehicle, and to comply with the pace of its inferior 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 75 
 
 companion, just like a man shut up in a coach, who, 
 while he is so, must be willing to go no faster than the 
 motion of the coach will carry him. 1 ' In denouncing 
 intemperance, he pithily says: "He who makes his belly 
 his business, will quickly come to have a conscience of as 
 large a swallow as his throat." In a sermon on educa 
 tion, he satirizes some schoolmasters as executioners rather 
 than instructors of youth, and says that " stripes and 
 blows are fit only to be used on those who carry their 
 brains in their backs." Pride he declares to have been 
 "the devil's sin and the devil's ruin, and has been, ever 
 since, the devil's stratagem; who, like an expert wrestler, 
 usually gives a man a lift before he gives him a throw." 
 Of misrepresentation he forcibly says: "It is this which 
 revives and imitates that inhuman barbarity of the old 
 heathen persecutors, wrapping up Christians in the skins 
 of wild beasts, that so they might be worried and torn 
 in pieces by dogs. Do but paint an angel black, and that 
 is enough to make him pass for a devil." To be angry 
 under the dispensations of Providence he pronounces the 
 height of folly, as well as wickedness. "A man so behav 
 ing himself is nothing else but weakness and nakedness 
 setting itself in battle array against Omnipotence; a 
 handful of dust and ashes sending a challenge to the host 
 of heaven. For what else are words and talk against 
 thunderbolts; and the weak, empty noise of a querulous 
 rage against him who can speak worlds, who could word 
 heaven and earth out of nothing, and can, when he 
 pleases, word them into nothing again?" One of his 
 most vivid and striking images, conveyed with a Mil- 
 tonian roll and grandeur of expression, illustrates the 
 seeming strength which a revengeful spirit acquires from 
 
76 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 resistance. "As a storm could not be so hurtful, were it 
 not for the opposition of trees and houses, it ruins no 
 where but where it is withstood and repelled. It has, 
 indeed, the same force when it passes over the rush or 
 the yielding osier; but it does not roar or become dread 
 ful till it grapples with the oak, and rattles upon the 
 tops of the cedars." Denouncing ignorance in public 
 men, he says: "A blind man sitting in the chimney corner 
 is pardonable enough, but sitting at the helm, he is 
 intolerable. If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep 
 close within the tree, and not perch upon the upper 
 boughs." These pithy and pointed sayings are not rare 
 and occasional gems that gleam on us at long intervals 
 in South's writings, and reward us only after we have 
 sifted heaps of verbiage, but sparkle on every page, we 
 had almost said in every paragraph. 
 
 South had a keen insight of human nature. He had 
 thoroughly anatomized the human heart, and laid bare 
 its complex web of motives; and hence there is no 
 " pleasant vice," no self-gratulating hypocrisy, no evasion 
 of duty under a complacent admission of its claims, no 
 self-cheating delusion, no sham sentiment, that hides its 
 true character from his searching glance. He "strips 
 vice and folly of their frippery, scatters the delusions of 
 pride and passion, and lays down the rule of Christian 
 faith and practice with a precision which satisfies the 
 intellect, while it leaves the transgressor without an 
 excuse." 
 
 South never juggles nor coquets with words; he has 
 no verbal prudery; and hence he excels in expressive 
 coarseness of language, or felicities of vulgar metaphor: 
 as when he speaks of "that numerous litter of strange, 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 77 
 
 senseless, absurd opinions, that crawl about the world, to 
 the disgrace of reason"; or says of the pleasures of the 
 eating man and the thinking man, that they are "as 
 different as the silence of Archimedes in the study of a 
 problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash." Again, 
 wishing to show that pleasure is merely a relative term, 
 that what is such to one being may be pain to another, 
 he says: "The pleasures of an angel can never be the 
 pleasures of a hog." Provided he can make his meaning 
 clear, he never troubles himself about the niceties, ele 
 gancies, and refinements of expression; and his strongest 
 terms are often what an old dramatist calls " plain, naked 
 words, stript of their shirts." 
 
 It is by their wit that the sermons of South are 
 chiefly known, and against no class of persons is it more 
 frequently or more mercilessly directed than against the 
 Puritans, whose " heavenly hummings and hawings," as 
 well as their " blessed breathings," he never tires of 
 ridiculing. Regarding the Church of England royalists 
 as " the best Christians and the most meritorious subjects 
 in the world," it is not strange that he delighted to 
 satirize the sectarians with whom the country was over 
 run, the preachers of the tub and the barn, who 
 denied the divine right of kings, declared that men should 
 " be able to make a pulpit before they preached in it," 
 and held, as he believed, all human learning in contempt. 
 Gifted with a razor-like wit, and exquisitely sensitive to 
 the comic and the grotesque, he dwelt with delight on 
 their meagre, mortified faces, their droning and snuf 
 fling whine, their sanctimonious look and demeanor; and 
 with a proud consciousness of superior bearing, and a 
 somewhat pharisaical conceit of superior integrity with 
 
78 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 the keenest sarcasm and the most undisguised contempt, 
 held up to the scorn of mankind those whom he deemed 
 impudent pretenders to the gifts of the Spirit. That in 
 his perpetual gibing at rebels and schismatics, he some 
 times trembles on the verge of buffoonery, that his wit 
 and humor, even on more sacred themes, often border on 
 grossness and indelicacy, cannot be denied. South knew 
 the truth of Horace's maxim: 
 
 "Ridicule acri 
 Fortius et melius magnas plerumqne secatis." 
 
 But just as he begins to disgust us by his coarseness, he 
 almost invariably recovers himself by some stroke of vig 
 orous sense and language; and his excuse is to be found 
 in the fact that he lived in an age of sinners whose rhi 
 noceros skin of impudence was not penetrable by nice, 
 mincing phrases, but needed to be lashed with a whip 
 of scorpions, or branded with the hot iron. 
 
 A few specimens of South's wit are all that we shall 
 have space to give. Of Popery and Puritanism, which in 
 his opinion were one, he says: " They were as truly brothers 
 as Romulus and Remus. They sucked their principles from 
 the same wolf." Sometimes he despatches the Puritans 
 with the short dagger of a single phrase, as where he 
 terms them "those seraphic pretenders," or speaks of 
 " this apocalyptic ignoramus." . Of the greatness and lustre 
 of the Romish clergy, he says: "We envy them neither 
 their scarlet gowns, nor their scarlet sins." In allusion 
 to the many persons who in his time rushed into the 
 ministry without serving an apprenticeship, ' he observes 
 that " matters have been brought to this pass, that if a 
 man amongst his sons had any blind or disfigured, he 
 laid him aside for the ministry; and such a one was pres- 
 
ROBERT SOUTH. 79 
 
 ently approved, as having a mortified countenance." Of 
 the perversity of the Israelites, he observes that " God 
 seems to have espoused them to Himself upon the very 
 same account that Socrates espoused Xantippe, only for 
 her extreme ill conditions, as the fittest argument both 
 to exercise and to declare His admirable patience to the 
 world." Speaking of the paradoxes maintained by the 
 Greek sophists, he declares: "Such a stupidity or wanton 
 ness had seized upon the most raised wits, that it might 
 be doubted whether the philosophers or the owls of Athens 
 were the quicker sighted." Ridiculing the idolatry of 
 the Egyptians, he asks: "Is it not strange that a rational 
 man should worship an ox, nay, the image of an ox? 
 fawn upon his dog? bow himself before a cat? adore leeks 
 and garlic, and shed penitential tears at the smell of a 
 deified onion? Yet so did the Egyptians, once the famed 
 masters of all arts and learning." Again, quoting Isaiah 
 xliv, 14, " A man hews him down a tree in the wood, 
 and a part of it he burns," and in verses 16, 17, " with 
 the residue thereof he maketh a god," South thus com 
 ments: "With the one part he furnishes his chimney, 
 with the other his chapel. A strange thing, that the fire 
 must first consume this part, and then burn incense to 
 that. As if there was more divinity in one end of the 
 stick, than in the other; or as if it could be graved and 
 painted omnipotent, or the nails and the hammer could 
 give it an apotheosis." Of sensualists, he says: " Saying 
 grace is no part of their meal; they feed and grovel 
 like swine under an oak, filling themselves with the mast, 
 but never so much as looking up, either to the boughs 
 that bore, or the hands that shook it down." 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher declares that in his younger 
 
80 ROBERT SOUTH. 
 
 days he was a great reader of the old sermonizers. " I 
 read old Robert South through and through. I saturated 
 myself with South. I formed much of my style, and of 
 my handling of texts on his methods." Let the rising 
 generation of preachers follow this example, and if there 
 is not less complaint of the lack of freshness, force, and 
 energy in the pulpit, W3 are sure the complaint will 
 cease to be well founded. 
 
CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 
 
 " TTT^HO has not seen Naples, has seen nothing," say 
 * ^ the Italians ; who has not heard Mr. Spurgeon, 
 has not heard the greatest of living preachers, will say 
 hundreds, not only of Englishmen, but of Americans, who 
 have listened to the burning words of a Beecher, a Liddon, 
 a Punshon, or a Hall. To visit London without seeing the 
 Metropolitan Tabernacle and its preacher, would be like 
 visiting Rome without seeing St. Peter's, or making the 
 tour of America without beholding Niagara. For this 
 reason and a mixture of others, we left our hotel on a fine 
 Sabbath morning, the 6th of August, 1871, and, mount 
 ing an omnibus bound for " The Elephant and Castle," 
 were soon on the Surrey side of the Thames, and presently 
 at our point of destination. The Tabernacle, so noted 
 among churches, we found to be a plain, but massive 
 church of brick, adorned with Corinthian pillars, standing 
 back from the street, and inclosed with an iron fence. 
 Although the gate to the inclosure was not yet open, a 
 crowd of persons had already collected, half an hour before 
 the service began, waiting impatiently for admission. 
 Upon stating that we were an American, a ticket of admis 
 sion was at once handed to us, and we entered the building 
 just as it was beginning to fill. Glancing around, we were 
 struck with the resemblance of the vast audience-room to 
 that of a large theatre. At the farther end is a stage-like 
 platform, with a moveable table on castors and a few chairs; 
 
82 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 
 
 and just below it, five or six feet above the main floor, there 
 is an orchestra-like inclosure, filled with a large number of 
 bright-looking and neatly-dressed boys. Running round 
 the church are three galleries, one above another, the 
 whole forming one of the best arrangements for seeing and 
 hearing that could be contrived. Seating ourselves in the 
 lower gallery, at just the right distance from the speaker, 
 we had an excellent opportunity both to see and listen. 
 The regular congregation having been seated, the doors 
 were thrown open to the crowd, when a mighty tide of 
 human beings surged into the aisles, filling every standing- 
 place, sitting-place, nook and corner of the building, till it 
 seemed impossible for another man or child to squeeze him 
 self in. Never have we seen an audience more densely 
 packed, not even when Jenny Lind sang the first night at 
 Tremont Temple in Boston, of the rapt attention of the 
 dense throng on which occasion this strongly reminded us. 
 Even in the uppermost gallery, which is a good way 
 toward heaven, many persons were standing for lack of 
 seats. 
 
 The house filled, Mr. Spurgeon at once steps from a 
 back door upon the platform, followed by the elders of the 
 church, who sit just behind him. In his physiognomy 
 and general appearance, there is little to give assurance of 
 a great orator. Short, stout, and muscular, with a some 
 what square face, small, sparkling eyes, a well-formed nose, 
 .a mouth shaded by a black moustache, and a general air of 
 frankness, straightforwardness, and honesty, he is a good 
 type of the Anglo-Saxon, and no one could possibly mistake 
 him for a native of any other country. Natural, decided, 
 and impressive in his manner, full of force and fire, and 
 speaking in a loud, bell-like voice, at once clear in its 
 
CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 83 
 
 articulations and pleasant in its tones, he rivets your atten 
 tion at the start, though precisely what is the secret of his 
 hold upon you, you are puzzled to tell. He begins the 
 service with prayer; and a prayer it is, a real outpouring 
 of the heart to God, not an oration before the Almighty, or 
 an eloquent soliloquy. He is evidently not one of those 
 preachers who, as South says, " so pray that they do not 
 supplicate, but compliment Almighty God 1 '; he believes, 
 with the same divine, that it is not necessary to beg our 
 bread in blank verse, or to show anything of the poet in 
 our devotions but indigence and want. After the prayer 
 comes the hymn, read in a clear, impressive voice; and 
 without any accompaniment, either of organ or bass-viol, 
 the vast assembly of six thousand or seven thousand sound 
 forth the notes of praise. After the first verse has been 
 sung, Mr. Spurgeon singing with his people, a second verse 
 is read and sung, then another verse, till the entire hymn 
 is gone through with. Before worshipping at the Taber 
 nacle, we had heard the fine music at the royal chapel at 
 Whitehall, and listened with ravished ears to the echoing 
 strains of the trained and gowned singers in St. Paul's, and 
 to the pealing organ as it swelled the note of praise in 
 " the long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults " of Westminster 
 Abbey; but we were more deeply moved by this simple 
 praise, this grand, though inartistic song of joy, welling 
 up from these Christian hearts, than l)j the most gorgeous 
 music that ever in minster or cathedral had essayed to 
 
 "Dissolve us into ecstasies, 
 And bring all Heaven before our eyes." 
 
 A lesson from the Scriptures is next read, accompanied 
 with a pithy and suggestive running commentary, and the 
 people throughout the house open their Bibles, and follow 
 
84 CHAELES H. SPURGEON. 
 
 the pastor in the reading. Another hymn is given out and 
 sung as before; and then comes the sermon. Though fifty 
 or sixty minutes long, it is listened to throughout with the 
 profoundest interest, no one, not even of the listeners who 
 are standing, showing any signs of weariness. The text is 
 1 Corinthians vi, 19, 20: "Ye are not your own; for ye 
 are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your 
 body, and in your spirit, which are God's.' 1 The subject is 
 considered under three heads : I, The blessed fact, " Ye are 
 bought with a price"; II, The plain consequence arising 
 from this fact, namely, that, 1, It is clear as a negative, that 
 "Ye are not your own"; and, 2, It is clear as a positive, 
 that " your body and spirit are God's." Ill, The natural 
 conclusion, "Therefore glorify God in your body and in 
 your spirit." 
 
 Under the second head the speaker observes: "It is a 
 great privilege not to be one's own. A vessel is drifting 
 on the Atlantic hither and thither, and its end no man 
 knoweth. It is derelict, deserted by all its crew; it is the 
 property of no man; it is the prey of every storm, and the 
 sport of every wind; rocks, quicksands, and shoals wait to 
 destroy it; the ocean yearns to engulf it. It drifts onward 
 to no man's land, and no -man will mourn its shipwreck. 
 But mark well yonder bark of the Thames, which its owner 
 surveys with pleasure. In its attempt to reach the sea it 
 may run ashore, or come into collision with other vessels, 
 or in a thousand ways suiFer damage; but there is no fear, 
 it will pass through the floating forest of ' the Pool'; it will 
 thread the winding channel, and reach the Nore, because 
 the owner will secure it pilotage, skillful and apt. How 
 thankful you and I should be that we are not derelict 
 to-day! We are not our own, not left on the wild waste 
 
CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 85 
 
 of chance to be tossed to and fro by fortuitous circum 
 stances, but there is a hand upon the helm; we have on 
 board a pilot who owns us, and will surely steer us into the 
 Fair Havens of eternal rest." Under the third head, Mr. 
 Spurgeon says: " Our bodies used to work hard enough for 
 the devil; now they belong to God, we will make them 
 work for Him. Your legs used to carry you to the theatre; 
 be not too lazy to come out on a Thursday night to the 
 house of God. Your eyes have often been open on iniquity ; 
 keep them open during the sermon, do not drop asleep! 
 Your ears have been sharp enough to catch the words of a 
 lascivious song; let them be quick to observe the word 
 of God. Those hands have often squandered your earnings 
 in sinfulness; let them give freely to the cause of Christ. 
 Your bodv was a willing horse when it was in the service 
 of the devil ; let it not be a sluggish hack now that it draws 
 the chariot of Christ. 1 ' 
 
 Again: " If you were to go to a cattle-show, and it were 
 said, ' Such and such a bullock belongs to Her Majesty,' it 
 may be that it is no better than another, but it would be 
 of interest to thousands as belonging to royalty. See here, 
 then, such and such a man belongs to God; what manner 
 of person ought he to be? If there be any one in this 
 world who wi-ll not be criticised, depend upon it, Christian, 
 it is not the Christian; sharp eyes will be upon him, and 
 worldly men will find faults in him which they would not 
 see if he were not a professor. For my part, I am very 
 glad of the lynx eyes of the worldlings. Let them watch, 
 if they will. I have heard of one who was a great caviller 
 at Christian people, and after having annoyed a church a 
 long time, he was about to leave, and, therefore, as a part 
 ing jest with the minister, he said, ' I have no doubt you 
 
86 CHARLES H. SPURGEON". 
 
 will be very glad to know that I am going a hundred miles 
 away ! ' * No,' said the pastor, ' I shall be sorry to lose 
 you.' 'How? I never did you any good.' ' I don't know 
 that, for I am sure that never one of my flock put half a 
 foot through the hedge but what you began to yelp at him, 
 and so you have been a famous sheep-dog for me.' I am 
 glad the world observes us. It has a right to do so. If a 
 man says 'I am God's,' he sets himself up for public 
 observation. Ye are lights in the world, and what are 
 lights intended for but to be looked at? A city set on a 
 hill cannot be hid." 
 
 These passages, torn from the context, give but a 
 faint idea of the sermon as a whole, which was a mas 
 terpiece of its kind, and in many respects, peculiar and 
 original. After service, we had a pleasant interview with 
 the preacher, whom we found lying on a sofa in a back 
 room, quite exhausted by his effort. He had but just 
 recovered from a severe sickness, this being his second 
 sermon since he left his bed. It is well known that his 
 exhausting labors and burning enthusiasm have begun to 
 tell upon his physical constitution. The sword has proved 
 too sharp for even the stout scabbard. Ten years ago 
 preaching was almost as easy to him as singing to a 
 bird. To electrify, convince, and persuade audiences was 
 a labor of love. Now every Sunday's efforts cost him 
 forty- eight hours' pain. During our interview a gentle 
 man said to him that an American preacher who had 
 heard the sermon observed at its close, "That discourse 
 was composed in this house." " Did he say so?" exclaimed 
 Mr. Spurgeon. " That is remarkable. The text was given 
 to me by one of my deacons,, who died yesterday, and 
 requested in his last moments that I would preach from 
 
CHARLES H. SPliRGEOtf. 8? 
 
 it. At six this morning I sat down to think out the 
 discourse. I spent an hour upon the text, and could 
 make nothing of it. I never could preach from other 
 people's texts. I said this, in my despair, to my wife, 
 who told me to try again. I tried again with the same 
 result. ' Well,' said Mrs. S., 'go into the pulpit, and 
 the sermon will come to you.' I followed the advice, 
 and you know the result." In this case Mr. Spurgeon 
 must have spent more time than usual in preparation, 
 for it is said that he commonly devotes but a half hour 
 to this purpose. Only the heads of the sermon are put 
 on paper; all the rest is left to the pulpit. "If I had 
 a month given me to prepare a sermon," he once said 
 to a visitor, " I would spend thirty days and twenty- 
 three hours in something else, and in the last hour I 
 would make the sermon." When asked by the same per 
 son if he had ever written a discourse, he replied, " I 
 would rather be hanged." 
 
 Yet if Mr. S. spends but little time in immediate 
 preparation, he spends a vast deal of time in general 
 preparation, for the pulpit. No preacher has drunk deeper 
 draughts from the old English divines, or saturated his 
 mind more thoroughly with the spirit of God's word. 
 By these means he has become " a Leyden jar, charged 
 to a plenum," in Horace Mann's phrase, and, the moment 
 he comes in contact with his people, gives forth the elec 
 tric fire. In our conversation with him, we observed 
 that we would not call the sermon eloquent; it was 
 something far better than eloquence. " Oh, no," was the 
 reply, " I have no pretension to that sort of thing. I 
 love to hear eloquent men, you know, as well as any 
 body, but if I should attempt oratory, I should be sure 
 
88 CHARLES H. SPTJRGEOtf. 
 
 to fail." In the same spirit he lately prefaced a lecture 
 by saying that he had never yet succeeded in the art of 
 lecturing, and added, " If any of you have ever seen a goose 
 trying to fly, you may say, ' That's like Mr. Spurgeon 
 trying to lecture.' " It is reported that a noted fanatic 
 and bore once called to see him, and, being asked by a 
 deacon what name he should announce to Mr. S., re 
 plied, " Say that a servant of the Lord wants to see 
 him." "Tell him," was the preacher's reply, "that I 
 am engaged with his Master." Being asked whether this 
 anecdote was apocryphal, he smilingly admitted its truth. 
 Mr. Spurgeon has a good deal of mother wit, and even 
 when preaching drops from time to time a shrewd, pun 
 gent remark, or indulges in an apt, vivid pictorial illus 
 tration, that causes the sea of upturned faces to ripple 
 with a smile. In a recent speech in Surrey, at the lay 
 ing of the foundation stone of a new chapel, he said no 
 money was to be placed in the cavity of the stone, for 
 he could not see the use of burying money, and, more 
 over, he had known memorial stones to move suddenly 
 during the night when money had been placed in them. 
 He once heard a man say, " If you want to touch my 
 purse, you must touch my heart," to which he (Mr. S.) 
 replied, " I believe you, because there is where you keep 
 your heart." Another man once said to him: "I thought 
 you preached for souls, and not for money"; and he re 
 plied: "So we do, but we can't live upon souls, and if 
 we could, it would take a large number such as yours 
 to make a single breakfast." At a recent laying of the 
 corner-stone of a chapel, he told the people how he con 
 trived to secure pure air in a church where the windows 
 were so rarely opened that it was found difficult to raise 
 
CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 89 
 
 them. " It was so close and hot," he said, " that I asked 
 every gentleman near a window to smash a pane or two. 
 There was soon a very grand smash, but then the beau 
 tiful fresh air streamed in. I paid the bill afterwards 
 like an honest man; but it was much better to do that 
 than bear the cruelty of preaching in such an atmos 
 phere, or forcing people to listen when they were more 
 disposed to sleep." 
 
 What is the secret of Mr. Spurgeon's power as a 
 preacher? That he is the greatest of living European 
 preachers, if not the first in the world, few will doubt. 
 For twenty years men have gathered in crowds to hear 
 him. Audiences varying from 5,000 to 9,000 have con 
 stantly filled the houses where he has preached; men of 
 all classes have hung upon his lips; and yet, though the 
 " fiery soul has o'erinformed " the physical frame, and he 
 speaks almost always with some pain, there is no flagging, no 
 symptom of abatement in the eagerness with which men 
 listen. You must still go early to secure a seat in the 
 Tabernacle. His church numbers some 4,300 members. 
 He has published over a thousand sermons. More than 
 twenty millions of his discourses have been circulated in 
 the English language, and they have been translated into 
 all the languages of Christendom, besides being translated 
 to some extent into remote heathen tongues. There was 
 a time when it was fashionable to speak of him as " vul 
 gar," and as being a cometary genius, whose splendor 
 would be short-lived. But now even fashionable people 
 feel compelled to hear him, and scholars, barristers, mem 
 bers of parliament, and peers of the realm acknowledge 
 his power. How shall we account for this? Is there 
 anything in his person to solve the mystery? There 
 
90 CHARLES H. SPURGEOtf. 
 
 have been orators who almost by the magnetism of their 
 presence have held their hearers spell-bound. Their lofty 
 and commanding forms, their god-like foreheads, flashing 
 eyes, and general port and bearing, have given weight 
 and electric force to their words. Such was the case 
 with Whitefield, Irving, Chalmers, and other great pulpit 
 orators, who impressed men by their looks as well as by 
 their utterances. But Spurgeon has nothing of this sort 
 to magnetize men or chain their attention. There is no 
 necromancy in his face or figure. Short and chubby in 
 figure, with a round, homely, honest face, though with 
 an expressive eye, he is Saxon intus et in cute; and though 
 you might credit him with strength of will and iron en 
 durance, you would not from his features infer great 
 intellectual power or ability to sway the hearts of men. 
 Is it his culture that gives Mr. Spurgeon his sway 
 over men? Unquestionably he has done much to remedy 
 his lack of intellectual equipment since he began to 
 storm the hearts of his hearers. He has drunk deep, ox- 
 like draughts from the Scriptures and from the old 
 Puritan divines. He has spent not a little time, we 
 have been told, in the study of Greek and Latin, and 
 has enriched his vocabulary with words drawn from the 
 pure " wells of English undefiled." He has made incur 
 sions, too, into the broad domains of science, not merely 
 for recreation, or to gratify his intellectual curiosity, but 
 for the more definite purpose of supplying his mind with 
 new images and analogies. According to a statement in 
 the London " World," he has not only given attention to 
 astronomy, chemistry, zoology, ornithology, etc., but field- 
 sports, also, have helped to enrich his fund of illustration. 
 It is not uncommon, we are told, to find him engaged 
 
CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 91 
 
 busily over a pile of technical books on fox-hunting or 
 salmon-fishing, deer-stalking or grouse-shooting. He is a 
 strong believer in the theory of ventilating the mind, 
 of pouring a stream of new ideas constantly through it, 
 to preserve its freshness, and prevent the stagnation 
 not unfrequently brought about in a strong intellect 
 engrossed in one pursuit. All this explains the fresh and 
 breezy vigor of his preaching, and shows why, in his 
 thousands of sermons, he so rarely repeats himself. But, 
 it must be remembered, he did not begin his career with 
 the advantage of a liberal education. It is doubtful, too, 
 whether, in early life, he had either the taste, the appli 
 ances, or the leisure for the scientific and literary excur 
 sions he now makes. He is not a scholar, nor a trained 
 theologian, still less one of those bookish men in whom 
 the receptive faculty absorbs the generative, and the 
 scholarhood sucks up the manhood; nor is there reason 
 to suppose that, by any amount of application, he could 
 become 
 
 "A second Thomas, or at once, 
 To name them all, another Duns." 
 
 Does Mr. Spurgeon's voice account for his success? 
 That the quality of the voice has much to do with suc 
 cess in oratory, none can doubt. Cicero held that, " for 
 the effectiveness and glory of delivery, the voice, doubt 
 less, holds the first place." There are voices that electrify, 
 voices that melt, and voices that appal. It is said that 
 Chatham's lowest whisper was distinctly audible; his 
 middle tone was sweet, rich, and beautifully varied; and 
 when he raised his voice to its high pitch, the house was 
 completely filled with the volume of sound, and the effect 
 was awful, except when he wished to cheer and animate, 
 
92 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 
 
 and then he had a spirit-stirring note which was perfectly 
 irresistible. Henry Clay's voice had a similar flexibility. 
 Soaring with the grand and descending with the pathetic, 
 it had a marvellous compass, and its trumpet blasts were 
 not more audible or thrilling than its veriest whisper. 
 Burke's voice, on the other hand, was a loud cry, which 
 tended, even more than the formality of his discourses, 
 to send the M. P.'s to their dinners. Mr. Spurgeon's 
 voice, marvellous as it is, has little flexibility or compass. 
 It has a loud, bell-like ring, but is a comparatively level 
 voice, with little variety in its modulations, though very 
 pleasing in its tones. Rarely rising to a trumpet tone, 
 it never descends to the lowest notes, and, above all other 
 qualities, it is remarkable for distinctness and force. 
 Were his voice, however, ten times more impressive than 
 it is, and as " musical as Apollo's lute," it would not alone 
 account for his success, for it might be vox et preterea 
 nihil, which surely would soon lose its charm. 
 
 The real sources of Mr. Spurgeon's power we believe 
 to be his elocution, his style, and the earnestness that grows 
 out of a profound conviction of the truth of what he 
 teaches. His delivery, though not of the very highest 
 order, is wonderfully natural and impressive. There is 
 no stiffness or affectation in it. He talks, in a free, off 
 hand way, just as a man would talk with his friend. 
 Even when most impassioned, he speaks in colloquial 
 tones, never for a moment falling into what the old 
 Scotch woman, rebuking her son as he read the news 
 paper, called "the Bible twang." Again, his language is 
 as simple and unaffected as his manner. It is chiefly 
 plain, nervous, idiomatic Saxon; the vocabulary, not of 
 books, but of the market-place and the fireside, " not of 
 
CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 93 
 
 the university, but of the universe." " The devil," he 
 once said, " does not care for your dialectics, and eclectic 
 homiletics, or Germanic objectives and subjectives; but 
 pelt him with Anglo-Saxon in the name of God, and he 
 will shift his quarters." Mr. Spurgeon's style, like that 
 of every great speaker, is individual and original, the 
 outgrowth and exponent of his whole mental character. 
 It is plain, straightforward, luminously transparent, a 
 perfect mirror of the thought. His winged words have a 
 force and significance which they do not bear in the 
 dictionary, and hasten to their mark with the precision, 
 rapidity, and directness of an arrow. No shade of doubt 
 weakens the dogmatic decisiveness of the idea; no 
 momentary hesitation checks or turns aside the sure and 
 sweeping current of the expression. He has no meaning 
 less expletives to pad out his sentences; but everywhere 
 the mind of the speaker is felt beating and burning 
 beneath his language, stamping every word with the 
 image of a thought. 
 
 Besides these peculiarities of Mr. Spurgeon's style, it 
 is remarkable also for its pictorial power. Few pulpit- 
 orators abound more in illustrations, especially homely, 
 yet vivid, illustrations drawn from the fireside, the street, 
 the market, the scenes of daily life. Piety with him is 
 not a thing of abstraction, but something visible, in con 
 crete form. " If I am a Christian," he said, in the ser 
 mon we heard, " I have no right to be idle. I saw the 
 other day men using picks in the road in laying down 
 new gas-pipes; they had been resting, and, just as I passed, 
 the clock struck one, and the foreman gave a signal. I 
 think he said, ' Blow up; ' and straightway each man took 
 his pick or his shovel, and they were all at it in earnest. 
 
94 CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 
 
 Close to them stood a fellow with a pipe in his mouth, 
 who did not join in the work, but stood in a free and 
 easy posture. It did not make any difference to him 
 whether it was one o'clock or six. Why not? Because 
 he was his own; the other men were the master's for 
 the time being. If any of you idle professors can really 
 prove that you belong to yourselves, I have nothing more 
 to say to you; but if you profess to have a share in the 
 redeeming sacrifice of Christ, I am ashamed of you if you 
 do not go to work the very moment the signal is given." 
 Again, take the following: "The world has a right to 
 expect more from the Christian than from anybody else. 
 Stand in fancy in one of the fights of the old civil war. 
 The Royalists are fighting desperately and are winning 
 apace, but I hear a cry from the other side that Crom 
 well's Ironsides are coming. Now we shall see some fight 
 ing. Oliver and his men are lions. But lo! I see that 
 the fellows who come up hang fire, and are afraid to 
 rush into the thick of the fight; surely, these are not 
 Cromwell's Ironsides, and yonder Captain is not old Noll? 
 I do not believe it; it cannot be. Why, if they were what 
 they profess to be, they would have broken the ranks of 
 those perfumed cavaliers long ago, and made them fly 
 before them like chaff before the wind. So when I hear 
 men say, 'Here is a body of Christians.' What! Those 
 Christians? Those cowardly people who hardly dare speak 
 a word for Jesus! Those covetous people, who give a 
 few cheese-parings to His cause! Those inconsistent peo 
 ple whom you would not know to be Christian professors 
 if they did not label themselves! What! such beings fol 
 lowers of a crucified Saviour?" 
 
 Lastly, men love to hear Mr. Spurgeon, because, as 
 
CHARLES H. SPUKGEON. 95 
 
 Sheridan said of Rowland Hill, " his ideas come red-hot 
 from the heart" Wesley once said to his brother Charles, 
 who was drawing him away from a mob, in which some 
 coarse women were vituperating in eloquent billingsgate, 
 " Stop, Charles, and learn how to preach." The earnest 
 ness, courage, and passion which made these fishwomen 
 eloquent in a petty squabble, Wesley thought, if trans 
 ferred to the pulpit, could not fail powerfully to move 
 the hearts of the people. Mr. Spurgeon is not a sensa 
 tional preacher, nor a maker of fine phrases, a lettered 
 and polished orator. He is unlike as possible those 
 clerical icicles with whom the artistic air kills every 
 thing, and whose greatest fault is that they are absolutely 
 faultless. He is no less unlike those clerical Jehus who 
 take delight in sweeping with their chariot-wheels to the 
 very edge of some precipice of heresy, so as to call forth 
 a shriek from startled orthodox nerves. He has no half 
 beliefs, no sickly sentimentalism, no mental reservations, 
 but a direct, intense, Bunyan-like apprehension of the Gos 
 pel of Christ, and he preaches it fully and fervidly, as God 
 has given him ability, to mankind. Believing in the 
 truths of revelation with his whole soul, tormented 
 with none of those lurking doubts, that semi-skepticism 
 which so often paralyzes the pulpit in our day, reject 
 ing utterly what he regards as a Christless Christianity, 
 from which the supernatural element has been eliminated, 
 he urges those truths home upon his hearers with the 
 whole force of his nature. Supremely indifferent to the 
 modern philosophic statements, the literary refinements 
 of doctrine, regarding with utter scorn the nice, hair 
 splitting discriminations between what we may know of 
 a doctrine and what we may not, that leave us in the 
 
96 CHARLES H. SPUKGEON. 
 
 end with hardly anything to know about it, he proclaims, 
 Sabbath after Sabbath, without abatement, mincing, or 
 softening, those grand old truths, as he regards them, 
 which Calvin, and Augustine, and Paul proclaimed before 
 him. And what has been the result? As he himself 
 once said to a lady who observed that the secret of his 
 success was Christ, and Christ only, he is " constantly 
 striking on the old piece of iron, and it is no wonder 
 that it sometimes gets hot." While those timid preachers 
 of the modern school, who 
 
 "Would not in a peremptory tone 
 Assert the nose on their face their own," 
 
 and who know just how much truth it is prudent to 
 dole out, are left to utter their nicely-turned periods to 
 empty pews, this Puritanic preacher, who comes from 
 what John Foster calls " the morass of Anabaptism," is 
 listened to with such delight, that even from a church 
 that holds six or seven thousand souls, hundreds go 
 away, Sabbath after Sabbath, unable to find a standing- 
 place. He is a living refutation of the statement, so often 
 and so confidently made, that the preacher of our day 
 who stays in what are called " the old ruts " of theology, 
 and who takes no stock in the modern " progressive ideas," 
 has lost his hold upon the people; and proves, beyond 
 all gainsaying, that, even in this age of Darwins and 
 Huxleys and Mills, the most popular pulpit orator is not 
 he who panders to their love of excitement, novelty, or 
 rhetoric, but he who thunders forth with ceaseless itera 
 tion those grand old truisms, which, even in this day of 
 new theologies, are still the best things left upon the 
 earth. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 TN the year 1836 the writer entered the Law School at 
 -*- Cambridge, and saw for the first time Judge Story, 
 whose pupil he was for some two years to be. Earely 
 has the physiognomy of a distinguished man, whose looks 
 we had previously pictured to ourself, contrasted so strik 
 ingly as in this instance with our ideal. Instead of a 
 man " severe and stern to view," with an awe-inspiring 
 countenance in every hue and lineament of which justice 
 was legibly written, and whose whole demeanor mani 
 fested a fearful amount of stiffness, starch, and dignity, 
 in short, an incarnation of law, bristling all over with 
 technicalities and subtleties, a walking Coke upon Little 
 ton, we saw before us a sunny, smiling face which 
 bespoke a heart full of kindness, and listened to a voice 
 whose musical tones imparted interest to everything it 
 communicated, whether dry subtleties of the law, or 
 reminiscences of the " giants of those days " when he was 
 a practitioner at the bar, and of which he was so eloquent 
 a panegyrist. 
 
 Further acquaintance deepened our first impressions; 
 we found that he was the counsellor, guide, philosopher, 
 and friend of all his pupils; that, without the slightest 
 forfeiture of self-respect, he could chat, jest, and laugh 
 with all; and that if he never looked the Supreme Court 
 judge, or assumed the airs of a Sir Oracle, it was simply 
 5 
 
98 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 because he had a real dignity, an inward greatness of 
 soul, which rendered it needless that he should protect 
 himself from intrusion by any chevaux-de-frise of for 
 malities, still less by the frizzled, artificial locks, black 
 robes, and portentous seals of a British judge, who, with 
 out the insignia of his office, would almost despise himself. 
 Overflowing as the Judge was with legal lore, which 
 bubbled up as from a perennial fountain, he made no 
 display of learning; in this matter, as in the other, he 
 never led one to suspect the absence of the reality by 
 his over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. His 
 pupil did not pass many hours in his presence before he 
 learned, too, that the same fertile mind that could 
 illumine the depths of constitutional law, and solve the 
 knottiest and most puzzling problems of commercial 
 jurisprudence, could also enliven the monotony of recita 
 tion by a keen witticism or a sparkling pun. Though 
 thirty years and more have elapsed since the time of 
 which we speak, we can yet see him in fancy as plainly as 
 we see his portrait hanging before us. It is two o'clock 
 P.M.; he walks briskly into the recitation-room, his face 
 wreathed with smiles, and, laying down his white hat, 
 takes his seat at the table, puts on his spectacles, and 
 with a semi-quizzical look inquires, as he glances about 
 the room: 
 
 "Where do I begin to-day? Ah! Mr. L , I believe 
 
 you dodged out yesterday just before I reached you: so 
 we'll begin with you." 
 
 This sally provokes a laugh in which the Judge joins 
 as heartily as the students; and then begins perhaps an 
 examination in "Long on Sales," a brief treatise, which 
 suggests the remark that "Long is short, and short 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 99 
 
 because he is Long; a writer who can condense into a 
 small book what others would spin out into volumes. 1 ' 
 
 Probably no two teachers of equal ability were ever 
 associated, who were more unlike in the constitution of 
 their minds, and who conducted a recitation in modes 
 more dissimilar, than Judge Story and Professor Green- 
 leaf. The latter, the beau ideal of a lawyer in his 
 physique, was severe and searching in the class-room, 
 probing the student to the quick, accepting no half- 
 answers, or vague, general statements for accurate 
 replies, showing no mercy to laziness; and when he com 
 mented on the text, it was always in the fewest and 
 pithiest words that would convey the ideas. Language 
 in his mouth seemed to have proclaimed a sumptuary 
 law, forbidding that it should in any case overstep the 
 limits of the thought. Indolent students, who had 
 skimmed over the lesson, dreaded his scrutiny, for they 
 knew that an examination by him was a literal weighing 
 of their knowledge that they could impose on him by 
 no shams. Judge Story's forte, on the other hand, was 
 in lecturing, not in questioning; in communicating infor 
 mation, not in ascertaining the exact sum of the pupil's 
 knowledge. In most cases his questions were put in such 
 a way as to suggest the answer: for example, having 
 stated two modes of legal proceeding under certain 
 circumstances, he would ask the student "Would you 
 adopt the former course, or would you rather adopt the 
 latter?" "I would rather adopt the latter," the student 
 would reply, who perhaps had not looked at the lesson. 
 " You are right," would be the comment of the kind- 
 hearted Dane Professor; "Lord Mansfield himself could 
 not have answered more correctly." Whether he was 
 
100 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 too good-natured to put the student on the rack, or 
 thought the time might be more profitably spent, we 
 know not; but no one feared to recite because he was 
 utterly ignorant of the lesson. 
 
 The manner of the Judge, when lecturing, was that 
 of an enthusiast rather than that of a professional 
 teacher. The recitation, if recitation it could be called, 
 where the professor was questioned on many days nearly 
 as often as the student, was not confined to the text 
 book; but everything that could throw light upon the 
 subject in hand, all the limitations or modifications of 
 the principles laid down by the author, were fully 
 stated, and illustrated by numerous apt examples. The 
 book was merely the starting-point, whence excursions 
 were made into all the cognate provinces of the law from 
 which the opima spolia of a keen and searching intellect 
 and a capacious memory could be gathered. His readi 
 ness of invention, as his son has remarked in the biography 
 of his father, was particularly exhibited in the facility 
 and exhaustless ingenuity with which he supplied ficti 
 tious cases to illustrate a principle, and shaped the 
 circumstances so as to expose and make prominent the 
 various exceptions to which it was subject. Often his 
 illustrations were drawn from incidents of the day, and 
 the listless student whose ears had been pricked up by 
 some amusing tale or anecdote, found that all this was 
 but the gilding of the pill, and that he had been cheated 
 into swallowing a large dose of legal wisdom. Thus "he 
 attracted the mind along instead of driving it. Alive 
 himself, he made the law alive. His lectures were not 
 bundles of dried fagots, but of budding scions. Like the 
 Chinese juggler, he planted the seed, and made it grow 
 before the eyes of his pupils into a tree." 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 101 
 
 Few men have ever been less subject to moods. He 
 had no fits of enthusiasm. Of those alternations of mental 
 sunshine and gloom, of buoyancy and depression, to 
 which most men, and especially men of genius, are sub 
 ject, he seemed to know nothing. Nor did he, even 
 when most overwhelmed with work, manifest any sense 
 of weariness. After having tried a tedious and intricate 
 case in the United States Court Room in Boston, he was 
 as fresh, elastic, and vivacious in the recitation room as 
 if he had taken a mountain walk or some other bracing 
 exercise. He had that rare gift, the faculty of com 
 municating, and loved, above all things else, to com 
 municate knowledge. The one ruling passion of his 
 mind was what a French writer calls "un gout dominant 
 d'instruire et documenter quelqu'un." Few men with 
 equal stores of learning have had a more perfect com 
 mand of their acquisitions. All his knowledge, whether 
 gathered from musty black-letter folios or from modern 
 octavos, was at the tip of his tongue. He had no 
 unsmelted gold or bullion, but kept his intellectual riches 
 in the form of current coin, as negotiable as it was 
 valuable. His extraordinary fluency, his vast acquire 
 ment, his sympathy with the young, and especially his 
 personal magnetism, eminently fitted him to be a teacher. 
 To smooth the pathway of the legal learner, to give him 
 a clue by which to thread the labyrinths of jurispru 
 dence, to hold a torch by which to light his way through 
 its dark passages, above all, to kindle in his breast 
 some of his own ever-burning enthusiasm, was to the 
 Judge a constant joy. We doubt if ever a dull hour 
 was known in his lecture-room. His perennial liveliness; 
 his frankness and abandon; his " winning smile, that 
 
102 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 played lambent as heat-lightning around his varying 
 countenance"; his bubbling hurnor; his contagious, merry, 
 and irresistible laugh; his exhaustless fund of incident 
 and anecdote, with which he never failed to give piqu 
 ancy and zest to the driest and most crabbed themes, 
 all won not only the attention, but the love, of his 
 pupils, and he who could have yawned amid such stimu 
 lants to attention, must have been dull indeed. Only a 
 dunce or a beatified intelligence could listen uninterested 
 to such a teacher. 
 
 So prodigal was he of his intellectual riches, so lavish 
 of his learning, wit, and anecdote, that the fear of every 
 new-comer was, that he would exhaust himself; but the 
 apprehension was soon allayed; the stream never ceased, 
 but went pouring on its sparkling waters with undimin- 
 ished volume, till the hearer felt that he was in the 
 condition described by Robert Hall when speaking during 
 his lunacy of the conversation of Mackintosh, " It seemed 
 like the Euphrates pouring into a teacup." Of all the 
 themes which Judge Story loved to discuss, the constitutional 
 history of the country was the favorite. When lecturing 
 upon this subject, on which he never was weary of 
 expatiating, and all the smallest details as well as the 
 grand facts of which were at the tip of his tongue, his 
 enthusiasm and eloquence were at the height. Especially 
 fond was he at such times of describing the great men 
 of other days, the Marshalls, Pinkneys, Dexters, Martins, 
 and other giants of the law, whom he had known and 
 associated with; and of holding up their characters, their 
 Herculean industry, their integrity, and other virtues, as 
 models to be imitated. With breathless interest we 
 listened as he spoke of the principles of the Constitution, 
 
KECOLLECTIOHS OF JUDGE STOKY. 108 
 
 ' the views of the great men by whom it was drawn, 
 of the dangers to which the country was exposed, of 
 the anxiety with which the experiment of a republican 
 government was watched across the sea, and closed with 
 an exhortation to us to labor for the promotion of justice, 
 to liberalize and expand the law, to scorn all trickery 
 and chicanery in its practice, and to deem no victory 
 worth winning if won by the arts of the trickster and 
 the pettifogger. 
 
 Few of the old graduates of Dane Law School will 
 forget the scene that occurred on his return from the 
 winter session of the Supreme Court at Washington. The 
 announcement of his return was sure to fill the lecture- 
 room, and he was welcomed with all the joyousness, and 
 with the hearty grasp of the hand, with which a loving 
 father is welcomed home by his children. How eagerly 
 we gathered around him, and plied him with questions 
 concerning the great cases that had been argued at Wash 
 ington, and with what kindling enthusiasm would he 
 describe to us the keen contests between the athletes of 
 the bar, as one would have described to a company of 
 squires and pages, to use the illustration of one of his 
 pupils, R. H. Dana, a tournament of monarchs and 
 nobles on a field of cloth of gold; how Webster spoke in 
 this case, Legare, or Clay, or Crittenden, or Choate, in that, 
 and all " the currents of the heady fight." In vain, at 
 any such times as we have described, did the clock peal or 
 the bell clang the hour of adjournment. On the lecturer 
 went, oblivious of the lapse of time, pouring forth a con 
 tinuous and sparkling stream of anecdote and reminiscence, 
 or throwing " a light as from a painted window " upon the 
 dark passages of constitutional history, and charming the 
 
104 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 dullest listener by his eloquence, till the bell for evening 
 prayers announced that now he must cease, and his hearers 
 departed, hoping that he would resume the broken thread 
 of his discourse to-morrow. Some of these anecdotes and 
 reminiscences, as we heard them from his lips, with a few 
 others published just after his death in a Boston journal, 
 will make up the rest of this paper. 
 
 Judge Story was an intimate friend and warm admirer 
 of William Pinkney, whom, in spite of his dandyisms 
 and affectations, he regarded as one of the ablest and 
 most scholarly lawyers in the country. Mr. Pinkney, said 
 he, dressed always with fastidious elegance, and looked as 
 if he had just come from his dressing-room, and was 
 going to a fashionable party. His coat, of the finest blue, 
 was nicely brushed; his boots shone with the highest 
 polish; his waistcoat, of immaculate ' whiteness, glittered 
 with gold buttons; he carried in his hand a light cane, 
 with which he played; and his whole appearance was that 
 of a man of fashion rather than that of a profound and 
 laborious lawyer. He was exceedingly ambitious, fond of 
 admiration, and never spoke without an eye to effect. He 
 would spend weeks of hard labor upon a case, and, when 
 it was called up for trial, would beg earnestly to have it 
 postponed on the ground that he had had no time for 
 preparation; and when informed by the Court that it 
 could not be deferred longer, would rise and astonish 
 everybody by a profound and elaborate argument, which 
 he wished to be regarded as an impromptu burst of genius. 
 Another trick of his was to quote from a law-book a 
 passage which he had just previously read and got by 
 heart for the very occasion, and pretending he had not 
 seen it for a long time, but had no doubt of its tenor, to 
 
KECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STOEY. 105 
 
 cite it in support of the doctrine he had maintained. 
 The counsel on the other side would perhaps deny the 
 correctness of the citation, when Mr. Pinkney would call for 
 the book, and, to the surprise of everybody, would read 
 from it the exact words he had quoted, without the change 
 of a syllable. In spite of these affectations, however, he 
 was a brilliant and powerful lawyer, a fine scholar, and 
 a man of vast resources; and if in the contests of the 
 forum he did not stand confessed as facile princeps, the 
 victor of every contest, yet he was admitted by all who 
 witnessed his displays to be surpassed by none of the 
 athletes with whom he was wont to wrestle in the legal 
 arena. Nothing could be more logical or luminous than 
 his reasoning; his very statement of a case was itself an 
 argument. 
 
 Among the giants of the bar, with whom Mr. Pinkney 
 was accustomed to grapple, continued the Judge, was the 
 Irish exile, Thomas Addis Emmet. " I shall never forget 
 the first case in which these two men were pitted against 
 each other, and tested each other's mettle. It was a case 
 of prize law, and Mr. Pinkney, being perfect master of that 
 branch of the law, in which his antagonist was but slightly 
 versed, and having the advantage moreover of being at 
 home in the arena to which Mr. Emmet was a stranger, 
 gained an easy victory, and not content with that, was 
 somewhat haughty and overbearing in his manner, as he 
 was too apt to be when he lacked a foeman worthy of his 
 steel. Stung by this contemptuous treatment, Mr. Emmet 
 determined to supply his own defects, and, for the next 
 three or four months, devoted himself almost exclusively to 
 the study of that department of the law in which he had 
 been unable to cope with the great Marylander. At the 
 
106 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 end of that time he was employed as counsel in opposition 
 to Mr. Pinkney, in the famous case of the ' Nereide, 1 on 
 the decision of which depended the ownership of a large 
 and very valuable cargo. The speech of Mr. Emmet on this 
 occasion was a masterpiece of argument, learning, and 
 eloquence, and placed him by universal consent in the very 
 front rank of American lawyers. In his eloquent exordium 
 he spoke of the embarrassment of his situation, the novelty 
 of the forum, and the deep interest which the public took 
 in the cause. He spoke in glowing terms of the genius and 
 accomplishments of his opponent, whose fame had extended 
 beyond the Atlantic; and then, in language the most deli 
 cate and touching, he alluded to the contrast presented by 
 his own life to this brilliant career, to the circumstances 
 which had exiled him from his country, and to the treat 
 ment he had received from Mr. Pinkney at the previous 
 trial. All this was said with an air so modest and in terms 
 so full of pathos, that his audience, including the veteran 
 attorneys and gray-headed judges of the Supreme Court, 
 were moved to tears. He then proceeded to his argument, 
 which exhibited a profound knowledge and a firm grasp of 
 the law applicable to the case, and by its powerful logic 
 excited the admiration of both bar and court. Upon his 
 sitting down, Mr. Pinkney at once arose and prefaced his 
 argument, which, I need not say, was worthy of his 
 abilities and fame, with an apology for his former unkind 
 treatment of Mr. Emmet, couched in the most elegant and 
 polished language, surpassing even the latter in pathos, and 
 breathing sentiments so noble and magnanimous, that again 
 the entire assembly, lawyers, court, and spectators, were 
 moved to tears, which this time fell more plenteously ' than 
 from Arabian trees their medicinal gums.' When the 
 
KECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STOEY. 107 
 
 Court adjourned, I asked the author of this masterly 
 and eloquent speech if he would not write out the sub 
 stance of it, so far as he could recall it, for of course I 
 <>ould not expect him to give me the exact words of an 
 exordium thus extemporized, and let me have a copy. 
 ' Come with me to dinner, 1 was the reply, ' and we'll talk 
 about the matter. 1 I dined with him, and after we had 
 risen from the table, he drew from a drawer a large roll of 
 manuscript, elegantly written, for he wrote a beautiful 
 hand, and containing his entire speech word for word as 
 he had delivered it, not only the argument, but the 
 impromptu exordium which had so charmed and affected 
 all who heard it! The truth was, that, with the divining 
 instinct of genius, he had guessed correctly at the course 
 which his adversary would pursue, and carefully prepared 
 himself accordingly. 11 
 
 The case was decided adversely to Mr. Pinkney's client, 
 Judge Story dissenting from the opinion of the other mem 
 bers of the Court. Scarcely, however, had the decision 
 been made, when intelligence came across the Atlantic that 
 Lord Stowell, the head of the Admiralty Court of England, 
 one of the highest authorities in maritime law, had, in a 
 case involving precisely the same principles of prize law as 
 that of the " Nereide, 11 made a decision directly the opposite 
 to that of the United States Supreme Court. With the men 
 tion of this fact, so gratifying to his pride of opinion, Judge 
 Story triumphantly closed his narration. 
 
 At another time Judge Story told the following anecdote 
 of Samuel Dexter, Fisher Ames, and Chief Justice Marshall. 
 " Mr. Dexter was a remarkable man, a man whom, to use 
 Burke's language, if you should meet and talk with him a 
 few minutes on a rainy day under a shed, you would at 
 
108 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 once pronounce a great man. The first time I met him I 
 knew not who he was, and stared in wonderment. Yet his 
 was rather a brilliant mind than a truly great one. Mr. 
 Dexter was once in company with Fisher Ames and Chief 
 Justice Marshall, when the latter began a conversation, or 
 rather a monologue, which lasted some three hours. On 
 their way homeward, Ames and Dexter vied with each other 
 in extolling the learning and mental grasp of their host. 
 After a brief walk, Ames said : ' To tell the truth, Dexter, 
 I have not understood a word of his argument for half an 
 hour.' ' And I,' as frankly responded Dexter, ' have been 
 out of my depth for an hour and a half.' " 
 
 Judge Story was an ardent admirer of Albert Gallatin, 
 whom he ranked as the peer of Alexander Hamilton. Both 
 of these gentlemen, he observed, were foreigners, and they 
 landed on our shores about the same time. " When, as 
 Secretary of the Treasury under Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Gallatin 
 succeeded to Mr. Hamilton, he made no changes, though the 
 latter belonged to the opposing party. Unlike the Italian 
 on whose tombstone was inscribed the significant epitaph, 
 ' I was well, I wished to be better, and I am here,' he did 
 not try to improve upon that which was good. When Mr. 
 Gallatin was a member of Congress, he said to me one day: 
 'We have plenty of eloquence upon the floor, aye, and 
 too much! It is the hard-working committee-man who is 
 needed; the man who rarely speaks, but who can apply 
 himself to hard, dry, yet important statistical labor. 
 Figures of this kind are far weightier and more useful 
 than figures of speech.' If this was true in the days 
 of Mr. Gallatin, what is the fact now?" 
 
 The haste and recklessness with which laws are made 
 and repealed in this country, was a frequent topic of the 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 109 
 
 Judge's denunciation. He once asked an eminent gentle 
 man from Tennessee why the legislature of that State did 
 not meet annually, as did the legislatures of other States. 
 The reply was, " that the laws might have at least a trial 
 before they were repealed," a sarcasm not more pointed 
 than just. 
 
 Judge Story accounted for the provision in the United 
 States Constitution requiring that a person be thirty-five 
 years of age to render him eligible to the office of Senator, 
 by the fact that the framers of that instrument were very 
 distrustful of young men. " He is not yet fifty years old," 
 was an argument which annihilated a canvasser's preten 
 sions. " Some of the ablest statesmen, however, that the 
 world has seen, were young men; for example, Fox, and 
 Pitt, who at twenty-three was by far the ablest man in 
 Parliament. I am aware that I go counter to the judgment 
 of many when I pronounce William Pitt an incomparably 
 greater man than his father, Lord Chatham, a man who 
 was often strangely inconsistent. You all remember his 
 eloquent denunciation of the lord who recommended the 
 employment of the Indians against the Americans in the 
 war of the Revolution; and yet the man from whose lips 
 fell this burst of indignation filed in the British Cabinet a 
 letter in his own handwriting advising the very measure 
 which, when urged by another, he characterizes as in 
 famous ! " 
 
 Judge Story was a profound admirer of Chief Justice 
 Marshall, and could rarely hear his name mentioned with 
 out digressing to panegyrize his learning and intellectual 
 power. " Marshall's favorite expression, said he, was ' It is 
 admitted.' So resistless was his logic, that it was a com 
 mon remark of the bar, that if you once admitted his 
 
110 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 premises, it was all over with you. You were forced to his 
 conclusions; and the only safety, therefore, was in denying 
 everything he asserted. Daniel Webster once said to me, 
 * When Judge Marshall says, It is admitted, sir, I am 
 preparing for a bomb to burst over my head, and demolish 
 all my points.' " 
 
 " Some years ago," remarked the Judge, " I saw a book 
 advertised, entitled ' New Views of the Constitution.' I 
 was startled. What right has a man to announce new 
 views upon this subject? Speculations upon our govern 
 ment are dangerous, and should be frowned upon. That 
 great statesman, Edmund Burke, has wisely and senten- 
 tiously said, ' Governments are practical things, not toys 
 for speculists to play with.' And yet governments must 
 often change, to meet the demands of the times. I have 
 been in public life nearly forty years, and have seen great 
 changes in the country. Men may flatter themselves that 
 now, at least, all is settled; but no! our laws are written 
 upon the sands of time, and the winds of popular opinion 
 gradually efface them; new layers are to be made, and 
 your old writing renewed or changed." 
 
 The following statement was made by the Judge to 
 illustrate the extreme difficulty of framing statutes so as 
 to avoid all ambiguity in their language. Being once 
 employed by Congress to draft an important law, he spent 
 six months in trying to perfect its phraseology, so that its 
 sense would be clear beyond the shadow of a doubt, and not 
 the smallest loophole could be found for a lawyer to creep 
 through. And yet, in less than a year afterward, after 
 having heard the arguments of two able attorneys, he was 
 utterly unable, in a suit which came before him as a 
 Judge of the Supreme Court, to decide upon the statute's 
 meaning. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. Ill 
 
 Being asked one day whether John Tyler was President 
 or Acting President of the United States at the demise of 
 President Harrison, Judge Story replied: "A nice question, 
 gentlemen, and hard to solve. The question was debated 
 in Cabinet meeting; but, on Mr. Webster's opinion, Mr. 
 Tyler was addressed as President. On one occasion, when 
 Chief Justice Taney, of the Supreme Court, was ill, I took 
 his place as Chief Justice, and was thus addressed. At 
 first I felt nervous; but soon becoming used to it, I found 
 it, like public money to new members of Congress, ' not bad 
 to take.' And this was probably the feeling of Mr. Tyler." 
 
 Judge Story was fond of telling that Mr. Webster, on 
 one or two occasions, after grumbling at a legal decision 
 of the former, had afterwards the magnanimity to ac 
 knowledge that he was wrong. We are sure that when the 
 Judge himself was in error, he was frank, on discovering 
 it, to avow the fact. One day in the Moot Court, a 
 student, arguing a case before him, said: "My next authori 
 ty will be one which your Honor will not be disposed to 
 question, a decision by Mr. Justice Story, of the United 
 States Supreme Court.' 1 "I beg your pardon," said the 
 Judge, bowing; "but that opinion by Mr. Justice Story 
 is not law." 
 
 It was well observed by Charles Sumner, in his eulogy 
 on Judge Story, that any just estimate of the man and 
 his works must have regard to his three different char 
 acters, as a judge, as an author, and as a teacher. 
 When we look at his books only, we are astonished at 
 his colossal industry: it seems almost incredible that a 
 single mind, in a single life, should have been able to 
 accomplish so much. His written judgments on his own 
 circuit, and his various commentaries, occupy twenty-seven 
 
112 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 volumes, and his judgments in the Supreme Court of the 
 United States form an important part of thirty-four 
 volumes. Rightly does Mr. Sumner characterize him as 
 the Lope de Vega, or the Walter Scott, of the Common 
 Law. With far more truth might it be said of him 
 than was said by Dryden of one of the greatest British 
 lawyers : 
 
 "Our law that did a boundless ocean seem, 
 Was coasted all and fathomed all by him." 
 
 Besides all his legal labors, he delivered many discourses 
 on literary and scientific subjects, wrote many biographi 
 cal sketches of his contemporaries, elaborate reviews for 
 the "North American," drew up learned memorials to 
 Congress, made long speeches in the Massachusetts Legis 
 lature, contributed largely to the " Encyclopaedia Ameri 
 cana," prepared Reports on Codification, etc., and drafted 
 some of the most important Acts of Congress. The secret 
 of these vast achievements was ceaseless, methodical in 
 dustry, frequent change of labor, and concentration of 
 mind. He economized odd moments, bits and fragments 
 of time, never overworked, and, when he worked, con 
 centrated upon the subject all the powers of his intellect. 
 Add to this, that his knowledge did not lie in undigested 
 heaps in his mind, but was thoroughly assimilated, so as 
 to become a part of his mental constitution. His brain 
 was a vast repository of legal facts and principles, each 
 one of which had its cell or pigeon-hole, from which it 
 was always forthcoming the instant it was wanted. 
 
 No other American lawyer or jurist has so wide-spread 
 a European fame. His legal works, republished in Eng 
 land, are recognized as of the highest authority in all 
 the courts of that country; and his "Conflict of Laws," 
 

 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 113 
 
 embodying the essence of all similar works, as well 
 as the fruits of his own deep thinking, a work of 
 enormous labor, upon a most intricate and perplexing 
 theme, has been translated into many European lan 
 guages, and is cited as the most exhaustive discussion 
 of the subject. Yet, such is fame, this man whose 
 name had crossed the Atlantic, and was on the lips of 
 the profoundest jurists of the Old World, had com 
 paratively little reputation in his lifetime among his 
 own countrymen. Men immeasurably inferior to him, 
 intellectually and morally, overshadowed him in the pub 
 lic mind. And yet no man was more susceptible to 
 merited praise than he. While he despised flattery, and 
 could detect the least taint of it with the quickness of 
 an instinct, his heart was yet as fresh and tender as a 
 child's, and he felt neglect as keenly as the bud the 
 frost. Not soon shall we forget the good humor, mingled 
 with a sensibility that could not be concealed, with which 
 he told the following story of himself, illustrating the 
 saying that " a prophet is not without honor, save in his 
 own country " : 
 
 " One day I was called suddenly to Boston, to attend 
 to some business matters, and on my way thither I dis 
 covered that I had forgotten my pocket-book. It was too 
 late to return, and so when the omnibus halted at the 
 Port (Cambridgeport, half-way between Old Cambridge, 
 the Judge's residence, and Boston,) I ran hastily into the 
 neighboring bank, and asked to be accommodated with a 
 hundred dollars. The cashier stared at me as if he 
 thought me insane; but I noticed that he particularly 
 scrutinized my feet; and then he coldly informed me 
 that he had not the pleasure of recognizing me. I imme- 
 
114 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 diately told him my name, supposing that it might have 
 reached, at least, the limits of my own place of residence. 
 He still kept his eyes upon my feet, and finally, as I 
 was about to leave, more chagrined than disappointed, 
 he requested me to step back, adding that he would be 
 pleased to accommodate me. Upon my inquiring the 
 reason of his delay, he replied : ' Sir, I have never heard 
 your name before, but I know you must be a gentleman 
 from the looks of your boots.' " The unction and perfect 
 good humor with which the Judge told this anecdote, 
 and the joyous laugh with which he concluded it, aside 
 from the absurdity that such a man should be judged of 
 by his material understanding, were irresistible. We 
 need not add, that his pupils laughed, as Falstaff says r 
 " without intervellums," till their faces were " like a 
 wet cloak ill laid up." 
 
 We have spoken of Judge Story's wit. Like Cicero, 
 Burke, Erskine, and many other great lawyers, he loved 
 a keen witticism, and did not consider it beneath his 
 dignity to perpetrate a telling pun. Once at a Phi Beta 
 Kappa dinner, Edward Everett, then Governor of Massa 
 chusetts, gave as a toast: "The legal profession: however 
 high its other members may climb, they can never rise 
 higher than one Story." The shouts of applause which 
 greeted this sally were redoubled when Judge Story jumped 
 up and responded with the following: "Fame follows 
 applause where-mr it (Everett) goes. 11 
 
 We doubt if any teacher ever loved his pupils more 
 deeply, or was more universally loved by them, than the 
 subject of this article. In the success of his "boys, 1 ' as 
 he called them, both at the school and in their after life, 
 he felt a profound interest; their triumphs were his tri- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 115 
 
 amphs, and their failures caused him the keenest pain. 
 The tact with which he adapted himself to the various 
 temperaments and idiosyncrasies of his pupils, and the 
 patience with which he bore any one's dullness, were also 
 remarkable. We remember that one day a somewhat 
 eccentric and outspoken student from Tennessee came to 
 the Judge in the library of the Law School, and holding 
 up an old folio, said: "Judge, what do you understand 
 by this here Rule in Shelley's Case? I've been studying 
 it three days, and can't make anything of it." " Shelley's 
 Case! Shelley's Case!" exclaimed the Judge, with a look 
 of astonishment, as he took the volume and held it up 
 before his eyes, " Do you expect to understand that in 
 three days? Why, it took me three weeks!" 
 
 One of the hobbies of Judge Story was the great 
 blessings conferred on society by Courts of Equity, in 
 remedying the defects of the Common Law. A favorite 
 way of exposing these defects, was to put a case in which 
 the inadequacy of the latter was strikingly apparent, and 
 then naively ask the student: "Does it occur to you, 
 
 Mr. , where your remedy in such a case would lie?" 
 
 The invariable answer, " In a Court of Equity, Sir," was 
 so often repeated that it always provoked a smile from 
 the students. Like many eminent men, Judge Story had 
 his pet quotations, anecdotes, and maxims, which he never 
 wearied of repeating. Few of his living pupils can have 
 forgotten the favorite " Causa proxima, non remold spec- 
 tatur" or the oft-cited aphorism of Rochefoucauld, " There 
 is always something in the misfortunes of our best friends 
 which does not displease us," which must have impressed 
 itself on the Judge's memory simply because in his nature 
 there was not the slightest tincture of the cynicism which 
 tae sentiment expresses. 
 
116 RECOLLECTIONS OF JUDGE STORY. 
 
 When a young lawyer, Judge Story published a volume 
 entitled "Solitude, and other Poems" a literary venture 
 which he deeply regretted in after life. Most of the pieces 
 were of the kind which " neither men, gods, nor booksellers' 
 columns can endure," and the dedication began, 
 
 "Maid of my heart, to thee I string my lyre." 
 
 Of this production few copies are extant, the author 
 having bought up and destroyed all he could find. There 
 are two copies in Harvard College Library. He also pub 
 lished a Fourth-of-July oration, which contained about 
 the average number of "spread-eagles." The ease with 
 which he rhymed is well illustrated by the following 
 verses. Chancing to step into the office of the Salem 
 "Register," just as the first number was about to be 
 issued, he was asked by the editor to write a motto for 
 that newspaper. Taking a pen, young Story dashed off 
 the following impromptu: 
 
 "Here shall the press the people's rights maintain, 
 Unawed by influence, and unbribed by gain: 
 Here patriot truth her glorious precepts draw, 
 Pledged to religion, liberty, and law." 
 
 During the lifetime of Judge Story, a volume of " Mis 
 cellanies " from his pen was published, containing his 
 literary orations, contributions to reviews, and his beauti 
 ful address at the consecration of Mount Auburn Ceme 
 tery. There, under the trees that overshadow the lovely 
 dell in which he spoke, lie his remains; and in the 
 chapel, near the entrance to this home of the dead, 
 stands a marble statue of the great jurist, executed by 
 his son, W. W. Story, the sculptor and poet, an exqui 
 site work of art, in which all the characteristic qualities 
 of the original are idealized, yet most faithfully repro 
 duced and preserved. 
 
MORAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 ~1\ /T"ANY of our readers doubtless remember Sylvester 
 **"*-*- Graham, the great originator and expounder of the 
 bran-bread system of diet, and his theories. They remem 
 ber how eloquently he inveighed against the consumption 
 of animal food, and how he startled all the old ladies, both 
 male and female, throughout the length and breadth of the 
 land, by telling them that tea was a slow poison, which 
 would infallibly shorten their lives. It is said that one 
 venerable old lady, who had entered upon her ninety-second 
 year, abandoned with horror the delicious beverage, re 
 solved never to touch " the pizen " again, lest she should 
 not live out half of her days. Many was the stout Falstaff 
 that pined away to a skeleton under the Graham regimen. 
 Eobustious, corpulent fellows, perfect Daniel Lamberts 
 in ponderosity, who had trundled along a mountain of 
 flesh before trying a pea-soup diet, were suddenly reduced 
 so thin as hardly to have weight enough to turn a money- 
 scale, or opaqueness to cast a shadow. Horace Greeley 
 came near being reduced to a " dried neat's tongue, a mere 
 dagger of lath, 1 ' or second Calvin Edson, by the experiment. 
 At one time Graham had some ten thousand or more disci 
 ples in this country, who not only were the sworn foes of 
 beef, pork and mutton, but denounced Mocha and old Gov 
 ernment Java, scorned even Dr. Parr's compromise con- 
 
118 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 cerning tea, " non possum tecum vivere, nee sine te" 
 and declared, with Hood, that 
 
 "If wine ie a poison, eo is tea, 
 
 Only in another shape; 
 What matter if one die 
 
 By canister or grape? 
 
 
 
 By long searching, Graham might now, if alive, muster 
 a baker's dozen of followers; but probably, if they were 
 marshaled, he would exclaim, with Falstaff, " I'll not march 
 through Coventry with them, that's flat. Nay, and the 
 villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves 
 on." 
 
 Now, just as there are Grahamites who think that, be 
 cause they are virtuous, there shall be " no more cakes and 
 ale," living skeletons, who 
 
 " defy 
 
 That which they love most tenderly; 
 Quarrel with minced pie, and disparage 
 Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge; 
 Fat ox and goose itself oppose, 
 And blaspheme custard through the nose," 
 
 so there are moral Grahamites, too. They have a certain 
 course of mental dietetics, which they declare to be most 
 conducive to the welfare of man, the microcosm, in his 
 relations to the macrocosm. The moral Grahamites are 
 the men who set their faces against the higher and more 
 difficult branches of education taught in our colleges; who 
 prefer the wholesome bran-bread of the practical sciences 
 to the roast-beef and plum-pudding of scholastic lore. Give 
 us, they say, the man who makes a new mowing-machine, 
 or a Hobbs-defying, burglar-proof lock, harder to be opened 
 than the riddle of the Egyptian sphinx; give us the man 
 who can construct a tunnel under Lake Michigan, who 
 cnn build a railroad across the Rocky Mountains, or a first- 
 
MORAL GRAHAMISM. 110 
 
 rate steamship. Such men are the great benefactors and 
 movers of the world. The poet Longfellow, who makes 
 Golden Legends; his neighbor, Winlock, who scoops up 
 new asteroids from the depths of space; Powers, who 
 carves statues in marble; Bierstadt, who transports us 
 amid the marvels of the Yosemite; Whitney, who detects 
 the affinities of remote languages, and Emerson, who culti 
 vates divine philosophy, find little favor with our Gra- 
 hamites. Look, they say, at Pullman and his palace res 
 taurant cars, and at Donald McKay and his big ships! 
 Donald is the greatest man on our seaboard. And cer 
 tainly, if Providence intended that shipbuilding should be 
 the end of our creation, he would be greater than Soc 
 rates or Plato, Shakspeare or Milton, and only equaled by 
 Yanderbilt, James Fisk, Jr., or the late filibustering, law 
 less George Law. 
 
 But what is this " practical " education for which so 
 many persons are clamoring? Are there any two persons 
 among them who can agree as to what it is? If by prac 
 tical education is meant that minimum of training and 
 teaching which will just enable a man to house, clothe and 
 feed himself, to pay his bills and keep clear of the poor- 
 house, which is summed up in the three R's, " Readin', 
 Ritin' and Rithmetic," then we deny that such an educa 
 tion subserves, in the highest degree, even its own petty 
 and selfish ends. The wretched economy which tries to sift 
 the so-called practical from the true, the good, and the 
 beautiful, fails to get even the good it covets. But the 
 most popular idea of a practical education is that which 
 regards it as a training for a particular calling or profes 
 sion. Our colleges are begged to treat Smith's son as an 
 incipient tape-seller, Brown's as an undeveloped broker, 
 
120 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 Thompson's as an embryo engineer, and Jones's as a bud 
 ding attorney. Well, we admit to the fullest extent the 
 right of Smith, Brown, Thompson, and Jones, juniors, to 
 qualify themselves for any occupation they choose ; but we 
 deny their right to demand of the State or of our colleges 
 a special training which shall qualify them for buying 
 calico, building bridges, drawing declarations, or speculat 
 ing in stocks. Young men demand an education which shall 
 make them good merchants, lawyers, and carpenters; but 
 they need first of all, and more imperiously than all things 
 else, to be educated as men. 
 
 Of a piece of timber you may make a mast, a machine, 
 a piano, or a pulpit ; but, first of all, it must become timber, 
 sound, solid, and well seasoned. The highest and truest 
 education is not that which develops, trains, and strength 
 ens this or that faculty, but that which vitalizes and stimu 
 lates all the faculties; which does for the mind what the 
 gymnasium does for the body, energizes it by robust and 
 bracing exercises. Whatever does this most effectually, 
 whatever makes the mind of the pupil conscious of its own 
 energies, and gives it the power of rightly using them, is 
 the very thing he needs, however little use he may have for 
 it after the drill is over. The thing he is taught, the 
 lesson learned, is not the end, but the means of education. 
 There can be no greater mistake made, than to suppose that 
 a man is losing his time, unless he is learning something 
 which can be turned to immediate account in the calling 
 to which he is destined. Professor Maiden, in a lecture on 
 the " Introduction of the Natural Sciences into General 
 Education,' 1 has so ably exposed this fallacy, that we cannot 
 help quoting the passage. In speaking of the demand made 
 by some parents that education should have a direct relation 
 
MORAL GRAHAMISM. 121 
 
 to gainful pursuits, that, for example, a boy who is to 
 spend his days among figures and calculations, in buying or 
 in selling, in constructing engines or in navigating ships, 
 should not " waste his time " in mastering Greek or Latin, 
 the writer says: 
 
 " If the education of the body were the matter in ques 
 tion, instead of the education of the mind, the absurdity of 
 this conduct would be abundantly manifest. Put the case 
 of a boy of a weakly constitution and effeminate habits ; and 
 suppose that family connections and interest make it seem 
 desirable that he should enter the army, and that he is 
 committed to the care of some one, an old soldier, if you 
 like, who professes to prepare him for his military career. 
 At the end of four or five years, when he ought to obtain 
 his commission, his father may think it right to inquire 
 into his fitness for his profession. ' Have you studied 
 tactics? 1 ' No, sir. 1 'Have you studied gunnery? 1 'No, 
 sir. 1 ' Are you perfect in the last instructions issued from 
 the Horse Guards for the manoeuvres of cavalry? 1 ' I have 
 not seen them, sir. 1 ' Have you learned the broad-sword 
 exercise?' 'No. 1 'Can you. put a company of infantry 
 through their drill ?' 'No. 1 ' Have you practiced platoon 
 firing? 1 ' No. 1 ' Can you even fix a bayonet in a musket? 1 
 ' I have never tried, sir. 1 After such an examination, we 
 may suppose the father expostulating indignantly with the 
 veteran under whose care his son had been placed. The 
 latter might reply : ' Sir, when you entrusted your son to 
 my training, he was weak and sickly ; he had little appetite, 
 and was fastidious in his eating ; he could" bear no exposure 
 to the weather; he could not walk two miles without 
 fatigue; he was incapable of any severer exercise; he was 
 unwilling, and indeed unable, to join in the athletic sports 
 6 
 
122 MOKAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 of boys of his age. Now he is in perfect health, and wants 
 and wishes for no indulgence; he can make a hearty dinner 
 on any wholesome food, or go without it, if need be; he 
 will get wet through, and care nothing about it; he can 
 walk twelve or fifteen miles a day; he can ride; he can 
 swim; he can skate; he can play a game at cricket, and 
 enjoy it; though he has not learnt the broad -sword exer 
 cise, he fences well; though he has never handled a soldier's 
 musket, he is an excellent shot with a fowling-piece; he has 
 a firm foot, a quick eye, and a steady hand; he is a very 
 pretty draughtsman; he is eager to enter his profession; 
 and you may take my word for it, sir, he will make a brave 
 and active officer.' " 
 
 Was ever a method of training more triumphantly vin 
 dicated? The principle upon which the veteran rests his 
 argument is, that by his system he has invigorated the 
 physical constitution of his pupil, and so has fitted him for 
 any profession in which habits of activity or of endurance 
 may be required, a principle which is equally sound when 
 applied to the discipline of the mind. In the ancient gym 
 nasium, the first end sought was to produce a muscular 
 man, an athlete. When this was accomplished, it mattered 
 little whether he entered the lists of the wrestler, or of the 
 boxer, or of the racer. The first and most indispensable 
 requisite to success in any calling above that of a day- 
 laborer, is mental vigor. A man may have a head crammed 
 with information; he may be a walking encyclopaedia of 
 facts and opinions, of dates and statistics on this subject 
 and that; but without intellectual force, a trained and 
 athletic mind, he is little better than the case that contains 
 the books from which his knowledge has been drawn. The 
 man who has had a special training, directed with exclusive 
 
MORAL GRAHAMISM. 123 
 
 reference to a particular pursuit, may be well instructed, 
 but in no sense can he be called an educated or cultivated 
 man. As the development of a single member or organ 
 of the body is not true physical culture, so the inordinate 
 development of the memory, the imagination, or the rea 
 soning faculty, is not intellectual culture. The lirst con 
 dition of successful bodily labor is health; 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 endur 
 ance of fatigue, so, in like manner, general culture of mind 
 is the best aid to professional and scientific study, and the 
 educated man can do what the illiterate man cannot. As 
 Prof. J. H. Newman, himself a brilliant example of the 
 culture that comes from liberal studies, remarks: "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 these sciences or callings, 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." 
 
 Let us not be misunderstood. We cherish no extreme 
 opinions on this subject. We have no sympathy with 
 those who think that all wisdom is summed up in a 
 knowledge of Greek particles, with the men who can 
 give exactly all the dates of the petty skirmishes in the 
 
124 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 Peloponnesian War, and yet have always supposed that 
 Hyde and Clarendon were different persons, or men 
 like Dr. George, who doubted whether Frederick the Great, 
 with all his victories, could conjugate a Greek verb in 
 mi. We cannot think a tittle less of Burke's genius, 
 because, in the House of Commons, he accented the 
 antepenult instead of the penult of vectigal; or of the 
 Duke of Wellington's, because, though he conquered 
 Napoleon, he turned round, when reading his Chancellor's 
 address at Oxford, and whispered, "I say, is it Jac-o-bus?" 
 But we do contend that, as the records of human thought 
 are in many languages, so no man can be deemed edu 
 cated who knows no language but a modern one, and 
 that his own. That person cannot, certainly, be called 
 an intelligent workman who has no care for the state or 
 condition of the instrument with which he works. If 
 the sword be blunt, or made of inferior steel, it will do 
 little execution. If the vessel wants capacity, you cannot 
 freight her with a valuable cargo; or if her engine wants 
 power, she will make little headway against the billows. 
 The mind is the man's instrument, be he lawyer, doctor, 
 merchant, engineer, or farmer; and the stronger and more 
 highly finished the instrument, the better will be its 
 work. 
 
 If there is any one faculty of the mind which is more 
 valuable than the others, which is absolutely indispen 
 sable to success in every calling, it is the judgment. It 
 is the master-principle of business, literature, and science, 
 which qualifies one to grapple with any subject he may 
 apply himself to, and enables him to seize the strong 
 point in it. How is this power to be obtained? Is it 
 by the study of any one subject, however important? 
 
MORAL GRAHAMISM. 125 
 
 Assuredly not; but only by study and comparison of the 
 most opposite things; by the most varied reading and 
 discipline first, and observation afterwards. If there is 
 one well-ascertained fact in education, it is, that the man 
 who has been trained to think upon one subject 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; so necessary is it to know something of a 
 thousand other things, in order to know one thing well. 
 It is, however, the meanest of all the cants of igno 
 rance to assert that there is any incompatibility between 
 business or practical talents and scholarship, for the 
 successful booby to cry down accomplishments in the 
 counting-room or the carpenter's shop. As if cultivated 
 intelligence, added to refinement of manners and system 
 atic order, should accomplish less than undisciplined native 
 power ! as if the Damascus blade lost its edge by being 
 polished, or as if the supporting column of an edifice were 
 less strong because its shaft is fluted and its capital carved! 
 We believe that it might easily be shown that a liberal 
 education, which is only another name for intelligence, 
 knowledge, intellectual force, promotes success in every 
 honest calling, even though that calling be to cut cheese 
 or open oysters, or, even lower still, to make political 
 speeches and electioneer for Congress. But, suppose that 
 it were not so; that it did not contribute one jot or tittle 
 to success, in the vulgar sense of that word. Were men 
 designed to be mere merchants, farmers, or mechanics, and 
 nothing more? Man is not a means, but an end. He 
 claims a generous culture, not because he is to follow the 
 
126 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 plow, wield the sledge, or buy and sell wheat or cotton, but 
 because he is man. The fact that the ordinary pursuits 
 of life are widely removed from liberal studies is of itself 
 a cogent reason why those who are to be incessantly 
 dealing with material forms should early foster a taste 
 for those studies which, in the language of another, 
 " reclaim men from the dominion of the senses ; recruit 
 their overtasked energies; quicken within them the sensi 
 bilities of taste; and invite them to the contemplation oi 
 whatever is lovely in the sympathies of our common 
 nature, splendid in the conquests of intellect, or heroic in 
 the trials of virtue." 
 
 Those who clamor for the so-called " practical educa 
 tion " forget that, antecedent to his calling as merchant, 
 engineer, or carpenter, there is another profession, more 
 important still, for which every man should be trained, 
 " the profession of humanity." As Rousseau, in his famous 
 treatise on education, which contains many golden truths 
 imbedded among its errors, justly says: "Nature has 
 destined us for the offices of human life, antecedently to 
 our destination concerning society. To live, is the profes 
 sion I would teach him [a youth]. Let him first be a 
 man; he will, on occasion, as soon become anything else 
 that a man ought to be as any person whatever. Fortune 
 may remove him from one place to another as she pleases; 
 he will always be found in his place." We believe in 
 "practical" education most sincerely; only we would use 
 the word in its broadest and most comprehensive sense. 
 We call that education practical which educes all a man's 
 faculties, and gives him possession of himself. We call 
 that practical education which enables a man to bring all 
 his faculties to bear at once with energy and earnestness 
 
MO11AL GKAHAMISM. 127 
 
 on any given point, and to keep them fastened on that 
 point until the task he has set for them is accomplished, 
 We call that education practical which gives a man a clear, 
 conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, and 
 enables him to develop them with fullness, to express them 
 with eloquence, and to urge them with force. That is practi 
 cal education which 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 irrelevant. 
 That is practical education which enables him to estimate 
 with precision the worth of an argument, to detect the 
 hidden relations of things, to trace effects to their causes, 
 to grasp a mass of detached and dislocated facts, reduce 
 them to order and harmony, and marshal them under the 
 sway of some general law. That is practical education 
 which enables him to know his own weakness, to command 
 his own passions, to adapt himself to circumstances, to per 
 ceive the significance of actions, events, and opinions. 
 That is practical education which opens his mind, expands 
 it, and refines it; fits it to digest, master, and use its 
 knowledge; gives it flexibility, tact, method, critical exact 
 ness, sagacity, discrimination, resource, address and expres 
 sion. 
 
 Such a man is full of resources, and prepared for any 
 event. Misfortunes cannot kill him, nor disasters depress 
 him. He organizes victory out of defeat, and converts 
 obstacles into stepping-stones to success. Life to him is 
 never stale, flat, and unprofitable; but always fresh, 
 stimulating, opulent. In the words of the polished writer 
 already quoted, "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 
 
128 MORAL GRAHAMISM. 
 
 is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently, and 
 gain a lesson seasonably when he has nothing to impart 
 himself; 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 grace 
 fulness 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 happiness 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 disappointment have a charm." 
 
STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 
 
 T""\IO LEWIS, whose writings on bodiculture, if they 
 -* * are not very profound, have, at least, the merit of 
 brevity and good sense, calls the attention of the public 
 to the prevailing fallacy that strength is a synonym for 
 health. He knows intelligent persons who really believe 
 that you may determine the comparative health of two 
 men by measuring their arms. The man whose arm 
 measures twelve inches is twice as healthy as he whose 
 arm measures but six. " This strange and thoughtless 
 misapprehension," he says, " has given rise to nearly all 
 the mistakes thus far made in the physical-culture move 
 ment. I have a friend who can lift nine hundred pounds, 
 and yet is a habitual sufferer from torpid liver, rheuma 
 tism, and low spirits. The cartmen of our cities, who 
 are our strongest men, are far from being the healthiest 
 class, as physicians will testify. On the contrary, I have 
 many friends who would stagger under three hundred 
 pounds, that are in capital trim." 
 
 These truths seem so obvious, when thus stated and 
 illustrated, as hardly to rise above commonplace. Why, 
 then, repeat them? Because, by the vast majority of 
 " health-lifters," gymnasium-frequenters, and would-be ath 
 letes, they are either unknown or practically ignored. 
 Every pale, sickly, pigmy-limbed man wants to be phys 
 ically strong; to be a Hercules, a on of Anak, at least 
 
130 STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 
 
 a small Heenan, is absolutely essential, he thinks, to the 
 enjoyment of perfect health. If he cannot expect to lift 
 a ton, or to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, 
 he must, at least, be able to take a daily " constitutional " 
 of five miles and back, or to raise five hundred pounds 
 without bursting a blood-vessel. But what is the mean 
 ing of the word "strong"? From the glibness with 
 which some men repeat the term, one would suppose 
 that nothing is easier than to define it, that the propo 
 sition that a man is very strong is as simple as the 
 proposition that he is six feet high. The truth is, how 
 ever, that the word is ambiguous, that under its seem 
 ing unity there lurks a real dualism of meaning, as a 
 few facts will show. 
 
 In the first place, one of the most obvious tests of 
 strength is the power of exertion. But great power of 
 exertion may co-exist with extreme delicacy of organism, 
 and even with organic disease. Napoleon, who slept four 
 hours and was on horseback twenty, who toiled so ter 
 ribly that he half-killed his secretaries, underwent 
 fatigues that would have broken down nine out of 
 ten "strong" men; yet his digestion was always delicate 
 and easily deranged, and he died of an hereditary organic 
 disease at the age of 55. Julius Caesar was not what is 
 popularly called a " strong " man ; yet he was a prodigy 
 of exertion and endurance. Again: it is a striking fact 
 that great power of exertion in one direction does not 
 always imply its existence in another. There are hun 
 dreds of men who can perform tasks that severely tax 
 the muscles, and endure with impunity all kinds of ex 
 posure and hardship, who collapse under a continuous 
 and severe strain upon the eyes, the brain, and the 
 
STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 131 
 
 nerves; and the converse is as often seen. Dr. Elam, the 
 author of that deeply interesting work, " A Physician's 
 Problems," tells us that not long ago a friend reviewed 
 with him the names of six or eight upper wranglers at 
 the English Universities for the last twenty years, and 
 that, with very few exceptions, these and nearly all the 
 "double first" men were alive and well; while, on the 
 other hand, on reviewing the history of two boats' crews 
 of picked men, of whom they had full and accurate in 
 formation, they found that not one of them was alive. 
 Surely, such havoc as this was never found among men 
 tal athletes. 
 
 Again, while there is a recognized limit to physical 
 endurance, the limit to mental toil or strain is by no 
 means so well denned. A man may saw wood, plough 
 the earth, or lay brick, until he is physically exhausted, 
 and can do no more ; but the limit of mental labor is 
 far less evident. Look at the amount of work which 
 that dwarf, hunchback, and invalid, that "drop of pure 
 spirit in cotton wool," Alexander Pope, contrived to 
 perform! When he got up in the morning, he had to 
 be sewed up in stiff canvass stays, without which he 
 could not stand erect. His thin body was wrapped in 
 fur and flannel, and his meagre, spectral legs required 
 three pairs of stockings to give them a respectable look. 
 Almost literally a pigmy in size, he was so deformed 
 that his life was one long disease. Look at brave Samuel 
 Johnson, so feeble as a child that the physician said he 
 never knew another raised with such difficulty, struggling 
 all his life with a severe scrofulous disorder, that twisted 
 his body into strange contortions, and with a constitu 
 tional depression and hypochondria, "a vile melancholy," 
 
132 STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 
 
 that kept him, as he said, " mad half his life, or at least, 
 not sober," so languid at times that he could hardly 
 tell the hour on the clock, and yet, with one pair of 
 hands and one brain, doing the work of an academy! 
 In spite of his exhausting labors and still more exhaust 
 ing diseases, he lived to the age of seventy-five. See, again, 
 the giant labors performed by Channing, with his frail, 
 clayey tabernacle; and note the vast amount of writing 
 and other useful work performed by those physical ghosts 
 of men, Professor Goddard, of Brown University, and 
 the late Professor Hadley, of Yale ! Need we add to these 
 the cases of Torstenson, the Swedish General, who, af 
 flicted with gout, had to be borne on a litter, yet by the 
 rapidity of his movements astonished Europe; or that of 
 General Wolfe, who, though the seeds of several fatal dis 
 eases were laid in his constitution from infancy, yet 
 wrested from the French the Gibraltar of America; or 
 that of Palmerston, who, according to Sir Henry Holland, 
 under a fit of gout which would have sent other men 
 groaning to their couches, used to continue his work of 
 reading or writing on public business almost without 
 abatement, amid the chaos of papers which covered the 
 floor as well as the tables of his room? 
 
 But, some one will ask, has that spectral-looking lawyer, 
 or that statesman, who apparently performs such prodigies 
 of labor, that pale, lean man with a face like parchment, 
 and nothing on his bones, a constitution? We answer in 
 the words of the London " Times" to a similar query some 
 years ago, "Yes, he has; he has a working constitution, 
 and a ten times better one than you, my good friend, with 
 your ruddy face, and strong, muscular frame. You look, 
 indeed, the very picture of health, but you have^ in reality, 
 
STRENGTH AKD HEALTH. 133 
 
 only a sporting constitution, not a working one. You do 
 very well for the open air, and get on tolerably well with 
 fine, healthy exercise, and no strain on your brain. But 
 try close air for a week, try confinement, with heaps of 
 confused papers, blue books, law books, or books of refer 
 ence to get through, and therefrom extract liquid and 
 transparent results, and you will find yourself knocked 
 up and fainting, when the pale, lean man is if not 'as 
 fresh as a daisy,' which he never is, being of the perpetu 
 ally cadaverous type, at least as unaffected as a bit of 
 leather, and not showing the smallest sign of giving way. 
 There are two sorts of good constitutions, good idle con 
 stitutions, and good working ones." 
 
 Another test of strength is the power of enduring hard 
 ship, touching which we see repeated the paradox we have 
 already noted. Far from being associated invariably with 
 great muscular force, this power is often found in union 
 with extreme delicacy of organization. Who, in catas 
 trophes and seasons of great peril, has not seen frail, deli 
 cate women, who would scream and almost faint at the 
 sight of a mouse, bear up under toils, perils, and sufferings 
 which would kill the stoutest men ? Who has forgotten the 
 Iignum-vita3 toughness of Dr. Kane? Though a sailor by 
 profession, he never went to sea without suffering from 
 sea-sickness; he had a heart disease and a chronic rheu 
 matism; yet he had a vitality, an iron endurance, which 
 enabled him to go through sufferings in the Arctic Seas 
 under which big, burly sailors, and other men specially 
 trained to endure such hardships, sank into the grave. 
 William III, of England, was not a strong man, nor was 
 Luxemburg, his fiery opponent in the Netherlands. A 
 Greek educator would have deemed it an abuse of the 
 
134 STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 
 
 medical art to cherish the flickering flame of life in either 
 of them. Yet it is doubtful whether among the two hun 
 dred thousand men whom they commanded, there was one 
 with greater power of endurance than that of the hunch 
 backed dwarf that led the fiery hosts of France, or that of 
 the asthmatic skeleton that conducted the stubborn troops 
 of England. 
 
 In thinking of the ideal of humanity, the great man, 
 we almost always picture him as a noble bodily presence, 
 full of health and vigor, and with a mind as healthy and 
 vigorous as its abode. Yet how often is this notion contra 
 dicted by the facts ! In what mean and unsightly caskets 
 have some of the rarest and most potent essences of nature 
 been enclosed! 
 
 Among the tests of strength, longevity must be consid 
 ered one; and here we are confronted by facts that make 
 the explanation of " strength " still more difficult. Dr. 
 Elam cites the names of twenty-five celebrated thinkers, 
 than whom none have ever exerted a greater influence 
 upon literature, history, and philosophy, who lived to the 
 average age of ninety years. Yet many of them, it is well 
 known, were prodigious workers and voluminous authors, 
 and not a few of them, there is reason to believe, would be 
 regarded by our modern physical-culture men as weaklings. 
 One of them, Galen, wrote three hundred volumes, and 
 lived nearly a century; another, who had a very feeble 
 constitution, and wrote seven or eight hours daily, Lewis 
 Cornaro, reached a full hundred years. On the other 
 hand, Dr. Winship, the leading apostle of " muscular Chris 
 tianity" in this country, who at one time could lift a 
 weight of three thousand pounds, died at the age of forty- 
 two. Ascertain the united ages of twenty-five of the most 
 eminent farmers the world has seen, and is it probable that 
 
STRENGTH AND HEALTH. 135 
 
 the sum total would amount, as in the case of these think 
 ers, to twenty- two hundred and fifty years? 
 
 It is customary, where a seemingly feeble man, tortured 
 with disease, shows a durability or toughness which an 
 athletic man lacks, outliving and outworking him, to ex 
 plain the mystery by saying that the former has " a better 
 constitution" than the lattar. But does this solve the 
 riddle? Evidently not. It simply gives it another name. 
 What is that thing which, for convenience, or to hide our 
 ignorance, we call " constitution," which may be constant 
 ly impaired, but has the ability to withstand so many 
 shocks? It has been well observed by a thoughtful 
 writer that " a table would not be called strong if two of 
 its legs were cracked and several of its joints loose, how 
 ever tough might be its materials, and however good its 
 original workmanship. But if the table showed a power 
 of holding together and recovering itself, notwithstanding 
 every sort of rough usage, it might well be called strong, 
 though it was ultimately broken up; and its strength 
 might not unnaturally be measured by the quantity of ill- 
 usage which it survived. It is precisely in this power of 
 self -repair that the difference between a body and a mere 
 machine -resides. The difficulty of saying what is meant 
 by physical strength is in the difficulty of distinguishing 
 between the mechanical and what, for fault of a better 
 word, must be called the vital powers of the body. Look 
 upon the body as a machine, and the broken arm, the 
 tubercles in the lungs, or the cancer in the liver, prevent 
 you from calling it strong; but, if it goes on acting for 
 years, and wonderfully recovering itself again and again 
 from the catastrophe which these defects tend to produce, 
 there must be a strong something somewhere. What and 
 where is that something ? " 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OP BOOKS AND 
 READING.* 
 
 THE value of books as a means of culture is at this 
 day recognized by all men. The chief allies and 
 instruments of teachers, they are the best substitutes 
 for teachers, and, next to a good college, a good library 
 may well be chosen as a means of education. Indeed, a 
 book is a voiceless teacher, and a great library is a virtual 
 university. A literary taste is at once the most efficient 
 instrument of self-education and the purest source of en 
 joyment the world affords. It brings its possessor into 
 ever-renewing communion with all that is noblest and best 
 in the thought of the past. The winnowed and garnered 
 wisdom of the ages is his daily food. Whatever is lofty, 
 profound, or acute in speculation, delicate or refined in 
 feeling, wise, witty, or quaint in suggestion, is accessible to 
 the lover of books. They enlarge space for him and pro 
 long time. More wonderful than the wishing cap of the 
 Arabian tales, they transport him back to former days. 
 The orators declaim for him and the poets sing. He be 
 comes an inhabitant of every country, a contemporary of 
 all ages, and converses with the wisest, the noblest, the 
 tenderest, and the purest spirits that have adorned human 
 ity. All the sages have thought and have acted for him ; 
 
 *This essay is reprinted, by permission, with some changes, from a paper 
 contributed by the author to the Special Report on "The Public Libraries 
 of the United States of America, their History, Condition and Management." 
 lately made by Hon. John Eaton, LL.D., Commissioner of the U. S. Bureau of 
 Education, and published at Washington. 
 
OF BOOKS AND READIKG. 137 
 
 or, rather, he has lived with them; he has hearkened to 
 their teachings; he has been the witness of their great 
 examples; and, before setting his foot abroad in the world, 
 has acquired the experience of more countries than the 
 patriarchs saw. 
 
 The most original thinkers have been most ready to 
 acknowledge their obligations to other minds, whose wis 
 dom has been hived in books. Gibbon acquired from his 
 aunt " an early and invincible love of reading, which," he 
 declared, " he would not exchange for the treasures of 
 India." Doctor Franklin traced his entire career to Cotton 
 Mather's " Essays to Do Good," which fell into his hands 
 when he was a boy. The current of Jeremy Bentham's 
 thoughts was directed for life by a single phrase, " The 
 greatest good of the greatest number," caught at the end 
 of a pamphlet. Cobbett, at eleven, bought Swift's " Tale of 
 a Tub," and it proved what he considered a sort of " birth 
 of intellect." The genius of Faraday was fired by the vol 
 umes which he perused while serving as an apprentice to 
 an English bookseller. One of the most distinguished per 
 sonages in Europe, showing his library to a visitor, ob 
 served that not only this collection, but all his social suc 
 cesses in life, he traced back to " the first franc he saved 
 from the cake shop to spend at a bookstall." Lord Macau- 
 lay, having asked an eminent soldier and diplomatist, who 
 enjoyed the confidence of the first generals and statesmen 
 of the age, to what he owed his accomplishments, was in 
 formed that he ascribed it to the fact that he was quar 
 tered, in his young days, in the neighborhood of an excel 
 lent library, to which he had access. The French historian 
 Michelet attributed his mental inspiration to a single book, 
 a Virgil, he lived with for some years; and he tells us that 
 
138 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AHD READING. 
 
 an odd volume of Racine, picked up at a stall on the quay, 
 made the poet of Toulon. " If the riches of both Indies," 
 said Fenelon, " if the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe, 
 were laid at my feet, in exchange for my love of reading, 
 I would spurn them all." Books not only enrich and en 
 large the mind, but they stimulate, inflame, and concen 
 trate its activity; and though without this reception of 
 foreign influence a man may be odd, he cannot be original. 
 The greatest genius is he who consumes the most knowl 
 edge and converts it into mind. What, indeed, is college 
 education but the reading of certain books which the com 
 mon sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science 
 already accumulated? 
 
 A well-known American writer says that books are only 
 for one's idle hours. This may be true of an Emerson; 
 but how many Emersons are there in the reading public? 
 If the man who gets almost all his information from the 
 printed page, "needs a strong head to bear that diet," 
 what must be the condition of his head who abstains from 
 this aliment? A Pascal, when his books are taken from 
 him to save his health, injured by excessive study, may 
 supply their place by the depth and force of his personal 
 reflection; but there is hardly one Pascal in a century. 
 Wollaston made many discoveries with a hatful of lenses 
 and some bits of glass and crystal; but common people 
 need a laboratory as rich as Tyndall's. To assume that 
 the mental habits which will do for a man of genius will 
 do for all men who would make the most of their facul 
 ties, is to exaggerate an idiosyncrasy into a universal law. 
 The method of nature, it has been well said, is not ecstasy, 
 but patient attention. " There are two things to be con 
 sidered in the matter of inspiration; one is, the infinite 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OP BOOKS AND READING. 139 
 
 God from whom it comes, the other the finite capacity 
 which is to receive it. If Newton had never studied, it 
 would have been as easy for God to have revealed the cal 
 culus to his dog Diamond as to Newton. We once heard 
 of a man who thought everything was in the soul, and so 
 gave up all reading, all continuous thought. Said another, 
 ' If all is in the soul, it takes a man to find it.' " It is true 
 that, as Ecclesiasticus tells us, " a man's mind is sometimes 
 wont to tell him more than seven watchmen that sit above 
 in a high tower"; but it is also true that the man will 
 hear most of all who hearkens to his own mind and to the 
 seven watchmen besides. 
 
 No doubt books, like every other blessing, may be 
 abused. "Reading," as Bacon says, " makes a full man"; 
 and so does eating; but fullness, without digestion, is 
 dyspepsia, and induces sleepiness and flabbiness, both fatal 
 to activity. The best books are useless, if the book-worm 
 is not a living creature. The mulberry leaf must pass 
 through the silkworm's stomach before it can become silk, 
 and the leaves which are to clothe our mental nakedness 
 must be chewed and digested by a living intellect. The 
 mind of the wise reader will react upon its acquisitions, 
 and will grow rich, not by hoarding borrowed treasures, 
 but by turning everything into gold. There are readers 
 whose wit is so smothered under the weight of their accu 
 mulations as to be absolutely powerless. It was said of 
 Robert Southey that he gave so much time to the minds of 
 other men that he never found time to look into his own. 
 Robert Hall said of Dr. Kippis that he piled so many books 
 upon his head that his brains could not move. It was to 
 such helluones librorum, or literary anacondas, who are 
 possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it, that 
 
140 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AtfD READING. 
 
 Hobbes of Malmesbury alluded, when he said that had he 
 read as many books as other men, he would have known 
 as little. There is in many minds, as Abernethy com 
 plained of his, a point of saturation, which if one passes, 
 by putting in more than his mind can hold, he only drives 
 out something already in. The history of competitive ex 
 aminations shows that the kind of knowledge gained by 
 cramming is painfully evanescent; it melts away with lack 
 of use, and leaves nothing behind. It was one of the ad 
 vantages of the intellectual giants of old, that the very 
 scantiness of their libraries, by compelling them to think for 
 themselves, saved them from that habit of intellectual de 
 pendence, of supplying one's ideas from foreign sources, 
 which is as sure to enfeeble the thinking faculty as is a 
 habit of dram-drinking to enfeeble the tone of the stomach. 
 But though books may be thus abused, and many fine wits, 
 like Dr. Oldbuck's, "lie sheathed to the hilt in ponderous 
 tomes," will any man contend that such abuse is neces 
 sary? The merely passive reader, who never wrestles with 
 his author, may seem to be injured by the works he pe 
 ruses; but in most cases the injury was done before he 
 began to read. A really active mind will not be weighed 
 down by its knowledge any more than an oak by its leaves, 
 or than was Samson by his locks. John Milton walked 
 gracefully enough under the load of his immense learning; 
 and the flame of Bishop Butler's genius was certainly not 
 stifled by the mass of books he consumed. Great piles of 
 fuel, which put out the little fires, only make the great 
 fires burn. If a man is injured by multifarious knowl 
 edge, it is not because his mind does not crave and need 
 the most various food, but because it "goes into a bad 
 skin." His learning is mechanically, not chemically, 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 141 
 
 united to the mind; incorporated by contact, and not by 
 solution. The author of "Hudibras" tells us that the 
 sword of his hero sometimes 
 
 " ate into itself for lack 
 Of somebody to hew or hack/' 
 
 and there is reason to believe that the mind may be as 
 fatally enfeebled by turning perpetually upon itself, and 
 refusing all help or impulse from abroad, as by burying 
 itself among books, and resting upon the ideas of other 
 men. There are drones in cells as well as in libraries. 
 
 Such being the value of books, how can the college stu 
 dent better spend his leisure time, beyond what is required 
 for sleep, meals, bodily exercise, and society, than in read 
 ing? But what books shall he read, and how shall he read, 
 them? Shall he let his instincts guide him in the choice, 
 or shall he read only the works which have been stamped 
 with the approval of the ages? How may he acquire, if 
 he lacks it, a taste for the highest types, the masterpieces, 
 of literature? Are there any critical tests by which the 
 best books may be known, and is there any art by which 
 "to pluck out the heart of their mystery"? These ques 
 tions, if he is a thoughtful young man, anxious to make 
 the most of his time and opportunities, will confront him 
 at the very threshold of his college life. Of the incom- 
 petency of most students to answer them for themselves, 
 those persons who have watched them when drawing books 
 from college libraries can have little doubt. Not to speak 
 of the undergraduates who read merely for amusement, or 
 of the intellectual epicures who touch nothing but dainties, 
 nibbling at a multitude of pleasant dishes without getting 
 a good meal from any, how few, even of the laborious 
 and conscientious students who would economize their pre- 
 
142 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 cious moments, read wisely, with definite purpose or plan! 
 How many, ignorant that there is a natural order of ac 
 quirement, that, for young readers, biography is better 
 than history, history than philosophy, descriptive poetry 
 than metaphysical, begin with the toughest, the most 
 speculative, or the most deluding books they can find! 
 How many, having been told that the latest works in cer 
 tain departments of knowledge are the best, plunge at once 
 into Mill, Spencer, Buckle, Darwin, and Taine! books 
 pre-eminently suggestive to well-trained minds, but too 
 difficult of digestion for minds not thoroughly instructed. 
 There is, perhaps, no more frequent folly of the young 
 than that of reading hard, knotty books, for the sake of 
 great names, neglecting established facts in science, his 
 tory, and literature to soar into regions where their vanity 
 is nattered by novel and daring speculations. 
 
 Again, how many students read books through by rote, 
 without interest or enjoyment, without comprehending or 
 remembering their contents, simply because they have been 
 told to read them, or because some great man has profited 
 by them ! Who has not seen young men plodding wearily 
 through bulky volumes of history or science, utterly 
 unsuited to their actual state of development, under the 
 delusion that they were getting mental strength and illu 
 mination, when, in fact, they were only inflaming their 
 eyes and wasting their precious time? An heroic fresh 
 man, full of enthusiasm, and burning to distinguish him 
 self by some literary conquest, fancies that it would be 
 "a grand thing" to possess himself of universal history, 
 and so he attacks the history of the world, in seven, 
 volumes, by M. Charles Rollin. He plods through Hume, 
 Gibbon, Robertson, and other "works which no gentle- 
 
PKOFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 143 
 
 man's library should be without," journeying over page 
 after page with incredible patience, and with a scrupulous 
 attention to notes, and, in rare cases, to maps, that is 
 morally sublime. No tome is too thick for him, no type 
 too small; whether the author is luminous or voluminous, 
 it is all the same to him. Years pass, perhaps the young 
 man graduates, before the truth flashes upon him that the 
 object of reading is not to know books, but things; that its 
 value depends upon the insight it gives; and that it is no 
 more necessary to remember the books that have made one 
 wise than it is to remember the dinners which have made 
 one strong. He finds that instead of enriching and 
 invigorating his mind he has taken the most effectual 
 course to stultify it. He has crammed his head with 
 facts, but has extracted from them no wisdom. He has 
 mistaken the husks of history for the fruit, and has no 
 more assimilated his heterogeneous acquisitions than a 
 millstone assimilates the corn it grinds. The corn wears 
 out the millstone, giving it a mealy smell; and the books 
 have worn out the student, giving him only the faintest 
 odor of intellectual culture and discipline. Almost every 
 college has its literary Calvin Edsons, living skeletons 
 that consume more mental food than the strong and 
 healthy, yet receive from it little nourishment, remaining 
 weak and emaciated on much, while the man of sound 
 constitution grows vigorous on little. 
 
 The difficulties of deciding what books to read are 
 greatly multiplied in our day by the enormous number of 
 volumes that weigh down the shelves of our libraries. In 
 the National Library at Paris it is said there are 800,000 
 separate volumes, or, according to a late writer's estimate. 
 148,760 acres of printed paper! The library of the British 
 
 
144 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 Museum, which contains over 700,000 separate volumes, is 
 said to have forty miles of book shelves. And yet the 
 largest library in the world does not contain over a 
 quarter part of the books that have been printed since 
 the time of Gutenberg and Fust, while new books are 
 flying from the press as thick as snowflakes on a wintry 
 day. Five thousand new publications are issued in a year 
 in England, and it has been ascertained that over ten thou 
 sand works, including maps, or a million volumes, are 
 poured forth annually from the press of Germany alone. 
 The Leipsic catalogue contains the names of fifty thousand 
 German authors, and it is estimated that the time will 
 speedily come when the number of German writers will 
 exceed that of German readers. What reader is not 
 appalled by such statistics? Who can cope with even the 
 masterpieces of literature, to say nothing of the scientific 
 and theological works, whose numbers are increasing in 
 geometrical ratio? Steel pens and steam-presses have 
 multiplied the power of production, and railways hurry 
 books to one's door as fast as printed; but what has 
 increased the cerebrum and the cerebellum ? The two lobes 
 of the human brain are not a whit larger to-day than 
 when Adam learned his ab's and eVs in the great book 
 of nature. The spectacles by which we may read two 
 books at once are yet to be invented. De Quincey calcu 
 lates that if a student were to spend his entire life from 
 the age of twenty to eighty in reading only, he might 
 compass the mere reading of some twenty thousand 
 volumes; but, as many books should be studied as well as 
 read, and some read many times over, he concludes that 
 five to eight thousand is the largest number which a 
 student in that long life could hope to master. What 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND BEADING. 145 
 
 realms of books, then, must even the Alexanders of letters 
 leave unconquered! The most robust and indefatigable 
 reader who essays to go through an imperial library cannot 
 extract the honey from one-twentieth of this hive ; though 
 he read from dawn to dark, he must die in the first 
 alcoves. 
 
 It is true that, in another view, the facts are not quite 
 so discouraging. Newton said that if the earth could be 
 compressed into a solid mass, it could be put into a nut 
 shell ; and so, if we could deduct from the world of books all 
 the worthless ones and all those that are merely repetitions, 
 commentaries, or dilutions of the thoughts of others, we 
 should find it shrunk into a comparatively small compass. 
 The learned Huet, who read incessantly till he was ninety- 
 one, and knew more of books perhaps than any other man 
 down to his time, thought that if nothing had been said 
 twice, everything that had ever been written since the 
 creation of the world, the details of history excepted, might 
 be put into nine or ten folio volumes. Still, after all de 
 ductions have been made, the residuum of printed matter 
 which one would like to read is so great as to be absolutely 
 terrifying. The use of books is to stimulate and replenish 
 the mind, to give it stuff to work with, ideas, facts, senti 
 ments; but to be deluged with these is as bad as to lack 
 them. A mill will not go if there is too little water, but it 
 will be as effectually stopped if there is too much. The 
 day of encyclopaedic scholarship has gone by. Even that 
 ill-defined creature, " a well-informed man," is becoming 
 every year more and more rare; but the Huets and the 
 Scaligers, the Bacons, who " take all knowledge to be 
 their province," and the Leibnitzes, who presume " to 
 drive all the sciences abreast," must soon become as 
 7 
 
146 PROFESSOKSHIPS OF BOOKS AND BEADING. 
 
 extinct as the megatherium or the ichthyosaurus. The 
 most ambitious reader who now indulges in what Sydney- 
 Smith calls the foppery of universality, speedily learns 
 that no individual can grasp in the limits of a lifetime 
 even an elementary knowledge of the many provinces of 
 old learning, enlarged as they are by the vast annexations 
 of modern discovery; and, like Voltaire's little man of 
 Saturn, who lived only during five hundred revolutions, 
 or fifteen thousand of our years, he complains, as he 
 closes his career, that scarcely has he begun to pick up 
 a little knowledge before he is called on to depart. 
 
 For all these reasons we cannot but think that our 
 colleges, while they provide the student with libraries, 
 should also provide him with a professor of books and 
 reading. It is not enough to introduce him to these quar 
 ries of knowledge; he should also be taught where to sink 
 his shafts and how to work them. Mr. Emerson, speaking 
 of such a professorship in one of his later essays, says: 
 " I think no r hair is so much wanted." Even the ripest 
 scholar is puzzled to decide what books he shall read 
 among the myriads that clamor for his attention. What, 
 then, must be the perplexity of one who has just entered 
 the fields of literature! If in Bacon's time some books 
 were " to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few 
 to be chewed and digested," how much greater must 
 seem the necessity of discrimination at this day, when the 
 amount of literary pabulum has quadrupled and even 
 quintupled! Is there not then an absolute necessity that 
 the student who would economize his time and make the 
 best use of his opportunities, should be guided in his 
 reading by a competent adviser? Will it be said that, 
 according to the theory of a collegiate education, the 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 147 
 
 studies of the curriculum will demand all his time; that 
 he will have no spare hours for general culture? We 
 reply that, as a matter of fact, whatever the theory, in 
 no college does the student, as a rule, give his whole 
 time to the regular lessons, however long or difficult. 
 Unless very dull or poorly prepared, the student does 
 find time to read, often several hours a day, and he 
 is generally encouraged to do so by the professors. The 
 question, therefore, is not whether he shall concentrate 
 all his time and attention upon his text-books, but 
 whether he shall read instructive books, for a definite 
 purpose and under competent direction, or shall acquire, 
 without direction, the merest odds and ends of knowledge. 
 We live in a day when it is the practice in every 
 calling to utilize things which were once deemed value 
 less. In some of the great cities of Europe even the 
 sweepings of the streets are turned to account, being sold 
 to contractors who use them as dressing for farms. In 
 the United States Mint at Philadelphia the visitor to the 
 gold room notices a rack placed over the floor for him 
 to walk on; on inquiring its purpose, he is told that it 
 is to prevent the visitor from carrying away with the 
 dust of his feet the minute particles of precious metal 
 which, in spite of the utmost care, will fall upon the 
 floor when the rougher edges of the bar are filed, and 
 that the sweepings of the building save yearly thousands 
 of dollars. How much more precious are the minute 
 fragments of time which are wasted by the young, especi 
 ally by those who are toiling in the mints of knowledge! 
 Who can estimate the value to a college student of this 
 golden dust, these raspings and parings of life, these 
 leavings of days and remnants of hours, so valueless 
 
148 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 singly, so inestimable in the aggregate, could they be 
 gleaned up and turned to mental improvement! Let us 
 suppose that a young man, on entering college, econo 
 mizes the odds and ends of his time so far as to read 
 thoughtfully twelve pages of history a day. This would 
 amount, omitting Sundays, to about three thousand seven 
 hundred pages, or twelve volumes of over three hundred 
 pages each, in a year. At the end of his college course 
 he would have read forty-eight volumes, enough to have 
 made him master of all the leading facts, with much of 
 the philosophy, of history; with the great, paramount 
 works of English literature; with the masterpieces (in 
 translations) of French, German, Spanish, and Italian 
 literature, and with not a little of the choicest periodical 
 literature of the day. What a fund of knowledge, of 
 wisdom, and of inspiration would these forty- eight vol 
 umes, well chosen, well understood, and well digested, be 
 to him! What a quickening, bracing, and informing 
 study would even one great book prove! The histories of 
 Hallam, Grote, Merivale, Mommsen, Milman, Macaulay, 
 Motley; Clarendon's gallery of portraits, Gibbon's great 
 historic painting; any one of these might date an epoch 
 in the student's intellectual life. The thorough, consci 
 entious study of any masterpiece of literature, Dr. John 
 son thought, wo aid make a man a dangerous intellectual 
 antagonist. Over and above all this, the student would 
 have formed habits of self-improvement and of economy 
 in the use of his time which would be of more value 
 than his acquisitions, and would influence his whole life. 
 In saying this we do not forget that it is not well for 
 the intellectual worker to be always in the harness, or 
 to be a slave to the clock. We have no sympathy with 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 149 
 
 those persons who, with a pair of compasses, divide the 
 day into portions, alloting one portion and no more to 
 one thing, and another portion to another, and who think 
 it a sin to lose a minute. On the contrary, we believe 
 there is a profound truth in the saying of Tillier that 
 "le temps le mieux employe est celui que Ton perd." 
 Much of our education, even of our best education, is 
 acquired, not only out of school, but out of the study, 
 in the hours which morbid or mechanical workers con 
 sider lost. Deduct from our acquisitions all that is 
 learned in seemingly idle hours, in times of recreation 
 and social intercourse, and the residuum would be a heap 
 of bones without flesh to cover them. Making, however, 
 all deductions for necessary rest and relaxation, we still 
 believe there are few students who cannot find time to 
 read twelve pages a day. Are there not many who through 
 ignorance of what to read, and how to read, and even of 
 the chief advantages of reading, waste double this time? 
 Will it be said that it is enough for the student to 
 read a few choice authors, to absorb thoroughly a half- 
 dozen or more representative books, and that these he 
 can select for himself ? No doubt there are advantages 
 in thus limiting one's reading. So far as reading is not 
 a pastime, but a part of the systematic cultivation of the 
 faculties, it is useful only so far as it implies close and 
 intimate knowledge. The mind should be not a vessel 
 only, but a vat. A man may say that he has read Mil 
 ton's minor poems, if he has skimmed over them lightly 
 as he would skim over the columns of a newspaper, or 
 if he dispatches them as a person boasted that he had 
 gone through a geometry in one afternoon, only skipping 
 the A's, and B's, and crooked lines that seemed to have 
 
150 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 been thrown in to intercept his progress; but he has not 
 read them to any good purpose until they have fascinated 
 his imagination and sunk into his memory. Really great 
 books must be read and re-read with ceaseless iteration, 
 must be chewed and digested till they are thoroughly 
 assimilated, till their ideas pass like the iron atoms of 
 the blood into the mental constitution; and they hardly 
 begin to give weight and power to the intellect, till we 
 have them so by heart that we scarcely need to look into 
 them. It is not in the number of facts one has read 
 that his intellectual power lies, but in the number he 
 can bring to bear on a given subject, and in his ability 
 to treat them as data, or factors of a new product, in an 
 endless series. 
 
 It is hardly possible to censure too sharply what Sir 
 William Hamilton calls " the prevailing pestilence of 
 slovenly, desultory, effeminate reading." A great deal 
 of the time thus spent is but the indulgence of intel 
 lectual dram-drinking, affording a temporary exhilaration, 
 but ultimately emasculating both mind and character. 
 The Turk eats opium, the Hindoo chews tobacco and 
 betel nut, the civilized Christian reads; and opium, tobacco, 
 and books, all alike tend to produce that dizzy, dreamy, 
 drowsy state of mind which unfits a man for all the 
 active duties of life. But true as all this is, " the man 
 of one book, 11 or of a few books, is, we fear, a Utopian 
 dream rather than a reality, in this nineteenth century. 
 The young man who has a keen, vigorous appetite for 
 knowledge, and who would be abreast with his age, will 
 never be content to feed on a few choice authors, even 
 though each be a library. He knows that as the Ama 
 zon and the Mississippi have hundreds of tributaries, so 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 151 
 
 it is with every great stream of knowledge. He sees that 
 such are the interrelations and overlappings of science 
 that, to know one subject well, it is necessary to know 
 something of a thousand others. He recognizes, sooner 
 or later, the fact that, as Maclaurin says, " our knowledge 
 is vastly greater than the sum of what all its objects 
 separately could afford; and when a new object comes 
 within our reach, the addition to our knowledge is the 
 greater the more we already know; so that it increases, 
 not as the new objects increase, but in a much higher 
 proportion." Above all, he knows that, as in our animal 
 economy it is a disastrous policy to eat exclusively the 
 nitrates which contribute to the muscles, the phosphates 
 which feed the brain and nerves, or the carbonates which 
 develop fat, so we starve a part of our mental faculties 
 if we limit our mental diet to a few dishes. The intel 
 lectual epicure who would feed on a few choice authors 
 is usually the laudator temporis acti, the indiscriminate 
 eulogist of the past; and this, of itself, renders worthless 
 all his recipes for mental culture, and cuts him off from 
 the sympathy of the young. He is forever advising them 
 to read only classic authors, which would be to live in 
 an intellectual monastery. It is quite possible to feed a 
 young man with too concentrated a diet. It has been 
 truly said by a wise teacher that if there is one law more 
 sure than another in intellectual development, it is that 
 the young must take their start in thought and in taste 
 from the models of their own time; from the men whose 
 fame has not become a tradition, but is ringing in clear 
 and loud notes in the social atmosphere around us. 
 
 There are some persons, no doubt, who are opposed to 
 all guidance of the young in their reading. They would 
 
152 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 turn the student loose into a vast library and let him 
 browse freely in whatever literary pastures may please 
 him. With Johnson they say, " Whilst you stand deliber 
 ating which book your son shall read first, another boy 
 has read both; read anything five hours a day, and you 
 will soon be learned. 1 ' Counsel, advice in the choice of 
 books, they condemn as interfering with the freedom of 
 individual taste and the spontaneity which is the condition 
 of intellectual progress. " Read," they say to the young 
 man, "what you can read with a keen and lively relish; 
 what charms, thrills, or fascinates you; what stimulates 
 and inspires your mind, or satisfies your intellectual 
 hunger; 'in brief, sir, study what you most affect.'" No 
 doubt there is a vein of wisdom in this advice. It is quite 
 possible to order one's reading by too strict and formal a 
 rule. A youth will continue to study only that in which 
 he feels a real interest and pleasure, constantly provoking 
 him to activity. It is not the books which others like, 
 or which they deem best fitted for him, that he will read 
 and read with profit, but the books that hit his tastes 
 most exactly and that satisfy his intellectual cravings. 
 No sensible educator will prescribe the same courses of 
 reading for two persons, or lay down any formal, cast- 
 iron rules for the direction of the mental processes. That 
 which is the most nutritious aliment of one mind may 
 prove deleterious and even poisonous to another. 
 
 To some extent, too, the choice of books may be left 
 to individual taste and judgment. There will be times 
 when, under the attraction of a particular subject, or the 
 magnetism of a particular author, it may be advisable to 
 break away from the prescribed list, and follow the 
 thoughtful promptings of nature. That must be a sorry 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 153 
 
 tameness of intellect that feels no impulse to get out of 
 the groove of even the most judicious course of reading. 
 Again, there are some minds that have an eclectic quality 
 which inclines them to the reading they require, and in a 
 library they not only instinctively pounce upon the books 
 they need, but draw at once from them the most valu 
 able ideas as the magnet draws the iron filings scattered 
 through a heap of sand. But these are rare cases, and 
 can furnish no rule for general guidance. To assert that 
 a learned and judicious adviser cannot help the ordinary 
 student in the choice of books, is to assert that all teach 
 ing is valueless. If inspiration, genius, taste, elective 
 affinities are sufficient in the selection and reading of 
 books, why not also in the choice of college studies? 
 Why adopt a curriculum? The truth is, the literary 
 appetite of the young is often feeble, and oftener capri 
 cious or perverted. While their stomachs generally reject 
 unwholesome food, their minds often feed on garbage and 
 even poison. The majority of young persons are fond of 
 labor-saving processes and short cuts to knowledge, and 
 have little taste for books which put much strain upon the 
 mind. The knowledge too easily acquired may impart 
 a temporary stimulus and a kind of intellectual keen 
 ness and cleverness, but it orings no solid advantage. 
 It is, in fact, " the merest epicurism of intelligence, 
 sensuous, but certainly not intellectual." Magnify as we 
 may the necessity of regarding individual peculiarities 
 in education, it is certain that genius, inspiration, or 
 an affinity for any kind of knowledge, does not necessarily 
 exclude self-knowledge, self-criticism, or self-control. As 
 another has said: "If the genius of a man lies in the 
 development of the individual person that he is, his man- 
 
154 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 hood lies in finding out by study what he is, and what he 
 may become, and in wisely using the means that are fitted 
 to form and perfect his individuality." 
 
 Will it be said that there are manuals or " courses of 
 reading," such as Pycroft's, or President Porter's excellent 
 work, by the aid of which an undergraduate may select 
 his books without the aid of a professor? We answer that 
 such manuals, while they are often serviceable, can never 
 do the work of a living guide and adviser. Books can 
 never teach the use of books. No course of reading, how 
 ever ideally good, can be exactly adapted to all minds. 
 Every student has his idiosyncrasies, his foibles, his " stond 
 or impediment in the wit," as Bacon terms it, which must 
 be considered in choosing his reading-matter, so that not 
 only his tastes may be in some degree consulted, but " every 
 defect of the mind may have a special receipt." 
 
 Will it be objected to our plan, that a vast majority of 
 American colleges are ill endowed, and cannot afford to 
 have a Professorship of Books and Reading, however de 
 sirable? We reply that such a chair, specially endowed, 
 is not indispensable; but that its duties, in the smaller 
 colleges, might be discharged by the professor of English 
 Literature, or by an accomplished librarian. 
 
 But, it may be asked, what are the qualifications, and 
 what will be the duties, of such a literary gustator and 
 guide? We reply that a professor of books and reading 
 should be a man of broad and varied culture, with cath 
 olic tastes, a thorough knowledge of bibliography, espe 
 cially of critical literature, and much knowledge of men; 
 one who can readily detect the peculiarities of his pupils, 
 and who, in directing their reading, will have constant 
 reference to these as well as to the order of nature and 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 155 
 
 intellectual development. While he may prepare, from 
 time to time, courses of reading on special topics, and espe 
 cially on those related to the college studies, he will be still 
 more useful in advising the student how to read most advan 
 tageously; in what ways to improve the memory; how to 
 keep and use commonplace books; when to make abstracts; 
 and in giving many other hints which books on reading 
 never communicate, and which suggest themselves only to 
 one who has learned after many years of experience and 
 by many painful mistakes the secret of successful study. 
 He will see that the young men who look to him as their 
 guide read broadly and liberally, yet care " multum legere 
 potius quam multa" He will see that they cultivate " the 
 pleasure grounds as well as the corn fields of the mind"; 
 that they read not only the most famous books, but the 
 best reputed current works on each subject; that they read 
 by subjects, and not by authors; perusing a book not be 
 cause it is the newest or the oldest, but because it is the 
 very one they need to help them on to the next stage of 
 their inquiries ; and that they practice subsoil plowing by 
 re-reading the masterpieces of genius again and again. 
 Encouraging them to read the books they " do honestly 
 feel a wish and curiosity to read," he will teach them to 
 discriminate, nevertheless, between true desire, the moni 
 tion of nature, and that superficial, false desire after 
 spiceries and confectioneries, which, as Carlyle says, is 
 " so often mistaken for the real appetite, lying far deeper, 
 far quieter, after solid nutritive food"; and, discouraging 
 short cuts in general, he will yet often save the student 
 days of labor by pointing out some masterly review article 
 in which is condensed into a few pages the quintessence 
 of many volumes. 
 
156 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 Perhaps one of the greatest, services which such a 
 teacher might perform for the undergraduate would be 
 in showing him how to economize his reading, how to 
 transfer or inspirit into his brain the contents of a good 
 book in the briefest time. At this day, the art of read 
 ing, or at least one of the arts, is to skip judiciously, 
 to omit all that does not concern us, while missing noth 
 ing that we really need. Some of the best thinkers rarely 
 begin a book at the beginning, but dive right into the 
 middle, read enough to seize the leading idea, dig out 
 the heart of it, and then throw it by. In this way a 
 volume which cost the author five years of 'toil, they will 
 devour at a night's sitting, with as much ease as a spider 
 would suck the juices of a fly, leaving the wings and legs 
 in the shape of a preface, appendix, notes, and conclusion 
 for a boiled joint the next day. It is said that Patrick 
 Henry read with such rapidity that he seemed only to 
 run his eye down the pages of a book, often to leap over 
 the leaves, seldom to go regularly through any passage; 
 and yet, when he had dashed through a volume in this 
 race-horse way, he knew its contents better than anybody 
 else. Stories similar to this of "the forest-born Demos 
 thenes" are told of some of his contemporaries. Won 
 ders are recounted of their powers of perusal; how 
 Johnson would swoop down upon his prey like the eagle, 
 and tear out the heart of a book at once; how Burke, 
 reading a book as if he were never to see it again, de 
 voured two octavo volumes in a stage-coach; and how 
 package after package of these sweet medicines of the 
 mind were thrown in to Napoleon on the island of St. 
 Helena, like food to a lion, and with hoc presto dis 
 patched. It is said that Coleridge rarely read a book 
 
PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 157 
 
 through, but would plunge into the marrow of a new 
 volume, and feed on all the nutritious matter with sur 
 prising rapidity, grasping the thought of the author, and 
 following out his reasonings to consequences of which he 
 had never dreamed. 
 
 Chief-Justice Parsons, of Massachusetts, who, according 
 to Chief-Justice Parker, " knew more law than anybody 
 else, and knew more of other things than he did of law," 
 read books with a similar rapidity, taking in the mean 
 ing not by single words but by whole sentences, which 
 enabled him to finish several books in a single evening. 
 Thierry, the historian, tells us of himself that from the 
 habit of devouring long pages in folio, in order to ex 
 tract a phrase and sometimes one word among a thou 
 sand, he acquired a faculty which astonished him, that 
 of reading in some way by intuition, and of encountering 
 almost immediately the passage that would be useful to 
 him, -all the vital power seeming to tend toward a single 
 vital point. Carlyle devours books in the same wholesale 
 way, plucking out from an ordinary volume "the heart 
 of its mystery " in two hours. It is absurd, of course, to 
 suppose that every man, above all, that young men, 
 will be able with profit to dash through books as did 
 these great men; but all students can be taught how, by 
 practice, to come nearer and nearer to such a habit. It 
 is a miserable bondage to be compelled to read all the 
 words in a book to learn what is in it. A vigorous, live 
 mind will fly ahead of the words of an author and antic 
 ipate his thought. Instead of painfully traversing the 
 vales of commonplace, it will leap from peak to peak on 
 the summit of his ideas. Great quickness, acuteness. and 
 power of concentration are required to do this; but it is 
 
158 PROFESSORSHIPS OF BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 a faculty susceptible of cultivation and measurably attain 
 able by all. The first thing to be learned by every stu 
 dent is how to read. Few know how, because few have 
 made it a study. Many read a book as if they had taken 
 a sacramentum militare to follow the author through all 
 his platitudes and twaddle. Like the American sloth, 
 they begin at the top of the tree, and never leave it till 
 they have devoured all of which they can strip it, whether 
 leaves or fruit. Others read languidly, without re-acting 
 on the author or challenging his statements, when the 
 pulse should beat high, as if they were in battle and the 
 sound of the trumpet were in their ears. We are told by 
 Dr. 0. W. Holmes, who was a classmate of the late Dr. 
 H. B. Hackett, that when the latter was at Phillips Acad 
 emy, Andover, he " fastened his eyes upon a book as if it 
 were a will making him heir to a million." A reader 
 who is thus enthusiastic, and knows the secret of his art, 
 will get through a book in far less time, and master it 
 more thoroughly than another, who, ignorant of the art, 
 has plodded through every page. 
 
THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING-. 
 
 E science of cookery, which has so long been neg- 
 lected by Americans, is beginning at last to provoke 
 their attention. The labors of Professor Blot mark an 
 epoch in our dietetic history. In lectures and magazine 
 essays he has taught us how to eat, and, as pre-essential 
 to it, how to roast, fry, and boil; and the lessons are of 
 vital importance to our health and vigor as a people. 
 Englishmen and Americans have too long regarded the art 
 and mystery of cooking with contempt, as beneath the dig 
 nity of a cultivated, high-minded m?an. But good cookery 
 is only another name for economy, health, temperance and 
 longevity; and what can be more inconsistent than to 
 require a diploma of the man who professes to cure the 
 diseases caused by vile cookery, and to regard him as 
 eminently respectable, and yet to allow quacks and em 
 pirics, the most slovenly and uninstructed persons in 
 the community, to create them? 
 
 That a man's energy, happiness, and even goodness, are 
 dependent more or less upon his bodily condition, and con 
 sequently upon the condition of his stomach, few persons at 
 this day will hesitate to admit. " A sound mind in a sound 
 body " is a condition, not only of healthy intellectual, but 
 of healthy spiritual life. Hippocrates went so far as to 
 assert that all men are born with equal capacity, and that 
 the mental differences in men are owing to the different 
 kinds of foods they consume, a theory which was very 
 
 159 
 
160 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 
 
 plausibly illustrated by the late Mr. Buckle. A man of 
 the kindliest impulses has only to feed upon indigestible 
 food for a few days, and forthwith his liver is affected, and 
 then his brain. His sensibilities are blunted; his uneasi 
 ness makes him waspish and fretful. He is like a hedge 
 hog with the quills rolled in, and will do and say things 
 from which in health he would have recoiled. Dr. John 
 son said truly that " every man is a rascal when he is 
 sick;' 1 and Sydney Smith did not exaggerate when he 
 affirmed that " old friendships are often destroyed by 
 toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has often led to sui 
 cide." Who does not know that a nervous headache, an 
 attack of dyspepsia, a rheumatic pain, even so trifling a 
 thing as a cold in the head, will often convert the most 
 amiable of men into a bull-dog? Even so intellectual a 
 man as William Hazlitt, writing to his lady-love, could 
 say: "I never love you so well as when I think of sit 
 ting down with you to dinner, on a boiled scrag-end of 
 mutton and hot potatoes." The most blissful hours of 
 domestic life are those most pervaded by the element of 
 domesticity; and no prudent wife will despise the addi 
 tional charm added to the soothing effects of her presence 
 by the influence of " a boiled scrag-end of mutton and hot 
 potatoes." Who does not know that one of the secrets of 
 begging favors successfully is to ask for them immediately 
 after dinner. Many a man, who, before meal-time, would 
 not give a sixpence for any purpose, will, post-prandially, 
 talk with unction of the miseries of our race, and hand over 
 his greenbacks without grumbling. The same person that 
 at eleven o'clock A.M. repulsed a missionary with icy indif 
 ference, and almost laughed the world's conversion to 
 scorn, will sing Heber's hymn with feeling, and almost 
 
THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 161 
 
 shed tears over the benighted condition of the Hottentots 
 and Kickapoos, at three in the afternoon. Is there a lob 
 byist at Washington who is ignorant of the fact that his 
 " little bill " is more clearly apprehended by a legislator 
 after his one or two o'clock meal; or is there a wife who 
 doubts that the way to a man's heart is through his stom 
 ach? "He had not dined," says Shakspeare of Coriolanus; 
 and to the flatulence and acerbity thus caused in the hero's 
 stomach Menenius ascribes his rejection of the prayers of 
 
 Rome: 
 
 "He had not dined; 
 
 The veins unfilled, our blood is cold, and then 
 We pout upon the morning, are unapt 
 To give or to forgive; but when we have stuffed 
 These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood, 
 With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls 
 Than in our priest-like fasts." 
 
 The truth that man is half-animal has too often been 
 ignored by divines and moralists. The health which is 
 dependent upon a good digestion has much more to do with 
 a man's piety than has generally been supposed. Every 
 minister of the Gospel has to grapple with cases of con 
 science which baffle all ordinary spiritual treatment, and 
 which turn out at last to be simply cases of physical dis 
 order whose remedy is in the pharmacopeia, or more fre 
 quently in the larder or cook-book. Constitutional, hered 
 itary, and occasional diseases are constantly at work, 
 modifying men's opinions, feelings, and practices. Dr. 
 Mason, of New York, used to say that the grace that 
 would make John look like an angel, would be only just 
 enough to keep Peter from knocking a man down. If 
 the house of this tabernacle be shattered, and in constant 
 need of props and repairs, its sympathetic tenant is apt 
 to be like its crazy dwelling-place. There are only two 
 
162 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 
 
 bad things in this world, said Hannah More, sin and bile. 
 Was she ignorant that a large part of the sin springs from 
 bile? 
 
 The doctrine that health has a great deal to do with 
 godliness may not be very flattering to our pride; but 
 we must accept our natures, as the transcendentalist did 
 " the universe," and, accepting them, we must bow to the 
 plain fact that a ladder reaching to Heaven must, if we are 
 to climb it, have its feet upon the ground; and that, to 
 reach to the highest degree of spiritual excellence, we must 
 begin with physical and mental soundness. It is an in 
 dubitable truth that a man not only reasons better, but 
 loves more warmly, gives more generously, and prays 
 more fervently, when well than when ill. A man of 
 unquestionable piety once said that he could not worship 
 God until he had eaten his breakfast. It is equally true 
 that a man who is well fed, clothed, and housed is a more 
 amiable being than one who tacks the comforts of life. A 
 man before dinner may talk scandal or write scathing 
 criticism; may crawl like a horse-fly over the character or 
 the writings of a neighbor; but, after he has well eaten 
 and drunken, the thing is an impossibility. There is some 
 thing in a generous meal that exorcises the devils of 
 disparagement and calumny, and substitutes therefor the 
 spirits of good-fellowship and philanthropy. It may be 
 doubted whether half of the suicides, murders, heresies, 
 false philosophies, and apostacies that have stained the 
 annals of our race, have not had their origin remotely in 
 a disordered stomach. Voltaire affirms that the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew was primarily due to the utter inca 
 pacity of the King to digest his food. Had Josephine 
 been a good cook, perhaps history might have been spared 
 
THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 163 
 
 one of its saddest scandals. It is not the " fat, sleek- 
 headed man," but the "lean and hungry Cassius " that is 
 dangerous. 
 
 As a moral institution, therefore, dinner cannot be too 
 highly valued; but it has also its intellectual aspects. 
 Even the literature of a nation, and its intellectual 
 development generally, are more or less dependent on its 
 cookery. It is easy to assert that the mind of an author 
 should be independent of his physique, that, being the 
 nobler part of the man, it ought to rise superior to the 
 trammels imposed on it by the body, or external influ 
 ences. Your stout, robustious persons, with nerves of 
 whip-cord and frames of cast iron, cannot understand 
 why the delicate, sensitive frame of the child of genius 
 should be " servile to every skyey influence, 1 ' as Shaks- 
 peare calls it; or why a man who earns his bread and 
 butter by scribbling on foolscap, should not be able to 
 dash off Iliads, Divine Comedies, and Hamlets at all times 
 and seasons, just as another man wields the broad-axe, 
 handles the pitchfork, or shoves the jack-plane. It is, 
 nevertheless, a stubborn fact with which literary men are 
 only too familiar, that the flow and quality of a man's 
 ideas may be affected by even such vulgar and common 
 place things as victuals. The elder Kean understood so 
 well the physiological and psychological effects of diet, 
 that he regularly adapted his dinner to his part; he ate 
 pork when he had to play tyrants; beef for murderers; 
 boiled mutton, for lovers. "Are you not afraid of com 
 mitting murder after such a meal?" inquired Byron of 
 Moore, on seeing him occupied with an underdone beef 
 steak. Had Shakspeare lived on corned beef and cabbage, 
 he might have produced the monster Caliban, but he 
 
164 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 
 
 could never have conceived the delicate Ariel; and had 
 Milton lived on pork and beans, ten chances to one he 
 would have introduced the hog into his description of 
 Paradise. M. Esquiros, an acute Spanish writer, in speak 
 ing of the English diet, expresses the opinion that beer, 
 the national drink, has inspired the English poets, their 
 artists, and their great actors: "The English, 1 ' he adds, 
 " attribute to the use of this liquid the iron muscles of 
 their laboring classes, who struggle so valiantly, afloat 
 and ashore, in factories and vessels, for the power of 
 Great Britain: they even attribute their victories to it. 
 ' Beer and wine,' an orator exclaimed at a meeting where 
 I was present, ' met at Waterloo : wine red with fury, 
 boiling over with enthusiasm, mad with audacity, rose. 
 thrice against that hill on which stood a wall of immov 
 able men. the sons of beer. You have read history: beer 
 gained the day.' " 
 
 Be this doctrine true, or the opposite, that " he who 
 drinks beer thinks beer," the conclusion still follows that a 
 man's thinking is more or less affected by his food. Some 
 of the most anomalous events in history, including great 
 political revolutions, have had their origin in the dis 
 ordered stomachs of kings and statesmen. The finest 
 poets and prose writers that have charmed the world by 
 their pens', have been mentally prostrated by a fit of 
 indigestion; and generals who have proclaimed their pre 
 eminence at the cannon's mouth have been rendered 
 powerless by a badly-cooked dish. Could we know the 
 full history of all victories, ancient and modern, we 
 should probably be amazed to find how important a part 
 in the destiny of Empires has been played by the gastric 
 juice. The fears of the brave, as well as the follies of 
 
THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 165 
 
 the wise, may often be resolved into an overtaxed biliary 
 duct. Napoleon lost a battle one day because his poulet a 
 la Marengo was inconsiderably scorched by his chef-de- 
 cuisine. Indigestion, caused by his fast and voracious mode 
 of eating, paralyzed him in two of the most critical events 
 of his life, the battle of Borodino and the battle of Leip- 
 sic, which he might have converted into decisive and 
 commanding victories had he pushed his advantages as he 
 was wont. On the third day of Dresden, too, the German 
 novelist, Hoffman, who was present in the town, asserts 
 that the Emperor would have won far more brilliant suc 
 cesses but for the effects of a shoulder of mutton stuffed 
 with onions. It was owing in a great degree to the 
 wretched condition of their commissariat that the Aus- 
 trians were defeated at Austerlitz. C'est la soupe qui fait 
 le soldat. 
 
 " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we may die, 1 ' is 
 a motto which has often been denounced, and most justly, 
 by the Christian moralist. " Let us eat and drink well, 
 lest to-morrow we die," would be a good substitute. 
 The pleasures of the table are not the highest form of 
 human enjoyment, it is true; but for all that, an oyster- 
 pie is a good thing when well made. "A man," says Dr. 
 Johnson, " who has no regard for his stomach, will have 
 no regard for anything else." We fully agree with the 
 great moralist, and we subscribe no less heartily to the 
 saying of the French magistrate, of whom regenerated 
 France, according to Eoyer-Collard, has so much reason 
 to be proud,* who declared that the discovery of a new 
 dish is more important than the discovery of a new star, 
 because there never can be dishes enough, but there are 
 
 * M. Henrion de Pensey, President of the Court of Cassation. 
 
166 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 
 
 stars enough already. Justly did Talleyrand inveigh 
 against the English, that they had one hundred and fifty 
 forms of religion, and but one sauce, melted butter. It 
 is a mistake to suppose that only brainless men, with 
 full paunches and empty pates, have a keen relish for 
 the luxuries of the table, that, as Shakspeare says, 
 
 u Dainty bits 
 
 Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits." 
 
 The celebrated scholar, Dr. Parr, confessed a love for " hot 
 lobsters, with a profusion of shrimp sauce." Pope was a 
 decided epicure, and would lie in bed for days at Boling- 
 broke's, unless he were told that there were stewed lam 
 preys for dinner, when he would rise instantly and hurry 
 down to table. Cleopatra is said to have owed her empire 
 over Caesar as much to her suppers as to her beauty; and 
 who can tell how much the love of the Grand Monarque, 
 Louis XIV, for Madame de Maintenon, was owing to the 
 invention of the immortal cutlets which bear her name? 
 Henry VIII was so grateful to the inventor of a dish whose 
 flavor he relished, that he gave him a manor. Cardinal 
 Wolsey was conciliated by the good dishes on the Field of 
 the Cloth of Gold; and Agrippina won Claudius by a recipe 
 for dressing Spanish onions. Handel ate enormously; and, 
 when he dined at a tavern, always ordered dinner for three. 
 On being told that all would be ready as soon as the com 
 pany should arrive, he would exclaim: "Den bring up de 
 dinner, prestissimo. I am de company." 
 
 It is said that Cambaceres, second consul under the 
 French republic, and arch-chancellor under the empire, 
 never, under any circumstances, suffered the cares of gov 
 ernment to distract his attention from " the great object 
 of life," a good dinner. Being detained, on one occasion, 
 
THE MOKALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 167 
 
 when consulting with Napoleon, beyond the appointed hoar 
 of dinner, he betrayed great symptoms of restlessness and 
 impatience. At last he wrote a note, which he called a 
 gentleman usher in waiting to carry. Napoleon, suspect 
 ing the contents, nodded to an aide-de-camp to intercept 
 the despatch. As he took it, Cambace*res begged earnestly 
 that his majesty would not read a trifling note on family 
 matters. Napoleon persisted, and found it to be a note to 
 the chancellor's cook, containing only these words: " Gardez 
 les entremets, les rotis sont perdus" 
 
 It is sometimes said that " plain living and high think 
 ing" should be the motto of the scholar. The plain fact 
 is, that, of all laborers, none more imperiously need a 
 nutritious diet than the toilers with the brain. If there 
 is any system of living which they should hold in horror, 
 it is the bran-bread and pea-soup philosophy inculcated by 
 Graham, Alcott and Co., and practised upon by nervous 
 people, valetudinarians, and others, who are continually 
 scheming how to spin out the thread of a miserable, sickly 
 existence, after all their capacities of pleasure and enjoy 
 ment have passed away. These profound philosophers take 
 special pains to show that there is nothing but disease 
 lurking in all the delicacies of ocean, earth, and air, which 
 Heaven has blessed us with. All the piquant dishes which 
 lie so temptingly on the well-spread table, to tickle the 
 palate of the epicure, are, according to their view, impreg 
 nated with a subtle poison. One produces flatulency, 
 another acidity; beef is stimulating, ham is bilious, pork 
 is scrofulous, fish is indigestible, pastry is dyspeptic, tea 
 is nervous; and so on, from the simplest article of diet 
 to the most complicated effort of gastronomic skill. 
 
 It is a little amusing that, while these ascetic philoso- 
 
168 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 
 
 phers declaim so vehemently against the good things of this 
 life, and predict an early grave for every man who makes a 
 hearty, careless, miscellaneous meal, they are generally 
 perfect amateurs in physic, and swallow all sorts of quack 
 medicines and similar abominations with infinite relish. 
 It is true that the theories of the bran-bread philosophers 
 have received some countenance from a few distinguished 
 writers, particularly Dr. Franklin and the poet Shelley, 
 who seem to have thought that, by living wholly upon 
 vegetable food, we may preserve our physical and intel 
 lectual faculties in a state of much higher perfection. But 
 it is evident, in spite of such speculations, that man is a 
 carnivorous animal, and must, once a day at least, be fed 
 with flesh, fowl, or fish; he cannot make a satisfactory 
 repast off the roots and fruits of the earth; for, though 
 
 " His anatomical construction 
 
 Bears vegetables in a grumbling sort of way, 
 Yet certainly he thinks, beyond a question, 
 Beef, veal, and mutton easier of digestion." 
 
 Franklin, indeed, was not a very zealous convert to the 
 Grahamite doctrines. He hesitated for some time what 
 course to pursue, till, at last, recollecting that, when a cod 
 had been opened, some small fish had been found in its 
 stomach, he said to himself: " If you eat one another, I see 
 no reason why we may not eat you." 
 
 There was much good sense in the remark of a sainted 
 Archbishop of York, who was very fond of roast goose, that 
 so good a thing was not designed specially for sinners. 
 Not less wise was the reply of Saint Thomas a Becket to a 
 monk, who, seeing him eating a pheasant's wing with much 
 relish, affected to be scandalized, saying that he thought 
 Thomas a more mortified man. " Thou art but a ninny," 
 
THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 169 
 
 said the Archbishop; " knowest thou not that a man may 
 be a glutton upon horse-beans; while another may enjoy with 
 refinement even the wing of a pheasant, and have Nature's 
 aid to enjoy what Heaven's bounty gave?" 
 
 In advocating a due regard for the pleasures of the 
 table, we commend no wanton profusion. There is a 
 medium between the abstemiousness of the anchorite or the 
 indifference of a Newton, who sometimes inquires whether 
 he has dined, and the senseless profusion of a Caesar who 
 devoured at a meal the revenue of several provinces, or of 
 those other Romans who had single dishes composed of five 
 hundred nightingales' tongues, or the brains of as many 
 peacocks. The dinners of a people, their coarseness or 
 refinement, their profusion or scantiness, are an unerring 
 index of the national life. There is, indeed, as another has 
 said, a whole geological cycle of progressive civilization 
 between the clammy dough out of which a statuette might 
 be moulded, and the brittle films that melt upon the tongue 
 like flakes of lukewarm snow. In the early years of the 
 French Eevolution it was said to be impossible to under 
 stand that movement unless one dined at Barrere's. It is 
 France that leads the rest of the world in civilization; and 
 it is in France that the art of gastronomy has been carried 
 to the last limit of perfection. In what other country did 
 ever a maitre d'hotel stab himself to the heart because he 
 could not survive the dishonor of his employer's table? 
 Yet thus did Vatel, the cook of the great Conde, because on 
 a great occasion the sea-fish failed to arrive some hours 
 before it was to be served; thus showing, as Savarin has 
 said, that the fanaticism of honor can exist in the kitchen 
 as well as in the camp, and that the spit and the saucepan 
 have also their Deciuses and their Catos. 
 8 
 
170 THE MORALITY OF GOOD LIVING. 
 
 While giving due honor to the French, we must not 
 forget that they were indebted to the Italians for the 
 germinal ideas, the fundamental principles, of the great 
 science of which they are the acknowledged masters. It 
 was in Italy that the revival of cookery, as well as the 
 revival of learning, first began; and from that country 
 the science of gastronomy was introduced into the land 
 of Savarin and Soyer, by the artists that accompanied 
 Catherine de Medicis. When Montaigne visited the land 
 of Horace and Virgil, he was deeply impressed by the 
 formal and weighty manner in which the cook in the 
 service of Cardinal Caraffa spoke of the secrets of his art. 
 " He discoursed to me," says the old Gascon, " of the 
 science de gueule with a gravity and magisterial air, as 
 if he was speaking of some weighty point of theology." 
 
 To conclude, the cook may not rank very high in the 
 scale of humanity; but on the other hand it requires 
 no great stretch of imagination to foresee that, should 
 ever the bran-bread system come in fashion, " living 
 skeletons" would cease to be a wonder; Calvin Edsons 
 would meet us at every corner; a man of eighty or ninety 
 pounds would be a monster of corpulency; and, ere many 
 centuries could elapse, the human species would gradually 
 dwindle into nothingness, and vanish from the earth. 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 TT is said that when in 1751 a bill was introduced into 
 -*- the British Parliament for the reform of the calendar 
 by passing at once from the 18th of February to the 1st of 
 March, it met with fierce opposition. Lord Macclesfield, 
 the President of the Royal Society, warmly advocated the 
 bill; and when three years afterward his son was a candi 
 date for Parliament in Oxfordshire, one of the most vehe 
 ment cries raised against him was, " Give us back the 
 eleven days we have been robbed of!" When Mr. Brad 
 ley, the mathematician, another advocate of the bill, was 
 dying of a lingering illness, the common people with one 
 voice ascribed his sufferings to a judgment from Heaven 
 for having taken part in that " impious undertaking." 
 
 Something like this is the feeling of many persons in 
 regard to the havoc made with their idols by modern his 
 torical criticism. One of the most painful moments in the 
 experience of a student is when, after having spent years 
 in acquiring a knowledge of the past, in building pain 
 fully, brick by brick, an edifice of historical learning, a 
 doubt suggests itself whether the whole structure does not 
 rest on sandy foundations. Beginning his researches with 
 belief that " facts are stubborn things," or, as the Scotch 
 poet has it, that 
 
 "Facts are chiels that winna gang, 
 And daurna be disputed." 
 
 he too often ends with the melancholy conviction that 
 " nothing is so fallacious as facts, except figures." That 
 
 171 
 
172 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 compiled histories, like those of Hume and Gibbon, written 
 by persons not concerned in the events, should abound in 
 errors, is not strange; but it does startle us to be told that 
 original memoirs, describing what men profess to have seen 
 with their own eyes, or to have gathered from the lips of 
 the actors themselves, are scarcely less likely to misrepre 
 sent the facts than derived history. If we may not implic 
 itly believe Eobertson, Froude, and Macaulay, shall we not 
 credit Clarendon, Burnett, and Sully? Yet modern inves 
 tigation has shown that in the latter class of writers falsi 
 fications, exaggerations, and distortions of fact, are nearly 
 as frequent as in the former. 
 
 Who is not familiar with the despairing exclamation of 
 Sir Walter Raleigh, on vainly trying to get at the rights 
 of a squabble which he had witnessed in the court-yard of 
 the Tower, in which he was imprisoned? Two gentlemen 
 had entered the room, and given him conflicting, and, as 
 he thought, untrue accounts of the brawl. " Here am I," 
 he cried, " employed in writing a History of the World, 
 trying to give a just account of transactions many of which 
 occurred three thousand years ago, when I cannot ascer 
 tain the truth of what happens under my window!" So 
 the Duke of Sully tells us that, after the battle of Aumaule, 
 Henry IV, being slightly wounded, conversed familiarly 
 with some of his officers touching the perils of the day; 
 " upon which, 1 ' says the Duke, " I observed, as something 
 very extraordinary, that, amongst us all who were in the 
 chamber, there were not two who agreed in the recital of 
 the most particular circumstances of the action." 
 
 Doubtless differences like these result from the different 
 stand-points of the observers, just as two or more observers 
 behold each a different rainbow, since the sun's rays are 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 173 
 
 not reflected in the eyes of any two persons exactly in the 
 same angle. Yet the rainbows are mainly the same, and 
 so it may be with the differences of historians. But what 
 if the discrepancies are essential, so as fundamentally to 
 vary the whole statement? What if the witnesses are 
 weak in intellect, dull of perception, dishonest, prejudiced, 
 or deeply interested to give a lying account of the whole 
 affair? Have we all of Caesar's blunders in his Commen 
 taries, all of Napoleon's in his Memoirs? Who shall tell 
 us of the true character of the Inquisition? Eead Prot 
 estant historians, and you see an engine of devilish cruelty; 
 read De Maistre, and in an instant all history is upturned, 
 and all your convictions subverted. You find it to be a 
 mild and beneficent institution, founded upon the same 
 rock of eternal truth and justice as martyrdom, love and 
 heroic sacrifice. Who, again, shall tell us what was the 
 real character of John Graham, of Claverhouse? How shall 
 we decide between the two views which history presents to 
 us, on this panel, the butcher and the assassin; on that, 
 the heroic leader, with a rare genius for war, the politic 
 and tolerant statesman, with a rare capacity for civil organ 
 ization? 
 
 It may be thought that a historian living many ages 
 after the events he portrays is guarded against error by 
 the fact that he can judge calmly and philosophically of 
 men and their acts ; that he can sift the statements of con 
 temporary chroniclers, balancing one misstatement against 
 another, and thus ascertain the precise amount of truth. 
 But by what rule is he to decide among a variety of con 
 flicting statements? By what hair-balance is he to ascer 
 tain the exact amount of weight to be given to each? 
 Knowing that, as Boileau says, " Le vrai n'est pas toujours 
 
174 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 le vraisembldble" that Truth often lacks verisimilitude, 
 shall he declare that to be true which looks the most prob 
 able? Again: is it quite certain that distance from the 
 events guards the historian against prejudice? Is there 
 not too much ground for the sarcasm of Rev. F. W. Rob 
 ertson, that history, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, 
 is merely Mr. Hume's or Mr. Gibbon's theory, substantiated 
 by a dry romance, until Mr. Somebody else comes and 
 writes the romance in his way, the facts being pliable and 
 equally available for both? 
 
 What are Mitford's and Thirlwall's Histories of Greece 
 but elaborate and disguised party pamphlets, demon 
 strating, the one aristocratical principles from Grecian 
 history, the other democratical principles from precisely 
 the same facts? Or what is Alison's History but Mr. 
 Wordy's account of the French Revolution, in twenty vol 
 umes, written to show that Providence was always on the 
 side of the Tories? What Abbott's Life of Napoleon, but a 
 demonstration from the very same facts that the hero of 
 Austerlitz was a great philanthropist, who immolated self 
 on the altar of humanity? What is Macaulay's so-called 
 History but an ingenious and masterly piece of special 
 pleading, designed to show that James II was a miscreant 
 unworthy to live, while the asthmatic skeleton, his succes 
 sor, an obstinate, hard-headed, uninteresting Dutchman, 
 with a bull-dog tenacity of purpose, had, like Berkeley, 
 "every virtue under heaven?" Has not Mr. Froude 
 shown that the facts of history are ductile, and can be 
 manipulated so as to establish any desired theory, even 
 theories the most opposite? What, indeed, is the spirit of 
 past ages, as preserved in most histories, " but the spirit," 
 as Faust said to the student, " of this or that good gentle- 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 175 
 
 man in whose mind those ages are reflected?" All the 
 events of the past come to us through the minds of those 
 who recorded them; and they, it is plain, are neither ma 
 chines nor angels, but fallible beings, with human passions 
 and prejudices. Iron is iron in all its forms, but the sul 
 phate of iron will always differ from the carbonate of iron. 
 Smith and Brown may be equally anxious to give us the 
 facts of the past, without change or coloring; but the 
 Smithate of history will, nevertheless, always differ from 
 the Brownate of history. With the self-same facts, by 
 skillful selection and suppression, "you may have your 
 Hegel's philosophy of history, or you may have your 
 Schlegel's philosophy of history; you may prove that the 
 world is governed in detail by a special Providence, or you 
 may prove that there is no sign of any moral agent in the 
 universe, except man; you may prove that our fathers 
 were wiser than we, or you may prove that they were 
 fools; you may maintain that the evolution of humanity 
 has been a ceaseless progress toward perfection, or you 
 may maintain that there has been no progress, that the 
 race has barely marked time; or, again, that men were 
 purest in primeval simplicity, when 
 
 "'Wild through the woods the noble savage ran.'" 
 
 In days of old there were historians who avowedly 
 wrote as they were bribed. It was said of Paulus Jovius 
 that he kept a bank of lies. To those who paid him 
 liberally he assigned a noble pedigree and illustrious 
 deeds; those who gave nothing he vilified and blackened. 
 He claimed that it was the historian's privilege to aggra 
 vate or extenuate faults, to magnify or depreciate virtues, 
 to dress the generous paymaster in gorgeous robes, 
 and the miserly magnate in mean apparel. Many later 
 
176 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 historians, who would have scorned Jovius's fees, have 
 not hesitated to copy his practices, heightening the por 
 traits of some, and smearing the faces of others, as the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, in a fit of rage, did the por 
 trait of her daughter, declaring that she was now as 
 black without as within. 
 
 What a tissue of falsification are many of the so-called 
 histories of England! What lies have they perpetuated 
 concerning the patriots of the Commonwealth and the age 
 of Charles I ! So outrageously have they misrepresented 
 the facts and the principles of those times, that even De 
 Quincey, a churchman and a Tory, expresses his disgust, 
 and affirms that the clergy of the Church of England 
 have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the 
 Restoration to misrepresent both. " There is not a page 
 of the national history, even in its local subdivisions, 
 which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue of 
 their wounded remembrances. 11 Of Cromwell's adminis 
 tration, the most glorious in English annals, they have 
 given, he affirms, so mendacious a picture, that Conti 
 nental writers have actually believed that Oliver was a 
 ferocious savage, who built his palace of human skulls, 
 and that his major-generals of counties were so many 
 All Pachas, who impaled or shot a dozen prisoners every 
 morning before breakfast, or, rather, so many ogres that 
 ate up good Christian men, women and children alive. 
 
 Perhaps no historian ever piqued himself more on his 
 judicial equanimity than David Hume. It was a favorite 
 boast of his, that his first account of the Stuarts was 
 free from all bias, and that he had held the balance be 
 tween Whig and Tory with a delicate and impartial 
 hand. Yet, that his prejudices powerfully warped his 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 177 
 
 mind, so as to render him altogether unsafe as a historian, 
 few can doubt. Ten years after the first publication of 
 his work, irritated by the outcry against him " for pre 
 suming," as he expresses it, " to shed a generous tear 
 for the fate of Charles the First and the Earl of Stafford," 
 he avenged the censure by recasting his historical ver 
 dicts, so as to render them offensive to the party that 
 had attacked him. Among his intimate friends at Edin 
 burgh was an old Jesuit, who, like most of the order, 
 was a scholar and a man of taste; and to his criticism, 
 as the parts were finished, the MS. was submitted. Just 
 after the publication of Elizabeth's reign, the priest 
 chanced to turn over the pages, and was astonished to 
 find on the printed page sins of the Scottish queen that 
 had never sullied the written one. Mary's character was 
 the exact reverse of what he had found it in the manu 
 script. Seeking the author, he asked the meaning of 
 this. " Why," replied Hume, " the printer said he would 
 lose 500 by that story; indeed, he almost refused to 
 print it; so I was obliged to alter it as you saw." 
 
 But what truth could be expected of a historian who 
 wrote lying, on a sofa? Nothing can surpass the ex 
 quisite ease and vivacity of Hume's narration; the charm 
 of the style which Gibbon despaired of imitating, is fa 
 miliar to all. But the Scottish historian was too indo 
 lent to trouble himself about accuracy. Instead of 
 applying his powerful critical faculty to sift truth out of 
 tradition, he repeats legendary and half- mythological 
 stories with the same air of belief as the well-authenti 
 cated events of modern times. Essentially a classicist of 
 the Voltaire and Diderot school, he despised too heartily 
 the barbarous monkish chroniclers to think of going 
 
178 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 through the drudgery of examining their writings, and 
 winnowing the grains of fact they contain from the chaff' 
 of superstition and imaginative detail. We need not be 
 surprised, therefore, that the searching investigation to 
 which his history was subjected some years ago by George 
 Brodie brought to light so many departures from truth, 
 both wilful and unintentional. " Upon any question of 
 fact" says De Quincey, himself, like Hume, a Tory, " Hume's 
 authority is none at all." 
 
 Even had Hume struggled against his indolence and 
 his prejudices, there is one source of error which he 
 could not have avoided. In condensing a narrative from 
 the old chroniclers, and giving the pith of their state 
 ments in modern phraseology, the historian almost inva 
 riably gives us a new and different story. The events, 
 characters, all the features of the time, undergo a kind 
 of translation or paraphrase, which materially changes 
 their character and gives a false impression to the reader, 
 an impression as false as that which Dryden has given 
 of Chaucer by his attempts to modernize the old bard. 
 Every one knows how completely the aroma, the bouquet 
 of the old poet, the sly grace of his language, the 
 exquisite tone of naivete, which, like the lispings of in 
 fancy, give such a charm to his verse, have evaporated 
 in the process of transfusion into more modern language. 
 Words and ideas are so mystically connected, so con 
 natural, that the modernization of an old author is 
 substantially a new book. It is not the putting of old 
 thoughts into a new dress; it is the substitution of a 
 new thought, more or less changed from the original 
 type. Language is not the dress of thought; it is the 
 incarnation of thought, and it controls both the physiog 
 nomy and the organization of the idea it utters. 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 179 
 
 Even when Hume most unjustifiably perverts the truth 
 of history, it is not usually by positively false statements. 
 It is by suppression and exaggeration, by gliding lightly 
 over some parts, and scrutinizing others with microscopic 
 eye and relentless severity, that he commonly deceives 
 the reader; a process by which it is easy to make a saint 
 of Charles I, or a tyrant of William III. In the same 
 manner the author of " The Decline and Fall of the Ro 
 man Empire " has Gibbonized the vast tract over which 
 he has traversed. Guizot and Milman have both com 
 pared Gibbon's work with the original authorities, and 
 both, after the intensest scrutiny, pronounce him diligent 
 and honest; but, as Mr. E. P. Whipple has observed, this 
 by no means proves that he gives us the real truth of 
 men and events. The qualities of the historian's charac 
 ter steal out in every paragraph; and the reader who is 
 magnetized by his genius rises from the perusal of the 
 vast work, informed of nothing as it was in itself, but of 
 everything as it appeared to Gibbon, and especially doubt 
 ing two things, that there is any chastity in women, or 
 any divine truth in Christianity. " He writes," says 
 Macaulay, " like a man who had received some personal 
 injury from Christianity, and wished to be revenged on 
 it and all its professors." It is not, however, by what 
 he expressly says, that he misleads the reader, but by 
 what he hints and insinuates. Of all the writers who 
 have " sapped a solemn creed " with irony, he is the 
 most consummate master of the art of sneering. As 
 Archbishop Whately has well said, " his way of writing 
 reminds one of those persons who never dare look you 
 full in the face." Never openly attacking Christianity, 
 advancing no opinions which he might find it difficult to 
 
180 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 defend, he yet contrives to leave an impression adverse 
 to the idea of its divine origin. Its rapid spread is ac 
 counted for by secondary causes, and the evidences upon 
 which it rests are indirectly classed in the same category 
 with the mythologies of paganism. Through two chap 
 ters an insidious poison is distilled, and yet, so skilfully 
 is it mixed, that it would be difficult to put one's finger 
 on a single passage which the historian could not defend 
 as consistent with the faith of the most orthodox believer. 
 " No man should write history," says Montaigne, " who 
 has not himself served the State in some civil or military 
 capacity. 1 ' By this is meant that only a man of action, one 
 versed in affairs, can judge fairly the conduct of men of 
 action, the man of books being almost sure to judge men 
 according to some fanciful theory, which he has adopted in 
 his chimney corner, of what they might and ought to be, 
 and not practically, according to what they really are. 
 Besides this, there is yet another source of error against 
 which the most conscientious historian finds it difficult to 
 guard. It is that which Guizot calls the aptness to forget 
 moral chronology, to overlook the fact that history is 
 essentially successive. "Take the life of any man," he 
 observes, " of Oliver Cromwell, of Cardinal Eichelieu, of 
 Gustavus Adolphus; he enters upon his career; he pushes 
 forward in life, and rises; great circumstances act upon 
 him ; he acts upon great circumstances. He arrives at the 
 end of all things, and then it is we know him. But it is 
 in his whole character; it is as a complete, finished piece; 
 such in a manner as he is turned out, after a long labor, 
 from the workshop of Providence. Now at his outset he 
 was not what he thus became; he was not completed, not 
 finished, at any single moment of his life; he was formed 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 181 
 
 successively. Men are formed morally as they are phys 
 ically. They change every day. . . . The Cromwell of 1650 
 was not the Cromwell of 1640. . . . This, nevertheless, is 
 an error into which a great number of historians have fallen. 
 When they have acquired a complete idea of a man, have 
 settled his character, they see him in the same character 
 throughout his whole career. With them it is the same 
 Cromwell who enters Parliament in 1628, and who dies in 
 the palace of Whitehall thirty years afterwards." Who can 
 doubt that this mistake is a fruitful source of erroneous 
 judgments? How often are public men, especially 
 usurpers and despots, treated as if they had contem 
 plated at the outset of their career the goal which they 
 reached at last! It has been well said that Cromwell 
 followed little events before he ventured to govern great 
 ones; and that Napoleon never sighed for the sceptre 
 until he gained the truncheon, nor dreamt of the imperial 
 diadem until he had first conquered a crown. It is only 
 by degrees that a man attains to the pinnacles of influence 
 and power ; and often none of those who gaze at the height 
 to which he has risen are more astonished at his elevation 
 than himself. 
 
 That Macaulay succeeded better than Hume is doubtless 
 true; but in some respects he signally failed. That he 
 was far from being impartial, few, even of his admirers, 
 will deny. He was a brilliant advocate, rather than a 
 calm and discriminating judge. The most superficial 
 reader cannot be blind to his more palpable prejudices, 
 such as his intense dislike of the Quakers, his almost 
 bitter hatred of the Duke of Marlborough, which led him 
 to paint his character in the blackest ink, and his idolatry 
 of William III, which led him to palliate all the king's 
 
182 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 faults, even his faithlessness to his wife. But the historian 
 had graver faults. To the height of the great argument 
 of Puritanism he never rose. Cool, moderate, unenthusi- 
 astic in temperament, his genius exactly fitted him to 
 portray the reign of Queen Anne. The poets and the 
 politicians of that age he could thoroughly gauge; and 
 his picture of that brilliant group of versatile, witty, 
 corrupt, and splendid gentlemen would have been drawn 
 with a masterly hand. But his hand faltered when he had 
 to register grander passions and darker conflicts. The 
 world, as Macaulay viewed it, was a very commonplace 
 world. He did not brood over the mysteries of being, 
 like Carlyle. His idea of the universe was essentially a 
 Parliamentary one; and men with him are mainly Whigs 
 and Tories. Nothing can surpass his historical pictures 
 in pomp and splendor; they are woven into a grand and 
 imposing panorama, and every figure, too, is finished, down 
 to the buttons and the finger nails. But it is the accidents, 
 rather than the realities of things, that he paints. To use 
 a scholastic phrase, he sees the qualities, not the quiddities, 
 of men. He never gets to their core. The heroes of the 
 Commonwealth, and their motives of action, the spiritual 
 pains, the stormy struggles, which tore England asunder 
 in the seventeenth century, he never comprehended. His 
 plummet could not fathom them ; they lay beyond the reach 
 of his even temperament and unimpassioned intellect, and 
 set his measured antitheses at defiance. The strongest, 
 richest, most unconventional, most original characters, 
 become, when he touches them, comparatively insipid and 
 tame. 
 
 Macaulay's style, vivid, picturesque, and condensed, is 
 almost perfect of its kind. His short, quick periods, it 
 
THE ILLUSION'S OF HISTORY. 183 
 
 has been well said, fall upon the ear like the rapid firing 
 of a well-served battery. But the very splendor of his 
 style is often its chief fault. The temptation to write 
 epigrammatically, to employ strong contrasts, some 
 times overmasters his judgment. He is too vehement and 
 intense to be safe. There are whole pages in his history 
 with hardly an adjective that is not super-superlative. 
 The antithetical style, which by its salient contrasts is so 
 well adapted to character-painting, does not lend itself 
 readily, at least when used in excess, to the exact 
 expression of facts. It is not strange, therefore, that even 
 the most friendly critics of the Whig historian should have 
 complained of his exaggeration. His characterizations are 
 too extreme. He is always deepening the shadow and 
 raising the light. To those he likes and to those he 
 dislikes he gives more white and black than are due. 
 Historical criticism with him was only a tribunal before 
 which men were arraigned to be decisively tried by one or 
 two inflexible tests, and then sent to join the sheep on the 
 one hand, or the goats on the other. It is hard to believe 
 that the hero of Blenheim, with all his avarice, was a 
 moral monster, or that James II was a living contradiction 
 because he risked his soul for the sake of his mistress, and 
 risked his crown for the sake of his creed. Even when 
 most dazzled by Macaulay's brilliant word-painting, we 
 feel that we would gladly exchange the most Martial-like 
 epigram and the most glittering antithesis for a description 
 which, tickling the fancy less, might be nearer the truth. 
 
 Half of the lies of history have their origin in this 
 desire to be brilliant, to charm and surprise rather than 
 to instruct. Historic truth is usually too complex, too 
 full of half-lights and faint shadows, to admit of startling 
 
184 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 contrasts. The world is not peopled with angels and devils, 
 but with men. To say that Robespierre was a " logic- 
 formula,' 1 with spectacles instead of eyes, and a cramp 
 instead of a soul, as Carlyle has depicted him, and that, as 
 he half suggests, if this " sea-green formula " had been 
 sanguine and Danton bilious, there would have been no 
 Reign of Terror, may be a vivid way of putting things; 
 but we feel that the writer, in his effort to get below the 
 husks and shells to the very souls of things, has falsified 
 history as much by the excess of imagination as others by 
 the lack of it. 
 
 It has been justly said that in humanity there is no 
 such thing as a straight line or an unmixed color. You 
 see the flesh color on the cheek of a portrait. The artist 
 will tell you that the consummately-natural result was not 
 attained by one wash of paint, but by the mixture and 
 reduplication of a hundred tints, the play of myriad lights 
 and shadows, no one of which is natural in itself, though 
 the blending of the whole is. A man who lacks the historic 
 instinct ignores all this. He seems to think that all moral 
 distinctions are confounded, if Lucifer does not always wear 
 a complete suit of black, and if there be a speck on 
 Gabriel's wing. In painting his men and women, he 
 assumes that they have but a few leading and consistent 
 traits, and that these are always written in big and glaring 
 type, like that employed by bill-stickers; whereas, the fact 
 is, that all men act more or less from inexplicable motives, 
 and resemble in some degree the poet Edgar A. Poe, at 
 night the hero of a drunken debauch, in the morning a 
 wizard of song whose weird and fitful music is like that 
 of the sirens. 
 
 "I believe that a philosopher," says Disraeli, "would 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. > 185 
 
 consent to lose any poet to regain an historian." No 
 doubt, if the exchange were between a Massey and a 
 Mommsen, a Tupper and a Tacitus; but what if the poet 
 to be exchanged is a Homer or a Horace, a Shakspeare or 
 a Milton? "Fancy," it is added, "may be supplied, but 
 truth once lost in the annals of mankind leaves a chasm 
 never to be filled." Unfortunately such a fancy as that 
 of Dante or Milton cannot be made to order ; it is the 
 growth of centuries; while the truth of many "annals" 
 is purely imaginary. Even fiction itself is often more 
 truthful than history. The creations of the great epic 
 poets embody truths of universal application; and for a 
 vivid and life-like picture of the civil wars of England, 
 you must go, not to the stiff and stately pages of 
 Clarendon, but to a romance of De Foe's, which Lord 
 Chatham, deceived by its naturalness, once quoted as 
 history. 
 
 No one who has not compared the elegant and polished 
 works of modern historians with the homely old chronicles 
 on which they are based, would dream of the extent to 
 which the facts have been tortured or metamorphosed. 
 Not only are dry, naked facts amplified, so as to clothe 
 the skeleton of history with flesh and blood, but chasms 
 are filled up, and new facts added, to eke out the story, 
 and make it more "sensational"; while the entire narra 
 tion is often so clipped, and rounded off, and polished, 
 that the original author, were he to rise from the dead, 
 would not recognize his own offspring. These historians 
 do as the wolf did with Baron Munchausen's horse, who 
 began at the horse's tail, and ate into him, until the 
 Baron drove home the wolf harnessed in the skin of the 
 horsa It would be difficult to name a practice which 
 
186 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 has been more fatal to the trustworthiness of history than 
 this of filling up the chasms in the historian's informa 
 tion with conjecture. A Cuvier, from a bone, may recon 
 struct an antediluvian animal; but it is not so with the 
 writer, who, from a few isolated facts, tries to supply a 
 missing chapter in a nation's history. In one case there 
 is a correlation of the known and the unknown facts, a 
 law of typical conformity, which makes it easy to supply 
 those that are wanting; in the other there is no analogy, 
 and we are left to our guesses. 
 
 What shall we say of the latest historian of England, 
 Mr. Froude? Few writers have recognized more fully than 
 he, in theory at least, the difficulty, nay, impossibility, of 
 being entirely just in our estimate of other ages. He con 
 fesses that in historical inquiries the most instructed 
 thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most 
 illiterate. Those who know the most, whose investiga 
 tions are the profoundest, approach least to agreement. 
 In the eyes of Hume, he reminds us, the history of the 
 Saxon Princes is " the scuffling of kites and crows." 
 Father Newman, on the other hand, would mortify the 
 conceit of a degenerate England by pointing to the sixty 
 saints and the hundred confessors who were trained in 
 her royal palaces for the Calendar of the Blessed. How 
 vast a chasm yawns between these two conceptions of the 
 same era! "Again, the history of England scarcely inter 
 ests Mr. Macaulay before the Revolution of 1788; and to 
 Lord John Russell and Mr. Hallam the Reformation was 
 the first outcome from centuries of folly and ferocity. 
 Mr. Carlyle has studied the same subject with insight at 
 least equal to theirs, and to him the greatness of English 
 character was waning with the dawn of English literature. 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 187 
 
 The race of heroes was already waning; the era of action 
 was yielding before the era of speech." Yet, in spite of 
 these vivid examples of the difficulty of ascertaining the 
 real facts of the past, and though Mr. Froude declares 
 that he has been struck dumb with wonder at the facility 
 with which men fill in gaps in their knowledge with 
 guesses, will pass their censures, as if all the secrets of 
 the past lay out on an open scroll before them; and 
 though he acknowledges that, wherever he has been 
 fortunate enough to discover authentic explanations of 
 English historical difficulties, he has rarely found any 
 conjecture, either of his own or of any other modern 
 writer, confirmed, yet even he, it seems, has not been 
 able to avoid the errors of his predecessors; in his own 
 words, " has not been able to leap from his shadow." He 
 has been accused by able writers of making in his history 
 partial and highly colored representations, of summarizing 
 state papers in such a way as to read into them a mean 
 ing which does not exist in the originals; of throwing in 
 words and phrases for which no equivalent can be found 
 in the originals; of suppressing facts not suited to his 
 theories; of dealing in innuendoes and exaggerations; and 
 even of misquoting and entirely misrepresenting his 
 authorities. 
 
 Again, popular opinion and the so-called " dignity 
 of history " too often compel the writer to subordinate 
 faithfulness to impression. Agesilaus must not hobble, 
 nor the neck of Augustus be awry. Hannibal must 
 not be one-eyed, nor Marshal Vendome humpbacked; 
 Suwarrow must be a giant in body as well as in intellect; 
 Nelson, though dwarfish and lame, must stride the deck 
 with the body, as well as the soul, of a hero; Washington 
 
188 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 must always spell correctly, call "Old Put" General Put 
 nam, and never swear, and never pitch an offending 
 servant out of a window; and all the facts must lose 
 their ugliness or grotesqueness, and have the smoothly 
 clipped uniformity of a Dutch yew-tree. 
 
 Another of the banes of history is the necessity of find 
 ing out causes of sufficient dignity for its leading events. 
 Half of the great movements in the world are brought 
 about by means far more insignificant than a Helen's 
 beauty or an Achilles' wrath. A grain more of sand, 
 thought Pascal, in the brain of Cromwell, one more 
 pang of doubt in the tossed and wavering soul of Luther, 
 and the current of the world's history would have been 
 changed. Who can conjecture what that history would 
 have been, had Cleopatra's nose been shorter, had the 
 spider not woven its web across the cave in which Ma 
 homet took refuge, had Luther's friend escaped the 
 thunderstorm, had the Genoese, after the peace of 
 Paris, not sold the petty island of Corsica to France? 
 Accidents, too, mere accidents, the bullet which struck 
 Gustavus on the field of Llitzen, the chance by which 
 the Eussian lancers missed Napoleon in the churchyard 
 of Eylan, the chance which stopped Louis XVI in his 
 flight at Varennes, the death of Elizabeth of Kussia, 
 which, in the hour of Frederic the Great's despair, when 
 he was almost overwhelmed by his enemies, broke the 
 powerful combination against him, turn the course of 
 history as well as of life, changing alike the destinies of 
 nations and of men. Sallust says that a periwinkle led 
 to the capture of Gibraltar. "A chambermaid," wrote 
 Chesterfield to his son, " has often made a revolution in 
 palaces, which was followed by political revolution in 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 189 
 
 kingdoms; the subtlest diplomacy has sometimes been 
 interrupted by a cough or a sneeze." Causes like these, 
 which the sensational writer is fond of assigning, seem 
 inadequate and disproportionate to the grave historian; 
 and so he hunts about for weightier ones. He cannot 
 believe that the expedition of Henry of Guise, who went 
 in a herring-boat and made himself King of Naples, was 
 merely the frolic of a hare-brained youth; and he deems 
 it necessary to show a long train of important circum 
 stances leading to the expedition. 
 
 Who, again, is not familiar with the rehabilitations of 
 historical villains, which have become so fashionable with 
 recent historians? Special monarchs or statesmen having 
 been selected, whose pilloried bodies have been for cen 
 turies the favorite target for filth of every description, 
 they have been subjected to a scrubbing process, by which 
 all their vilest sins have been rubbed off them. Not 
 only has Ki chard III been " reconstructed," so as to lose 
 both his physical and his moral hump; not only has the 
 Bluebeard of British history, Henry VIII, been trans 
 formed into almost a model husband, whose only fault 
 was excessive uxoriousness ; not only has "bloody Mary" 
 lost nearly all her blood, except that running in her 
 own veins ; not only has Catiline, whom in our school-boy 
 days we learned so to execrate, been whitewashed into 
 a much-abused patriot; but even the bloody Borgias have 
 been bleached ; the Duke of Alva has been metamorphosed 
 from a cruel and cold-blooded bigot into a " cool, mod 
 erate, far-seeing statesman"; Catherine de Medicis has 
 been whitened ; and Nero himself, the synonym of cruelty, 
 will doubtless be proved to have been outrageously slan 
 dered; and some Froude or Niebuhr will yet show that, 
 
190 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 when he fiddled while Rome was burning, he was only 
 playing some " Dead March in Saul," or other funereal 
 strain, as a safety-valve to his agonized feelings! But 
 pray tell us, if the verdicts of the past are to be thus 
 unsettled, and this process is to go on till all the " crook- 
 backed tyrants " of history shall have been physically and 
 morally straightened, and its pages purified from all cut 
 throats, as if our historians had resolved to imitate 
 Canning's nice judge, who 
 
 "Swore, with keen, discriminating sight, 
 Black's not so black, nor white so very white," 
 
 how shall we know when the real truth, the " hard 
 pan " of past events, has been reached, and that History, 
 now so changeful, has made her final and irreversible 
 statement, which shall render her worthy of her proud 
 boast that she is "philosophy teaching by examples"? 
 
 Perhaps in the next generation the fashion will have 
 changed to the opposite point of the compass. We may 
 start with a hero, and conclude with a Nero; we 
 may begin with a saint, and end with a scamp. Indeed, 
 the disenchanting process has already begun. Have not 
 the German moles, who have been burrowing in the 
 Eternal City among its old manuscripts and tombstones, 
 shown by a dull realistic philosophy that all its early 
 history is a myth? Have they not squeezed the breath 
 out of Romulus and Remus, and shown that the wolf- 
 suckling story, which so charmed our boyhood, is a fable? 
 Has not the famous conspiracy of the Sicilian vespers, 
 which for ages has been the theme of song and story, 
 which has inflamed the imagination of all civilized na 
 tions through the dreams and embellishments of the nov 
 elist and the dramatist, been lately shown to be no 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 191 
 
 conspiracy at all? Has not Mr. Aaron Goodrich, of Min 
 nesota, just sought to sap our faith in Columbus by 
 showing that he was a pirate, whose true name was 
 Griego that he got all his ideas of the New World 
 from the Northmen and some shipwrecked Venetian sailors, 
 who had discovered the American coast, that he meanly 
 claimed of Queen Isabella the reward of discovery, though 
 one of his sailors in another vessel had first descried 
 the land, and he had again and again been ready to give 
 up the expedition in despair? Has not Mr. John Pym 
 Yeatman just demonstrated, to his own satisfaction, at 
 least, that the Normans never conquered England, but 
 only came down from the mountains and from Brittany, 
 and retook what was their own before? Have not Innes 
 and Pinkerton cut out eight centuries from the history 
 of Scotland, and, crueller still, knocked in the head 
 fifty of her kings? Are we not told that Dion Cassius 
 painted every man whom he disliked as black as Erebus, 
 and that Suidas was accustomed "to invent a horrid 
 death" for those whose doctrines he hated? 
 
 Have not the historical critics of Germany shown that 
 the notion which so kindled our youthful enthusiasm, 
 that Brutus stabbed Caesar from patriotic motives, is an 
 illusion, that the actual fact was, that, it being the 
 custom in old Rome for the nobles to lend money to the 
 plebeians at fearfully usurious rates, Caesar forbade this 
 by a law, and was immediately afterwards butchered by 
 the " noble " Brutus and his fellow conspirators ; and that 
 consequently all Akenside's fine poetry about Brutus's 
 rising " refulgent from the stroke," is mere poetry, and 
 nothing more ? Have not Monsieur Dasent and Mr. Baring- 
 Gould annihilated William Tell and his apple, by show- 
 
192 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 ing that no mention of them was made in Switzerland 
 till about two centuries after Tell's supposed time, and 
 that the story is common to the whole Aryan race, as 
 well as to the Turks and Mongols, who never heard of 
 Tell, or saw a book in their lives? Has not England's 
 patron saint been proved to be a low impostor, who got 
 rich by fraud, theft, and the arts of a common informer, 
 turned religious adventurer, bribed his way to a bish 
 opric, and, at last, upon being imprisoned for his crimes, 
 was dragged out of jail, and lynched by an angry mob? 
 Are we not all too familiar with the story of Amerigo 
 Vespucchi, the pickle-dealer at Seville, who, though but 
 a boatswain's mate in an expedition that never sailed, 
 contrived to supplant Columbus, and to baptize half the 
 earth with his own dishonest name? 
 
 Has any other department of history been so deluged 
 with lies as that of saintly biography? Not to dwell 
 upon the counterfeits and fabrications in mediaeval and 
 later literature, which the monks spent their leisure 
 in making, have we no brummagem saints in modern 
 times? What American that has visited London has not 
 learned to honor the name of Thomas Guy, who founded 
 Guy's hospital, who gave away fabulous sums for benev 
 olent purposes, and whose name stares at us in stone 
 in sundry statues? Yet who and what was this Guy, 
 when stripped of all his guises? Alas! for those who 
 believe that the great secret of happiness is to preserve 
 our illusions, this world-renowned philanthropist, whom 
 the poor, crippled sailor so idolizes, was, if we may be 
 lieve certain English writers, a clever stock-jobber, a 
 miser, and a man who absolutely fattened on the wrongs 
 of the poor cheated Jack Tars! At one time the English 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 193 
 
 * 
 
 sailors were paid, not in gold, Dut in paper, as inconvert 
 ible as our greenbacks. With these they were often 
 forced to part at any discount which the money-changers 
 chose to exact. The good Guy bought these tickets, and 
 out of the profits became a millionaire. 
 
 Shall we add to all these instances of men whom history 
 or biography has canonized, that of Sallust, denouncing in 
 his elegant pages, with burning anger, the corruption of 
 Rome and the extortion in its provinces, yet establishing 
 his famous museum-gardens " with the gold and the tears 
 of Numidia;" Pope Gregory VII, the haughtiest of pon 
 tiffs, entitling himself " the servant of the servants of God," 
 at the very time when he expected that kings and emperors 
 should kiss his toe and hold his stirrup; Francis I, the 
 pink of chivalry, threatening to stab himself rather than 
 sign a dishonorable treaty, and, on signing a treaty, de 
 claring secretly to his counsellors his intention, on a mis 
 erable pretext, of breaking it; Jean .Jacques Rousseau, 
 invoking parental care for infancy, and sending his own 
 children to a foundling hospital; Lord Bacon, holding 
 with one hand the scales of justice, and with the other 
 taking bribes; the great Duke of Marlborough, now acting 
 history in minutes, and now dirtying his hands by pecula 
 tion in army contracts, the politest of men and the mean 
 est; Lord Peterborough, the hero of Barcelona and the 
 amateur cook, walking from market in his blue ribbon, 
 with a fowl under one arm and a cabbage under the other; 
 Algernon Sydney, one moment mouthing patriotism, and 
 at another accepting bribes from France; the sentimental 
 Sterne, weeping over a dead ass, and neglecting a living 
 mother; Sheridan, firing off in the House of Commons 
 impromptu jokes kept in pickle for months; the poet 
 9 
 
194 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 Young, spending his best days in toadying and place- 
 hunting, and in old age satirizing the pursuits in which 
 he had failed, draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs, 
 and then turning State's-evidence against the world and 
 its follies? 
 
 Shall we speak of the poet Thomson, singing the praises 
 of early rising, and lying abed till noon; Woodworth, sing 
 ing in his " Old Oaken Bucket " the praises of cold water, 
 under the inspiration of brandy; Dr. Johnson, in his dic 
 tionary, denning pension as " pay given to a state hireling 
 for treason to his country," and afterwards accepting from 
 George III. a pension for himself; William Cobbett, de 
 nouncing the House of Commons as "a Den of Thieves," 
 and afterwards putting himself forward as a candidate for 
 admission into this thieving fraternity, and proudly taking 
 his place as one of its members; Byron, dining at Eogers's 
 on a potato and a little vinegar, and secretly stuffing like 
 an anaconda, sending 4,000 to Greece, and writing pri 
 vately to a friend that " he did not see how he could well 
 have got off for less" or sending a copy of his famous 
 " Fare-thee-well " verses to Lady Byron, with a butcher's 
 bill inclosed, with a slip like this, " I don't think we could 
 have had so much meat as this;" George I, gaining by act 
 of Parliament a crown to which he had no hereditary title, 
 yet in his very first speech to that body talking of " ascend 
 ing the throne of his ancestors"? But England (as some 
 of our examples have shown) has no monopoly of what one 
 of her writers has called " these humiliating humbugs of 
 history;" we have but to cross the channel to find among 
 her glory-loving neighbors others worthy to rank with a 
 note-shaving Brutus, patriotic from private spite, or a 
 Thomas Guy, ostentatiously giving to the seamen with one 
 hand what he had squeezed out of them with the other. 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 195 
 
 " History," wrote Voltaire to a friend, " is, after all, 
 nothing but a parcel of tricks we play with the dead." . . . 
 " As for the portraits of men, they are nearly all the cre 
 ations of fancy; 'tis a monstrous piece of charlatanry to 
 pretend to paint a personage with whom you have never 
 lived." Did the French historians think of this when they 
 told the story of the Vengeur? Kiddled in the sea-fight of 
 June 1, 1794, by three English ships, the Vengeur, they 
 tell us, began to fill. Her crew fought her lower tier of 
 guns till the rising water poured forth through the ports; 
 then, running to the next tier, they fired its guns till again 
 the water drove them off. Then they took to the deck 
 guns; and, at last, grouping, with arms stretched to 
 heaven, and shouting Vive la Republique! their colors still 
 flying, and preferant la mort a la captivite, they went 
 down, the waters rolled over them, and all was over! 
 
 All this is very magnifique, and many a Frenchman's 
 heart swelled as he thought that these men were his coun 
 trymen, till unfortunately, a letter of the French captain, 
 written on the ship to which he had surrendered, was dis 
 covered, showing that the Vengeur had struck her colors, 
 that her crew shrieked for help, that her captain and a 
 good part of her men were taken from her, that she sank 
 as a British prize, and that a British prize-crew went down 
 with her. Notwithstanding these facts, Thackeray saw in 
 the Louvre, in 1841, a great painting representing the 
 Vengeur going down with colors flying, and fired upon by 
 the British sailors in red coats ; and now, to save the na 
 tional honor, which is so much dearer than truth, the 
 French captain's official letter is pronounced a forgery!* 
 
 * Admiral Griffiths, one of the survivors of the engagement, who was 
 living in 1838, declares the French story to be "a ridiculous piece of non 
 sense." "Never," he says, "were men in distress more ready to save them.' 
 selves." There was "not one shout beyond that of horror and despair." 
 
196 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 Perhaps this method of getting rid of the facts was sug 
 gested to the French by the irony of Dean Swift: "I have 
 always," says the Dean, " borne that laudable partiality to 
 my own country which Dionysius Halicarnassus with so 
 much justice recommends to an historian. I would hide 
 the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and 
 place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous 
 
 light.- 
 
 Passing from the sea to the land, who has not read the 
 glorious tale of the chivalry of Fontenoy? how two 
 regiments, French and English, approached on the hill, 
 and the officers rode out from each front, bowing and 
 doffing hats, while the gallant Hay cried, " Gentlemen of 
 the French Guards, will you please to fire first?" to 
 which the Count d'Auteroche responds: "We never fire 
 first. 1 ' Now what were the facts? Few persons have 
 read them, as stated by Caiiyle in his Life of Fred 
 eric the Great, that the bowing was mockery, the polite 
 speeches huzzahs, the chivalry mere " chaffing," and that 
 the French did fire first, and that, too, without standing on 
 the order of firing, but immediately on catching sight of 
 the English, and without even waiting to say, "By your 
 leave." 
 
 Leaving France, and coming nearer home, need we 
 cite Commissioner Quids' defence of Wirz, the pious jailor 
 of Andersonville ; how he proved him to be a hero of the 
 noblest type, whose only foible was an excess of tenderness, 
 and gave as a reason for this revelation "a desire to 
 vindicate the truth of history"? Are we not all familiar 
 with the thrilling story of Farragut, who, at the battle 
 of Mobile Bay, lashed himself to the mast-head of his 
 battle-scarred flagship, and thence signalled to his fleet 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 197 
 
 as he sailed by Forts Gaines and Morgan vomiting flame? 
 The simple fact is, that the Admiral was not at the mast 
 head, was not lashed, did not go aloft to encourage his 
 men or to signal from his position, but simply stepped 
 into the main rigging to get a good vie~,v of the situa 
 tion, as sings Mr. T. Buchanan Read: 
 
 " High in the mizzen-shroud, 
 
 (Lest the smoke his sight o'erwhelm,) 
 Our Admiral's voice rang loud, 
 ' Hard a-starboard your helm 1 '" 
 
 And again: 
 
 " From the main-top, bold and brief, 
 
 Came the word of our grand old chief, 
 'Go on!' 'Twas all he said, 
 And the Hartford passed ahead. 
 
 So hard is it to get the facts touching what is going on 
 to-day, and almost before our very eyes ! " It is prob 
 able," says an able Scottish writer, " that not one fact in 
 the whole range of history, original and derived, is truly 
 stated/ 1 * 
 
 Had we space, it would not be difficult to show that 
 many of the most striking incidents of history, scenes 
 and events which artists have been fond of depicting, and 
 orators of citing, are pure fiction. Such are the stories 
 of Xerxes flogging the Hellespont, that his army num 
 bered five millions, and drank whole rivers dry; that three 
 hundred Spartans checked his career at Thermopylae, 
 when, in fact, they numbered over seven thousand; that 
 Virginia perished by her father's hand; that Omar burned 
 the Alexandrian library; and that Wellington at Waterloo 
 took refuge in a square: while grave doubts have assailed 
 the story of Cleopatra's dying by the asp's sting, that of 
 
 * For most of the facts and citations in the 7 last three pages, the author 
 is indebted to a writer in the N. Y. " Galaxy." 
 
198 THE ILLUSIONS OP HISTORY. 
 
 Canute commanding the waves to roll back, and that of 
 Charles IX firing on the Huguenots from a window of the 
 Louvre during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Who is 
 not familiar with the touching story of St. Pierre and his 
 companions delivering up the keys of Calais to Edward III, 
 with halters round their necks, and having their lives 
 spared at the intercession of the Queen? Hume discredited 
 it; it was shown by a French antiquary in 1835 to be 
 unfounded; and now a later French writer points to docu 
 mentary proof that St. Pierre was in collusion with the 
 besiegers, and was pensioned by the English King. Who, 
 again, has not heard the popular story of the origin of the 
 Order of the Garter, that it was owing to the accident 
 that happened to the Countess of Salisbury, when dancing 
 at the court of Edward III? It may be true; but the first 
 mention made of it is by Polydore Virgil, who wrote two 
 hundred years later. What historical tableau has been 
 more deeply impressed on the public mind than the part 
 ing of Louis XVI from his family? The scene has been 
 described in prose and verse, and portrayed in pictures of 
 all sizes, yet never occurred. It is true the Queen wished, 
 with the children, to see the King on the morning of his 
 execution, and he consented; but he subsequently requested 
 that they might not be permitted to return, as their 
 presence too deeply affected him. 
 
 Again: what Napoleon-worshipping disciple of Headley 
 or Abbott ever dreams of doubting that the hero of Lodi 
 and Austerlitz really did scale the Alps on a fiery, high- 
 mettled charger, with "neck clothed with thunder," as 
 David, the French artist, has painted him? But let us 
 hear the great Corsican himself: " The First Consul 
 mounted, at the worst part of the ascent, the mule of 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOliY. 199 
 
 an inhabitant of St. Peter, selected by the prior of the 
 convent as the surest-footed mule of that country." Such 
 is the difference between reality and painting, truth and 
 declamation. Again and again has it been denied by 
 historical critics that the Russians burned Moscow to pre 
 vent Napoleon from making it his winter-quarters; and 
 in vain do they assert what Mr. Douglas, at one time our 
 minister to Russia, has confirmed, that hardly more than 
 the suburbs, where the French were quartered, were set 
 on fire, to cover the Russian attack. Maelzels and other 
 showmen still renew the infandum dolorem of the confla 
 gration in paintings and panoramas. 
 
 So long as biography is written, or an essayist loves 
 to point his moral with an anecdote, we shall hear the 
 story of Newton and his dog Diamond, which destroyed the 
 papers which the philosopher set himself so patiently to 
 rewrite; and that he cut two holes in his study door for 
 his cat and kitten to go out and in, a big hole for the 
 cat, and a small hole for the kitten, albeit both stories 
 are myths, since neither purring puss nor sprightly poodle 
 were allowed within the precincts of the mathematician's 
 thought-hallowed rooms. But the APPLE, the falling of 
 the apple? Surely, the lynx-eyed critics of history, who 
 have cheated us out of so many pleasing illusions, will 
 not rob us of'' that? In one sense, it is of little conse 
 quence whether the story be true or false. Unless 
 observed by a mind already so prepared to make the 
 discovery that any falling body would have started the 
 proper train of ideas, the falling of ten thousand apples 
 would have led to no discovery of gravitation. But what 
 are the facts? We have, for the story, the authority of 
 several of Newton's friends, and the opinion of M. Biot, 
 
200 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOltY. 
 
 the eminent French savant, after a scrutiny of all the 
 facts in the case; yet Sir David Brewster, who, in the 
 first edition of his biography, declared his disbelief of the 
 story, sticks still to his incredulity; and rhetoricians must 
 still refer, with less confidence than eloquent eifect, to 
 " Newton and the falling apple." 
 
 It is popularly believed that Milton, in his blindness, 
 dictated his immortal epic to his daughters, and a British 
 painter has depicted the scene; though Dr. Johnson, in 
 his life of the poet, declares that he would not suffer 
 them to learn to write. The story that the Duke of 
 Clarence was drowned, at his own request, in a butt of 
 Malmsey, is still repeated in popular compilations of his 
 tory; and the Right Hon. J. W. Croker, in a book for 
 children, has had the incident, illustrated by a wood-cut. 
 The only foundation for the story, according to a historian 
 of the Tower of London, is the well-known fondness of 
 Clarence for Malmsey. " Whoever," says Sir Horace Wai' 
 pole, " can believe that a butt of wine was the engine of 
 his death, may believe that Richard (the Third) helped him 
 into it, and kept him down till he was suffocated." 
 
 Till recently it was generally believed that Britain 
 exchanged the name it had borne for more than a thou 
 sand years, for the new one of Anglia, or England, in 
 the reign of Egbert, king of Wessex. A Witanegemot, 
 or Parliament, the old chronicler tells us, was held at 
 Winchester, A.D. 800, and then and there the change was 
 made. But now comes Francis Palgrave with his " His 
 tory of the Anglo-Saxons," and declares that the first nine 
 years of Egbert's reign are a void in all the authentic 
 chronicles, that the country "was not denominated Eng 
 land till a much later period," and that " the Parliament 
 of England is a pure fable." 
 
THE ILLUSIOHS OF HISTORY. 201 
 
 Amono- the stories of travelers which have been re- 
 
 O 
 
 peated again and again in histories, geographies, and Sun 
 day-School books, none is more familiar to men in 
 Christian lands than the account of " Juggernaut," the 
 hideous idol under the wheels of whose car the deluded 
 heathen of India have been supposed to throw themselves, 
 with the hope of winning heaven by their self-sacrifice. 
 According to the latest and highest authorities* on the 
 subject, the popular belief on this latter point, so deeply 
 rooted in childhood, and made vivid by wood-cuts, rests 
 upon an entire misapprehension of the facts. " Juger- 
 nath," or rather " Jagernath," means simply " the Lord 
 of Life " ; self-immolation is utterly opposed to the spirit 
 of his worship; and the poor wretches who have been 
 supposed to court death by the idol, were simply invol 
 untary victims, who, among the multitudes that crowded 
 round the rope to pull, fell, in the excitement, under 
 the wheels and were crushed. 
 
 It is said that a famous Hebrew commentator, having 
 determined to write a work on Ezekiel, bargained, before 
 he began his book, for a supply of 300 tons of oil. Were 
 any writer to attempt the giant task of disabusing the 
 world of all its historical illusions, he would need, we 
 fear, not only tons of midnight oil, but an extra pair of 
 brains and hands, and a lease of lives " renewable for 
 ever." Among the grand and impressive incidents of 
 history, none are more interesting than the mots, or 
 striking expressions, which have dropped on memorable 
 occasions from the mouths of great men. These, being 
 brief, and so pungent as to stick like burrs in the mem- 
 
 *"Orissa," by Dr. N. W. Hunter, and "Ten Great Religions," by Rev. 
 J. G. Clarke. 
 
202 THE ILLUSIOKS OF HISTORY. 
 
 ory, one might suppose to have been accurately caught 
 and reported by history. Yet, probably, not one in a 
 hundred of these famous sayings was ever uttered, at 
 least, as reported, by the men with whose names they 
 are labelled. The fact is, the vast majority of these 
 pungent anecdotes have received their point in the man 
 ufactory of the wit. 
 
 So long as the star-spangled banner continues to wave, 
 and heroism to be admired, Americans will continue to 
 believe that General Taylor at the crisis of Buena Vista 
 called out, " A little more grape, Captain Bragg " ; and 
 equally impossible will it be to make them disbelieve 
 that General Jackson fought at New Orleans behind breast 
 works of cotton. Yet Captain Bragg asserts that the 
 " little more grape," like the schoolboy's whistle, produced 
 itself, in other words, is a poetic fiction; and "Old 
 Hickory" always denied the truth of the cotton bale 
 story, which certainly rather detracts from, than adds to, 
 his glory. The only foundation for it was the fact that 
 a few bales of cotton goods were flung into the breast 
 work, forming but an insignificant part of the material. 
 Again: how often on the anniversary of the battle of 
 New Orleans are we reminded of the famous cry of the 
 British soldiers, viz.: "Beauty and Booty," though it has 
 been declared by every surviving officer of that battle to 
 be a fiction. Perhaps no hero of ancient or modern 
 times has been credited with so many grand and even 
 sublime utterances which he never uttered, as Lord Nel 
 son. In Southey's admirable life of the hero, it is related 
 that, when, going into the battle of the Nile, Captain 
 Berry, Nelson's second in command, was told of the plan 
 and its probable results, he exclaimed with transport, 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HtSTOftY. 203 
 
 "If we succeed, what will the world say?" "There is 
 no if in the case," replied Nelson; "that we shall suc 
 ceed, is certain. Who may live to tell the story, is a 
 very different question." Mr. Massey quotes the anecdote 
 in his history of the reign of George IV, and adds: "We 
 are assured, on the authority of Captain Berry himself, 
 that no such scene took place." 
 
 Again: who has not admired the simple majesty of 
 the sentiment expressed in the order of Nelson at Trafal 
 gar, which has so often been the battle-cry of Britannia's 
 sons on sea and land: "England expects every man to do 
 his duty"? Yet the real order was, ''''Nelson expects 
 every man to do his duty," for which the former was 
 ingeniously substituted by the officer whose business it 
 was to telegraph the order to the fleet, simply because 
 he could find no flag by which to telegraph the word 
 Nelson. Once more, whose soul has not been thrilled 
 by the sublime sentiment of the reply with which the 
 same hero is said to have silenced the affectionate impor 
 tunities of his officers, when they entreated him to con 
 ceal the stars on his breast at the same battle: "In 
 honor I gained them, and in honor I will die with them! " 
 History has recorded few nobler sentiments, than which 
 Tacitus could not have put a finer into the mouth of 
 Agricola. But its merit is purely imaginative. The facts 
 are, as Dr. Arnold gathered them from Sir Thomas 
 Hardy, that Nelson wore on the day of battle the same 
 coat which he had ivorn for weeks, having the Order of 
 the Bath embroidered on it; and when his friends ex 
 pressed some fears regarding the danger, Nelson answered 
 that he was aware of the danger, but that it was " too 
 late then to shift a coat." 
 
204 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 "Up, Guards, and at them!" men will always believe 
 to have been the exclamation of Wellington, while they 
 thrill at the story of Waterloo, in spite of the Duke's 
 protest that he uttered no such nonsense; and just as 
 implicitly will they believe the tallying statement, that 
 the captain of the Imperial Guards uttered the bravado, 
 "La garde meurt, et ne se rende pas!" which is purely 
 a myth, albeit so dramatically introduced by Victor Hugo 
 in his picture of the battle in Les Miserables, and in 
 scribed, too, on the monumem at Nantes. The last 
 bombastic phrase was a pure ir.yention of a French jour 
 nalist two days after the bactle. On the authority of 
 Lamartine, every Frenchman religiously believes that 
 Wellington in that terrible fight had seven horses killed 
 under him, though it is well known in England that 
 Copenhagen, the one horse that bore him through the day, 
 escaped the murderous bullets, and died "in a green old 
 age" at Strathfieldsaye. If we may believe the same 
 poetic writer, the French were not beaten at Waterloo; 
 they simply left the field in disgust. The splendid irony 
 of Alexandre Dumas's compliment to the author of the 
 "History of the Girondins" has rarely been surpassed. 
 Meeting Dumas soon after the publication of that work, 
 Lamartine inquired anxiously of the great romancer, if 
 he had read it. " Ouij Jest superbe! C'est de Vhistoire 
 elevJe a la hauteur du roman" 
 
 A less memorable French mot than that invented for 
 the commander of the Imperial Guard, is the cry of 
 Philip of Valois, when, flying from the battle of Crecy, 
 he arrived before the closed gates of the Castle of Braye, 
 and exclaimed: " Ouvrez, ouvrez, Jest la fortune de la 
 France, Open, open to the fortunes of France." Turn- 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 205 
 
 ing to Froissart, the original source of the anecdote, we 
 find what ? Instead of the fine sentiment we have quoted, 
 by which the king embodies in himself the stricken for 
 tunes of his country, only the tame exclamation, " Ouvress, 
 ouvrez, c'est Vinfortune Roi de la France, Open, open; 
 'tis the unfortunate King of France." Will any one who 
 knows the intensity of a Frenchman's love for dramatic 
 " effects," be surprised to learn that Chateaubriand, that 
 splendide mendax writer, having misrelated this story in 
 his History of France, refused, on being informed of his 
 error, to correct it? Or is it strange that, with the same 
 noble scorn for strict accuracy, and exclusive regard for 
 artistic effect, Voltaire, on being asked where he found a 
 certain startling "fact," in one of his histories, replied: 
 "It is a frolic of my imagination?" For three centu 
 ries, historians have delighted to repeat the heroic senti 
 ment expressed by Francis I, when writing to his mother 
 from the battle-field of Pavia: "All is lost but honor" 
 (Tout est perdu fors Vhonneur). But how runs the letter 
 which the King actually wrote on the occasion, and which 
 has been preserved? Instead of the pithy, epigrammatic 
 communication, as terse as a telegram, which Francis is 
 said to have despatched from the battle-field, and which 
 so electrifies the reader as the grand outburst of a regal 
 spirit in sudden adversity, it turns out that the French 
 monarch wrote in prison, by permission, a long letter, in 
 which, after describing the battle, he says, prosaically: 
 " With regard to the remaining details of my misfortune, 
 honor, and life, which is safe, (Thonneur et la vie qui est 
 saulve,) are all that are left to me," etc., etc. Hardly less 
 diluted in the original is the sententious despatch which 
 Henry IV. is said to have written to one of his nobles 
 
206 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 after the battle of Arques: "Hang thyself, brave Crillon; 
 we have fought, and thou wert not there!" When we 
 have learned, too, that " Hang thyself! " was a hackneyed 
 expression of Henry's, repeated on the most trivial occa 
 sions, the mot sinks into the veriest commonplace. 
 
 What is more hackneyed than the saying attributed to 
 Demosthenes, that "action, action, action!" that is, gesticu 
 lation, is the one thing essential to success in oratory? 
 The word he used is x > tvr l <n':, the true signification of which 
 is agitation, motion, anything of a stirring character. Not 
 action, but emotion, which, if deeply felt, like murder, 
 " will out," was what Demosthenes held to be so vitally 
 essential, agreeing herein with the well-known maxim of 
 Horace, that " if you wish me to weep, you must first grieve 
 yourself." Again: how often has Cicero been quoted as 
 having said, " I would rather err with Plato than hold the 
 truth with the philosophers." The real sentiment of Cicero, 
 "Errare mehercule malo cum Platone . . . quam cum istis 
 vera sentire" which has been so often applauded by some, 
 and by others denounced as an instance of excessive and 
 almost idolatrous reverence for a giant intellect, occurs 
 in the " Tusculan Questions " ; and it is only by the grossest 
 perversion of the language that it can be construed into 
 such an expression of a humiliating general submission to 
 the authority of Plato as it is supposed to contain. The 
 immediate point under discussion was the immortality of 
 the soul, which was maintained by Plato, but denied by the 
 Epicureans ; and it is solely with reference to the conclusion 
 of Plato on this one point, not to the weight of his authority, 
 that Cicero prefers to err with him rather than to think 
 rightly with them. In other words, the Roman writer 
 prefers to share with the Greek what he deems the benefi- 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 207 
 
 cent possible error of eternal life, rather than entertain 
 with Plato's opponents what he (Ciceiro) regards as the 
 fearful and pernicious truth, if truth it be, of final anni 
 hilation. 
 
 A suspicious circumstance connected with many fine 
 sentiments is, that they have been put by historians into 
 the mouths of different persons, and on widely different 
 occasions, thus suggesting a doubt whether they were not 
 invented for rhetorical effect. Thus when Louis XIV 
 revoked the Edict of Nantes, Christina of Sweden is 
 reported to have said: "He has cut off his left arm with 
 the right." The epigram is as old as Valentinian. Almost 
 every reader is familiar with the sarcasm attributed to 
 Lord Eldon, concerning his successor on the woolsack, 
 Lord Brougham, " If he only knew a little of law, he 
 would know a little of everything." This is but a recoin- 
 age of a saying of Louis. Passing out of chapel after a 
 sermon by the Abbe Maury, he said: "If the Abbe* had 
 said a little of religion, he would have spoken to us of 
 everything." Sully, in his Memoirs, tells us that going one 
 day to see Henry IV. he met on the back stairs leading to 
 the King's apartment, a young lady veiled and dressed in 
 green. Being asked by the King whether he had not been 
 told that his majesty had a fever, and could not receive 
 that morning: "Yes, sire," replied the minister, " but the 
 fever is gone; I have just met it on the staircase dressed 
 in green." Precisely the same story is told of Demetrius 
 and his father. 
 
 " Were I to die at this moment," Nelson is said to have 
 written to the English government after the Battle of the 
 Nile, " more frigates would be found written on my heart." 
 Two and a half centuries before, Mary, Queen of England, 
 
208 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 is said to have deplored the loss of the last foothold of the 
 English in France with the exclamation, " When I die 
 Calais will be found written on my heart." Once more: 
 Mr. Motley tells us in his History of the Dutch Republic, 
 that Montpensier, a French prince, protested to Philip II 
 of Spain that he would be cut in pieces for that monarch's 
 service, and affirmed that " if his body were to be opened 
 at that moment, the name of Philip would be found 
 imprinted on his heart." Who has not admired the noble 
 reply of Wellington to a lady who expressed a passionate 
 desire to witness a great victory, "Madam, there is 
 nothing so dreadful as a great victory, excepting a great 
 defeat." Yet this speech was made long before by D'Ar- 
 genson, and is reported by Grimm. Among the countless 
 pungent witticisms attributed to Voltaire, we are informed 
 that having extolled Haller, he was told that he was very 
 generous in so doing, since Haller had just said the con 
 trary of him ; whereupon Voltaire remarked, after a short 
 pause, " Perhaps we are both of us mistaken." Is it not 
 a curious coincidence, that, centuries before this, Libanius 
 should have written to Aristaenetus, "You are always 
 speaking ill of me. I speak nothing but good of you. 
 Do you not fear that neither of us shall be believed?" 
 
 It has been said with truth that in Athenaeus, Macro- 
 bius, and other old jest-books, we shall find more than one 
 witty saying which now adorns the brazen front of the 
 plagiary. It is stated that when Lord Stormont boasted 
 to Foote, the English comedian, of the great age of some 
 wine which, in his parsimony, he doled out in very small 
 glasses, Foote observed, " It is very little of its age." This 
 identical joke is reported by Athenaeus, and assigned to one 
 Gnathsena, whose jokes were better than her character. 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 2C9 
 
 In Irving's "Abbotsford" we are told that Sir Walter 
 Scott was going on with great glee to tell a story of the 
 Laird of Macnab, " who, poor fellow," he said, " is dead 
 and gone." " Why, Mr. Scott," exclaimed his "gu.de wife," 
 " Macnab's not dead, is he?" "Faith, my dear," replied 
 Scott, with humorous gravity, " if he is not dead, they 
 have done him great injustice, for they've buried him." 
 The joke " passed harmless and unnoticed by Mrs. Scott, 
 but hit the poor Dominie just as he had raised a cup of tea 
 to his lips, causing a burst of laughter which sent half of 
 the contents about the table." Queer, is it not, that in 
 Dean Swift's specimens of genteel conversation in his own 
 time, we should find the following: " Colonel. Is it certain 
 that Sir John Blunderbuss is dead at last? Lord Sparkish. 
 Yes, or else he's sadly wronged, for they have buried him." 
 Among the after-dinner facetiae attributed to Thackeray is 
 a saying of his to Angus B. Reach, a clever young Scotch 
 man, who, when addressed as Mr. Reach, indignantly 
 exclaimed, "My name is pronounced Ree-ack, in two 
 syllables." Handing his angry neighbor a peach, Mr. 
 Thackeray said: "Mr. Ree-ack, will you allow me to help 
 you to a pee-ack?" In the Diary of Thomas Moore, we 
 read that Luttrell, the wit, dined at the same table with a 
 gentleman whose father invented the small napkins called 
 from the name, doilies. This gentleman having insisted 
 on being addressed as Mr. D'Oyley, with a long rest 
 between the " D " and the rest of the name, Luttrell, 
 pointing to a dumpling, blandly said, " Mr. D' Oyley, 
 may I ask you for a little of the d' umpling, near you?" 
 
 Macaulay's famous New Zealander is now known to be 
 the same person, in different costume, as Shelley's " Trans 
 atlantic Commentator," Kirke White's " Bold Adventurer," 
 
210 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOKY. 
 
 and Horace Walpole's " Traveler from Lima"; and the joke 
 attributed to Sheridan, on his son's saying that he had gone 
 down a mine to be able to say he had done so, " Why not 
 say you had, without going down? 1 ' has been reclaimed by 
 Mr. Forster for Goldsmith. An English wit used to say: 
 " I don't like my jokes until Sheridan has used them, then 
 I can appreciate them." Wit, it has been well said, like 
 gold, is circulated sometimes with one head on it, and some 
 times with another, according to the potentates who rule its 
 realm. What was the memorable jest, in all the news 
 papers a few years ago, about the eccentricities of a 
 certain family, but a repetition of Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu's witticism that " the world was made up of men 
 and women and Herveys?" So the germ of Douglas Jer- 
 rold's joke, that " it is better to be witty and wise than 
 witty and otherwise," has been detected in a book pub 
 lished in 1639; and the threadbare illustration of a dwarf 
 standing on the shoulders of a giant, employed to illustrate 
 the advantage of modern over ancient learning, is used by 
 Sir William Temple, is quoted by old Burton, and has been 
 traced back to the twelfth century. 
 
 Many of these similarities of thought and expression, 
 like many wonderful discoveries and inventions, are, no 
 doubt, merely coincidences. As the human mind and the 
 human heart are the same in all ages, we must not be sur 
 prised to find that 
 
 "kindred objects kindred thoughts inspire, 
 As summer clouds flash forth electric fire." 
 
 Perhaps of all the memorable sayings of great men, 
 there is no other about which lovers of rhetoric have so 
 often had their commonplace, as about the famous " e pur 
 si muove" "and yet the earth does move," of the 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 211 
 
 silenced, but not persuaded Galileo. And yet, as a late 
 French writer has shown, not only is there no proof that 
 Galileo ever uttered the epigram, but it flagrantly con 
 tradicts his whole demeanor on the trial. To regard him 
 as a martyr of science is simply ridiculous. Never was 
 a martyr less disposed for martyrdom. He denied every 
 thing with impatient alacrity. He offered to prove that 
 he had never held the doctrine of the earth's mobility, and 
 declared himself ready to show, by fresh arguments, the 
 error of that doctrine. In short, the epigram is " one of 
 those mots de cir Constance, invented after the occasion, 
 which tradition eagerly adopts because it so admirably 
 expresses the general sentiment." 
 
 Writers on religious toleration are fond of quoting the 
 supposed saying of Charles V, Emperor of Germany, who 
 in his retirement kept many clocks and watches, the mech 
 anism of which he was fond of studying, that it was un 
 reasonable to expect men to think alike, when no two 
 clocks or watches could be made to keep precisely the same 
 time. Not only does the story rest on no good authority, 
 but its mythical character is evident a priori from the fact 
 that in his last hours Charles enjoined on his son Philip to 
 enforce uniformity of opinion by means of that terrible 
 engine, the Inquisition. Moreover, he again and again 
 expressed his regret that he did not put Luther to death 
 when he had him in his power. Another story of 
 Charles, long implicitly believed on the authority of the 
 Scottish historian, Robertson, but now exploded, is that the 
 Emperor held a mock funeral of himself, celebrated his 
 own obsequies, and in so doing caught a cold which made 
 a real funeral necessary two days afterwards. 
 
 Among the stereotyped quotations of our political wri- 
 
212 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 ters and stump orators, there is no one which drops oftener 
 from their lips and pens than that which is so generally 
 attributed to Gen. Charles Cotesworthy Pinckney, namely: 
 "Millions for defence, not one 'cent for tribute/' While 
 Mr. P. was Ambassador to the French Court, Bonaparte 
 was preparing for operations against Great Britain, and 
 had pledged the representatives of other powers to degrad 
 ing contributions. What Mr. Pinckney really did say, 
 when Napoleon turned to him and asked, " And what will 
 your Republic give?" was, "Not a penny, not a penny." 
 The cent was not then known among our coin. Nearly 
 contemporary with this was the witty reply said to have 
 been made by Thelwall to Erskine, when the latter, in 
 reply to the former's proposal to defend himself from the 
 charge of treason, wrote, " If you do, you'll be hanged." 
 "Then I'll be hanged if I do," was Thelwall's prompt 
 rejoinder. A living relative of Thelwall's declares that 
 he had from his own lips the statement that no such cor 
 respondence ever took place. 
 
 Of all the brilliant epigrammatic sayings that have been 
 attributed to the wrong author, no one perhaps has been 
 more frequently quoted than that ascribed to that prince 
 of epigrammatists, Talleyrand, on the murder of the Duke 
 D'Enghien by Napoleon: "It is worse than a crime: it is 
 a blunder." The real author of the mot was Fouche. So, 
 because they have the ring of his unique witticisms, to. 
 Talleyrand have been attributed the saying, " It is the 
 beginning of the end;" the Chevalier de Panat's remark 
 on the Bourbons, that " they had learned nothing, and for 
 gotten nothing;" the saying of Chamfort that " revolutions 
 are not made with rose-water;" and Napoleon's observa 
 tion, "A king by birth is shaved by another. He who 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 213 
 
 makes kings is shaved by himself." To the same arch 
 diplomatist and wit has been attributed the famous saying 
 that " speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts," 
 a mot which has been traced back to Goldsmith, to Voltaire, 
 to the poet Young, to South, to Job, till we almost reach 
 the Prometheus who stole the original fire from Heaven. 
 So lucky or so cunning was Talleyrand that he even got 
 the credit of saying of others what was said against him 
 self. Thus, the remark, " Who would not adore him, he 
 is so vicious?" was said of him by Montrond, not by him 
 of Montrond ; and his pithy interrogatory to the dying man 
 who cried out that he was suffering the torments of the 
 damned, "Deja?" (Already?) was murmured by Louis 
 Phillippe when Talleyrand thus characterized his own suf 
 ferings. 
 
 Of all peoples the French have the most passionate love 
 for epigrams, and when a great man or a great occasion 
 wants one, they do not hesitate to invent it. Chamfort 
 characterizes the old regime as "an absolute monarchy 
 tempered by epigrams." Henry IV reigned by bon mots, 
 and even Bonaparte, in the plenitude of his power, could 
 not dispense with them. It was in the reign of Louis XIV 
 that they reached the zenith of their splendor. When the 
 king made an appointment, he communicated it to the 
 object of his condescension in an elegant saying. " If I 
 had known a more deserving person," he would say, " I 
 would have selected him." Perhaps no impromptu has 
 been more admired than the well-known saying of Louis 
 XII. when urged to revenge certain insults offered to him 
 before his accession to the throne:- "The King of France 
 does not revenge the injuries of the Duke of Orleans." 
 Of both the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, and the Duke of 
 
214 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 Savoy, predecessors of Louis, is the same anecdote related; 
 and, instead of being uttered thus concisely by Louis to 
 the Duke de la Tremouille, the saying was the conclusion 
 of an address to the deputies of the city of Orleans, who 
 were told that it would not be decent or honorable in a 
 King of France to revenge the quarrels of a Duke of Or 
 leans. The reply of Hadrian was: " Minime licere Prin- 
 cipi Romano ut quce privatus agitasset odia, ista Imperator 
 exequi" 
 
 Who has not admired the daring address of Mirabeau 
 to the minister of Louis XVI, who had been sent to the 
 National Assembly, to demand its dissolution? "Go tell 
 your master that we are here by the will of the people, 
 and that we will not depart except at the point of the 
 bayonet!" The real language of Mirabeau is far milder, 
 and lacks the most audacious words ascribed to him. 
 Almost every history of the French Revolution records 
 the famous invocation to Louis on the scaffold: "Fils de 
 Saint-Louis, montez au del!" Yet, when questioned on the 
 address by Lord Holland, the Abbe Edgeworth frankly 
 owned that he had no recollection of having made it. It 
 was put into his mouth, on the evening of the execution, 
 by a journalist. 
 
 One of the most signally successful hits in the form 
 of an invented saying, in French history, is the speech 
 put into the mouth of the Comte d'Artois, brother of 
 Louis XVIII, at the Restoration. As his Royal Highness 
 rode into town, he was received by a brilliant company, 
 and, in reply to an address by Talleyrand, stammered out 
 a few confused sentences, for which it was felt by the 
 shrewd statesman that some substitute must be prepared 
 for the Moniteur. Dupont offered to do it. " No, no," 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 215 
 
 replied Talleyrand, "you would make it too poetical. 
 Beugnot will do for that." Beugnot sat down to his 
 task, but, finding some difficulty, returned to Talleyrand, 
 and told him of it. " Why," said Talleyrand, " if what 
 he said does not suit you, invent an answer for him. 1 ' 
 " But how can I make a speech that Monsieur never pro 
 nounced?" "There is no difficulty about that," replied 
 Talleyrand; "make it good, suitable to the person and 
 to the occasion, and I promise you that Monsieur will 
 accept it, and so well, that in two days he will believe 
 he made it himself; and he will have made it himself; 
 you will no longer have had anything to do with it." 
 '"Capital! 1 I answered, says Beugnot, "and attempted 
 my first version, and brought it to be approved. ' That 
 won't do, 1 said Talleyrand; 'Monsieur never makes 
 antitheses or rhetorical flourishes.' I attempt a new 
 version, and am sent back a second time for making it 
 too elaborate. At last I am delivered of the one inserted 
 in the Moniteur, in which I make the prince say: 'No 
 more discord: Peace and France; at last I revisit my 
 native land; nothing is changed, except it be that there 
 is one Frenchman the more.' ' This time I give in ! ' 
 exclaimed Talleyrand. ' That is what Monsieur did say, 
 and I answer for its having been pronounced by him.' 
 In fact, the speech proved a perfect success; the news 
 papers took it up as a lucky hit; it was repeated as an 
 engagement made by the Prince; and the expression, 
 1 One Frenchman more!" 1 became the necessary pass- word 
 of the harangues, which began to pour in from all quar 
 ters. 11 When the Prince complained to the ministers that 
 he never uttered it, he was told that there was an 
 
216 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 imperious necessity for his having uttered it; and it 
 became history. 
 
 But the French are not the only people who have been 
 cheated into admiration of grand oratorical explosions 
 that never took place. Chatham's famous outburst in 
 reply to Horace Walpole, beginning, " The atrocious crime 
 of being a young man," etc., is the composition of Dr. 
 Johnson, who was not even present when the actual reply 
 was made, and of whose fidelity as a parliamentary reporter 
 we may judge from his boast that he took care always 
 that the Whig dogs should have the worst of it. 
 
 The interest which attaches to the dying words of 
 great men offers a powerful temptation to the inventive 
 talents of historians and biographers. Many of these last 
 utterances are too epigrammatic and sensational, too 
 well rounded off and polished, not to provoke a doubt 
 about their genuineness. Did Augustus Caesar, in dying, 
 ask if he had played his part well on life's stage, and, 
 when answered in the affirmative, say, "Then applaud"? 
 Did Vespasian bid his attendants raise him from his 
 couch, adding that an Emperor ought to die on his legs, 
 decet Imperatorem stantem mori? Did Chaucer alleviate 
 his dying pains by "A Balade, made upon his dethe- 
 bedde, lying in his great anguysse"? Did Scarron say 
 to those weeping about him, " My children, you will 
 never weep for me one half so much as I have made 
 you laugh"? Did Chesterfield, courteous to the last, gasp 
 out in articulo mortis, " Give Dayrolles a chair " ? How 
 often has it been stated in private, and echoed from 
 the pulpit, that the skeptic Hume died in an agony of 
 remorse, though his Christian biographer declares that 
 his last moments were as peaceful and unruffled as the 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOJIY. 217 
 
 gentle Addison's, and though some of Hume's more 
 intelligent enemies have asserted that in jesting about 
 Charon and the boat, and his arguments with the ferry 
 man to let him off a little longer, the Scottish philoso 
 pher affected an indifference which he did not feel! It is 
 said the last words of Louis XV to Madame Du Barri 
 were, " We shall meet again in another world." " A 
 pleasant rendezvous he is giving me! 11 she murmured; 
 " that man never thought of any one but himself." Almost 
 precisely the same story is told of Louis XIV and Madame 
 Maintenon. Among the last words of Burns were, 
 "Don't let the awkward squad fire over me," meaning a 
 body of local militia, of which he was a member, and 
 whose discipline he, to the last, humorously disparaged. 
 It is reported that the philosopher Haller kept his finger 
 on his pulse till he expired, which was immediately upon 
 saying, " My friend, the artery ceases to beat." Pitt's 
 heart was broken by Austerlitz, and he died exclaiming, 
 "Oh, my country! how I leave my country!" 
 
 It is a popular belief that Truth, if run over by a 
 locomotive and train, gets well; while Error dies of 
 lockjaw, if it but scratches its finger. But facts show 
 this to be an illusion. When the world has once got 
 hold of a lie, it is wonderful how hard it is to get it 
 out of the world. You beat it on the head, and think 
 it has given up the ghost, when lo! it jumps up again, 
 as lively and thrifty as ever. Bacon, in one of his 
 weighty essays, after remarking that truth is a naked 
 and open daylight, that does not show the masks, and 
 mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately 
 and daintily as candle-lights, adds, that " a mixture of a 
 lie doth ever add pleasure." Once declare to the world 
 10 
 
218 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 that Berkeley denies the existence of matter, and all over 
 the world men with Berkeley in their hands will echo the 
 absurdity. Say that Locke denies all knowledge except 
 through the medium of the senses, and though Locke be 
 studied in every college, the statement will pass unchal 
 lenged. Let some Fourth of July Orator quote from 
 Bacon the hackneyed sentiment, " Knowledge is power," 
 and other orators will ring the changes upon it in saecula 
 saeculorum, though Bulwer again and again deny that the 
 author of the " Instauration" ever penned such an aphorism. 
 Of all popular fallacies there is xio one more frequently 
 on men's lips than the statement th u * l^con was the father 
 of the Inductive Philosophy, the grand founder of modern 
 science. But it may be doubted whether his Novum 
 Organon, or new instrument of Philosophy, was really 
 new when he announced it as such, either as a process 
 followed in scientific discovery, or as a theory of the true 
 method of discovery. Bacon was neither the first to pro 
 claim the barrenness of the Aristotelian philosophy, nor 
 is his the glory of having ended the reign of that phi 
 losophy in Europe. He but hastened the downfall of a 
 system already in disrepute, and which would soon have 
 been banished from the schools had his " Instauration" never 
 been published. In short, as De Maistre has shown, he 
 was a barometer that announced the fine weather after a 
 long period of storm and controversy; and because he 
 foretold the glorious daylight of true science after the 
 darkness of the middle ages, he was proclaimed the author 
 of it. A contemporary called him truly "the prophet of 
 science." " I have seen," says De Maistre, " the design of a 
 medal struck in his honor, the body of which is a rising 
 sun, with the inscription, Exortus uti aetherius sol ('He 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 219 
 
 rose like the sun in the sky '). Nothing is more plainly 
 false. Better an aurora, with the inscription, Nuncia 
 soils (' Messenger of the sun ') ; and even this would be 
 an exaggeration, for, when Bacon rose, it was at least ten 
 o'clock in the morning." 
 
 How often do we hear attributed to Sir Eobert Walpole 
 the execrable saying, "All men have their price. 1 ' Pope 
 refers to it in the lines: 
 
 " Would he oblige me, let me only find 
 He does not think me what he thinks mankind." 
 
 But the " Grand Corrupter," as he was nicknamed by his 
 libelers, uttered no such sweeping slander against his fel 
 low-men. He simply declared of his corrupt opponents. 
 "All those men have their price," a truth as unquestion 
 able as his alleged maxim was false. Again, let Lord 
 Orrery relate, as an unquestionable occurrence, that Dean 
 Swift once began the service when nobody, except the 
 clerk, attended his church, with " Dearly beloved Roger, 
 the scripture moveth you and me in sundry places," and 
 the scandal will be again and again repeated, though a 
 kinsman of the Dean show that it was published of another 
 person in a jest book before Swift was born. The author 
 of "The Tale of a Tub" and "The Battle of the Books" 
 was not so destitute of originality as to have to borrow a 
 joke as paltry as it was profane. So Swift and Butler will 
 forever continue, we suppose, to divide the honors of the 
 closing couplet of the epigram on the feud between Handel 
 and Bononcini: 
 
 " Strange that all this difference should be 
 'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee, " 
 
 though neither of these wits was the author, but Dr. By- 
 rom, of Manchester. As " to him that hath shall be 
 
220 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 to Butler, so long as the world is infested with rascals, will 
 be awarded the credit of Trumbuirs sarcasm on the Tories 
 of the Revolution: 
 
 "No rogue e'er felt the halter draw 
 With good opinion of the law." 
 
 Among the hackneyed quotations of the day is the line, 
 
 " Small by degrees, and beautifully less," 
 
 which is invariably misquoted from " Henry and Emma," 
 a parody published in 1721, on Matthew Prior's " Nut 
 Brown Maid." Describing the dress of Emma, the lover 
 says: 
 
 "No longer shall the bodice, aptly laced, 
 From thy full bosom to thy slender waist, 
 That air of harmony and shape express, 
 Fine by degrees, and beautifully less." 
 
 Another current quotation which, in England and 
 France, and occasionally in this country, is attributed to 
 Buffon, is this: " Le style, c'est Vhomme" the style is the 
 man. Even Professor Marsh, in his lectures on the English 
 Language, reproduces the misquotation, which asserts a 
 manifest untruth. What Buffon really did say was this: 
 " Le style est de I'homme meme" " the style of a writer," 
 that is, distinguished from the contents of a work, which 
 must be pushed aside by fresh discoveries, " is his own 
 peculiar contribution. 1 ' Perhaps the tritest of all thread 
 bare quotations is the saying, " There is but one step from 
 the sublime to the ridiculous;" yet even of this the pater 
 nity is commonly mistaken. It has so often been credited 
 to Napoleon, instead of to Thomas Paine, that even intelli 
 gent persons are puzzled to fix the authorship. 
 
 It has been well observed that sometimes an invented 
 pleasantry passes for fact, as in the asparagus and oil story 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 221 
 
 of Fontenelle. Fontenelle, so the myth runs, was sup 
 ping with a friend who liked oil, which the former dis 
 liked. It was agreed that half the asparagus should be 
 dressed with oil, and half without. The friend dropped 
 down in an apoplectic fit, and immediately Fontenelle hur 
 ried to the door, and called out, "Point d'huile!" "No 
 oil!" How many thousands have believed the malicious 
 story about Gibbon, that, offering himself to Mademoiselle 
 Churchod (afterwards Madame Neckar), he went down on 
 his knees, and, being very fat, was unable to get up. The 
 simple fact is, that she asked him why he did not go down 
 on his knees to her, and he replied, " Because you would be 
 obliged to ring for your footman to get me up again." 
 
 So many historic sayings have never been uttered by 
 the great men to whom they have been attributed, that we 
 need not be astonished if we one day learn that Caesar's 
 "Veni, vidi, vici" is a myth; that Perry never wrote the 
 immortal words, " We have met the enemy, and they are 
 ours;" and that Lawrence's "Don't give up the ship!" is 
 an old sailor's yarn. Indeed, Napoleon, who understood 
 the military skill of " the foremost man of all the world," 
 ridiculed as absurd that saying of the great Julius to the 
 pilot in a storm, " What do you fear? You carry Caesar!" 
 Americans, at least American musical critics, are not ex 
 cessively proud of " Yankee Doodle, either the words or the 
 tune; but the poor honor of its composition, it seems, is 
 not ours. The song and tune date back to the wars of 
 Roundhead and Cavalier. An early version of the words 
 in England runs: 
 
 "Nankee Doodle came to town 
 
 Upon a Kentish pony; 
 He stuck a feather in his hat, 
 And called him Macaroni." 
 
222 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 The English, it is said, borrowed the song from Germany, 
 and it was introduced to America as a martial or national 
 air by a Dr. Shackburg, a surgeon of the regular troops at 
 Albany, who was so struck by the outre appearance of the 
 raw colonial levies gathered there in 1755 for the attack 
 on the French posts of Niagara and Frontenac, that he 
 quizzically prepared a song for them to the tune of Yankee 
 Doodle, which they at once adopted as their own. It would 
 be easy to multiply these illustrations, but we will add but 
 one more, the over-hackneyed piece of nonsense attrib 
 uted to Archimedes, that give him a place to stand on with 
 his lever, and he would move the world. This is one of the 
 standard allusions, a part of the necessary stock-in-trade 
 of all orators and newspaper- writers ; and persons, when 
 ever they meet with it, think of, Archimedes as an extra 
 ordinarily great man, a giant of the intellectual giants, 
 and cry, " Really, how wonderful ! " 
 
 Now, it is a well-known principle of mechanical forces 
 that the velocities at the extremities of a lever are recip 
 rocally as the weights at those extremities, and the lengths 
 of the arms directly as those same velocities. So it has 
 been shown that if, at the moment when Archimedes ut 
 tered his memorable saying, God had taken him at his 
 word by furnishing him with place, prop, and lever, 
 also with materials of sufficient strength, together with 
 a counter- weight of two hundred pounds, the fulcrum 
 being at three thousand leagues from the centre of the 
 earth, the great geometer would have required a lever 
 of twelve quadrillions of miles long, and a velocity at 
 the extremity of the long arm equal to that of a cannon 
 ball, to raise the earth one inch in twenty-seven trill 
 ions of years! Yet will this exposure of' the colossal ab- 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 223 
 
 surdity be of any use? Of not the slightest. Orators will 
 continue to employ this bravura of rhetoric, and men will 
 continue to gape with astonishment at the boast of Archi 
 medes, as if he had been foolish enough to make it, of 
 which, out of Plutarch, there is no proof whatever. 
 
 The Roman poet, Horace, tells of a crazy citizen of 
 Argos who fancied that he sat in a theatre, seeing and 
 applauding wonderful tragedies. Being cured of his mad 
 ness by his friends with a dose of hellebore, instead of 
 thanking them, he was indignant, and exclaimed, " By 
 Pollux, you have killed me, not saved me, in thus robbing 
 me of my pleasure, and expelling from my mind a most 
 delightful illusion ! " Not unlike this, we fear, have been 
 the feelings of the reader, while we have been disabusing 
 him, perhaps, of some of his historical hallucinations. Cui 
 bono? Of what use is it thus to throw all our heroes and 
 heroines into the crucible? Are you sure that, as Dryden 
 said of Shakspeare, burn them down as you will, there will 
 always be precious metal at the bottom of the melting pot? 
 Can we be confident of anything that is told us of past 
 times? Is all history false? or, if not, how are we to dis 
 criminate the gold from the dross, the reality from the 
 counterfeit? If I choose to believe in the gaunt she- wolf 
 of the Tiber, or that the unhappy Mary of Scotland was 
 as good as she was beautiful, what harm can it do me? 
 Why must I be pestered into the conviction that the first 
 is a myth, and that the last was a courtesan and a mur 
 deress? Grant that the heroism of a Lucretia, of a 
 Mucius Scsevola, is a fa-ble; as Goethe says, "if the Ro 
 mans were great enough to invent such stories, we should 
 at least be great enough to believe them." If it be true 
 that "where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise"; if 
 
224 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOEY. 
 
 the secret of all earthly bliss lies in preserving our illu 
 sions, in contriving, as we go through life, not to be 
 disenchanted; how can you expect us to be grateful to, 
 even if we are not positively angry with, the Niebuhrs, the 
 Lewises, and other historical big-wigs, who have dethroned 
 so many of our idols? Is history so rich in noble deeds 
 and utterances, that we can afford to lose any of the god 
 like acts, any of the sparkling jests, the happy inspirations, 
 the thrilling improvisations, of great and good men? Are 
 not these " fables," as you call them, almost the only poetry 
 the State and county taxes have not crushed out of our 
 hearts? Nay, can we spare a single epigram? 
 
 In reply, let us say, first, that, in spite of all we have 
 said, the substance of history remains intact. As in the 
 case of money, the very word counterfeit implies the ex 
 istence of a true, nay, that the great mass of silver or 
 gold coin is genuine, so with the stories of the nations. 
 Again, let us remember that the spirit of inquiry and 
 the spirit of scepticism are as widely removed as the 
 poles. The same relentless iconoclasm. the same search 
 ing spirit of inquiry, which cheats us of many of our 
 fond illusions, may also relieve human nature of countless 
 unjust stigmas of meanness, stupidity, cowardice, and 
 cruelty. 
 
 Again, as the value of the real gem is enhanced by 
 the exposure of the counterfeit, as the Dutch, by de 
 stroying one-half of their spice trees, increased the value 
 of the entire crop, so will the common stock of recorded 
 or traditional wit, virtue, and heroism, be rather increased 
 in value than depreciated by the illusion-destroying pro 
 cess to which history has been subjected by modern 
 criticism. The occasional loss of a charming error will 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 225 
 
 be compensated, and more than compensated, by the 
 habits of sharpness and accuracy we shall acquire, by 
 challenging every story which taxes our credulity. We 
 are aware that it is sometimes said that ignorance is the 
 mother of admiration. If this be so, then it follows that 
 one of the noblest and healthiest exercises of the mind 
 rests chiefly on a deceit and a delusion, that, with fuller 
 knowledge, all our enthusiasm would cease; whereas, in 
 fact, for once that ignorance leads us to admire that 
 which, with fuller insight, we should perceive to be a 
 cheat or a sham, a hundred, nay, a thousand times, it 
 prevents us from admiring that which is admirable in 
 deed. While, therefore, some eyes will look sorrowfully 
 upon this reformation, will regard it, in the fine image 
 of Landor, like breaking off a crystal from the vault of 
 a twilight cavern, out of mere curiosity to see where 
 the accretion ends and the rock begins, others will agree 
 with Dr. Johnson, that the value of a story depends on 
 its truth; on its being a picture of an individual, as of 
 human nature in general; and that, if it be false, it 
 is a picture of nothing. 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu closes one of her letters 
 with the remark: "There is nothing can pay one for 
 that valuable ignorance which is the companion of youth. 
 ... To my extreme mortification, I find that I am 
 growing wiser and wiser every day. 11 But does any sen 
 sible man regret, or any sensible woman, in this age 
 of Somervilles, Stowes, and Martineaus, that he is no 
 longer cheated by the fictions that amused his childhood? 
 that he has ceased to believe that Romulus and Remus 
 were suckled by a wolf, and that Jack-the-Giant-killer, 
 Sinbad the Sailor, and Robinson Crusoe, were flesh-and- 
 
226 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 blood personages? If not, why should he mourn because 
 some relentless investigator threatens to sweep away the 
 myths that have deceived his maturer judgment by sug 
 gesting grave doubts whether Curtius did actually jump 
 into the gulf, or whether there was any gulf for him to 
 leap into; whether Portia swallowed live coals; whether 
 Xerxes cut a canal through Mount Athos, and clouded 
 the sun with the arrows of his soldiers; whether Codes 
 defended a bridge, single-handed, against an entire army; 
 whether Rome was saved by a goose, and captured by a 
 hare; whether Hannibal levelled rocks, and Cleopatra 
 dissolved pearls, with vinegar; whether Belisarius did beg 
 an obolus in the streets of Constantinople; whether 
 Scsevola burned his right hand, or Regulus died a heroic 
 death; whether Zisca's skin was made into a drum-head; 
 whether Columbus's egg had not tried its trick of bal 
 ancing long before the fifteenth century; whether he did 
 not first discover Watling Island, instead of Cat Island 
 (or San Salvador), and whether the Norwegians were not 
 500 years ahead of him; whether Alfred really burnt the 
 cakes, and went disguised into the Danish camp; whether 
 Hengist and Horsa, Rowena and Vortigern, are not 
 shadows; whether Cromwell's dead body was hung in 
 chains at Tyburn; whether there was really a Pope Joan? 
 and whether Captain John Smith had more lives than 
 ten cats, and was saved by Pocahontas. 
 
 Within a few years it has been found, by the discov 
 ery of the Sinaitic *and other very ancient manuscripts 
 of the New Testament, that some of its most admired 
 passages are forgeries, mediaeval additions to the origi 
 nal text. It is sad to learn that the story of the woman 
 taken in adultery is a myth. It is sadder still to learn 
 
THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTOKY. 227 
 
 that the utterance of our Lord on the cross, " Father, 
 forgive them, for they know not what they do," is not to 
 be found in some of the old manuscripts, and that the 
 words in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matt, v, 44, 
 " Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
 you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, 1 ' 
 words which lie at the very foundation of Christian mo 
 rality, must be swept away from the sacred text. What, 
 then, shall we do? Shall we throw aside our Testaments, 
 or shall we weep over the loss of these precious verses? 
 What, indeed, do we want? Is it the interpolations of 
 monks, or the very words, the exact language, of Matthew, 
 Mark, Luke, and John, without a syllable or a letter 
 added or removed? For ourselves, we thank God for 
 every exposure of a forgery, whether in His book or in 
 man's books; and to our mind the most cogent proof 
 that the Holy Scriptures are from Him, is the fact that 
 while other histories have been found to swarm with 
 errors, they, when subjected to the intensest, most micro 
 scopic scrutiny of modern criticism, have come forth from 
 the ordeal substantially unscathed. 
 
 God grant that the day may never come when we 
 shall adopt the Jesuitical doctrine of Infidelity's latest 
 champion, Renan. " For the success of what is good," 
 he tells us in his " Life of Jesus," " less pure ways are 
 necessary"; "the best cause is only won by ill means; 
 we must accept men as they are, with all their illusions, 
 and thus endeavor to work upon them; France would 
 not be what it is, if it had not for a thousand years 
 believed in the flask of holy oil at Rheims; when we with 
 our scrupulous regard for truth have accomplished what the 
 heroes did by their deceptions, then, and not till then, shall 
 
228 THE ILLUSIONS OF HISTORY. 
 
 we have a right to blame them; the only culprit in such 
 cases is mankind, who wants to be cheated." (The italics 
 are ours). So, according to this unblushing apostle of 
 fraud, we are not to believe with John Milton that 
 "Truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no 
 policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her vic 
 torious." Instead of destroying the delusions of our fel 
 low men, we must use them cunningly, cheat those who 
 want to be cheated, and rouge and powder, if need be, 
 the face of Truth herself, to make her attractive. And 
 this is the morality of a French democrat who would 
 have us give up our Bibles! Let us cultivate a reverent 
 love for Truth, pure Truth, without gloss, alloy, or 
 adulteration. Let us seek to know " the truth, the whole 
 Truth, and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH," in history, in sci 
 ence, in literature, and in religion, at whatever sacrifice 
 of our prejudices, or whatever havoc it may make with 
 our fondly- cherished illusions; for, if there is any truth 
 which all the experience of the past thunders in our ears, 
 it is that falsehood is moral poison, that any short-lived 
 pleasure which we may derive from cheating ourselves 
 or from being cheated, will be dearly paid for by the 
 disappointment and anguish which will be ours when the 
 veil shall be torn away, and we shall see things as they 
 are. 
 
HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 
 
 A MONG the favorite topics of newspaper declamation, 
 OL there is none upon which certain moralists of the 
 press are fonder of preaching a quarterly homily, than 
 upon the importance of early rising. Of course, the argu 
 ments for the practice are the old, hackneyed, stereotyped 
 ones upon which the changes have been rung a thousand 
 times, " straw that has been threshed a hundred times 
 without wheat," as Carlyle would say. " Early to bed, and 
 early to rise," etc. There is a freshness, a briskness, a 
 sparkling liveliness in the first hours of the day, which all 
 the subsequent ones lack ; let it stand but an hour or two, 
 and it is already settled upon its lees; it is stale, flat, and 
 vapid. Again, the early riser seizes the day by the forelock ; 
 he drives it, instead of being driven, or rather dragged 
 along, by it. Then, all the great men, especially those 
 who have distinguished themselves in literature, science, 
 and the arts, were early risers. Homer, Virgil, Horace, 
 among the ancients, and Paley, Priestly, Parkhurst, and 
 Franklin, among the moderns, all left their pillows early. 
 Sir Thomas More and Bishops Jewel and Burnet sprang 
 upon their feet at four in the morning. The Great 
 Frederic of Prussia, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, and 
 Napoleon, were early risers. " When you begin to turn 
 in bed," said the Duke of Wellington, "it is time to turn 
 out." Jefferson declared at the close of his life, " The sun 
 has not caught me in bed for fifty years." 
 
230 HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 
 
 Did not Sir Walter Scott write all his great novels 
 before breakfast, and was it not in the same early hours 
 that Dr. Albert Barnes penned those Commentaries of 
 which a million volumes have been sold in this country 
 and Europe? Was it not between the hours of five and 
 eight in the morning that John Quincy Adams penned most 
 of his public papers? Was it not in the same three hours 
 that Gibbon wrote his immortal " Decline and Fall," and 
 has not Buffon told us that to the studies of those three 
 hours daily the world is indebted for the noble work which 
 established his fame as the greatest of 'natural historians? 
 Did not Judge Holt, who was curious concerning longevity, 
 and questioned every old man that came before him, about 
 his modes of living, find that, amid all their different 
 habits, they agreed in one thing, they got up 'betimes? 
 These stale anecdotes, eked out with the old quotation from 
 
 Thomson, 
 
 "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?" 
 
 and ether passages from the poets in which they try to 
 inveigle people from their beds by singing of the beauty 
 of the dappled morn, the dewy grass, the warbling birds, 
 and preserving a studied silence concerning the rising fog, 
 the chill air, and the raw, underdone feeling of the world 
 generally, comprise all the arguments which, for half a 
 century, the wit of the early risers has been able to scrape 
 together for the practice. 
 
 Now all this may carry great weight with some people 
 with whom an uneasy conscience, an overloaded stomach, 
 or a hard bed, may, like Macbeth, " murder sleep." It is 
 not strange that your old bachelor, who is happy neither in 
 bed nor out, or your henpecked husband, who dreads a 
 morning curtain lecture, or your ghostly, pale-faced, 
 
HOMILIES ON" EAELY RISING. 231 
 
 dyspeptic student, who fancies that by rising with the lark 
 he is to become a giant in law, medicine, or theology, 
 cries up this foolish custom. Making a merit of necessity, 
 they may grow grand and intolerant on the strength of 
 their virtue, and crow like chanticleer over those who can 
 appreciate the luxury of " t'other doze." But those who 
 have no torturing conscience, dyspepsia, or " Damien's bed 
 of steel," to make Alcmena nights for them, are not to be 
 dragged from their warm pillows on such pretences as 
 these. Talk of the healthiness of early rising! Who can 
 believe that such violent changes from the sleeping to the 
 waking state, from warm to cold, are beneficial to the 
 system? Why is it, if they are not unnatural, that the 
 poets, refining upon the torments of the damned, make 
 one of their greatest agonies to consist in being suddenly 
 transported from heat to cold, from fire to ice? Are they 
 not, at certain revolutions, according to Milton, " haled out 
 of their beds" by " harpy- footed furies," fellows by whom 
 they are made to 
 
 " -feel by turns the bitter change 
 Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce"? 
 
 " But think," we hear some one exclaim, " of the 
 amount of time saved by early rising"! When all other 
 arguments are exhausted, the early riser will call for 
 slate and pencil, and proceed to prove to you by a painful 
 arithmetical calculation that you may add some six or 
 seven years to your life by crawling out of bed at five 
 o'clock instead of seven. Of course, he makes it con 
 venient to forget, in his calculation, the two hours one 
 loses by hurrying to bed that much sooner, in order to 
 humor his foolish eccentricity; as if one should try to 
 lengthen a yard-stick by cutting off a foot from one end 
 
232 HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 
 
 and adding it to the other. Admitting that we may add to 
 our days by rising early, is the longest life necessarily the 
 best? Or is it desirable to spin out one's years to three 
 score and ten, if, to do so, he must cheat himself of all 
 life's comforts and luxuries, abjure his morning snooze, 
 "feed on pulse, and nothing wear but frieze"? The lapse 
 of years alone is not life; we should count time by heart 
 throbs, by the number of delicious or pleasing sensations. 
 As to one's growing wealthy by early rising, we leave it 
 to the candle-end-saving economists to say whether it is 
 cheaper to keep one's self warm by coal at ten dollars a 
 ton than between a mattress bed and comforters. Recollect 
 that you wear out no clothes, consume no oil, eat no break 
 fasts, while you are coquetting with " tired nature's sweet 
 restorer." Then, as to growing wise by early rising, has 
 not knowledge-seeking been associated, from time imme 
 morial, with the midnight oil? Have not all the great 
 works of genius which have conferred immortality on their 
 authors, been written while the rest of the world was 
 hushed in slumber, in the "wee small hours ayant the 
 'twal " ? Is not every elaborate literary production said 
 to smell of the lamp, thus showing that, in the opinion of 
 authors and critics, Apollo has no time to attend to his 
 votaries until he has unharnessed his steeds from the 
 chariot of the sun? Did not Pope's best thoughts come 
 to him, like owls, in the night-time; and did not Swift, 
 according to a contemporary, " lie abed till eleven o' clock, 
 and think of wit for the day"? But, admitting an excep 
 tion or two to the general rule, because Sir Walter Scott 
 wrote whole books before breakfast, is anyone foolish 
 enough to natter himself that he can dash off Waverleys 
 and Ivanhoes simply by striking a light at four in the 
 
HOMILIES OK EARLY RISIKGL 233 
 
 morning, poscente ante diem librum cum lumine? Boobies 
 and dunces will be boobies and dunces still, though they 
 keep their eyes wide open from January to December. 
 Early rising will no more convert a fool into a wise man, 
 a commonplace man into a man of genius, than eating 
 opium will make him a Coleridge or a DeQuincey. The 
 examples of Frederic the Great and the Emperor Napoleon 
 may weigh with their admirers; but we believe it would 
 have been far better for humanity if they had loved their 
 pillows. It was only after a desperate and most unnatural 
 struggle that the former triumphed in his youth over the 
 charms of sleep, which he found it harder to resist than in 
 after life to rout the Austrians ; and he succeeded only by 
 invoking the assistance of an old domestic whom he charged, 
 on pain of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every morning 
 at two o'clock. As to the poet Thomson's panegyrics on 
 early rising, who usually snored away the whole forenoon 
 in bed, and was so lazy that he used to eat peaches from the 
 trees in his garden with his hands in his waistcoat pocket, 
 literally browsing, like a giraffe, our judgment of his 
 counsel is pithily expressed by an American poet, Saxe: 
 
 "Thomson, who sang about the Seasons, said 
 It is a glorious thing to rise in season; 
 But then he said it, lying, in his bed 
 
 At ten o'clock A. M., the very reason 
 He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is, 
 His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice." 
 
 It is very well to "take Time by the forelock 1 '; but 
 what if, in the eifort to do so, one exhausts himself too 
 much to hold him? George Eliot, in one of her novels, 
 portrays a thrifty farmer's wife who rose so early in the 
 morning to do her work, that by ten o'clock it was all 
 over, and she was at her wits' end to know what to do 
 
234 HOMILIES ON EARLY RISING. 
 
 with her day. No doubt it is " the early bird that catches 
 the worm"; but, as the pillow-loving boy said to his father, 
 " it is the early worm that gets caught." Intemperance 
 in early-rising, like every other excess, is sure to bring 
 its penalty along with it. Nature will not be cheated 
 out of her dues, and if they are not paid in season, she 
 will exact them, with compound interest, out of season. 
 It is well known that the early riser often compensates 
 himself for his greeting to the dawn by frequent naps 
 in the afternoon or evening. Josiah Quincy tells us in 
 the " Life " of his father, that the latter rose every morn 
 ing in winter and summer, for many years, at four 
 o'clock. The effect of this outrage upon Nature was that 
 he was sure to drop to sleep, wherever he was, when his 
 mind was not actively occupied, sometimes even in com 
 pany, when the conversation flagged, and always as soon 
 as he took his seat in his gig or sulky, in which he drove 
 to town. John Quincy Adams, who was addicted to the 
 same vice of intemperate early rising, with similar con 
 sequences, once accompanied him to the Harvard Law 
 School, to hear Judge Story lecture. " Now Judge Story," 
 continues the biographer, " did not accept the philosophy 
 of his two friends in this particular, and would insist 
 that it was a more excellent way to take out one's allow 
 ance of sleep in bed, and be wide awake when out of it, 
 which he himself most assuredly always was. The Judge 
 received the two Presidents gladly, and placed them in 
 the seat of honor on the dais by his side, fronting the 
 class, and proceeded with his lecture. It was not long 
 before, glancing his eye aside to see how his guests were 
 impressed by his doctrine, he saw that they were both of 
 them sound asleep, and he saw that the class saw it too. 
 
HOMILIES ON EARLY BISIKG. 235 
 
 Pausing a moment in his swift career of speech, he pointed 
 to the two sleeping figures, and uttered these words of 
 warning: 'Gentlemen, you see before you a melancholy 
 example of the evil effects of early rising!' The shout 
 of laughter with which this judicial obiter dictum was 
 received effectually aroused the sleepers, and it is to be 
 hoped that they heard and profited by the remainder of 
 the discourse." 
 
 There is a class of moralists at the present day with 
 whom it is a favorite dogma that no one can ever reach 
 a high degree of goodness except by passing through a 
 certain number of self-imposed trials. It has been justly 
 said of such persons that their whole mind seems wrapt 
 up in the office of polishing up little moral pins and 
 needles, and running them into the most tender parts of 
 their skins. It is chiefly men of this stamp who advo 
 cate the heresy of early rising. Were they content to 
 stick pins into themselves, we would leave them to get 
 all the moral discipline that is possible from the practice. 
 But they insist on other persons imitating them; and 
 what is more offensive, they are continually putting on 
 airs on account of their eccentricity. Not content with 
 "shaking hands with himself mentally," and thinking he 
 has done a great thing, the early riser must vaunt him 
 self of his achievements herein. Indeed, there are few 
 things in the way of bragging that will compare with 
 what an English essayist calls " the insulting triumph, 
 the outrageous animation of the man who has dressed by 
 candle-light in the month of December." It is not mere 
 ly that he speaks of the exploit with a chuckle, or the 
 
 " sort of satisfaction 
 Men feel when they've done a noble action." 
 
236 HOMILIES ON EAELY BISItfG. 
 
 but he looks down upon you who hug your pillow, with 
 an air of superiority, as if you lacked moral backbone, 
 or were a pigmy in virtue. 
 
 There is a caustic proverb, " We are all good risers 
 at night, 1 ' which strikingly shows how unnatural is this 
 practice of getting up early. We have long been puzzled 
 to account for the origin of so disagreeable a practice; 
 but a recent English writer suggests an explanation which 
 is as satisfactory as it is original and ingenious. For those 
 who have to labor in the fields, or to get their living by 
 hunting, there are obvious advantages in making the most 
 of the daylight. Now philosophers have remarked that an 
 instinct, like a physical organ, often survives after its 
 original function has become unimportant. Animals retain 
 rudimentary claws or wings which have become perfectly 
 useless, a legacy from their remote ancestors; a dog still 
 turns himself three times around before he lies down, 
 because his great-great-grandfathers did so in the days 
 when they were wild beasts, roaming amongst the long 
 grass; and every tamed animal preserves for a time 
 certain instincts which were useful to him only in his 
 wild state. The sentiment about early rising is such a 
 traditionary instinct, which has wandered into an era 
 where it is not wanted. 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 A HISTORY of the misdirected labors of the human 
 *-V race would form one of the most curious and in 
 structive, as well as one of the most voluminous, books 
 that could be compiled. It would show that, while util 
 ity has been a sharp spur to human effort, difficulty and 
 the love of praise have furnished motives equally power 
 ful. Not to speak of the pyramids, those mountains of 
 masonry, which, though costing the labors of thousands 
 for many years, serve only as monuments of human 
 folly; or of huge walls stretching along the length of an 
 empire ; or of the costly monuments reared to perpetuate 
 the memory of things which men should be anxious to 
 forget; or of the oceans of time wasted in the profitless 
 researches of astrology, magic, quadrature of the circle, 
 perpetual motion, etc.; let us glance for a few moments 
 at some of the fruits of a similar folly in the literary 
 world. Here, after all, will be found the most prodigal 
 waste of time and labor, as the far-stretching Saharas of 
 useless, and worse than useless, books that greet the eye 
 in every Bodleian library will testify. There are authors 
 who have written hundreds of volumes, folio, quarto, and 
 octavo, full of the veriest commonplace, and which now 
 not only sleep quietly and undisturbed on the shelves, 
 but which respect for the human understanding compels 
 us to believe could never have found even yawning 
 
 readers. 
 
 337 
 
238 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 Perhaps theology may claim to be the Arabia of liter 
 ature, for here are far-reaching wastes or Great Deserts 
 of books, in which, could he live as long as the ante 
 diluvians, one might travel for ages, without finding 
 a single verdant spot to relieve the eye or cheat the 
 painful journey. In one of the immense libraries of 
 Continental Europe there is pointed out to the traveler 
 one entire side of a long hall filled with nothing but 
 treatises on a certain mystical point in divinity, all of 
 which are now but so much old lumber, neglected even 
 by the antiquary, and fit only for the pastry-cook or the 
 trunk-maker. As space is limitless, and there are large 
 chasms of it still unfilled by tangible bodies, it may 
 seem cruel to grudge these writings the room they oc 
 cupy. Yet one cannot but lament such an enormous 
 waste of labor, nor with the utmost stretch of charity 
 can he refrain from believing that, though Nature may 
 have abhorred a vacuum in the days of Aristotle, her 
 feelings must have greatly changed since mediocrity has 
 filled it with so wretched apologies for substance and 
 form. 
 
 The celebrated William Prynne, whose ears were cut 
 off by Charles I, wrote about 200 books, nearly all ele 
 phantine folios or bulky quartos, not one of which the 
 most inveterate literary mouser of our day ever peeps 
 into. In 1786 the Rev. William Davy, an obscure curate 
 in Devonshire, began writing a " System of Divinity," 
 as he termed it, in twenty-six volumes, which, being 
 unable to find a publisher, he resolved to print with his 
 own hands. With a few old types and a press made by 
 himself, he began the work of typography, printing only 
 a page at a time. For twelve long years he pursued 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 239 
 
 his extraordinary labors, and at last, in 1807, brought 
 them to a close. As each volume of the twenty-six octavo 
 volumes of his work contained about 500 pages, he must 
 have imposed and distributed his types, and put his press 
 into operation 13,000 times, or considerably more than 
 three times a day, omitting Sundays, during the long 
 period of his task, an amount of toil without remuner 
 ation which almost staggers belief. Only fourteen copies 
 were printed, which he bound with his own hands, and 
 a few of which he deposited in the public libraries of 
 London. He died at an advanced age in 1826, hoping 
 to the last for a favorable verdict from posterity, though 
 even the existence of his magnum opus, magnum in 
 size only, is probably not known to ten men in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 But it is not in the literary productions of the eighteenth 
 or nineteenth century, but in those of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth, that are to be found some of the most signal 
 examples of misdirected intellectual labor. We refer to 
 those torturing experiments upon language called ana 
 grams, chronograms, echoes, macaronies, bouts-rimes, acros 
 tics, palindromes, alliterative verses, etc., which were poured 
 forth in floods, not by mere flippant idlers, or dunces 
 who deemed themselves wits, but often by scholars of bril 
 liant abilities and attainments. Weary of the search after 
 ideas, disgusted with great speculations that ended in 
 doubt, and dissatisfied with wisdom that brought no heart's 
 ease, and knowledge that only increased sorrow, the think 
 ing men of those ages, like their predecessors of more 
 ancient times, often employed their leisure moments in 
 the composition of laborious trifles, magno conatu magnas 
 nugas, which mocked the fruits of their graver studies 
 
240 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 with something of a fairy quaintness. Follies of this 
 kind date back, indeed, almost to the invention of letters. 
 The Greeks had their lipogrammatists, who could write 
 elaborate poems or treatises from which a particular let 
 ter was excluded. An ancient poetaster wrote a para 
 phrase of the "Iliad," in which alpha or a was rejected 
 from the first book, beta or b from the second, and so to 
 the end. Both the Greeks and the Romans had their 
 karkinie poems, or reciprocal verses, so written that the 
 line was the same whether read backward or forward, as 
 in the following: 
 
 "Roma, tibi, subito motibus ibit amor." 
 
 Lope deVega wrote five novels, the first without an 
 A, the second without a B, the third without a C, and 
 so on. At one time, even long after the revival of learn 
 ing, the grand merit of a large part of English and 
 Scottish verse lay in the ridiculous conceit of all the 
 words of a line beginning with the same letter; at another 
 time, it was a favorite device to write Latin verses of 
 which every line began with the same syllable that had 
 concluded the preceding one, a kind of game of shuttle 
 cock, in which one player stationed on the left tossed a 
 line across the page to a second, who, passing with the 
 velocity of thought to the same side, hurled another at a 
 third; and thus the match continued till he who began 
 the sport put a stop to it by making his appearance on 
 the opposite list. In this way the poor hapless poetaster 
 was forced to hobble along an avenue, guarded on either 
 side by a row of unrelenting monosyllables, which, if his 
 mettlesome fancy manifested any inclination to scamper 
 according to the freedom of her own will, brought her 
 effectually to her senses. 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 241 
 
 But, of all the ridiculous shackles invented by the 
 devotees of these coxcombical arts, the restrictions on the 
 shape, form, and length of poems, were the most absurd 
 and ludicrous. There are many poems of the sixteenth 
 century on which a sort of Chinese ingenuity seems to 
 have been expended; the lines being so drawn in here, 
 and stretched out there, so cut, twisted, and tortured 
 in every conceivable way, as to have a rude, general 
 resemblance to the most fantastical objects. Of course, it 
 was a rare triumph of ingenuity when an amatory poem 
 could be squeezed into the shape of a heart, fan, or lady's 
 gown; a still greater, perhaps, when a sonnet on destiny 
 could be put into the figure of a pair of scissors; but 
 when an anacreontic could be coaxed into the form of a 
 wine-glass, or a meditation on mortality into the shape 
 of an hour-glass or tombstone, the effect was absolutely 
 overwhelming. One Benlowes, a wit who, though now 
 forgotten, is said to have been " excellently learned in his 
 day," had a wonderful facility in this kind of literary 
 carpentry. Butler, the author of " Hudibras," thus iron 
 ically commends him in his "Character of a Small Poet": 
 "There is no feat of activity, nor gambol of wit, that 
 ever was performed by man, from him that vaults on 
 Pegasus to him that tumbles through the hoop of an 
 epigram, but Benlowes has got the mastery of it, whether 
 it be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. As for altars and 
 pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men in that way; 
 for he has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, 
 that, besides the likeness in shape, the very tone and 
 sound of the words did perfectly represent the noise 
 made by these utensils, such as Sartago loquendi." 
 
 Another excruciating exercise of wit, which was in 
 11 
 
242 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 vogue in the sixteenth century, especially with those 
 who could not aspire to the lofty art of shaped-verse- 
 making, was the framing of anagrams. By the ancients, 
 anagram-making, or the transposing of the letters of 
 certain words so as to produce new words, was classed 
 among the cabalistic sciences; and it was often thought 
 that the qualities of a man's mind, and his future des 
 tiny, could be guessed at by anagrammatizing the letters 
 of his name. When this could be done in such a 
 way as to bring forth a word or sentence pointedly 
 allusive to the original idea, it was deemed a mar 
 vellous feat, and the happy wit was ready to scream 
 with joy. In France, such weight was attached to this 
 jugglery with letters, that Louis XIII pensioned a pro 
 fessional transposer of words. Occasionally a name would 
 appear to defy all attempts to torture it into meaning- 
 and the pains and throes of the anagrammatist, while in 
 labor, were sometimes terrible to behold. The venerable 
 Camden speaks of the difficulty as " a whetstone of patience 
 to them that shall try the art. For some have beene scene 
 to bite their pen, scratch their head, bend their browes, bite 
 their lips, beate the boord, teare their paper, when they 
 were faire for somewhat, and caught nothing therein." 
 Addison gives a most ludicrous account of one of these 
 word-torturers, who, after shutting himself up for half a 
 year, and having taken certain liberties with the name of 
 his mistress, discovered, on presenting his anagram, that 
 he had misspelled her surname! by which misfortune he 
 was so thunderstruck that he shortly after lost his senses. 
 If ever an explosion of wrath were justifiable, and one 
 might be excused for losing all self-command, and crying 
 out with Hamlet, 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 243 
 
 "Ay, turn thy complexion there, 
 Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubin,' 
 
 it must be in a case like that. 
 
 Almost as unhappy as this was the experience of Daniel 
 Dove, who, after long brooding over his own name, was 
 able to hatch from it the ominous presage, " leaden void." 
 Knowing that, with a change of one letter, he might have 
 become " Ovid," he felt like the man whose lottery-ticket 
 was next in number to the 20,000 prize. Sometimes 
 from the same name may be extracted both good and evil 
 omens, as in the case of Eleanor Davies, wife of the poet, 
 and the Cassandra of her age, who belonged to the Court 
 of Charles II. Having extracted the quintessence of her 
 own name, and finding in it the impure anagram, 
 "Reveal, Daniel!" she began to croak prophecies by 
 no means agreeable to the Government, when she was 
 silenced by an arrow drawn from her own quiver. She 
 was arraigned before the Court of High Commission, the 
 Judges of which vainly racked their brains for arguments 
 to disprove her claims to inspiration, when luckily it 
 occurred to one of them to take his pen and write a 
 letter anagram upon her name: Dame Eleanor Davies: 
 "Never so mad a ladie!" which, hoisting the engineer 
 with his own petard, forever silenced the prophecies. 
 The ingenuity of the Judge is only paralleled by that of 
 John Bunyan, whose anagram on his own name, " Nu 
 hony in a B," is a masterly triumph over the difficulties 
 of orthography. 
 
 " The anagram," says Richelet, " is one of the greatest 
 follies of the human mind. One must be a fool to be 
 amused by them, and worse than a fool to make them." 
 Drummond, of Hawthornden, denounces the anagram as 
 
244 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 "the most idle study in the world of learning. Their 
 maker must be homo miserrimce patientiae, and when he is 
 done, what is it but magno conatu nugas magnas agere!" 
 Happy, therefore, he thought, was that countryman of his, 
 whose mistress's name, being Anna Grame, contained a 
 ready-made and most acceptable Anagram. Considering 
 that not a few men of high repute, illustrious scholars 
 and thinkers even, have tried their hand at this " ineptie 
 de V esprit humain" these must be considered as somewhat 
 exaggerated statements. The anagram is a triumphant 
 answer to the question, "What's in a name? 11 especially 
 when by a slight transposition a Wit is found in WIAT, 
 Eenown in VERNON, and Laurel in WALLER. Though ana 
 grams are not the grandest productions of human genius, 
 yet the intellectual ingenuity that is sometimes displayed 
 in resolving a word into its elements, and from these ele 
 ments compounding some new word characteristic of the 
 person or thing designated by the original, is quite surpris 
 ing. For example, what can be more curious than the 
 coincidence between Telegraphs and its anagram, viz.: 
 great helps? So of Astronomers, moon-starers; Peni 
 tentiary, Nay, I repent it- Eadical Reform, Rare mad 
 frolic. Hardly less felicitous are the following: Presby 
 terian, best in prayer; Gallantries, all great sin; Old 
 England, golden land. Some years ago there was an 
 eminent physician in London, whose name, John Aber- 
 nethy, on account of his bluntness and roughness, was 
 metamorphosed into " Johnny the Bear." It is probable 
 that even " Ursa Major " himself smiled and growled at 
 the same time when he first heard this witty anagram. 
 
 Few persons will yield to the logic of political ana 
 grams, but it is impossible not to be struck by the famous 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 245 
 
 Frantic Disturbers, made from Francis Burdett; and, in 
 an ignorant age, doubtless not a few persons were con 
 firmed in their dogged adherence to the Pretender to the 
 British throne, while his enemies were startled and con 
 founded, by the coincidence of Charles James Stuart with 
 his anagram, He asserts a true claim. The two finest ana 
 grams ever made are: Honor est a Nilo (Honor is from 
 the Nile), from Horatio Nelson; and the reply evolved 
 from Pilate's question, "Quid est veritas?" (What is truth?) 
 "Vir est qui adest" (It is the man who stands before you.) 
 The following, written by Oldys, the bibliographer, and 
 found By his executors among his manuscripts, will be 
 regarded by many as " quaintly good," to use an expres 
 sion of Isaak Walton's: 
 
 " In word and WILL I AM a friend to you, 
 And one friend OLD IS worth a hundred new." 
 
 The Greeks made few anagrams, and the Romans de 
 spised them. Nearly all Latin anagrams are of modern 
 manufacture; as, from corpus (body) porcus (pig), from 
 logica (logic) caligo (darkness). The French have invented 
 a few very happy anagrams, of which a remarkably in 
 genious one is that on Frere Jacques Clement, the assassin 
 of Henri III, " C'est 1'enfer qui m'a cree." What can be 
 more beautiful than the anagram on the name of Christ, 
 in allusion to the passage in Isaiah liii, " He is brought as 
 a sheep to the slaughter"? 
 
 Thou art that sheep." 
 
 Rousseau, ashamed of his father, who was a cobbler, 
 
 changed his name into Verniettes, in which a wit dis 
 
 covered more than the author had dreamed of, namely, 
 
246 ' LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 Tu te rentes. Voltaire's name is an anagram, derived from 
 his real name, Arouet l.j., or Arouet le jeune. As a speci 
 men of a witty anagram, there is one on Charles Genest, 
 a Frenchman of much note, which is, as Mrs. Partington 
 would say, "a chief-done-over; 1 ' it is unrivaled. The gen 
 tleman in question was distinguished by a preternaturally 
 large organ of smell, such as would have thrown Napoleon 
 Bonaparte or Eden Warwick into raptures of admiration, 
 whereupon some ingenious wag finds in his name the 
 mirth-provoking anagram, "Eh? c'est un grand nez!" 
 (Eh? it is a great nose!) 
 
 One of the prettiest of modern anagrams is the follow 
 ing: 
 
 'FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, 
 Flit on, charming angel! " 
 
 When the eloquent George Thompson was urged to go into 
 Parliament to serve the cause of negro emancipation more 
 efficiently, one of his friends found a cogent reason for 
 such a course in the letters of his name: 
 
 "GEORGE THOMPSON, 
 go the. Negro's M. P./" 
 
 A patriotic Englishman made Napoleon Bonaparte read in 
 Latin, Bona rapta leno pone, or " Rascal, yield up your 
 stolen possessions." The last anagram we shall cite, 
 though less brilliant than the foregoing, as a mere feat 
 of intellectual ingenuity, is wonderfully truthful, namely, 
 editors, who are always so tired. 
 
 Another curious phase of literary labor is alliteration, 
 which may be a mere trick or conceit of composition, or a 
 positive ornament. When used too often it is suggestive 
 of laborious eiforts, and affects the reader like the feats of 
 an acrobat, which excite at last an interest more painful 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 247 
 
 than pleasant. But, when used with such subtle art as to 
 be noticed only by the peculiar charm of sound that ac 
 companies it, it is one of the most delicate graces of lan 
 guage. Spenser uses alliteration often, and sometimes 
 with the finest effect, as in the "Shepherd's Calendar": 
 
 " But home him hasted with furious heate, 
 Encreasing his wrathe with many a threate; 
 His harmeful hatchet he hent in hand." 
 
 In the following verse of Tennyson, there is an alliter 
 ative beauty in the pleasant interlinking of the sounds of 
 d, and n, and /, which is peculiarly delicious to the ear, 
 because it is so subtle as hardly to be noticed by a common 
 reader: 
 
 "Dip down upon the Northern shore, 
 Oh, sweet new year, delaying long; 
 Thou dost expectant nature wrong, 
 Delaying long, delay no more." 
 
 Shakspeare has occasional instances of happy allitera 
 tion, as in 
 
 "The churlish chiding of the winter's wind"; 
 
 and again in the line, 
 
 "In maiden meditation, fancy-free;" 
 
 and in the following passage from " Macbeth," where the 
 grandeur of the effect is greatly increased by the repeti 
 tion of the letter s: 
 
 "That shall, to all our nights and days to come, 
 Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom." 
 
 The poet ridicules, however, the excessive use of this de 
 vice, as in the prologue to the interlude of Pyramus and 
 Thisbe in "Midsummer Night's Dream": 
 
 " Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, 
 He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast." 
 
248 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 Alliteration adds not a little to the force of Burns's 
 word-painting, as when he calls Tarn O'Shanter 
 
 "A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum," 
 
 and characterizes the plowman's collie as 
 
 "A rhymin', rantin', rovin' billie." 
 
 Byron was a great master of alliteration. It was a 
 favorite device of his, and his finest passages, whether 
 grave or gay, owe much of their beauty and power to it. 
 E.g. 
 
 " He who hath bent him o'er the dead, 
 Ere the first day of death has fled, 
 The first dark day of nothingness, 
 The last of danger and distress." 
 
 In the "Corsair" he has thirty-one alliterations in 
 twenty-three lines, yet so skilfully used that the reader 
 is conscious of no mannerism. What an addition of pun 
 gency and comic effect is given to the epigram by this 
 expedient, may be seen by the following lines from Byron's 
 "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 1 ': 
 
 "Yet mark one caution, ere thy next review 
 Spreads its light wings of saffron and of blue, 
 .Beware lest Plundering .Brough'm destroy the sale, 
 Turn beef to Jannocks, cauliflowers to kail ! " 
 
 Coleridge was an adept in the use of this rhyming 
 ornament, as a single example will suffice to show: 
 
 "The white breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
 The furrow followed free." 
 
 Professor G. P. Marsh states that Milton, and the 
 classic school of poets generally, avoid alliteration alto 
 gether; but this is too sweeping a statement, as, had 
 we space, we might easily show. How much the allitera 
 tion adds to the expressiveness of his 
 
 "Behemoth, biggest born of earth!" 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 249 
 
 and how greatly is the force of the following lines inten 
 sified by the same device, where he strings together his 
 vowels and consonants in juxtaposition, so as to make 
 the verse more harsh and grating to the ear: 
 
 "Others apart sat on a hill retired, 
 For thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 
 Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 
 Fixed /ate, /ree will, /oreknowledge absolute." 
 
 The most brilliant poets of the day abound in this 
 device, and even the most accomplished prose-writers do 
 not disdain what Churchill calls 
 
 "Apt alliteration's artful aid." 
 
 In the following lines, by Austin, we have an almost 
 excessive use of it: 
 
 " You knew Blanche Barley ? Could we but once more 
 .Behold that belle and pet of '54! 
 Not e'en a whisper, vagrant up to Town 
 From hunt or race-ball, augur'd her renown. 
 far in the wolds sequester' d life she led, 
 .Fair and un/ettered as the /awn she/ed, 
 (7aress'd the calves, coquetted with the colts, 
 .Bestowed much tenderness on Turkey polts; 
 .Bullied the huge, ungainly ftloodhound pup, 
 TifTA with the terrier, coax'd to make it up: 
 The farmers quizzed about the ruin'd crops, 
 The fall of barley and the rise of hops. 
 So soft her tread, no nautilus that skims 
 With sail more silent than her Ziquid ftmbs. 
 Her presence was low music; when she went 
 She left behind a dreamy discontent, 
 As sad as silence, when a song is spent." 
 
 In irony, satire, and all kinds of comic writing, 
 and even in invective, alliteration adds a peculiar 
 piquancy to the comic effect. Thus Grattan, denouncing 
 the British ministry, said: "Their only means of govern 
 ment are the guinea and the gallows." Sydney Smith 
 
250 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 employs this feature of style with masterly skill and 
 effect; as when he speaks of an opponent as "a polupha- 
 gous, poluposous, and pot-bellied scribbler"; and when, 
 in contrasting the position of the poor curates with that 
 of the high dignitaries of the English Church, he calls 
 the two classes "the Rt. Rev. Dives in the palace, and 
 Lazarus in orders at the gate, doctored by dogs and 
 comforted with crumbs." A still more striking instance 
 is an ironical passage in the " Letters of Peter Plymley," 
 in which, ridiculing a measure of Mr. Perceval, the 
 British Premier, he asks: "At what period was the plan 
 of conquest and constipation fully developed? In whose 
 mind was the idea of destroying the pride and plasters 
 of France first engendered? . . . Depend upon it, the 
 absence of the materia medica will soon bring them to 
 their senses, and the cry of 'Bourbon and Bolus!' burst 
 forth from the Baltic to the Mediterranean." 
 
 Proverbs owe much of their piquancy and point to 
 alliteration, and favorite passages of poetry owe their 
 frequency of quotation not a little to this element, which 
 greatly aids in their recollection. Two hundred years 
 ago John Norris wrote the line 
 
 "Like angels' visits, short and bright," 
 
 which Blair, half a century later, improved into 
 
 " Visits, like those of angels, short and far between " ; 
 
 but Campbell, unconsciously appropriating it, " contrived 
 at one blow to destroy the beauty of the thought, and 
 yet to make the verse immortal by giving it a form that 
 soothes the ear and runs glibly off the tongue " : 
 
 "Like angels' visits, few and far between," 
 
 a line which is palpably tautological. 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 251 
 
 The following is probaoly the most remarkable speci 
 men of alliteration extant. Any one who has written an 
 acrostic, and who has felt the embarrassment of being 
 confined to particular initial letters, can appreciate the 
 ingenuity demanded by these verses, where the whole 
 alphabet is fathomed, and each word in each line exacts 
 its proper initial. The author must have been " homo 
 miserrimce patientice " : 
 
 "An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, 
 Boldly, by battery, besieged Belgrade. 
 Cossack commanders cannonading come, 
 Dealing destruction's devastating doom: 
 Every endeavor engineers essay, 
 For fame, for fortune fighting furious fray: 
 Generals 'gainst generals grapple great God! 
 How honors Heaven heroic hardihood! 
 Infuriate indiscriminate in ill, 
 Kinsmen kill kinsmen kindred kindred kill! 
 Labor low levels loftiest, longest lines 
 Men march 'mid mounds, 'mid moles, 'mid murderous mines. 
 New noisy numbers notice nought 
 Of outward obstacles, opposing ought: 
 Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed, 
 Quite quaking, quickly quarter, quarter 'quest; 
 Reason returns, religion's right redounds, 
 Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds. 
 Truce to the Turk triumph to thy train! 
 Unjust, unwise, unmerciful Ukrane! 
 Vanish vain victory, vanish victory vain! 
 Why wish we warfare, wherefore welcome were 
 Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xaviere? 
 Yield, ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell! 
 Zeno's, Zarpater's, Zoroaster's zeal, 
 And all attracting against arms appeal." 
 
 Alliteration occurs sometimes in the writings of the 
 ancients, but not, it is supposed, designedly, as they re 
 garded all echoing of sound as a rhetorical blemish. 
 Cicero, in the " Offices," has this phrase, " Sensim sine 
 
252 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 sensu setas senescit"; and Virgil, in the "./Eneid," has 
 many marked alliterations. 
 
 There are several Latin poems of the Middle Ages in 
 alliterative verse, the most famous of which, the Pugna 
 Porcorum per Publium Porcium Poetam, or " Battle of 
 the Pigs, 1 ' in which every word begins with p, extends 
 to several hundred lines, thus, 
 
 u Propterea properaus proconsul, poplite prono, 
 Precipitem plebem pro patrum pace poposcit, 
 Persta paulisper pubes preciosa! precamnr." 
 
 Among the literary devices which have " fretted their 
 brief hour upon the stage, and now are no more," are 
 double rhymes, in which Butler and Hood especially ex 
 celled. A still more ludicrous form of comic verse is 
 where the rhyme is made by dividing the words, being 
 formed by a similar sound in the middle syllables; as 
 in Canning's lines; 
 
 " Thou wast the daughter of my Tu- 
 tor, Law Professor in the U- 
 niversity of GSttingen; 
 
 or in Smith's 
 
 "At first I caught hold of the wing, 
 And kept away; hut Mr. Thing- 
 umhob, the prompter man, 
 Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, 
 And said, ' Go on, my pretty love, 
 Speak to 'em, little Nan.'" 
 
 Akin to the waste of labor in anagrams, chronograms, 
 alliterations, assonances, etc., though not strictly to be 
 classed under literary trifles, is the waste of labor upon 
 microscopic penmanship. Years of toil have been devoted 
 to copying in a minute print-hand books which could 
 have been bought for a trifle in ordinary typography. 
 In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, one Peter Bales wrote a 
 
LITEKARY TRIFLERS. 253 
 
 copy of the Bible, with the usual number of pages, in a 
 hand so fine that the whole could be put into a walnut-shell. 
 In St. John's College, Oxford, there is shown a portrait of 
 Charles I, done with the pen in such a way that the lines 
 are formed by verses of the Psalms, all of which are 
 included in the work. When Charles II visited the Col 
 lege, he asked for it, with the promise to grant any favor 
 in return; the request was granted, and the owners imme 
 diately asked to have the gift restored to them. In the 
 British Museum there is a portrait of Queen Anne, on 
 which appear a number of minute lines and scratches. 
 These, when examined through a microscope, are found to 
 be the entire contents of a small folio-book which belongs 
 to the library. Some years ago a gentleman in London 
 bought a pen-and-ink portrait of Alexander Pope, sur 
 rounded by a design in scroll-work. Upon examining it 
 through a glass, to discover the artist's name, he was 
 astonished to find that the fine lines in the surrounding 
 scroll were a biography of the poet, so minutely transcribed 
 as to be legible only by the aid of a magnifier. 
 
 Another literary trifle upon which a vast amount of 
 time and ingenuity has been expended, is the riddle. 
 Riddle-making has been popular in all ages and countries, 
 and not only the small wits, but the big-wigs, of Greece, 
 Rome, France, Germany, and England, have amused them 
 selves with it. Schiller, the German poet, was an adept in 
 this art, and some of his riddles are marvels of ingenuity. 
 Here is one by Fox, the great English orator: 
 
 'Formed long ago, yet made to-day, 
 
 And most employed when others sleep; 
 What few would wish to give away, 
 And none would wish to keep." 
 
 The answer is a bed. 
 
254 LITERARY TRIFLERS. 
 
 Dr. Whewell, the late Master of Trinity College, is 
 credited with the following, which was often on his lips. 
 It would baffle a sphynx: 
 
 "U a 0, but I thee, 
 O no 0, but O me; 
 Then let not my a go, 
 But give 0010 thee so." 
 
 "You sigh for a cypher, but I sigh for thee, 
 O sigh for no cypher, but O siuh for me; 
 Then let not my sigh for a cypher go, 
 But give sigh for sigh, for I sigh for thee so." 
 
 Whew well done! we hear a punning reader exclaim. 
 
 The following is inferior to the sighing riddle, so often 
 repeated to his friends by the author of the " History of 
 Inductive Sciences," but it is not the device of a bungler: 
 
 "Stand take to takings. 
 I you throw my " 
 
 " I understand 
 You undertake 
 To overthrow 
 My undertakings." 
 
 Prof. De Morgan, author of the celebrated work on 
 " The Theory of Probabilities," is the author of a cunning 
 punning riddle : How do you know there is no danger of 
 starving in the desert? Because of the sand which is 
 there. And how do you know you will get sandwiches 
 there? Because Ham went into the desert, and his 
 descendants bred and mustered. 
 
 The following curious epitaph was found in a foreign 
 cathedral : 
 
 " EPITAPHIUM. 
 
 O quid tuae 
 
 be est bite; 
 
 ra ra ra 
 
 es et in 
 
 ram ram ram 
 
 i i." 
 
LITERARY TRIFLERS. 255 
 
 These puzzling lines have been explained as follows: 
 Ra, ra, ra, is thrice ra, i. e., ter-ra terra; ram, ram, ram, 
 is thrice ram, i. e., ter-ram terram; i i is twice i i, i. e., 
 i-bis ibis. The first two lines are to be read: super be, 
 quid super est tuse super bise. The epitaph will then be : 
 
 "O superbe, quid euperest tuae superbise? 
 Terra es et in terrain ibis." 
 
 We know not who is the author of the following 
 
 curious line: 
 
 " Sator arepo tenet opera rotas." 
 
 1. This spells backward and forward the same. 2. The 
 first letters of all the words spsll the first word. 3. The 
 second letters of all the words spell the second word. 
 4. The third letters of all the words spell the third word; 
 and so on through the fourth and fifth. 
 
 We will close with a specimen of the puzzles in letters: 
 
 "CO 
 SI" 
 
 " The season is backward." (The C's on is backward.) 
 
 Truly the human mind is like an elephant's trunk, 
 capable of grasping the mightiest objects, and of adapting 
 itself with equal facility to the meanest and most trifling. 
 There is but one thing to which we can compare the labors 
 of this whole tribe of triflers, it is to the toils of those 
 unwearying imps who were set by the magician to the task 
 of twisting ropes out of sea-sand. 
 
AYRITING FOR THE PRESS. 
 
 A LMOST every person who is a known contributor to 
 -*--*- the press receives, more or less often, letters like the 
 following: "I am not earning enough to pay my ex 
 penses, and, to make the two ends meet, I would like 
 to write for the press. Can you give me some hints?" 
 The number of persons who, when at their wits 1 ends, 
 in despair of eking out a living in any other way, look 
 to journalism as a last resource, is legion. The passion 
 ate appeals which are made personally or by letter to 
 the managing-editor of a leading journal, beseeching him 
 to buy articles, nine-tenths of which are utterly worth 
 less, and ninety-nine hundredths of which could not be 
 got into the paper, were they ever so interesting, make 
 his place anything but a bed of roses. Even in the old- 
 fashioned newspaper-establishments, where four or five 
 steep, dark, and dingy stair-cases must be climbed to 
 reach the editorial den, some would-be contributor, male 
 or female, may be seen panting up the steps almost 
 hourly; but, in the modern offices, in which the steam- 
 elevator has placed all the floors on a level, the swarms 
 of writers that beset the manager, coaxing, imploring, 
 almost insisting, that their MSS. shall be used, render 
 his situation absolutely appalling. To ninety-nine out of 
 every hundred of these persons he must return an inex 
 orable No. No would-be contributor, however, dreams 
 that he is doomed to be one of the ninety-nine; and be- 
 
WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 257 
 
 cause it is useless, therefore, to begin with Punch's advice 
 to those about to marry, "Don't!" we offer the following 
 suggestions: 
 
 First, consider well whether you have the peculiar 
 qualifications required in a newspaper-writer. Writing 
 for the press has grown to be an art by itself; it is one 
 whose rules and principles, like those of music, sculpture, 
 and painting, must be mastered by intense, patient, and 
 persistent study by those who aspire to success. To write 
 a really good editorial or contribution is like scaling an 
 Alp, which, in its clearness of atmosphere, seems so near, 
 and yet is so far a-nd so hard of ascent. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that, because the 
 greater includes the less, the talents which qualify a man 
 to write a first-rate book will make him a good article- 
 writer. Many an author of reputation, who has reasoned 
 thus, has started off brilliantly in the career of journal 
 ism; but, after a little smart writing and display of 
 bookish ability, has " fallen flat and shamed his worship 
 ers," because he could not seize and condense the spirit 
 and moral of passing history. As Carlyle complains of 
 the needle-women of England, that there are seamstresses 
 few or none, but botchers in abundance, capable only of 
 " a distracted puckering and botching, not sewing, only 
 a fallacious hope of it, a fond imagination of the mind"; 
 so in literary labor, especially journalism, it is but too 
 true that there are many botchers, and few skilled work 
 men, very little good article-writing, and a deal of 
 " distracted puckering and botching." It is true there is 
 no mystery in the craft when we have once learned it, 
 as there is none in walking on a tight-rope, turning a 
 double back- summersault, or vaulting through a hoop 
 
258 WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 
 
 upon a running horse. The difficulty is, to learn. It 
 may seem a very easy thing to trim a bonnet; but hun 
 dreds of expert workmen, who can do things far more 
 difficult and complicated, fail utterly when they try to 
 trim a bonnet. A man may be a brilliant review or 
 magazine writer, and yet not show a particle of skill or 
 tact in conducting a daily or weekly newspaper. It is 
 one thing to elaborate an article at leisure, " with malice 
 prepense and aforethought," in one's study, hedged in by 
 books on every side, with other " appliances and means 
 to boot"; and quite another to cope with the hydrostatic 
 pressure, the prompt selection of salient points, and the 
 rapid, glancing treatment of them, demanded by a daily 
 journal. 
 
 Which, indeed, are the most popular papers of the 
 day? Is it the journals that are filled mainly with long 
 and ponderous disquisitions that smell of the lamp; arti 
 cles crammed with statistics, and useful knowledge of 
 the " penny- magazine " stamp, which it is more painful 
 to read than it was to write them? No; they are, almost 
 without exception, those whose merit lies in condensation; 
 which, with full reports of news, and a limited number 
 of elaborate discussions, give the apices rerum, the cream 
 and quintessence of things; whose pithy paragraphs, 
 squeezed into the smallest possible space, may be taken 
 in by the eye while the reader is occupied in discussing 
 a cup of coffee, or devoured like a sandwich between two 
 mouthfuls of bread and butter. These are the papers 
 which are sought for with avidity, and devoured with 
 keen relish; which are passed from hand to hand, and 
 read till they are worn out; and to serve up the spicy 
 repast they furnish, is a Sisyphan task, which requires 
 
WRITING FOR THE PEESS. 259 
 
 ceaseless industry and a peculiar combination of talents 
 which not one educated man in a thousand possesses. 
 
 It is the lack of these talents and the neglect of these 
 principles which explain the failure of so many newspa 
 pers and newspaper-writers. The rock on which they 
 split is ignorance or forgetfulness of the very end of a 
 newspaper. The first thought which should be uppermost 
 in the mind of every writer for the press is that this 
 " map of busy life " is a thing not to be read or studied, 
 but to be glanced over. The contents must be such as 
 at once to catch the attention. Take care, then, at the 
 beginning, not to frighten the reader by a long article. 
 Big guns make a loud noise, but rifle-balls often do the 
 greatest execution. A tremendous thought may be packed 
 into a small compass, made as solid as a cannon-ball, and 
 cut down everything before it. " A brief ejaculation," 
 says South, "may be a big and a mighty prayer"; and 
 a ten-line paragraph, a single thought, pungently pre 
 sented, may change a man's convictions in politics or 
 religion, or be a seed-corn to fructify through his whole 
 life. An ideal newspaper article is not an exhaustive 
 essay, but a brief monogram, for which one positive and 
 central idea is sufficient. As Virgil says of farms: "Ad 
 mire long articles; cultivate short ones." 
 
 To achieve this, make sure that you have something 
 to say, and say it only when you are in the vein, in 
 your best mood. Are you a clergyman? Don't write on 
 "blue Monday," when you feel like a mouse in an 
 exhausted receiver. Why rush before fifty thousand 
 readers when you feel so stupid that you can't prepare a 
 sermon for five hundred hearers? Waste no time on 
 introductions. Don't begin by laying out your subject 
 
260 WRITING FOE THE PRESS. 
 
 like a Dutch flower-garden, or telling your motives for 
 writing. Nobody cares how you came to think of your 
 theme, or why you write upon it. Sink rhetoric, and 
 throw Blair and Campbell to the winds. Copy Milton, 
 who does not stop to invoke his Muse till he has first 
 announced his theme, " of man's first disobedience and 
 the fall." Plunge at once into the very middle of your 
 subject, and "pluck out the heart of its mystery. 1 ' The 
 first end is to excite attention. The keynote should be 
 struck, if possible, in the very first sentence. A dull 
 beginning often damns an article; a spicy one, that whets 
 the appetite by a prime, juicy slice right out of the middle 
 of the coming joint, often commends an article to both 
 editor and reader. Be brief and crisp, giving results 
 only, not processes, suggesting argument rather than 
 stating it. Don't serve up with the pearl the oyster and 
 the shell. 
 
 Put your points clearly and sharply; don't cover them 
 up with verbiage, but let them stick out. Macaulay well 
 says that a bold, dashing, scene-painting manner is that 
 which always succeeds best in periodical writing. Let 
 your sentences be electrically charged. Let every word 
 leap with life, and blot out every one which does not 
 help to clench the meaning. Condense, condense, con 
 dense. Ignore all inferences, and regard explanatory 
 sentences as a nuisance. Some writers always explain a 
 thing to death. Throw subordinate thoughts to the dogs 
 Thin your fruit that the tree may not be exhausted, and 
 that some of it may come to perfection. Above all, stop 
 when you are done. Don't let the ghost of your thought 
 wander about after the death of the body. Aim to be 
 suggestive, not exhaustive, and leave the reader to draw 
 
WRITING FOR THE PRESS. 261 
 
 many inferences for himself. Take for granted, after all 
 your condensation, that your article is twice too long. 
 Leave off the beginning and the conclusion, and make the 
 middle as short as possible. Cutting it down may require 
 nerve, but it is the compactness which makes it do 
 execution. Lastly, lay aside your paper, if possible, for 
 a week, and then retouch it; strengthen its weak points, 
 and polish its rough ones. Too many article- writers 
 grudge the toil which is necessary to perfect their con 
 tributions. They quote Taine, who condemns transitions, 
 elegances of style, " the whole literary wardrobe," to the 
 old-clothes shop. " The age demands ideas, not arrange 
 ment of ideas; the pigeon-holes are manufactured; fill 
 them." True, in a certain sense; but ideas, like soldiers, 
 owe their force largely to their arrangement. Thoughts 
 become different thoughts when expressed in different 
 language. Other newspaper-writers believe in fast writ 
 ing, which is generally apt to be hard reading. The 
 thought, they say, should be struck off in the passion of 
 the moment; the sword-blade must go red-hot to the 
 anvil, and be forged in a few seconds, not by piecemeal, 
 if you would have it of heavenly temper. Granted; but, 
 after the forging, long and weary polishing and grinding 
 must follow before your sword-blade will cut. What 
 would you think of a cutler who should say, " I turn 
 out knives with great facility, but I cannot stop to give 
 them an edge? 1 ' Cassius Etruscius boasted that he could 
 write two hundred pages before dinner, and as many 
 after. He was burned, as he deserved to be, on a pile 
 of his own productions. 
 
 We have said nothing of the mechanical parts of an 
 article. That it should be written legibly, on one side 
 
262 WRITING FOB THE PRESS. 
 
 of small-sized sheets, with careful punctuation and spell 
 ing, and plenty of paragraphs, is generally known. We 
 might add other useful hints; but enough. Follow the 
 directions we have given, and, if you have a soul that 
 fires with great thoughts, and fears not to utter them 
 freely, you may wield with the pen a power that no 
 sceptre can rival. But, if you have no enthusiasm or 
 inspiration, and can't put fire into your writings, you 
 would better put your writings into the fire. If you don't 
 do so, and your article goes to " Balaam's box," don't fly 
 into a passion and call the editor a fool, or assert that 
 he is prejudiced. Mothers are always partial to their 
 deformed children, and authors think most highly of their 
 rickety literary bantlings. Don't waste a moment's time 
 in vindicating your productions against editors or critics, 
 but expend your energies in writing something which shall 
 be its own vindication. 
 
 Finally, do you feel, on reading these hints, as did 
 Easselas when he had listened to the detail of the quali 
 fications necessary to a poet, and exclaimed: " Who, then, 
 can be a poet?" We confess it is the picture of an ideal 
 article- writer that we have drawn; but, though the con 
 ception that haunts our brain is one which we have been 
 utterly unable to realize, though our ideal, after many 
 weary years' pursuit, still flies before us like the horizon, 
 and mocks us with its unattainable charm, we still have 
 the satisfaction of knowing that our readers yawn less 
 frequently than if we had adopted a lower and more 
 easily- reached standard. 
 
STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 rr^HAT the study of foreign languages is a necessary 
 **- part of a liberal education is a proposition which few 
 intelligent persons will at this day dispute. The records 
 of thought and knowledge are many tongued; and, there 
 fore, as a means of encyclopaedic culture, of that thorough 
 intellectual equipment which is so imperiously demanded 
 of every scholar, and even thinker, at the present day, a 
 knowledge of foreign literature, both ancient and modern, 
 is absolutely indispensable. 
 
 Familiarity with foreign languages liberalizes the mind 
 in the same way as foreign travel. The Emperor Charles V 
 once said that to learn a new language was to acquire a 
 new soul. The man who is familiar only with the writers 
 of his native tongue is in danger of confounding what is 
 accidental with what is essential, and of supposing that 
 manners and customs, tastes and habits of thought, which 
 belong only to his own age and country, are inseparable 
 from the nature of man. Acquainting himself with foreign 
 literatures, he finds that opinions which he had thought to 
 be universal, and feelings which he had supposed in 
 stinctive, have been unknown to millions. He thus loses 
 that Chinese cast of mind, that contempt for everything 
 outside of his own narrow circle, which was a foe to all 
 self-knowledge and to all self-improvement. He doubts 
 where he formerly dogmatized ; he tolerates where he 
 formerly execrated. Qualifying the sentiments of the 
 
264 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 writers of his own age and country with the thoughts and 
 sentiments of writers in other ages and other countries, he 
 ceases to bow slavishly to the authority of those who 
 breathe the same atmosphere with himself, and with whose 
 idiosyncrasies he is en rapport. He declines henceforth to 
 accept their opinions, to make their tastes his tastes, and 
 their prejudices his prejudices, and thus avoids that mental 
 slavery which is baser than the slavery of the body. 
 
 While we thus appreciate the value "of linguistic studies 
 to the few who have the time and money for thorough 
 culture, we yet doubt whether the study of foreign lan 
 guages, to the extent that fashion now exacts, is wise or 
 profitable. That an Englishman, Frenchman, or German, 
 even though a business man, should deem a knowledge of 
 them not only useful, but even vital to his worldly success, 
 we can understand. There is hardly a commercial house 
 of any note in England that does not sell goods to Ger 
 many, France, Switzerland, Sweden, or Russia; hence every 
 such house must have employes to conduct its foreign corre 
 spondence, and a knowledge of foreign tongues is, therefore, 
 one of the best recommendations with which a young man 
 seeking a clerkship can be armed. The same is true of 
 Germany and France; but who will pretend that such is 
 the fact in this country? If, instead of all speaking a 
 common tongue, the Eastern, Northern, Southern, Western, 
 and Middle States of our country spoke as many languages, 
 the lingual necessities of our merchants and manufacturers 
 would be similar to those of the great business houses of 
 Europe; but, as the facts are, no such necessities exist. It 
 is true we have a few houses that do business with Europe; 
 and it is true, also, that in a few of our largest cities, 
 there are many foreigners who cannot speak English ; but ; 
 

 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 265 
 
 everywhere else, linguistic knowledge is of little prac 
 tical use. 
 
 The question is not whether a knowledge of French and 
 German is desirable per se, but whether it is not too dearly 
 purchased. Is it worth the heavy tax which our youth pay 
 for it? Cannot the weary days, weeks, months, and even 
 years, which are spent in acquiring what, after all, is 
 usually but the merest smattering of those tongues, be 
 more profitably spent upon English literature and the 
 sciences? There is hardly any subject upon which so much 
 illusion prevails as upon the supposed ease with which a 
 modern language can be mastered. We hear it daily 
 remarked that French and Italian are very easy, and that 
 German, though presenting some difficulties, is by no means 
 hard to acquire. Now the truth, to which, sooner or later, 
 every student is forced to open his eyes, is, that the acquisi 
 tion of any language, as Mr. Lincoln said of the crushing 
 of the Rebellion, is " a big job." The mastering of a 
 foreign tongue, even the easiest, is the work, not of a day, 
 but of years, and years of stern, unremitting toil. 
 
 It is true that Mr. Macaulay undertook (we know not 
 with what success) to possess himself of the German lan 
 guage during a four months 1 voyage from India to Europe; 
 but have we not the authority of the same Mr. Macaulay 
 for the statement that Frederick the Great, after reading, 
 speaking, writing French, and nothing but French, during 
 more than half a century, after unlearning his mother 
 tongue in order to learn French, after living familiarly 
 many years with French associates, could not, to the last, 
 compose in French, without imminent risk of committing 
 some mistake which would have moved a smile in ths 
 literary circles of Paris? Mr. Hamerton, the author of 
 12 
 
266 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 "The Intellectual Life," a most competent judge, lays 
 down the following two propositions, tested by a large 
 experience, as unassailable : 1. Whenever a foreign lan 
 guage is perfectly acquired, there are peculiar family 
 conditions. The person has either married a person of the 
 other nation, or is of mixed blood. 2. A language cannot 
 be learned by an adult without five years' residence in the 
 country where it is spoken; and, without habits of close 
 observation, a residence of twenty years is insufficient. 
 Mr. Hamerton further adds that one of the most accom 
 plished of English linguists remarked to him that, after 
 much observation of the labors of others, he had come to 
 the rather discouraging conclusion that it was not possible 
 to learn a foreign language. 
 
 This is an extreme position; but, if by "learning a lan 
 guage " is meant a thorough acquisition of it, so that one 
 can speak and write it like a native, we believe that the 
 statement is impregnable. Of course, we except the few 
 prodigies of linguistic genius, the Magliabecchis and the 
 Mezzofantes, of whom but one appears in a century, men 
 who, as De Quincey says, in the act of dying, commit a rob 
 bery, absconding with a valuable polyglot dictionary. 
 
 Will it be said in reply, that a knowledge of a foreign 
 language may fall short of perfection, yet be of great prac 
 tical and even educational value? We admit it; we admit 
 that there are men who learn many languages sufficiently 
 for certain practical purposes, and yet never thoroughly 
 master the grammar of one. Such a man was Goethe. 
 Easily excited to throw his energy in a new direction, as 
 his biographer tells us, he had not the patience which 
 begins at the beginning, and rises gradually, slowly, into 
 assured mastery. Like an eagle, he swooped down upon 
 
STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 267 
 
 his prey; he could not watch for it with cat-like patience. 
 But though Goethe had no critical knowledge of foreign 
 languages, was but an indifferent linguist, he had what 
 was better for his own purposes, the divining instinct of 
 genius, which enabled him to seize upon and appropriate 
 the spirit of compositions, to a knowledge of which other 
 men attain only by a critical study of the letter. But 
 Goethe's method is one that can be safely followed only by 
 those who have Goethe's genius. For the mass of students 
 there is no royal road, no safe short-cut, to a language. 
 The Duke of Wellington, when asked how he spoke French, 
 replied, " With the greatest intrepidity;" and so he fought 
 at Waterloo ; but it was not till, after years of patient toil, 
 he had mastered the art of war. Intrepidity is an indis 
 pensable thing; but it is not reasonable, if possible, till 
 after one has conquered all the difficulties of the idiom. A 
 mastery far short of this, may be very serviceable; but we 
 do not believe that the smattering which the great major 
 ity of our young men and women get, and ivhich is all 
 they can get in most cases, can possibly enrich them intel 
 lectually. 
 
 As Mr. Hamerton justly urges, until you can really 
 feel the refinements of a language, you can get little help 
 or furtherance from it of any kind, nothing but an inter 
 minable series of misunderstandings. " True culture ought 
 to strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to provide the 
 material upon which that noble faculty may operate. An 
 accomplishment which does neither of these two things for 
 us is useless for our culture, though it may be of consider 
 able practical convenience in the affairs of ordinary life." 
 In the weighty words of Milton: "Though a man should 
 pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the 
 
268 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in 
 them, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 
 man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his 
 mother dialect only." 
 
 He is a poor economist who looks only at the value of 
 an acquisition without counting the cost. If a young 
 man can begin his studies early and continue them till 
 his twenty-first year, by all means let him study French 
 and German. But in no case would we have him study 
 those tongues at the expense of utter ignorance or the 
 merest surface-knowledge of his own language and its 
 literature, and of the physical sciences. That the two 
 latter branches of knowledge are far more essential than 
 the former to both his success and happiness, we cannot 
 doubt. Unfortunately, the majority of our young men 
 are compelled to plunge into business so early that they 
 are forced to elect between the two acquisitions; they 
 cannot have both. For such persons to choose the French 
 and German, and neglect the sciences and their own noble 
 tongue and its literature, is as absurd as it would be for 
 a laborer to stint himself all the year in meat or bread 
 that he may enjoy a few baskets of strawberries in April. 
 We yield to no one in our admiration of Montaigne, Pascal, 
 Moliere, Cuvier, and Sainte-Beuve, or of Goethe, Schiller, 
 Lessing, Richter, and Heine ; but we do, nevertheless, echo 
 most heartily the words of Thomas DeQuincey, himself 
 a consummate linguist, when he declares that it is a 
 pitiable spectacle to see young persons neglecting the 
 golden treasures of their own literature, and wasting their 
 time on German, French and Italian authors, comparatively 
 obscure, and immeasurably inferior in quality. (See p. 22.) 
 
 The same writer has admirably explained the secret of 
 
STUDY OF THE MODERN" LAlSTGUAliES. 269 
 
 this strange preference, a preference with which fashion 
 has doubtless as much to do as the cause he names: "It is 
 the habit (well known to psychologists) of transferring to 
 anything created by our own skill, or which reflects our 
 own skill, as if it lay causatively and objectively in the 
 thing itself, that pleasurable power which in very truth 
 belongs subjectively to the inind of him who surveys it, 
 from conscious success in the exercise of his own energies. 
 Hence it is that we see daily without surprise young 
 ladies hanging enamored over the pages of an Italian 
 author, and calling attention to trivial commonplaces, such 
 as, clothed in plain mother English, would have been more 
 repulsive to them than the distinctions of a theologian or 
 the counsels of a great-grandmother. They mistake for a 
 pleasure yielded by the author what is in fact the pleasure 
 attending their own success in mastering what was lately 
 an insuperable difficulty." 
 
 We are fully convinced that even the literary man, 
 though he cannot dispense with a familiarity with the 
 modern languages, pays a high price for his knowledge. 
 Here, as everywhere else, the law of compensation holds. 
 Familiarity with foreign idioms almost invariably injures 
 an author's style. We know that the Romans, in exact 
 proportion to their study of Greek, paralyzed some of 
 the finest powers of their own language. Schiller tells us 
 that he was in the habit of reading as little as possible in 
 foreign tongues, because it was his business to write Ger 
 man, and he thought that, by reading other languages, he 
 should lose his nicer perceptions of what belonged to his 
 own. Thomas Moore, who was a fine classical scholar, tells 
 us that the perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote 
 their own language was justly attributed to their entire 
 
270 STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 
 
 abstinence from any other. It is notorious that Burke, 
 after he took to reading the pamphlets of the French 
 terrorists, never wrote so pure English as he did before. 
 Gibbon, who boasted that his Essai sur VEtude de la 
 Literature was taken by the Parisians for the production 
 of one of their own countrymen, paid for the idiomatic 
 purity of his French by the Gallicisms that aeform the 
 "Decline and Fall.' 1 
 
 Our young men might be pardoned for making some 
 sacrifices to acquire a knowledge of the modern languages, 
 if such a knowledge were necessary as a key to their 
 literatures; but it is not. Nearly all the masterpieces 
 have been translated into English. We are aware of the 
 objections to translations; they are, at best, as Cervantes 
 said, but " the reverse side of tapestry." The scholar has 
 yet to be born who can reproduce in their full splendor in 
 another tongue the epithets of St. Paul, the silvery lights 
 of Livy, the curiosa felicitas of Horace, or the picture- 
 words of ^Eschylus. But how many of our young men 
 and women, who cannot give themselves a liberal edu 
 cation, are likely to enjoy the originals better than the 
 translations that are executed by accomplished linguists? 
 Not one in fifty. If a man of so exquisite a taste as 
 Mr. Emerson prefers, as he tells us, to read foreign works 
 in translations, is it at all likely that " Young America," 
 with his almost utter ignorance of the niceties and deli 
 cacies of the modern languages, will lose much by imitating 
 his example? We say, then, in conclusion, if you are a 
 man of leisure, or have sufficient time and money for a lib 
 eral education, by all means study French and German, and, 
 if you can, Spanish and Italian; but, if you are to begin 
 life at eighteen or twenty, let Spiers and Adler alone. 
 
STUDY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. 271 
 
 Your first duty is to acquaint yourself with the learn 
 ing and literature of your own and the mother country. 
 Our English granaries will, of themselves, feed a long 
 life. When you have mastered the giants who wrote in 
 your mother-tongue, when the great works of Chaucer, 
 Shakspeare, Hooker, Bacon, Milton, Swift, Wordsworth, 
 Byron, Mill, Tennyson, and all our other representative 
 authors, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into 
 your mental constitution, it will be time to go abroad 
 after " fresh fields and pastures new." But do not, we 
 beg of you, indulge the foolish ambition of becoming a 
 polyglot when you cannot write a grammatical letter in 
 your mother-tongue, and have never read a page in half 
 of its best writers. 
 
WORKING BY RULE. 
 
 A BOSTON correspondent of the New York " Tribune," 
 --*- in speaking of the late Professor Agassiz, remarks 
 that he was singularly unmethodical in his habits. Men 
 who live and work by rule would be puzzled to under 
 stand how the great scientist contrived to do sa much 
 without these helps. Agassiz lived and worked by in 
 spiration. "If he was suddenly seized with an interest 
 in some scientific inquiry, he would pursue it at once, 
 putting by, perhaps, other work in which he had just 
 got f?'ly started. 'I always like to take advantage of 
 my r, oducuve moods,' he said to me. Thus he often had 
 several irons in the fire, only one of which might be 
 .intimately finished. Probably he saw that the last iron 
 promised to work up better than the first. He never 
 could be made to work like a machine, turning out a 
 definite quantity at regular intervale. He never felt 
 bound to regard the rule that you must finish one thing 
 before you begin another, so emphatically presented in 
 the old copy-books." 
 
 The fact here stated concerning the habits of Agassiz, 
 points to an important principle of intellectual labor which 
 merits the attention of all mental workers. There are 
 some persons who seem to think the great end and aim 
 of life is to practice the minor virtues. To be courte 
 ous, punctual, economical in the management of time and 
 money, to do one thing at a time, and never to pro- 
 
 272 
 
WORKING BY RULE. 273 
 
 crastinate, in short, moral dexterity and handiness, 
 are qualities which they never tire of glorifying, and 
 which, above all others, they aim to exemplify in their 
 own lives and characters. Almost every liberally-edu 
 cated man can remember some persons of this class whom 
 he knew in college, young men who were marked by 
 their associates for their enslavement to certain stiff, 
 cast-iron rules, more inflexible than the laws of the 
 Medes and Persians, so often referred to by stump-speak 
 ers, -by which they regulated their minutest actions. 
 Over their mantels were posted a long string of regula 
 tions, which, at a heroic sacrifice of comfort, they daily 
 and sedulously observed, such as these: "Remember 
 to: 1. Rise at 6. 2. Recitation at 7. 3. Breakfast at 8. 
 4. Exercise half an hour. 5. Study two hours;" and so 
 on. If they had an hour or a half-hour for general read 
 ing, they would read to the end of it with the most 
 exemplary conscientiousness, however stupid they felt, or 
 however persistently their wits went wool-gathering; and, 
 on the other hand, they would shut the book exactly on 
 the instant when the minute-hand got opposite the dot, 
 however deeply the passage might chance to interest them. 
 Such martyrs to method are generally very conscientious 
 men, who honestly wish to make the most of their facul 
 ties and opportunities; but generally, we fear that they 
 are not overstocked with brains, and, as they do not 
 create a prodigious sensation in college, so they are 
 rarely guilty of setting any rivers on fire after gradua 
 tion. It was good people of this kind that Sir Walter 
 Scott had in his mind's eye when he said he had never 
 known a man of genius who could be perfectly regular 
 in his habits, whilst he had known many blockheads who 
 
274 WORKING BY EULE. 
 
 could. The Roman poet, Juvenal, with his usual vigor 
 ous touch, has painted a " representative man " of this 
 class : 
 
 " If he but walk a mile, he first must look 
 For the fit hour and minute in his book; 
 If his eye itch, the pain will still endure, 
 Nor, till a scheme be raised, apply the cure." 
 
 Now, it is well to have some method in one's actions, 
 even in one's madness, as did Hamlet; but to be 
 shackled by many and minute rules of conduct, to rule 
 all one's actions with a ruler, to divide one's time with 
 a pair of compasses, and allow precisely so much to this 
 thing and so much to that, is an intolerable torment. 
 The virtues that accompany method, such as punctu 
 ality, the disposition not to loiter, and the power of 
 working up spare moments for useful purposes, are all 
 commendable; they help a man to do his work triumph 
 antly, and in an easy, assured manner; but it is possible 
 to overrate their value. They oil the wheels of life, and 
 make them run without hitch or creaking; but they do 
 not determine the character of that life. Their only 
 value is derivative, and they have no more power to do 
 the business of life than a pulley has to lift a weight. 
 Robert Hall used to say of early rising, that the real 
 question was not what time you get up, but what do 
 you do when you are up. So method and the improve 
 ment of time are important in themselves; but a far 
 more important question is, how do you improve your 
 time? It is well to be at your post at the very moment 
 the clock strikes the hour; but it is far more important 
 to be able to discharge its duties after you have got 
 there. Mental stature, intellectual power, has not a very 
 close relation, we fear, to the virtues of a martinet. A 
 
 
WORKING BY RULE. 275 
 
 wise, thoughtful, useful man, a clear-headed reasoner, a 
 profound thinker, may be immethodical, dilatory, slov 
 enly, just as a giant may be clumsy, awkward, and 
 loose in all his make-up. 
 
 Perhaps no two persons were ever more unlike each 
 other, in respect to method or system, than Southey and 
 Coleridge. They strikingly illustrate the advantages and 
 drawbacks of the habit of mind which has been so much 
 lauded. Southey was as regular as a clock. Always 
 prompt and punctual, he did his work with the exactness 
 and precision of a machine; and the watch no sooner 
 ticked the hour than his literary tale of brick was forth 
 coming. He wrote poetry before breakfast ; he read during 
 breakfast; he read history till dinner; he corrected proof- 
 sheets between dinner and tea; he wrote an essay for the 
 "Quarterly" afterwards; and after supper composed "The 
 Doctor," an elaborate jest. Never was there a greater 
 miser of time; never, since Pliny, were moments so con 
 scientiously improved. Even when walking for exercise, 
 he took a book with him. But what does his life prove, 
 except that the habits of mind best fitted for communi 
 cating information, habits formed with the greatest care, 
 and daily regulated by the best motives, are exactly 
 the habits which are likely to afford a man the least in 
 formation to communicate? Southey's works are prodigies 
 of learning and labor; but who reads them now? What 
 work has he produced which the world " will not will 
 ingly let die " ; what bold, striking thoughts has he uttered 
 which stick in the memory like barbed arrows, that can 
 not be withdrawn? Of the hundred and three volumes, 
 which, in addition to the one hundred and fifty review- 
 articles, he so painfully composed, not one, in all proba- 
 
276 WORKING BY RULE. 
 
 bility, except possibly the " Life of Nelson," of which his 
 publisher dictated the subject and size, will be read fifty 
 years hence. The truth is, Southey read and wrote so 
 systematically and so mechanically, so much like a ma 
 chine, that his life was monotonous and humdrum; it 
 had no adventures, changes, events, or experiences; and 
 hence his works show a painful want of intellectual bone 
 and muscle, and rarely touch the hearts or thrill the 
 sympathies of his hearers. Gorgeous passages may be 
 found in them, proofs of vigorous fancy and imagina 
 tion; but his persons and their adventures are so super 
 natural so dreamy, phantom-like, and out of the circle 
 of human sympathies, both in their triumphs and suffer 
 ings, that his elaborate and ambitious poems produce 
 on us the impression of a splendid but unsubstantial 
 nightmare. 
 
 Now look at Coleridge. He passed his whole life out at 
 elbows, physically and morally. He loitered and dawdled; 
 he wasted whole weeks and months; he had no sense of the 
 value of minutes ; he prosecuted a thousand literary schemes 
 which were never finished; and, when he died, left behind 
 him, as Lamb playfully said, " forty thousand treatises on 
 metaphysics and divinity, not one of them complete." It 
 is in these fragments, in casual remarks, scribbled often 
 on the margins of books, and reminding us of the Sibyl's 
 leaves, in imperfectly-reported conversations, and in a 
 few brief but exquisitely-harmonized poems, that we must 
 look for the proof of Coleridge's mighty but imperfectly- 
 recorded powers. Yet who that is familiar with these, and 
 with the writings of Southey, can doubt that Coleridge was 
 by far the greater man of the two; and who can help 
 suspecting that there was, if not a direct connection, at 
 
WORKING BY RULE. 277 
 
 least a strong sympathy between his genius and his sloven 
 liness? He had, as another has said, a gift for seeing the 
 difficulties of life, its seamy side, its incongruities and con 
 tradictions, which he would probably have lost if he had 
 been more respectable and victorious. 
 
 " But Agassiz's or Coleridge's method of working would 
 be ruinous to any man who had not their wonderful facul 
 ties, their far-sight and insight." No doubt; and therefore 
 neither of them ever proposed his own method of working 
 as a model for others. " Once, in my presence," says the 
 correspondent of the " Tribune," " a near relative ventured 
 to ask him (Agassiz) if he did not think he would accom 
 plish more if he finished one thing before he began another. 
 ' Every man must work according to his own method,' he 
 replied. It was frequently a hard thing to get him to sign 
 a paper, or write a letter (except for somebody else), or to 
 look over accounts, or to do little routine work. Yet he 
 could never have attained his great eminence in science if 
 he had not paid, in his department, great attention to the 
 minutest and apparently the most insignificant details. 
 Looking at the drawing of a fish made by his artist, he 
 said, after taking a single glance, ' It is a beautiful draw 
 ing, but don't you see you have left out two or three of the 
 scales ? ' ' 
 
 The sum of the matter is, method, like fire, is a good 
 slave, but a bad master, and is too apt to degenerate, like 
 other minor virtues, into mere priggishness. As intel 
 lectual companions, your systematic, square-rule-and-com- 
 pass men are, of all persons, the dullest and most unsatis 
 fying. " I do not like," says the charming French writer, 
 Xavier De Maistre, in his " Voyage autour de ma Chambre," 
 " people who are so completely the masters of their steps and 
 
278 WORKING BY RULE. 
 
 their ideas that they say to themselves, ' To-day I will make 
 three visits; I will write four letters; I will finish that 
 work which I have begun.' '' We sympathize with him. 
 We respect the literary Pharisees, who tithe mental mint, 
 anise, and cummin, with scrupulous regularity; but we 
 cannot love them. Even in morals, it is not the most 
 straight-laced persons, the "unco guid," who never 
 deviate by a hair's breadth from the path of propriety, 
 that are the best Christians, the best neighbors and citizens, 
 parents or children, husbands or wives. John Milton 
 has justly denounced those scrupulists " who, when God 
 has set us in a fair allowance of way, never leave subtle- 
 izing and casuisting till they have straightened and pared 
 that liberal path into a razor's edge to walk on." And 
 the wise old Gascon, Montaigne, with his usual sagacity, 
 observes of systems of conduct generally, that a young man 
 ought sometimes " to cross his own rules" to awake his 
 vigor, and to keep it from growing faint and rusty; "for 
 there is no course of life so weak as that which is carried 
 on by rule and discipline." The reader of Dickens will 
 remember the old clock at Dr. Blimber's, whose monotonous 
 beat rapped every second on the head as soon as it was 
 born, killing it stone-dead on the spot. Like this, we fear, 
 is the murderous clock-work of many human lives. 
 
TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 
 
 ~T~~\0 we need more public speakers in this country? We 
 - ^ ask the question because we often see paragraphs 
 going the rounds of the press, advising fathers to teach 
 their boys to "spout" as a means of getting on in the 
 world, considering the countless occasions on which, in this 
 country, a man is called to address his fellows. Moreover, 
 we are reminded that the speaking class par eminence, 
 that is, the lawyers, usually number nine-tenths of the 
 United States Congress. 
 
 There is force in these suggestions; yet we are fully of 
 the opinion that the advice is mischievous; that, instead of 
 swelling the number of public speakers in this country, it 
 would be a mercy to the community, and should be the 
 solicitude of every one having the control of boys, to 
 diminish it. This running at the mouth has become a 
 terrible epidemic, and we believe that the health of the 
 body politic demands that it should be checked rather than 
 encouraged. The facility for extempore speaking which 
 dazzles so many persons, begets self-conceit and a thirst for 
 public notice, and tempts thousands of our young men to 
 seek temporary notoriety at the expense of a solid and 
 enduring reputation. Instead of cultivating and disciplin 
 ing their brains, storing their minds with the hived wisdom 
 of the ages, and, above all, acquiring that most valuable 
 and important of all arts, the art of thinking consecutively 
 and with effect, they study clap-trap and sensational 
 
 279 
 
280 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 
 
 oratory, the art of producing instantaneous and ephem 
 eral, instead of deep and lasting effects. Habits of speak 
 ing thus formed speedily react on the habits of thinking, 
 and instead of weighing questions carefully and trying to 
 ascertain their merits, young men view them only as 
 pegs upon which to hang speeches. An easy utterance, 
 a lively verbosity, a knack of stinging invective, and a 
 command of that piquant ridicule which always brings 
 down the house, soon come to be preferred to the pro- 
 foundest knowledge, the largest grasp of mind, and the 
 most thorough comprehension of a subject, which, owing 
 to the very embarras des richesses, hems and stammers in 
 trying to wreak itself upon expression. 
 
 There is hardly any gift so dangerous or so worthless 
 as what is vulgarly termed eloquence. The French have 
 rightly characterized it as the flux de bouche, a mental 
 diarrhoea. It is a mistake to suppose that it is difficult 
 to acquire the faculty of fluent speaking; almost any man 
 can succeed who will try often, and who can harden him 
 self against the mortification of frequent failures. Com 
 plete self-possession and a ready flow of language may thus 
 be acquired mechanically; but it will be the self-possession 
 of ignorance, and the fluency of comparative emptiness. 
 Such a habit may teach him something of arrangement, 
 and a few of the simplest methods of making an impres 
 sion; but, as Lord Brougham has said, "his diction is sure 
 to be much worse than if he never made the attempt. 
 Such a speaker is never in want of a word, and hardly 
 ever has one that is worth having." The truth is, full 
 men are seldom fluent. Washington seldom spoke in 
 public, and when he did, it was in a few pointed sentences, 
 d n livered in an easy, conversational way. In the conyen- 
 
TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 281 
 
 tion that framed the Constitution of the United States he 
 made but two speeches, of a few words each; yet the con 
 vention acknowledged the master spirit, and it is said that 
 but for the thirty words of his first speech, the Constitution 
 Would have been rejected by the people. Neither Franklin 
 nor Jefferson had " the gift of gab," though the one wrote 
 the Declaration of Independence, and the other " snatched 
 the lightning from the skies and the sceptre from tyrants." 
 Though silent and slow-tongued, each in the weightiest 
 debate was effective, because he spoke tersely and from a 
 full mind, and drove a nail home with every blow. The 
 latter changed the messages of the Executive to Congress 
 from oral to written discourses, because of his aversion to 
 public speaking. President Jackson was as tongue-tied as 
 Grant. Napoleon said that his greatest difficulty in ruling 
 was in finding men of deeds rather than of words. When 
 asked how he maintained his influence over his superiors in 
 age and experience when he commanded in Italy, he said, 
 " By reserve." Moltke is said to be silent in eight lan 
 guages. He rarely speaks, except in the crash of solid 
 shot and the shriek of the angry shell. When the Creator 
 was to choose a man for the greatest work ever done in 
 this world, it was Moses, the man "slow of speech," and 
 not Aaron, the man who could " speak well," that He 
 commissioned. It was said of Col. John Allen, a Kentucky 
 jurist, that he knew more than he could say and of the 
 noted Isham Talbot, whose tongue ran like a flutter-mill, 
 that he said more than he knew. 
 
 The most convincing speakers have been niggard of 
 their words. The reason why the classic orators of an 
 tiquity spoke with such terseness and condensed energy, 
 is that they turned over their subjects long and deeply, 
 
282 TOO MUCH SPEAKIKG. 
 
 and made the pen a constant auxiliary of the tongue. 
 By this double means the cogitatio et commentatio, as 
 Cicero calls it, added to the assidua ac diligens scriptura, 
 they laid up in the arsenal of the memory a supply of 
 weapons for any emergency that might arise; and the 
 sentences thus turned over and over in the laboratory of 
 thought, and submitted to criticism and revision by being 
 embodied in written composition, were immeasurably more 
 weighty and effective than those which in our day are 
 thrown off in the hurry of debate, when there is no time 
 to pause for the best thoughts and the most pregnant 
 and pointed expression. 
 
 It is said that the Germans, long-winded as they are in 
 their books, and though they will endure any amount of 
 printed matter, unappalled by size of volume, number of 
 pages, or closeness of type, will not tolerate a long speech 
 out of a lecture-room. A ten-minutes' harangue is an 
 exception; one of an hour's length is a phenomenon; one 
 of two hours never dreamed of; and as for the feat of 
 speaking four or five hours consecutively, which has been 
 achieved by some leathern-lunged American politicians, it 
 is looked upon as an impossibility, or, if credited on evi 
 dence too positive to doubt, is ranked with rope-dancing, 
 balancing one's self heels upward on the point of a steeple, 
 or similar eccentric and useless performances to which men 
 sometimes pervert their powers. 
 
 The weightiest men in the British Parliament have ever 
 been slow of speech. For a speaker who has something to 
 say, John Bull has an exhaustless patience; but for mere 
 loquacity he has an unmitigated contempt. Hemming and 
 hawing, stammering, want of tact, poverty of diction, 
 all are borne with patience, so long as the hearers 
 
 
TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 283 
 
 believe that the speaker has some special knowledge, some 
 telling fact, some wise suggestion, which he will contrive 
 to get out, if he is suffered to take his own time and way. 
 But the instant a suspicion arises that he is talking " for 
 buncombe," that he is trying to dazzle his hearers with 
 oratorical pyrotechnics, that he is, in short, vox et preterea 
 nihil, they give reins to their indignation, and cough him 
 down without mercy. So far is this carried, that a traveler 
 tells us that, in the House of Commons, it is almost unpar 
 liamentary to be fluent, to speak right on, without hem 
 ming and hawing; and quite unlordly, because smelling 
 of a professional aptitude, to march through a long sentence 
 without losing the way, without stumbling over Lindley 
 Murray and possibly the Queen herself, and without the 
 speaker coming out of the sentence at last nearly where he 
 went in. The most skilful debaters in that body, instead 
 of spinning out their words like a juggler blowing endless 
 ribbons from his mouth, cultivate a prudent reticence. 
 Like Anthony, they are plain, blunt men. They shrink 
 from antithesis, and epigram, and point, and regard fluency 
 as a debater's most dangerous snare. Nor is this opinion 
 ill-grounded. Its truth was strikingly illustrated a few 
 years ago by the comparative success of that brilliant par 
 liamentary orator, Mr. Horsman, and Lord Falmerston. It 
 was remarked that the very brilliancy of Mr. Horsman 
 converted his hearers into hostile critics, piquing themselves 
 upon their skill in seeing through the magic colors in which 
 his genius shrouded the truth ; whereas Lord Palmerston's 
 dexterous hemming and hawing only made his audience 
 sympathetically anxious to help the struggle of the honest 
 advocate of a sound cause against the disadvantages of his 
 own oratorical defects. 
 
284 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 
 
 If an Englishman would succeed as a speaker, lie first 
 seeks to store his mind with facts, and, before studying 
 oratorical tricks and arts, he tries by patient study and 
 profound meditation to master the subjects upon which 
 there is a demand for knowledge. Not till he has honestly 
 worked out a problem by brooding over it like a hen over 
 her eggs, does he prepare to lay the solution of it before 
 the public. What is the secret of Mr. Bright's oratorical 
 power? Practice in debating clubs? No; but the habits 
 of keen observation and reflection fostered by his public 
 and private life, the constant claims on ease and readiness 
 caused by a political canvass, the demand on the resources 
 of practical comment and sagacious observation made at 
 the hustings or in the House of Commons. It is because 
 he has brooded for years in solitude over the subjects on 
 which he has delivered himself with so much fire, that his 
 mind has acquired that depth of passion, earnestness, and 
 force which the playful and facile contests of the college 
 debating society would only have diluted and diminished. 
 In short, oratory is the weapon of an athlete, and it can 
 never be wielded to any purpose by a mere stripling. The 
 heroes of collegiate discussions gain intellectual agilit} 7 , 
 readiness, facility; but this suppleness of mind is too often 
 gained at the expense of higher and more sterling qualities, 
 and especially of that unity of personal character which is 
 one of the great sources of impressiveness. It takes serious 
 business and real purpose to train the orator; and if the 
 aspirant begins his career too early, the strain is too great 
 for the system that is to support it, the tax eats into the 
 capital, the practice, in Shakespeare's words', 
 
 "Lays on snch burdens as to bear them 
 The back is sacrifice to the load." 
 
TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 285 
 
 College life and college debating-clubs, it has been 
 truly said, give brightness, alertness, wit, candor, fair 
 ness, grace, to the intellects which they discipline; but 
 they do not give, they rather take away, that effect of 
 intensity and massiveness, that subduing and overpower 
 ing impressiveness which come of brooding thought and 
 purpose, which come, that is, of the tone of mind which 
 has not accustomed itself to look at questions with other 
 men's eyes. It is because he cares less for manner than 
 for matter, less to be quick and fluent than to be strong 
 and full, because he thinks long and deeply on the 
 subject which he speaks upon, that the English orator 
 is weightier and more impressive than the American. 
 The English care most for the foundation of their 
 speeches; we, for the superstructure. We fight splendidly 
 in debate, but it is to win or perish, and we exhaust 
 ourselves by a single effort. They have less dash and 
 brilliancy, but great reserved force, and renew the attack 
 to-morrow with as much vigor as at the first onset. It 
 has been justly said that " if the maiden speeches of 
 some of England's most brilliant and polished debaters 
 have been downright failures, it has been owing to inex 
 perience, not to the lack of solid information, to want 
 of practice in the tricks and mechanical devices of oratory, 
 and in no degree to the absence of convictions or sound 
 thought." 
 
 But, says some one, is it then, of no importance to 
 cultivate the faculty of speech? Do not men of fine 
 abilities sacrifice half their power and influence by not 
 learning the art of speaking well in public? Is it not 
 painful to see a man who has spent years in self-culture, 
 standing dumb as a heathen oracle, or with his intellect 
 
286 TOO MUCH SPEAKING. 
 
 smitten with indescribable confusion, the moment he opens 
 his lips in public, for lack of a few happy sentences in 
 which to embody his thoughts? Yes; but it is not neces 
 sary to join a debating club, or to thrust one's self for 
 ward as a speaker in all assemblies, in order to become 
 a good public speaker. Every time one opens his lips in 
 society, he has an opportunity to acquire and strengthen 
 the habit of giving clear and forcible utterance to his 
 thoughts. Instead, then, of bidding our young men 
 " spout," we would bid them read widely, think deeply, 
 reas in logically, and act sensibly. We would with Richter 
 exhort them never to speak on a subject till they have read 
 themselves full upon it, and never to read upon a subject 
 till they have thought themselves hungry upon it. When 
 a sensible and thoughtful man has anything to say, he will 
 always find a way of saying it, when circumstances require 
 him to speak. On the other hand, if a young man begins 
 spouting on all occasions, while his faculties are yet imma 
 ture, and his knowledge scanty, crude, and ill-arranged, he 
 will be almost sure to retain through life a fatal facility for 
 pouring forth ill-digested thoughts in polished periods, and 
 a hatred for cautious reflection. We have rarely known 
 a fluent speaker who said things that stuck like burrs in 
 the memory; but we have heard hesitating and artless 
 talkers who have blurted out the most original, the deepest 
 and the most pregnant things which we have cared to 
 remember. No, we want no more spouting. We want 
 thought, and taste, and brevity, and that Doric simplicity 
 of style which is so nearly allied to the highest and most 
 effective eloquence. 
 
A FORGOTTEN WIT. 
 
 TTTHAT is more uncertain than literary fame? The 
 * * history of literature shows that, if it is one of the 
 most enviable of human possessions, it is at the same 
 time one of the most fleeting. There is scarcely any 
 thing about which one can prophesy with so little cer 
 tainty as concerning the future fame of an author who 
 is now the pet or favorite of the reading world. Fifty 
 years ago Byron was the poetic idol of the public; and 
 Macaulay did not exaggerate when he said that all the 
 readers of verse in England, nay, in Europe, hastened 
 to sit at his feet. Now, instead of having his thousands 
 of worshipers, who drink gin ceaselessly, and strive, in 
 turned-down collars, to look Conrad-like and misanthropic, 
 he is barely a power in literature. Who reads Crabbe now, 
 or South ey, or Moore? Yet Crabbe, the " Pope in worsted 
 stockings," was so famous in his day as to create a decided 
 sensation at the hotel where he stayed on visiting London; 
 Southey, who, as a poet, is remembered to-day only by 
 a few pieces and passages which he himself pronounced 
 clap-trap, believed that his ponderous epics would be im 
 mortal; and Moore, whose songs were sung in a thousand 
 drawing-rooms, might well have believed that they, at 
 least, would not be ephemeridae. Again, what reader of 
 to-day has toiled through the seven volumes of Richard 
 son's "Pamela"; or how many have ever heard the name 
 of "Clarissa" and "Sir Charles Grandison"? Yet these 
 
 287 
 
288 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 
 
 were the novels which held our great-grandmothers spell 
 bound, which were more popular than are the tales of 
 Dickens or Miss Evans now. Rousseau hung over Richard 
 son's pages with rapture; and Diderot declared that, if 
 forced to sell his books, he would never part with these, 
 which he ranked with the productions of Moses, Homer, 
 Euripides, and Sophocles. Who reads Cleveland now, or 
 " the great Churchill," or Hayley, or Dr. Darwin, or Beattie's 
 prose or poetry, or " Fitzosborne's Letters," which reached 
 its eightieth edition, or Blair's Sermons, which sold in 
 their day like Robertson's Sermons and " Ecce Homo " 
 in ours? These, and a thousand other cases that might 
 be cited, show that the highest contemporary fame is no 
 guarantee of immortality. The suddenness with which an 
 author who has been puffed into the loftiest elevation is 
 sometimes hurled into the gulf of forgetfulness reminds 
 one of the vicissitudes that befell Milton's Satan in his 
 flight through chaos: 
 
 "His sail-broad vans 
 
 He spreads for flight, and, in the surging smoke 
 Uplifted, ppnrns the ground; thence, many a league, 
 As in a cloudy chair, ascending, rides 
 
 Audacious 
 
 .... All unawares, 
 
 Fluttering his pennons vain, plumh down he drops 
 
 Ten thousand fathoms deep." 
 
 These reflections have been provoked by a perusal of 
 the writings of Chamfort, of which a new edition was pub 
 lished a few years ago in Paris. Though a leading jour 
 nalist in the French Revolution, he is now almost forgotten 
 in Europe, while few persons in America have even heard 
 of his name. Sebastian Roch Nicholas Chamfort was born 
 in 1741, near Clermont, in Auvergne. He was a natural 
 

 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 289 
 
 son, and had the quickness of parts which the proverb 
 ascribes to such children. He never knew who his father 
 was. His mother, who was a dame de compagnie, came to 
 Paris to hide her shame, and there found friends and 
 protectors, through whose influence he found a boursier's 
 place at the College of the Grassins. Eather a dull scholar 
 at first, he at last shone forth brilliantly, and in his third 
 year this filius nullius, this " child of misery, baptized in 
 tears," carried off the five grand prizes of the University. 
 These triumphs determined his calling; he chose letters. 
 At first he tried to get employment from the journals 
 and booksellers, but failed, and would have starved had 
 not a young Abbe paid him a louis a week for writing 
 sermons. He next became a tutor; then secretary to a 
 rich citizen of Liege, whom he followed across the Rhine; 
 but they soon quarreled, and Chamfort returned to Paris, 
 saying that " the thing in the world for which he was 
 least fitted was to be a German." An indifferent comedy, 
 which had some success, and the winning of a prize at 
 the Academy, and another at the Academy of Marseilles 
 for an Eloge on La Fontaine, introduced him into society, 
 where his good looks, his aplomb, and his ready and 
 brilliant wit, soon made him a favorite. Men and women 
 of rank now sought him and doated on him. That they 
 did not for a moment suspect the intensity of pride and 
 the rage for equality which slumbered in his heart, is not 
 strange; for far keener observers were deceived than the 
 great ladies who thus caressed him. When he was elected 
 an Academician, Eivarol said that he was " like a bit of 
 lily-of-the-valley in a bouquet of poppies." The lily-of- 
 the-valley exhaled strange and deadly poisons with its 
 perfume. 
 
290 A FOBGOrTEN WIT. 
 
 Gradually the gay and dissipated life which Chamfort 
 led told upon his health. He went from watering-place 
 to watering-place, among others to Spa and Bareges, but 
 with little benefit. He lost the vigor and good looks 
 which led the Princess of Craon to say of him, " He looks 
 only an Adonis, but he is a Hercules " ; but his position 
 was assured. Places and pensions were showered upon 
 him. At Bareges, four ladies fell in love with him, 
 among them Madame de Grammont and Madame de 
 Choiseul, " in reality," wrote Mdlle. Lespinasse to a 
 friend. " four friends, who each of them loved him with 
 all the strength of four,' 1 and she adds, "he is very well 
 pleased, and tries his best to be modest." About this 
 time he wrote his tragedy of " Mustapha et Zeanger," a 
 play which has been much praised for its purity of style 
 and sweetness of sentiment, which Sainte-Beuve notes as 
 somewhat singular in a tragedy, and in an author like 
 Chamfort; "he reserved," adds the critic, "all his sweet 
 ness for his tragedies. He shows himself a feeble disciple 
 of Racine in his Bajazet, and of Voltaire in Zaire." Marie 
 Antoinette, nattered by some allusions to herself in one of 
 his tragedies, gave him a pension of one thousand two 
 hundred livres. The Prince of Conde also offered him the 
 post of Secretaire des Commandements. In .spite of these 
 successes, however, envy, malice, and uncharitableness con 
 tinued to gnaw at his heart. His acrid sayings about 
 those with whom he lived burn, it has been well said, the 
 very paper on which they are written. His reply to 
 Rulhire, itself stinging enough, is among the mildest of 
 them. " I have committed," said the wit and historian, 
 "but one wickedness in my life." "When will it end?" 
 asked Chamfort. Resigning his secretaryship in a fit of 
 
A FORGOTTEN" WIT. 291 
 
 spleen and misanthropy, he retired to Auteuil, saying, " It 
 is not with the living, but with the dead, one should com 
 mune," meaning, of course, with books. His communion 
 had hardly begun, before, at the dangerous age of forty, 
 he fell in love with the Duchess of Maine, a beauty who 
 counted eight-and-forty winters. They married and lived 
 together but a few months, when she died, and her hus 
 band relapsed into a profound melancholy. The secret of 
 his unhappiness at this time was his inaction and his ste 
 rility. Nothing, as Sainte-Beuve truly observes, is so con 
 soling to the man of letters as to produce; nothing better 
 reconciles him with others and with himself. The excessive 
 pleasures in which Chamfort had indulged, had rapidly 
 destroyed his health and his youth. " I have destroyed my 
 passions," he said, " pretty much as a violent man kills his 
 horse, not being able to govern him." Made an Acade 
 mician, he delivered on the occasion a brilliant discourse, 
 and immediately after published a " Discourse against Acad 
 emies." Occasionally he went to Court, where the Queen, 
 Marie Antoinette, once said to him: " Do you know, M. de 
 Chamfort, that you pleased all the world at Versailles, not 
 by your wit, but in spite of it?" " The reason is easy to 
 find," replied the sparkling satirist; "at Versailles I learn 
 with resignation many things I know from people who are 
 completely ignorant of them." 
 
 When the Revolution burst forth, Chamfort' s friendship 
 was sought by Mirabeau. The influence he soon had with 
 the great Tribune is the highest proof of his sagacity and 
 power. In his letters to Chamfort, Mirabeau recognizes 
 him as not only his dearest and most sympathetic, but as 
 his most suggestive and inspiring friend. " I cannot deny 
 myself the pleasure," said Mirabeau to him, "of rubbing 
 
292 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 
 
 the most electric head I have ever known. There is hardly 
 a day I do not find myself saying, 'Chamfort froncerait le 
 sourcil; ne faisons pas, rfecrivons pas cela" 1 or, on the 
 other hand, 'Cliamfort sera content' " In the union of the 
 two men there was just that blending of opposite qualities 
 which is essential to the strongest friendship. Delicacy, 
 neatness, subtlety, finesse, characterized the one; force, im 
 petuosity, fury, sensibility, predominated in the other, 
 each supplementing the other's defects. Throwing himself 
 into the revolutionary struggles, Cham fort defended the 
 new doctrine with heart, mind, tongue, and pen; and, in 
 the enthusiasm of the hour, though his whole fortune was 
 in pensions, vindicated the decree that suppressed them. 
 For a time he was one of the most active and powerful 
 revolutionary journalists; but, at last, as the Reign of 
 Terror grew darker, he was shocked and disgusted by its 
 atrocities, and began to denounce the reigning furies in 
 vehement terms. Indignant at the mockery of the words 
 "Fraternity" and "Liberty" traced on all the walls, he 
 translated them thus: "Be my brother, or I kill thee." 
 He used to liken the fraternity of the revolutionary cut 
 throats to that of Cain and Abel. Finally he was denounced 
 by an employe in the National Library, of which he had 
 been made one of the Librarians by Roland, and was 
 hurried to prison. Soon after he was released; but, find 
 ing himself " shadowed " by a gendarme, he mentally swore 
 that he would die rather than go back to the dungeon. 
 Being seized again by the myrmidons of power, he tried 
 first to shoot, then to stab himself, but only succeeded in 
 inflicting ugly wounds. " You see what it is to be mal 
 adroit in the use of one's hands," he exclaimed; "one can 
 not even kill one's self to escape the pangs of tyranny." 
 
A FORGOTTEN WIT. 293 
 
 In spite of a ball in his head, the loss of one eye, and 
 other mutilations, he recovered, but only to live for a 
 brief time, dying on the 13th of April, 1793, in the fifty- 
 second year of his age. It was still the Reign of Terror, 
 and but three friends dared to follow him to the tomb. 
 It was his opinion to the last, that the pistol-ball, with 
 which he had attempted to blow out his brains, was still 
 in his head. "Je sens," said he, " que la balle est restd 
 dans ma tete- Us n'iront pas Vy chercher" 
 
 Chateaubriand, describing the personal appearance of 
 Chamfort, says that " he was pale-faced and of a delicate com 
 plexion. His blue eye, occasionally cold and veiled when 
 unexcited, sparkled and flashed with fire when he became 
 animated. His slightly open nostrils gave to his counte 
 nance an expression of energetic sensibility. His voice 
 was flexible, and its modulations followed the movements 
 of his soul; but in the last days of my sojourn at Paris, 
 it had acquired some asperity, and one detected in it the 
 agitated and imperious accent of the factions." 
 
 The best edition of Chamfort for the English reader 
 is that edited by Arsene Houssaye, which contains his 
 choicest pieces, omitting all of temporary interest. Few 
 books contain a greater amount of sparkling wit, delicate 
 satire, and worldly wisdom, than is condensed in this 
 small volume. Mingling much with the world, Chamfort 
 brought into it a spirit of observation so ingenious and 
 penetrating that the shrewdest and most sagacious of his 
 contemporaries deemed him almost unerring and miracu 
 lous in his judgments. Many sayings which are now on 
 everybody's lips first fell from his lips or pen. It was 
 he who first divided our friends into "those who love us. 
 those who are indifferent to us, and those who hate us." 
 
294 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 
 
 It was he, not Talleyrand, who said, "Revolutions are 
 not made with rose-water." It was he who gave to the 
 French armies, as they marched into Belgium, the motto, 
 " War to the castle; peace to the cottage." It was Cham- 
 fort, too, that furnished the Abbe*-Sie*yes with the memora 
 ble closing words of his pamphlet: " What is the Third 
 Estate? All. What has it? Nothing." Chamfort was 
 accustomed to write out daily, on little bits of paper, the 
 results of his observations and reflections condensed into 
 maxims; and these mots, carefully polished and sharpened, 
 with the anecdotes he had picked up in the great world 
 among professional men, artists, and men of letters, form 
 the most brilliant and attractive part of his writings. 
 The following, selected almost at random, are fair speci 
 mens of the whole: 
 
 "The public, the public, how many fools does it take to make a 
 public?" 
 
 " The menace of a neglected cold is for the doctors that which purga 
 tory is for the priests, a mine of wealth." 
 
 "'You yawn,' said a lady to her husband. 'My dear friend,' said the 
 husband, ' husband and wife are but one, and when I am alone I become 
 weary.' " 
 
 "To despise money is to dethrone a king; il y a du ragout." 
 
 "The majority of nobles recall their ancestors pretty much as an Italian 
 cicerone recalls Cicero." 
 
 " Madame de Tencin, with the suavest manners in the world, was an 
 unprincipled woman, capable of anything. On one occasion, a friend was 
 praising her gentleness. 'Aye, aye,' said the Abbe Imblet, 'if she had any 
 object whatever in poisoning you, undoubtedly she would choose the sweetest 
 and least disagreeable poison in the world.'" 
 
 " I heard one day a devotee, speaking against people who discuss articles 
 of faith, say naivement; ' Gentlemen, a true Christian never examines what 
 he is ordered to believe. It is with that as with a bitter pi-ll ; if you chew it, 
 you will never be able to swallow it.' " 
 
 " The most utterly lost of all days is that on which you have not once 
 laughed." 
 
 "Society is composed of two great classes, those who have more din 
 ners than apoetitrs, and those who have more appetites than dinners." 
 

 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 295 
 
 "Madame de Talmont, seeing M. de Richelieu, instead of lavishing atten 
 tion on herself, paying court to Madame Brionne, a very pretty woman with 
 out the least mind, said to him, 'Marshal, you are not blind, but I believe 
 you are a little deaf.' " 
 
 "A lady, who shall be nameless, was at the representation of 'Merope, 
 and did not shed a tear. Everybody was surprised; perceiving which the 
 lady said, 'I could indeed have wept, but I am engaged out to-night to 
 supper.' " 
 
 "L'Eclure used to relate, that, when quite a young man, and without 
 fortune, arriving at Luneville, he obtained the place of dentist to King Stan' 
 islaus on the very day on which the king lost his last tooth." 
 
 "A lady aged ninety said to Fontenelle, at ninety-five: 'Death has for 
 gotten us.' 'Silence! not a word!' said Fontenelle, placing his finger upon 
 his mouth." 
 
 "A person chided M." (Chamfort himself) "upon his taste for solitude. 
 He replied: 'It is because I am more accustomed to my own faults than 
 to those of another person.' " 
 
 "Man arrives a novice at every age of life." 
 
 " Nature, in loading us with so much misery, and in giving us an invin 
 cible attachment to life, seems to have dealt with man like an incendiary who 
 sets our house on fire after having posted sentinels at our door. The danger 
 must be very great to oblige us to leap out of the window." 
 
 "M. de Lassay, a very pleasant man, but who had a great knowledge of 
 society, said that it would be necessary to swallow a toad every morning, in 
 order not to find anything disgusting the rest of the day, when one has to 
 spend it in the world." 
 
 " A certain person, who shall be nameless, had been, for thirty years, in 
 the habit of passing his evenings at Madame II's. At length his wife died. 
 People thought he would marry the lady whose house he frequented, and his 
 best friends encouraged him to perpetrate the deed. He refused, saying, " In 
 that case, my friends, where should I find a house of refuge to pass my even 
 ings?" 
 
 " People give ten-guinea dinners to entertain those for whose good diges 
 tion of the expensive dinner they would not give a groat." 
 
 " France is a country in which it is always necessary to display one's vices, 
 and always dangerous to disclose one's virtues." 
 
 These sayings, so acrid and corrosive, are a fair speci 
 men of what a witty French writer has called les tenailles 
 mordantes de Chamfort. The majority of those relating 
 to society apply only to the great world in which he 
 lived, the society of the great; they wholly fail to char 
 acterize the less factitious society in which the natural 
 
296 A FORGOTTEK WIT. 
 
 sentiments are not abolished. It was because he lived 
 too long in high life, that theatre of unequal struggles, 
 of trickery, and of vanity, because he passed too many 
 years in refined society, and saw its hollowness, selfish 
 ness and dissimulation, that he has given us so many 
 pictures of hypocrisy and insincerity, and was able to 
 utter his famous saying: "I have been led there by de 
 grees. In living and in seeing men, the heart must break 
 or be bronzed (se brise ou se bronze}. Chamfort had one of 
 those unfortunate natures, which, ignorant of the happy 
 alchemy which converts even gall and wormwood into 
 honey, find bitterness in everything, and echo the senti 
 ment of the poet, 
 
 " La rose a des poisons qu'on finit par trouver." 
 
 He confesses, however, to have had in his life two 
 years of happiness, and six months of perfect felicity. 
 He had retired to the country with a female friend 
 older than himself, but with whom he felt himself in 
 perfect sympathy of sentiment and of thought. He lost 
 her, and appears to have buried with her the remains of 
 his heart. He never speaks of her but in terms that 
 mark a profound sadness: 
 
 u When my heart has need of tenderness, I recall the friends whom I have 
 lost, women of whom death has robbed me. I inhabit their grave; I send my 
 soul to wander about theirs. Alas! I have three tombs." 
 
 In estimating many of his maxims we must not forget 
 that they come from a man who never had a family, who 
 was not softened by its endearments, ni en remontant ni 
 en descendant, who had no father, and who, in his turn, 
 never wished to be one. "Consulting reason only." he 
 again and again asks, " what man would wish to be a 
 father?" "I will not marry," he says again, "for fear 
 
A FORGOTTEN WIT. 297 
 
 of having a son to resemble me. Yes, for fear of having 
 a son who, being poor like myself, may know not how to 
 lie, or to flatter, or to creep, and may have to undergo 
 the same trials as myself." 
 
 Chamfort did nothing continuously; he has left no 
 book as a monument of his powers. He left others to 
 execute important enterprises, and was content to supply 
 the stimulus. His forte, his genius, lay in summing up a 
 situation, a counsel, a general impression, in a single word. 
 His influence upon French society was unquestionable, 
 but it was exercised wholly in conversation, in sallies of 
 wit, in those sparkling sayings " which make one (a thing 
 so rare) laugh and think at the same time." It is in 
 the Maximes et Pensees, which form the latter half of 
 Houssaye's edition of his remains, that we must look for 
 the quintessence of this piquant and spirituel writer. 
 Whether he deserves a literary resurrection, the reader 
 can judge. That his genius was quite as original and 
 brilliant as that of many an author whom the world does 
 "not willingly let die," we think is clear. That he was 
 especially a. keen observer of men, the volume we have 
 quoted from abundantly proves. The court, the camp, the 
 city, the exchange, the theatres, the churches, all the 
 classes, ranks, and conditions of society, pass in review 
 in his pictured pages, and reveal themselves to us "in 
 their habit as they lived." 
 
 Will it be said that he was cynical, that his wit 
 was dry, caustic, and sardonic? So was Swift's and 
 Rochefoucauld's. Are there occasional passages in his 
 writings that one would not like to read aloud? Yes; 
 but are there not more such in Shakspeare, Sterne, Pope, 
 and Montaigne? That Chamfort would have produced 
 
298 A FORGOTTEN WIT. 
 
 works more worthy of his genius if his energies had not 
 been drained by the exhausting labors of journalism, we 
 cannot doubt. We all know the effects of these labors, 
 when ceaseless and engrossing, upon even the most lav 
 ishly-endowed writer. He becomes at last a hack thinker 
 and a loose writer; he is a race-horse in the shafts of 
 an omnibus, Aaron's beard never would have come down 
 to us in history, had he been in the habit of shaving 
 daily; and had Montaigne and Pascal lived in our day, 
 the immortal " Essays " might have dwindled into a 
 Moniteur correspondence, and the "Provincial Letters" 
 might have been let off in squibs to fizz and sparkle 
 through fifty-two weeks in Charivari. Granting all that 
 can be said in disparagement of Chamfort, that he was 
 sour and misanthropical; that his genius had little flow; 
 that his wit was disproportionate to his other gifts; that 
 he lacked that highest wisdom which only goodness can 
 give, and was blunt and vehement where a milder and 
 more courteous expression of his opinions would have 
 better insured their reception, we still think his works 
 should be kept from the " moth and worm, and mouldering 
 hand of time." We believe with Sainte-Beuve, that, in 
 spite of his faults, Chamfort will continue to be classed in 
 the front rank of those who have managed la saillie fran- 
 paise with the most dexterity and boldness. Too sickly and 
 too irritable to deserve ever to obtain a place in the 
 series of true moralists, his name will remain attached to 
 a number of concise, sharp, vibrating, and picturesque 
 sayings, which pique the attention, and which fix them 
 selves like barbed arrows in the memory. At the same 
 time, however, we would say to all his readers, in the 
 words of the same critic: " Me*fiez-vous, pourtant! je crains 
 qu'il n'y ait toujours un peu d'arsenic au fond." 
 
ABE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 
 
 " "A yf~Y children, 1 ' Dr. Johnson used to say to his friends, 
 JJLL. n deli ver yourselves from cant." Every age has 
 its cant, which, in some of the thousand forms of the thing, 
 is the prevailing rage. That of our own time is Anglo- 
 Saxon glorification. Not a day passes, but we read in 
 print, or hear from the platform, the eternal, hackneyed 
 boasting about our "manifest destiny," the same weari 
 some ding-dong about the Anglo-Saxon energy, and the 
 rapidity with which the race is belting the globe, and 
 supplanting the laws, manners, and customs of every 
 other people. This cant has been echoed and re-echoed, 
 in newspaper articles, stump speeches, Congressional 
 harangues, and even in works on ethnology, till it has 
 become a nuisance. We are as sick of it as ever Dr. 
 Johnson was of the everlasting " Second Punic War." 
 "Who will deliver me from the Greeks and Romans?" 
 cried in agony the classic- ridden Frenchman. " Who will 
 deliver us from the Anglo-Saxon?" despairingly cry we. 
 There are in the United States some six or eight 
 millions of people who are descended from the Anglo- 
 Saxons, and that is probably all. That population is to 
 be found principally in New England, side by side with 
 men of every clime and land; not a very stupendous 
 item, is it, out of some forty-two millions of men, women, 
 and children, who think and toil between the St. Croix 
 Eiver and the Bay of San Francisco? True, these forty- 
 
 299 
 
BOO ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 
 
 two millions all, or nine-tenths of them, speak the 
 language of Shakspeare and Bacon; but this no more 
 proves them the descendants of that race which was first 
 whipped by a few Scandinavian filibusters, and afterward 
 thrashed, held by the throats, and ruled with a rod of 
 iron when they complained, for century after century, by a 
 handful of Normans, than the wearing of woolen proves a 
 man a sheep, or drinking lager beer proves him a Dutch 
 man. 
 
 Who are the men who have built up this nation and 
 made it the great republic it is? Are they all, or nearly 
 all, of Anglo-Saxon birth or descent? Not to speak of 
 the Swiss, the Huguenots, the Dutch, and other minor 
 peoples, let us look at the Irish contingent to American 
 greatness. From the very first settlement of the country, 
 in field and street, at the plow, in the Senate, and on 
 the battle-field, Irish energy was represented. Maryland 
 and South Carolina were largely peopled by Hibernians. 
 Maine, New Hampshire, and Kentucky received many 
 Irish emigrants. During the first half of the last cen 
 tury, the emigration from Ireland to this country was 
 not less than a quarter of a million. When our fore 
 fathers threw off the British yoke, the Irish formed a 
 sixth or seventh of the whole population, and one- fourth 
 of all the commissioned officers in the army and navy 
 were of Irish descent. The first general officer killed in 
 battle, the first officer of artillery appointed, the first 
 Commodore commissioned, the first victor to whom the 
 British flag was struck at sea, and the first officer who 
 surprised a fort by land, were Irishmen; and with such 
 enthusiasm did the emigrants from " the Green Isle " 
 espouse the cause of liberty, that Lord Mountjoy declared 
 
ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON"? 301 
 
 in Parliament, "You lost America by the Irish." We 
 will not speak of the physical development of America, 
 to which two generations of Irish laborers have chiefly 
 contributed, but for the constant supply of which the 
 buft'alo might still be browsing in the Genesee Valley, 
 and " Forty-second street " be " out of town " (speaking 
 Hibernice) in New York; we will confine ourselves to the 
 men of brain who have leavened the mass of bone and 
 sinew by which our material prosperity has been worked 
 out. Who were the Carrolls, the Rutledges, the Fitzsim- 
 mons, and the McKeans, of the Revolution? whence 
 came Andrew Jackson, Robert Emmet, J. C. Calhoun, and 
 McDuffie, of a later day? whence the projector of the 
 Erie Canal, the inventor of the first steamboat, and the 
 builder of the first American railroad? whence two of 
 our leading sculptors, Powers and Crawford? whence 
 our most distinguished political economist, Carey? 
 whence the Hero of Winchester, whom all the people of 
 the North have delighted to honor? They were all Irish 
 by birth or descent. 
 
 Even to the Welsh element in our population, our 
 country is indebted in no small degree for its prosperity. 
 Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, eighteen 
 had Welsh blood in their veins, and among them were 
 Samuel Adams, John Adams, Stephen Hopkins, Francis 
 Hopkinson, Robert Morris. B. Gwinnett, Thomas Jefferson, 
 Benjamin Harrison, Richard H. Lee, and Francis H. Lee. 
 Among our Revolutionary Generals, the brave Montgom 
 ery, who fell at Quebec, " Mad " Anthony Wayne, the fiery 
 Ethan Allen, and David Morgan, together with Charles 
 Lee, John Cadwallader, and many others, were of Welsh 
 blood; and so were six of our Presidents, viz.: John 
 
302 ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 
 
 Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Harrison, and 
 Buchanan. We may add that President Grant, to whom 
 the Republic is indebted more than to any other man since 
 Washington, is not of Anglo-Saxon descent, but of Nor 
 man, via Scotland. 
 
 If, leaving history, we look to the moral and physio 
 logical traits of the American people, we shall find them 
 clearly distinguished from those of the Anglo-Saxons. The 
 English people and the American differ widely in mind, 
 feeling, temper, and manners; and these differences may be 
 traced to the characteristics of nations who have mingled 
 the stream of their life with the current derived from Eng 
 land. We have far quicker sensibilities than the English, 
 both of affection and of wrath, being kindlier in our gentle 
 mood, and more fiery when irritated. Along with this 
 inflammable temper, we have an originality of invention, 
 a discursiveness of inquiry, a keen quest of novelty, a 
 fertility of expedients, a contempt for antiquated laws, 
 customs, and precedents, which strikingly contrast with 
 the timidity and caution, the conservative and creeping 
 policy of the English. 
 
 How we came to be infected by the Anglo-Saxon 
 mania, it would be hard to tell. Even in England it is 
 ridiculous enough ; but there it is beginning to be laughed 
 at by men of sense, who perceive the absurdity of English 
 men claiming to be Anglo-Saxons, when there is no such 
 race in existence, and never was. Those who echo this 
 boast, should read Defoe's " True-born Englishman," in 
 which, at a time when it was customary to denounce 
 King William as " a foreigner," the author was at pains 
 to instruct his countrymen how many mongrel races had 
 conspired to form "that vain, ill-natured thing, an Eng- 
 
ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 303 
 
 lishman," and showed in limping verse, but unanswerable 
 
 logic, that 
 
 U A True-born Englishman's a contradiction 
 In speech an irony, in fact a fiction; 
 A metaphor invented to express 
 A man AKIN to all the universe." 
 
 Anything more motley and heterogeneous than the 
 Anglo-Saxon blood, even before the Norman invasion, 
 made up, as it was, from the veins of Britons, Eomans, 
 Saxons, Picts, Scots, and Danes, it would be hard to con 
 ceive. It began with the Celtic, of which it is a dilution, 
 that very Celtic with which certain writers are fond 
 of telling us it is in deadly antagonism and enmity; next 
 comes the Roman blood, a blood shared, more or less, 
 by every people in Southern and Western Europe, to say 
 nothing of parts of Asia and Africa, and which, we 
 know, was derived from a mingling together of all the 
 races of ancient Italy and the ancient world; and then 
 follows the blood of the Picts and Scots, the Jutes, Frisians, 
 Angles, and Saxons, the Danes, and, last of all, the Normans, 
 who, as Dr. Latham says, were, from first to last, Celtic 
 on the mother's side, and on that of the father, Celtic, 
 Roman, and German, and hence brought over to England 
 only the elements they had before, Celtic, Roman, German, 
 and Norse. All this shows plainly that the idea of an 
 Anglo-Saxon race, composed of pure Anglian and Saxon 
 elements, is sheer nonsense. It shows that the English 
 Anglo-Saxon race is composed of the same constituents 
 as the other leading European races, not excepting the 
 French; and that hence it is simply absurd for Americans 
 to call themselves Anglo-Saxons, when they have con 
 founded, and are daily more and more confounding, the 
 confusion of the English blood by infusions from the 
 veins of all the other nations of Europe. 
 
304 ARE WE ANGLO-SAXON? 
 
 The truth is, that, made up as we are, of so many 
 nationalities, " pigging together, heads and points,, in one 
 truckle-bed," we are as mixed, piebald, and higgledy- 
 piggledy a race as the sun ever looked down upon. Com 
 pared with us, the Romans, who first comprised all the 
 vagabonds of Italy, and finally incorporated into the 
 empire all the semi-barbarians of Europe, were a homo 
 geneous race. To plume ourselves upon our Anglo- 
 Saxon extraction, is as ridiculous as the inordinate pride 
 of ancestry rebuked by Defoe, which led the self-styled 
 " True-born Englishmen " of his day to sneer at the 
 Dutch: 
 
 " Forgetting that themselves are all derived 
 From the most scoundrel race that ever lived. 
 A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, 
 Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns; 
 The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot, 
 By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought; 
 Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, 
 Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains; 
 Who, joined with Norman French, compound the breed, 
 From whence your ' True-born Englishmen ' proceed." 
 
 When we think how much we, in common with the 
 English people, are indebted to the sturdy old Norman 
 kings and barons for our liberties, we have still less 
 reason for joining in the cant of Anglo-Saxonism. Who 
 was it that established in England the right of trial by 
 jury; that commuted personal service in the field for a 
 fair scutage; that taxed nobles and commons alike, and 
 struck the hardest blows at the tyranny of feudal lords 
 over their vassals ? Who , was it that summoned the first 
 English House of Commons; that gave England her 
 judicial circuits; that opposed the stoutest and most 
 effectual resistance to the encroachments of the Koman 
 
ABE WE ANGLO-SAX01T? 305 
 
 See? In each case it was a Norman King. It was the 
 Norman Kings who first forbade appeals to Rome, and 
 denied to the Papal legates permission to be received as 
 such within the realm; and it was the sturdy Norman 
 barons who, when John Lackland stooped to resign his 
 crown and kingdom into the hands of a Papal legate, and 
 to receive it back as a Papal fief, rose against the cow 
 ard, and forced the signing of Magna Charta. If we 
 are proud of our descent from the Saxons, let us not 
 forget that we have also the blood of the old Scandi 
 navian vikings in our veins, and that but for this infusion 
 of Norse fire into their cold Saxon nature, the nation 
 from which we have derived our political and religious 
 liberties, might have bequeathed to us the same institu 
 tions that prevail on the Continent of Europe. 
 
 Out, then, upon this stereotyped laudation of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race and its progress! There is nothing 
 more dangerous to our political unity than this miserable 
 cant about " races," and especially this gabble about 
 Anglo-Saxon blood, which we .hear so often in the United 
 States. It is just such talk as this which has caused 
 many civil wars in Europe, which in 1848 set the Ger 
 mans and the different Slavic races to cutting each 
 other's throats; and it has led to similar horrors in our 
 own country. It has already roused the jealousy of our 
 South American neighbors, whom our demagogues are so 
 fond of teaching us to regard as an inferior race, and 
 therefore doomed to be our prey, the victims of our 
 "manifest destiny." Those Americans who join in these 
 vauntings, proclaiming that we are a great people 
 because we are of the same stock as the English, forget 
 that thie self- stultification is anything but creditable to 
 
306 ABE WE ANGLO-SAXON ? 
 
 them ; that it detracts from rather than adds to the dignity 
 of the American character. Instead of blushing or hang 
 ing down our heads on account of our mixed origin, we 
 should be proud of it, for all history, ancient and modern, 
 shows that it is by the fusion of race that all great and 
 vigorous new races are made. All the powerful nations 
 of Europe have been reconstituted, made anew, in this 
 way, and those are the weakest which have received the 
 least stimulus of admixture. " The purest populations of 
 Europe," says that distinguished ethnologist, Dr. Latham, 
 " are the Basques, the Lapps, Tie Poles, and the Frisians," 
 confessedly among the weakest and most insignificant 
 tribes of Europe; and he adds that "the most powerful 
 nations are the most heterogeneous." The British are in 
 many respects the most powerful people of Europe, and 
 they are also the most heterogeneous. We are still more 
 mixed, and every day blends new elements with our blood, 
 making our pedigree more and more a puzzle. Consider 
 ing how much Celtic, Scandinavian, and other blood runs 
 in our veins, this Anglo-Saxon glorification in our repub 
 lic is peculiarly invidious, exasperating, and misplaced. 
 America is not Anglo-Saxon any more than it is Norman 
 or Celtic; it is the grand asylum and home of humanity, 
 where people of every race and clime under the whole 
 Heaven may stand erect on one unvarying plane of 
 political and religious equality, feel that, despite "the 
 lack of titles, power and pelf," they are men " for a' 
 that," and bless Heaven that they have work to do, 
 food to eat, books to read, and the privilege of worship 
 ping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. 
 Such may it ever remain! . 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 AMONG the thousand interesting places which the 
 -JL_ American traveler may visit in Europe, there are 
 none which have a greater charm for the scholar than the 
 two university towns of England, Oxford and Cambridge. 
 Whatever the architectural beauties or the historic glories 
 he finds in the Continental towns, there is no one in 
 which he lingers so long and lovingly, no one from which 
 he at last tears himself away with such a pang of reluc 
 tance, as from these ancient seats of learning. It is now 
 five years since we first enjoyed the intense pleasure of 
 treading the quadrangles, the gardens and the halls of 
 the two universities; and though we have since visited 
 many other places of world-renowned beauty, and hal 
 lowed by historic memories, yet there is no one the men 
 tion of which conjures up so many pleasant recollections 
 of hours too quickly passed, hours in which eye and ear, 
 mind and soul, were intoxicated with delight, as do the 
 names of these famous towns. To which of these haunts 
 of learning the palm of beauty is to be given, it is as hard 
 as it would be invidious to say. Neither has its parallel 
 elsewhere in the world. There is something absolutely 
 unapproachable in the scenes that greet the eye behind 
 the colleges at Cambridge, where the Cam steals along 
 between frequent arches, and groves, and lawns, and be 
 neath the shadows of venerable edifices; there is no other 
 quadrangle in the world like the great quadrangle of 
 
 307 
 
308 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 Trinity; nor can Oxford boast of any chapel equal to that 
 of King's College, with its huge buttresses, its immense 
 windows, its profusion of exquisite carvings, and quaint 
 fret- work, and above all, its wondrous stone roof, 
 
 "Self-poised and scooped into ten thousand cells, 
 Where light and shade repose, where music dwells, 
 Lingering, and wandering as loth to die; 
 Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
 That they were born for immortality." 
 
 Yet the view of Oxford, with its multiplicity of tur 
 rets, pinnacles, and towers, rising in the bosom of a 
 beautiful valley, amid waters and gardens, fully merits 
 Wordsworth's epithet of "overpowering; 11 and he who 
 can look upon this " City of Palaces, 1 ' hoary with ancestral 
 honors, and rich in treasures of bibliography, science, and 
 art, and not exclaim with the poet, 
 
 " Robed in the grandeur of thy waving woods, 
 Girt with a silver zone of winding floods, 
 Fair art thou, Oxford! " 
 
 must be as dull as the clod he treads upon. It was an 
 excusable burst of enthusiasm in Robert Hall, when, 
 standing on the summit of the RadclifFe Library, he was 
 so impressed with the beauty of the scene, the dark and 
 ancient edifices, clustering together in forms full of rich 
 ness and beauty, the quadrangles, gardens, and groves, 
 the flowing rivers and belting hills, wood-crowned, 
 and, over all, the clear, blue-flecked sky, that he cried 
 out, " Sir, sir, it is surely the New Jerusalem come down 
 from Heaven!" 
 
 It is, of course, impossible, within the limits of a brief 
 essay, to speak of a tithe of the interesting things one 
 may see in even a day's visit to a city like Oxford or 
 Cambridge. The name Oxford is derived from the " Ox- 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 309 
 
 fords" about the city, the particular ford being at Binsey 
 or North Hincksey. The city is of great antiquity, and 
 from an early period was one of considerable importance, 
 Nearly every British sovereign has visited it, some have 
 lived in it, and Parliament has assembled in it on twenty 
 different occasions. The zealous antiquaries of the town 
 have even claimed that the first English printing-press was 
 set up in Oxford, Corsellis having printed a book there in 
 1468, four years before Caxton set up a press at West 
 minster. It is much more certain that the first British 
 martyrs, that suffered for renouncing the Roman Catholic 
 faith, were Oxford men. Thirty Baptists of this city were 
 punished for heresy, in the time of Henry II, by starva 
 tion without the walls. The University consists of twenty 
 Colleges and five Halls, or unendowed societies. The oldest 
 (University) is said to date back to 886 ; the latest (Keble) 
 was founded in 1868. The entrances to the town are all 
 more or less picturesque, except that from the railway sta 
 tion, and three of them cross those beautiful meandering 
 streams which the Oxonians dignify with the names of 
 rivers, the Thames (here called the "Isis") and the 
 " Cherwell." In the good old days, before the scream of 
 the locomotive was heard in this charming valley, the 
 visitor, from whatever direction he came, got from the 
 top of the stage-coach a glorious view of the city. The 
 one that bursts upon you from the Abingdon road, espe 
 cially, is of such ineffable beauty that it must quicken 
 the pulse of the veriest dunce. It is one of those rare 
 sights that always fill a painter's heart with delight, and 
 might be put at once on canvas without the change of a 
 feature. We, of course, came by rail, and, entering the 
 town from the west, felt little throbbing of the heart till 
 
310 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 we reached " the heart of its mystery." Strolling along 
 with no guide but our Murray, we passed the Castle, 
 built in William Rufus's time, now used as a gaol, and 
 soon found ourselves in High street, where the genius loci 
 at once seized upon us, and we realized that we were 
 standing in the intellectual birth-place of Hooker, Hamp- 
 den, Wyckliffe, and many another 
 
 " Giant of mighty bone and high emprise," 
 
 of whose victories not only Englishmen, but Americans, 
 are proud. 
 
 This famous street, the pride of Oxford, at once charms 
 the stranger by its beauty, and increasing intimacy only 
 deepens his admiration. The citizens of Oxford may well 
 be pardoned for believing that it has few rivals in the 
 world. It is certainly a noble street, being eighty-five 
 feet in width, and lined with buildings of the most im 
 pressive orders of architecture, the parallels of which are 
 to be found nowhere else in the " silver-coasted isle." 
 The great and rich variety of buildings, colleges and 
 churches mingling with modern shops and old-fashioned 
 dwellings, and the remarkable diversity of the styles in 
 which they are built, are brought, by the gentle curva 
 ture of the street, into the most pleasant combination 
 and contrast imaginable. The churches of St. Mary-the- 
 Virgin, All Saints', and St. Martin, together with the Col 
 leges of All Souls', University, Queen's, and Magdalen's, 
 present a coup d'ml of the rarest beauty, worth almost 
 a trip across the Atlantic to see. Up this street it was 
 that went the sad procession of students to the Bible 
 Auto-da-FJ in 1527. Carrying each his Bible and a fagot, 
 they marched slowly and gloomily to Christ Church, thence 
 to the place where the sacred books were thrown into the 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 311 
 
 flames. Down this street it was that on March 20, 1556, 
 Cranmer slowly wended his weary steps, bowed with years 
 and trouble, on his way to St. Mary's Church, to protest 
 against "the great thing that troubled his conscience," 
 his renunciation of his Protestant faith; and it was but 
 a stone's throw from here that, with Latimer and Ridley, 
 he received his " baptism of fire." The waist-shackle of 
 Cranmer is still preserved, and the bailiff's account for 
 burning him, which is as follows: 
 
 One hundred wood fagots 6 8 
 
 One hundred and fifty furze fagots 3 4 
 
 Carriage of them 8 
 
 Two laborers 1 4 
 
 12~~0 
 
 As we followed " the stream-like windings of that glo 
 rious street," as Wordsworth terms them, evidences that 
 we were in a University- town presented themselves on 
 every side. Bookstores abounded, their windows filled 
 with classics and rare old tomes; and in other shops 
 were exposed for sale gowns, surplices, academical caps, 
 and the colored silken hoods that denote the various de 
 grees of University rank. At every step we encountered 
 persons in the costume worn by the President of Harvard 
 College at Commencement, and which, a few years ago, 
 when worn occasionally by undergraduates, provoked the 
 biting ridicule of the Boston butcher-boys and truckmen. 
 
 The richest and most extensive of all the Oxford col 
 leges is Christ Church, and to that we took our way. 
 This superb structure, " at once a Cathedral and a Col 
 lege," owes its foundation to the " King- Cardinal " Wol- 
 sey, who felt so deep an anxiety about its completion 
 that, in the midst of his trials, he earnestly begged the 
 
312 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 King to let the work go on. To this college and to 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, resort all the princes and 
 nobles of Great Britain who desire a liberal education; 
 and from this foundation have gone forth a long line of 
 illustrious statesmen, who have found no superiors in the 
 House of Commons in scholarship, eloquence or ability. 
 Four great religious movements have had their origin in 
 this establishment, Wyckliffe's in the fourteenth cen 
 tury, James the Second's in the seventeenth, Wesley's 
 and Whitefield's in the eighteenth, and Dr. Pusey's in 
 the nineteenth. Nothing can be more imposing than the 
 exterior of this college; its long front of four hundred 
 feet, with its turrets and balustrades, fill the mind at 
 once with ideas of amplitude, magnificence and power. 
 Through the grand gateway, above which, in the beauti 
 ful cupola which crowns it, hangs the bell, " Great Tom," 
 weighing seventeen thousand pounds, you enter the larg 
 est quadrangle (or " quad ") in Oxford. The bell, we may 
 say in passing, originally hung in Osney Abbey campa- 
 nille, "the largest and loudest of Osney bells"; and, as 
 Milton wrote his " II Penseroso " within four miles of Ox 
 ford, it is supposed that it was the sound of " Tom," 
 borne over the waters in time of flood, that he had in 
 mind when he wrote the famous musical lines, 
 
 "Over some wide-watered shore, 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar." 
 
 The buildings of this, as of all the colleges, form a 
 square, or series of squares, with generally a green lawn 
 in the centre, sometimes a reservoir and fountain; here 
 and there trees are planted, and sometimes the walls are 
 completely covered with ivy. After a few admiring 
 glances at the "quads," we visit the Hall, a magnificent 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 313 
 
 room, among the finest in Europe. It is one hundred 
 and fifteen feet long and fifty feet high, and has a roof 
 of Irish oak, carved and decorated in the most elaborate 
 manner, and adorned with nearly three hundred armo 
 rial bearings of the two founders, Cardinal Wolsey and 
 Henry VIII. The walls on both sides are lined with 
 portraits of the benefactors of the college, over one hun 
 dred in number, and all specimens of the best masters. 
 Holbein, Lely, Vandyke, Hogarth, Raphael, Reynolds, and 
 many other artists hardly less celebrated, have contrib 
 uted to the riches of this gallery. Though three to four 
 centuries old, the Hall has none of the dust or decay of 
 age, but looks as fresh and bright as if finished but yes 
 terday. Here the scholars of Christ Church dine; the 
 Peers, Dean and Canons occupying the raised dais at the 
 upper end, the Masters and Bachelors the side- tables, and 
 the undergraduates the lower end of the hall. Here Henry 
 VIII, Edward VI, James I, Charles I, and other English 
 Kings and Queens, have been entertained with plays, de 
 clamations, and banquets; here Handel, the great composer, 
 gave concerts; here, in June, 1814, the Allied Sovereigns, 
 with Blucher, Metternich, and a host of other celebrities, 
 nine hundred persons in all, sat down to a princely feast. 
 Besides this gallery of portraits the college has in the 
 Library building another splendid collection of paintings, 
 chiefly of Italian schools, some of them belonging to the 
 oldest periods of Italian art. The library is a beautiful 
 apartment, 142 feet by 30 feet, and 37 high. The ceiling is 
 richly ornamented with delicate stucco work, and the wains- 
 coat and pillars are of the finest Norway oak. The room 
 is full of literary treasures and curiosities, and adorned 
 with antique statues and busts. If the visitor has time, 
 
314 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 he should take a peep into the kitchen, and see a good 
 specimen of an old English cooking-room. Here he will 
 see a huge gridiron moved on wheels, 4-J- feet long by 4 
 feet wide, used before the introduction of spits and ranges, 
 and upon which a whole bullock might have been broiled 
 as easily as a single steak at one of the ranges of these 
 degenerate days. Leaving this unique cuisine, we next 
 proceed to the magnificent Cathedral, now the chapel of 
 the college, but originally the Priory Church of St. Frides- 
 wide. To describe fully this fine building, which is a 
 cruciform 154 feet in length, would require an entire 
 article. The beauty of the choir, with the massive Saxon 
 pillars on each side, and the double arches springing from 
 their capitals, through the air, and meeting in the centre 
 the solid arches of the ceiling, with its rich pendants, is 
 such as to baffle description. The Cathedral is rich in 
 altar-tombs, illuminated windows, and monuments of rare 
 workmanship as well as great antiquity, among which 
 are that of that prodigy of out-of-the-way learning, 
 Robert Burton, the author of " The Anatomy of Melan 
 choly," and that of Bishop Berkeley, the metaphysician, 
 whose tombstone is inscribed with Pope's eulogy, "To 
 Berkeley every virtue under heaven." 
 
 The New Buildings, built in the modern Venetian 
 Gothic style, 300 feet in length, and containing fifty luxu 
 rious sets of rooms, next attract our attention; after which 
 we visit the shaded walks in the meadows between Christ 
 Church and the Isis, than which it is hard to conceive 
 of a more beautiful scholarly retreat. These consist of 
 " The New Meadow Walk," six hundred yards long, ex 
 tending from the New Buildings to the river; and " Broad 
 Walk," a splendid avenue of a quarter of a mile in length 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 315 
 
 and fifty feet in width, lined on each side with lofty elms, 
 whose meeting tops form in a hot day a most delicious 
 shade. The eminent men of whom Christ Church boasts 
 as its scholars form of themselves a dazzling host. Among 
 them are William Penn, Locke, Ben Jonson, the two Wes- 
 leys, Camden the antiquary, Otway, Dr. E. B. Pusey, Sir 
 Robert Peel, Gladstone, Sir G. C. Lewis, Euskin, Lord 
 Derby, and scores of others whose names have been 
 sounded hardly less loudly by the trump of fame. 
 
 Leaving Christ Church, we visited college after college, 
 which we found to differ in detail, but all agreeing in 
 their general plan, and presenting something to charm 
 or surprise the traveller. Stepping out of the busy streets, 
 for in this respect the city contrasts with Cambridge, 
 which has a more quiet, scholastic air, you go through 
 an arched gateway, and at once find yourself enjoying 
 the beautiful lawns, the trees, ivy, flowers, and fountains 
 of a quadrangle. No person with a spark of enthusiasm 
 or love for the picturesque and beautiful, who has once 
 seen these venerable piles, can ever forget the impression 
 made on him by their cool cloisters, whose pavements 
 are the tombstones of departed worthies; their statues of 
 Kings, Queens, and benefactors; their quaint and grotesque 
 gargoyles; their libraries filled with the rarest books and 
 manuscripts; their chapels adorned with the monuments 
 of the mighty men who have made England the home of 
 freedom, letters, and the arts; their vaulted roofs; their 
 lofty columns; the splendors of their painted windows, 
 that blaze like sparkling jewels in the sunlight; and, if 
 he has been so fortunate as to enjoy a general view of 
 Oxford's glories from the roof of the Radcliffe Library, or 
 the tower of New College, he must be made of sterner stuff 
 
316 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 than flesh and blood if he has not cried out with Words 
 worth, 
 
 "Ye spires of Oxford! domes and towers! 
 Gardens and groves! Your presence overpowers 
 The soberness of reason." 
 
 Near by Christ Church is Pembroke College, once the 
 nest of those " singing birds," Beaumont, Heywood, and 
 Shenstone, and the Alma Mater of the eloquent George 
 Whitefield and the sturdy John Pym. Here that quaint old 
 fantast, Sir Thomas Browne, studied; and here, over the 
 gateway, on the second floor, roomed heroic Samuel John 
 son, a commoner, "poor as the poorest, proud as the 
 proudest"; so poor that he had but one pair of shoes, and 
 those so old that his feet peeped through them, so proud 
 that, when a new pair was placed by a gentleman's order 
 outside of his door, he indignantly flung them out of the 
 window. Indigence drove Johnson away, long before the 
 usual time, from Pembroke ; but, though steeped in poverty 
 to the lips, he read, as he said, " solidly," while there, 
 and always regarded his Alma Mater with the profoundest 
 veneration and love. 
 
 The oldest of the Oxford colleges is Merton, on our 
 way to which we pass between two others, of which we 
 must say a word or two. One, Corpus Christi, was founded 
 in Henry the Eighth's reign, by Bishop Fox, in memory 
 of whom a tame fox was kept in the college for many 
 years. Had Corpus nothing else to boast of but those 
 two giants of the English Church, Bishop Jewell and the 
 judicious Hooker, who were her sons, she might well be 
 proud; but she reckons in her roll many worthy suc 
 cessors of these giants, including that " gulf of learning," 
 John Rainolds, Dr. Buckland, and John Keble, whose 
 "Christian Year" had reached, seven years ago, its 110th 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 317 
 
 edition and 265th thousand. Directly opposite Corpus 
 is Oriel College, endowed by Edward II, in 1326. Its 
 buildings are not remarkable, but it may challenge any 
 other college to show a more splendid muster-roll of names. 
 Here were trained Sir Walter Raleigh; Chief Justice 
 Holt; Bishop Butler, the author of that impregnable 
 bulwark of Christianity, the "Analogy of Natural and 
 Revealed Religion"; Prynne, the stout Republican, whose 
 ears were cut off by Charles I; J. H. Newman, the famous 
 " fugitive from the camp of Anglicanism," a man of noble 
 intellect and antique loftiness of soul, and one of the 
 greatest masters of English of this century ; Dr. Copleston ; 
 Archbishop Whately, whose " Logic " has crucified the wits 
 of so many students; Matthew Arnold; "Tom Brown" 
 Hughes; Bishop Ken, the hymnist; and Richard H. Froude, 
 from whom emanated the famous " Tractarian" movement; 
 and scores of other men hardly less illustrious. Merton, 
 " the primary model of all the collegiate bodies in Oxford 
 and Cambridge," merits a minuter notice than our space 
 permits us to give. It has three quadrangles, in one of 
 the smallest of which is the chapel, which, in grandeur of 
 proportion, ranks second to none in Oxford. The side 
 windows, of which there are fourteen, illuminated in 
 imitation of those at Cologne, are marvels of beauty; and 
 the great east or Catherine-wheel window is filled with 
 tracery that is rarely matched in delicacy. In looking at 
 the architectural triumphs of this and many other chapels 
 in Oxford, where 
 
 "Through mullioned windows' tinted panes 
 
 The coloied radiance softly falls, 
 And dyes with flickering roseate stains 
 The nave and aisle, the floor and walls," 
 
 one is tempted again and again to ask, Where did these 
 
318 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 old masons of the Middle Ages learn the secrets of their 
 skill? They certainly seem to have had more cunning 
 fingers than their modern successors, and to have moulded 
 their stone-tracery as though they were working in some 
 plastic material. In the Middle Ages, Merton College was 
 famous for its professors in scholastic theology. Brad- 
 wardine, the great " doctor doctorum " ; John Duns Scotus, 
 the acutest and most subtle-witted of the schoolmen, whose 
 name, by a hard fate, has become a synonym for stupidity 
 (dunce); Occam, the "invincible"; John Wyckliffe, Sir 
 Richard Steele, and Harvey, who discovered the circula 
 tion of the blood, all belonged to Merton. 
 
 Next in age to Merton, but some distance from it, is 
 Balliol College, founded in the thirteenth century, of 
 which Prof. Jowett, of the famous " Essays and Reviews M 
 memory, is Master. Here Adam Smith the economist, 
 Archbishop Manning, and Bishop Temple, Dr. Arnold's 
 successor at Rugby, were educated. Among the Masters 
 of Balliol in the eighteenth century was a noted wit and 
 punster, Dr. Theophilus Leigh. His conversation was a 
 perpetual stream of jests and retorts; but his most suc 
 cessful practical joke was living to over ninety, when he 
 had been elected Master on account of his weak health 
 and likelihood to die early. As a specimen of his jeux 
 cTesprit, it is said that, when some one told him how, in 
 a late dispute among the Privy Councilors, the Lord 
 Chancellor struck the table with such violence that he 
 split it, Dr. Leigh replied, "No, no; I can hardly per 
 suade myself that he split the table, though I believe he 
 divided the Board" Almost in death the ruling passion 
 triumphed. Being told, in his last sickness, that a friend 
 had been lately married, that he had recovered from a 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 319 
 
 long illness by eating eggs, and that the wits said he had 
 been egged on to matrimony, the Doctor at once trumped 
 the joke by adding, " Then may the yoke sit easy on him." 
 It was to Dr. Parsons, the forty-fourth Master of this 
 College, afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the' University, that 
 Theodore Hook made his reply when he matriculated, at 
 Oxford. Being asked if he was "prepared to subscribe 
 to the Thirty-nine Articles," Theodore replied, "Oh, 
 certainly, sir; forty, if you please!" 
 
 Leaving Balliol, we stroll down Broad street, and, 
 attracted by the sound of music, enter the gardens of 
 New College, which, like New York, belies its name, 
 having been founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham. 
 The gardens are charmingly retired, and among the most 
 beautiful of the many delicious retreats which Oxford 
 offers to the weary or meditative scholar. We wonder 
 not that our countryman, the shy, contemplative Haw 
 thorne, was ravished by this " sweet, quiet, stately, sacred 
 seclusion," these lawns of the richest green and softest 
 velvet grass, shadowed over by ancient trees, and sheltered 
 from the rude winds; for we can conceive of nothing 
 more delightful than to spend an hour's leisure, earned 
 by a half-dozen hours of hard study, in lounging about 
 or lying down in these lovely grounds, building air- 
 castles, planning new intellectual conquests, or musing 
 over the days of " lang syne." The charm of the gar 
 dens is enhanced by the picturesque views one gets here 
 of the college-buildings; and one hears with interest that 
 the boundary on one side is the ancient city-wall which 
 Cromwell's artillery battered at the siege of the town. 
 The music that drew us here comes from a fine band 
 attached to a military company of the students, which 
 
320 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 plays two or three afternoons in the week for the delight 
 of the scholars and their outside friends. The concert 
 ended, we attend the evening service in the chapel, and 
 listen to some of the most exquisite choral harmonies that 
 have ever 
 
 " from eating cares 
 Lapped us in soft Lydian airs." 
 
 The choir of singers is the best-trained, and the chapel 
 by general consent the noblest, in Oxford. The choir is 
 one hundred feet long; the nave, or ante-chapel, eighty 
 feet; it is sixty-five feet high, and thirty-five broad. The 
 style of architecture is the early perpendicular, retaining 
 much of the simplicity of the decorated, but displaying 
 the decided peculiarities of the later style. The organ, 
 whose capabilities are gloriously revealed in the choral 
 service, is one of the finest in England. But the grand 
 attraction to most visitors is the illuminated windows 
 designed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Peckett of York, and 
 the pupils of Rubens, which, if beauty, not the admission 
 of light, be the object of windows, must be deemed worthy 
 of high admiration. The original sketches for the great 
 west window, by Reynolds, were sold at auction, it is said, 
 in 1821, for 7,229 5s. In this chapel is preserved the 
 silver-gilt pastoral staff of the founder, seven feet long, 
 an exquisite relic of the finished style of the jewelers' 
 work, with enamels, of the period, and of the most 
 elaborate workmanship. Lack of space prevents more 
 than an allusion to the massive tower of this college, 
 with its fine peal of bells, upon which is inscribed Wyke- 
 ham's motto, "Manners makyth man"; and to the clois 
 ters, with their remarkable echo, repeating sounds seven 
 or eight times. New College boasts many famous sons. 
 It was these cloisters that echoed Sydney Smith's jokes 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 321 
 
 and laughter; and it was within these walls that William 
 Pitt (Lord Chatham) learned to plume his wings for his 
 grand oratorical flights. 
 
 Beautiful as is New College, with its grand old tur- 
 reted tower, its splendid chapel, and its shaded grounds, 
 it must yield the palm to Magdalen, the magnificent, 
 (for that is the meaning of its Syriac name,) which we 
 are inclined to look upon as the gem of the Oxford 
 colleges. Magdalen is, truly, a glorious establishment, 
 and we do not wonder that the old University laureate, 
 Antony a' Wood, in singing its praises, bursts into a 
 rapturous strain, quite above his usual prosaic style. 
 Grand old buildings this college has, that gladden the 
 eye and captivate the imagination, from the 
 
 " High embowed roof 
 With antique pillars massy proof," 
 
 and the stately tower with its "tunable and melodious 
 ring of bells," down to studious cloisters; trim gardens, 
 too, it has, full of rare plants and flowers; smooth-shaven 
 lawns, and arched walks of twilight groves; water-walks 
 " as delectable as the banks of Eurotas, where Apollo him 
 self was wont to walk and sing his lays " ; and rivers which 
 so pleasantly, and with a murmuring noise, wind and turn, 
 that we are almost ready to agree with honest Wood, 
 that one may, in a manner, say of them that which the 
 people of Angouleme, in France, were wont to say of their 
 River Touvre, that it is " covered over and checkered with 
 swans, paved and floored with trouts, and hemmed and 
 bordered with crevices." The buildings of this college 
 which are comprised within three quadrangles, cover an 
 area of three acres. The grounds comprise more than 
 one hundred acres. Entering the college by the beauti- 
 
322 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 ful new gateway, with its canopied statues of Mary Mag 
 dalen, St. John the Baptist, and the founder (William 
 Waynflete, Lord Chancellor of England in the reign of 
 Henry VI), we are greeted with one of the most strik 
 ing displays of architectural beauty in Oxford. Directly 
 fronting us is the west end of the chapel, with a gor 
 geous window, and beneath it an elaborately-ornamented 
 doorway, with a shallow porch richly sculptured, and sur 
 mounted by five statues in canopied niches, which, with 
 the lofty tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, with its 
 diadem of pinnacles and fretted battlements, forms one 
 of the most imposing spectacles we have yet witnessed. 
 The chapel, which, about forty years ago was thoroughly 
 restored, at an expense of 28,000, is an architectural 
 gem. The altar-screen, the oak seats and stalls, the or 
 gan-screen of stone, all the carvings, whether of stone 
 or wood, are executed with the rarest felicity. Mag 
 nificent candelabra, exquisite paintings, and superb painted 
 windows, are among the other beauties of this unique 
 place of worship; and when we add the powerful organ, 
 which Cromwell carried off to Hampton Court, but which 
 Charles II restored, it must be admitted that this chapel 
 has few peers even in this land of chapels. We regret 
 that it was not our good fortune to attend a choral ser 
 vice in it, and hear 
 
 "The pealing organ blow 
 To the full-voiced choir below"; 
 
 for it is said to be solemn and impressive in a degree 
 rarely equaled. 
 
 Visiting the library; the cloisters, with their grotesque 
 figures, which have so puzzled the antiquaries; and the 
 hall, hung around with portraits; we next pass by a nar- 
 
A DAY AT OXFORD. 323 
 
 row passage into the chaplain's quadrangle, where we 
 have another glorious view of the tower, from its base 
 to the top. Its simplicity of structure and its graceful 
 proportions, its union of real solidity with extreme 
 lightness of appearance, make it one of the finest 
 structures of its class in England. Tradition says that 
 upon the top formerly, on every May morning at four 
 o'clock, a requiem was sung for the soul of Henry VII; 
 and the custom of chanting a hymn there, beginning 
 
 " Te Deum Patrem colimus, 
 Te laudibus prosequimur," 
 
 on the same morning each year, is still preserved. 
 
 How shall we do justice to the charming grounds of 
 Magdalen, the meadows with their winding, tree-em 
 bowered walks along the banks of the Cherwell, theh 
 rustic bridges, and the peep at the antique-looking water- 
 mill? Can any trees be grander, any lawns more soft 
 and pleasant, any scholastic retreats more cool and shady, 
 any views more picturesque than these? And then that 
 dainty relic of monastic days, the little Deer-Park; how 
 Old- World-like it seems, as another has said, to step out 
 of the High-street of a great city upon a quiet, secluded 
 nook, where deer are quite unconcernedly browsing among 
 huge old elms! It was in these learned groves that Ad- 
 dison loved to linger; here Gibbon studied; here the mel 
 ancholy Collins wooed the genius of poetry; here glorious 
 "Kit North" drank his earliest draughts of hippocrene; 
 and here, in ages to come, will many other Englishmen, 
 of equal genius, echo the words of Antony a' Wood: 
 
 " Thou dear old college, by whatever name 
 Natives or strangers call our Oxford " Queen," 
 To me, from days long past, thou art the same, 
 Maudlin or Magdalen or Magdalene." 
 
324 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 Leaving Magdalen, we next proceed to the Bodleian 
 library, founded in 1409, and refounded by " that full 
 solempne man," Sir Thomas Bodley, in 1602. This vast 
 collection comprises about four hundred thousand vol 
 umes, a wilderness of books, and is remarkable not 
 only for its size, but for the peculiar character of its 
 " volumed wonders." It is said that no other library of 
 similar extent in Europe, none in Paris, Brussels, Frank 
 fort, Munich, Valladolid, or Madrid, has so conventual a 
 character. Associated with all the great traditions of 
 England, from the age of Duke Humphrey, its original 
 founder, down to the present century, from the days 
 when Queen Elizabeth, in ruff and farthingale, with 
 Burghley and Walsingham at her side, harangued the 
 doctors and Heads of Houses in Latin, to the time when 
 the Allied Sovereigns celebrated the downfall of Napo 
 leon within its walls, it is no wonder that its treasures 
 of books, manuscripts, and rarities have a kind of unique 
 ness and quaint antiquity about them, not found else 
 where. An adequate account of the bibliographical curi 
 osities which are accumulated here would fill a goodly 
 volume. Truly may the scholar, as he sits in the read 
 ing cells and curtained cages of " old Bodley," murky 
 in its antiquity, redolent of old bindings, fragrant with 
 moth-scented coverings, say with Southey, 
 
 " My days among the dead are passed, 
 
 Around me I behold, 
 Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
 The mighty minds of old." 
 
 Here are a " History of Troy," printed by Caxton at Bru 
 ges in 1472, the first book printed in the English language; 
 a copy of Caedmon's Anglo-Saxon version of Genesis, made 
 about A. D. 1000; a Bible collection, including almost 
 
A DAY AT OXFOKD. 325 
 
 every known version; an Aldine edition of Ovid's "Meta 
 morphoses," containing a genuine autograph of Shakespeare ; 
 a Latin Bible printed by Gutenberg at Mentz about 1455, 
 the first book printed from movable types; an Italian 
 sermon, translated by Queen Elizabeth into Latin, whilst 
 Princess, and written in her own handwriting; and hun 
 dreds of other similar rarities. Here are the collections of 
 Dr. Dee, the earliest of spirit-rappers, who " did observe and 
 write down what was said by the spirits"; here are gar 
 nered up all the correspondence of Lord Clarendon, and 
 the little notes that passed between him and Charles I, in 
 the lobby of the House of Commons, during the debates 
 that cost the King his crown ; and here, too, are the corre 
 spondence of the Parliamentary generals, and the papers of 
 the famous non-jurors. Passing to the upper story of the 
 library building, we enter the Picture Gallery, which 
 comprises three sides of the quadrangle. The pictures 
 are chiefly portraits of benefactors of the University and 
 of eminent literary men, by Vandyke, Lily, Kneller, Jan- 
 sen, Reynolds, and others. Along the centre of the rooms 
 are models of the ancient temples of Greece and Italy; a 
 very curious one of a subterranean palace in Guzerat; an 
 elaborate model of the Cathedral of Calcutta; and one of 
 the Maison Carree of Nismes in France. Among the 
 rarities in the room are a chair made out of " The 
 Golden Hind," the ship in which Drake circumnavigated 
 the globe, and the veritable lantern of Guy Fawkes. 
 
 Our sketch is long, and yet we have said nothing of the 
 Arundel marbles; nothing of the RatclifFe library, with its 
 antique statues, busts, Italian marbles, and especially, its 
 lofty dome, from the balustrade surrounding whose exterior 
 you may have a fine panoramic view of the " city of spires 
 
326 A DAY AT OXFORD. 
 
 and pinnacles " ; nothing of the magnificent Taylor Insti 
 tute, with its art-treasures, including paintings, statues, 
 original drawings by Raphael and Angelo, purchased at a 
 cost of 7,000, and which are marked with all the beauty 
 and grandeur that distinguished their public works ; nothing 
 of the Ashmolean Museum, or the New Museum (346 feet 
 by 145), packed full with collections and specimens in every 
 department of science; nothing of the exquisitely-beautiful 
 Martyrs' Memorial, 73 feet high, with richly- canopied 
 statues, erected near the spot where the three Bishops, 
 Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, in blinding smoke and 
 tormenting flames, yielded up their lives at the stake; and 
 we have barely alluded to St. Mary's Church, whose " sym 
 metric pride " so dazzles the beholder when the pale moon 
 light falls on spire, buttresses, statues, and pinnacles. 
 As we look back in imagination upon these sights and 
 scenes, to which we bade adieu but a few years ago, they 
 flit before us, though fixed forever in the mind, like the 
 pleasant memories of a dream. Even after a hurried peep 
 at the glories of this vast establishment, we cease to wonder 
 that Lipsius, on first beholding them, declared with fervor 
 that one college of this university was greater in its power 
 and splendor, that it glorified and illustrated the honors of 
 literature more conspicuously by the pomps with which it 
 invested the ministers and machinery of education, than 
 any entire university of the Continent. Go, reader, and 
 see for yourself this home of letters, and you will confess 
 that we hare not told you half the truth of this wondrous 
 town, which you will evermore think of as 
 
 "A rich gem, in circling gold enshrined, 
 Where Isis' waters wind 
 
 Along the sweetest shore 
 That ever felt fair Culture's hands, 
 
 Or Spring's embroidered mantle wore." 
 
AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 AMONG the strange and unique sights which attract 
 if*- the eye of the stranger in London, one of the 
 oddest is the apparition, in the neighborhood of Newgate 
 street, of a boy dressed in a monastic garb of the sixteenth 
 century. It is raining, yet he is bareheaded, and he wears 
 a long, flowing, dark-blue coat, like a monk's tunic, confined 
 at the waist by a leather belt, which, with yellow breeches, 
 shoes, and yellow stockings, complete his quaint costume. 
 Who is he? Is he the ghost of some boy of the sixteenth 
 century, or is he a living, flesh-and-blood urchin of the 
 nineteenth century, arrayed in the garb of a bygone time? 
 We need not be ashamed to confess our inability to solve 
 this problem, for it is one which puzzled even so acute and 
 ingenious a thinker as Sydney Smith. The witty Canon of 
 St. Paul's brooded long over the origin of the Bluecoat 
 Boy, for it is by this name he is ycleped, and finally haz 
 arded the theory that he was a Quaker in the chrysalis state. 
 "Look at the circumstances," he urged, in a discussion 
 with the Countess of Morley; " at a very early age, young 
 Quakers disappear, at a very early age the Coat Boys 
 are seen; at the age of seventeen or eighteen young 
 Quakers are again seen, at the same age, the Coat Boys 
 disappear; who has ever heard of a Coat Man? The 
 thing is utterly unknown in natural history. That such 
 a fact should have escaped our naturalists is truly aston 
 ishing. . . . Dissection would throw great light on the 
 
328 AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 question; and, if our friend would receive two boys 
 
 into his house about the time of their changing their 
 coats, great service would be rendered to the cause. I 
 I have ascertained that the Bluecoat infants are fed with 
 drab-colored pap, which looks very suspicious." To these 
 daring speculations Lady Morley replied with reasonings 
 equally shrewd and hard to answer. The possible cor 
 rectness of Sydney's theory she admitted; but there was 
 a grave difficulty: "The Bluecoat is an indigenous animal, 
 not so the Quaker. ... I have seen and talked much 
 with Sir R. Ker Porter on this interesting subject. He 
 has traveled over the whole habitable globe, and has 
 penetrated with a scientific and scrutinizing eye into 
 regions unexplored by civilized man, and yet he has 
 never seen a Quaker baby. He has lived for years in 
 Philadelphia (the national nest of Quakers) ; he has roamed 
 up and down Broadways, and lengthways in every nook 
 and corner of Pennsylvania, and yet he never saw a 
 Quaker baby; and what is new and most striking, never 
 did he see a Quaker lady in a situation which gave hope 
 that a Quaker baby might be seen hereafter. This is a 
 stunning fact, and involves the question in such impene 
 trable mystery as will, I fear, defy even your sagacity, 
 acuteness, and industry to elucidate." 
 
 How the question was settled, whether Sydney con 
 tinued to maintain that there never was such a thing as 
 a Quaker baby, that " they are always born broad-brim 
 med and in full quake," we know not; and therefore, 
 in lieu of other authority, we will accept the traditionary 
 history of the Bluecoats. According to this, Christ's Hos 
 pital, or the Bluecoat School, was founded in 1553 by 
 Edward VI, in his sixteenth year, just before his death. 
 
AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 329 
 
 The buildings were erected on the site of the monastery of 
 the Gray Friars, of which a few arches, a part of a cloister, 
 are all that remains; and the queer costume of the boys, 
 which they intensely dislike, was adopted at the time. The 
 flat caps supplied to them are so small that the boys rarely 
 wear them, and go bareheaded. In 1672, Charles II founded 
 the Mathematical School for forty boys, called " King's 
 Boys," to which twelve more have been added; and they 
 are distinguished by a badge on the shoulder. The school 
 now has an income of 40,000 a year, and it feeds, clothes, 
 and educates twelve hundred children, of whom five hun 
 dred, including the younger children and girls, are kept 
 in a branch school at Hertford, for the sake of pure air. 
 It was through the kindness of Messrs. Triibner & Co., 
 the celebrated publishers and booksellers, whose shop on 
 Ludgate Hill, London, is within a stone's throw of 
 Christ's Hospital, that we found an " Open Sesame " to 
 the famous school. While indulging our bibliomaniac 
 propensities there one day, we were so lucky as to be 
 introduced to Dr. Brette ; Professor of Modern Languages 
 in the school, who kindly invited us to visit it the next 
 day. Christ's Hospital! Where is the scholar or literary 
 man whose pulse does not quicken at the mention of 
 these words? What a crowd of pleasant memories they 
 conjure up! Who, that has skimmed but the surface of 
 modern English literature, has not read Charles Lamb's 
 charming "Recollections" of that school? Christ's Hospi 
 tal! where not only the loving Carlagnulus, as he was 
 afterwards called, but Coleridge, " the inspired charity- 
 boy," and Camden, and Leigh Hunt, and scores of other 
 worthies, began their education, how did our hearts 
 leap up at the prospect of seeing the very benches 
 
330 AH HOUE AT CHRIST^ HOSPITAL. 
 
 which they hacked, the very spots where they quailed 
 under the eagle glance and thunder tones of Boyer! 
 Accepting Dr. B.'s invitation, we next day proceeded to 
 Newgate street, and, passing the gloomy prison, turned 
 into a cross-street, where, aoout noon, we entered the 
 boy-King's school. Entering a corridor, we notice on the 
 wall numerous tablets placed there in honor of the grad 
 uates of the school who have become its benefactors. 
 Not a few of England's "solid men" of business, who 
 were educated here, have left handsome legacies to the 
 institution. The buildings consist of several large struct 
 ures of brick, fronting paved courts, which serve as play 
 grounds for the boys in sunny weather, while the corri 
 dors shield them from the rain in wet weather. Following 
 the lead of Dr. Brette, we visit a school-room, where the 
 hard seats and benches, with deep gashes testifying to the 
 excellence of English cutlery, remind us of the pine 
 planks upon which we tried our Rogers in the old red 
 school-house of our boyhood. Was there ever a school 
 boy who did not make his mark with his jack-knife, 
 whatever his failures in recitation? 
 
 The eulogists of "modern improvements" will find 
 but little to admire in these venerable piles, except the 
 swimming-room, the water of which is tempered at 
 pleasure, the admirable bathing-rooms, of which the 
 boys are required to make use at prescribed times, and 
 the clean and airy hospital, where boys who are unwell, 
 or who have met with an injury in their sports, are cared 
 for by skillful surgeons and tender nurses. Visiting these 
 apartments, we next glance at the dormitories, with their 
 multitude of iron bedsteads and the monitor's room in 
 the corner; and then return to the playground, where 
 
AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 331 
 
 memory is busy calling up the history of the Bluecoats 
 whose names have been blazoned high on the scroll of 
 fame. Can it be, we musingly ask ourselves, that the 
 spider-legged, spectral-looking " Elia " once trod these 
 courts, and trembled in yon rooms under the master's 
 frown? Did Home Tooke here begin the "Diversions of 
 Purley," and Wesley shout in his boyish games as he 
 never did afterwards in the Methodist class-room? Did 
 the thoughtful Addison and the careless, impulsive Dicky 
 Steele here kick the football, and little Barrow begin the 
 pugilistic feats which he afterwards repeated with such 
 effect in his struggle with an Algerine corsair? Was it 
 here that the youthful Blackstone tested in boyish games 
 the strength of the British Constitution; and was it from 
 this school that Mitchell, the translator of "Aristophanes," 
 was translated to Cambridge? All these names are on the 
 muster-rolls of the Bluecoat School, and many others 
 hardly less brilliant. 
 
 We think of these, and of the Bedlam cells to which 
 naughty boys in Elia's time were consigned; little fellows 
 of seven years shut up aL night in these dungeons, where 
 they could just lie at length upon straw and a blanket; 
 with only a peep of light by day, let in from a prison- 
 orifice at the top ; and permitted to come forth only twice 
 a week and then to be flogged by the beadle. We think 
 of the fierce master, Boyer, and his two wigs, the one 
 serene, smiling, fresh -powdered, and betokening a mild 
 day, the other, an old, discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, 
 denoting frequent and bloody execution. We see him shak 
 ing his knotty fist at a poor, trembling child, and crying, 
 "Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at me?" then 
 flinging back into his lair, and after a few moments 
 
332 AN Hotm AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 bounding forth again, and singling out a lad with the 
 exclamation, " Od's my life, sirrah, I have a great mind 
 to whip you," which imperfect sense he speedily " pieces 
 out," as if it had been some devil's litany, with the ex- 
 pletory yell, " and / WILL, too." We see the " gentle 
 Elia" in another room, where the thunders rolled innoc 
 uous, listening to the Ululantes, and catching glimpses of 
 Tartarus; we hear Coleridge, hardly yet in his teens, 
 unfolding the mysteries of Plotinus, or reciting Homer 
 or Pindar in his Greek, to the wonderment of the visit 
 ors. We think, too, of Coleridge's pious ejaculation 
 when told that his old master was on his death-bed: 
 " Poor J. B. ! may all his faults be forgotten, and may he 
 be wafted to bliss by little cherub boys all head and wings, 
 with no bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities!" 
 
 We think of the poor scholar who conveyed to his 
 room his fragments of coarse meat, which he was sup 
 posed to sell to beggars, for which he was excommunicated 
 by the other boys as a gag-eater, until the kind steward 
 found that he carried home the scraps, which he denied 
 himself, to his starving parents. We think of the silver 
 medal which the noble lad received for this from the 
 Governor of the school; and then, perhaps, our thoughts 
 revert to another boy, the petty Nero, afterwards seen a 
 culprit in the hulks, who actually branded a boy who had 
 offended him, with a red-hot iron, and who nearly starved 
 forty younger lads, by exacting from them daily one-half 
 of their bread to pamper a young ass, which he had con 
 trived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the 
 ward, as the dormitories were called, till the foolish 
 beast, waxing fat, and kicking in the fulness of bread, 
 betrayed him by braying. All these, and many other 
 
AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 333 
 
 recollections, comic or touching, are related by Lamb and 
 Coleridge in their own inimitable style, but hardly seemed 
 to us, when we were 4,000 miles away, as they do now, 
 realities. It was here, too, that the following ludicrous 
 scene occurred, narrated by some graduate, to omit which, 
 in an account of this famous school, would be like blot 
 ting Moses 1 experience from the Vicar of Wakefield: 
 
 Among the scholars, when Lamb and Coleridge attended, 
 was a poor clergyman's son, by the name of Simon Jennings. 
 On account of his dismal and gloomy nature, his playmates 
 had nicknamed him Pontius Pilate. One morning he went 
 up to the master, Dr. Boyer, and said, in his usual whim 
 pering manner, " Please, Dr. Boyer, the boys all call me 
 Pontius Pilate. 1 ' If there was one thing which old Boyer 
 hated more than a false quantity in Greek and Latin, it 
 was the practice of nicknaming. Hushing down among 
 the scholars from his pedestal of state, with cane in hand, 
 he cried, with his usual voice of thunder: "Listen, boys; 
 the next time I hear any of you say * Pontius Pilate,' I'll 
 cane you as long as this cane will last. You are to say 
 ' Simon Jennings,' not ' Pontius Pilate.' Remember that, 
 if you value your hides." Having said this, Jupiter 
 Tonans remounted Olympus, the clouds still hanging on 
 his brow. 
 
 The next day, when the same class were reciting the 
 Catechism, a boy of remarkably dull and literal turn of 
 mind had to repeat the creed. He had got as far as 
 " suffered under, 1 ' and was about popping out the next 
 word, when Boyer's prohibition unluckily flashed upon his 
 obtuse mind. After a moment's hesitation he blurted out, 
 "suffered under Simon Jennings, was cruci ." The rest 
 of the word was never uttered, for Boyer had already 
 
334 AN HOUR AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 
 
 sprung like a tiger upon him, and the cane was descending 
 upon his unfortunate shoulders like a Norwegian hail-storm 
 or an Alpine avalanche. When the irate Doctor had dis 
 charged his cane-storm upon him, he cried: " What do you 
 mean, you booby, by such blasphemy?" " I only did as you 
 told me," replied the simple-minded Christ-Churchian. 
 "Did. as I told you?" roared old Boyer, now wound up 
 to something above the boiling point. " What do you 
 mean?" As he said this, he again instinctively grasped 
 his cane more furiously. " Yes, Doctor, you said we were 
 always to call ' Pontius Pilate ' ' Simon Jennings. 1 Didn't 
 he, Sam?" appealed the unfortunate culprit to Coleridge, 
 who was next to him. Sam said nought; but old Boyer, 
 who saw what a dunce he had to deal with, cried, " Boy, 
 you are a fool. Where are your brains?" Poor Dr. 
 Boyer for a second time was floored, for the scholar said, 
 with an earnestness which proved its truth, but to the 
 intense horror of the learned potentate, " In my stomach, 
 sir." The Doctor ever afterwards respected that boy's 
 stupidity, as though half afraid that a stray blow might 
 be unpleasant. , ^ 
 
 But, whoop! our musings are interrupted by shouts, 
 and away bounds a football, followed by an avalanche 
 of boys, screaming, pushing, kicking, jostling, and tum 
 bling headlong, very much like boys in America, and 
 showing, by their earnestness, impetuosity, and energy, 
 that they belong to the nineteenth century, and not to 
 the sixteenth. But what a plague their long coats are, 
 and how strange that the Governors do not see the gro- 
 tesqueness and inconvenience of these old monkish cos 
 tumes! To play their games the boys tuck up their 
 coat-tails, and so, we suppose, will have to do for years 
 
AN HOUE AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. 335 
 
 to come, till John Bull can see that modern garments 
 may be substituted without impairing the stability of the 
 British Constitution. 
 
 But, hark! a burst of martial music is heard; the 
 boys have dropped the footballs, and, under the directions 
 of a drill-master, are marshaled in platoons, each display 
 ing its number on a flag. After a series of evolutions, 
 they march, seven hundred strong, with a boy-band of 
 thirty performers at their head, up the grand staircase 
 to the Gothic hall, to dinner. This magnificent hall, 
 which was completed in 1829, is 187 feet long, is lighted 
 by large stained-glass windows, has an organ gallery at 
 one end, and the walls are hung with portraits of the 
 founder and benefactors of the institution. We take seats 
 on a platform on the west side of the hall; a bell is 
 touched, and a boy at the organ plays an anthem, while 
 seven hundred children's voices mingle in the chant of 
 thanksgiving. Another bell, and down sit the boys, off 
 come the covers, and Bluecoats wait on Bluecoats, until 
 all have quieted their barking stomachs with a plentiful 
 supply of meat, potatoes, bread, and, above all, beer. The 
 boys themselves clear the tables, and, after a few minutes' 
 chat with them, we leave the hall, with many thanks to 
 Dr. Brette for his courtesies, and a feeling that hence 
 forth the writings of "Elia" and the " Highgate Sage" 
 will have for us an added charm, if it is possible for 
 Us to hang with profounder interest over their bewitch 
 ing pages. Meanwhile, if any of our readers care to see 
 the famous old school as it has been for three centuries, 
 they must cross the ocean soon, for these venerable piles are 
 speedily to be swept away, to make room for the ruthless 
 locomotives of the Mid-London Railway. 
 
BOOK-BUYING. 
 
 I) EADER, were you ever afflicted with that hopelessly - 
 -"-** incurable disease, ycleped bibliomania, that disease 
 which sends its victim daily to Appleton's or Scribner's 
 to empty his pocket-book freely in the purchase of rare 
 and curious editions, or, perhaps, luxurious modern edi 
 tions, of favorite old authors, flaunting in the bravery of 
 large, clear type, with snow-white paper, a rivulet of 
 ink in a meadow of margin? Do you know what it is 
 to be drawn to the book salesroom with an attraction like 
 that of the steel to the magnet, and to find the tap of 
 the auctioneer's hammer as irresistible as is the roll of 
 the roulette-ball to the gambler, or the music of cork- 
 drawing to the toper? Did you ever stand for hours 
 wistfully turning over the pages of some coveted volume, 
 vainly racking your brains for some art by which, with 
 your limited funds, to make it your own? Did you ever 
 feel your heart sink within you when, through your hes 
 itation, or, more likely, the depletion of your purse, some 
 ardently-coveted volume, on which you had fastened with 
 longing eyes, which, in imagination, you had already 
 seen snugly stowed in a corner of your library, passed 
 by the inexorable law of the hammer to some luckier 
 individual? Have you not deplored a thousand, times the 
 fatality that led you to haunt these marts of literature, 
 and resolved, and re-resolved, and resolved again, never 
 more to be seduced by the witchery of tree-calf, fine tool- 
 
BOOK - BUYING. 337 
 
 ing, or luxurious type and paper? And yet, if the book- 
 buying disease had fairly seized on you, did you ever 
 succeed in extirpating it, stern as might be the necessity 
 for economy? If you got it under for a week, or pos 
 sibly for a month, did you not invariably find, in the very 
 ecstasy of your triumph, that it had temporarily abated 
 only to break forth with tenfold fury? 
 
 If you have ever experienced the feelings we have 
 described, we can sympathize with you. We have been a 
 life-long victim of the disease, which early became chronic 
 and incurable. Our ruin da,ted from the hour when we 
 bought our first duplicate. This downward step, as John 
 Hill Burton says, is fraught with fearful consequences; 
 it is like the first secret dram swallowed in the forenoon, 
 or the first pawning of the silver spoons; there is no hope 
 for the patient after this: "It rends at once the veil of 
 decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which he has 
 been deceiving his friends, and partially deceiving him 
 self, into the belief that his previous purchases were 
 necessary, or, at all events, serviceable for professional 
 and literary purposes. He now becomes shameless and 
 hardened; and it is observable, in the career of this class 
 of unfortunates, that the first act of duplicity is immedi 
 ately followed by an access of the disorder, and a reckless 
 abandonment to its propensities." 
 
 Shall we ever forget the evenings passed in "lang 
 syne" at Leonard's, in the American Athens, at Bangs's, 
 in Gotham, or at Lord's, in the City of Brotherly Love, 
 mobs, and firemen's fights, in watching the sale of those 
 darlings in calf or turkey-morocco, on which we had set 
 our affections? How, like many a lover by the side of 
 flesh-and-blood mistresses, did we sigh for wealth for their 
 15 
 
338 BOOK - BUYING. 
 
 sake! The beauties! we would have embraced them all; 
 but, alas! a terrible presentiment weighed upon our mind 
 touching the number we should be able to secure in the 
 awful conflict of the evening. The Duke of York, nam 
 ing the select courtiers whom he wished to be saved from 
 the wreck of the Gloucester frigate, leaving the rest to 
 perish, was but a faint type of our gloomy self, deciding 
 among scores of coveted volumes upon the few choicest and 
 most fondly-prized ones, which we were most anxious to 
 carry to the dry land of our own snug bookcase at home. 
 Then how anxiously we weighed the chances, how pro 
 foundly we estimated the probabilities, of securing, or 
 not securing, the favorites! Perhaps our capital was 
 enough only to warrant the hope of winning one goodly- 
 sized volume, a fine old copy of Selden, Fuller, Burton, or 
 Sir Thomas Browne; should we concentrate all our finan 
 cial resources upon that, or should we divide our affec 
 tions and our cash among two or three smaller volumes? 
 Perhaps, hateful thought! the very book or books we 
 yearned for might be eyed and coveted by some richer 
 rival, who would outbid us. The work came early in the 
 catalogue; there would be few present; it would go cheap. 
 It was in the middle of the list, the very noon of the 
 sale; it would go dear. Oh! how we dreaded to see cer 
 tain well-known faces peering through the crowd! Never 
 have we had rivals whom we feared or hated more than 
 rival book-buyers. Even when we neither saw nor heard 
 any person who had fixed his affections on the book we 
 longed for, there- was sure to be some lynx-eyed Burn- 
 ham, or other "Antique-Bokestore " man, who would 
 'fight to the last dollar, or, at least, make us pay dearly 
 for the treasure if we won it. With what perfect malig- 
 
BOOK - BUYING. 339 
 
 nity did we regard these cruel, remorseless, but crafty, 
 old fellows, these tyrants, who bid off the precious 
 volumes, not from any love of them, but from the mean 
 and sordid motive of making money! 
 
 There are some persons who have no sympathy with 
 the inveterate book-buyer; who cannot appreciate the 
 miser-like feeling which prompts a man to accumulate 
 on his shelves hundreds of volumes which he can never 
 read. There are those to whom the artificial refinements 
 which have grown up about the outside of literature 
 yield no pleasure, to whom one of Pickering's gorgeous 
 editions, or even one of Aldus himself, has no greater 
 charms than the same work on flimsy paper and in 
 shabby sheep. They read purely for information. A 
 book to them is a storehouse of ideas and facts, or a 
 mine to be quarried and worked, after which they care 
 not what happens to it. The volumes they have read are 
 to them shells without kernels, oranges that have been 
 squeezed. They never acquire a love for a book, as a 
 true smoker does for his pipe, apart from its uses. No 
 pleasant associations or delicious memories cluster about 
 their volumes, which the bare sight of them, after ab 
 sence, conjures up. No pets or darlings of the heart 
 have they; their souls never warm to a book. They can 
 not understand the feeling which prompted Charles Lamb 
 to kiss a long-coveted old folio which he had found at a 
 bookstall. The best book in the world, after they have 
 sucked out all its marrow, is to these cold-blooded, mat 
 ter-of-fact readers, nothing but printed paper between 
 boards; just as, to some persons, the grandest old cathe 
 dral, with its fretwork and tracery, is only a pile of stone 
 and mortar, and the music of Rubinstein only the regu- 
 
340 BOOK - BUYING. 
 
 lated tinkling of piano wires. There are persons who 
 will walk down the finest nave in Christendom and see 
 there no poem in stone, and there are those who can 
 gaze on the superb alcoves of Trinity College library, 
 Cambridge, without an emotion. Of such a man we may 
 say, in the language of Wordsworth: 
 
 "A primrose by the river's brim 
 A yellow primrose is to him, 
 And it is nothing more." 
 
 There is another and a larger class of readers, who 
 have a still lower esteem for books. These are the liellu- 
 ones librorum, the literary gluttons, who devour whole 
 libraries, and prize books only as a means of amusement, 
 or of killing time. Volumes of history, novels, travels, to 
 these men are mere mile-posts to a swift and hurried 
 traveller. When they close a work, they have the same 
 hazy, confused recollection of its contents that a passenger 
 in a "lightning-express" railway train has of the brooks, 
 meadows, hills, dales, and other objects, by which he has 
 been whirled. Each volume they race through acts as a 
 sponge to wipe out the impressions made by its predeces 
 sors. Readers of this stamp have even less real love for 
 books than the utilitarians first mentioned. They never 
 say with Macaulay: "I have no pleasure from books 
 which equals that of reading over for the hundredth 
 time great productions which I know almost by heart." 
 They never say of these silent teachers, with DeBury: 
 " Hi sunt magistri qui nos instruunt sine vergis et ferula, 
 sine verbis et colera, sine pane et pecunia " ; nor will you 
 ever catch them exclaiming, as did Theodore Beza to his 
 loved volumes: 
 
 "Salvete, incoluines mei libelli, 
 Meae deliciae, meae salutes!" 
 
BOOK - BUYING. 341 
 
 With all such users of books, who are indifferent to 
 their dress, whether grim utilitarians, who prize only 
 their thoughts, or pleasure-hunters who read to avoid 
 thought, we have no sympathy, yet no quarrel. With 
 Horace, we bid them stultos esse libenter, and wish them, 
 in the words of the Archbishop of Granada to Gil Bias. 
 " all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste." We 
 envy not the disposition that leads a man to prize not 
 the jewel more for its brilliant setting; that looks upon 
 books over which the eye has hung from childhood as 
 mere bricks in a wall, and that, without a pang or sigh, 
 could replace them by others from the nearest shop. 
 Almost every man has his hobby, his pet taste, which 
 he loves, at whatever cost of time or money, to gratify. 
 The hobby of one man is shells; another spends all his 
 spare cash for pictures; a third doats on old coins; a 
 fourth, on bugs and butterflies; and a fifth rides a musical 
 hobby, and goes merrily through the world to the sound 
 of fiddle, flute, French horn, and double bass. The hobby 
 of another is books, books old and new, in vellum and 
 in calf, gilt-edged and marbled, with headbands and with 
 out, with which, perhaps, he packs his cases, loads his 
 what-nots, stuffs his drawers, and piles his floors, till his 
 whole house becomes a library, a wilderness of books ! He 
 is a black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or an uncut man, or 
 a rough-edged man, or an early-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, 
 or a broadsider, or a pasquinader, or a tawny moroccoite, 
 or a gilt- topper, or a marbled insider, or an editio princeps 
 man, or any other of the innumerable species which the 
 author of "The Book-Hunter" has defined. Who will 
 say that this is not as innocent a hobby as any of the list? 
 
 It is true that the book-hunter, the mere bibliomane 
 
342 BOOK - BUYING. 
 
 or bibliotaphe, as distinguished from the bibliophile, the 
 true lover of books, is often an utter stranger to the 
 contents of the volumes he amasses; 
 
 "Horace he has hy many different hands, 
 But not one Horace that he understands." 
 
 It was a genuine bibliomane who is reported to have said 
 contemptuously of a well-known scholar, " He know 
 about books! Nothing, nothing at all, I assure you, 
 unless, perhaps, about their insides" The value of a 
 book, with this class, lies solely in its rarity, and they 
 feel as did the English auctioneer, who, when the high 
 bids at a book sale began to slacken, remonstrated pathetic 
 ally: "Going so low as thirty shillings, gentlemen, this 
 curious book, so low as thirty shillings, and quite imper 
 fect. 1 ' 1 While we can pardon these enthusiasts, and even 
 the bibliognostes, who are learned only in title-pages 
 and editions, and presses, and places of issue, we enter 
 tain no such feeling toward the bibliotaphes, long-pursed 
 wretches, who get possession of a unique copy and lock 
 it up. " There were known," says Mr. Burton, in his 
 admirable volume, " The Book-Hunter, 1 ' " to be just two 
 copies of a spare quarto, called ' Rout upon Rout, or the 
 Rabblers Rabbled,' by Felix Nixon, Gent. A certain col 
 lector possessed one copy; the other, by indomitable per 
 severance, he also got hold of, and then his heart was 
 glad within him; and he felt it glow with well-merited 
 pride when an accomplished scholar, desiring to complete 
 an epoch in literary history on which that book threw some 
 light, besought the owner to allow him a sight of it, were 
 it but for a few minutes, and the request was refused. ' I 
 might as well ask him,' said the animal, who was rather 
 proud of his firmness than ashamed of his churlishness, 
 
BOOK - BUYING. 343 
 
 ' to make me a present of his brains and reputation.' " 
 It is said the same fiendish spirit sometimes enters the mild 
 bosom of the Dutch tulip fancier; and he has been known 
 to pay thousands of dollars for a duplicate tuber, that he 
 may have the satisfaction of crushing it beneath his heel. 
 Dibdin warmed his convivial guests at a fire fed by the 
 wood-cuts which had been printed from in the impression 
 of the " Bibliographical Decameron," so that the sub 
 scribers to his costly volumes might not be troubled with 
 the ghost of a doubt that poor men would ever partici 
 pate in their privilege. 
 
 The prices which bibliomanes . are sometimes reported 
 as paying for their coveted treasures almost stagger be 
 lief. At the sale of Mr. Perkins's library, in London, in 
 1873, a "first folio" of Shakspeare sold for 585; Chris 
 tine de Pisan's " Cent Histories de Troie," an " exquisite 
 vellum manuscript full of miniatures," was knocked 
 down for 650; and a fine manuscript copy of John 
 Lydgate's "Siege of Troy," for 1,620! But the most 
 " fabulous " price was that paid on the last day of the 
 sale for a vellum copy of the famous Gutenberg and 
 Fust Bible, of which only eight other copies are known 
 to exist. For this precious book, " the most important 
 and distinguished work in the annals of typography," 
 the first edition of the Holy Scriptures, the first book 
 printed with movable metal types by the inventors of the 
 art of printing, the enormous sum of 3,400 was paid! 
 Seventeen thousand dollar^ for a single book! enough 
 money to buy a large private library. This surpasses the 
 sale, made 'immortal by Dibdin, of the copy of Boccaccio 
 published by Valdarfer, at Venice, in 1471. The sale of 
 the Duke of Roxburgh's library, to which it belonged, 
 
344 BOOK - BUYING. 
 
 took place in May, 1812, and lasted forty-two days. 
 Among the distinguished company who attended the sale 
 were the Duke of Devonshire, Earl Spencer, and the Duke 
 of Marlborough, then Marquis of Blandford. The Lid 
 stood at five hundred guineas. "A thousand guineas," 
 said Earl Spencer. " And ten," added the Marquis. You 
 might have heard a pin drop. All eyes were turned, 
 all breathing well nigh stopped, every sword was put 
 home within its scabbard, except that which each of these 
 champions brandished in his valorous hand. " Two thou 
 sand pounds," said the Marquis. The Earl Spencer be 
 thought him like a prudent general of useless bloodshed 
 and waste of powder, and had paused a quarter of a 
 minute, when Lord Althorp with long steps came to his 
 side, as if to bring his father a fresh lance to renew the 
 fight. Father and son whispered together, and Earl Spen 
 cer exclaimed, "Two thousand two hundred and fifty 
 pounds!" An electric shock went through the assembly. 
 "And ten," quietly added the Marquis. This ended the 
 strife. Mr. Evans, ere he let the hammer fall, paused; the 
 ebony instrument seemed to be charmed or suspended " in 
 mid air"; the spectators stood aghast when the hammer 
 fell, and the echo of its fall sounded on the farthest shores 
 of Italy. The tap of that hammer was heard in the libra 
 ries of Rome, Milan, and Venice. Boccaccio started in his 
 sleep of five hundred years, and M. Van Praet groped 
 in vain amidst the royal alcoves in Paris, to detect a 
 copy of the famed Valdarfer Boccaccio.* 
 
 The most discouraging feature of the mania for book- 
 collecting is, that it grows by what it feeds on, and be 
 comes the more insatiable the more it is gratified. It is 
 
 *Dibdin's "Bibliographical Decameron." 
 
BOOK - BUYIHG 345 
 
 hard for ordinary book-lovers to comprehend a desire for 
 books so devouring as that which consumed Richard 
 Heber. The number of his books was stated in six fig 
 ures, 'and the catalogue of them filled five thick octavo 
 volumes. He built a library at his house in Hodnet, 
 which was said to be full. His residence at Pimlico, 
 London, was filled, like Magliabecchi's at Florence, with 
 books from the top to the bottom, every chair, table, 
 and passage containing piles of erudition. He had an 
 other house in York street, laden from the ground floor 
 to the garret with curious books. He had a library in 
 High street, Oxford; an immense library in Paris; an 
 other at Antwerp; another at Brussels; another at Ghent; 
 and yet others at other places in the Low Countries and 
 in Germany. When any one raised a cui bono query of 
 wonder at this, his answer was ready: "Why, sir, you 
 see no man can comfortably do without three copies of a 
 book. One he must have for a show-copy, and he will 
 probably keep it at his country-house; another he will 
 require for his own use and reference; and, unless he is 
 inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or 
 risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a 
 third at the service of his friends." 
 
 It is said that, some years ago, a book-hunting Arch 
 deacon in England, going up to London to be examined 
 on some question before the House of Commons, suddenly 
 disappeared, with all his money in his pocket, and his 
 friends, with many misgivings of foul play, wondered 
 what had become of him. Suddenly he returned home 
 one day, penniless, followed by a wagon containing three 
 hundred and seventy-two copies of rare editions of the 
 Bible. Who will judge harshly of a case like this? How 
 
346 BOOK - BUYING. 
 
 glaring the contrast between the victim of such a mania 
 and the de grege Epicuri porous, who squanders his money 
 upon the luxuries of the table, or him who wastes it upon 
 ostentatious upholstery, upon wall-papers that cost $3 a 
 roll, or carpets that cost $5 a yard! 
 
 But is there no cure for the disease? None that we 
 have heard of, except downright " impecuniosity." It is, 
 indeed, hydra-headed; extirpate one of its manifestations, 
 and it crops out in fifty new forms and ways. Generally 
 it rages more and more fiercely in the patient, until he 
 has gathered together more books, and "things in books 
 clothing," as Lamb calls them, than he can find conven 
 ient room for; or, if he has wisely collected on some 
 single branch of literature or science, he finds, sooner or 
 later, an impenetrable barrier to the progress of his 
 hobby, with whatever spirit he may spur its stuffed sides. 
 He opens his eyes some day to the fact that, although 
 one book, and yet another, and another, fill but little 
 space, yet an aggregate of volumes may clamor as loudly 
 for more room as an aggregate of more vulgar wares, 
 and that heaps of books never read nor consulted may 
 be as much in the way as heaps of other lumber. If he 
 lives in a hired house, this fact is more deeply impressed 
 on his mind by a migratory May-day; soon after which, 
 if he can screw up his courage to the sticking-point, he 
 ransacks his hecatombs of musty old tomes, prunes out 
 those which are dear to him as "the ruddy drops that 
 visit his sad heart, 1 ' and packs off the rest to an auction 
 room, to be fought for by a fresh horde of enthusiastic 
 bibliomaniacs. 
 
A PINCH OF SNUEF, 
 
 "Scent to match thy rich perfume, 
 Chymic art did ne'er presume. 
 Through her quaint alembic strain, 
 None so sovereign to the brain." 
 
 SO sings the quaint, dear, gentle Elia, in his chaunt 
 to the Virginia weed; and a passionate lover of it 
 he was, in all its witching forms of pigtail, roll, and 
 titillating dust. How ardent was his devotion to the 
 plant, is well known to all who have read his " Farewell 
 to Tobacco," in which, after ironically abusing it with 
 all sorts of hard names, he abruptly turns traitor (a good 
 traitor) to the side he had espoused, and, archly declaring 
 his hatred was but feigned, concludes by asserting his 
 resolve still to retain 
 
 " a seat 'mong the joys 
 Of the bless'd tobacco boys," 
 
 where, though he may be debarred by sour physician the 
 full luxury of the plant, he yet 
 
 " may catch 
 
 Some collateral sweets, and snatch 
 Sidelong odours, that give life 
 Like glances from a, neighbor's wife." 
 
 The struggle which Lamb has so vividly depicted, 
 between his love for tobacco and his acquiescence in the 
 necessity which severed him from it, is one through which 
 millions of human beings have passed; and, almost invari 
 ably, with the same result. Who, that ever fell under 
 
 347 
 
348 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 the sorcery of the weed, has not again and again resolved 
 to escape from its spell, racking the vocabulary for 
 epithets with which to curse it, and yet again and 
 again yielding to the siren, affirming 
 
 "'Twas but in a sort I blamed thee, 
 None e'er prospered who defamed thee." 
 
 If logic and learning, satire and eloquence, could " kill off" 
 a plant, tobacco would ages ago have ceased to be chewed, 
 smoked, or snuffed. Alphonse Karr declares that, had it 
 been a useful plant, it could never have survived the 
 assaults made upon it. Had any statesman, he adds, 
 before tobacco was discovered, proposed, for the purposes 
 of revenue, to introduce so nauseous and poisonous an 
 article among the people; had he declared it his intention 
 to offer it for sale, chopped up into pieces, or reduced 
 to powder, telling them that the consequences of chewing, 
 snuffing, or smoking it would be only heart-pains, stomach- 
 pains, vertigoes, cholics, convulsions, vomitings of blood, 
 etc., that's all; the project would have been ridiculed as 
 absurd. "My good friend," would have been the reply 
 of every sane listener to the scheme, " nobody will dis 
 pute with you the privilege of selling a thing of which 
 there will be no buyers. You would have a far better 
 chance of success, should you open a shop and write 
 over it 
 
 KICKS ARE SOLD HERE! 
 
 or 
 
 HORSEWHIPPINGS SOLD HERE, 
 "WHOLESALE AND RETAIL." 
 
 And yet the speculation has succeeded, and tobacco and 
 its praises are in almost every man's mouth. Kings have 
 forbidden it; popes have anathematized it; physicians have 
 warned against it; and even clergymen have thundered 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 349 
 
 their denunciations of it from the pulpit; but in spite 
 of declamations, and " counterblasts," and sarcasms, it 
 continues to be rooted in the affections of its votaries, 
 who greet it with the cry 
 
 "Hail, sole cosmopolite, Tobacco, hail! 
 
 Shag, long-cut, short-cut, pigtail, quid, or roll, 
 Dark Negrohead, or Orinooka pale, 
 In every form congenial to the soul." 
 
 Gentle reader, we are no slave of the weed; but, should 
 we ever become one, as in our weakness we may, we 
 shall have a decided choice as to the form of our servitude, 
 and shall incline to the powdered article as the least 
 objectionable to our senses. Chant as you may the praises 
 of chewing and smoking, they are but wretched ways of 
 extracting the juices of the plant, and, if for no other 
 reason, would be without a charm to us, by the vulgar 
 commonness to which they are degraded. Inconvenient 
 and laborious, they are at the same time uncleanly, offensive 
 to one (and that the better) half of humanity, and, it is 
 hardly too much to say, that no man who is addicted to 
 them can expect-to-rate as a gentleman. 
 
 But snuff-taking is not only a more delicate and refined 
 operation per se, but the number and character of those 
 engaged in it show it to be at once a dignified and an 
 aristocratic practice. It requires a certain fineness and 
 delicacy of perception to apprehend the virtues of fine 
 Spanish; and hence the vulgar part of the community, 
 whose senses take cognizance of the coarser scents and 
 substances, who dine off the most strongly-flavored dishes, 
 and, when they drink, want their wine brandied, every 
 glass a headache, almost universally "turn up their 
 noses" at the pleasures of the box. Add to this, that 
 
350 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 snuff- takers are, almost entirely, a serious, reflecting race; 
 no men know better than they that things are not always 
 what they seem at first blush, and that it is dangerous 
 to approach to an examination of them bluntly and with 
 uncleared optics. A snuff-taker, before he looks into any 
 grave question, is careful to take his pinch; and then, as 
 Leigh Hunt observes, if any fallacy comes before him, he 
 shakes the imposture, like the remnant of the pinch, to 
 atoms, with one "flesh-quake" of head, thumb, and indif 
 ference. Or should he " look into some little nicety of 
 question or of creation, of the intellectual or the visible 
 world, he, having sharpened his eyesight with another 
 pinch, and put his head into proper cephalick condition, 
 discerns it, as it were, microscopically, and pronounces 
 that there is ' more in it than the un- snuff-taking would 
 suppose.' " Hence, doubtless, it is, that the phrase " up 
 to snuff" is a synonym for keenness and quickness of 
 intellectual vision. 
 
 But it is not merely on philosophical grounds that we 
 prefer this form of using tobacco. It has authority in 
 its favor. If we turn over the pages of modern biog 
 raphy, we shall find hardly a man whose name has been 
 emblazoned high on fame's scroll, that was not a votary 
 of snuff. Talleyrand used to declare that diplomacy was 
 impossible without it. It was indispensable, he argued, 
 to politicians, as it gives them time for thought in answer 
 ing awkward questions while pretending only to indulge 
 in a pinch. Among his snuff-boxes was one which was 
 double, being two snuff-boxes joined together by a com 
 mon bottom. The one was politely offered to his acquaint 
 ance; the other, never to be profaned by the finger and 
 thumb of a second person, was reserved for himself, a 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 351 
 
 precaution in which we recognize the arch-diplomate, 
 who was so eternally on his guard, that, when a lady 
 requested his autograph, he wrote his name on the very 
 top of the sheet of paper handed to him. Pope tells us, 
 in his " Key to the Lock, 1 ' that the Prince Eugene was 
 a great taker of snuff as well as of towns. Frederic the 
 Great had a collection of 1,500 snuff-boxes, and he loved 
 the dust so well that he had capacious pockets made to 
 his waistcoat, to get at it readily. " Glorious John Dry- 
 den" was a liberal patron of snuff, and in his later 
 years, was peculiarly fastidious in the article, abhorring 
 all ordinary snuffs, and satisfied only with a mixture 
 which he himself prepared. When from his chair in 
 Will's Coffee House he issued those literary decrees which 
 ruled the judgment of the town, he was never without 
 the stimulant; and for a young author, on visiting Will's, 
 to receive a pinch from Dryden's snuff-box, was equiva 
 lent to a formal admission into the society of wits. It 
 has been said that you might as soon divorce the idea 
 of the Popes, Steeles, and Voltaires, from their wigs and 
 caps, as from their snuff-boxes. 
 
 Beau Brummell, who so long was the glass of fashion, 
 had a gorgeous collection of snuff-boxes, and was distin 
 guished for the grace with which he opened the lid of 
 his box, with the thumb of the hand that carried it, 
 while he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of 
 the other. His claim to be the leader of the beau monde 
 was based not more on his walk, his coat, and his cra 
 vat, than on the inimitable and distingue manner with 
 which, snatching "a grace beyond the reach of art," 
 he indulged in the " nasal pastime," as his biographer 
 terms it, of taking snuff. The great literary leviathan, 
 
352 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 Dr. Johnson, was fond of the delicious dust; and so lavish 
 was he in the use of it, that he was wont to take it 
 from a waistcoat pocket, instead of from a box. The 
 gloom of his life might have deepened into a profounder 
 melancholy, had he not cheated its ennui by frequent 
 pinches of snuff, as well as draughts from the tea-kettle 
 that was " never dry." Sir Joshua Reynolds had a keen 
 zest for this stimulant, and we know not how much the 
 exquisite beauty of his pictures may be owing to the 
 clearness which it gave to his brain and his optics. 
 When bored with talk about " Raphael, Correggio, and 
 stuff, 1 ' by canting ignoramuses whose shallowness his old- 
 fashioned politeness would not allow him to ridicule, he 
 found a ready resource in his box: 
 
 " He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff." 
 
 Scott, though he may not have carried it with him, 
 was yet fond of an occasional pinch; and Cowper, as all 
 know, rescued an hour from melancholy to hymn the 
 praises of his favorite weed. It is recorded of the ele 
 gant historian, Gibbon, that, when about to say a good 
 thing, he was wont to announce it by a complacent tap 
 on his snuff-box. In the silhouette, the profile cut out 
 with scissors, which faces the title-page of his " Memoirs," 
 he is represented as indulging his habit, and looking, as 
 Colman says, 
 
 " Like an erect black tadpole, taking snuff." 
 
 Narrating his journey to Turin, and his presentation at 
 Court there at the age of twenty-seven, the historian 
 says: "The most sociable women I have met with are the 
 King's daughters. I chatted for about a quarter of an 
 hour with them, talked about Lausanne, and grew so 
 
A PINCH OF SNURF. 353 
 
 very free and easy that I drew my snuff-box, rapped it, 
 took snuff twice (a crime never known before in the 
 presence chamber), and continued my discourse in my 
 usual attitude of my body bent forward and my forefinger 
 stretched out." Napoleon was a famous snuff-taker, and, 
 on the eve of battle, always stimulated his thinking 
 powers by extra quantities of the pulverized weed. Can 
 ning attributed to it half his own victories: " Would you 
 confute your opponent in argument?" said he; "learn to 
 take snuff, and turn your back!" a style of reproof 
 which we have seen most felicitously practised. Henry 
 Clay loved a good pinch ; and during one of his fiercest 
 encounters with Calhoun, which we witnessed some years 
 ago, in the United States Senate, when the two giants 
 measured swords with each other some half-dozen times, 
 we noticed that he uniformly, each time he advanced to 
 the onset, roused and stimulated himself to the height of 
 his great argument by drawing on the snuff-box of the 
 nearest Senator. 
 
 It is said that some one who was a little skeptical 
 about Tom Moore's originality, once asked him whence 
 he had derived a particularly brilliant sentiment in one 
 of his songs. " Why, I got it," replied the poet, at the 
 same moment priming his nose with a stiff pinch, " I got 
 it where I got all the rest, to be sure, at Lundy Foot's 
 shop." The poet Crabbe was an ardent votary of snuff; 
 and, doubtless, we owe many a fine domestic picture to 
 the stimulus of a pinch. We are told that Dr. Parr, too, 
 that famous incarnation of Greek and Latin, fond as 
 he was of smoking (consuming forty pipes a day, accord 
 ing to some authorities), was not niggard in the use of 
 snuff. We have already spoken of Charles Lamb: it is 
 
354 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 said that if a person took snuff heartily, that alone was 
 enough to commend him to Lamb's acquaintance. He 
 would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other 
 things besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A 
 modern essayist, who passed " a day of happy hours " 
 alone with Lamb at Islington, speaks of his wild way 
 ward words of wonder as to the sort of snuff he would 
 meet with in the Elysium, and the faint stutterings of 
 joy with which he anticipated offering to old Burton a 
 fine pinch of Spanish, as pungent as his own wit. 
 Doubtless he never would have written his "Farewell 
 to Tobacco," had he used it only in the powdered form, 
 instead of learning to puff the coarser weed " by toil 
 ing after it as some men toil after virtue." Sydney 
 Smith, describing the French savant, says it is curious to 
 see in what little apartments he lives; "you find him at 
 his books, covered with snuff, with a little dog that bites 
 your legs." Butler has noted that the saints of Crom 
 well's time were not averse to snuff. He says of one: 
 
 " He had administered a dose 
 Of snuff mundungus to his nose; 
 And powdered the inside of his skull 
 Instead of the outward jobbernole." 
 
 In short, few great or good men have lived since the 
 introduction of the weed, who have not consumed it in 
 this form; and to have deprived them of the excitement 
 which their snuff-boxes afforded would have been, there 
 is reason to believe, not only to lessen their happiness 
 and sour their tempers, but to rob them in a great de 
 gree of their powers of reflection. 
 
 Again, the snuff-box is a powerful auxiliary to social 
 intercourse and enjoyment. By what subtle, mysterious 
 influence it operates, we know not; but who has not no- 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 355 
 
 ticed the almost miraculous effect of a little Maccaboy in 
 " breaking the ice " and banishing the freezing formali 
 ties of a mixed company, when gracefully tendered by 
 one of their number? Who has not observed also what 
 a bond of union, what an isthmus of communication, the 
 snuff-box is among travelers, even foreigners who know 
 not each other's language; how quickly the heart opens 
 to the open box of a true gentleman, of whatever coun 
 try he be, or however humble his station? The snuff 
 box has been a powerful engine even in Presidential elec 
 tions, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that to it 
 some of our Chief Magistrates have owed their elevation 
 to office. When Madison was candidate for that dignity, 
 and was assailed with the utmost vehemence of party 
 rage, the polite attentions of Mrs. Madison to the chiefs 
 of all parties, who met in social intercourse at her house, 
 did wonders towards softening the asperities of party 
 spirit at the Capital, and electing her husband to the 
 Presidency. Her snuff-box, in particular, had a magic 
 influence, and its titillating dust seemed as perfect a se 
 curity from hostility as is a participation of bread-and- 
 salt among some savage tribes. The kindly feelings thus 
 cultivated among those who sneezed together, triumphed, 
 we are told, over the animosity of party spirit, and won 
 for her husband a popularity to which his lofty reserve 
 and chilling manners would have been an insuperable 
 obstacle. The handful of dust with which Virgil ends 
 the wars of the bees, but typified the magic power of her 
 snuff-box: 
 
 "Hi motus animorum, atque haec certamina tanta 
 Pulvis exigui jactu compressa quiescunt." 
 
 That there is some instinct of our nature which 
 
356 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 prompts the use of this stimulus is proved by the fact 
 that even anti-tobacconists, who declaim against the weed, 
 are guilty, unconsciously to themselves, of the exqui 
 site inconsistency of using it in its powdered form. How 
 often have we listened to a vehement tirade against to 
 bacco, while ever and anon the orator would pull out a 
 silver snuff-box, and sandwich between his sentences a 
 most sternutatory pinch! In the reign of Louis XIV, 
 Fragon, the physician of the grand monarch, having to 
 maintain a thesis against snuff in the schools, was taken 
 ill; whereon his place was supplied by a brother medicus, 
 who read the thesis, taking all the while enormous 
 quantities of snuff! So true is the remark of Horace, 
 that you may pitchfork Nature out of your presence, but 
 
 " usque recurret, 
 Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix." 
 
 Few things are more interesting than to notice the 
 different ways in which men take snuff. A thorough and 
 critical knowledge of these would, no doubt, add largely 
 to our acquaintance with psychology, and perhaps give 
 us a profounder insight into men's characters, their 
 secret thoughts and hidden motives of action, than 
 physiognomy or phrenology. On this head, Leigh Hunt 
 observes, with his usual felicity, that " some men take 
 snuff by little fits and starts, and get over the thing 
 quickly. These are epigrammatic snuff-takers, who come 
 to the point as fast as possible, and to whom pungency 
 is everything. They generally use a sharp and severe 
 snuff, a sort of essence of pins' points. Others are all 
 urbanity and polished demeanor; they value the style as 
 much as the sensation, and offer the box around them as 
 much out of dignity as benevolence, Some take snuff 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 357 
 
 irritably, others bashfully, others in a manner as dry as 
 the snuff itself, generally with an economy of the vege 
 table; others with a luxuriance of gesture, and a lavish- 
 ness of supply, that announces a moister article, and 
 sheds its superfluous honors over neckcloth and coat. 
 Dr. Johnson's was probably a snuff of this kind." About 
 a century ago a fashion prevailed among snuff-takers of 
 administering the powder to the nose with a little spoon 
 or ladle, in allusion to which Samuel Wesley expressed 
 a fear that the human ear would not long remain exempt 
 from its application: 
 
 " To such a height with some is fashion grown, 
 They feed their very nostrils with a spoon; 
 One, and but one degree, is wanting yet 
 To make their senseless luxury complete; 
 Some choice regale, useless as snuff and dear, 
 To feed the mazy windings of the ear." 
 
 But to leave these references to authority, and glance 
 at some additional advantages of snuff- taking: what 
 pleasure is there, we ask, comparable to the luxury of a 
 sneeze? We love a good laugh, it is true, and agree 
 with Charles Lamb that it is worth a hundred groans in 
 any state of the market. Its delicious alchemy can con 
 vert even tears into the quintessence of merriment, and 
 make wrinkles themselves expressive of youth and frolic. 
 But who will pretend that it sends such an electric thrill 
 through the frame as a sudden sternutation? The former 
 may convulse by degrees; but it is the last only which 
 can instantly electrify the nerves, brighten every sense, 
 clear away the cobwebs from the brain, and give the 
 whole system a shock to which the effect of the voltaic 
 pile is as nothing. Who, that has ever experienced the 
 titillating sensation, at least, when produced artificially. 
 
358 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 can forget the ecstatic feelings that accompanied and 
 followed the paroxysm? Truly has it been said that 
 " one seems to himself suddenly to be endowed with a 
 sixth sense," opening to him a world of wonders, and 
 teaching him to contemplate the possession of a thousand 
 delicate nerves before unthought of. Hardly are the se 
 ries of sneezes over, 'ere the slight premonitory tickling 
 at the nose is felt again, and he tries, by various per 
 suasive arts, to coax forth another; he draws his breath 
 through his nostrils, he moves his head to and fro with 
 an ish-i, he thinks intensely of his last sneeze, when 
 suddenly the titillation begins again, and away he goes, 
 
 sn-sn-sneeze ! 
 
 " Sudden with starting tears each eye o'erflows, 
 And the high dome re-echoes to the nose!" 
 
 According to a late writer the following is the scien 
 tific explanation of a sneeze: The nose receives three 
 sets of nerves, the nerves of smell, those of feeling, and 
 those of motion. The first communicate to the brain the 
 odorous properties of substances with which they may 
 come in contact, in a diffused or concentrated state; the 
 second communicate the impressions of touch; the third 
 move the muscles of the nose; but the power of these 
 muscles is very limited. When a sneeze occurs all these 
 faculties are excited to a high degree. A grain of snuff 
 excites the olfactory nerves, which dispatch to the brain 
 the intelligence that " snuff has attacked the nostril." 
 The brain instantly sends a mandate through the motor 
 nerves to the muscles, saying, "Cast it out!" and the 
 result is unmistakable. So offensive is the enemy besieg 
 ing the nostril held to be, that the nose is not left to its 
 own defense. It would be too feeble to accomplish this. 
 
A PINCH tfF SNUFF. 359 
 
 An allied army of muscles join in the rescue, nearly 
 one-half the body arouses against the intruder, from 
 the muscles of the lips to those of the abdomen, all unite 
 in the effort for the expulsion of the grain of snuff. 
 
 A modern poet, who, though he would doubtless object 
 to having his nose pulled, yet holds it ever ready for a 
 pinch, has the following picturesque description of a 
 sneeze: 
 
 "What a moment! What a doubt! 
 
 All my nose, inside and out, 
 
 All my thrilling, tickling, caustic 
 
 Pyramid rhinocerostic 
 
 Wants to sneeze, and cannot do it! 
 Now it yearns me, thrills me, stings me, 
 Now with rapturous torment wrings me; 
 
 Now says l Sneeze, you fool, get through it.' 
 
 What shall help me? Oh! Good Heaven! 
 
 Ah yes, thank ye Thirty-seven 
 
 Sheeshee Oh, 'tis most del-^Ai 
 
 Ishi ishi most Ael-ishi 
 
 (Hang it! I shall sneeze till spring) 
 
 Snuff's a most delicious thing." 
 
 Who can conceive of a more innocent luxury than this? 
 What language, then, can paint the cruelty of the cynic 
 who would rob men of this enjoyment? as did Amu- 
 rath IV, who, in 1625, forbade his subjects the use of 
 snuff under the penalty of having the nose cut off; and 
 the Grand Duke of Moscow, by whom the Muscovite who 
 was found snuffing was condemned to have his nostrils 
 split. Pope Urban VIII and Innocent XII were compar 
 atively excusable when they anathematized all snuff- takers 
 who committed the heinous sin of taking a pinch in 
 church; nor will any devotee of the dust execrate the 
 memory of " Good Queen Bess," because she added to the 
 penalty of excommunication in such cases by authorizing 
 the parish beadle to confiscate the snuff-box to his own 
 
360 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 use. These were harsh penalties for so trivial an offense; 
 but there is a time and place for all things; and absti 
 nence from Maccaboy during the hours of church service, 
 so far from robbing its lover of any pleasure on the 
 whole, would only give a finer edge to his subsequent 
 enjoyment. But to subject men to the death-penalty for 
 fche use of snuff,- to bore a hole through their noses, as 
 did Mahomet IV, to compel the offenders, as once did 
 the Shah of Persia, to expatriate themselves in order to 
 enjoy this "virtuous vice," does it not seem a stretch 
 of tyranny too violent for belief? And how paltry and 
 picayunish appear the calculations of such minute philos 
 ophers as Lord Stanhope, who estimated that, in forty 
 years of a snuff-taker's life, two entire years would be 
 spent in tickling his nose, and two more in blowing it, 
 and concluded that a proper application of the time and 
 money thus lost to the public might constitute a fund 
 for the discharge of England's national debt! Out upon 
 such utilitarian suggestions, worthy of the mean "age of 
 calculators and economists ! " Hearken unto Boswell, as 
 he sings in his "Shrubs of Parnassus": 
 
 "O snuff! our fashionable end and aim, 
 Strasburgh, Rappee, Dutch, Scotch, whate'er thy name; 
 Powder celestial! quintessence divine! 
 New joys entrance my soul, while thou art mine. 
 By thee assisted, ladies kill the day, 
 And breathe their scandal freely o'er their tea; 
 Not less Ihfy prize thy virtues when in bed; 
 One pinch of thee revives the vapored head, 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and tickles in the sneeze." 
 
 Apropos to sneezing, it is a question which has long 
 tormented the wits of antiquaries, whence came the custom 
 of saying "God bless you!" to one who sneezes. Many 
 
A PIKCH OF SNUFF. 361 
 
 writers ascribe it to an ordinance of Pope St. Gregory, 
 at whose time the air was so pestilential that they who 
 sneezed instantly expired. On this the pontiff, it is said, 
 instituted a short benediction to be pronounced on such 
 persons, to save them from the fatal effects of this malig 
 nancy. The Rabbins, however, declare that before Jacob 
 men sneezed but once in a lifetime, and then immediately 
 died; and that the memory of this was ordered to be pre 
 served in all nations, by a command of every prince to his 
 subjects to employ some salutary exclamation after the act 
 of sternutation. Whatever the origin of the custom, it 
 has prevailed among all nations, and was found to exist 
 even in the New World, on its first discovery by the 
 Spaniards. Among the ancients, the distinctions made 
 about sneezing raised it to an art; for while it was 
 unlucky in the afternoon, or when men were clearing away 
 food, or if it occurred three times, or more than four, or 
 on the left-hand side, if it occurred among persons in 
 deliberation, or two or four times, or in the morning, or on 
 the right-hand side, it was accounted a lucky omen. We 
 are told that Themistocles, by a judicious sneeze on his 
 right-hand side, persuaded his soldiers to fight, and Xeno- 
 phon, by a similar act in the middle of a speech, was 
 elected General. On another occasion, a sneeze from a 
 linesman just before a battle was considered so ominous 
 that public prayers'were deemed necessary in consequence. 
 An old writer says that the ancients were accustomed 
 to go to bed again, if they sneezed while putting on their 
 shoes. Catullus, in one of his charming poems, makes 
 Cupid sneeze his approbation of two lovers. When the 
 King of Mesopotamia sneezes, he is greeted with shouts 
 in the ante-chamber, shouts in the palace-yard, and 
 16 
 
362 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 shouts in the city streets, echoed and reverberated by 
 a thousand loyal voices. Supposing his majesty to be 
 an inveterate snuff-taker, what horrid cries must rend 
 the air of his capital "from morn till dewy eve"! 
 According to mythology, the first sign of life given by 
 Prometheus's artificial man was a sneeze, caused by the 
 solar rays stealing through his pores. The Siamese wish 
 long life to persons sneezing. The reason, according to 
 Brande, is, they believe that when one of the judges of 
 hell opens the register in which the duration of men's 
 lives is written, and looks upon any particular leaf, all 
 those whose names chance to be entered on it never fail 
 to sneeze immediately. In Vienna, if one sneezes in a cafe, 
 the bystanders will doff their hats, and say ".God be with 
 you ! " The lower class of modern Romans greet a sneezer 
 with the salutation, "May you have male children!" 
 Milton says that earthquakes, 
 
 " though mortals fear them 
 As dangerous to the pillared frame of heaven, 
 Or to the earth's dark basis underneath, 
 Are to the main as inconsiderable 
 And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze 
 To man's less universe, and soon are gone." 
 
 Perhaps the most terrific sneeze on record is that de 
 scribed by Martelli, an Italian writer, in his Bambociata, 
 or Sneezing of Hercules, a marionette farce, from which 
 Swift borrowed the idea of his Voyage to Laputa. In 
 this piece Hercules is represented as reaching the land 
 of the Pigmies, who, alarmed at the sight of what seems 
 a living mountain, hide themselves in caves. One day, 
 as Hercules is sleeping in the open fields, the Pigmies 
 venture forth from their hiding places, and, armed with 
 boughs and thorns, mount the sleeping monster, and 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 363 
 
 cover him from head to foot like flies covering a piece 
 of raw meat. Hercules awakes, and, feeling something 
 tickling his nose, sneezes. His enemies are routed, " horse, 
 foot, and dragoons," and tumble precipitately from his 
 sides, when the curtain falls, and the piece ends. 
 
 A powerful argument for snuff-taking in preference 
 to other modes of using the weed, is, that one does not 
 have to serve a long and disagreeable apprenticeship be 
 fore he acquires a full mastery of the art and revels in 
 the highest pleasures of snuffing. Unlike the tobacco- 
 chewer or other consumer of the weed, who has to strug 
 gle heroically through its repugnant qualities of taste and 
 eifect, until by habit its stimulus grows pleasurable and 
 the system gets mithridated against the poison, the snuff- 
 taker, at the very threshold of his career, is placed on a 
 level with the most veteran practitioners of the art. 
 Another argument for this form of the weed is, that the 
 snuff- taker is rarely guilty of such outrageous excesses in 
 its use as are habitual with the chewer and the smoker. 
 The lover of the pipe and the cigar puffs out his volumes 
 of smoke from dawn till bed-time, 
 
 "Faucibus ingentem fumum, mirabile dictu, 
 Evomit involvitque domum caligine caeca"; 
 
 the devotee of raw cavendish " chews the cud of sweet 
 and bitter fancy" from the moment he wakes in the 
 morning till he drops to sleep at night; and some 
 wretches, not satisfied with this, resort to what is called 
 "plugging," that is, thrusting long pellets or rolls of 
 tobacco up the nose, and keeping them there during the 
 entire night. Sir Walter Raleigh, who first made smok 
 ing fashionable in England, was a type of the whole 
 tribe of smokers. Though an elegant courtier, he smoked 
 
364 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 to the disgust of the ladies at court, smoked as he sat to 
 see his friend Essex perish on the scaffold, and smoked 
 just before he went to the scaffold himself. Eobert Hall 
 used to smoke till the last moment before ascending the 
 pulpit, and resumed his pipe as soon as he came down. 
 When a friend sought to convince him that tobacco was 
 sapping his health, he replied: "I can't answer your 
 arguments, and I can't give up my pipe." 
 
 That snuff- taking may be, and is, abused, that, like 
 all other innocent enjoyments, it may be carried to such 
 excess as to undermine the health, and even cause death, 
 is true; and it is upon this abuse that all the argu 
 ments against it are founded. The nose is the emunctory 
 of the brain, and when its functions are impeded, the 
 whole system of the head is deranged. One of the effects 
 of excessive snuffing is to deaden the nerves of the nose, 
 which are endowed with exquisite sensibility, and traverse 
 with their fine net-work the entire inner membrane of 
 the nostril. Drying up the secretion which lubricates 
 this membrane, it gradually destroys the sense of smell, 
 and the result is, that of all the pleasures derived from 
 the olfactory organs, the omnis copia narium, as Horace 
 terms it, the snuff-taker knows as little as if he were 
 noseless. Similar effects ensue upon the saliva, and the 
 sense of taste is blunted. An inveterate snuff-taker may 
 always be recognized by his brown, sodden complexion, 
 by a certain nasal twang or asthmatic wheezing when he 
 tries to speak, and by a sort of disagreeable noise in 
 respiration, which resembles incipient snoring. Snuff, 
 in temperately taken, is a deadly foe to the memory. 
 The Abbe Moigno, an eminent French savant, who in 
 1861 took twenty grammes a day, found this faculty 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 365 
 
 rapidly decaying in consequence of the habit. He had 
 learned some fifteen hundred root-words in each of several 
 languages, but found these gradually dropping out of his 
 mind, so as to necessitate frequent recurrence to diction 
 aries. Quitting the use of tobacco in all its forms, he 
 found, after six years of abstinence, that his memory had 
 recovered all its riches, all its sensibility. The army of 
 words, which had run away, had all gradually returned. 
 Snuff, taken in enormous quantities, also causes fleshy 
 excrescences in the nose, tumors and polypi in the throat, 
 vomitings, loss of appetite, dyspepsia, is a frequent cause 
 of blindness, and is said to induce convulsions, promote 
 consumption, and even to cause madness and death. Na 
 poleon's death is attributed to a morbid state of the 
 stomach, superinduced by excessive snuffing; and Dr. 
 Rush tells us that Sir John Pringle, who was afflicted 
 with tremors in his hands and an impaired memory, 
 through the use of snuff, recovered his recollection and 
 the use of his hands by abandoning the dust at the sug 
 gestion of Dr. Franklin. As if this catalogue of ills to 
 which the snuff-taker is liable were not fearful enough, 
 other imaginary ones have been added; and grave doctors 
 have gone so far as to declare that his brain will be 
 found after death to be dried to a sort of dirty mem 
 brane, clogged with soot! 
 
 These facts, however, are not solid objections to snuff 
 itself; they only show that it may be taken in excess, or 
 may -not be suited to one's peculiar idiosyncrasies of con 
 stitution or temperament. Would you chop off men's 
 fingers, because they are sometimes pickers and stealers? 
 Or is the fact that some men make gluttons of themselves 
 an argument for the abolition of eating? No one abstains 
 
366 A PINCH OF SNUFF. . 
 
 from veal pie because a greedy fool once died of eating 
 a whole calf; and the excellence of sherry at dinner is 
 not disputed because unlimited Old Bourbon induces de 
 lirium tremens. There are men so strangely constituted 
 that they cannot digest even lamb or mutton, and whom 
 the bare sight or smell of certain healthful articles of 
 food throws into spasms. The Duke d'Epernon fainted at 
 the sight of a leveret; and Marshal de Breze, who died 
 in 1689, swooned at the sight of a rabbit. Erasmus could 
 not smell fish without being thrown into a fever, and 
 Scaliger shuddered in every limb on seeing water-cresses 
 Favoriti, a famous Italian poet, could not bear the odoi' 
 of a rose. 
 
 The gravest objection to snuif is the adulterations to 
 which it is subjected. When adulterated, as it too often 
 is, with pepper, hellebore, and pulverized glass, to give it 
 additional pungency, its effects must be anything but bene 
 ficial. Add to these the ferruginous earths, such as red 
 and yellow ochre, and no less than three poisonous prepa 
 rations, viz.: chromate of lead, red lead, and bi-chromate 
 of potash, which, according to the London "Lancet" 
 Commission, are introduced into it, and its deleterious 
 effects are frightfully aggravated. At a meeting of the 
 Philosophical Society of Manchester, England, Dr. C. Cal- 
 vert stated that he had recently analyzed several samples 
 of snuff, in all of which he had found traces of red lead, 
 and of the bi-chromate of potash, which is still more fre 
 quently employed. M. Duchatel, of Paris, found that a 
 dose from one twenty-fifth to one five-hundredth of a 
 grain sufficed to destroy a dog. Colic, " dropped hands," 
 and other forms of paralysis, are among the least effects 
 of this deadly poison. Statements like this are not to be 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 367 1 
 
 sneezed at; but, added to the fact that it is the scented 
 snuffs that are most unwholesome, as they hide the adul 
 teration, and that it is not unusual to save the sweepings 
 of tobacco-shops and warehouses, even the bits of leaf 
 that adhere to the shoes, for the purpose of mixing in 
 snuff, must make even the most hardened and incorri 
 gible snuffer pause ere he again converts his nose into a 
 dust-hole and a soot-bag. 
 
 Considering how the practice of snuff-taking tends to 
 spoil the complexion, it seems strange that ladies should 
 ever become addicted to it. The fact that, by the drain 
 of the juices, it tends to injure the muscles of the face, 
 to furrow and corrugate the skin, and to give a gaunt, 
 withered, and jaundiced appearance to " the human face 
 divine," would be enough, one would think, saying noth 
 ing of damage to the health, to deter any woman from 
 touching the " high-dried pulvillio." Yet in the days of 
 Queen Anne and Louis XY, as we have already hinted, 
 the practice was fashionable, not only with old ladies, 
 who still cling to it, but with those who had their con 
 quests yet to make, and whom time had not begun to 
 rob of their charms. Leigh Hunt remarks that the 
 ladies in the time of the Voltaires and the Du Chatelets 
 seemed never to think themselves either too old to love, 
 or too young to take snuff. A bridegroom in one of the 
 British essayists, describing his wife's fondness for rouge 
 and carmine, complains that he can never make pure, 
 unsophisticated way to her cheek, but is obliged, like Pyr- 
 amus in the story, to kiss through a wall, to salute 
 through a crust of paints and washes: 
 
 "Wall, vile wall, which did these lovers sunder." 
 
 This, it has been well observed, "is bad enough; yet the 
 
368 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 object of paint is to imitate health and loveliness; the 
 wish to look well is in it." But snuff ! what a death 
 blow does it give to all that romance and poetry with 
 which man delights to invest the other sex! How vulgar 
 the thought that a sneeze should interrupt a kiss or a 
 sigh! Fancy a young beauty, to whom her lover on his 
 knees, after a protracted and sentimental courtship, has 
 just closed a tremulous avowal of his passion with the 
 despairing interrogatory, " C-a-n I 1-i-v-e?" sneezing out, 
 at this very pinch of the game, what would otherwise be 
 one of the sweetest of loving and bashful replies: "Oh! 
 Edward! this is so un-un-un-unexpected ! '" What sylph, 
 foreseeing the possibility of such a catastrophe, would 
 superintend the conveyance of this dust to the nostrils 
 of a belle! What gnome would not take a fiendish de 
 light in hovering over a snuff-loving beauty! 
 
 The question who invented snuff-taking is an interest 
 ing one on which antiquaries differ. That Catherine de 
 Medicis, who instigated the horrid massacre of St. Bar 
 tholomew, is entitled to the honor of so philanthropic an 
 act, we shall not believe. If she did originate the practice, 
 it was from any but philanthropic motives. It is well 
 known that when she wished to get rid of offensive per 
 sons in an " artistic " manner, she was in the habit of 
 presenting them with delicately made sweetmeats, or 
 trinkets, in which death lurked in the most engaging 
 forms; -and perhaps she had the same end in view, in 
 inventing and offering snuff. Whoever invented it, it 
 was at the court of the grand monarch, Louis XIV, that 
 snuff, with all its expensive corollaries of scents and cu 
 rious boxes, first received the highest sanction, so that 
 Moliere speaks of it as le passion des honnetes gens. In 
 
A PItfCH OF SNUFF. 369 
 
 England, it became common after the great plague, from 
 a belief that tobacco, in all its forms, prevented infection. 
 Its use is also said to have increased very much after 
 Sir George Eooke's expedition to Spain, great quantities 
 having been taken and sold as prizes. Howell, in a letter 
 on Tobacco (1646), says that the Spanish and Irish " take 
 it most in powder or smutchin, and it mightily refreshes 
 the brain"; and he adds that the serving-maids and the 
 swains at the plow, when overtired with labor, " take out 
 their boxes of smutchin, and draw it into their nostrils 
 with a quill, and it will beget new spirits in them, with 
 a fresh orjour to fall to their work again." 
 
 When William of Holland ascended the British throne, 
 the prevalence of the Dutch taste confirmed the general 
 use of snuff, and it was the fashion to be curious in its 
 use. Valuable boxes of all stylcj were sported, and the 
 beaux carried canes with hollow heads, that they might 
 the more conveniently inhale a few grains through the 
 perforations, as they sauntered in the fashionable prom 
 enades. Rich essences were employed to flavor snuff, and 
 a taste in such scents was considered a necessary part of a 
 refined education. Now, snuff-taking has become a prac 
 tice as wide-spread among civilized people as chewing or 
 smoking, is the favorite mode of consuming the weed 
 with men of culture, quick intellects, and elegant tastes; 
 and in every country, the boxes, which are the favorite 
 presents of kings to their favorites, are devised hardly 
 less ingeniously, and ornamented far more expensively, 
 than pipes. At the coronation of George IV, the bill of 
 Messrs. Rundell and Bridge for snuff-boxes to foreign 
 ministers, was 8,205 15s. 5d. It is estimated that in 
 France not less than six millions of persons take snuff, 
 
370 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 consuming each two and a half pounds annually, at an 
 expense of over ten francs per nose ! The bare duty paid 
 upon tobacco and snuff in England and Scotland aver 
 aged in 1850 more than twenty-eight millions of dollars 
 annually! a prodigious amount to be blown away in 
 smoke, or sneezed away in dust, at a time when the gov 
 ernment was higgling on a paltry sum of 100,000 for 
 national education. It is an interesting fact that snuff 
 ing is more a Scotch habit than an English or Irish one. 
 We are told that an Edinburgh tobacconist, who made a 
 large fortune by the sale of snuff, had painted on his 
 carriage panels the following pithy distich: 
 
 " Wha wad a thocht it 
 That noses could ha' bought it?" 
 
 The consumption of the dust north of the Tweed is 
 enormous. Every man who would have a smooth path 
 way in "Auld Scotia" carries a "mull 1 '; it is a letter of 
 introduction, a begetter of conversation, a maker of 
 friends. Hence it has been said that the way to a 
 Scotchman's heart is "through his nose." 
 
 Snuff-taking necessitates snuff-boxes, and it is interest 
 ing to note the ingenuity which has been expended in 
 different countries in contriving and ornamenting these 
 receptacles of "the dust." In France, in the age of 
 Louis XIV, a snuff-box of some elegant material, whether 
 decorated with paintings or resplendent with precious 
 stones, was part of the necessities of a beauty of ton. 
 Mr. Fairholt, in his late work on " Tobacco," states that 
 quaint forms have been as common to snuff-boxes as to 
 tobacco-pipes. Coffins were at one time hideously adapted 
 to hold the fragrant dust. A coiled snake, whose central 
 folds form the lid, was a box for a naturalist; a book 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 371 
 
 might serve for a student, and a boat for a sailor. Of a 
 fashion in Queen Anne's time a poet thus sings: 
 
 "Within the lid the painter plays his part, 
 And with his pencil proves his matchless art; 
 There, drawn to life, some spark or mistress dwells, 
 Like hermits chaste and constant to their cells." 
 
 When on the death of Louis XV, the beautiful Marie 
 Antoinette ascended the throne of France, the people 
 were so fascinated by her charms and virtues, that a 
 jeweler made a large fortune by selling mourning snuff 
 boxes in her honor. They were composed of chagrin, with 
 the motto La Consolation dans le Chagrin. 
 
 It has been said that snuff-boxes enough have been 
 made of Shakspeare's mulberry tree to build a man-of-war. 
 Perhaps the most unique and useful of all these devices 
 was a snuff-pistol with two barrels, invented about forty 
 years ago by an Englishman. By touching a spring with 
 the forefinger, both nostrils were instantly filled, and snuff 
 enough was driven up the nose to last the whole day. 
 Apropos to royal presents of snuff-boxes, to which we have 
 alluded, a curious secret came to light some years ago in 
 England, showing the manner in which kings are fleeced 
 by those with whom they deal, and the heartlessness of 
 those on whom they lavish their favors. It appears that 
 the royal goldsmith who charged his majesty 1,000 or 
 500 for a presentation snuff-box, was in the habit of 
 purchasing it the next day of the donee for about half or 
 two thirds of the nominal value, and that the same box 
 was again supplied and again repurchased, till some for 
 eigner, not liking the practice or the price, put it in 
 his pocket! 
 
 The literature of snuff-taking teems with amusing an 
 ecdotes, with a few of which we will conclude. Every- 
 
372 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 body has heard of the thief, who, being arrested for 
 having " conveyed " without leave a canister of the dust 
 from a shop, protested that he never knew before that it 
 was criminal to take snuff; and of the anti-snuffing per 
 son, who, when politely tendered a pinch, refused with 
 the rude declaration, that, had Nature intended his nose 
 for a snuff-box, she would have turned it the other way, 
 a logical non sequitur, by the way, since by such an 
 arrangement the organ could be less easily supplied than 
 now. Napoleon's love of snuff has already been hinted 
 at; not only on the battlefield, but at home in the coun 
 cil, he had recourse to the dust, especially when his 
 schemes were unfavorably received, and he wished to hide 
 his uneasiness or impatience. Unable to sit still in his 
 elbow-chair, he would try in a thousand ways to divert 
 attention from himself; and, among other devices, as 
 soon as he saw a member's eye fixed on him, would hold 
 out his arm, and shake his thumb and forefinger, to sig 
 nify that he wished for a pinch of snuff. A box being 
 promptly tendered, Napoleon would help himself to its 
 contents, and then turning it round and round in his 
 hands, would invariably conclude, in his abstracted mood, 
 by putting it into his pocket. Not less than four, and 
 even six, snuff-boxes, disappeared in this manner during 
 a single sitting; and it was not till he had left the coun 
 cil-chamber that he became aware of the larceny. So 
 confirmed was this habit, that some of the councillors, 
 whose snuff-boxes were heir-looms or presents from for 
 eign princes, hit upon the expedient of carrying cheap 
 papier-mache or wooden boxes for the Emperor to pocket. 
 The snuff-boxes, however, always returned to their own 
 ers, and, in doing so, were often found to have undergone 
 
A PINCH OF SNUFF. 373 
 
 a very pleasant metamorphosis. By some necromancy, a 
 wooden or tortoise-shell box, on coming out from the im 
 perial pocket, was usually transformed into one of gold, 
 set around with diamonds, or bearing the Emperor's min 
 iature on the lid. 
 
 The distress experienced by inveterate snuff-takers 
 when long deprived of their favorite stimulus, drives 
 them sometimes to desperate shifts; and in such an ex 
 tremity almost any " Jack-at-a-pinch " at all resembling 
 it ; is eagerly snapped up to supply the place of the real 
 article. A severe snow-storm in the Scottish Highlands, 
 which raged several weeks, so blockaded all communica 
 tion between neighboring hamlets, that snuff-takers were 
 at length reduced to their last pinch. Among the suf 
 ferers was the parson of the parish, whose craving was 
 so intense that the sermon was at a stand-still. " What's 
 to be done, John?" was his pathetic inquiry of the 
 beadle, who had ended a bootless journey through the 
 snow-drifts to a neighboring glen in quest of a supply. 
 John shook his head gloomily; but soon started up ab 
 ruptly, as if a new idea had struck him. In a few min 
 utes he came back, crying, "Hae!" The minister, too 
 eager to be scrutinizing, took a long, deep pinch, and 
 then asked, "Whaur did you get it?" "I soupit (swept) 
 the pulpit," was John's triumphant reply. The parson's 
 wasted snuff had come to be eminently serviceable in this 
 hour of " fearfullest extremity." 
 
 The last anecdote might find an appropriate place in 
 Dean Ramsay's amusing book, our next in some future 
 " Reminiscences of New England Character." Some years 
 ago, a clergyman in the land of steady habits, who was a 
 most inveterate snuff-taker, commenced the Sunday ser- 
 
374 A PINCH OF SNUFF. 
 
 vice by reading the fourth section of the 119th Psalm. 
 Unconsciously, as he announced the passage to be read, 
 and while the hearers were looking it out in their Bibles, 
 he drew out his snuff-box, and took a lusty pinch of the 
 contents, which resulted in a startling explosion of his 
 nasal organ, making the style of elocution somewhat as 
 follows: " M y soul dea-e-e-e-che-che-e-e-che-che-cleaveth unto 
 the dust!" The titter that ran through the church showed 
 that not only the pcor parson but the congregation " felt 
 the pinch," and were " up to snuff." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbott, his Life of Napoleon, 174. 
 
 Abernethy, Dr., on mental sat 
 uration, 140. 
 
 Accidents, the cause of great 
 movements, 188, 189. 
 
 Adams, John Q., anecdote of, 234. 
 
 Agassiz, Professor, unmethodical, 
 212; his attention to details, 
 277. 
 
 Allen, 9!. John, 281. 
 
 Alliteration, 246-249; remarkable 
 specimen of, 251. 
 
 Ames, Fisher, 107, 108. 
 
 Anagrams, 242-246. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, Americans are not, 
 299-306; glorification of, 299- 
 305; proportion of in the U. S., 
 299; how distinguished from 
 Americans, 302; a heteroge 
 neous race, 303. 
 
 Anne, Queen of England, curious 
 portrait of, 253. 
 
 Archimedes, saying of, 222. 
 
 Authors, Dr. R. South on, 74. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, a taker of bribes, 
 193; on truth and falsehood, 
 217; not the father of the In 
 ductive Philosophy, 218. 
 
 Balli9l College, Oxford, 318. 
 
 Baptists, starved for heresy, 309. 
 
 Beattie, Dr., his sensitiveness to 
 harsh noises, 35. 
 
 Beau Brummell, his snuff-boxes, 
 351. 
 
 Becket, Thomas a, his reply to a 
 monk, 168. 
 
 Beecher, H. W., on Robert South, 
 79, 80. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 137. 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop, his style, 51; 
 
 his opinion about matter, 218. 
 Bibliomania, 336-346; examples 
 
 of, 345, 346. 
 Biography, its misrepresentations, 
 
 192-194. 
 Blot, Professor, his lectures on 
 
 cookery, 159. 
 "Bluecoat Bovs," their origin, 
 
 327, 328. 
 Bodleian Library, Oxford, 324, 
 
 Books and Reading, Professor 
 ships of, 136-158. 
 
 Books, as a means of culture, 136- 
 139; original thinkers indebted 
 to, 137; they stimulate and in 
 flame the mind, 138; may be 
 abused, 139; necessary to men 
 tal vigor, 141 ; often cnosen and 
 read ignorantly, 141-143; their 
 multiplicity, 143-145; new ones 
 published annually in England 
 and Germany, 144; the num 
 ber one can read in a lifetime, 
 144; difficulty of selecting them 
 wisely, 146; number which a 
 college student can read in his 
 course, 148; should be re-read, 
 150; should be adapted to in 
 dividual tastes, 151, 152; should 
 be chosen for the young, 153; 
 cannot teach the use of books, 
 154; how read most rapidly, 
 156-159; great prices paid for, 
 343, 344. 
 
 Book- Auctions, 336-339. 
 
 Book-Buying, 336-346. 
 
 Boyer, Dr., Master of Christ's 
 Hospital, 331-334. 
 
 Bright, John, secret of his power, 
 284. 
 
 Brutus, illusions concerning, 191. 
 
376 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Buncombe" speeches not tol 
 erated in the British Parlia 
 ment, 282, 283. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, his voice, 92; 
 his pronunciation of ' ' vectigal, ' ' 
 124; a rapid reader, 156. 
 
 Burton, Jonn Hill, on biblio 
 mania, 337; his account of a 
 bibliotaphe, 342, 343. 
 
 Butler, Bishop, a great reader, 
 140. 
 
 Butler, Samuel, verses erroneous 
 ly ascribed to him, 220. 
 
 Byron, Lord, quotation from his 
 " Manfred," 81; on underdone 
 food, 163; his affectation, 194; 
 his influence waning, 287. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, not a strong man, 
 130; his epicureanism, 166. 
 
 Calvin, John, his scurrility, 64. 
 
 Cambaceres, 167. 
 
 Camden, on anagrams, 242. 
 
 Cassius, Dion, his histories, 191. 
 
 Carlyle, on the taste for letters, 
 155; a rapid reader, 157. 
 
 Chamfort, Sebastian Roch Nich 
 olas, 288-298; his early history, 
 289; wins prizes, 289; receives 
 a pension, 290; his acrid say 
 ings, 290, 295, 296; his ex 
 cesses, 291 ; his witticisms and 
 aphorisms, 291-295; his influ 
 ence with Mirabeau, 291, 292; 
 defends the French Revolution, 
 292; denounced, 292; attempts 
 suicide, 292; his death, 293; 
 his physiognomy, 293; his lit 
 erary remains, 293; his disposi 
 tion, 296; his dislike of mar 
 riage. 297; his forte, 297; esti 
 mate of, 298. 
 
 Channing, Dr. W. E., 132. 
 
 Charles I, curious portrait of, 
 253. 
 
 Charles V, Emperor, fictitious 
 stories concerning him, 211. 
 
 Chatham, Lord, his voice, 91 ; his 
 reply to Walpole, 216. 
 
 Christ Church College, Oxford, 
 311-315. 
 
 Christina, of Sweden, saying of, 
 207. 
 
 Christ's Hospital, an Hour at, 
 327-335; its "Bluecoat Boys," 
 327-329; when founded, 328; 
 its eminent pupils, 331, 332; its 
 master, 1 ->yer, 331-334. 
 
 Cicero, misquoted, 206. 
 
 Clarence, the Duke of, not 
 drowned in Malmsey, 200. 
 
 Clay, Henry, his voice, 92; a 
 snuff- taker, 353. 
 
 Cobbett, William, on writers, 74; 
 inspired by Swift's "Tale of a 
 Tub, "137. 
 
 Coincidences of thought and ex 
 pression, 207-210, 214. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., his discursive 
 ness, 53; aided by DeQuincey, 
 54; his father's absent-minded 
 ness, 38,39; a rapid reader, 156; 
 his idleness and irregularity, 
 276, 277; at Christ's Hospital, 
 332-334. 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 191. 
 
 Constitution, the physical, its 
 power of self- repair, 135. 
 
 Controversy, ancient and modern 
 compared, 63-65. 
 
 Cookery, importance of, 159, 161, 
 163. 
 
 Cornaro, Lewis, 134. 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 
 316. 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, burned at 
 Oxford, 311. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 181. 
 
 D'Artois, Count, saying invented 
 for, 214-216. 
 
 Davy, Rev. Wm., his " System of 
 Divinity," 238, 239. 
 
 Debating-clubs, 284-286. 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, on "True-Born 
 Englishmen," 302-304. 
 
 DeMaistre, Joseph, on Bacon's 
 philosophy, 218, 219. 
 
 De Maistre, Xavier, on method 
 ical people, 277,278. 
 
 DeMedicis, Catherine, her treat 
 ment of her enemies, 368. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 377 
 
 Demosthenes on oratory, 206. 
 
 DeQuincey, Thomas, 9-57; his 
 personal appearance, 9, 33, 34; 
 his versatility, 10, 13; his re 
 markable dreams, 12 ; his literary 
 vagrancy, 14, 53, 54; noticed in 
 the " Noctes " of Blackwood, 
 14; his parentage and birth 
 place, 15; his weakness in 
 childhood, 16, 17; his feelings 
 on the death of his sister, 16, 
 17; his elder brother's tyranny, 
 17-20; his proficiency in Greek 
 and Latin, 20, 21; his escape 
 from school and wanderings in 
 Wales, 20; his trials in London, 
 21-24; his love of English liter 
 ature,'^; his acquaintance with 
 "poor Anne," 23, 24; his life 
 at Oxford University, 24, 25; 
 his gift to Coleridge, 25 ; his life 
 at Grasmere, 25; on Words 
 worth's good luck, 25, 26; be 
 gins taking opium, 26; his ac 
 count of its effects, 27-30; his 
 picture of his home at Grasmere, 
 27; his opium-dreams, 29, 30; 
 his " Confessions of an Opium- 
 Eater," 29, 32; abjures opium, 
 31, 32; begins his literary labors, 
 32; moves to Edinburgh, 32; 
 returns to Grasmere, 32 ; invites 
 Charles Knight to visit him, 32, 
 33; dies at Lass wade, 33; his 
 
 Ehysical sufferings at close of 
 is life, 33; his shyness and 
 eccentricity, 34, 35; his love of 
 music, 34, 49; his sensitiveness 
 to harsh noises, 34, 35; his 
 courtesy, 35-37; his ignorance 
 of money matters, 36; his dose 
 of laudanum, 37, 38; his eccen 
 tric social habits, 37, 38; his 
 costume at a dinner party, 38; 
 his dislike of shirts, 38; his 
 treatment of books, 39, 40; his 
 indifference to the fate of his 
 writings, 40; his learning, 40, 
 41; his memory, 41; a close 
 observer of character, 42; his 
 power of detecting resem 
 blances, 42; his critical acute- 
 
 ness, 42; his distinction between 
 the literature of knowledge and 
 that of power, 43; his criticism 
 on Pope, 43; his criticisms on 
 Brougham, Junius, Sheridan, 
 and Parr, 44; contrasted with 
 Coleridge, 44; his humor, 45-48; 
 his contrast of the stage-coach 
 with the railway, 45, 46; his 
 "Murder considered as one of 
 the Fine Arts," 46, 47; his 
 pathos, 48, 49; his recital of a 
 victory in Spain, 48, 49; his 
 genius for the sublime, 49- his 
 dialectic skill, 49; his "Logic 
 of Political Economy," 49; his 
 style, 50, 51; his remark on 
 Berkeley's style, 51 ; his irreso 
 lution ; his writings fragmentary 
 and indeterminate, 52, 53; his 
 apology for his vagrancy, 53; 
 his conversation, 53, 56; his 
 writings commended to young 
 men, 56, 57; deplores the pre 
 ference of foreign literatures to 
 the English, 268; explains the 
 reason of this preference, 269; 
 censures the clerical misrepre 
 sentations of English history, 
 176; his opinion of Hume as a 
 historian, 178; his estimate of 
 the number of volumes that can 
 be read in a lifetime, 144. 
 
 Dexter, Timothy, anecdote of, 107, 
 108. 
 
 Dibdin, T. F., D.D., his account 
 of the " Roxburgh Fight," 343, 
 344. 
 
 Dinner, its connection with liber 
 ality, 160, 161; with kind feel 
 ing, 161 ; its intellectual aspects. 
 163; an index of national life, 
 169. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, on the values 
 of history and poetry, 185. 
 
 Dreams, De Quincey's, 29-31. 
 
 Dry den, John, when most in 
 spired, 31. 
 
 Dumas, Alexandre, his ironical 
 compliment to Lamartine, 204. 
 
 Dying words of great men, 216, 
 '217. 
 
378 
 
 IXDEX. 
 
 Early Rising, homilies upon, 229- 
 236; arguments for, 229, 230; 
 objections to, 230-236; origin 
 of the practice, 236; Robert 
 Hall on, 274. 
 
 Education, Dr. R. South on, 75; 
 the proper otyect of, 120-127; 
 why needed in practical pur 
 suits, 126; not all acquired in 
 school, 149. 
 
 Elam, Dr. Charles, on the healths 
 of senior wranglers and boat 
 men, 131; on the age of cele 
 brated thinkers, 134. 
 
 England, histories of, 176; Hume's, 
 176-179; when named, 200. 
 
 English literature, its superiority 
 to the Greek, 22. 
 
 Englishmen as orators, 283, 284. 
 
 Epitaph, curious, 254. 
 
 Error, its tenacity of life, 217. 
 
 Esquiros, M., on English diet. 164. 
 
 Everett, Edward, his toast to 
 Judge Story, 114. 
 
 Fame, literary, 287, 288. 
 
 Faraday, Professor, 137. 
 
 Farragut, Admiral, at Mobile, 
 196 
 
 Fenelon, his love of reading, 138. 
 
 Fluency, easy to acquire, 280; not 
 characteristic of full men, 280, 
 286 ; a disadvantage in the 
 House of Commons, 282, 283. 
 
 Fontenelle, mythical story of, 221. 
 
 Fontenoy, the battle of, 196. 
 
 Foote, the comedian, witticism of, 
 208. 
 
 Francis I, of France, his letter 
 from Pavia, 205. 
 
 Franklin, Dr. Benjamin, his in 
 debtedness to Cotton Mather, 
 137; not fluent, 281; on a veg 
 etable diet, 168. 
 
 Frederic the Great, his knowl 
 edge of French, 265; an early 
 riser, 229, 233. 
 
 Frenchmen, their love of epi 
 grams, 213. 
 
 Froude, J. A., on writing history, 
 186; on the disagreements of 
 English historians, 186; his his 
 tory of England, 187. 
 
 Galen, his feebleness, 134. 
 
 Galileo, his "epur si muove," 210, 
 211; not a martyr, 211. 
 
 Gallatin, Albert, Judge Story's 
 opinion of him, 108. 
 
 Germans, the, their dislike of long 
 speeches, 282. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, his love of read 
 ing, 137; his history, 179, 180; 
 anecdote of, 221 ; an early riser, 
 230; his snuff- taking, 353. 
 
 Goethe, his mode of studying 
 languages, 267. 
 
 Good living, its pleasures relished 
 by famous men, 166; required 
 by the scholar, 167. 
 
 Goodness, dependent on the stom 
 ach, 159-163. 
 
 Graham, Dr. Sylvester, his bran- 
 bread system, 117, 167; effects 
 of his regimen, 117; his loss of 
 popularity, 118. 
 
 Graham, John , of Claverhouse, 1 73 . 
 
 Great men, often feeble in body, 
 134; their "memorable say 
 ings " generally fabrications, 
 201-223; coincidences in their 
 sayings, 207-210. 
 
 Greenleaf, Prof. Simon, as a legal 
 teacher, 99. 
 
 Gregory, Nazianzen, his anathe 
 mas of Julian, 63. 
 
 Guizot, on moral chronology in 
 history, 180, 181. 
 
 Guy, Thomas, 192. 
 
 H 
 
 Hackett, Dr. H. B., an earnest 
 reader, 158. 
 
 Hall, Robert, on the conversation 
 of Mackintosh, 102; on Dr. 
 Kippis's reading, 139; on early 
 rising, 274; on the beauty of 
 Oxford, 308; his love of the 
 pipe, 364. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 379 
 
 Hamerton, P. G., on learning a 
 modern language, 265-267. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir W., on desultory 
 reading, 150. 
 
 Handel, his voracity, 166. 
 
 Hazlitt, William, saying of, 160. 
 
 Heber, Richard, his libraries, 345. 
 
 Henry IV of France, imaginary 
 mot of, 205. 206. 
 
 Henry VIII, 166. 
 
 Henry of Guise, King of Naples, 
 
 J-Ot/. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, his mode of read 
 ing books, 156. 
 
 Hill, Rowland, his denunciation 
 of Charles Wesley, 65; his ear 
 nestness, 95. 
 
 Hippocrates, on mental differ 
 ences, 159. 
 
 Historians, their difficulties, ITS- 
 ITS; Montaigne on, 180; forget 
 moral chronology, 180; their 
 love of antithesis, 183; their 
 treatment of 'the old chroniclers, 
 185. 
 
 Historical criticism, 171. 
 
 History, Rev. F. W. Robertson on, 
 174; F. W. Froude on, 174, 175; 
 its facts ductile, ib.; origin of 
 its lies, 183-188; less truthful 
 than fiction, 185; dangers of 
 conjecture in, 186; its truth 
 sacrificed to effect, 187; its 
 great events caused by accidents 
 or petty means, 188; its reha 
 bilitations of villains, 189, 190; 
 its disenchantments, 190-194, 
 223-228; defined by Voltaire, 
 195; some of its doubtful stories, 
 197, 198; its substance not 
 forged, 224. 
 
 Hobbes of Malmesbury, saying 
 of, 140. 
 
 Hobbies, 341. 
 
 Homilies on Early Rising, 229- 
 
 Huet, Bishop of Avranches, say 
 ing of, 145. 
 
 Hume, David, his history, 176- 
 179; his death, 216, 217. 
 
 Hunt, Leigh, on the modes of 
 snuff-taking, 356. 
 
 I 
 
 Iconoclasm, 224. 
 
 Idiosyncrasies of celebrated men, 
 
 366. 
 Illusions of History, 171-228; their 
 
 supposed utility, 223, 224; their 
 
 loss not to be regretted, 224-227. 
 Imperial Guard, the French, at 
 
 Waterloo, 204. 
 Indigestion, its moral effects, 160, 
 
 162; its political effects, 16; the 
 
 cause of military defeats, 164. 
 Inquisition, the, 173. 
 Irishmen, their contributions to 
 
 American prosperity, 300, 301. 
 
 Jackson, Gen. Andrew, and the 
 
 cotton-bags story, 202. 
 Jefferson, President, not fluent, 
 
 281. 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his capacity 
 
 for work, 131, 132; on reading, 
 
 148; a rapid reader, 156; on 
 
 sickness, 160; a snuff-taker, 352. 
 Journalism, its effects on writers, 
 
 298. 
 
 Jovius, Paulus, on history, 175. 
 Judgment, the most valuable 
 
 mental faculty, 124, 125. 
 ' ' Juggernaut, ' ' errors concerning, 
 
 201. 
 
 K 
 
 Kane, Dr. Elisha, 133. 
 
 Karr, Alphonse, on tobacco, 348. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, his adaptation of 
 
 food to his theatrical parts, 163. 
 Knowledge, its branches related, 
 
 151. 
 
 L 
 
 Labor, the limit of mental, 131; 
 misdirected, 237-240. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, on tobacco, 347; 
 his love of snuff, 354; at Christ's 
 Hospital, 333. 
 
 Languages, foreign, study of, 263 
 -271; Goethe's study of, 266, 
 267 ; why their study is fashion 
 able, 268, 269. 
 
 Leigh, Dr. Theophilus, 318. 
 
380 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Lewis, Dio,on health and strength, 
 
 Library, the National, at Paris, 
 143; of the British Museum, 
 143, 144. 
 
 Lipogrammatists, 240. 
 
 Literary triflers, 237-255. 
 
 Literature, that of knowledge dis 
 tinguished from the literature 
 of power, 43; its dependence 
 on cookery, 163, 164. 
 
 Locke, John, misrepresented, 218. 
 
 Longevity, a test of strength, 134. 
 
 Lope de Vega, his lipograms, 240. 
 
 Louis XIV, his sayings, 207, 213. 
 
 Louis XVI, his parting from his 
 family, 198. 
 
 Luther, Martin, as a controver 
 sialist, 63. 
 
 Luttrell, Henry, witticism of, 209. 
 
 Luxemburg, his endurance, 134. 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., his history, 174, 
 181-183; on Gibbon's history, 
 179 ; his injustice to Marl- 
 borough, 181, 183; his "New 
 Zealander, ' ' 209 ; on writing for 
 periodicals, 260; studies the 
 German language, 265; anec 
 dote by, 137. 
 
 Macclesfield, Lord, his advocacy 
 of a reform of the calendar, 171 . 
 
 Maclaurin, on the relations of 
 knowledges, 151. 
 
 Madison, Mrs. James, her snuff 
 box, 355. 
 
 Magdalen College, Oxford, 321- 
 323. 
 
 Maiden, Prof., on education, 120- 
 123. 
 
 Man, not designed to be a mere 
 mechanic, merchant, etc., 125, 
 126; before the Fall, 65, 66. 
 
 Marlborough, Duke of, 181, 183. 
 
 Marshall, Chief Justice, anecdote 
 of, 108; his logical power, 109; 
 Daniel Webster on, 110. 
 
 Mason, Dr. John, saying of, 161. 
 
 Merton CoUege, Oxford, 316-318. 
 
 Method, martyrs to, 273, 274; de 
 generates into priggishness,277. 
 
 Michelet, the French historian, 
 inspired by Virgil, 137. 
 
 Milton, John, his learning, 140; 
 his violence in controversy, 64, 
 65; on linguistic knowledge, 
 267; on scrupulists, 278; and 
 his daughters, 200; on earth 
 quakes, 363. 
 
 Mint, U. S., savings in, 147. 
 
 Mirabeau, his indebtedness to 
 Chamfort, 292; his reply to the 
 minister of Louis XVI, 214. 
 
 Misquotations, 219, 220. 
 
 Mitford, Wm., his history of 
 Greece, 174. 
 
 Moigno, the Abbe, effects of to 
 bacco on his memory, 364. 
 
 Montagu, Lady Mary W., saying 
 of, 225. 
 
 Montaigne, on historians, 180; on 
 working by rule, 278. 
 
 Montpensier, saying of, 208. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, his songs, 287; 
 anecdote of, 353. 
 
 Moral Grahamism, 117-128. 
 
 Morality of Good Living, 159-170. 
 
 More, Hannah, saying of, 162. 
 
 Moscow, not destroyed by the 
 Russians, 199. 
 
 N 
 
 Napoleon I, his anagram, 246; 
 his power of labor and delicate 
 digestion, 130; his Memoirs, 
 173; a rapid reader, 156; his 
 ascent of the Alps, 198; paral 
 yzed by indigestion, 165; a 
 saying of, 281; a snuff- taker, 
 353, 372; his habit of borrow 
 ing snuff-boxes, 372, 373 ; his 
 death caused by snuff-taking, 
 365. 
 
 Nelson, Lord, imaginary sayings 
 of, 202, 203; on the Battle of 
 the Nile, 207. 
 
 New College, Oxford, 319-321. 
 
 Newman, Prof. J. H., on mental 
 culture, 123. 
 
 Newspapers, advice to their con 
 tributors, 257-262; what are 
 most popular, 258; "maps of 
 busy life, "259. 
 
ISTDEX. 
 
 381 
 
 New Testament, interpolations of. 
 226, 227. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 139; saying of, 
 145; mythical stories of, 199. 
 
 Normans, the defenders of lib 
 erty, 304, 305. 
 
 Opium, DeQuincey's experiences 
 with it, 26-32; its exaltation of 
 the ideas, 27; the torments it 
 inflicts, 27-30. 
 
 Order of the Garter, its supposed 
 origin, 198. 
 
 Oriel College, Oxford, 317. 
 
 Oxford, a Day at, 307-326; 
 beauty of, 307, 308, 315. 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, his power of 
 work, 132; contrasted with Mr. 
 Horsman, 283. 
 
 Parr, Dr. Samuel, 166. 
 
 Parsons, Chief-Justice, a rapid 
 reader, 157. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 138. 
 
 Pembroke College, Oxford, 316. 
 
 Penmanship, microscopic, 252. 
 
 Philip of Valois, imaginary say 
 ings of, 204, 205. 
 
 Piety, dependent on the physical 
 health, 161, 162. 
 
 Pinckney, Gen. Charles C., his 
 reply to Bonaparte, 212. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, curious portrait 
 of, 253; his capacity for labor, 
 131; an epicure, 166. 
 
 "Practical" education, the pop 
 ular idea of it, 119, 120; objec 
 tions to, 120-126; true defined, 
 126-128; not incompatible with 
 high culture, 125; its advan 
 tages, 127, 128. 
 
 Professorships of Books and Read 
 ing, 136-158; R. W. Emerson 
 upon, 146; objection to, 154; 
 qualifications for, 154, 155; du 
 ties of, 154, 157. 
 
 Prynne, William, 238. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, anecdote of, 234. 
 
 Races, the most powerful, 306. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir W., 172. 
 
 Readers, 339, 340; wholesale, 340. 
 
 Reading, the abuse of, 139, 140; 
 cannot injure an active mind, 
 140; mistakes about, 141, 142, 
 158; profitless, 142, 143; should 
 be systematic and thorough, 
 
 149, 150; effects of desultory, 
 150; should be multifarious, 
 
 150, 151 ; and have reference to 
 individual tastes, 151-153; yet, 
 needs an adviser, 153; manuals 
 and " courses " of, 154; how to 
 economize it, 156-159; method 
 of Patrick Henry, Dr. Johnson, 
 Burke, Napoleon, Coleridge, 
 Judge Parsons, Thierry, and 
 Carlyle, 156, 157 ; intensity of 
 Dr. Hackett in, 158. 
 
 Read, T. Buchanan, his verses on 
 Admiral Farragut, 197. 
 
 Renan, on deceptions, 227, 228. 
 
 Rhymes, double, 252. 
 
 Richardson, Samuel, his novels, 
 288. 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, on reading 
 and speaking, 286. 
 
 Riddles, 253-255. 
 
 Robespierre, 184. 
 
 Rome, its early history, 190. 
 
 Rousseau, J. J., on "the profes 
 sion of humanity, 1 ' 126; his 
 anagram, 245. 
 
 Roxburgh, the Duke of, sale of 
 his library, 343-344. 
 
 Sainte Pierre, story of, 198. 
 
 Saint George, an impostor, 192. 
 
 Scholarship, not incompatible with 
 practical ability, 125 ; favorable 
 to success in all callings, 125; 
 encyclopaedic, 145. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, anecdote of. 
 209; on methodical people, 273. 
 
 Shakspeare, on feeding and fast 
 ing, 161. 
 
 Sheridan, Richard B., 193, 210. 
 
 Skepticism, its compensations, 
 224, 225. 
 
382 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Smith, Sydney, on indigestible 
 food, 160; description of a 
 French savant, 354. 
 
 Smokers, their excesses, 363. 
 
 Sneezing, its pleasures, 357, 358; 
 scientifically explained, 358; pic 
 turesque description of, 359; 
 why it calls forth the exclama 
 tion of "God bless you," 361; 
 a good or bad omen with the 
 ancients, 361, 362; superstitions 
 about it, 361, 362; a terrific 
 instance of, 363. 
 
 Snuff, a pinch of, 347-374; its 
 consumers a serious class, 350; 
 its influence on Presidential 
 elections, 355; modes of taking 
 it, 356; its adulterations, 366, 
 367; duty on, in Great Britain, 
 370. 
 
 Snuff-boxes, their varieties, 369- 
 372; royal, 371, 372. 
 
 Snuff- taking, the best mode of 
 using tobacco, 349-350, 363; 
 celebrated persons addicted to, 
 350-354; promotes social enjoy 
 ment, 354; the modes of, 356; 
 legal prohibitions of, 360, 361; 
 time wasted in, 361; Bos well 
 on its pleasures, 361; preferable 
 to smoking, 363, 364; effects of 
 excess in, 364-366; not neces 
 sarily injurious, 376; chief ob 
 jections to, 366; effects on the 
 complexion, 367; in the days of 
 Queen Anne and of Louis XV, 
 367; fatal to romance, 368; by 
 whom invented, 368; in France 
 and England, 368-370; in Scot 
 land, 370; anecdotes of, 372- 
 374. 
 
 Solitude, De Quincey on, 17. 
 
 Southey, Robert, on Words 
 worth's treatment of books, 40; 
 an excessive reader, 139; his 
 methodical habits, 275; value 
 of his works, 275, 276; little 
 read, 287. 
 
 South, Robert, D.D., 58-80; com 
 pared with Sydney Smith, 58; 
 his birth and education, 58, 59 ; 
 his studies at Oxford, 59 j elect 
 
 ed public orator to the Univer 
 sity, 59; his sermon on "The 
 Scribe Instructed," 59-61; on 
 qualifications of the preacher, 
 59, 60; on the rhetoric of the 
 Scriptures, 61 ; becomes a parti 
 san of the Restoration, 62; his 
 sermon on " Pretense of Con 
 science no Excuse for Rebell 
 ion," 62, 63; on the execution 
 of Charles I, 62; his denuncia 
 tion of Vane and Milton, 62; 
 his sermon on "Man Created 
 in God's Image," 65, 66; his 
 sermon on "The Pleasantness 
 of Wisdom's Ways," 66, 67; 
 on the Roman austerities, 67; 
 made Prebendary of St. Peter's, 
 Westminster, 67; made canon 
 of Christ Church, Oxford, 67; 
 his discourse on "Christ's 
 Promise the Support of his 
 Despised Ministers," 67; his 
 ridicule of Jeremy Taylor, 67, 
 68; his sermon on "All Contin 
 gencies Directed by God's Prov 
 idence," 69; his hit at Crom 
 well, 69 ; refuses a bishopric, 69 ; 
 his attitude toward William 
 III, 69; his bodily infirmities, 
 69 ; his death, 70; compared with 
 Hooker, Barrow and Taylor, 
 70; his principal characteristics, 
 70; his plainness of speech, 70, 
 71; his command of vehement 
 language, 71, 72; his intensity 
 of thought and feeling, 72 ; his 
 aphorisms and epigrams, 72, 73; 
 his sermon on " Extempore 
 Prayer," 72-74; his style, 74- 
 76; quotations from, 74-76, 79; 
 his knowledge of hum an nature, 
 76; his coarsenesses of lan 
 guage, 76, 77; his wit, 77-79; 
 his ridicule of the Puritans, 77, 
 78. 
 
 Speaking, public, excessive in 
 America, 279, 280. 
 
 Spurgeon, Rev. Charles H., 81- 
 96; his "Tabernacle" de 
 scribed, 81, 82; his physiocr- 
 nomy, 82, 90; his voice, 83, 91, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 383 
 
 92; his Sunday service, 83; one 
 of his sermons analyzed, with 
 extracts, 84-86; his poor health, 
 86; account of an interview 
 with him, 87; his preparation 
 of sermons, 87; disclaims elo 
 quence, 87, 88; his wit, 88; the 
 secret of his power, 89-96; his 
 audiences, 89; wide circulation 
 of his sermons, 89; his popu 
 larity as a preacher, 89; his 
 culture, 90, 91; not a theolo 
 gian, 91, 95; his delivery, 92; 
 his language, 92, 93; his pic 
 torial style, 93, 94; his earnest 
 ness, 94, 95; not a sensational 
 preacher, 95. 
 
 Sterne, Lawrence, 193. 
 
 Story, Joseph, 97-116; his per 
 sonal appearance, and manner, 
 97, 98; his wit and humor, 98, 
 102, 114, 115; contrasted with 
 Professor Simon Greenleaf, 99; 
 his manner as a lecturer, 100; 
 his elasticity and vivacity, 101 ; 
 his qualifications as a legal 
 teacher, 101 ; his prodigality 
 of learning, 102; his eloquence 
 on Constitutional themes, 102, 
 103; his descriptions of great 
 bar contests, 103, 104; his anec 
 dotes of William Pinkney, 104- 
 107; his description of Thomas 
 Addis Emmet, 105; his account 
 of the arguments in the "Ne- 
 reide " case, 105-107; his anec 
 dote of Dexter, Ames, and 
 Marshall, 107, 108; his opinion 
 of Albert Gallatin, 108; on 
 hasty legislation, 108; on young 
 statesmen, 109; compares the 
 elder and the younger Pitt, 109; 
 exposes Lord Chatham's incon 
 sistency, 109 ; his panegyrics on 
 Chief Justice Marshall, 109, 110; 
 on changes in the U. S. Consti 
 tution, 110; on the difficulty 
 of framing unambiguous laws, 
 110; on the proper title of John 
 Tyler, 111; on Daniel Web 
 ster's magnanimity, 111; his 
 frankness in avowing his judi 
 
 cial errors, 111; his industry, 
 111, 112; his literary and polit 
 ical publications, 112; his econ 
 omy of time, 112; his fame as 
 a jurist, 112, 113; his love of 
 praise, 113;' his experience in 
 borrowing money, 113, 114; his 
 love for his pupils, 114; his tact, 
 115; on Shelley's case, 115; his 
 panegyric on Courts of Equity, 
 115; his favorite maxims, 115; 
 his early poems and orations, 
 116; his address at Mt. Auburn 
 Cemetery, 116; his statue, 116; 
 witticisms of, 234, 235. 
 
 Strength and Health, 129-135. 
 
 Strength, tests of physical, 133- 
 Io5. 
 
 "Strong," meanings of the word, 
 130-135. 
 
 Study of the Modern Languages, 
 263-271; its advantages, 263, 
 its difficulties underrated, 265; 
 Mr. Hammerton on, 265, 266, 
 267; when advisable, 268, 270; 
 why preferred to the study of 
 English writers, 269 ; injures a 
 writer's style, 269, 270 ; Schil 
 ler's and Moore's opinion of, 
 269; not necessary to a knowl 
 edge of foreign literatures, 270. 
 
 Suidas, the historian, 191. 
 
 Sully, Duke of, witty saying of, 
 207; on the battle of Aumaule, 
 172. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, his notices of 
 Judge Story, 111, 112. 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, D.D., his letter 
 to Halifax, 69; on the writing 
 of history, 196; anecdote of, 219. 
 
 Sydney, Algernon, 193. 
 
 Taine, H., on style, 261. 
 
 Talleyrand, saying of, 166; cred 
 ited with other men's witti 
 cisms, 212, 213. 
 
 Taylor, Gen. Zachary, his order at 
 Buena Vista, 202. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, his style ridiculed 
 by South, 67, 68. 
 
 Tell, William, a myth, 191, 192. 
 
384 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M., witticism of, 
 209. 
 
 Thelwall, John, his supposed re 
 ply to Erskine, 212. 
 
 Thierry, a rapid reader, 157. 
 
 Thirlwall, his History of Greece, 
 
 Thomson, James, a late riser, 
 233. 
 
 Tillier, M., saying of, 149. 
 
 Time, economy of, 147, 149; how 
 to economize in reading, 156- 
 158. 
 
 Times, London, on a working 
 constitution, 132. 
 
 Tobacco, its fascinations, 347- 
 349; inconsistency of its ene 
 mies, 356. 
 
 Toplady, Augustus M., his de 
 nunciation of C. Wesley, 65. 
 
 Torstenston, Swedish general, 132. 
 
 Truth, its value, 228. 
 
 V 
 
 Vatel, the cook of Conde, 169. 
 
 Vengeur, story of the, 196. 
 
 Vespucchi, Amerigo, 192. 
 
 Villains, historical rehabilitations 
 of, 189, 190. 
 
 Voltaire, on the Massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew, 162; an inventor 
 of historical "facts," 205; his 
 reply to Haller, 208; his name 
 an anagram, 246. 
 
 W 
 
 Walpole, Sir Robert, supposed 
 
 saying of, 219. 
 
 Washington, his brevity, 280. 
 Webster, Daniel, on Chief- Justice 
 
 Marshall's logic, 110. 
 
 on snuff-taking, 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 124; ficti 
 tious stories concerning him, 
 197, 204; on a great victory, 
 208; on early rising, 229; on 
 speaking French, 267. 
 
 Welsh blood, in eminent Amer 
 icans, 301, 302. 
 
 Wesley, Charles, denounced by 
 Rowland Hill and Toplady, 
 65. 
 
 Wesley, John, on earnestness in 
 preaching, 95. 
 
 Wesley, Samuel, 
 357. 
 
 Whately, Archbishop, on Gib 
 bon's History, 179. 
 
 William III, of England, his 
 power of endurance, 133, 134. 
 
 Winship, Dr. Charles, 134. 
 
 Wirz, the jailor of Andersonville, 
 Quid's defense of him, 196. 
 
 Wit, a forgotten, 287-298. 
 
 Wolfe, Gen. James, 132. 
 
 Wollaston, 138. 
 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 166. 
 
 Woodworth, 194. 
 
 Wordsworth, his good luck, 25, 
 26. 
 
 Working by Rule, 272-278. 
 
 Writing, fast, 261. 
 
 Writing for the Press, 256-262; 
 an art, 257; its difficulties, 257, 
 258. 
 
 X 
 
 Xerxes, fictitious stories of, 197. 
 
 Yankee Doodle, its authorship, 
 
 221, 222. 
 Young, Edward, 193, 194. 
 
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